Nations and their Histories: Constructions and Representations

Nations and their Histories Constructions and Representations

Edited by

Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne

Nations and their Histories

Also by François Gemenne DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT AND MIGRATION: Analysis of Linkages and Consequences (co-author with R. Stojanov, J. Novosak, J. Opiniano and T. Siwek) GÉOPOLITIQUE DU CHANGEMENT CLIMATIQUE (forthcoming 2009)

Nations and their Histories Constructions and Representations Edited by

Susana Carvalho Department of Government London School of Economics and Political Science, UK and

François Gemenne Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies University of Liège, Belgium Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations Sciences Po, Paris, France

Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne 2009 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–21860–4 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–21860–1 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Dedicated to Amélia, my beloved and adoring mother, and to Sandra, her younger sister and my guarding angel. (Susana Carvalho) To Christine, who knows all too well why this book matters. (François Gemenne)

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Contents Illustrations and Figures

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Contributors

xi

Introduction Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne

1

Part I National Histories and the Construction of Nations 1

Nationalism and the Making of National Pasts John Breuilly

2

The Comparative History of National Historiographies in Europe: Some Methodological Reflections and Preliminary Results Stefan Berger

3

4

5

6

7

7

29

‘Colonising’ The Past: History and Memory in Greece and Turkey Spyros A. Sofos and Umut Özkırımlı

46

The Politics of Memorialisation in Zimbabwe Terence Ranger

62

Beginning the World over Again: Past and Future in American Nationalism Don H. Doyle

77

Rediscovering Columbus in Nineteenth-Century American Textbooks Christine Cadot

93

Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Mexico D. A. Brading vii

111

viii

Contents

Part II

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Present Representations of National Histories

Eternal France: Crisis and National Self-Perception in France, 1870–2005 Robert Gildea

139

Cuisine, Nationality and the Making of a National Meal: The English Breakfast Kaori O’Connor

157

National Restoration and Moral Renewal: The Dialectics of the Past in the Emergence of Modern Israel Allon Gal

172

Crafting Iranian Nationalism: Intersectionality of Aryanism, Westernism and Islamism Azadeh Kian and Gilles Riaux

189

The Union Des Populations Du Cameroun, from Vilification to National Recognition: The Evolution of State Discourses on the Nationalist Political Party in Post-Colonial Cameroon Carine Nsoudou Refashioning Sub-National Pasts for Post-National Futures: The Xhosa Cattle Killing in Recent South African Literature Jennifer Wenzel

204

223

A Season of War: Warriors, Veterans and Warfare in American Nationalism Susan-Mary Grant

237

Sinocentricism and the National Question in China Eric Hyer

255

Nation, History, Museum: The Politics of the Past at the National Museum of Australia Ben Wellings

274

Conclusion Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne

289

Index

291

Illustrations and Figures Illustrations 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Temple of Time (1845) Temple of Time (1860) Discovery of San Salvadore Discovery of San Salvadore Situation of America in A.D. 1492

97 98 100 100 102

Figures 6.1

Books with Illustrations of Columbus and of the Norsemen over the 19th Century 6.2 Value Judgement on Columbus

ix

104 105

Acknowledgements The initial idea for this book came about when we were chairing the 16th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) held at the London School of Economics on 28–30 March 2006. We are very grateful to the Executive Committee of ASEN for entrusting us with the organisation of this conference, ‘Nations and their Pasts: Representing the Past, Building the Future’, which planted the seeds for the conception of this book . We would also like to extend our gratitude to the contributors of this volume, who agreed to submit a revised version of their conference papers as well as to those who were not speakers at the conference but have contributed with new additions. Although their opinions may not always be our own, it should be noted that we take sole responsibility for the structure and general argument of this book, as well as any omissions and errors that might be present in the following pages. We would not have been able to bring this book to a conclusion if it weren’t for the generous and selfless intellectual advice of John Breuilly. We were very honoured and proud to have a scholar, and an individual, of his calibre supporting us all the way. Our commissioning editors at Palgrave Macmillan, Amy Lankester-Owen and Gemma d’Arcy Hughes, have also been crucial to the development of this project. We would like to thank them for their vote of confidence and for their eternal patience with us.

x

Contributors Stefan Berger is Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester. He directed the five-year European Science Foundation Programme entitled ‘Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe (2003–2008)’. He has just completed a British Academy funded project on the relations between Britain and the GDR, 1949–1990. He has published widely on comparative labour history, the history of nationalism and national identity in Europe and on historiography as well as historical theory. Among his most recent book publications are. (ed.). Writing the Nation: a Global Perspective (Palgrave, 2007), and Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth Century Europe, 1789–1914 (Blackwell, 2006); ‘Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR 1949–1990, with Norman la Porte (Berghahn, 2009); ed., Kaliningrad in Europa: nachbarschaftliche Perspektiven nach dem Ende des Kalten Krieges (Harrossowitz, 2009); ed. with Chris Lorenz, The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Palgrave, 2008); ed. with Linas Eriksonas and Andrew Mycock, Narrating the Nation: National Identity in History, Media and the Arts (Berghahn, 2008). David Brading is Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He has taught Latin American history at Cambridge for more than 30 years and is generally recognised as one of the leading historians on Mexico. He’s the author of several books on Mexican history, including: Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico (1971), Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío (1979), The Origins of Mexican Nationalism (1985), the First America (1991), Church and State in Bourbon Mexico (1994) and Mexican Phoenix(2001). He has been awarded the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration for a foreign citizen given by the Mexican government. John Breuilly is Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at LSE. Recent publications include Nationalism, Power and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Germany (2007), the introduction to the second edition (2000) of Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism and, co-edited with Ronal Speirs, Germany’s Two Unifications: Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (2005). Current work includes editing the Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism and writing on the modernisation of the German lands between 1780 and 1880. Christine Cadot is Associate Professor of Political Science at Paris 8 University. Her current research examines the artistic representations of Europe in museums, and more generally, the effects of national frames in discourses and representations of Europe. Her publications include xi

xii Contributors

“ ‘N’Oubliez pas le Guide!’ Les Identités Post-Nationales au Musée (Musée de l’Europe et National Museum of Australia)”, in Violaine Roussel (dir), Les Artistes et la Politique, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, forthcoming 2009; “Fédéralisme et Lèse-Nation. Traduction et Criminalisation du Fédéralisme Américain sous la Révolution Française”, Revue TLE (Théorie, Littérature, Epistémologie), n°25, 2008, pp.165–176; and “Une Géométrie ‘Naturelle’ du Politique: Les Rues de Paris et de Washington D.C.”, Pouvoirs, n°116, January 2006, pp.45–64. Susana Carvalho holds a first degree in Political Science and International Relations from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She joined the Department of Government of the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2004 to study for an MSc in Nationalism and Ethnicity. She is currently finishing her PhD research in the same department under the supervision of John Hutchinson. Her thesis studies the role played by nationalism in Portugal’s twentieth century regime overthrows. In 2006, alongside François Gemenne, Susana organised the 16th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), entitled ‘Nations and Their Pasts: Representing the Past, Building the Future’. From 2006 to 2007, she was the Deputy Editor of Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism and the Co-Chair of ASEN. From 2006 to 2008, Susana worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant on ‘Theories and Problems of Nationalism’ at the LSE. In the 2008–2009 academic year, she was a visiting Lecturer on ‘Nationalism in Spain’ and ‘Nationalism in Modern Europe’ at King's College London. Don H. Doyle is the McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, USA. He has also taught as visiting professor at the University of Rome, University of Genoa, Leeds University, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and Richmond University. His more recent books include Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question; and edited (with Marco Pamplona) Nationalism in the New World (English and Portuguese editions). He is currently working on The Cause of All Mankind, a book reinterpreting US nationalism. Allon Gal is an Emeritus Full Professor, History Department, and a Senior Research Fellow at Ben-Gurion Research Institute, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He is on the Editorial Board of Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Bialik Institute, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies and American Jewish History. He is a contributor to and editor of World Regional Zionism: Geo-cultural Dimensions, Shazar Center, Jerusalem, and Ben-Gurion University Press (in Hebrew), and (with A. S. Leousssi and A. D. Smith) of The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present (forthcoming) by Brill, Leiden and Boston. Current work includes editing (with M. Lissak) the forthcoming (in Hebrew) The Historical Foundations of Israeli Democracy and writing on the role of Western Zionism in the democratic course of the Yishuv and the state of Israel.

Contributors xiii

François Gemenne is a research fellow with the Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM) and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), and a junior lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris. He recently completed a doctoral dissertation on the norms and policies addressing migration flows triggered by environmental changes, and is due to publish a monograph on the international politics of climate change in Fall 2009. From 2005 to 2006, he was the Managing Editor of Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, and in 2006 he organised the 16th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) with Susana Carvalho. He holds a Master of Research in Political Science from the London School of Economics and a Master of Science in Development, Environment and Societies from the University of Louvain (Belgium). Robert Gildea is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. Among his publications are Children of the Revolution. The French, 1799–1914 (London, Allen Lane, 2008), Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation (London, Macmillan, 2002), which won the Wolfson History Prize, France since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 1996), and The Past in French History (Yale University Press, 1994). He has edited Writing Contemporary History with Anne Simonin (London, Hodder Arnold, 2008) and Surviving Hitler and Mussolini, with Anette Warring and Oliver Wieviorka (Oxford and New York, Berg, 2006). Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at Newcastle University, UK. She is the author of North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000), The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006), and various articles on American nationalism in the nineteenth century. Most recently she has published ‘Reimagined Communities: Union Veterans and the Reconstruction of American Nationalism,’ in Nations and Nationalism 14:3 (July 2008), an article derived from her current research project on American Civil War veterans and the development of American nationalism after 1861. Professor Grant is the current editor of the journal American Nineteenth Century History (Routledge). Eric Hyer is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. He has published articles on territorial and security questions in China Quarterly (1992), Pacific Affairs (1995) and Journal of Contemporary China (2001) and has published research on China’s national and ethnic issues in the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (2006). He is currently completing a manuscript on China’s boundary disputes and settlements. Azadeh Kian is Professor of Sociology and Director of Centre for Feminist Studies at the University of Paris 7-Paris-Diderot, and Researcher at CNRS

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Contributors

(Mondes iranien et indien). She earned her Ph.D. in 1993 in PoliticalHistorical Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her publications include: La République Islamique d’Iran : De la Maison du Guide à la Raison d’Etat, Paris, Editions Michalon, 2005. translated into Greek, Editions Kpitikh (Kritiki), 2006; Les Femmes iraniennes entre islam, Etat et famille, Paris, Maisonneuve & Larose, 2002; Secularization of Iran, a Doomed Failure? The New Middle Class and the Making of Modern Iran, Louvain & Paris, Peeters & Institut d’Études Iraniennes, 1998; ‘From Motherhood to Equal Rights Advocates: The Weakening of Patriarchal Order’, in Homa Katouzian et Hossein Shahidi (dir), Iran in the 21st Century. Politics, Economics and Conflict, London, Routeledge, 2008, p. 86–106; ‘La Révolution Iranienne de 1979’, in Michelle Zancarini-Fournel et Philippe Artières (dir), 1968,Une Histoire Collective, Paris, Editions la Découverte, 2008. Carine Nsoudou is currently completing her PhD thesis on the ‘Emergence of Political Cultures in Cameroon between 1918 and 1961 through a Comparative Study of Areas under French and British Rule’ at the Centre for African Research, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research interests include nationalism, political practices and representations, as well as the political instrumentalisation of the concepts of national unity, tribalism and minorities. Kaori O’Connor is a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology, University College London. She obtained her PhD from University College London, and holds degrees in social anthropology from Reed College and from Oxford University. Her research interests include material culture, heritage, identity and the anthropology of food. She is the author of several books and articles touching upon these subjects including ‘The King’s Christmas Pudding: Globalisation, Recipes and the Commodities of Empire’ (Journal of Global History, 4:1, 2009), ‘The Secret History of the Weed of Hiraeth: Wales, Laverbread and Identity ‘(Journal of Museum Ethnography, 22, 2009), ‘The Hawaiian Luau: Food as Tradition, Transgression, Transformation and Travel (Food Culture and Society 11:2, June 2008)’; ‘The Body and the Brand: How Lycra Shaped America’ in Producing Fashion edited by Regina Blasczyck (University of Pennyslvania Press, 2007) and The English Breakfast: the Biography of a National Meal (Kegan Paul, 2006). Umut Özkırımlı is Associate Professor of Politics and the Director of Turkish-Greek Studies at Istanbul Bilgi University. His previous publications include Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), Nationalism and its Futures (edited collection, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (with Spyros A. Sofos, Hurst & Co. and Columbia University Press, 2008). He is currently working on the English edition of a monograph on nationalism

Contributors xv

and EU-Turkey relations (to be published by Hurst & Co.) and an edited collection on nationalism in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey with Ayhan Aktar and Niyazi Kızılyürek (to be published by Palgrave Macmillan). Terence Ranger is Emeritus Professor of African History at the University of Oxford, having previously held chairs in Manchester, UCLA and Dar es Salaam. He first went to Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, in 1957 and was deported by Welensky’s Federal government in 1963. He has published seven monographs about the modern history of Zimbabwe and is currently completing an urban social history to be entitled ‘Bulawayo Burning’. In 1983 he edited with Eric Hobsbawm ‘The Invention of Tradition’. Gilles Riaux is a junior lecturer at Sciences Po Bordeaux. He obtained his PhD in 2008 from the University of Paris 8-Saint-Denis, and holds a degree in politics from Sciences Po Bordeaux. His publications include: *«The Formative Years of Azerbaijani Nationalism in Post Revolutionary Iran», Central Asian Survey, Vol. 27, n°1, 2008 pp. 45–58, ‘La Radicalisation des Nationalistes Azéris en Iran ‘, CEMOTI, n° 37, 2004, p. 15–42; ‘Être Jeune Militant Nationaliste Azéri en Iran’, CEMOTI, n° 38, 2004, p. 205–233. Spyros A. Sofos is Senior Research Fellow in European and International Studies at the European Research Centre and the Helen Bamber Centre for the Study of Conflict and Human Rights of Kingston University, London and coordinator of the Mediterranean Studies@Kingston Research Unit. His publications include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (edited with Brian Jenkins, Routledge, 1996), Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (with Umut Özkırımlı, Hurst & Co. and Columbia University Press, 2008) and Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Networks (with Roza Tsagarousianou, forthcoming). Ben Wellings is Convenor of European Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. His first degree was in Contemporary History and French in the School of European Studies at the University of Sussex. He gained an MSc in Nationalism Studies from Edinburgh University before completing his PhD on Nationalism and Britishness in Britain and Australia at the Australian National University. Between these stints in academia he has been a museum curator, a public affairs consultant, a parliamentary researcher and a merchant seaman – helping to keep England’s supply lines to cheap French lager open during the mid-1990s. He is currently researching aspects of English nationalism and identity. On this subject he has published ‘Rump Britain: Englishness and Bristishness, 1992–2001’ in National Identities, 9:4, p. 395–412 and ‘Empire-nation: national and imperial discourses in England’ in Nations and Nationalism, 8:1, p. 95–109. In 2008 he was Senior Visiting Fellow in the London School of Economics, Department of Government, researching the links between English nationalism and Euroscepticism.

xvi Contributors

Jennifer Wenzel is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she teaches courses in world literatures and postcolonial theory. Her book on narrative recuperations of the Xhosa cattle killing, Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2009.

Introduction Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne

Nations and Their Histories: Constructions and Representations aims to address both the theoretical and empirical aspects of nation-building based on the study of nationalist interpretations of past histories, departing from different academic disciplines, such as history, sociology, political science and anthropology. Nationalism, whether studied as an ideology, a vision or a political or cultural movement, lays claim to the past as part of its effort to manage the present and to justify its goals for the future. The nation is not only the central idea for nationalists but also the bearer of a history, real or imagined, which shapes national identity and values. History is then the backbone of nationalism, considering that a nationalist movement or a nationalist ideology in order to legitimise its present claim to state power, a particular territory or a national identity, usually frames itself around a common past that unites the people under the same national ceiling and within the same historical vision of continuity. As a result, history tends to fall victim to practices of selective choice of the past on the part of nationalists both in opposition and in power who have constructed historical accounts of the nation – of its struggles, triumphs, glories, humiliations and defeats – designed to inspire their contemporaries and to mobilise them into taking part in their version of the nation’s destiny. The construction of the past in national histories emerged in modern times as a reaction to universalist Enlightenment. With the displacement of moral, philosophical and religious views of the past, nationalists developed a classification of the national character and of the special trajectories of their nation’s historical development with the aim of bringing cultural renewal and political independence to their nation (see Breuilly’s chapter on the making of the national past). History was therefore important to the creation of the modern nationstate both in the New and the Old World. From the 18th century to the 20th century, national historiographies legitimised European empires, devising national projects around the core areas, while at the same time they gave 1

2 Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne

meaning to the formation of new nationalisms in the periphery of these same empires. The construction of national histories became especially relevant when contesting nationalisms coexisted within the same region, pitching official master narratives against counter-narratives. Usually, in these cases, different interpretations of the same facts would arise, revised meanings would be given to the same historical memories, heroes and myths, and new connections would be created between the present nation and much older pre-imperial pasts (see Berger’s chapter on European national historiographies and Sofos and Özkırımlı’s chapter on Greek and Turkish national historiographies). In the New World, populated by newly-formed settler nations without an homogeneous ethnic composition and without ‘pasts’ – or at least without histories that identified a distinctive, cohesive people whose roots supposedly extended deep in time – new master narratives that celebrated the rebirth of a time that preceded imperial conquest and rejected any links with the European motherland had to be written (see Doyle’s chapter on the independence of the United States and Brading’s chapter on the mestizo conception of the 19th century and early 20th century Mexican nation). But history’s purpose in nationalist projects is not solely related with the desire to give substance to newly-created nations. History also plays a paramount role in the politics of the nation after its own formation. History, therefore, can serve the purpose of regenerating the nation through the continued celebration of its past, remembrance of its most important dates and feats and even through the daily practice of its most elemental customs, such as eating breakfast (see O’Connor’s chapter on the English breakfast). History can also be reinterpreted at times when national ideals are being revised. In this sense, official narratives of the past tend to change as a product of the alignment of current politics and nowhere else is that change most prominent than in the classroom where history textbooks are adjusted to master narratives as these change (see Cadot’s chapter on 19th century American textbooks). However, despite the fact that history can be seen as a pool of raw materials from which redefinitions of a nation’s character and destiny may be tapped on, as long as there are independent historians who explore alternative ways of conceiving the past that clash with the state’s driven politics of memory, the success of the latter seems to be limited (see Ranger’s chapter on the politics of memorisation in Zimbabwe). In assessing the rationale of history in nationalist movements and ideologies, the purpose of this book is twofold. First, this edited volume tries to understand the role played by history in the formation of national identity and nations around the world as mentioned above. Taking into account the fact that nationalists tend to highlight the past that best fits their doctrine (or to draft the doctrine that best defends their interests as reflected in the past that they most relate to), this volume draws attention to the importance of identifying the alternative past

Introduction 3

histories that are available to nationalists in their conceptualisation of the nation and why exactly these pasts, rather than other pasts, assume paramount importance in the discourse of the nation. In other words, the first part of the book tackles the role played by national histories and national historiographies in the formation of nations in the modern period. The second part, on the other hand, assesses how these national histories are represented in the present. Strong emphasis is given to the study of collective memories, symbols, myths, events and traditions portrayed as perennial phenomena by national histories in their present representation of nations and in their legitimation of current maps of identity. Nations, be what they may – an Old World imperial nation (see O’Connor’s chapter on Britain and Gildea’s chapter on France), a New World settler nation (see Grant’s chapter on the United States of America and Welling’s chapter on Australia), a nation with a strong and millenarian sense of destiny (see Gal’s chapter on Israel), a Persian nation at civilisational crossroads (see Kian and Riaux’s chapter on Iran), an African decolonised nation (see Nsoudou’s chapter on Cameroon and Wenzel’s chapter on South Africa) or a Sino-communist nation (Hyer’s chapter on China) – they all have in common the fact that they acknowledge and pay deference to the importance of history in their present cultural and political representations of national ideals and goals. It is not of relevance whether these representations are constructed or genuine as the aforementioned chapters show. As long as they resonate with the people they become the cement that keeps the national building erect and the expression that gives meaning to national histories.

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Part I National Histories and the Construction of Nations

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1 Nationalism and the Making of National Pasts John Breuilly

From histories to history In his discussion of different concepts of time, Charles Taylor considers the way in which Augustine introduced a ‘secular’ notion of time, relevant to the earthly city, though overlaid by a higher conception of time to be found in the heavenly city. Taylor (2007, p. 56) writes of: ... the gathering together of past into present to project a future. The past, which ‘objectively’ exists no more, is here in my present; it shapes this moment in which I turn to a future, which ‘objectively’ is not yet, but which is here qua project.1 Nationalist history is one way of gathering together past, present and future. However, to understand this one needs first to outline the emergence of the idea that ‘history’ was the chief, indeed the only, way of gathering time. The principal justifications for historical writing in the ancient world – other than to satisfy curiosity about strange and exotic peoples – were pragmatic and moral, and were to be achieved chiefly by preserving the memory of great deeds and men.2 The pragmatic purpose is apparent in Thucydides. His narrative history, including the ‘re-enactment’ of speeches given by leading figures at crucial moments, sets out the logic by which reasoning but passionate men come into conflict and unintentionally bring about disaster or triumph. This provides lessons to posterity: what happened in the past ... will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.3 Thucydides is the intellectual ancestor of Machiavelli, who wrote about the Roman historian Livy as well as The Prince, a ‘realistic’ manual for 7

8

John Breuilly

rulers; of Hobbes, who translated Thucydides into English; and of today’s ‘realist’ students of international relations. By contrast, historians of Rome – notably Livy – wrote the long-run history of their city, creator and centre of the greatest empire known to man, and reflected on themes of vigour and decline, virtue and corruption. Such history laid bare the relationship between moral and material achievements. It displayed cyclical tendencies whereby success bred prosperity which led to corruption, softness and decline in the face of an ascendant, more vigorous and primitive polity.4 The Jewish presentation of their history as God’s chosen people also meditated on virtue and vice and their contrasting consequences, only now not as the results of strong or weak action (with luck and a little interference from the gods) but as reward or punishment from the one true God with whom the Jewish people had struck a bargain. Greek and Roman polytheism produced multiple histories; Jewish monotheism created the premiss for universal history, albeit focused on one small society. Assyrians, Persians, Babylonians, Romans and others had a place in this history; as instruments of God’s wrath upon his chosen people. With Christianity the premiss was explicitly universalised as the one true God became the God of all people. But as the possibility of universal history opened up, it was subordinated to a religious world-view. The epochs of human history were derived from this world view: before and after Christ (though also seen as a sequence of empires) and a future when history would end with the Second Coming. Revelation and faith trumped historical knowledge. History had limited pragmatic and moral purposes – as in Augustine’s meditations on the earthly city – but the stress was on the limits. A sense of how to gather together time therefore was obtained primarily from sources other than history, above all from religion or philosophy. Meanwhile, for particular societies – especially their non-literate members – stories passed from one generation to the next were probably amongst the most important ways of constituting collective memory and identity.5 Nationalist history only became significant as a way of gathering time following a displacement of moral and pragmatic, religious and philosophical views of the past, as well as the decline of collective memory. In their stead developed a sense of history as linear and secular. Although one can discern elements of this in the 16th and 17th centuries, for example in the notion of anachronism used to unmask forgeries and to trace changing modes of organisation through legal texts, this new conception of the past became significant in the period c.1750–1850, in what Reinhart Koselleck (2004) has termed the ‘axial age’.6 Koselleck lays great emphasis upon the growth of a sense that the future will not be like past and present. This is caught, optimistically, in the idea of progress, which undermines views of human history as cyclical or constant. However, once the future is envisioned as radically new, this changes

Nationalism and the Making of National Pasts

9

one’s view of the past. It can no longer serve as a pragmatic or moral guide. Collective memory based on stories handed down from the past also have less purchase on present conduct. The freshly arrived immigrant in the city might cling to such stories for reassurance but they have to be transformed in meaning to help negotiate a path through a new world.7 This did not make the past irrelevant but instead changed the nature of relevance. Mankind was seen as on a determinate and generally upward path, passing through a set of stages. Different societies occupy different stages. It now becomes possible to envisage a universal history with unity and direction. The task of the historian is to uncover the forces which bind together and push forward progressive change. This also influenced how one should act towards the future, for example by seeking to accelerate or slow down change. Such a view generates phrases like ‘making history’ or ‘serving history’ (as a midwife helps a birth), condemnations of those who stand in the ‘way of history’ and accordingly will be consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’.8 However, these claims to universality, that history had an ‘end’ which was progress toward the age of reason,9 also encountered sharp rejections. One of these, the nationalist rejection, preserved elements of this new conception of the past and history but took them in a different direction.

