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LESSON 1 WEEK 4

The document outlines theories of nationalism through the perspectives of five theorists: Ernest Gellner, Miroslav Hroch, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Renan, and Benedict Anderson, each contributing unique frameworks for understanding the development and characteristics of nations. It also includes a timeline of significant historical events that have shaped national identities from the invention of the printing press in 1450 to various independence movements in the 20th century. The lesson aims to help students identify these theorists, explain their studies, and understand the historical context of nationalism.

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12 views

LESSON 1 WEEK 4

The document outlines theories of nationalism through the perspectives of five theorists: Ernest Gellner, Miroslav Hroch, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Renan, and Benedict Anderson, each contributing unique frameworks for understanding the development and characteristics of nations. It also includes a timeline of significant historical events that have shaped national identities from the invention of the printing press in 1450 to various independence movements in the 20th century. The lesson aims to help students identify these theorists, explain their studies, and understand the historical context of nationalism.

Uploaded by

Erick Gracilla
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THEORIES OF NATIONALISM

FIVE NATIONALIST THEORISTS


WEEK 4
Lesson Objectives
At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to:

1. Identify five nationalist theorists;


2. Explain each study on nationalism; and
3. Cite timeline of the major events in the history of
nations.
Ernest Gellner
 The most influential theorist in the study
of nationalism.

 One of the world's most vigorous


intellectuals, and by The Independent as a
"one-man crusader for critical
rationalism".

 Has proposed the five stages in the


transition:
1. Baseline
2. Nationalist Irredentism
3. Emergence of Nationalist States
4. Nacht and Nebel
5. Cultural Convergence
1. Baseline
 A world exists where ethnicity is still not yet self-
evidently present, and where the idea of any link
between it and political legitimacy is almost
entirely absent.

2. Nationalist Irredentism
 A world which has inherited and retained most of
its political boundaries and structures from the
previous stage, but within which ethnicity as a
political principle – in other words, nationalism – is
beginning to operate. The old borders and polities
are under pressure from nationalist agitation.
3. Emergence of Nationalist States
 "National Irredentism triumphant and self-defeating.
Plural empires collapse, and with them the entire
dynastic religious style of political legitimation, and it is
replaced by nationalism as the main effective principle.
A set of smaller states emerge, purporting to fulfill the
national destiny of the ethnic group with which they are
identified. This condition is self defeating, in so far as
these new units are just as minority-haunted as the
larger ones which had preceded them. The new units
are haunted by all the weaknesses of their precursors,
plus some additional ones of their own. "
4. Nacht and Nebel
 This is a term employed by the Nazis for some of their
operations in the course of the Second World War.
Under cover of wartime secrecy, or in the heat of
conflict and passion, or during the period of retaliatory
indignation, moral standards are suspended, and the
principle of nationalism, demanding compact
homogenous ethnic groups within given political-
territorial units, is implemented with a new
ruthlessness. It is no longer done by the older and
benign method of assimilation, but by mass murder or
forcible transplantation of populations.
5. Cultural Convergence
 High level of satiation of the nationalist
requirement, plus generalized affluence, plus
cultural convergence, leads to a diminution,
though not the disappearance, of the virulence
of nationalist re-vindication.
Miroslav Hroch
 classifies a nation as a large
social group integrated not by
one but by a combination of
several kinds of objective
relationships (economic,
political, linguistic, cultural,
religious, geographical,
historical) and their subjective
reflection in collective
consciousness.
Three keys to creating a "nation"
1. a memory of a common past, treated as a destiny
of the group;
2. a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a
higher degree of social communication within the
group or beyond it;
3. a conception of the equality of all members of the
group organized as a civil society.

* Three keys to creating a national identity generally occur in Phase A


PHASE A
 Activists strive to lay the foundation for a national identity. They
research the cultural, linguistic, social and sometimes historical
attributes of a non-dominant group in order to raise awareness of the
common traits but they do this without pressing specifically national
demands to remedy deficits.

PHASE B
 A new range of activists emerged, who sought to win over as many of
their ethnic group as possible to the project of creating a future
nation.

PHASE C
 The majority of the population forms a mass movement. In this
phase, a full social movement comes into being and movement
branches into conservative clerical, liberal and democratic wings, each
with its own program.
Eric Hobsbawm
 He incorporates Hroch's three phases
into his model for the development of
nations and adds to them

 National Consciousness: Hobsbawm's


first stage describes how national
Consciousness develops unevenly
among the social groupings and
regions of a country the popular
masses – workers, servants, peasants
– are the last to be affected by it
 Hobsbawm adopts Hroch's terminology, describing
Phase A as the emergence of cultural, literary and
folkloric identity for a particular social group.

 Cites three criteria for making claims of nationality:


1. Its historic association with a current state or one
with a fairly lengthy and recent past
2. The existence of a long-established cultural elite,
possessing a written national literary and
administrative vernacular
3. A proven capacity for conquest
Phase B or Popular Proto-Nationalism
 A body emerges, which consists of pioneers and militants of
the national idea. They begin to campaign for this idea of
nationality.
 He gives four main criteria for the development of popular
proto-nationalism:
1. Language
2. Ethnicity
3. Religion
4. The consciousness of belonging or having belonged to a
lasting political entity—the most decisive criterion of
proto-nationalism
Phase C
 Nationalist programs acquire mass support, or at least some
of the mass support that nationalists always claim they
represent
Ernest Renan

 Sacrifices form the


foundation of nations – a
nation is therefore a large
scale solidarity, constituted
by the feeling of the
sacrifices that one has made
in the past and of those that
one is prepared to make in
the future.
 He disregards conventional proposals that race,
religion and language generate nationalism.
However, he does cite geography as a significant
factor.

 He also emphasized that most nations began as


dynasties.

 According to Renan, dynastic territories progress to


nations in one of three ways: dynastic unions,
general popular consciousness and direct will of
provinces
Benedict Anderson
 He depicts a nation as a socially
constructed community,
imagined by the people who
perceive themselves as part of
that group.

 Theory of imagined
communities, the main causes of
nationalism are the movement to
abolish the ideas of rule by divine
right and hereditary monarchy
and the emergence of printing
press capitalism
Timeline of the Major Events in the
History of Nations
 1450- Invention of the printing press (Gutenberg)
 1452- The Archduke of Austria selected as Holy Roman Emperor,
marking the beginning of the Hapsburg Dynasty (1452-1918)
 1492- The Unification of Spain
 1618-1648- The Thirty Years' War
 1648- Peace of Westphalia
 1702-1713- War of Spanish Succession
 1713-1714- Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt
 1776-1783- The War for American Independence
 1789- French Revolution
 1792-1815- Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
 1815- Congress of Vienna
Timeline of the Major Events in the
History of Nations
 1848- Revolutions of 1848
 1859- The Italian War
 1864- The Danish War
 1866- The Austro-Prussian War
 1870- The Franco-Prussian War
 1871- Italian and German Unification completed
 1914-1918- World War I
 1917- Russian Revolution
 1919- Treaty of Versailles
 1933-1945- Germany's Third Reich: Hitler comes to power
 1938- Munich crisis; Germany annexes Austria
 1939-1945- Second World War
Timeline of the Major Events in the
History of Nations

 1945- United Nations established (51 members); Cold War


begins
 1947- India and Pakistan independent
 1948- Burma independent, Israel established
 1949- People's Republic of China established; Dutch leave
Indonesia
 1950s- Japan regains sovereignty; various African independence
movements
 1960s- More African independence movements; Vietnam War
begins

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