The intellectual foundations of nationalist history Enlightenment history operated with a notion of progress whereby man’s reason and freedom achieved ever-increasing sway.10 This was presented as the history of ‘society’ or ‘civil society’ to which the term ‘nation’ was often applied.11 This usually only embraced an elite in the present; there was a long way to go before most people would become enlightened. Accompanying and following political upheaval, war and economic transformation over the period c1750 to 1850, the idea of progress was elaborated, differentiated and questioned. It was also associated with social conflict (such as between classes), political agents (revolutionaries, reactionaries), and mechanisms (revolution, reform). The idea of ‘history’ itself as a force achieving things through men rather than being a record or records of specific deeds in the past came to full expression in Hegel.12 In enlightenment and Hegelian views of history there was a leading element in the progressive move of history. It might be a civilisation (European Christendom), a state (France, Britain), a social group (bourgeoisie, working class), or a ‘world-historical’ individual (Napoleon).13 Such a conception of history was congenial to whoever exemplified this leading element. From their perspective the (agreeable) fate of others was to become like them – usually after a period of subordination to their civilising, progressive power. Intellectuals claiming to represent those subordinated reacted ambivalently to this vision. First, they claimed a more central role for their nation in the historical process. They sought the secret of national difference not in ‘external’ forces

10 John Breuilly

such as climate or institutions, the typical explanations of enlightenment writers like Montesquieu and Hume, which produced a hierarchy of nations. Rather they saw ‘national character’ as moulded from ‘within’ and passed along from generation to generation. Culture, language, customs, common descent and race furnished preferred explanations of national character. This idea of essential, underlying uniqueness entailed a repudiation of the universalist idea of progress, if that meant imitating the path taken by more advanced nations. This was linked to a stress on emotion, identity, particularity and variety against what was seen as arid enlightenment concerns with reason, universal human nature and convergence on a single future. This alternative view justified itself by drawing on or constructing myths and memories, elaborating cultural stereotypes, and insisting that ‘history’ was not subject to some extra-historical force called ‘reason’ which enlightenment writers claimed to have discovered.14 Yet these intellectuals also wanted to appropriate the fruits of progress, pragmatically to gain the power that these were thought to bring but also because they found many of these achievements intrinsically attractive. This laid the basis for a national appropriation of the past. It took the form not only of historical accounts of past events but a historicising approach to language and literature, art and architecture, law and institutions. It repudiated universal history in favour of national history. Such work was conducted in intellectual sincerity. However, it was linked to nationalist projects, sometimes confined to cultural renewal or awakening, but more usually aimed at achieving political autonomy or independence. The essays in this book consider various aspects of this national appropriation of the past. Here I want to suggest ways of organising this large subject, especially in relation to the political work of nationalism.

Nationalist history before the nation-state I begin with an apparent paradox. The nation is an historic category which nationalists counterpose to universalist, a-historical rationalism. Yet the most important early forms of nationalism (if by this we mean minimally the demand for territorial autonomy made on behalf of a group termed a ‘nation’) came in universalist form and without appeals to national history. Doyle highlights the impact of Paine’s writing and his argument that Americans constituted a new nation founded on universal principles which would serve as a beacon for the rest of mankind. A similar argument is to be found in Jacobin nationalism alluded to by Gildea. It is present in the ‘proto-nationalism’ of the early insurgencies against Spanish rule in America mentioned by Brading. Yet the point needs qualifying. Each of these movements had a view of the past in which ancien regimes had imposed upon their nation. Brading refers to the claim in the 1821 Mexican Act of Independence of a 300–year history grounded in the Aztec nation. Some French radicals suggested that

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the Third Estate were the Gauls, rebelling against Frankish rule. However, such ideas were marginal at the time, and non-existent in North America. What history there was instead grounded itself in contrasts between corruption and virtue, age and youth, privilege and equality.15 There were ethnic or racial distinctions: against native Americans and black slaves in the Americas and non-French speakers in southern and western France. Independence movements picked up on ‘civic republican’ themes in vogue in the 18th century to argue that commerce, consumption and the preoccupation with freedom ‘from’ the state were softening and enervating the virtue of citizens who should participate in public life, militantly if need be, and focus their efforts on achieving freedom ‘in’ the state.16 Such arguments could generate epithets like ‘aristocrat’, ‘traitor’ and ‘counter-revolutionary’, juxtaposing these against ‘patriot’ and ‘citizen’, turning them into stereotypes, with physical (ethnic?) features such as dress, manners, speech habits and even physiognomy, and using these to justify mass violence. Elsewhere in Europe oppositional movements did engage from the outset in constructing a distinctive national past.17 Historical writing was accompanied by the collecting of national folklore and folksong, ‘discovering’ national epics, compiling grammars and dictionaries of the national language.18 We can see such activity in the Greek and Turkish cases analysed by Özkirimli and Sofos. Official historical accounts linked to the ruling dynasty are challenged. Classical Greek models are set against Greek Orthodoxy; Turkish values against Ottomanism; Slav virtues against the Germanic Habsburg dynasty. The Ottoman, Habsburg and Romanov empires play the same role as corrupt, ‘old’ powers against new, national projects as did the ancien regimes of Britain, France and Spain for the 18th century revolutionary movements. Gal shows how Zionists in the later 19th and early 20th century shift from conventional Jewish accounts of suffering and waiting upon God’s reward to selecting moments of heroism and resistance (Samson, the Macabean revolt, Masada). As with criticisms of Greek Orthodoxy, the ‘ancien regime’ comes to encompass the backward elements in one’s own nation. Xhosa cattle killing can be presented as a moment of resistance by the young oppositional nationalism of early 20th century South Africa. This search for resistances to colonial rule informed other nationalist historiographies in Africa and Asia.19 The same concern with resistance or independence moments is found in 19th century oppositional nationalist historiography in Europe. For Palacky and other Czech nationalists the Hussite moment was central. Lithuanian national historians looked back to medieval independence before the Union of Lublin (1569) with Poland. Polish historians could start more recently, with the rising against the final partition of Poland at the end of the 18th century but also looked back to medieval monarchies. Rumanian historians went back further, to pre-Roman or Roman times, before Slav incursions.20 This phase of nationalist historiography was not highly institutionalised. It was the work of small networks of intellectuals, often in exile or operating

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under constraints. Such exiles were in contact with each other, often opposed to the same imperial regimes, and this gave their activity a transnational character. They were – as is usually the case with zealots under pressure – argumentative and highly individualistic figures. At this early stage there was often fluidity about what was national and how this, including its past, was to be understood. All this inhibited the formation of orthodoxy. The oppositional nationalist historians deployed different idioms depending upon the material at their disposal and the problems to be confronted in seeking to move from intellectual work to political agitation. Greek, Polish, German, Hungarian and Italian nationalist historians had a high culture on which they could draw (above all, a literary language), usually connected to institutions such as a privileged church, local, if not state, government, and representative assemblies.21 Here the idiom employed was that of ‘historic’ nations which needed only to be freed from reactionary dynasties, often seen as controlled by more ‘primitive’ nations. Such idioms were close to those deployed by the ‘civilised’ and ‘progressive’ national discourses prevailing in Britain and France, and understandably received a sympathetic hearing in those countries.22 The situation was different for historians writing on behalf of ‘nations’ which lacked a literary language or control of important institutions. Sometimes these historians could credibly claim to locate these in the past, for example the Czechs in medieval Bohemia. Sometimes they built on subordinate institutions, as with Rumanian nationalists in relation to the Orthodox and Uniate churches. Where even these were vestigial or absent, nationalists shifted to language, folkore and folk customs, as with Lithuanian and Turkish (as opposed to Ottoman) nationalism.23 With the rise of anti-colonial nationalism in the 20th century, oppositional movements drew on all of these themes, as appropriate, though also re-introducing the ‘civic’ theme in order both the better to highlight the failure of European imperial powers to practice their own ideals and to focus on independence for the territorial political unit.24 The history was also influenced by the kind of political movement involved. There is a major difference between elements of an imperial elite turning to nationalism (Turks in the Ottoman Empire, Germans in the Habsburg Empire) and nationalists making claims on behalf of a largely peasant population confronted by an ethnically distinct ruling class (Rumanians in Transylvania, Ruthenians or Ukrainians in Polish Galicia). Elite nationalists found it difficult to take up socially transformative programmes like peasant emancipation while subordinate class-cum-ethnic movements often mobilised on precisely such programmes (for example, Kai Struve, 2001, pp. 347–371). Naturally all this influenced the way the past was read, which periods and social groups were highlighted. To summarise my argument thus far. There was an intellectual revolution on either side of 1800 which came to regard ‘history’ as a unified force with a logic of its own rather than as a collection of accounts of past actions.

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Grasping the nature of this history provided better understanding of the human condition than religion or philosophy. History began to displace the communal transmission of memory as the principal source of collective identity. Such ideas were taken up by nationalist intellectuals. However, the ways in which they did this varied according to what rendered particular historical claims credible and the political constraints at work upon the movements they helped build. In the oppositional phase this produced a rich and varied historiography but not as yet an institutionalised and orthodox view of the national past.25

National history in the new nation-state The process of nation-state formation has been an uneven and lengthy one. Arguably Britain and France had long been nation-states by 1800, although in France the revolutionaries denied that and saw themselves finally bringing nation and state together. The first ‘new’ nation-states were constructed beyond Europe, in the opposition of white Americans to British and Spanish imperial rule. Within Europe, some of Napoleon’s creations bore national names or meanings (Kingdom of Italy, Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Illyrian provinces). However, those associated with nationalist struggles were only founded from the late 1820s (Belgium and Greece). The unification of German and Italian states between 1859 and 1871 dramatically altered the map of central Europe and inspired further nationalist projects.26 The slow collapse of Ottoman control over the largely Christian populations of the Balkans brought about further nation-states: Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria. In the Americas civil and inter-state wars gave the new or re-formed states a more explicitly national character, as did the Meiji restoration in Japan.27 The comprehensive and sudden collapse of the Ottoman, Romanov, Habsburg and German empires in 1918–20 saw the formation of a swathe of new nationstates, legitimised by the doctrine of national self-determination advanced by Woodrow Wilson. It raised nationalist expectations in the empires of the victor states, in Europe, Asia and the Middle East (Manela, 2007). However, these empires were only demolished after 1945, the process reaching its climax in the 1960s and 1970s. Most recently, the collapse of Soviet communism in Eastern Europe ushered in another (final?) wave of nation-state formations. A near 200–year process of ‘nation-state’ formation has been accompanied by a bewildering variety of national histories which purport to explain and legitimise what had been achieved. However, the story is more complicated than: ‘one new nation-state – one new national history’. One wave of nation-state formations emboldened new nationalist claims and constructions of the past; one satisfied nationalist achievement provoked one or more oppositional nationalisms with their own versions of the past. Furthermore, intellectual idioms and approaches changed, as did the techniques and institutional contexts of history-writing.28

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Nationalist intellectuals, including historians, frequently played a central role in the politics of forming a nation-state, not just as publicists and ideologues but as practical politicians. Usually, in the euphoria of success, they saw this as the end of history, an end brought about by the nation itself. Jakob Burkhardt gloomily predicted that German history would now be presented as a road leading to 1871. One can generalise the prediction to all new nationstates. Others saw that the formation of the new-state was just the first step; ahead lay the difficult task of nation-building; making Italians and not just Italy, as Massimo D’Azeglio was reputed to have observed. One form nationbuilding took was constructing a proper understanding of the national past and impressing it upon the nation. The resources of a state provided means for doing this far beyond the scope of oppositional nationalism. It was now possible to support an academic elaboration of national history, as in universities like Berlin and Athens which became centres of an establishment view of national history. Özkirimli and Sofos show how in Athens Paparrigopoulos combined Hellenic and Greek Orthodox elements in his history. His counterparts in Berlin, Sybel and Treitschke similarly linked the history of the Prussian state to that of the German national spirit. Berger provides a European survey of various efforts to write ‘master narratives’ of the nation, pointing to the problems encountered and the solutions worked out. Wellings shows how the premiss that Australia only entered history with its ‘discovery’ by whites underpinned a master-narrative which excluded the indigenous population. Very interesting is his further argument that some nationalist historians are troubled by revisionism not so much because it challenges the white man’s story than because it fails to provide an alternative narrative. If national history is not a story, it is not a national history. Official, academic nationalist master-narratives were constructed in many, if not all, new nation-states. Berger outlines a range of reasons for differences between master narratives. Here I will focus on yet another source of conflict: disputes within one national historiography. One can point to two kinds of disagreement. The first relates to shifts from opposition to power. N’Soudou deals with a government claiming national legitimacy in conflict with nationalist forces that remain oppositional. Each side constructs a different history, focused above all on the process of national liberation, to explain why nationalism succeeded or failed, according to the two perspectives. The oppositional nationalists are frequently more utopian than those in government, criticising compromise and corruption which they see anticipated in the independence struggle. Garibaldi condemned deals struck with France and the Catholic Church (though for a time he certainly went along with the first) (Riall, 2007). Disappointed nationalists in new African states blamed neo-colonialism, again projected back into the colonial period. Official nationalists played down the role of mass resistance movements while critical nationalists exaggerated them. Another variant, as Ranger argues for Namibia, is that different traditions of resistance are picked

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up by the regime and its opponents. Mau-Mau activists in Kenya portrayed themselves as the true freedom-fighters who had compelled British retreat while collaborators reaped the rewards.29 Ranger in his essay argues that the Kenyan way of dealing with this tension was to ignore the past; sometimes the problems nationalists confront in relation to their past can lead to the marginalisation rather than manipulation of history. In the Zimbabwean case, the claim to be continuing the anti-colonial struggle is, as Ranger shows, central to the manipulation of history by the Mugabe regime.30 More subtly, official master-narratives often integrate elements which had stood outside or even against oppositional nationalism. I have mentioned Greek official history with its positive treatment of Greek Orthodoxy and, therefore, its distancing from earlier nationalists like Korais who, as a Westernising Hellenist, had condemned the Greek Orthodox Church as harshly as the Ottoman Empire, seeing the two as allies. More rarely, official nationalism radicalises its policies and, therefore, its history, in a bid to consolidate its power, as when the new Turkish Republic repudiated not only the Ottoman Empire but also the public claims of Islam. Such radical secularism is also found in the anticlericalism of French and Italian nationalism and in pan-Arab nationalism. Second, closely linked to the first point but not quite the same, are the tensions created when the new nation state leans towards some interests at the expense of others. Catholic critiques of German and Italian nationalism increased in intensity when confronted with official anti-clericalism. Regional divisions, not necessarily framed in ethnic terms, gave rise to competing historical interpretations. In relation to the essay by Hyer, Eduard Friedmann has argued that Sun-Yat-Sen represented a ‘southern’, while Mao Zedong stood for a ‘northern’ nationalism (Friedman, 1995; 2008). The same is true of conflicting views of Italy based on north/south distinctions which continue in the current League of the North (Sciatino, 1999). It applies to competing nationalisms in mid-19th century USA, culminating in the Civil War (Grant, 1996). It is the case with a Prussian, ‘small-German’ versus Austrian ‘great German’ nationalism, associated with distinct historiographies of Germany (Breuilly, 1996). It relates to a ‘Biafran’ construction of Nigerian history during the civil war of the 1960s. Ranger argues the same point in relation to a north versus central and south tension in Namibia. There are many more examples one could give. At the extreme, this leads to secessionist movements whose national understanding of the past has diverged so far from that of official nationalism as to claim to speak for a different nation with its own distinct history, as with Basques and Catalans in Spain. How far such differences are expressed in academic historiography depends not just on what differences there are but how the state is organised. A liberal state and decentralised university system (as in the German Second Empire) permits alternatives to official nationalism to be expressed. Official historians have advantages such as access to sensitive state archives and funding

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and patronage, but that is all. An authoritarian and centralised government, as in the early Turkish republic, represses challenges to the official view. It is all very well to have imposing academic historical legitimation but more important is for the state to be accepted by the population at large. One of the most potent weapons available to governments is the schooling system. This varies greatly. In some cases there is limited schooling and the government is unable to expand this very far in the face of poverty and, especially in undeveloped agrarian societies, popular indifference. Education in the proper national view of the past remains an elite affair, something which suits some elites. However, the general tendency has been for universal and compulsory elementary education, and often extensive secondary education, guaranteed if not directly furnished by the state, to establish itself. One obvious policy is to entrench the official nationalist view in school history teaching and text books. Cadot provides an account of 19th century US school text books, though the key political agent is state, not federal government. The shifts in emphasis from Columbus to Norse explorers as ‘discoverers’ of America is suggestive, linked by Cadot to a concern to draw distinctions between whites and blacks, Anglo-Saxons and Europeans, rather than as previously between all Europeans and native Americans. Even new nations quickly come to frame their history in national terms. Things do not remain static in nation-states. What were major concerns when the nation-state was formed get marginalised while new issues arise. For the USA from the 1770s until 1814 the principal conflict was with Britain. History framed in racial or ethnic, linguistic or cultural terms had nothing to offer in such a conflict. By the mid-19th century the situation has changed. Now such terms helped in the response to present conflicts and visions of the future and, therefore, tended to the construction of a different past. Brading provides an account of the shift from a ‘creole’ to a ‘mestizo’ view of the Mexican nation, linked to the new idioms of race and Social Darwinism, and generating an ethnic reintepretation of Mexican history. Ranger cites the argument that a number of states in Africa are seeking to wrest the dominant representations of the past from academic historians, in turn changing the tone and content of that history. The brief period of government by the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, in India led to the production of new school histories and popular presentations of the Indian past. Studies of school history text books in nation-states can prove illuminating on the ‘official’ view of the national past and how this changes over time (for example, Berghahn and Schissler, 1987). More difficult to assess is how and to what effect they were used in schools. Some historians consider the disciplining impact of schools (and also military conscription) as more important than nationalist historical indoctrination. It is the habitual acceptance that the state can command attendance, enforce codes of conduct, and issue certificates which promote future careers which elicits obedience, even

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respect, rather than stories about the past. But much remains speculation in the absence of direct testimony from pupils.31 As with academic history, it is important to note the extent of pluralism. At one extreme competing nationalist or even anti-nationalist views of the past are taught, as where Catholic or other churches retain a major role in schooling and are at odds with official nationalism. Where oppositional mass movements such as those of organised labour form, these may have their own historians who present a different view of the national past from the official one.32 The nation-state may ‘contain’ these alternatives, so that a German and a French socialist might each express pride in their nationality and give a distinctive national shape to their socialism. Yet at the same time both will sharply distinguish between nation and regime, stressing that the government of the day is anti-national, identifying the nation with the labouring masses. At the other extreme authoritarian states, and even more totalitarian states in the 20th century, impose and often intensively propagate one view in the public sphere. One needs to distinguish between the capacity of brutal, authoritarian regimes to suppress alternative representations of the past and the far greater capacity required effectively to indoctrinate a significant part of the population with one official view. Nation-states seek to influence a broader public sphere beyond schools. They institute high days and holidays during which key events in national history are celebrated. They erect national monuments. They select and display national symbols such as flags and anthems, stamps and bank-notes. Many of these transmit historical information and views. As with schooling, it is easier to study intentions than effects. Some events decline in popularity, for example Sedan Day in Germany which celebrated the military victory over the French in 1870. Counter-events sometimes acquire mass support, for example May Day celebrations instituted by the labour movement.33 A nation-state may end up repudiating the very nationalism which gave it life. The revulsion against British and French imperialism and their bad faith towards Arab allies in the 1914–18 war against the Ottoman Empire, helped mobilise support for pan-Arab nationalism. This fitted with other pan-nationalisms which flourished at this time, providing mutual support and influence (Aydin, 2006). Arab nationalism was strongly secular (Lebanese Christians had played a leading role in formulating its ideas), marginalising Islam as well as opposing the new creations of Iraq, Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine and Saudi Arabia which were seen as imperial puppets.34 Yet already there were differences between these areas and the non- Ottoman Arab regions in north Africa. As each of these states gained independence so their regimes focused on their own interests. With the disastrous defeats by Israel in 1948 and 1967 attention shifted decisively to the territorial state. A different kind of nationalism had to be cultivated with a different view of the past. The failures of these states in turn can be linked to the rise of a new Islamism, eroding the secular tone of nationalism. And, as present

18 John Breuilly

situation and future prospect once again changes, so does the national view of the past.35

Naturalising the national view of the past Yet out of these constant shifts and conflicts over what is the nation, and therefore the national past, more enduring views emerge. This is of the nation and its past as something beyond current politics and ideology, as something natural which is just ‘there’. The key to this is the degree to which the nation-state becomes the ‘container’ of people’s lives.36 As different political and social forces dispute details of the national history, so increasingly they do so within an implicit agreement that there is an enduring national history, even if one cannot agree on many of its features. 37 There are, however, different ways in which this can happen. The first is to do with continuity both in the institutions of the nationstate and in the framing elements of a national view of the past. A few brief examples must suffice to support this point. England/Britain exhibits the greatest degree of apparent continuity in its central political institutions of any current nation-state. Not surprisingly this in turn became a key feature of the national view of the past. As a historical profession developed from mid-19th century, coinciding with the rise of a strongly national view of the past, so the continuous existence of central political institutions became the chief vehicle of that view. It was primarily an English view because that longterm continuity, stretching beyond medieval parliament and monarchy to late Anglo-Saxon institutions, only applied to England. A British view of the past is more obviously syncretic, brief, fragile and contested. The continuity was not only about longevity but the sense that gradualism was the principal form of change, empiricism and piecemeal reform the dominant temper of political culture. All these claims can and have been challenged (successful invasions in 1066 and, arguably, in 1688; revolution mid-17th century; social upheaval and transformation from late 18th century; and a history which is essentially about global expansion rather than island continuity) but there was sufficient truth in the continuity thesis for it to dominate academic, political and popular conceptions of a national past.38 French historiography could call upon a sense of continuity in terms of territory and statehood and this has dominated the sense of a national history right across the political spectrum.39 However, the succession of upheavals following 1789 undermined political institutional continuity and historical writing often identified with one or other side in those conflicts.40 In both these cases the ‘state’ or, to take a favourite English term, the ‘constitution’ provided the focus of a long, continuous history, even if it was more difficult for French than English historians to extend this from state to society. In the German and Italian cases the state was entirely lacking. Prussia could furnish a substitute but it was clearly unsatisfactory and

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contested, while there was nothing at all to serve in the Italian case, especially when anticlerical nationalism turned against the one extensive institution in Italy, the Papacy. Historians were forced to find other frameworks for a national past such as national culture or ‘spirit’, subjects which did not easily lend themselves to narrative history or a focus on political and military events. At least, however, these historians had some institutions to which one could refer (the Holy Roman Empire, the Italian city-states) and a continuous ‘national’ presence in land ownership, urban governance and church affairs. When one turns to nationalism based on subordinate cultural groups the vehicles for a national history become even hazier. Yet the sense that a nation must have a history ensured that unpromising material would be pummelled into the appropriate shape.41 Continuity in the lifetime of the nation-state itself is also important. Upheavals not only introduce disruptions in views of the past, they can lead to purges of existing universities and schools and other institutions, as with both the communist achievement of state power in much of Europe after 1945 and communist collapse in the early 1990s. The steady build-up of scholarly and popular historical work around a particular framework of interpretation is thereby interrupted. For example, the rapid marginalisation of East German historians after 1990 accelerated the decline of a Marxistcum-national view of the German past although one can assume that this was going to happen in any case (Fulbrook, 1997). These continuities of the nation-state as container operate at the level of reflective historical work. At another level this sense of containment is bound up with routinisation; the nation-state as providing the overarching frame for political conflict, economic activity and social and cultural matters. This is an argument made in a strong and distinct way by Billig (1995) in his book on banal nationalism. As Billig vividly expresses it, it is not the flag carried proudly by a group of patriots which matters in the long-run so much as the flag which hangs limply on every government building and school. It is the implicit contrast of ‘us’ and ‘them’, rather than the elaborate and explicit telling of a national history, which takes mental hold. Culture, Ernest Gellner once memorably remarked, is not having to think. Or as Nietzsche put it: Truths are illusions whose illusory nature has been forgotten, metaphors that have been used up and have lost their imprint and that now operate as mere metal, no longer as coins.42 It is the unexamined, cliché character of such banal nationalism which gives it its strength. When a crisis leads to the resurgence of what Billig calls ‘hot nationalism’, there is once again argument and dissent, even if the drip-drip continuity of banal nationalism provides a foundation for such hot nationalism.43

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This ‘view of the past’ associated with a naturalised view of the nation, does not take the form of explicit historical argument. Indeed, argument is the last thing such a view needs. Instead Englishness inheres in the nonpolitical, such as the English breakfast O’Connor writes about. Rather than a coherent narrative we have images and glimpses such as those provided by George Orwell (‘old maids biking to Holy Communion’) or John Betjeman (‘modest village inns ... the noise of mowing machines on Saturday afternoons’) or T. S. Eliot (‘Derby Day ... a cup final ... the music of Elgar’). Such images exclude as well as include, are fragmentary and changing, and have less credibility today then when they were, tellingly, all compiled in the 1940s.44 Indeed, when John Major pillaged the list in the 1990s, speaking of warm beer, cricket and spinsters riding bicycles at dusk, the response was mocking rather than respectful. As soon as these become matters of reflection and argument they lose their force. Such ‘natural’, ‘non-political’ images seem to have nothing to do with nationalism – if that is understood as something noisy, active and disputatious, indeed often to represent an alternative to nationalism (Echternkamp, 2002). Such images tend to support a defensive, inward-looking nationalism of the kind Gildea describes in seeking explanations for the rejection of Europeanism in the French referendum on a European constitution, explanations which go deeper than pragmatic fears about economic policies. I suspect one can find something similar in every western European country and in other developed parts of the world concerned about mass immigration or other challenges from low-wage, high unemployment economies. The comforting banalities and images turn into justifications for fear and exclusion.

Concluding points From the elaborate historical accounts of oppositional nationalism aiming at cultural renewal and justifying demand for political autonomy through the construction of master-narratives in new nation-states to the unargued images of banal nationalism in established nation-states is a long and complex path. By the end of this path little sense remains of ‘history’ with unity and direction, whether advocated by universalist or nationalist movements. This is especially so since the serial failures of the more utopian of these movements – such as communism and fascism and anti-colonial nationalism – were accompanied by massive violence. Fukuyama (1992) did have the temerity to write about the ‘end of history’ following the collapse of the Soviet Union, explicitly drawing on Hegel, but the ‘utopia’ turned out to be real, existing capitalism and liberal democracy, and even that sense of modest triumphalism has since diminished. Nationalism today is a word with negative connotations. Those who stress the values of the nation and a proud grasp of national history, look for other names, such as patriotism or homeland.45 Oppositional movements are now

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inclined to focus on human rights and democratic institutions instead of ethnic or national difference, recognising a shift in what language is most congenial to the international community, though they frequently go on to claim that it is a nation or ethnic groups whose rights are being abused and who are shut out of democratic participation. Yet the term ‘nation’ still carries a charge, a presumption about cultural value and political rights.46 Some analysts argue that globalisation and supra-national institutions like the European Union are eroding nationalism and will render it obsolete. If this produced a different, non-national view of our present and vision of our future, one could anticipate that it will also lead to a non-national sense of the past. In the field of historical studies there are indications that this is happening. There is a renewal of world history, and no longer in the sense of a succession of civilisations culminating with the ‘rise of the West’. Global networks and transnational connections are seen as having a long history, not being entirely recent changes impacting on a series of long-entrenched nations. There is also work on regional, local and ‘micro-history’. What is more, these kinds of historical work are connected, for example, in considering the impact of longdistance migration on specific communities, or of regional connections across ‘national’ boundaries. Nationalism and nation-state formation themselves are seen not as a series of self-contained histories but a contingent outcome from interactions between forces both more local and global. Historians of subjects such as mass migration, international economic history and the environment find little of value in a national view of the past.47 Yet there are many counter-arguments insisting that nationalism and the nation-state will not so easily be sidelined. The nation-state remains a powerful institution. There are many who argue that its very entrenchment gives it a democratic legitimacy that none of its challengers can match (Calhoun, 2007). Its very success makes its own historical self-image persuasive. The fact that the professionalisation of historical writing went along with the formation of nation-states and the construction of deeply researched and carefully argued national master-narratives makes it difficult to break with such views of the past (Berger, 1999). Most academic historians in most countries, for example, continue to be historians of their own countries. Even when historians argue in a critical, anti-nationalist way, they often do so by presenting a different view of the national past rather than breaking with the national frame itself.48 As Gildea shows, even the sense that the national might be transcended can itself generate yet another wave of nationalism. The naturalisation of the national takes it out of the realm of argument and refutation. National views of the past are contingent and constructed, constantly altering according to the results of diplomatic and military conflicts, changes in social and economic structures, and shifts in the idioms and methods used by historians. They are themselves contested, both between conflicting nationalisms and the ‘same’ nationalism. That is not to say that

22

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all such historical accounts are nothing more than the ideological reflex of nationalist politics. Even the most scientific and objective historical work has to start with questions, a ‘point of view’ and a set of methods. What matters is how far the questions, views and methods permit the reasoned and argued use of evidence. Often, however, the step is taken from reasoned historical argument to ideological assertion and it sometimes needs careful inspection to see just how and when this is done. However, whatever the quality of the specific historical work, there is also the larger framework within which it is undertaken. This framework is that of one or another form of ‘gathered time’, ways of connecting past, present and future. In the modern period a distinctive framework developed whereby history was seen as a unified, secular force tending in a particular, usually progressive direction. Nationalists rejected the universalist form of this understanding but appropriated it for national history. It thus became vital to understand and relate the true national past, usually in the form of a masternarrative, and to connect this to present conduct and future vision. Those nationalist constructions of the past have taken many different forms and have typically changed in the moves from opposition to nation-state formation and according to the subsequent duration and stability of the nation-state. Such national constructions, even if discarding earlier utopian associations, seem likely to remain central in academic, political and popular discourse.

Notes 1. In the heavenly city this gathering of time will take on the quality of eternity, beyond earthly understanding. 2. Herodotus, the first ‘historian’ we know of, catered for curiosity with his ethnographic accounts and pragmatic and moral concerns with his account of the war between Greek states and the Persian empire. 3. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, quoted in Burrow (2007, p. 48). 4. Generally see Ibid., ‘Part II: Rome’. Tacitus’s depiction of the ‘Germans’ draws the contrast; they were rebuke and threat to a decaying Rome (Tacitus, 1948). A similar principle of cyclical movement, applied to Islamic societies in the Middle East, was developed in the 14th century by Ibn Khaldun (2005). Aristotle proposed a cycle of constitutional change. 5. I say probably because, by its very nature, we can know little of such oral traditions in the past. It is all too easy to assume that all non-literate, small-scale societies possessed something called ‘ethnic identity’. 6. His German term was Sattelzeit. 7. On the form of this universal history, for example in Scottish enlightenment writers, see Burrow (2007, chapter 21, ‘Philosophic History’). On the displacement of memory by history see Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman (1996). This is an abridged version of the original multivolume French publication edited by Nora, Les Lieux de mémoire (1984ff). On the changed function of stories and identity for the urban immigrant and its links to nationalism see Ernest Gellner (2006). 8. Karl Marx used the midwife metaphor; Leon Trotsky that of the dustbin.

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9. Don Doyle in his essay considers the huge impact of Paine’s writings on the American independence movement. One of Paine’s books was entitled The Age of Reason. 10. For Kant moral freedom was equated with rational autonomy. See his essay ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’ in Kant (1991, pp. 54–60). 11. As in the title of Adam Smith’s book The Wealth of Nations. 12. I draw heavily on Jürgen Habermas (1987, especially chapter 2); and David Owen (1994). For an introduction to Hegel’s own writings in English see ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1827–1831)’ in Hegel (1999, pp. 197–224). 13. Hegel, who saw Napoleon in Jena in 1806 following the decisive French victories over Prussia, famously declared that he had seen the world spirit, sitting on a horse. 14. The story is a well known one which I will not repeat here. The best known figure in this nationalist reaction against enlightenment is Herder. See Barnard (1965; 2003). A good start in English on his own writing is Johann Gottfried Herder (2004). On stereotypes (which he calls ‘ethnotypes’) see Joep Leerssen (2006). 15. Nevertheless, as Cadot points out, a ‘young nation’ is still a nation, sharing something with an ‘old nation’. The imagery also suggests an organic view of history, even if now it is on the side of youth rather than maturity. 16. One aspect of this theme is taken up by Grant in her essay on images of militia and volunteers. It is found again in the rhetoric of the armée revolutionaire and the subsequent justifications of the levée en masse, and in the image of the citizen-soldier Simon Bolivar. For the civic republican tradition see J. G. A. Pocock (2003). The distinction between freedom from and in the state, as a distinction between modern and ancient liberty, was formulated around 1800 by Benjamin Constant, who favoured the ‘soft’ view against ‘hard’ Jacobins (Constant, 1988). 17. This is what Hroch has identified as the first stage (stage A) of many nationalist movements (Hroch, 1968; 1996, 78–97). See now his most recent general study of this (Hroch, 2005). 18. A good recent overview in Leerssen (2006). 19. African examples include the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879 and the Meiji-Meiji resistance to German rule in Tanganyika. Asian ones include the ‘revolution’ of 1857 in India (rejecting the British label ‘Indian Mutiny’) and the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. Ranger, one of the contributors to this book, has been a pioneering historian of such resistances in East-Central Africa. See now Abbink (2003). My thanks to John Lonsdale for drawing this recent publication to my attention. 20. For a fine comparative analysis of five different nationalist historians see Monika Baar (2008). The collective project on national historiography coordinated by Stefan Berger (see his contribution to this book) will, when published, provide much detail about such historical work. 21. These were not modern elective institutions but estate assemblies, organised into nobility, burghers and peasants. Palacky’s ‘nationalist’ history began with studies on behalf of the Boheman estates. 22. One only has to think of the pro-Hellenic sentiments in Britain, vividly embodied in Byron’s death on the Greek side. Naturally, nationalist writers who were aware of the influence of public opinion in Britain and France and the power of these states in Europe, deliberately emphasised precisely what they anticipated such opinion would find attractive.

24 John Breuilly 23. These differences gave rise to the notorious distinction between ‘historic’ and ‘non-historic’ nations, or between ‘political nations’ and ‘mere cultural nationality’. I consider this in detail in John Breuilly (2008). 24. For Africa see the works cited in Note 19 above as well as Ranger’s essay in this book. For a good example of the varied arguments and associated historical representations for India see now Maria Misra (2007). 25. These are very bare assertions. Clearly collective memory continued to play an important role in many societies. Pragmatic and moral purposes of history continued to be asserted. ‘Time’ did not suddenly become empty and homogenous, to borrow terms from Benedict Anderson. People did not suddenly cease to believe in gods or a God as the source of meaning. Rather a new way of thinking about how to gather together past, present and future, one which endowed historical understanding with special importance, developed alongside and sometimes competing with the established ways. 26. Moses Hess (1962), for example, one of the intellectual founders of Zionism, was inspired by Italian unification, as both the date and title of his major book on the subject makes clear, originally published in 1862. 27. For the parallels between the mid-to-late 19th century territorial state formations in Asia, Europe and the Americas see Charles S. Maier (2005, pp. 32–55). 28. A number of chapters pick up on the increasing influence of Social Darwinian and race ideas in the historical writing of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After 1945 there was a turn against such ideas and a greater focus on culture and language as creative of nations and their histories. In terms of approaches there was a new interest in economic and then social history from about 1900 with clear and obvious implications for national views of the past. For a good overview see Burrow (2007). 29. I draw on older references used when writing my book Nationalism and the State: namely, Barnett and Njama (1966), Rosberg and Nottingham (1966). My thanks to John Lonsdale for drawing my attention to more recent work on the Mau Mau such as Odhiambo and Lonsdale (2003). 30. It is a powerful argument elsewhere in southern Africa, especially amongst voices in the ANC critical of the failure of the post-apartheid regime to engage in radical land reform. 31. The classic study of schooling in terms of institutional inclusion, along with army, railways, mass literacy, etc., is Eugen Weber’s (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France. This is very different from the approach based on schools as agents of top-down nationalist messages or from attempts to work out how subordinate groups receive and appropriate national values. 32. In the era of the Second International such historians were also schooled in the powerful ideas of Marxism. 33. A pioneering study of such official ceremonial was George Mosse’s (1975) The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich. Since then there have been many such studies. 34. A good example is Satr al’Husri who worked as the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education in British-run Iraq. See Abeed Dawisha (2003, especially chapter 3), as well as S. Reeva Simon (1986). 35. For a survey of the shifts see James Mellon (2002). 36. I take the notion of the nation-state as a power container from Michael Mann (1993).

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37. The idea that nationalism is strengthened by such disputes is argued by John Hutchinson (2005). 38. For a good introduction see Burrow (2007). The historiographical continuity precedes the professionalisation of history, receiving perhaps its most eloquent expression in Macaulay’s volumes on English history published mid-19th century. The notion of gradualism also enabled historians to introduce the fashionable idea of evolution into a national historiography. 39. Thus Ferdinand Braudel, although challenging the dominance of political history, invested his sense of the centrality of the longue durée with national meaning with his three volume study of French identity. 40. In addition to his chapter in this book see Robert Gildea (1994). 41. For a comparative overview of recent historical writing on these four countries see Stefan Berger (2005). 42. Nietzsche, Philosophy and Truth, quoted in Owen (1994, p. 21). 43. Billig’s book was in part occasioned by the bewilderment caused by British enthusiasm for waging war to regain control of the Falkland Islands, a remote place of which hardly anyone had heard or could locate on a map and where sheep outnumber people. However, Billig’s work is still ‘top-down’, studying what is printed in newspapers or said on the television but not extending to the problems of popular reception. 44. See Peter Mandler (2006, pp. 206–7), where these lists (I have left out many items) are quoted. 45. The Office of Homeland Security set up in the USA following 9/11 sounds more comforting than, say, the Bureau of National Security. 46. One sees it in arguments about ‘asymmetrical’ forms of regional autonomy in Spain and of federalism in Canada, where Catalans and Basques in the one case and Quebecois in the other case insist on having a ‘higher’ group status than other regionally concentrated populations, something which can cause problems in the very words used in constitutional documents. 47. For some of these initiatives see Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye (2005). For an historical view of globalisation see C. A. Bayly (2004). On global networks in history see J. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill (2003). 48. For example, the relentlessly critical approach to German history of Hans-Ulrich Wehler and the school of historians associated with him, never doubts that there is a distinct national historical path.

References Abbink, J., M. de Bruijn and K. Van Walraven (ed.) (2003) Rethinking Resistance: Revolt and Violence in African History (Leiden: Brill). Aydin, C. (2006) ‘Beyond Civilisation: Pan-Islam, Pan Asianism and the Revolt against the West’, Journal of Modern European History, 4:2, 204–23. Baar, M. (2008) Historians and the Nation in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of EastCentral Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Barnard, F. M. (1965) Herder’s Social and Political Thought: From Enlightenment to Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Barnard, F. M. (2003) Herder on Nationality, Humanity and History (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press). Barnett, D. L. and K. Njama (1966) Mau Mau from Within: Autobiography and Analysis of Kenya’s Peasant Revolt (London: MacGibbon and Kee).

26 John Breuilly Bayly, C. A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell). Berger, S. (2005) ‘A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in Germany, Italy, France and Britain from 1945 to the Present’, Journal of Modern History, 77:3, 629–78. Berger, S., M. Donovan and K. Passmore (eds) (1999) Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800 (London: Routledge). Berghahn, V. R. and H. Schissler (1987) Perceptions of History: International Textbook Research on Britain, Germany, and the United States (Leamington Spa & New York: Berg). Billig, M. (1995) Banal Nationalism (London: Sage). Breuilly, J. (1996) The Formation of the First German Nation-State, 1800–1871 (London: Macmillan). Breuilly, J. (2008) ‘On the Principle of Nationality’ in G. S. Jones and G. Claeys (eds) The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Burrow, J. (2007) A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane). Calhoun, C. (2007) Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream (London: Routledge). Constant, B. (1988) Political Writings, translated by B. Fontana in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Dawisha, A. (2003) Arab Nationalism in the 20th Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Echternkamp, J. (2002) ‘ “Verwirrung im Vaterländischen”? Nationalismus in der Deutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft 1945–1960’, in J. Echternkamp and S. O. Müller (eds) Die Politik der Nation : Deutscher Nationalismus in Krieg und Krisen 1760–1960 (Munich: R.Oldenbourg Verlag). Friedman, E. (1995) National Identity and Democratic Prospects in Socialist China (New York: M.E. Sharpe). Friedman, E. (2008) ‘Where Is Chinese Nationalism? The Political Geography of a Moving Project’, Nations and Nationalism, 14:4, 721–38. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press). Fulbrook, M. (1997) ‘Reckoning with the Past: Heroes, Victims and Villains in the History of the German Democratic Republic’, in R. Alter and P. Monteath (eds) Rewriting the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press). Gellner, E. (2006) Nations and Nationalism, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell). Gildea, R. (1994) The Past in French History (London: Yale University Press). Grant, S. M. (1996) ‘When Is a Nation Not a Nation? The Crisis of American Nationality in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Nations and Nationalism, 2:1, 105–29. Habermas, J. (1987) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity). Hegel, G. W. F. (1999) Political Writings, translated by H. B. Nisbet in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Herder, J. G. (2004) Another Philosophy of History [1744] and Selected Political Writings, translated by I. Evrrigenis and D. Pellerin (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company). Hess, M. (1962) ‘Rom und Jerusalem’, in H. Lademacher (ed.) Moses Hess: Ausgewählte Schriften (Cologne: Melzer). Hirschhausen, U. von, and J. Leonhard (eds) (2001) Nationalismen in Europa. West- Und Osteuropa Im Vergleich (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag).

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Hroch, M. (1968) Vorkämpfer dern Nationalen Bewegungen bei den kleinen Völkern Europas (Prague: Universita Karlova). Hroch, M. (1996) ‘From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The NationBuilding Process in Europe’, in G. Balakrishnan (ed.) Mapping the Nation (London: Verso), 78–97. Hroch, M. (2005) Das Europa Der Nationen. Die Moderne Nationsbildung Im Europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Hutchinson, J. (2005) Nations as Zones of Conflict (London: Sage). Kant, I. (1991) Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Khaldun, I. (2005) The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, translated by F. Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Koselleck, R. (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia University Press). Leerssen, J. (2006) National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). Maier, C. S. (2005) ‘Transformations of Territoriality, 1600–2000’, in G. Budde, S. Conrad and O. Janz (eds) Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen Und Theorien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 32–55. Mandler, P. (2006) The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press). Manela, E. (2007) The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anti-Colonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mann, M. (1993) The Sources of Social Power: Vol.2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States 1760–1914, 1st edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Mazlish, B. and A. Iriye (eds) (2005) The Global History Reader (New York: Routledge). McNeill, J. R. and W. H. McNeill (2003) The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of History (New York: W. W. Norton). Mellon, J. (2002) ‘Pan-Arabism, Pan Islamism and Interstate Relations in the Arab Word’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8:4, 5–15. Misra, M. (2007) Vishnus’s Crowded Temple: India since the Great Rebellion (London: Penguin Books). Mosse, G. (1975) The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: H. Fertig). Nora, P. and L. D. Kritzman (1996) Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. 3 vols, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press). Odhiambo, E. S. A. and J. Lonsdale (eds) (2003) Mau Mau and Nationhood (Oxford: James Currey). Owen, D. (1994) Maturity and Modernity: Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault, and the Ambivalence of Reason (London: Routledge). Pocock, J. G. A. (2003) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, 2nd edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Riall, L. (2007) Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Rosberg, C. G. and J. Nottingham (1966) The Myth of the Mau Mau: Nationalism in Kenya (London: Praeger). Sciatino, G. (1999) ‘Just before the Fall: The Northern League and the Cultural Construction of a Secessionist Claim’, International Sociology, 14:3, 321–36. Simon, S. R. (1986) ‘The Teaching of History in Iraq before the Rashid Ali Coup of 1941’, Middle Eastern Studies, 22, 1.

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Struve, K. (2001) ‘Bauern und Nation in Ostmitteleuropa: Sozale Emanzipation und nationale Identität der galizischen Bauern im 19. Jahrhundert’, in U. von Hirschhausen and J. Leonhard (eds) Nationalismen in Europa. West- und Osteuropa im Vergleich (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag). Tacitus (1948) The Germania, translated by H. Mattingly. (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Taylor, C. (2007) A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Weber, E. (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France (London: Chatto and Windus).

2 The Comparative History of National Historiographies in Europe: Some Methodological Reflections and Preliminary Results Stefan Berger

The nationalisation of European culture and thought in the 19th century included the nationalisation of history writing (Leersen, 2006; Hroch, 2005). Throughout much of the 19th and first half of the 20th century national history was the dominant show in town – never the only one, but for many the most important one. Increasingly, as the 19th century progressed, the history lectures and seminars at universities were dominated by national history, which was perceived by many historians as the highest form of history writing. National historical narratives underpinned a wide variety of nationalisms throughout Europe and were influential in justifying nation state formation, revolution, civil war, war, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The deep impact of historical national narratives on European culture is clear. It is therefore particularly important to investigate these narratives in a genuinely comparative and transnational way, a process that has been under way for a number of years now. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a range of monographs and edited collections have sought to explore the theme (e.g. Lönnroth et al., 1994; Duchhardt and Kunz, 1997; Berger et al., 1999; Conrad and Conrad, 2002; Lingelbach, 2003; Raphael, 2003; Eriksonas, 2004).1 What I would like to do in this chapter is to discuss some of the methodological assumptions and some of the preliminary results which underpin and come out of these studies. I shall start off by reviewing the legacy of the ideas of national special paths, which were at the heart of historical national narratives. In the second section I would like to ask how comparative historians might be able to cluster the diverse constructions of national experiences according to specific research questions to be pursued. Finally, I will conclude by exploring the assumption that, regardless of all the many differences in the projection of national historical trajectories, the comparative history of national historiography is able to discern a European 29

30 Stefan Berger

path, or perhaps better a European highway of national history with multiple lanes. Ultimately, however, such a hypothesis can only be tested by comparing the national historiographies of Europe with national historiographies in other continents.

A Europe of special paths? the legacy of the search for authenticity It has been part and parcel of methodological nationalism in history writing to postulate ‘special paths’ of nations. Everywhere in Europe national historians were keen to argue that the history of ‘their’ nation was somehow peculiar and displayed unique characteristics. The search for national Sonderwege was a legacy of European Romanticism, which put such heavy emphasis on the authenticity of national cultures that it became of key importance to establish notions of difference. Some of the big imperial nations in Europe were adept at constructing national peculiarities which served the purpose of legitimating empires. In Britain it was constitutional history, which was at the heart of establishing the slow and peaceful evolution of a parliamentary democracy through the centuries. The British parliament as ‘mother of parliaments’ and the legacy of constitutionalism also predestined Britain to spread the values of constitutionalism throughout the world, giving it a civilising mission which underpinned British imperialism. In Spain national progress was often intimately connected with the spread of Christianity and more specifically, Catholicism. The Reconquista was a key example of how the nation protected not only Spain but Europe from the Infidels and the history of Spanish colonialism was also a history of spreading the values of Christianity around the globe. In Germany historians sought to combine the history of the Kulturstaat with that of the Machtstaat, arguing that it was, in Thomas Mann’s words, a special machtgeschützte Innerlichkeit which protected the advances of real culture (Mann, 1918). The spread of such culture into Eastern Europe was frequently regarded as Germany’s mission in Europe. French 19th and 20th century historians overwhelmingly wrote national history from the vantage point of the revolution of 1789, out of which emerged a republican and laicist France. The values of the revolution were universal but they were also national, which allowed the ‘grande nation’ to formulate an imperial mission to spread ‘egalité, fraternité et liberté’ around the globe. In Soviet Russia it was another revolution, that of the Bolsheviks of 1917 which became the key structuring device for national history in the post-1917 period. It allowed Soviet Russia to formulate a Communist civilising narrative, according to which its national mission as ‘motherland of the proletarian revolution’ was to liberate other working-class nations from the dominance of their respective bourgeoisies. But national historiographies in these cases did not one-sidedly legitimate empires. One can also argue the reverse, namely that empire historiographies

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constructed nation states. Land- and sea-based empires needed to integrate different regions of the empire in diverse ways. In the process of doing so, historians of empire constructed ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ areas of empire and formulated national projects around the core areas. The successful integration of Scotland and Wales into a British national narrative and the equally successful integration of Siberia, Byelorussia and Ukraine into a Greater Russian national history are good examples of this trend (Berger and Miller, 2008). If we look at some of the medium-sized and smaller European nation states, their historians were not less prone to formulate notions of exceptionalism. Poland was described as ‘Christ among nations’ indicating the long history of suffering leading to salvation and ultimate triumph. The theme of suffering and repression is prominent in a wide range of national histories, which deploy it to mark out national history from an ‘oppressive’ other. In Catholic Irish historiography it is the English and the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, whereas in Polish national history it is the Russians/Soviets and Germans which are depicted as the main oppressors. Stories of repression form a prominent telos of national histories, where they only recently emerged from the tutelage of an ‘oppressive’ state and are seeking to construct their own lineages, for example in Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states. Stories of national victimhood are also combined with forgetfulness about degrees of complicity with former oppressor states. One of the most blatant examples of such forgetfulness is the construction of Austrian national history after 1945. Arguably it only established itself firmly as being independent from a wider German national history after the Second World War, when Austrian national historians from the far left to the right came up with the idea of Austria as ‘first victim’ of Hitler and National Socialist Germany, thereby marking itself out as a victim of, rather than perpetrator in, National Socialist crimes between 1938 and 1945. Next to narratives of repression we encounter narratives of mediation in the diverse attempts to construct special national paths in historiography. Luxembourg historians after 1945 increasingly framed the history of Luxembourg around a particular European mission, which increasingly seemed to coincide with the European Union. Belgian historians, especially Henri Pirenne, argued that Belgium fulfilled a particular role as a bridge between different cultures, in particular French and Germanic cultures. It was distinguished not by a particularly pure language or ethnicity, but by being a meeting point of diverse cultures and peoples. Many of the Communist countries after 1945 combined a Marxist framework of history writing with the propagation of national characteristics which allowed these historiographies to produce distinct Communist trajectories of national historical development. In Communist Albania, a working-class national narrative was combined with state-sponsored atheism in such a way as to mark out the Albanian nation before all other Communist nations. In East Germany ideas of a socialist German nation as the outcome

32 Stefan Berger

of all the progressive national traditions underpinned identity discourses which were constructed vis-à-vis West Germany. Communist Yugoslavia also embarked on the search for Yugoslav national identity which could overcome the national narratives of the diverse parts making up Yugoslavia. It concentrated very much on the successful resistance to fascism in the Second World War and the idea of self-liberation. However, this attempt was unsuccessful, as the professional historians in Yugoslavia by and large retained a sub-Yugoslav national outlook and concentrated on writing the histories of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia – often with their own, mutually contradictory, special paths (Brunnbauer, 2002). Ideas of special paths were connected to notions of difference, which in turn often mutated into discourses about the superiority of one’s own nation over others. There was already a certain amount of tension in the work of early cosmopolitan nationalists, such as Johan Gottfried Herder, who, on the one hand, declared the basic equality of all nations whilst, on the other, constructing hierarchies of nations according to their particular virtues (Nisbet, 1999). British constitutionalism, German Kultur, French revolutionary values, Catholicism in Spain and Poland, Orthodoxy in Russia and Rumania, Lutherism in Denmark, Sweden and Finland all served the purpose of marking out these particular nations vis-à-vis others, who were frequently constructed as their ‘national enemies’. However, as indicated above, inferiority could also become a mark of honour, especially if it could be connected to the suffering of the nation at the hands of a ruthless ‘other’. Polish and Irish historiography are prime examples of such constructions. With regard to the various markers of nationality, be it language, culture or ethnicity, historians sought to establish firmly that the markers for their particular nation were genuinely pure, important and durable. National histories were nowhere uncontested and they invariably came in the plural. Nevertheless, one can say that some national histories were more homogeneously grouped around particular narratives, whilst others were characterised by narrative dissonance, that is very diverse national narratives competing for superiority in the nation state. So, for example, nations with a strong Catholic narrative often produced liberal counter-narratives intent on demonstrating the negative influence of the Catholic Church on the national development. In Spanish historiography liberal historians were keen to point to the Inquisition as one of the darkest chapters of Spanish national history. In France, the revolutionary republican traditions served as a powerful antidote to the previously close association of the French nation with Catholicism. In fact republicanism soon dominated the official historiography, marginalising Catholic national narratives of France to a significant extent. In 19th century Ireland it was, by and large, representatives of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, which dominated historical writing and, between W. H. Lecky and J. A. Froude, managed to construct quite different

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histories of Ireland. But it was fundamentally different to the Catholic Irish historiography which was to blossom under the Irish state after 1922. It was characteristic for the establishment of exceptionalist arguments that their authors usually restricted their enquiries to ‘their’ nation states and did not feel it necessary to look beyond the borders of ‘their’ nation state. Yet, it is a truism that one can only establish exceptionalisms through comparison. In fact, if we look at the special paths reviewed above, we detect similarities in the narratives, which already make those special paths look less special. Thus, for example, a variety of constructions focus on the early and continuous state histories with special reference to institutions, such as the monarchy or parliament. Others, by contrast, look towards cultural markers of collective national identity, especially the emergence of vernaculars and the strength of a literary national tradition. Others again connect the national trajectory to the nation’s particular religious and denominational character, thereby postulating a symbiotic relationship between a particular religion and national development.

Comparison and the need for clustering narrative constructions of national histories One way of trying to compare the construction of national narratives is therefore to cluster those narratives which display similarities in the construction process. Thus, for example, it would make sense to compare those national narratives, in which notions of sacrifice or mediation play a prominent role. Likewise it would be intriguing to compare those in which the national peculiarity is linked to an international mission which legitimated various imperialist ventures. But ultimately, as with all comparisons, everything depends on the question(s) asked, and therefore one can envisage very different forms of clustering, depending on which particular question is being pursued. Before we come to the problem of clustering, however, one other methodological problem needs to be addressed: what kind of national histories are to be compared. Given the prevalence and strength of national history writing in the modern period, it seems impossible to compare whole bodies of national historiographies. Here the concept of national master narrative might be usefully deployed to limit the number of actual histories to be compared. The development of the idea of ‘master narrative’ has a very complex history (Thijs, 2008), but we can talk about master narratives as dominant narratives as expressed in key texts, which were widely received as being particularly subtle, masterful and authoritative. These were master texts also in the sense that they were frequently copied and used as an interpretative framework for a whole body of other literature. National historical master narratives thus provide narrative frameworks which national history writing accepted widely and which therefore can be found in many forms of

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national history writing. The narrative framing of those master national histories can be explored through a set of questions including: who are central actors of national histories? Which historical figures populate the national stage? Who are described as enemies of the nation? Who has agency? How is the passing of time structured in national histories? What importance is attached to concepts such as progress or contingency? What periodisation does the story follow? What origins are constructed? The answer to these and related questions will provide us with a better idea of the narrative framing of historical master narratives. It is through such historical master narratives that people make sense of the past and identify with particular versions of the past (Middell et al., 2000). Whilst one might sympathise with postmodernist critiques of such master narratives, it would be facile to assume their dissolution and disappearance. Instead, one needs to analyse how they are perpetually reconstructed. Comparative clustering can take place around the ‘most similar’ paradigm suggested above, but it can also be organised around a set of pertinent themes relevant to most, if not all national histories. I would suggest four such themes: first, the institutionalisation and professionalisation of history writing. The professionalisation and the nationalisation of historical writing are parallel processes, which are intimately related. Professional historians’ truth claims and objectivity claims were most often connected to nations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Everywhere in Europe, the process of history writing itself was connected to the emergence of nationhoods and nation states. History was to a large extent the history of nation formation. The nation was the telos of history and through ‘scientific’ history writing, historians could provide objective foundations for their respective nations. Hence the timing and nature of processes of professionalisation were bound to have a major impact on the framing of national master narratives (Porciani and Raphael, 2010, forthcoming; Porciani and Tollebeek, 2010, forthcoming). When were the first chairs of history founded at national universities? When did the first seminars appear? When were major national source collections published? The close interrelationship between older learned societies and Enlightenment historiography on the one hand and processes of professionalisation in the 19th century on the other merits closer attention. The same is true for the transitions from an older ‘amateur’ national historiography, often rooted in antiquarian interests and societies, to a professionalised historiography, often tied to the ambitions of a nationalising state. What was the role of academies, associations, museums and journals in establishing national master narratives and ensuring their success with wider publics? Whilst the establishment of a professionalised and institutionalised national history took place in most parts of Europe at some point during the long 19th century, in some rare cases, it only started in the 20th century. Particular places of learning often radiated wide and far into European historiographical culture: Göttingen, Berlin and the German

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universities did so before 1914. Paris became the place for historians after 1945. And increasingly, from the 1960s onwards, North American universities took the lead in setting the historiographical agenda in Europe. The same can be said about particular individuals who often acted as beacons of orientation and were genuinely European in their reach and influence. In the 19th century one thinks, for example, of Herder, Mazzini, Michelet and Ranke, and in the 20th century Lamprecht, Braudel and Hobsbawm come readily to mind. Quite apart from the towering intellectual figures and institutions influencing identity discourses throughout Europe, one can also identify more limited forms of regional transfers across neighbouring regions (Troebst, 2003). Over the past two decades historians of cultural transfer have firmly established the fact that one cannot compare without taking into account the cases which are to be compared (Berger, 2003). Only if it is acknowledged that we are not comparing isolated cases but cases which are interrelated in manifold and complex ways, does the comparison make sense, for it is only then that we recognise that adaption, adoption, rejection and reception all played a major role in constructing ‘national experiences’. A second pertinent theme to be explored comparatively concerns the interrelationship between national master narratives with other master narratives, e.g. those of ethnicity/race, religion and class. We can produce a range of clusters according to which interrelationship looked particular prominent in given national historiographies (Berger and Lorenz, 2008). Regarding ethnic narratives, for example, it makes sense to compare notions of origin and national beginnings in the historical narratives. How are migrations dealt with and what impact is attributed to the migrations regarding the changing character of the nation? Were there notions of an Urvolk, and how do those notions relate to ideas about ethnic purity? Ethnic national narratives were particularly important in challenging multinational and imperial states, such as Spain, Britain or the Habsburg Empire. It makes sense to compare those challenges in order to find answers to the question, why they were successful in some cases and not in others. The racialisation of ethnic narratives in the last third of the 19th century is characteristic of many national historiographies and again deserves systematic comparison. How did the ideas of Social Darwinism enter the historical discourse about nation? While ethnicity in the first half of the 19th century was often used to mean culture and cultural similarities, the race discourse biologised culture and made it a matter of genetic and biological determinism. Did some discursive constructions of ethnicity/culture lend themselves to such racialisation more than others? What did the national narratives do with ethnic ‘others’ within the territory of the nation state? One thinks of transnational European peoples, such as the Jews or the Roma, or of ethnic minorities, such as the Samis and the Lapps in Scandinavia and Finland or the Sorbs in Germany. Especially in East Central and Eastern

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Europe the rich tapestry of parallel constructions of competing ethnicities clashed badly with the aspirations of national master narratives for ethnic purity. The homogenising desires of the latter produced ethnic cleansing and genocide in the context of the Second World War and its aftermath. Only the framework of the European Union has allowed the narrative celebration of diversity in European history. For the first time, mixing and in-between-ness had positive connotations. In-between peoples in classical European borderlands began to celebrate their status rather than fear to be viewed as a potential threat to the nation state. Ironically, such a perspective only developed when the rich ethnic mix of Europe was but a historical memory. And, as the case of Yugoslavia in the 1990s powerfully underlined, ethnic diversity could still be made into a major problem leading to ethnic cleansing and mass murder. However, the eventual (albeit belated) intervention of the EU and the USA to stop the bloodshed was based to a considerable degree on the historical argument that Europe had to draw lessons from the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust. If ethnicity and national narratives were tightly interrelated, the latter often displayed a more ambiguous relationship to religion (Haupt and Langewiesche, 2001). On the one hand, they sought to replace religion as a key marker of collective identity, but on the other hand, they also were keen to integrate religion into the national narrative. Hence, almost everywhere in Europe, the national narratives came to be identified with particular religious or denominational links. The comprehensive confessionalisation of whole societies in 19th century Europe left a mark on conceptions of national identity. Religion provided key symbols, rituals and collective practices which strengthened national historical master narratives. National saints and religious festivals, for example, feature prominently in the latter. In terms of class narratives it is very noticeable that Communist histories produced a range of mergers between national history and class ideology. Early labour movement historians already wrote class histories in order to facilitate the integration of the working classes into their respective nation states. In Communist states, historians again worked largely within national frameworks and sought to adapt traditional national narratives to the Communist ideology. Thus, for example, Czech national history under Communism continued a well-established antagonistic dialogue with German national history as the key ‘other’ of Czech self-definitions. Portraying Czech and Slovak national history as a particularly proletarian history, it could be juxtaposed to German national history in which the bourgeoisie and feudal classes played prominent roles. Thus it was the national history as class history which marked out Czechoslovak history vis-à-vis its main ‘other’ – Germany. But there have also been Marxist scholars who sought to overcome methodological nationalism with reference to Marxist internationalism. In the Soviet Union of the 1920s Marxist internationalism in historical writing

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flourished only briefly. In Western Marxism we find influential champions of transnational comparative history writing. However, theirs was mostly an oppositional history seeking to write against the grain of national(ist) history. By contrast, in the Communist nations of Eastern Europe, state historians espoused the merger between Marxism and nationalism. The Czechoslovak national narrative is by no means unique in relating the national story to the development of a particular social class. In Denmark, for example, extensive debates surrounding the free peasants focused on the extent to which this class could be described as the backbone of the nation. Other national storylines are more firmly tied to other social classes. In the Polish and Hungarian cases, the nobility has been relatively important not only in developing the national storylines but also in featuring in them as nation-forming classes, whereas in British and German national narratives, pride of place in most narratives goes to an urban-based, educated and propertied bourgeoisie. Whilst gender is not a master narrative analogous to those of ethnicity/ race, religion and class, it nevertheless features strongly in European national histories. It would be mistaken to assume that national histories are all-male histories, which exclude women. The nation is most frequently imagined as family and as such national histories need both male and female heroes and heroines. They possess very different virtues, according to the gender stereotypes prevalent at the time of writing, but both male and female virtues are perceived as being necessary for the flowering and development of the nation. In a surprising number of cases, one also encounters female heroines which conform more to male gender stereotypes than to female ones. One only needs to think of Queen Boadicea in Britain or Jeanne d’Arc in France. However, given the fact that much national history was political history, and that women remained excluded from the political sphere for much of the modern era, many national histories are male-centred. This even produced attempts, in Norway and also in Finland, to write a female national history as a counter-history to the male-dominated genre. But the gendering of national histories is not just about the place of women in national histories. It is about the deployment of gendered metaphors, tropes and narrative devices which abound in national histories and which remain woefully under-researched (O’Dowd and Porciani, 2004). National enemies are routinely feminised and periods of extreme national suffering are frequently portrayed as ‘rape’ of the nation. The misfortunes of the nation are placed on the shoulders of foreign-born wives of indigenous kings or foreignborn rulers. The betrayal of women is made responsible for the downfall of nations and their defeat by the hands of their national enemies. Sexual deviance is related to responsibility for national catastrophe. Overall, the place of gender as a structuring device of national histories cannot be overestimated. A third theme for comparative analysis is the interrelationship between national master narratives with sub- as well as transnational narratives. Here

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we can, first of all, form a cluster of those national narratives which seek to build on established local and regional identity discourses. The importance of such sub-national identity discourses for the construction of national narratives in a variety of different European contexts is well established (Thiesse, 1999). One might ask further, under which circumstances such regional identity discourses in multinational states and empires turn themselves into national discourses. It is, after all, a peculiar phenomenon that several regions have displayed an ability to turn themselves into nations whilst others have not. But it is not only the subnational identity discourses which have been of major importance to the construction of national master narratives. Transnational stories, including European and imperial storylines, were often national storylines in disguise (Middell and Roura, 2010, forthcoming; Hadler and Mesenhöller, 2007). How often, for example, has the history of Europe been written as the sum total of its (usually bigger) nation states? What European missions did the nation states formulate? How did national discourses legitimate schemes of imperial expansion? The methodological nationalism which characterised so much historical writing in the 19th and 20th centuries was in complex and sometimes contradictory ways linked up with an accelerating transnationalism of the historical profession which started in the last third of the 19th century. Given the historians’ scientific (wissenschaftlich) pretensions, it is not surprising that they aimed at a transnational dialogue which found expression in an increasing number of international conferences, transnational research projects and the emergence of world historical congresses (Erdmann, 2005). At the beginning of the 21st century such transnationalisation has reached endemic proportions and it is easy to write satires on academic life which takes place on airplanes and in-between continents. On the European level, much research-funding is already being provided by the European Commission for projects which need several European partners to collaborate and the percentage of such funding is bound to rise much faster than national funding over the coming years. Yet without a methodological turn away from national paradigms, such transnationalisation of the historical profession does not necessarily undermine methodological nationalism; for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it simply institutionalised methodological nationalism on a transnational level. The fourth theme relates to the problem of overlapping national histories and the role of borders and borderlands, which have been vitally important for national narratives (Frank and Hadler, 2010, forthcoming). In many cases the nation defined itself most acutely at the border. A comparison of constructions of borders and contested territories and their role in national histories promises to shed important light on one of the key components of national histories. One could also produce a cluster of borderlands in Europe and look at the ways in which borderlanders and their attempts to construct borderland identities managed to survive the mighty nationalising drives

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of national narratives and carve out niches for themselves within and even between national histories.

Unity in diversity? towards a comparative history of national historiographies in Europe The different research questions reviewed above will provide a framework for the clustering of European national historiographies. Only such meaningful clustering will allow us to make use of the comparative method and combine it with cultural transfer studies in order to arrive at a synthetic overview of how national history writing across Europe differed and what it had in common. For a start, the beginnings of national history-writing in Europe are quite diverse. Whereas many parts of Europe can trace those beginnings to the high and late medieval period (Armstrong, 1982; Geary, 2002), others can look back no further than the early 20th century. Despite such differences we can nevertheless identify two important pan-European waves of national history writing going back to the early modern period. First, humanism produced a wide array of scholarship which dealt in categories of the national (Helmrath et al., 2002). Secondly, the Reformation marked a period in which national history became an important weapon in the arsenal of Protestant nations against the universalism of the Catholic Church and those (nation) states allied to it. While medieval and early modern constructions of the nation established particular ways of talking about the nation, including popular metaphors, tropes, heroes, enemies and myths of origin, they fundamentally differed from modern national narratives in their scope and appeal. The construction of modern national identities coincided with the construction of a professionalised and institutionalised historiography emancipating itself from theology. Being a professional historian included a claim to having a privileged vantage point onto the past. It was qua their professionalism that historians could claim to interpret the nation’s past and speak on behalf of the nation’s past better than anyone else. However, that claim was accepted to varying degrees in different parts of Europe. Whilst history could rise to become the leading academic discipline in the German lands during the 19th century, in Britain it never occupied such a prominent position (Osterhammel, 1993). Partly this was to do with the lack of professionalisation and institutionalisation in Britain, but partly also with the fact that the historical master narrative was relatively well established and uncontested – at least if compared with most areas of Central and Eastern Europe. The nation was already there and whilst history served to legitimate it, the historical profession and the knowledge it produced had a different degree of urgency in areas undergoing projects of nation formation. If geography had an important impact on the function and presence of national history writing, so had chronology. Whilst 18th century

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Enlightenment historians wrote national histories in order to emphasise general principles of historical development manifesting themselves in different nations, in the 19th century, Romantic historians delivered national histories which concentrated on what made nations unique and special (Bann, 1995). In the later 19th century, national historians tended to see themselves as more professional, working closer to the sources and therefore having a greater insight into the past than their Romantic predecessors. Debunking Romantic myths about national history became a favourite pasttime of later generations of historians, but this did not mean that the latter were any less nationalist than the Romantic historians. In some respects one can argue the reverse. At least some Romantic national historians were still influenced by the Enlightenment. Their nationalism, following Herder, depicted a marked ambiguity between cosmopolitan egalitarianism (i.e. every nationalism is of equal value) and claims of nationalist superiority of one’s own nation over others. And, of course, the more they could claim to be professionals, the more it underlined their authority to speak on behalf of the nation. Their status as spokespersons for the nation involved them in often highly politicised debates about the shape and nature of the nation state and its relation to both its internal and external enemies (Breuilly, 1997). Especially in recently formed nation states, such as Germany or Italy, and in nations seeking to establish their own state (often by breaking away from empires), historians were very close to politics, serving the interest of the state (being sometimes employed by the state) or undermining existing state structures. National histories were thus both legitimatory and oppositional – depending on the national circumstances. At times, historians became politicians and politicians wrote history. The First World War highlighted the political function of historians, as they became involved in war propaganda (for Germany see Stibbe, 2001). They used history to legitimate their respective nation’s struggle, to denounce their opponents and to justify claims on territories. A similar use of national history can be observed in the Second World War, and in civil wars such as the Spanish one after 1936 or the Russian one after 1917. Dictatorships of the right and the left routinely sought to streamline national history into a version which served the dictatorship, whilst banishing all other forms of historical writing. This brings us to the interesting phenomenon that national histories were also written in exile (Tortarolo, 2007). Exiled historians often formulated national counter-narratives, which sometimes remained marginal, but frequently became important after ‘regime change’, when the historiography which underpinned a dictatorship gave way to other forms of historiography and the search for new national master narratives produced an opening for different narratives. Historians in exile could also be influential in encouraging research among historians of their host country into the history of their country of origin. The most famous examples in this respect are the

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historians, who had to leave Nazi Germany. In Britain and North America they not only wrote a different German national history, but they also engendered much interest among English-speaking historians in the history of Germany and the German lands. The prominence of German history among British and North American historians of the post-Second World War period has much to do with the presence of a German exile historiography, and this ‘foreign’ national historiography has in turn come to influence German historiography. One only has to think about the impact of David Blackbourn’s and Geoff Eley’s critique of the German Sonderweg (Blackbourn and Eley, 1984). It is noticeable that British and North American historians had the power to start or influence debates on national history elsewhere, e.g. Robert Paxton and the French discussions on Vichy (Paxton, 1972), Dennis Mack Smith and the question of continuities between the Risorgimento and Italian fascism (Mack Smith 1959), or Paul Preston and the Spanish debates surrounding the legacy of Franco and the Spanish civil war (Preston, 1993). After 1945 national histories in Western Europe experienced a delayed break with traditional national paradigms following attempts to stabilise these traditional paradigms after the massive upheaval of the Second World War. With some exceptions, most notably Britain, but also some of the ‘neutral’ countries, such as Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, the war was crucial in reconceptualising national history throughout Europe (Flacke, 2004). Many national histories in Western Europe now became more self-reflective and, in the process, more self-critical. In Eastern Europe, the Communist regimes enforced the writing of national history under Marxist guidelines, but in many places this saw an adaptation of traditional national master narratives rather than their complete abandonment or replacement. In some respects the revision of those traditional master narratives was less thorough than was the case in Western Europe, which might also help to explain why nationalism erupted with such force in some regions of Eastern Europe after the collapse of Communism. It would, however, be mistaken, even for Western Europe, to postulate a terminal decline of national histories from the 1960s onwards. While parts of professional history have indeed moved in the direction of transnational and comparative history, in order to overcome the national focus of historiography, many parts of Europe (both West and East) witnessed a revival of national history writing in the 1980s, which was exacerbated by the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe around 1990 (Berger, 2005). German reunification brought a search for national normality and a renewed interest in reinterpretations of the national past. The crisis of the post-war Italian republic made many historians rally to the topic of national history in order to fend off a perceived threat of disintegration and (northern) separatism. In multinational states, such as Britain, Spain or Belgium, separatist nationalisms began to produce their own national histories – often to underpin claims for greater autonomy or even independence. In Eastern Europe the peaceful

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separation of Czechoslovakia necessitated the re-writing of national history in both parts – the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia saw historians in the vanguard of those justifying the setting up of nation states in the different parts of Yugoslavia and even legitimating acts of ethnic cleansing in the name of securing or demolishing the territorial integrity of the new territorial regimes. The setting up of post-Soviet national states, such as Byelorussia and Ukraine also brought with it attempts to construct national histories underpinning projects of nation formation.

A European path of national history writing? This is admittedly a broad-brush sketch of a comparative history of national historiographies and it will need considerable detail to fill in the many gaps on the canvass (which is the aim of the six-volume book series under the direction of Berger, Conrad and Marchal, 2008–2010). Such detail will invariably highlight many fine differences between national experiences, and yet, despite the legacy of a multiplicity of national special paths, it seems possible to discern broad similarities in European attempts to write national histories. They include the parallel and closely intertwined processes of the rise of professional history writing and the rise of nationalism in 19th century Europe, the strong interrelationship of national historical paradigms with other master narratives, in particular those of ethnicity/race, religion and class, the equally close bonds of national histories with histories of sub- and transnational places, and, finally, the importance of borderlands and contested borders for the framing of national histories. In addition, the similarities stretch to the gendering of national histories across Europe, the political functionalisation of national master narratives especially in the context of nation formation, war and civil war, and the longevity of the importance of national historical narratives which continue to inform collective identity processes into the present time. In some respects then, we may indeed be able to speak about a ‘European path’ in the construction of national historical narratives, although one should not underestimate the many different lanes on this path on which national histories travel with different speeds and under different guises. How some of these European characteristics of the relationship between history writing and national identity formation relate to similar processes elsewhere in the world, is a project well worth the attention of comparative historians, as this volume and related publications demonstrate (Berger, 2007; Fuchs and Stuchtey, 2002).

Note 1. Many of the examples in this article are taken from draft chapters for the many publications produced by a European Science Foundation Programme entitled

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‘Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe’ (NHIST), which I had the pleasure to direct between 2003 and 2008. I would like to thank the more than 150 scholars from across Europe who participated in the NHIST programme for making the whole thing happen. For an introduction to the NHIST programme see also Berger and Mycock (2007) and the programme website, http://www.uni-leipzig.de/zhsesf, last accessed 30 December 2007.

References Armstrong, J. (1982) Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). Bann, S. (1995) Romanticism and the Rise of History (Boston, MA: Twayne). Berger, S. (2003) ‘Comparative History’ in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds) Writing History: Theory and Practice (London: Hodder Arnold), pp. 161–179. Berger, S. (2005) ‘A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in Germany, Italy, France, and Britain from 1945 to the Present’, Journal of Modern History, 77, 3, 629–678. Berger, S. (2007) Writing the Nation: a Global Perspective (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan). Berger, S., M. Donovan and K. Passmore (eds) (1999) Writing National History. Western Europe since 1800 (London: Routledge). Berger, S. and A. Mycock (eds) (2007) ‘Europe and its National Historians’, special issue of Storia della Storiografia, 50. Berger, S. and C. Lorenz (eds) (2008) The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Religion, Class and Gender in National Histories (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan). Berger, S. and A. Miller (2008) ‘National Building and Regional Integration, c. 1800–1914: the Role of Empires’, European Review of History, 15, 3, 317–330. Berger, S., C. Conrad and G. Marchal (eds) (2008–2010, forthcoming) Writing the Nation, 6 vols (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan). Blackbourn, D. and G. Eley (1984) The Peculiarities of German History. Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Breuilly, J. (1997) Myth-Making or Myth-Breaking? Nationalism and History (Birmingham: University of Birmingham). Brunnbauer, U. (ed.) (2002) Umstrittene Identitäten. Ethnizität und Nationalität in Südosteuropa (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang). Conrad, C. and S. Conrad (eds) (2002) Die Nation schreiben: Geschichtswissenschaft im internationalen Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Duchhardt, H. and A. Kunz (eds) (1997) ‘Europäische Geschichte’ als historiographisches Problem (Mainz: Institut für europäische Geschichte). Erdmann, K. D. (2005) Toward a Global Community of Historians. The International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences, 1898–2000 (Oxford: Berghahn). Eriksonas, L. (2004) National Heroes and National Identities: Scotland, Norway and Lithuania (Brussels: Peter Lang). Flacke, M. (ed.) (2004) Mythen der Nationen. 1945: Arena der Erinnerungen (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern). Frank, T. and F. Hadler (eds) (2010, forthcoming) Borders and Nations: Confrontations and (Re-)Conciliations (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan).

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Fuchs, E. and B. Stuchtey (2002) Across Cultural Borders. Historiography in Global Perspective (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield). Geary, P. J. (2002) The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Hadler, F. and M. Mesenhöller (eds) (2007) Lost Greatness and Past Oppression in East Central Europe: Representations of the Imperial Experience since 1918 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag). Haupt, H-G. and D. Langewiesche (eds) (2001) Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt/Main: Campus). Helmrath, J., U. Muhlack and G. Walther (eds) (2002) Diffusion des Humanismus. Studien zur nationalen Geschichtsschreibung europäischer Humanisten (Göttingen: Wallstein). Hroch, M. (2005) Das Europa der Nationen. Die moderne Nationsbildung im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Leersen, J. (2006) National Thought in Europe. A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). Lingelbach, G. (2003) Klio macht Karriere. Die Institutionalisierung der Geschichtswissenschaft in Frankreich und den USA in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). Lönnroth, K., K. Molin and R. Björk (eds) (1994) Conceptions of National History (Berlin: K.G. Saur). Mack Smith, D. (1959) Italy: a Modern History (s.l.: Mayflower). Mann, T. (1918 [1983]) ‘Bekenntnisse eines Unpolitischen’ in T. Mann Aufsätze, Reden, Essays, vol. 2, 1914–1918 (Berlin [O]: Aufbau). Middell, M., M. Gibas and F. Hadler (eds) (2000) Zugänge zu historischen Meistererzählungen (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag). Middell, M. and L. Roura y Aulinas (eds) (2010, forthcoming) World, Global and European Histories as Challenges to National Representations of the Past (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan). Nisbet, H. B. (1999) ‘Herder: the nation in history’ in Michael Branch (ed.) National History and Identity. Approaches to the Writing of National History in the North-East Baltic Region. Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society), 78–96. O’Dowd, M. and I. Porciani (eds) (2004) ‘History Women’, special issue of Storia della Storiografia, 46. Osterhammel, J. (1993) ‘Epochen der britischen Geschichtsschreibung’ in W. Küttler, J. Rüsen and E. Schulin (eds) Geschichtsdiskurs, vol. 1: Grundlagen und Methoden der Historiographiegeschichte (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer), pp. 157–188. Paxton, R. (1972) Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (New York: Knopf). Porciani, I. and J. Tollebeek (eds) (2010, forthcoming) Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography: Comparative Approaches (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan). Porciani, I. and L. Raphael (eds) (2010, forthcoming) Atlas of the Institutions of European Historiographies, 1800 to the Present (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan). Preston, P. (1993) Franco: a Biography (London: HarperCollins). Raphael, L. (2003) Geschichtswissenschaft im Zeitalter der Extreme. Theorien, Methoden und Tendenzen von 1900 bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck). Stibbe, M. (2001) German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Thiesse, A. M. (1999) La Création des Identités Nationales: Europe XVIIIe–XXe Siècle (Paris: Seuil).

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Thijs, K. (2008) ‘The Metaphor of the Master. “Narrative Hierarchy” in National Historical Cultures of Europe’ in S. Berger and C. Lorenz (eds) The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Religion, Class and Gender in National Histories (Houndmills: Palgrave McMillan). Tortarolo, E. (2007) ‘Objectivity and Opposition: Some Émigré Historians in the 1930s and early 1940s’ in Q. E. Wang and F. L. Fillafer (eds) The Many Faces of Clio. Cross-Cultural Approaches to Historiography. Essays in Honor of Georg G. Iggers (Oxford: Berghahn). Troebst, S. (ed.) (2003) ‘Geschichtsregionen: Concept and Critique’, special issue of European Review of History, 10.

3 ‘Colonising’ The Past: History and Memory in Greece and Turkey Spyros A. Sofos and Umut Özkırımlı

Nationalist projects always look back in time, seeking to demonstrate the ‘linear time of the nation’, its undisputed diachronic presence. Although the timing and the circumstances of the emergence of Greek and Turkish nationalisms are not identical, both projects were informed by the hegemony of Western European modernity and its prevailing attitudes towards the past. As such, both Greek and Turkish nationalisms developed an ambivalent relationship with the past as this past constituted a resource not only for instilling national pride and establishing beyond doubt the diachronic existence of the nation but also validating it in the international arena, making it an acceptable member of the civilised world – by repressing the traces of the ‘backward’ Ottoman Empire from their newly written historiographies.

Modern Greece in the shadow of European classicism Greek nationalism, an intellectual and political movement that emerged in the 18th century, intimately linked with contemporary European intellectual traditions and trends, rested upon a project that involved extensive engagement with the past. Partly the offspring of Philhellenism and European romantic classicism of the end of the 18th and the turn of the 19th century, it was premised on the fusion of the utopian ideals of Hellas and modern day Greeks. The tone and frames of reference of this endeavour were set by the diaspora of Greek-speaking and/or Orthodox intellectuals in major European cities throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In the context of this diasporic activism, the secular classicist outlook of one of the major exponents of Greek nationalism and its intellectual counterpart of Neohellenic Enlightenment, Adamantios Korais, influenced considerably the relationship of modern Greece to its putative past, even after his original vision was moderated by political exigency and considerations of those at the helm of the nation-building process. Korais identified the original locus of the Greek nation and the civilisation generated by it in classical Greece, which was incidentally identified as one 46

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of the sources of intellectual inspiration of European Enlightenment and modern Europe. This invaluable heritage was allegedly preserved through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and although suppressed during the Middle Ages by Latin and Byzantine Christianity, was eventually re(dis)covered during the Renaissance and through the European Enlightenment. As we have suggested elsewhere (see Özkırımlı and Sofos, 2008, chapter 2), for Korais and his fellow nation-builders, modern Greek society had severed its links with this past and its heritage due to the intolerance of Byzantine Christianity, the lack of education of the clergy and the leadership of the Greeks during the Ottoman occupation and, perhaps more importantly, the ‘debilitating’ and ‘barbaric’ Turkish influence on their compatriots. Korais himself quite often projected the ‘amnesia’ from which his compatriots suffered and the state of ‘oblivion’ in which they lived to the presence of the ‘Turk’ in his ‘homeland’. We use the term projected here in two senses: first, to point out that despite his publicly declared belief in the undisputed relationship of his compatriots with their classical ‘progenitors’, implicit in his conduct was a disappointment and lack of faith in them. Korais could barely stand staying in his home town, Smyrna, and never attempted to visit the independent Greek state whose establishment he so much worked for. Second, his intellectual activism can be seen as informed by an orientalist perspective, a desire to narrate modern Greeks’ identity before them, for them; to project on them the image of Greece that the West had created in order to validate and legitimise its assumed superiority. In many ways, his compatriots were seen as a proxy of European Enlightenment. On closer look, the Greek Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire shared the contempt Korais showed towards ‘the Turk’ as their culture failed to live up to the standards of the enlightened West. As a result, the task at hand was to retrieve the forgotten past and reconnect modern Greeks to it. Much of the work of Korais focused on the restoration of the links of modern with classical Greece: a substantial number of his publications consisted of translations into French and Greek of classical and Hellenistic works known as the Hellenic Library. The rationale of this effort was made explicit in his introductions to the various works that comprised the Hellenic Library, which, at the end of his life Korais published as a collection of prolegomena. There Korais argued that the intellectual growth of his compatriots constituted a prerequisite for their political emancipation, that is their liberation from Ottoman domination (1833, p. 23). Undoubtedly such a venture was not fated to reach his compatriots in their entirety as literacy was quite limited among the Greek-speaking populations of Southeastern Europe, Asia Minor and beyond, and their readiness to recognise classical antiquity as their past was doubtful. It was, however, highly symbolic of the shape and direction that modern Hellenism’s engagement with its putative classical past was to take over the next two centuries: in the words of Artemis Leontis, the classical Greek heritage is the particular

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past that haunts the Greek present (1995, p. 19) as modern Greeks were essentially expected to live up to the cultural achievements of their putative ancestors and to gain their ‘rightful’ place among the ‘civilised’ European nations, which after all, it was believed, were the cultural offspring of classical Greece. Neohellenic Enlightenment can be thus seen as an act of ‘colonisation’ of the culture of the populations that were to be designated as Greeks. It instituted a centre of gravity, a ‘kernel’ around which attempts to explore identity and to engage in narrations of the self in modern Greek society were to revolve. It is not surprising in this context to remark that, between 1837 and 1843, the teaching of Greek history at the University of Athens, the institution that was to produce the intellectual and political elite of the new state, was confined to the teaching of ancient Greek history (Karamanolakis, 2004, pp. 27–9). Similarly, Alexandros Soutsos remarked in 1845 that ‘today, the intellectuals of our tiny state revolving around Athens celebrate only victories exacted against the Persians and [remember] only the Academies of Platos, ignoring or forgetting the subsequent glory of the Hellenic nation’ (quoted in Svolopoulos, 2006, p. 17). In many ways the gravity of what was seen as a glorious classical past was such that it obliterated all other memory and experience.1 Through the colonisation of memory and the past, the people who eventually made up modern Greece defined themselves in an ambiguous way by both confirming their overdetermination by a dominant and ‘undisputed’, often alien, past, as well as resisting to embracing it fully: it is characteristic that modern Greeks today call themselves νεοέλληνες (Neoellines, Neohellenes) implicitly distinguishing themselves from their putative ancestors who are routinely called οɩ αρχαíοɩ, or οɩ αρχαíοɩ Έλληνες (archaioi or archaioi Ellines, the ‘ancients’, used as a noun, or the ancient Greeks). Although the use of the noun-like term οɩ αρχαíοɩ may be taken to connote a mere distinction between modern and ancient, it often denotes distance, a rift or a binary quasi-antagonistic division. Nevertheless, in this context of the prevalence of an overarching classicist obsession, modern Greek society was to invest vast amounts of energy and effort to establish beyond doubt its inextricable links with a past ‘only temporarily forgotten’. As we will see in the next few pages, historiography, folklore, literature, the educational system and a host of other scientific institutions developed in the service of this objective, the making of modern Greece in the image of its ancient counterpart.

A necessary compromise: rehabilitating Byzantium The classicist hegemony over the Greek past was facing a threat primarily from the inconsistencies in the narrative it had produced: whereas the

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influence and gravity of the classical past remained undisputed, other elements of the past were much more problematic for those engaged in the process of weaving a national narrative. In such attempts, the linear past of the nation was invariably disrupted, as Korais and his disciples could not account for the severing of modern Greece’s link to classical antiquity that the establishment of a Christian (not Hellenic) Byzantine empire, the ‘dark’ centuries of the Middle ages and the often ‘unnational’ conduct of the Church,2 the clergy and other elites which dominated the Rum millet of the Ottoman Empire entailed. And, despite the romantic faith of Greek nationalists and the European philhellenes alike in the potential of the peasants and shepherds of the Ottoman Empire identified as the heirs of Pericles, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to undergo an eye-opening cultural regeneration experience, the situation on the ground remained disappointing for Korais and his like-minded nation-builders. Enthusiasm for the chosen privileged classical past was not forthcoming and probably not one of the priorities of a population that either had no sense of relationship to those who had produced in these lands a civilisation almost two millennia ago or whose most tangible and material remnant were the ruins scattered throughout the Ottoman territories and, often unbeknown to its users, a host of vernaculars preserving elements of ancient Greek. On the other hand, although the Hellenic, classical past was resurrected and in many ways imposed on the population, there remained an important gap in the project as its proponents could not establish a clear thread that would convincingly assert the continuous presence of the Greeks and their Hellenic culture in the Balkans and Asia Minor from classical antiquity to the present. The contentious lapse in the historical narrative had to do with approximately 15 (!) centuries that made up the period of Byzantine and Ottoman rule. Indeed, several European commentators of the period, and most notably, the Austrian scholar Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer who was vilified in modern Greek historiography for his contribution to the debate (1827, 1830, 1836, 1860), threatened the Neohellenic Enlightenment continuity and provenance thesis by arguing that modern Greeks had nothing to do with the ancient inhabitants of the peninsula and Asia Minor, and indeed a lot to do with the Slavic and Albanian tribes that populated the region during the period of Byzantine decline. To this ideological problem was also added a more practical one. The Christian Orthodox Church, despite its ambivalence with reference to the Greek national(ist) project, still had influence on local societies and Orthodoxy had permeated the realm of everyday life. In addition to this, its undisputable links with Byzantium made it extremely difficult for the early Greek nationalists, first to ignore the reality on the ground and second, to circumvent over a millennium throughout which the Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy had a real and effective presence. For many of the nation-builders that followed Korais, this dilemma was starkly posed as the

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practicalities of their project made necessary an accommodation with a past that had been denounced and derided. The combined threat to the very basis of the project of revival of classical Hellas that the Fallmerayer thesis represented and the practical problems that the supression of the Byzantine and Ottoman past entailed were swiftly met by a reformulation of the official history of Greece, a reformulation that has until the time of writing been the orthodoxy in Greek historiography. This reformulation project was spearheaded by Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, deemed by many the major modern Greek historian, and often recognised as the founder of Greek national historiography. Paparrigopoulos’s first publication ∏ερí της Εποɩκíσεως Σλαβɩκών Φύλων τɩνων εɩς την ∏ελοπόννησον (About the Emigration of Slav Tribes in Peloponnese, 1842) confronting the claims advanced by Fallmerayer that modern Greeks were of Slavic and Albanian descent, gave a foretaste of his overall position vis-à-vis the historical continuity of Hellenism. His magnum opus appeared 17 years later, in 1860, when the first volume of his Іστορíα του Ελληνɩκού Έθνους (History of the Hellenic Nation), comprising six volumes completed in 1877, was published. Paparrigopoulos adopted the periodisation of Greek history introduced by the historian and folklorist Spyridon Zambelios, which distinguished three significant periods in the history of Hellenism: ancient, medieval and modern Hellenism, and integrated Byzantium in Greek historiography by proposing a Hellenic-Christian synthesis formula. Having engaged in research on the Byzantine Empire, Paparrigopoulos argued that the latter constituted a distinct phase in the development of Hellenism as a result of the creative encounter Hellenism had with Christianity. According to Paparrigopoulos, although since 1830 several histories of Greece, ancient and modern, were published in the West, they had an ‘incomplete and amputated’ understanding of the unity of Hellenism (1878, p. 832). For him, the presence of Hellenism in the shores of the Aegean and beyond has been uninterrupted. Although classical antiquity was still considered to be an important moment in the life of Hellenism, it nevertheless constituted one of many significant moments to which Byzantium was added. Through this reformulation, the previously derided anomaly of the Byzantine Empire was rehabilitated as part of a seamless continuous presence of Hellenic culture and people in the region. Paparrigopoulos’s Greek nation straddles these pasts, which were previously seen as alternative and mutually exclusive, fairly unproblematically, and what becomes the unifying force, the point de capiton of the national narrative, what is supposed to obscure the litany of instances of rupture, discontinuity, and disruption of the past five millennia is the transcendental character of the Greek nation, resting primarily on the belief in the latter’s civilising mission. The intellectual movement that Paparrigopoulos inspired sees the nation as a mystical and a-temporal entity surviving through various transformations, bypassing the actual people who make the national

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community and questioning their sovereignty. The past and future mission of an ideal Hellenic-Christian civilisation becomes sovereign and displaces any vestiges of a civic Greek identity. It is this definition of the nation that will inspire adventures such as the Megali Idea which eventually led, in 1922, to the Greek invasion of Asia Minor. This was also echoed in several political projects throughout the 20th century such as that of the Hellenic-Christian synthesis that a group of army colonels will clumsily use to legitimise their coup d’état in 1967. The rehabilitation of Byzantium and the Hellenization of the Orthodox Church and their often antagonistic relationship with Western Christendom would also give the intellectual support necessary for the development of significant social movements in modern Greek life such as the Neoorthodox movement that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Although Paparrigopoulos’s project represented a fairly radical reorientation of the relationship of modern Greece to its past, it should be pointed out that the exponents of the Neohellenic Enlightenment were not oblivious to the practical implications and benefits of such overtures to aspects of the past and heritage that their own project sought to repress in the first instance. Thus a set of intellectual debates and empirical research was initiated after the establishment of the new state under the rubric of Λαογραφíα (laografia, folklore, from the Greek λαός-laos, people, and γράφω-grafo, write/ compose) and made a distinctive and important contribution to the making of modern Greece. This body of research and debate, represented by its practitioners as rooted in the study of the concrete cultural experience of the Greek people (λαός) was, at first sight, markedly distinct from the realm of abstract grand ideals that the movement of Neohellenic Enlightenment was advancing. Armed with the legitimacy of their claimed proximity to the living culture of modern Greeks (in contrast to the remoteness – cultural and physical – of the diasporic intellectuals who first articulated the notion of Greek nationhood), the first Greek folklorists set out to study and codify folk culture. But behind this perception of the folklorist’s gaze as matter-of-fact and down to earth lay a substantially different reality. Folklore in Greece developed in the context of the very same concerns and debates that Neohellenic Enlightenment gave rise to. Λαογραφíα in Greece, far from being an impartial and unemotional intellectual pursuit, was framed by what Herzfeld calls ‘the ideological needs of [the Modern Greek] emergent polity’ (1986, p. 9). The discipline’s founders, Nikolaos Politis and Spyridon Zambelios as well as their successor in the interwar period, Stilpon Kyriakidis, despite different nuances in their overall outlooks, tried to translate the extremely diverse and localised practices and memory, often ‘corrupted’ by foreign influences of many kinds, into a national heritage, giving the discipline the role of a nation-building institution par excellence. What is more, folklorists almost invariably saw folk culture as a set of living practices/yet fossilised remains whose origin or provenance has to be located in classical antiquity, thus

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internalising the classicist argument, and whose existence constituted proof of an eternal immutable Greekness in a way reminiscent of the project of Paparrigopoulos (Damianakos, 1987, p. 28; Herzfeld, 1986, pp. 53–75). To some extent, Greek folklore both shares Korais’s dismay with regards to vernacular culture or even its dismissal, yet it sees in it a veritable national resource: it ‘colonises’ it and expropriates it in ways that Korais and his fellow nationalist intellectuals had not even imagined. The Greek rendering of folklore, λαογραφíα, and not εθνογραφíα (ethnografia), ethnography, is not accidental but denotes precisely this ambiguity which marks folklorists’ attitude towards the creators/performers of folk culture, the people. As Herzfeld argues, this choice of terminology sees the people (λαός) as a living part of the transcendental ethnos, proving through its practices the eternal character of an absolute moral entity (1986, pp. 11–13). Folklore has developed into a powerful institution, both in its own right, and as a formative influence in school curricula (Frangoudaki, 1978; Beaton, 1980, p. 190). As a discipline in its own right, it has had an undisputed place in the realm of scientific discourse as the Academy of Athens sanctioned the discipline through the establishment of its own Folklore Archive (founded in 1918 by Nicolaos Politis, with Stilpon Kyriakidis as its first Director). As Sofos and Tsagarousianou (1992) have pointed out, folklore has also been popularised as a host of local organisations, amateur folklorists and politicians alike have produced a vast corpus of folklore ‘studies’, a new genre of popular literature that is underpinned by the national role of the discipline. Another means of popularisation of folklore has been the national and local media which have been further propagating the discourse of folklorists, professional and self-appointed alike, by constructing, sustaining and reproducing annual calendars dotted with events and rituals through their coverage of local and national activities. In this context, the origins of contemporary practices are routinely attributed to pre-Christian Hellenic traditions and customs drawing upon the work of popular culture experts. By the end of the 19th century, the disciplines of history and folklore had acquired a veritable nation-building mission. Their findings, propagated through school curricula and the development of the modern Greek historical novel, permeated public discourse and popular memory. The synthesis achieved was not unproblematic as the weight of classical antiquity but also of the heyday of Byzantium was dwarfing modern Greek society and overdetermining the present. Whatever reminded of the Ottoman presence or threatened in any way the continuity of Hellenism was banished to the realm of oblivion, as folklore, history, literature and other fields of cultural activity were promoting a state of social amnesia and selective remembering. As a result, the agendas of the political and intellectual elites of the modern Greek state were to be informed by this selective relationship to the ‘Greek’ past. This historical selectivity was projected in the present through the establishment of a rigid distinction between a high (classicist and modern) and a

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low (traditional-Romaic) culture. It did so by largely discrediting the ‘oriental’, or the ‘Romaic’ aspects of the culture of the majority of modern Greeks (Herzfeld, 1986, p. 40; Leigh-Fermor, 1983), which, viewed as remnants of the Ottoman, and, in some cases, of the Byzantine past, were thought to be opposed to the ideals, and therefore to deny the very ‘essence’, of Greek identity. However, this distinction was not simply an academic or ideological one; it provided the ground upon which ‘purist’ interventions in cultural life would be based, the ‘purification’ of modern Greek language being the most pervasive, durable and contested intervention of the kind (Skopetea, 1988, pp. 99–118; Moschonas, 1981: ζ΄- πβ΄ ).3

Between orientalism and occidentalism: in search of a glorious Turkish past Just as the Greeks before them, the Turks themselves were not aware of their distant past until relatively recently. Traditional Ottoman histories paid scant attention to the history of the Turks before the establishment of their dynasty in Anatolia and generally ignored their pre-Islamic past (Kushner, 1977, p. 27). It was only in the closing decades of the 19th century that the ‘Turks’ began to cast a curious gaze into the ‘past’, encouraged by the publication of several historical accounts focusing on ancient Turkish history. Ahmet Vefik Paşa was one of the first intellectuals to establish a link between the Ottomans and the broader Turkic world by arguing that the former were only one of the many tribes of the great Turkish nation, and that their mothertongue was a dialect of a language spoken over wide areas outside the boundaries of Turkey. In his book Tarih-i Alem (World History), his contemporary Süleyman Paşa contributed to this endeavour by focusing on the pre-Islamic history of the Turks. In a private correspondence, Süleyman Paşa laid down explicitly that ‘Ottoman’ was only the name of a country, and that the language and literature of the ‘Turks’ should be duly called Turkish (Heyd, 1950, pp. 105–6; see also Gökalp, 1968, pp. 3–5). In all these accounts, the Turks were presented as an old race which had established many states under different names, with an innate ability to civilise others. This was also the approach espoused by the apostles of Turkism, notably Ziya Gökalp. ‘Other peoples’, wrote Gökalp, ‘are compelled, in order to adopt modern civilization, to depart from their past. But the Turks have only to turn back to their ancient past’ (quoted in Heyd, 1950, p. 112). This paved the way for his famous thesis on the three stages of Ottoman-Turkish history. In the first stage, the Turks were a racial group (kavim) in Central Asia; in the second a religious community (ümmet) in the Ottoman Empire; and in the third a modern nation (millet) within the borders of the new Turkey (Gökalp, 1959, pp. 245, 126–34; Heyd, 1950, pp. 159–60). For Gökalp, what mattered was not ‘objective history’, but what he called ‘national history’, which he regarded as an art rather than a science. The main task of national

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history was pedagogic, that is to strengthen patriotism by describing the glorious past of the nation. It was, however, in the early republican period that these ideas reached their climax and assumed canonical status, at least at the state level, in the form of the Turkish History Thesis. A veritable case of social and political engineering, the thesis portrayed the Turks as the architects of a glorious civilisation in Central Asia, until they were forced by climate change and drought to migrate to various parts of the world, sowing the seeds of the world’s major civilisations. The thesis also asserted that the Turks were the first inhabitants of Anatolia, hence the forefathers of all peoples who have dwelled there throughout history, from the Hittites to the Romans, including the Greeks. But the founders of the republic differed from early Turkists in one important respect: whereas Gökalp and his predecessors saw Ottoman history as part and parcel of Turkish history, they strove to cut off the new republic from its immediate past, which they depicted as a period of decay and selfdenial. Instead, they romanticised the Turks’ pre-Islamic past, presenting it as a quasi-mythical ‘golden age’. The main tool used to inculcate this new historical vision was education.4 The educational crusade began with the opening of Millet Mektepleri (Schools of the Nation) to teach the new alphabet in 1928 and continued with the rewriting of history textbooks. The first outcome of this process was Türk Tarihinin Anahatları (The Outline of Turkish History), prepared by selected members of the recently established Türk Tarihini Tetkik Heyeti (The Society for the Study of Turkish History) in 1929–1930. The book was meant to replace Türkiye Tarihi (History of Turkey), the textbook used in the first six years of the republic, which asserted that the Turks were living in tribes before their conversion to Islam, thereby adopting an Ottomancentred view. By contrast, The Outline of Turkish History devoted only 50 pages to Ottoman history, while 200 pages talked about other Turkish states and civilisations, 100 pages about the Turkish sources of other civilisations (mainly of those based in Anatolia); the rest of the 605 pages was devoted to Chinese, Indian, Iranian and Egyptian civilisations. The Introduction stated that the book was written for a specific purpose: In most history textbooks that are published in our country so far, and in their French originals, the role of the Turks in world history has been downgraded consciously or unconsciously ... The aim of this book is to correct these errors which caused so much harm to our nation which finally achieved its rightful place in the world. (quoted in Ersanlı, 2003, p. 122, our translation) This excerpt interestingly articulates a perception of Ottoman historiography as a vehicle of distortion in tandem with its French (by extension,

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Western European) counterparts. By misrepresenting the history and reality of the ‘Turkish’ people, it has become a source of ‘misrecognition’ for the Turks. The result, in the eyes of the elites, was a disoriented and alienated society, unable to realise its full potential. The Outline of Turkish History was followed by the four-volumes Tarih (History) which was published in 1932 and contained the most extended version of the history thesis. The first, second and fourth volumes of History are 400-pages each, whereas the third volume dealing with the Ottoman Empire is only 200 pages. This volume occasionally referred to the Ottoman Empire as the ‘sick man of Europe’, and talked about it as a foreign empire which had no relationship to Turkishness. The fourth volume confirmed the existence of the Turks before the Turkish Republic, and talked about a series of successful states, but implied that the Ottoman Empire was, in a way, the weakest link in this long line of succession (Ersanlı, 2003, pp. 132–4).

Weaving an official national history Needless to say, history textbooks were not the only tool the regime used to propagate the new conception of history. The history thesis was introduced on a more formal basis in two History Congresses held in Ankara in 1932 and 1937, respectively. As the congresses were seen as an extension of the educational crusade, school teachers made up the bulk of the participants to the first congress, with 198 high school and intermediate school teachers and 18 university professors attending the congress. In his welcoming speech, the Minister of Education Esat Bey (Sagay) asserted that a nation can only learn about its past or its homeland, language, literature and arts by studying history. Yet the history textbooks the Turks had used up to that point, mostly translations, refrained from acknowledging the historical existence of the Turkish nation and its contribution to world civilisation (Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, 1932, pp. 5–14; see also Ersanlı, 2003, pp. 139–88). İhsan Şerif, one of the delegates, similarly lamented: It is now forty-five years that I teach history. Every year, I went through a period of embarrassment and moral suffering, which was when I had to teach the Turkish portion of history. My words took on a morose and melancholy tone, because I knew very little about what happened in the heights of Central Asia, which, for thousands of years, has been our ancestors’ motherland. (Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, 1932, p. 14)5 Following the First History Congress, The Society for the Study of Turkish History, which was responsible for the writing of history textbooks and promulgating the history thesis, was replaced with Türk Tarih Kurumu (Turkish Historical Society) in 1935. It was this society which organised and presided over the Second Historical Congress in 1937. This time the emphasis was on

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archaeology, and the participants were overwhelmingly university professors and researchers, half of whom were from European countries. Sixty papers were presented, most focusing on the archaeological excavations of the mid-1930s which aimed at establishing ‘scientific’ evidence for the Turkish origins of Anatolian civilisations, hence proving the claim that ‘the Turks were there first’ (see İkinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, 1943). The new nationalist vision and its incarnation, the history thesis, was a broadbrush strategy to instil pride in Turkishness, to denounce the competing claims of the Greeks and the Armenians over Anatolia, now redefined as the perennial ‘Turkish’ homeland, and to legitimise the secularising modernist thrust of the new regime by banishing the Ottoman-Islamic past to oblivion. More specifically, the thesis fought racial prejudice through ‘scientifically’ establishing that the Turks belonged to the Indo-European family of nations, and not to the Mongoloid yellow race (Çağaptay, 2006). The thesis maintained that the Turks had already become, in their motherland, civilised enough to know the use of wood and metal, while the rest of the humanity was living in caves, leading a most primitive life. In fact, it was the Turks who created the civilisations of China, India, Mesopotamia, North Africa and Europe when they were forced to emigrate from Central Asia, introducing key elements of a ‘civilising process’ such as agriculture, the domestication of animals, and so on. Clearly, one of the aims of such a formulation was the (re)positioning of the Turkish nation within the group of ‘civilised’, modern nations of the West. This represented a double coup, in the sense that it challenged the dominant European orientalist view that the Turks were inferior or uncivilised, while it simultaneously posited Western modernity as a coveted prize. In many ways, by unsettling a Eurocentric perspective on the world, the Turkish History Thesis was an attempt to ‘colonise’ the self-image of the Turks. The thesis also repudiated the ‘false’ conception of Turkish history, which purportedly reduced a long and distinguished national presence to the few centuries of Ottoman imperial history. Thus the thesis claimed that Turkish history did not begin with Osman’s tribe, but 12,000 years before Jesus Christ (see Afet İnan’s paper in Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, 1932). The exploits of the Ottomans constitute only one episode in the history of the Turkish nation which had established several other empires throughout history. Finally, the thesis sought to demonstrate the racial and historical continuity of the Turks in Anatolia, from the Bronze Age to the Seljuks. This it did by pointing to new archaeological findings, which supposedly proved that the Turks founded the Hittite civilisation in Anatolia some 4,000 years before the Christian era. The civilisation of Anatolia was thus as ancient as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In this framework, the thesis also argued that the Turkish peoples who travelled westwards created the Aegean civilisation, which developed in time cultural centres like Troy, Crete, Lydia, Ionia and so on, thereby refuting the thesis of the ‘Greek miracle’ (Copeaux, 2001, pp. 115, 118; Çağaptay, 2006, p. 53).

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The Turkish Historical Thesis needs to be understood in the context of the broader Kemalist project which entailed a complete break with the immediate, Ottoman-Islamic, past. The twin targets of the regime’s execrations were the dynasty and the caliphate. Hence the various textbooks produced in this period blamed the autocratic regime of Abdulhamid for every disaster that hit the Turkish nation between 1877 and 1922. Decadence, corruption, self-denial were some of the terms the books used to describe this period. On the other hand, the institution of caliphacy was characterised as a tool in the hands of the sultans, which they used liberally to block change or to prevent any reform that might have helped the nation to catch up with the West. This also explained why the Turks lagged at least 300 years behind the Europeans. But one nagging question remained: how to fill in the vacuum created by the demise of institutionalised Islam and the dynasty which had pervaded the fabric of everyday life for more than six centuries? In other words, how could the new regime acquire the legitimacy it so badly needed? One of the answers the regime came up with was history. It thus turned the clock back and focused on the Turks’ pre-Ottoman, pre-Islamic past, projecting onto it the principles it was trying to inculcate in the present. Its closest allies in this campaign were ‘missionary historians’ who were inextricably involved with the process of ‘nation-building’. In fact, most of the members of The Society for the Study of Turkish History were actively involved in politics. The Turkish Historical Thesis quickly became the backbone of Kemalist nationalism in the early republican era, the kernel around which narrations of Turkishness were to be constructed. It formed the core of what, following Sofos and Tsagarousianou (1992), we would call ‘scientific nationalism’, that is, ostensibly scientific or quasi-scientific discourses which are used to legitimise the particular construction of Turkishness favoured by the Kemalist elites. It is therefore not surprising that the thesis constituted the guiding principle of civic education for many years to come.

Historical closure and nation-building Our attempt at a critical reading of the nationalist histories and the ways in which the past has been constructed/mobilised through them demonstrates that nationalist genealogies are highly complex constructs which, despite their claim to offer linearity and continuity, are marred by ambiguity, discontinuity and disruption. Therefore in each particular case, we need to get past the façade, the semblance of narrative closure, identify the alternative pasts that are available at any given moment and determine ‘which’ past is chosen by the nationalist elites. In the case of both Greece and Turkey, nation-builders had several options at their disposal. And when the available alternatives were deemed incapable of providing answers to the dilemmas they faced, they were prepared and capable to invent new ones. In many ways this was the course of action

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chosen by Turkish nationalist elites who became convinced that the institution of the new nation necessitated a radical rupture with aspects of the given past. This was not the case in Greece, as both domestic and Western elites had recourse to an ‘established’ and ‘documented’ past, albeit not one which was readily recognised and accepted by the majority of the population who was invited to own it. In a nutshell, whereas in Greece, the relationship to the chosen past was dubious and problematic, in Turkey, what was problematic was the past itself, which was largely an invention of consecutive generations of intellectuals and nation-builders. This problematic relationship to the past, or even the nature of the past itself, compels us to consider the circumstances and the reasons underlying the selection of a particular past; to address the question of ‘why’ this past and not others, to probe into the interests that are secured in and through that selection. Clearly, any attempt to give an answer to such questions can only be partial and will not do justice to the complexity of the processes involved. Several factors, conscious and subconscious, political, cultural, economic, social and historical are involved here, as are various unforeseeable contingencies. What seems to have been a central concern in both Greek and Turkish nationalisms’ engagement with the past was a two-pronged quest for legitimation. On the one hand, the particular past the nationalist elites opted for was deployed to legitimise the decisions they took regarding the eventual shape their nations were to assume. On the other hand, and equally importantly, the past was invoked to justify the inclusion of the Greek and Turkish nations into Western modernity. As both Greece and Turkey emerged out of what Western orientalist narratives represented as a backward Ottoman Empire, their nation-building elites agonised over both the self-image of their nations and the way these were to be perceived by significant others, notably the advanced and ‘civilised’ West. The final question that needs to be addressed in some detail relates to the ways in which the choices of the nationalist elites are implemented and imposed. To this end, both nationalist projects invested considerable resources and energy in establishing meaningful links to a past that often was problematic. Greek and Turkish nationalists had to resort to the organisation of the denial of the past, the promotion of social amnesia (for more examples, see Özkırımlı and Sofos, 2008, chapters 5 and 6), or the forgetting of aspects of recent or more remote experience that were not congruent to the narration of their respective nations. The memory and experience of Byzantium in the case of Greece and of the Ottoman Empire in both cases had the potential of disrupting the coherence of the nationalist imagination and had to be erased or banished to oblivion. In this context, not only a concerted intervention in the process of historiographical construction of the past was carried out, but also a broader engagement with the various loci where memory and experience are deposited and reproduced. Therefore, both nationalisms gave prominence to projects such as the purification of

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language, as they saw in these not merely a linguistic intervention but a more ambitious attempt to expunge the past. Nevertheless, however well-designed and -implemented nationalist social engineering was, it was not able to eliminate entirely the baggage of the undesirable past and the resistance its living memory generates. Nationalism’s encounter with such instances of resistance often required accommodation and compromises. The accommodation of Orthodoxy and Byzantium through the revisionism of Paparrigopoulos, but also through folklore and allied disciplines, and the accomodation of Islam in Turkey were nothing but attempts by the nationalist discourse to circumscribe resistance and to consolidate its hegemony. Such interventions were actually tantamount to processes of ‘colonisation’ as they sought to introduce and impose values and representations that were alien to the people who were ‘chosen’ to participate in the nationalist projects. By altering the most fundamental means of expression, the official as well as everyday languages, and by intervening in some of the key areas of socialisation and social reproduction, nation-builders attempted to colonise the very fabric of the societies they sought to ‘empower’. The preoccupation with history and the propagation of its ‘authentic’ version through schooling as well as through the recourse to scientific nationalism in other areas of social life led to its fetishisation to the point of obsession as the image of Mustafa Kemal dictating sections of the history textbooks of his time amply demonstrates. In all these endeavours, amid the obsession with history and the agonising struggle to impose and reproduce preferred representations of the past, what remained constant and central, the point de capiton of Greek and Turkish nationalist historiography, was the belief in, and representation of the nation as a mystical, a-temporal, even transcendental entity whose survival is more important than the survival of its individual members at a given time.

Notes 1. It should, however, be stressed at this point that, despite his secularism, Korais himself realized that some accommodation of Orthodoxy in a modern Greek nationalist project was necessary, perhaps unavoidable. As Chaconas (1968) points out, referring to Korais’s evolving nationalism at the time of the Greek War of Independence, ‘perplexed by the unnational and selfish conduct of the military chieftains [during the Greek War of Independence ... he appealed] to their altruistic and religious sense’, essentially realising that his ‘fellow Greeks’ were not readily captivated by the classical past that he offered them as a source of inspiration and, as a result, more pragmatic means of incitement such as appeal to honour, morality and religion were needed. 2. Characteristic of this ‘unnational’ stance is a tract published in 1798 and entitled ‘Paternal Exhortation’ that has been attributed to Patriarch Gregory V: To preserve the holy Orthodox faith. ... the Lord had created from nothing the powerful Ottoman state to take the place of the Byzantine Empire which had

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begun to deviate from the true faith. ... The new regime of Liberty is a trick of the Devil, superficially attractive, but in fact contrary to the Holy Scriptures and designed to deprive men of every heavenly and earthly wealth. (quoted in Campbell and Sherrard 1968, pp. 52–3) Ironically, Gregory V did not escape the wrath of the Sultan and was hanged as soon as the Greek War of Independence erupted in 1821. 3. For a more detailed discussion of this linguistic intervention, see Özkırımlı and Sofos (2008, Chapter 2). 4. Not surprisingly, the number of primary schools rose from 4,894 in 1923–24 to 6,599 in 1928–29 and to 6,713 in 1931–32. A similar increase can be observed in the number of students, from 341,941 to 523,611, in the same period (Üstel, 2004, p. 128). 5. This passage is also quoted in Tekin Alp (1970, pp. 218–19). We use here Kedourie’s translation.

References Alp, T. (1970) ‘The Restoration of Turkish History’, in E. Kedourie (ed.) Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London: Frank Cass), 207–24. Beaton, R. (1980) Folk Poetry of Modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi: Konferanslar, Müzakere Zabıtları (1932) (İstanbul: T.C. Maarif Vekâleti). Campbell, J. and P. Sherrard (1968) Modern Greece (New York: Frederick Praeger). Chaconas, S. G. (1968) Adamantios Korais: A Study in Greek Nationalism (New York: American Monograph Series). Copeaux, É. (2001) ‘Le Récit Historique Turc, Une Réponse au Miracle Grec. Mishellénismes’, in G. Grivaux (ed.) Les Mishellénismes. Actes du Séminaire Organisé à l’École Française d’Athènes (16–18 mars 1998) (Athens: EFA), 111–20. Çağaptay, S. (2006) Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk? (London and New York: Routledge). Damianakos, S. (1987) ∏αράδοση Ανταρσíας καɩ Λαɩκός ∏ολɩτɩσμός (Athens: ∏ λέθρον). Ersanlı, B. (2003) İktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye’de ‘Resmi Tarih’ Tezinin Oluşumu (1929–1937) (İstanbul: İletişim). Fallmerayer, J. P. (1827) Die Geschichte des Kaisertums von Trapezunt (Munich: Weber). Fallmerayer, J. P. (1830) Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters. Teil 1: Untergang der peloponnesischen Hellenen und Wiederbevölkerung des leeren Bodens durch slavische Volksstämme (Stuttgart and Tübingen: J. G. Cotta). Fallmerayer, J. P. (1836) Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters. Teil 2: Morea, durch innere Kriege zwischen Franken und Byzantinern verwüstet und von albanischen Colonisten überschwemmt, wird endlich von den Türken erobert. Von 1250–1500 nach Christus (Munich: Weber). Fallmerayer, J. P. (1860) ‘Das albanesische Element in Griechenland’, Abhandlungen der Historischen Klasse der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 8, 3, 657–736 and 9, 1, 3–110. Frangoudaki, A. (1978) Τα Αναγνωστɩκά Βɩβλíα του ∆ημοτɩκού – Іδεολογɩκός ∏εɩθαναγκασμός καɩ ∏αɩδαγωγɩκή Βíα (Athens: Θεμέλɩο). Gökalp, Z. (1959) Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization, Selected Essays, translated and edited by N. Berkes (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd).

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Gökalp, Z. (1968) The Principles of Turkism, translated by R. Devereux (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Herzfeld, M. (1986) Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (New York: Pella). Heyd, U. (1950) Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp (London: Luzac & Company Ltd and The Harvill Press). İkinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, İstanbul 20–25 Eylül 1937, Kongrenin Çalışmaları, Kongreye Sunulan Tebliğler (1943) (İstanbul: Kenan Matbaası). Karamanolakis, V. (2004) Η Συγκρότηση της Іστορɩκής Επɩστήμης στην Ελλάδα. Η ∆ɩδασκαλíα της Іστορíας στη Φɩλοσοφɩκή Σχολή του ∏ανεπɩστημíου Αθηνών 1837– 1932, PhD thesis (Athens: University of Athens). Korais, A. (1833) Συλλογή των εɩς την Ελληνɩκήν Βɩβλɩοθήκην, καɩ τα Πάρεργα Προλεγομένων, καɩ τɩνων Συγγραμάτων του Αδαμαντíου Κοραή (Paris). Kushner, D. (1977) The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876–1908 (London: Frank Cass). Leigh-Fermor, P. (1983) Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (London: Penguin). Leontis, A. (1995) Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Moschonas, E. I., (1981) Η δημοτɩκɩστɩκή αντíθεση στην κοραϊκή μέση οδό (Athens: Οδυσσέας). Özkırımlı, U. and S. A. Sofos (2008) Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (London: Hurst & Co). Paparrigopoulos, K. (1842) Περí της Επɩκοíσεως Σλαβɩκών Φύλων τɩνών εɩς την Πελοπόννησον (Athens). Paparrigopoulos, K. (1878) ‘∏ερí των ∏ερɩπετεɩών της Iστορíας του Ελληνɩκού Έθνους εν τοɩς καθ’ημάς χρόνοɩς’, Παρνασσός, Β΄, 825–40. Skopetea, E. (1988) Το Πρότυπο Βασíλεɩο καɩ η Μεγάλη Іδέα (Athens: ∏ολύτυπο). Sofos, S. and R. Tsagarousianou (1992) ‘The Politics of Identity: Nationalism in Contemporary Greece’ in J. Amodia (ed.) The Resurgence of Nationalist Movements in Europe (Bradford University Occasional Papers), 51–66. Svolopoulos, K. (2006) Η Γένεση της Іστορíας του Νέου Ελληνɩσμού (Athens: Βɩβλɩοπωλεíο της Εστíας). Üstel, F. (2004) ‘Makbul Vatandaş’ın Peşinde: II. Meşrutiyet’ten Bugüne Vatandaşlık Eğitimi (İstanbul: İletişim).

4 The Politics of Memorialisation in Zimbabwe Terence Ranger

State produced history in contemporary Africa Africa is now in a new era of state produced nationalist history. Alessandro Triulzi has recently argued that: public history in many parts of Africa has largely overcome academic explorations of the past, while its strongest ally, an ill-defined ‘public memory’, under the guise of state rituals and public memorialisation of past events, has come to dominate the public arena filling the fluid space which exists between memory and history with a disturbing asphalt-like cover of enduring cement. In this wide-ranging and politically-oriented process, the State often acts as a primary agent of history, if not its main promulgator and interpreter. As professional historians are relegated to a secondary role, or at times dismissed as public agitators, a forcefullyshared vision of the nation’s ‘collective memory’ is drafted in government offices by state intellectuals in order to settle accounts with the country’s troubled past ... The ensuing result is the moulding of state-driven policies of memory aimed at rewriting the national script by enhancing unwritten norms of exclusion which set apart citizen from subject, freeborn from bondage-bound, patriots from sell-outs. (Triulzi, 2006, citing Jewsiewicki and Mudimbe, 1993) Triulzi gives many examples of public memorialisation and restoration all giving a ‘symbolic new embodiment of the “nation” they reveal ... History is undoubtedly at the centre of politics today’ (Triulzi, p. 8). He discusses the public history arising out of war and liberation struggles in the Horn and in Southern Africa. ‘The “return” of the state as the main guide of African politics has brought new forms of state memorialism: history, especially public history, has been used as a powerful tool for political mobilization’ (Triulzi, p. 15). Triulzi’s analysis is compelling and, as we shall see, fits some African cases very well indeed. Yet African nation-states vary enormously in their capacity 62

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to produce a public national history. I propose to make a comparison of national history in Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe to reveal the limitations as well as the potential of ‘state-driven politics of memory’.

The Kenyan case Kenya desperately needs a national history but does not have one. The brilliant Kenyan writer and journalist, Parselelo Kantai (2006), has described the dilemma of ‘the nation’ in Kenya. ‘Independent Kenya was founded on a pact of forgetting the past – the spirit of Harambee. To achieve this, histories both collective and personal had to be swept under the national carpet ... The drama of forging a nation was a single narrative in the continuous present tense – the narrative of Development. Any invocation of the past brought instant punishment.’ When development faltered, an official narrative was developed which saw ‘Kenya as born of a heroic armed struggle against colonialism’. But as Kantai observes, this ‘automatically excludes most Kenyans’ and ignored the reality that ‘the Mau Mau were losers in both war and peace,’ firmly excluded from Jomo Kenyatta’s government at independence which rewarded instead their ‘loyalist’ enemies. As a result when the NARC coalition replaced Moi’s authoritarian rule and tried to memorialise this heroic past, history returned the second time as farce. The public were treated to a series of historical faux pas. One of NARC’s first orders of business was the search for Dedan Kimathi’s grave – in order to exhume the Mau Mau leader’s remains and give him a hero’s burial ... In the event, a highly political event graced by Cabinet ministers, nobody could remember where he was buried. His bones have never been recovered. Then a man was brought from Ethiopia and presented to the public as the disappeared Mau Mau hero, General Stanley Mathenge. This act itself, taking a survivor out of the national closet – with all his pent-up secrets, his 50 years of anonymity – seemed to confirm that NARC’s victory over 40 years of KANU rule was the key to opening up the past. It was not to be. After a few nervous days in which he was presented to the public ... ‘General Mathenge’ couldn’t take it any more. He revealed that he was actually Lemma Ayanu, an Ethiopian peasant farmer ... He was dispatched to the national laboratory and DNA tested, then sent swiftly back to Ethopia’. (Kantai, 2006) State memorialisation does not always work. The Kenyan state has lost control of the past. Kantai writes that ‘the nationalist moment has passed: the fervour with which the past could be used to flay the skins of the saboteurs of nationalism no longer exists. The past has lain under the carpet for so long, it seems to have rotted away and died. In its place is a growing sub-nationalist culture’.

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He writes with sympathy of ‘the father of Kenyan history and Africa’s most celebrated historian’, Bethwel Ogot, (Ndeda, 2003) who ‘has spent his career writing Kenya into being’, but who rose at a book-launch in 2006 ‘and declared the Kenyan project dead’. (Kantai, 2006; Ogot, 1972, 1996, 2003). But here was not a case of a professional historian marginalised and silenced by state intellectuals. Rather Professor Ogot is tempted to become silent – ‘Why should I write history when nobody pays any attention to it?’, he asked after the post-electoral violence in Kenya – because of the failure of the Kenyan state to embody the nation of which Ogot had once dreamed.

The Namibian case Namibia seems to fit Triulzi’s model rather better. Discussing the Namibian state history and the establishment of a Namibian Heroes’ Acre in 2002, Reinhart Kossler writes that: ‘The image of the liberation struggle conveyed and publicized in Heroes’ Acre as well as by other media, centres on the military aspect and the war waged mainly from exile ... Thus, a whole array of unarmed, as it were civil, dimensions of the liberation struggle, such as the workers’ and trades union movement, student activism, the role of churches, and activities of traditional communities and their leaders, is obscured by this vision ... The hegemonic image of the liberation struggle as a war ... tends to shroud the broad character of anti-colonial struggle’ (Kossler, 2007, p. 372; Melber, 2003). Yet, as Kossler emphasises, Namibia has a ‘rich and varied, but also very diverse, historical experience and heritage on which public memory building can draw’. The state hegemonic narrative of liberation war privileges the experience of northern Namibia, where the guerrilla war was fought, over the rest of the country. But the central point of reference for ‘most people in the central and southern parts of the country ... most people identified as Herero, Nama or German (speakers), as well as Damara and San’ was the German colonial genocide of 1904 rather than the guerrilla war against South Africa. The result has been a communal memorialisation of resistance and oppression quite separate from the national one. ‘For various regions and various groups there are different central events and time periods that are still remembered and also formally memorialized.’ (Kossler, 2007, p. 368). Describing the still dominant monuments of the German colonial period in the centre of the Namibian capital, Kossler notes that ‘remarkably, it is on a non-state, broadly civil society level’ that they are ‘counter-balanced by projecting alternative memory contents on to the public realm’. Traditional communities commemorate the deaths or burials of revered chiefs and by so doing ‘highlight both the particular community’s historic contribution and their present claims and pursuits, thus blending communal with national historical accounts and asserting a rightful place for the community within national history’. The date of burial of the Herero Chief Samuel Maharero,

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whose body was returned to Namibia in 1923 after his death in exile from the German genocide, has become institutionalised as Herero Day; the date when Kaptain Hendrik Witbooi was killed in action in 1905 against the Germans has been commemorated by the Nama for several decades, first as Witbooi Fees and now as Heroes Day. The Swapo Namibian government sought to ignore such ‘ethnic or communal’ commemorations in the interests of national unity (Kossler, 2007, pp. 375–7). When the genocide centenary came in 2004 the Herero Genocide Committee organised an event in January which was attended by the German Ambassador but not by any member of government. By the time of the central commemoration on 14 August, which was attended by the German Minister of Economic Co-operation who made an emotional apology and promised reparations, the central government was obliged ‘by the weight of this gathering’ to send a senior representative. Kossler writes of the challenges posed to a single hegemonic state national history ‘by Namibia’s fragmented past’ (Kossler, 2007, 377–81). Meanwhile academic historians have been transforming the historiography of Namibia (Gewald, 1999; Hayes, 1998; Katjavivi, 1998; Melber, 2003; Shigwedha and Nampala, 2006. The closest thing to a state intellectual in Namibia is Ellen Namhila, 1998 and 2005, but her writing expresses disillusionment with the hegemonic national narrative).

The Zimbabwean case By contrast Zimbabwe today fits Triulzi’s model very well indeed. A version of the nation’s history is critical to the ‘legitimacy’ of Robert Mugabe’s regime; state intellectuals have been busy producing and propagating it; in a nation very much less ethnically diverse than Kenya or Namibia there have been few communal or local commemorations to challenge the hegemony of state memorialisation. Zimbabwean historians and public intellectuals have great difficulty in making any effective challenge to the state’s narrative. Yet this is a relatively recent development in Zimbabwean national historiography. Indeed Zimbabwe offers an ideal case study for successive stages of nationalist historiography. I have myself made a distinction for Zimbabwean historiography between ‘nationalist’ history, the history of the nation, and ‘patriotic’ history. (Ranger, 2004; for a highly sceptical view of this triple distinction as merely ‘making terminological distinctions without a real difference as the basic assumptions remain the same’, see Roberts, 2006). I shall discuss each of these in turn and indulge myself with some reference to my own development as a historian of Zimbabwe.

‘Nationalist’ historiography When it began in the 1960s Zimbabwean ‘nationalist’ history involved tracing the roots of African nationalism, its connections with ‘mass consciousness’

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and with insurrections – the uprising of 1896–97, now called in Zimbabwe ‘the First Chimurenga’, and the guerrilla war of the 1960s and 1970s, now called ‘the Second Chimurenga’. It did not claim that these were the only important historical questions but that they were important questions which had been obscured or denied by main-stream Rhodesian historiography. I began my own Africanist career as a ‘nationalist’ historian par excellence; I was a member of the African nationalist parties between 1960 and 1963; I was embarking upon a history of nationalism in Southern Rhodesia; I was reacting against the Rhodesian denial that there was any significant African history. When I re-read my correspondence, now deposited in Rhodes House, I am struck by the close relationship between my first articles on Rhodesian/ Zimbabwean history and the African nationalist leadership. I sent all my articles to the nationalist detainees and restrictees and they responded with enthusiasm. I find among my papers a letter from Ndabaningi Sithole, then leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union, and a fellow scholar. Sithole’s own study of rural nationalism had been written in and smuggled out of Salisbury prison (Sithole, 1970). In 1970 he wrote to me from jail to say that he had managed to read my first book, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–7 (Ranger, 1967). He thought it was a book which ought to be prescribed reading for every schoolchild in the country. Naturally I was pleased. My second book, The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia (Ranger, 1970) was received with equal enthusiasm. In view of subsequent depictions of nationalist history as truckling to the rulers of post-colonial African states, at least I can claim that I was writing for people in prison rather than for people in power. I don’t repent of my early ‘nationalist’ history. It was work that had to be done, and which was, of course, being done by others, particularly by the first African academic historians (Samkange, 1967; Bhebe, 1979). But it certainly led to distorting over-simplification. In its early stages this search for roots and connections led to the co-option of any sort of resistant practice as ‘proto-nationalism’ – African-initiated churches, for example, both Pentecostal and millenarian, which can now clearly be seen as anti-state rather than as anti-colonial (Ranger, 1986b); urban riots, which can now be seen as struggles over urban culture or as class struggles rather than as nationalist protest (Ranger, 2006); strikes, which fit more easily into a narrative of workers’ struggle than into a narrative of revolutionary nationalism (Phimister and Raftopoulos, 2000). As for nationalism itself it can now be seen as multiple rather than single; different in the towns than in the countryside and different from region to region. It is almost a matter of ‘nationalisms’ rather than of ‘nationalism’ (Alexander et al., 2000; Scarnecchia, 2008b). One of the dangers of ‘nationalist’ history was that it might be read to amount to the total significant history of Zimbabwe. After 1980, when some of the people who had been in prison became the people in power, and I was able myself to return to Zimbabwe and re-commence research, I thought

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that exactly this was happening in the new school texts. In 1982 I wrote a review of this too triumphant ‘nationalist’ history: It is possible, I think, to define four ways in which the new historical consciousness is deficient. In the first place it makes too restricted an appeal to the African past ... A second danger is of a coarsening of interpretation in the process of repetition. Instead of the original ‘nationalist’ historiography of the 1960s being modified and corrected by means of radical insights or by the application of a penetrating class analysis, it sometimes seems that the initial nationalist propositions are being extended and over-stated ... A third deficiency of the new historiographical consciousness is that it almost entirely ignores the details of white political, economic and social history ... The fourth deficiency is that very little of this history deals directly with the experience of the people ... The demand for ‘pride in culture and civilisation’ makes it all too easy for another type of elite history to flourish. (Ranger, 1983)

The history of the nation The answer, I thought, was to move to a total history of the nation. The history of the nation, which I and many others then went on to practice, involves seeking to set African nationalism in its overall context, including African accommodation with colonial hegemony, rural society and peasant consciousness, urban society and trade unionism, the experience of women and children, settler culture, etc. It seeks to be an inclusive record of multiple pasts. One such past was the peasant experience. By 1980 I had myself begun to move from defining rural resistance as essentially anti-colonial to seeing it essentially as agrarian protest, which could happen as readily in a postcolonial situation as in a colonial one. I set out this shift in focus in two essays. One was published in 1976 and argued that ‘nationalist’ historiography had been ‘catering for interests that were too easily satisfied and too little demanding ... Many young Africans see African historiography as having contributed exclusively to cultural nationalism ... but the poor and hungry cannot eat past cultural achievements’. I called for a new emphasis on the problems of poverty and on the history of peasantries (Ranger, 1976, pp. 22 and 25). The other was given to a comparative conference on black resistance in 1983 under the title ‘From Nationalist Revolt to Agrarian Protest’ (Ranger, 1986a). These proclamations found expression in my Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War (Ranger, 1985). As I explained to a lecture audience in 1988, I was aiming ‘to write a people’s history, in which peasants rather than chiefs would be the protagonists, in which change rather than tradition

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would be the theme’ and in which nationalist fervour would give way to ‘peasant consciousness’ (Ranger, 1988). But it is difficult to shake off a reputation once earned. This book too has been seen, I think mistakenly, as part of ‘nationalist’ historiography even though I said nothing, in fact, about the significant history of formal African nationalism in the Makoni district on which I focused. But I did too un-problematically assume that Makoni peasants supported Zanla guerrillas, even while arguing that they bound guerrillas to their own agendas (Kriger, 1992). Since then there has been an outpouring of rural studies by historians, anthropologists and political scientists. An equal amount of energy has gone into studies of industrial workers and of urban life, most of it seeking to rebut the co-opting claims of nationalism. Morgan Tsvangarai, then General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade unions, introduced a history of the labour movement in Zimbabwe by claiming that for ‘an oppressed class, the recovery of its history is a source of strength for its ongoing struggles. In Zimbabwe’, he went on, the history of the labour movement has usually been subordinated to the struggles of the nationalist elite ... the complex relationship of the movement to the growth of national parties and nationalist ideology has frequently been simplified to suit the triumphalist views of nationalist history. We hope that this study provides a more comprehensive view ... The history of a nation-in-the-making should not be reduced to a selective heroic tradition, but should be a tolerant and continuing process of questioning and re-examination’. (Raftopoulos and Phimister, 1997, see also Raftopoulos and Sachikonye, 2001) Urban social and political history has been explored in the same spirit (Raftopoulos and Yoshikuni, 1999; Barnes and Win, 1992; Barnes, 1999; Yoshikuni, 2007; Ranger, forthcoming). The African middle classes and their ambiguous relationship to nationalism have been studied (West, 2002; Ranger, 1995). The historical experience of African women has been discussed (Schmidt, 1992; Jeater, 1993) and their exploitation by patriarchal nationalism described (Nhongo-Simbanegavi, 2000). Tsvangarai’s formula – ‘the history of a nation-in the making’ – is a good elaboration of what I have called ‘the history of the nation’. And it is in that spirit which I myself have written my books on Matabeleland (Ranger, 1999; Alexander et al., 2000). White Rhodesian history is still badly in need of revision though Alois Mlambo (2002) has written a book about white immigration and my own latest article deals with the tensions between white cabinet ministers and the white city councillors of Bulawayo (Ranger, 2007). The only overall history of Zimbabwe yet to appear – Ian Phimister’s study of ‘class accumulation and class struggle’ (Phimister, 1988) – balances in

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each chapter the activities of metropolitan capital, of white settler interests, and the history of black peasants and workers. It is very much not a ‘nationalist’ history and the book ends in 1948 before mass nationalist parties had made their appearance but its own Marxist teleological narrative prevents it from being total ‘history of a nation-in-the-making’. Many of these books, however, consider the topic of African nationalism without being in any sense ‘nationalist’. They are bound to do so given nationalism’s centrality in Zimbabwe’s recent history. We still badly need to know more about its social composition, its organisation and its ideas. My own latest edited collection on Zimbabwe (Ranger, 2003) deals with the question of how and why the authoritarian tendencies in nationalism have overwhelmed its original libertarian and democratic aspirations.

‘Patriotic’ history While all this ‘history of the nation’ work was going on, of course, examples of ‘nationalist’ history were still being produced. And then, quite suddenly, there emerged in the 2000s a new variant – ‘patriotic’ history, the name now given to the version of history offered by Mugabe himself and the regime intellectuals. It is an extreme version of the narrative of ‘nationalist’ history, reducing the total history of Zimbabwe to a sequence of revolutionary resistance – the sequence from the First Chimurenga through the Second to the Third (the acquisition of commercial farm land in the 2000s). It glorifies the spirit mediums who were hanged after the 1896 uprising, especially the medium of the great Nehanda spirit, seeing the subsequent Chimurengas as the working out of her dying prophecy. Rather than being ‘a tolerant and continuous process of questioning and re-examination’ it seeks to be exclusive and to divide Zimbabweans into ‘patriots’ and ‘traitors’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2004). It marginalises urban life and worker activism. It is intensely patriarchal and minimises the significance of women (Campbell, 2003). Robert Mugabe himself is hailed as the keeper of patriotic memory. Mugabe represents ‘that powerful, elemental African memory going back to the first Nehanda and even to the ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians’, wrote Tafataona Mahoso in the Sunday Mail of 16 March 2003. ‘The Zimbabwe opposition ... have exposed themselves as forces opposed to Mugabe as Pan-African memory, Mugabe as the reclaimer of African space, Mugabe as the African power of remembering the African legacy and African heritage which slavery, apartheid and imperialism thought they had dismembered for good.’ Mugabe represents ‘deep ancestral memory’, contrasted to Western ‘mechanical, even computerized recall’. National intellectuals dominate monopoly state television and radio, and write continually in the state-controlled press to elaborate the tenets of ‘patriotic’ history. Youth militia are taught it; compulsory courses in it have been introduced into

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universities, side by side with the old History curricula. Public rituals are performed at Heroes’ Acre and at the Great Zimbabwe ruins. It has become a powerful and almost un-contested ideology (Ranger, 2004, 2005). The continuing significance of ‘patriotic’ history could be seen on the eve of the March 2008 elections when the state-controlled Herald carried no fewer than three editorials invoking history. Richard Nyamahindi’s ‘Of History and the Mother of All Polls’ told ‘Zimbabweans who are going out to vote [that] there is need to guard our history, land and other resources conscientiously ... Zimbabwe’s history is so significant in this election’. In the same issue Nathaniel Manheru (pen-name of Mugabe’s information secretary, George Charamba) predicted a Zanu PF landslide because Tsvangarai and Simba Makoni had betrayed history. ‘The debate is cast’ he admitted ‘in rabidly nationalistic overtones’. The issues were sovereignty and empowerment as embodied in liberation history. The opposition were depicted as ‘pentecostals’, erasing history in the flush of neo-liberal salvation. After the victory of the MDCT in the March parliamentary elections the state intellectuals alleged that the Zimbabwean people themselves had betrayed history. ‘As we brace for the run-off’, declared a Herald editorial on May 30 2008, ‘a poll which could make or break everything we fought for since our forefathers took up arms against the settler infidels in 1896, we must ask ourselves whether we have measured up to Murenga, the legendary fighter, in whose honour we have christened our three revolutions’. After the MDC won the parliamentary seat in the district of her birth, it was said, Nehanda must be turning in her grave. Mugabe’s publicity secretary lamented in the Herald of 3 May 2008 that ‘a mere X on a piece of paper, all done in time shorter than life-creating ecstasy, can steal a free people, steal a heritage, steal a freedom, steal a land, steal a future’. Maybe, he wrote, ‘we shall have to shoot – yes shoot – the ballot box for the preservation of our independence’. And shoot and beat and proclaim ‘patriotic’ history they did in order to achieve Mugabe’s empty victory in the June 2008 presidential re-run. And now, as the Zimbabwean unity talks begin, ‘patriotic’ history rejects the language of human rights and governance in favour of a deep historical legitimacy based on struggle and traditional religious endorsement. In a column in the Sunday Mail of 19 July 2008 ‘patriotic’ history’s major ideologist, Tafataona Mahoso, dismissed talk of ‘governance’ and human rights as ‘totally alien and contemptuous to the history, experience and values of the vast African majority’. All ideas that Robert Mugabe lost ‘legitimacy’ in the March 2008 election ‘point to utter ignorance or contempt of the values of the people of Zimbabwe and the interests which Zimbabweans have fought and defended throughout the First, the Second and the Third Chimurenga’. Nationalists included the slogan ‘One Man, One Vote’ in their demands only ‘because they believed that the vote would bring them their land’ and not because they wanted parliamentary democracy. ‘The governance thread which unifies the First, the Second and the Third Chimurengas’ is

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the blessing given to them by the spirit mediums, on behalf of the mhondoro ancestors. ‘The success of the African liberation movement (the guerrillas) was that they made indigenous land reclamation the main objective and motive of the armed struggle and were given the blessing by the mhondoro to shed blood as long as this was to be done in order to free the people and the land’. So the ‘liberation movement and its leaders earned their legitimacy in the 15 years of armed struggle in the countryside’. The 1980 election ‘did not create the legitimacy of the liberation movement. It only confirmed a leadership ... already made legitimate’. Subsequent elections re-confirmed it. But no election can nullify it.

The predicament of Zimbabwe’s academic and civil society intellectuals So far Mugabe’s Zimbabwe conforms closely to the Triulzi model. And it does so also in terms of the plight of Zimbabwe’s professional historians and civil society intellectuals in their unsuccessful attempts to counter ‘patriotic’ history. Few of them have had access to the press and none to television and radio. Many have left for South Africa, Europe or North America. Many young Zimbabwean historians are academically successful, publishing in major journals and attaining posts in Western and South African universities. But they have little influence in Zimbabwe itself. Dr Miles Tendi has recently completed an Oxford doctorate on the reception of ‘patriotic’ history in Zimbabwe and on the debate about the past among the country’s state, academic and civil society intellectuals. In a brilliant recent article he discusses the failure of radical or liberal historians and political scientists to produce an effective answer to ‘patriotic’ history. Denied access to the media, unable to conduct their own public commemorations, in some cases too uncritically tied to ‘neo-liberal’ definitions of human rights and democracy, dismissing ‘sovereignty’ as an out-moded concept, these intellectuals have effectively criticised the distortions of ‘patriotic’ history in journal articles. But they have failed to produce an alternative account of Zimbabwean history which might be used by opposition parties or by indigenous NGOs. Tsvangarai’s electoral appeal is to ‘change’ rather than to the tolerant, plural history he called for in 1997 (Tendi, 2008).

Elections, violence and historical memory: Kenya and Zimbabwe compared The contrast I have drawn in this chapter between Kenyan and Zimbabwean public history has been clearly shown in the differing appeals to history made during post-electoral violence. Namibia has so far been spared this. In Zimbabwe, as we have seen, the discourse of ‘the nation’ is firmly in state hands. Zimbabwean intellectuals have to de-construct the nation before

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they can re-construct it (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009). In Kenya, however, the construction of the nation has been taken as a top priority by a brilliant group of writers and academics, who once took Kenya for granted and saw themselves as pan-Africanists, but who now realise that they cannot leave the expression of national identity to the cumbrous and anti-intellectual Kenyan state. Meanwhile history on the ground in Kenya has assumed an aggressively regional character. In Kenya various ‘nationalities’ have appealed to 19th century war leaders and prophets for inspiration and justification in their fight against Kikuyu domination of the state. In Zimbabwe the state monopolises such appeals extending back to the example of the prophetess Nehanda. There is certainly regional resentment in western Zimbabwe but Ndebele activists cannot invoke pre-colonial prophetic legitimation. Paradoxically, the appalling violence with which the Zimbabwean regime has ‘shot the ballot’ has largely taken place outside Matabeleland and in deep ‘Shona’ areas so that Ndebeles who cannot forget the atrocities committed by the Fifth Brigade in the 1980s are slowly coming to see them as authoritarian rather than ethnic. As the Zimbabwean state press continually boasts, Zimbabwe is not another Kenya either in terms of the effectiveness of state power or in terms of the effectiveness of state ideology (Ranger, 2008, ms). The intellectual work that needs to be done in Zimbabwe is to produce a securely grounded indigenous doctrine of human rights rather than to make historical arguments for federalism or nationalism.

Preparing counters to ‘patriotic’ history in Zimbabwe Zimbabwe already possesses many more human rights organisations than Kenya and their numerous and detailed reports, documenting state violence between March and June 2008, dwarf Kenyan attempts to document postelection killings. These reports are based on a network of representatives reporting from every district in the country, giving Zimbabwean human rights documentation a ‘national’ character. Some of them set out their own histories of persistent human rights abuses by successive regimes in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. In response the Mugabe regime has begun to arrest and prosecute civil rights activists for collecting and disseminating ‘false’ information about direct and indirect state violence. As we have seen, the indefatigable Mahoso depicts human rights discourse as ‘neo-liberal’, globalised rhetoric. Robert Mugabe is said to be ‘in denial’ about the atrocities used to ensure his ‘re-election’ as president. This contemporary and historical debate is at the centre of the emergence of a new historiography for Zimbabwe. Certainly no historian can afford to ignore the persistent strain of violence in Zimbabwe’s past (Alexander et al., 2000). Meanwhile, the historical work under way to counter ‘patriotic’ history is taking two forms. One is the production, for the first time, of overall

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histories of Zimbabwe, coming right up to the present. A volume edited by Alois Mlambo and Brian Raftopoulos, with chapters written exclusively by Zimbabwean historians, is nearing completion. Another volume, edited by two young Zimbabwean historians, asks ‘What History for Which Zimbabwe?’ (Chipembere et al., forthcoming). Its aim is set out in the Introduction: ‘Our intention is to go beyond the academic and political debate on patriotic history and starting from where Zimbabwe is now to explore alternative and plural ways of conceiving its past ... We are committed to “pluralism and difference.” We are also committed to bringing together again the now uncoupled dual aim of the original nationalist and liberation movements – both national sovereignty and human rights and democracy. Today in Zimbabwe there is a dangerous polarisation not only between “heroes” and “sell-outs” but also between two views of the past. One – which enunciates patriotic history – puts all its stress on national sovereignty and denounces talk of human rights and democracy as “neo-liberal.” The other, which certainly does not want to produce an un-patriotic history, emphasizes the entitlement of Zimbabweans to rights and freedoms. What is needed is a history which brings together the double aims of liberation and which includes all those who have been left out’. This Introduction, saying that historians need to widen their focus, alludes to a second level of historical production – the local ‘history-scapes’ constructed by clan elders and spirit mediums. At this grass-roots level spirit mediums are certainly not captured by the state. There are multiple Nehanda mediums, some critical of state land ‘reform’, others leading the way in land re-possession, others deploring the failure of the state to observe ancestral rituals (Fontein, 2006; Sadomba, 2008). Nehanda may be invoked by the state but her mediums are often harried, silenced or prosecuted. In many ways ‘patriotic’ history is a shaky construction, claiming to represent but really silencing voices from below. And this is especially true of what Joost Fontein in a brilliant recent article calls ‘the politics of the dead’. ‘Patriotic’ history seeks to monopolise heroic bones by means of the national Heroes’ Acre and its provincial counterparts. But as Fontein writes: ‘The exhumations and reburials of liberation war dead engaged with sometimes competing, more often intermeshing, attachments to the dead; by close kin, clans, ethnic and regional communities or work and war comrades and political affiliates, as well as political parties and the “state”.’ He writes of the tension between re-worked national histories and ‘the often angry demands of marginalized communities, kin and the dead themselves for the restoration of sacred sites or for the return of human remains. Bones and bodies can confront heritage and commemorative processes by restoring silenced or marginalized pasts back to the present, contesting or under-mining the dominant narratives of political elites.’ Moreover, there are all those other bodies – of the ‘traitors’ in the narrative of ‘patriotic history’, the Ndebele dead in the 1980s, the MDC dead in the

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2000s. ‘It is likely that in the future the unsettled dead of Zimbabwe’s most recent violence will return in their demands for reburial, cleaning and commemoration, just as the spirits of ... the victims of the gukurahundi [atrocities in Matabeleland] continue to demand commemoration. Perhaps one day their bones and troubled spirits will ... be turned into heritage for a new political regime in Harare’ (Fontein, 2008; Scarnecchia, 2008a). The old ‘nationalist’ historiographical rhetoric about ‘the African Voice’ may have been discredited as we realise how multiple and contradictory those voices are. But the need to hear multiple voices from below is just as important as it ever was. Perhaps even Triulzi’s ‘ill-defined public history’ need not be captured and cemented over by the state.

References Alexander, J., J. McGregor and T. Ranger (2000) Violence and Memory (Oxford: James Currey). Barnes, T. and E. Win (1992) To Live a Better Life (Harare: Baobab). Barnes, T. (1999) We Women Worked So Hard: Gender, Urbanization and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930–1956 (Portsmouth: Heinemann). Bhebe, N. (1979) Christianity and Traditional Religion in Western Zimbabwe, 1859–1923 (London: Longman). Campbell, H. (2003) Re-claiming Zimbabwe. The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Mode of Liberation (Claremont: David Philip). Chipembere, E., G. Mazarire and T. Ranger (eds) (2010) What History for Which Zimbabwe? (Harare: Weaver) Fontein, J. (2006) The Silences of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage (London: UCL Press). Fontein, J. (2008) ‘The Politics of the Dead: Living Heritage, Bones and Commemoration in Zimbawe’, ms., April. Gewald, J. B. (1999) Herereo Heroes, A Social Political History of the Herero of Nambibia, 1890–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hayes, P. (ed.) (1998) Namibia Under South African Rule. Mobility and Containment, 1915–46 (London: James Currey). Jeater, D. (1993) Marriage, Perversion and Power: The construction of moral discourse in Southern Rhodesia, 1894–1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Jewsiewicki, B. and V. Y. Mudimbe (eds) (1993) History Making in Africa (New York: Columbia University). Katjavivi, P. (1998) A History of Resistance in Namibia (London: James Currey). Kantai, P. (2006) ‘Death of the Kenyan Dream’, The East African, 31 (July). Kossler, R. (2007) ‘Facing a Fragmented Past: Memory, Culture and Politics in Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30: 2, 361–82. Kriger, N. (1992) Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War. Peasant Voices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Melber, H. (ed.) (2003) Re-Examining Liberation in Namibian Political Culture Since Independence (Uppsala: Nordic African Institute). Mlambo, A. (2002) White Immigration into Rhodesia. From Occupation to Federation (Harare: University of Zimbabwe). Mlambo, A. and B. Raftopolous (eds.) (2009) A History of Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver). Namhila, E. (1998) The Price of Freedom (Windhoek: New Namibia Books).

The Politics of Memorialisation in Zimbabwe 75 Namhila, E. (2005) Kaxumba kwNdola: Man and Myth. The Biography of a Barefoot Soldier (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien). Ndeda, M. (2003) ‘Nationalist Historiography in Kenya. A Look at the Changing Disposition of B. A. Ogot’s Works Since 1961’, Paper Presented at the Codesria’s Thirtieth Anniversary Celebrations, 10–12 December, Dakar, Senegal. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2009) Are There Zimbabweans? (Oxford: Peter Lang). Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2004) ‘Puppets and Patriots: A Reconstruction of the History of the Decisive Phase of the Struggle for Zimbabwe, 1977–1980’, ms. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, J. (2000) For Better of Worse. Women and Zanla in Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (Harare: Weaver). Ogot, B. (ed.) (1972) Politics and Nationalism in Colonial Kenya (Nairobi: EAPH). Ogot, B. (ed.) (1996) Ethnicity, Nationalism and Democracy in Africa (Kisumu: Maseno University Press). Ogot, B. (2003) My Footprints in the Sands of Time: An Autobiography (Victoria: Trafford). Phimister, I. (1988) An Economic and Social History of Zimbabwe, 1890–1948 (London: Longman). Phimister, I. and B. Raftopoulos (2000) ‘ “Kana Sora Ratswa Ngaritswe”: African Nationalists and Black Workers – the 1948 General Strike in Colonial Zimbabwe’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 13: 3, 289–324. Ranger, T. (1967) Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896–7 (London: Heinemann Educational). Ranger, T. (1970) The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia, 1898–1930 (London: Heinemann Educational). Ranger, T. (1976) ‘Towards a Usable African Past’, in C. Fyfe (ed.) African Studies Since 1945 (London: Longman). Ranger, T. (1983) ‘Revolutions in the Wheel of Zimbabwean History’, Moto (January). Ranger, T. (1985) Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey). Ranger, T. (1986a) ‘Resistance in Africa: From Nationalist Revolt to Agrarian Protest’, in G. Okihiro (ed.) In Resistance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press). Ranger, T. (1986b) ‘Religious Movements and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa’, African Studies Review, 29: 2, 1–69. Ranger, T. (1988) Chingaira Makoni’s Head: Myth, History and the Colonial Experience (Indiana: African Studies Programme). Ranger, T. (1995) Are We Not Also Men? The Samkange Family and African Politics in Zimbabwe, 1920–64 (Oxford: James Currey). Ranger, T. (1999) Voices From the Rocks. Nature, Culture and History in the Matopos (Oxford: James Currey). Ranger, T. (ed.) (2003) Nationalism, Democracy and Human Rights (Harare: University of Zimbabwe). Ranger, T. (2004) ‘Nationalist History, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30: 2, 215–34. Ranger, T. (2005)’The Uses and Abuses of History in Zimbabwe’, in M. Palmberg and R. Primorac (eds.) Skinning the Skunk – Facing Zimbabwean Futures (Uppsala: Nordic African Institute). Ranger, T. (2006) ‘The Meaning of Urban Violence in Africa: Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1960’, Cultural and Social History, 3: 2, 193–228. Ranger, T. (2007) ‘City Versus State in Zimbabwe: Colonial Antecedents of the Current Crisis’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 1: 2, 161–92.

76 Terence Ranger Ranger, T. (2008) ‘Elections and Identities in Kenya and Zimbabwe’, ms., Oxford. Raftopoulos, B. and I. Phimister (1997) Keep on Knocking. A History of the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe, 1900–97 (Harare: Baobab). Raftopoulos, B. and T. Yoshikuni (ed.) (1999) Sites of Struggle. Essays in Zimbabwe’s Urban History (Harare: Weaver). Raftopolous, B. and L. Sahikonye (ed.) (2001) Striking Back. The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe, 1980–2000 (Harare: Weaver). Roberts, R. S. (2006) ‘Traditional Paramountcy and Modern Politics in Matabeleland. The end of the Lobengula Royal Family – and of Ndebele Particularism’, Heritage of Zimbabwe Publication No. 25 (Harare: History Society of Zimbabwe). Sadomba, W. Z. (2008) War Veterans in Zimbabwe Land Occupations (Wageninen: Wageninen UR). Samkange, S. (1968) Origins of Rhodesia (London: Heienemann Educational). Scarnecchia, T. (2008a) ‘In Zimbabwe Today, Politics is Violence’, ACAS Bulletin, 79. Scarnecchia, T. (2008b) The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe (New York: University of Rochester Press). Schmidt, E. (1992) Peasants, Traders and Wives. Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939 (London: James Currey). Shigwedha, V. and L. Nampala (2006) Aawambo kingdoms, History and Cultural Change, Perspectives from Namibia (Basel: P. Schlettwein Publishing Company). Sithole, N. (1970) Obed Mutezo, The Mudzimu Christian Nationalist (London: Oxford University Press). Tendi, B. M. (2008) ‘Patriotic History and Public Intellectuals Critical of Power’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34: 2, 379–96. Triulzi, A. (2006) ‘Public History and the Re-Writing of the Nation in Postcolonial Africa’, Afriche & Orienti, Special Issue II, The West and Africa. West, M. (2002) The Rise of an African Middle Class in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Yoshikuni, T. (2007) African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe. A Social History of Harare before 1925 (Harare: Weaver).

5 Beginning the World over Again: Past and Future in American Nationalism Don H. Doyle

The theme of this book, history and the formation of national identity, goes to the heart of a debate that has framed our understanding of the origin and meaning of nationalism for the past two decades or more. The prevailing argument has been that nations are inventions of the modern age and that they rest their case for nationhood upon false claims to deep historic origins. The ‘modernist’ argument tells us nationalism involves ‘imagined communities’ that rest on ‘invented traditions’, fabricated historic myths, legends and heroes, all concocted to create an aura of legitimacy through historic perpetuity. Nationalist historical consciousness, according to the modernists, insinuates itself in the banalities of everyday life: national holidays, statues, memorials, the names of streets and plazas, history lessons in school, and through literature, art, music, all aimed at creating a popular illusion of eternal national distinction and magnificence. The historical narrative resulting from the deliberate efforts by nationalist elites is one that casts the nation as the natural expression of a people with origins deep in the past and a future without end. Because most modernists see nationalism as a pernicious force, they see their task as exposing the historical fallacies that underpin it. Ernest Renan’s (1882) prescient lecture, ‘What is a Nation?’, anticipated the modernist critique of the role of history in forging national identity when he observed: ‘Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality’. When Eric Hobsbawm (1990) offered his blunt summary of Renan’s point – ‘getting its history wrong is part of being a nation’ – he captured perfectly the modernists’ derision towards the historical claims for nationhood.

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The debate between modernists and rival schools of thought can be understood in large part as a disagreement over the authenticity of nationalist historic foundation myths. Modernists, like Eric Hobsbawm, say they are bogus inventions designed to legitimise the authority of the modern state. Anthony Smith (2000), one of the leading critics of the modernist orthodoxy, emphasises the tremendous importance of the myths and symbols of ancient ethnic nationhood to our understanding of the intense loyalty that attach people to modern nations. Their historical accuracy is beside the point, Smith would argue; it is the symbolic importance of those myths and the sharing of common historic memories that make a people a nation. Both sides agree in the end that nationalism rests on a people’s historic claim to nationhood, whether imagined or real – or something of both. This debate over the historic origins of nations came to dominate so much of the discussion of nationalism for the past quarter century, that we have failed to question its underlying premise and its applicability to the great varieties of nationhood around the world. The idea that modern nations justify their existence by their historic existence as a people may seem obvious and incontrovertible; however, this notion that nationhood rests on historic perpetuity stems from a peculiarly European view of the world. We need to broaden our understanding of the great varieties of nationalism that have taken form in the modern world. We need to consider different types of national identity placed along a wide spectrum with one end occupied by nations bound by a profound sense of ancient historic origin while at the other end the promise of the future, the repudiation of tradition, homogeneity and past injustice may form the foundation of a new national identity. Let us begin by turning to nations without pasts – or at least without histories that identify a distinctive, cohesive people whose roots supposedly extend deep in time. Foremost among these are nations born of settler colonies whose struggle for independence typically involved rejection of the indigenous people and repudiation of the empires sponsoring their original settlement. Anti-colonial nationalism often employs a narrative of imperial oppression and injustice leading to liberation and independence. Conquered indigenous peoples logically organise their nationalist ideology around a nostalgic historical narrative of their pre-colonial culture and proclaim their nation as the rebirth of something that preceded imperial conquest. Nations deriving from settler colonies, such as the United States, however, require a different sort of ideology. Typically, this involves rejecting the mother country and the past they share. For rebellious colonial settlers the nation’s history, in no small measure, begins anew with independence. Many such new nations came to define themselves by their novelty and new found independence from the cultural as well as political dominance of the mother country. Though this model may fit many of the new nations of the Americas, the foremost example is the United States.

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The absence of American national identity The United States was one of the many new nations that emerged from the break up of European empires in the Western Hemisphere in the half century between 1775 and 1825. The American wars of independence, instead of being isolated events in distant lands, were an integral part of the wave of nationalist movements that swept through much of the European Atlantic world in the Age of Nationalism. In his path-breaking interpretation of the spread of nationalism in the modern world, Benedict Anderson (1991) referred to the new American nations as ‘Creole pioneers’ that ‘provided the first real models of what such states should “look like”.’ ‘Out of the American welter’, Anderson wrote, ‘came these imagined realities: nation states, republican institutions, common citizenships, popular sovereignty, national flags and anthems, etc., and the liquidation of their conceptual opposites: dynastic empires, monarchical institutions, absolutisms, subjecthoods, inherited nobilities, serfdoms, ghettoes, and so forth’. In the new nations of the Americas, Anderson continued, ‘a “model” of “the” independent national state was available for pirating’. As his expression ‘Creole pioneers’ suggests, Anderson emphasised the role of the Spanish colonies in providing models for Europe, but their movement towards independence followed the United States by more than a third of a century. It was in the United States, the ‘first new nation’, not the former Spanish, Portuguese or French colonies, that Europeans could witness a successful model of republicanism (Lipset, 2003). Anderson’s argument may be oversimplified and his emphasis on the Spanish American republics as pioneers and models is dubious, particularly in light of his puzzling neglect of the United States as a widely imitated model for independence and nationhood (Armitage, 2006). Nonetheless, Anderson’s claim that the new American republics presented a prototype of nationhood rather than an aberrant exception invites us to see the emerging nations of the Americas in the first wave of modern nationalism. The success of American independence movements, the creation of many new states and their break with the past pointed towards a model of nationhood that did not rest on historic claims to antiquity nor on any sense of distinctive peoplehood. The United States of America deserves special attention in this story, not least because of its precedence and success as a model for other new nations. The basic elements of nationalism in the United States appear to be the very opposite of what we think of as the European model of the nation as the reawakening of an ancient people. History bound the Thirteen Colonies to Britain, not to a separate American national identity. Right up to the time they declared independence, even the most ardent American rebels hurled their protests against crown and parliament as ‘freeborn Englishmen’, full and equal members of the British Empire, and they insisted that the British

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had better treat them as such, not as vassal subjects. It was British exclusion of the Thirteen Colonies from membership and respect within the British Empire, and British punishment of colonials for protesting these matters, that set loyal colonists on the unpredictable road towards separatist rebellion. Whatever their grievances against British policy, before 1776 most Americans saw themselves as proud members of the British Empire and its far-flung parts. Their identities as New Englanders, Virginians or South Carolinians nested within their identity as British. There was little evidence indicating a distinctive identity as Americans as they approached 1776. Even then, it was tenuous and incomplete, as demonstrated by the defection of thousands of Loyalists, who fled, mostly to Canada, during the Revolution. It is telling that there was no term to describe the people of British North America. Before the Revolution the collective term ‘American’ was first employed by rulers in Britain, as Liah Greenfeld (1992) explains, to provide ‘a purely geographical qualifier’. It was simply a shorthand term to distinguish those British who lived in the American colonies, and it in no way implied any cultural difference, nor any ethnic distinction. ‘American’, in this sense, might be used in the same way one might refer today to ‘Africans’ or ‘Asians’ without imputing any specific national meaning to the term. Likewise, the French referred to ‘Americans’ in their Caribbean colonies, just as the Spanish might use ‘American’ to refer to their colonials in Argentina or New Spain. As Metternich would later famously say of Italy, ‘America’ was merely a ‘geographic expression’. Furthermore, it was one British North American colonists rarely used to describe themselves. Their primary identities were either provincial (Pennsylvanians, Virginians, etc.) or national, that is, British or English. The self-descriptor ‘American’ came into common usage among rebellious colonists as they forged an inter-colonial alliance in solidarity against British policy. Even then, it is noteworthy that ‘America’ did not even enter the name of the new government minted in 1774 as the ‘Continental Congress’. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 announced to the world the ‘united [sic] States of America’ and specified that ‘these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES’. It was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, adopted in 1777, that made its first order of business the appellation for the new nation: ‘The Stile of this Confederacy shall be “The United States of America” ’. Insofar as what they called themselves indicated some basic measure of nationalist sentiment, the national identity of the former Thirteen Colonies followed – at some distance and unevenly – the move towards independence and nationhood. The strongest form of nationalism coursing through pre-Revolutionary America was British not American. Most colonists believed themselves to be members of the freest, most powerful empire in the world and they were proud of their place within it. The appeal to American nationalism was inherently

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weak, not only because of this ‘imperial patriotism’, as John Murrin (1987) calls it, but also because the simple facts of historic origin and cultural ties to Britain all undercut any sense of separate American identity (Breen, 1997; Greene, 1993). Except for the protest movement that galvanised the American colonists during the Stamp Act crisis in 1765 and the formation of the First Continental Congress nine years later, American colonists had no inter-colonial institutions binding them together. Nor is there plausible evidence, most contemporary historians agree, of an American proto-nationalist tradition emerging from a long, smouldering opposition to British rule that united Americans. It was the American tradition of local self-government that colonists were defending against the imposition of British imperial governance in the colonies after 1763. It was their common grievance against the new imperial policy that emerged at the end of the Seven Years (French and Indian) War that generated the makings of an inter-colonial scaffolding from which a nation could be constructed; and it was British intransigence in the face of sustained protests that finally forced the colonists to consider independent nationhood. The bonds between the American colonies and Britain were historic and political, of course, but Britishness was also embedded in everyday life of American colonists, in language, religion, law and customs. Not all Americans understood themselves to be British, and fewer still English. The colonies had long been a refuge for Europeans from a great variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds. Ironically, New England, easily the most rebellious region of British North America, was the most English. Its population originated from the Puritan exodus that occurred between 1620 and the English Civil War of the 1640s, and there had been very little immigration into New England for more than a century. By the time of the American Revolution, New England was into its fifth and sixth American-born generation. In this sense, New Englanders were at once the most English and the most American. Both identities might well explain their proclivity for protest and rebellion, for they were ‘freeborn Englishmen’ claiming their rights as British citizens and New Englanders long accustomed governing themselves. The claim to Britishness would not have resonated with many of the American colonists; large numbers might as easily define themselves by not being English. Estimates from the first census in 1790 indicate those of English descent constituted less than half the total US population, while those descending from Great Britain and Ireland made up a little over two thirds of the population. Africans claimed almost 19 per cent of the population, Germans 7 per cent and the rest from the Netherlands, France, Scandanavia, Spain (Henretta and Nobles, 1987; McDonald, 1980). Given the colonies’ history as an asylum for religious dissenters, impoverished servants, and assorted refugees, there were few common links – ethnic, religious, or ideological – that provided Americans with a sense of national

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community distinct from and in opposition to their membership of the British Empire. The historian John Murrin (1987) explains this succinctly: ‘The American continent could boast no common historic institutions other than crown and Parliament. It had acquired no shared history outside its British context. Likewise, the American settlers possessed only one language in common: English. In both cases, the logic of national identity pointed back to Britain, to counterrevolution, to a repudiation of the bizarre events of 1776’. It was out of the events of 1775–76, however, that British colonists rather suddenly became American nationalists.

Tom Paine: America as refuge from the past The task of American nationalists would be not to suddenly concoct an American national history and identity, but instead to repudiate their British past, reject Old World tradition and celebrate their new nation’s future. They set out to destroy historic bonds of affection towards what the rebels themselves commonly referred to as the ‘parent’ or ‘mother country’. In doing so, they invited their fellow rebels to a kind of patricide, or at least the deliberate alienation of affection between child and parent (Jordan, 1973; Blakemore, 1995). Instead of building a nation on a historic past of a fictive family, American nationalism would emphasise the shared destiny of youth seeking their own way in the world. Of necessity, this American brand of nationalism was to build on common aspirations for the future – not shared memories of the past. No one understood this enterprise better than Tom Paine whose enormously popular booklet, Common Sense (1776), more than any other single piece of propaganda guided the American turn from protest to revolution. It took an outsider and a newcomer to tell Americans they were more than just a collection of protesting provinces – they were a nation in the making, a people distinguished, not by any essential bonds of blood or belief, but by their distance from Old World corruption. They were a nation, Paine further explained, insofar as America would serve as an inspiration to other peoples; America was to become, in Paine’s poignant phrase, an ‘asylum for mankind’. Newly arrived from England in November 1774, Paine came to America at the urging of Benjamin Franklin, whom he had met by chance in London only two months earlier. Coming from a checquered career as stay maker for women’s corsets, a minor government official, and inventor, he came to America in flight from an inauspicious life in England. He had only limited experience as a political writer and even less knowledge of America and its recent disputes with Britain. In all, Paine seemed an unlikely prophet of American nationhood. He landed in Philadelphia deathly ill from the voyage and in a little more than a year established himself as the colonies’ leading voice for an independent American nation. Paine would go on to

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a career as a radical revolutionary in France. His books, The Rights of Man (1791), a widely read guide to the leading ideas of the Enlightenment, and The Age of Reason (1795), a critique of organised religion, established his European reputation as a revolutionary thinker. It was this small, hastily written pamphlet, Common Sense, however, that first demonstrated Paine’s extraordinary talent for packaging revolutionary ideas in language common people could grasp. His arguments summed up much that was afloat in the stream of pre-revolutionary pamphlets of the time. There was something in his language, its vividness and its vitriol, its plain style and accessibility that resonated with the American temperament in that winter of discontent in 1776. Above all, it was his blunt confrontation with the nature of the problem and its radical solution that seized the imagination of Americans poised on the verge of rebellion. Paine understood more because he knew less. His unfamiliarity with the American scene allowed him to see the makings of a nation that lay in waiting beneath the often petty provincial divisions that set colonists quarreling with one another, even as they joined in protest against British policy. Paine saw the disputes over taxation, trade, and local government as minor symptoms of much greater conflict between Old World monarchism and New World republicanism. He envisioned a future for an American continental nation that would not only separate itself from Old World corruption but also offer an inspiring model by which Europeans might redeem their own nations. He attacked the most powerful force against any nationalist rebellion for independence – the presumption that history provides a valid justification for the existing state of things as something natural, reasonable and incontrovertible. For example, he cleverly inverted the notion that Britain is and always would be superior to America in population and power: ‘there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself’. History was about to change the traditional order of things, he predicted, and America was going to be in the vanguard of an epic transformation. ‘The cause of America’, Paine wrote, ‘is in a great measure the cause of all mankind’. Instead of particularising and historicising the American narrative of nationhood, Paine cast America’s claim to independence within the larger Enlightenment ideal of universal human rights. He saw America as a model of democratic society whose historic mission would be to serve as a beacon of reason and hope for the Old World. What united Americans, in Paine’s view, was not common customs, institutions, ethnicity or history; it was their opposition to the Old World, their distance from Europe, their lack of European aristocracy. America provided an escape from the past, an asylum from the Old World.

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What made Paine’s pamphlet so radical in the context of pre-revolutionary protest was that he shifted the whole discussion beyond disputes about particular policies and leaders to assault the very foundations of British authority over the American colonies. Paine challenged the British crown’s right to rule, not just the fairness of its policies or even the constitutionality of imperial rule. Hitherto, protesting colonists had assailed Parliament’s bad policy and misguided leaders for abusing the king’s loyal subjects in America. Paine, instead, launched an all-out assault on the king – not Parliament – as the source of British misrule of the American colonies. Paine did not actually attack the person of King George III (who goes unmentioned in the text) but he ridiculed the entire principle of hereditary rule on which the king’s authority rested. Paine cast doubt on the idea that any monarchy was born of virtue, and he did so with shocking disrespect. Few monarchies have ‘honorable origin’, he asserted; most dynasties could be traced back to the ‘principal ruffian of some restless gang ... chief among plunderers’. William the Conqueror, a ‘French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original’. His successors included ‘some few good monarchs’ but a ‘much larger number of bad ones’. ‘One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves it’, Paine observed, ‘otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ASS FOR A LION’ (Paine, 1776; Jordan, 1973). Paine understood that he was trying to undermine the most basic loyalties and identities among the British in North America and topple what were deeply ingrained traditions of deference. He acknowledged that these attacks on Britain and on monarchy generally were not likely to win immediate acceptance among his readers precisely because most humans were slaves of tradition. As he explained, ‘a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom’. Tradition was an obstacle to reason and reform in Paine’s view. Once subjected to the logic of his argument and the evidence that supported it, however, Paine felt confident that his appeal would win people over: ‘Time makes more converts than reason’. Conversion came with remarkable quickness, however, for the success of Paine’s little pamphlet was far greater and more rapid than he could have imagined. It sold 150,000 copies within weeks and went through 25 editions by the end of 1776 alone. The pamphlet was reprinted in newspapers, read aloud in taverns and coffee houses and passed around among friends (Foner, 1977). Paine’s Common Sense may be one of the best examples ever of Benedict Anderson’s concept of the nation first appearing in print. What made it such a successful nationalist appeal was not Paine’s pointed attack on the king and British rule in the American colonies. Paine repudiated the whole justification of dynastic rule as something supported by tradition

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and bogus histories that obscured the violent seizures of power at the origins of all dynasties. Modernist scholars of nationalism owe more to Paine than they might realise, for he was among the first to articulate the role of a nation’s mythical history in disguising self-serving rulers. Paine understood that a prerequisite to any willingness to embrace independence was the American estrangement from Britain, their country, but also from their king as father of their country. He turned the paternal metaphor of kingdom and empire into a cutting critique when he wrote: ‘But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families’. Referring to the massacre and burning at Lexington on the ‘fatal nineteenth of April 1775’ Paine laid responsibility on ‘the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England ... with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE’ who could ‘unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul’. While his attack on monarchy aimed at alienating Americans from the traditional identity as loyal subjects of the British crown, the real genius of Common Sense was its vision of an American future as a nation that would show the world a better way. His argument for independence told Americans that the conflict was about so much more than recent disputes over British policy or even the British monarch per se. For Paine the cause of American independence was part of a far more revolutionary opposition to the principle of monarchy, dynastic rule and aristocracy and the beginning of a new model for self-government. ‘Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression’, he wrote. ‘Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind’. ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now’. In Paine’s mind, America’s very lack of history was one of its major assets. Youth and small size made it possible to form a union and build a nation; to delay would only harden the divisions among various provinces. ‘The infant state of the Colonies, as it is called, so far from being against, is an argument in favour of independence. We are sufficiently numerous, and were we more so we might be less united’. ‘Youth is the seed-time of good habits as well in nations as in individuals’, he proposed. ‘It might be difficult, if not impossible, to form the Continent into one government half a century hence’. This association of youth with opportunity and freedom and its opposite with stubborn tradition and resistance to change would become a core element in American nationalism. History was not always an advantage in the formation of nations, Paine told Americans. Paine’s marvellously persuasive little pamphlet went a long way towards framing an imagined nation and future among what had hitherto been

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little more than rebellious colonists protesting imperial policy. It was Paine who first called for a formal declaration of independence: ‘Were a manifesto to be published, and despatched to foreign Courts, setting forth the miseries we have endured, and the peaceful methods which we have ineffectually used for redress ... such a memorial would produce more good effects to this Continent than if a ship were freighted with petitions to Britain’. Issued a half year after Common Sense first appeared, the Declaration of Independence stated the case for America’s nationhood before the world. It did so in language that was altogether different from any argument for nationhood based on history and culture. In its detailed ‘long train of abuses’, the Declaration thoroughly rehearsed the history of relations between Britain, its monarch and his colonies, but this was not to show diverging historic paths between empire and colonies. Nor were there any suggestions in the Declaration that America’s differences with Britain were rooted in fundamental antagonisms between peoples or even in insurmountable problems of distance. On the contrary, there were several references to ‘our British brethren’ and their ‘consanguinity’ with American colonists. The historical evidence in the Declaration demonstrated the ‘long train of abuses and usurpations’ and, therefore, the necessity of secession. Instead of using history to justify nationhood, the Declaration took their nation out of history to rest the American justification to exist as a nation on the timeless and universal principles of natural rights (Breen, 1997; Armitage, 2006).

America’s place in history Though the initial justifications for independence did not enlist historic or ethnic claims of nationhood, America’s place in history would nonetheless come to play a vitally important part in the nationalism that took form in the early republic. American nationalists were keenly aware of the ongoing need to build their nation, to cultivate a national consciousness. In this endeavour, the brief history of the nation and its future place in the history of the world became absolutely central to the nationalist project in America. Between the Revolution and the Civil War, the young American nation witnessed a dispersed corps of intellectuals, writers, clergymen, educators, men and women, working not in concert but with a common purpose to create national consciousness and cohesion in the United States. At the heart of this enterprise was the fundamental idea that Americans had a historic mission and that their bond of nationhood lay in their common destiny. New England took the lead in formulating a national history, typically emphasising Paine’s theme of America as a refuge from the corruption and sin of the Old World and featuring New England as the standard for the American ideal (Zelinsky, 1988; Grant, 2000). Though anxiety about the

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need for a stronger sense of national community had been a paramount concern of many political leaders, it took on a cultural dimension in the Early Republic. By the 1820s, a large number of cultural nationalists worked at defining an American literature, language, history and culture. The new American republic began to emerge in print. Benedict Anderson describes the process of producing national identity in print, but few nations were better equipped to consume the work of their nationalist writers. The United States enjoyed literacy rates among the highest in the world. Public education became widespread by the mid-19th century, at least in towns and cities in northern states. Despite comparatively low rates among southern whites, immigrants and virtual non-literacy among African-Americans during slavery, by 1870 an estimated 80 per cent of those 14 or older could read or write in some language and about half of all school-age children attended school (Cremin, 1980; Snyder, 1993). American reformers advocated literacy and education as essential to the workings of a democratic society and educators were keenly aware of their vital role in building national identity in the young republic. They urged an education that was ‘truly American’, historian Lawrence Cremin (1980) explains, one ‘purged of all vestiges of older monarchical forms’ and ‘rooted in the American soil, based on an American language and literature, steeped in American art, history, and law, and committed to the promise of an American culture’. This involved ‘a conscious rejection of Europe’ and its ‘thousand-year tradition of feudalism, despotism, and corruption’. Several among the leading intellectual talents of the young republic lent their energies to generating an American version of history. Noah Webster, best known for his efforts as a lexicographer in advancing new standards for ‘American English’, was also a pioneering advocate of teaching America’s history to its young. His An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking (1790) included extensive selections on American history. ‘Unshackle your minds and act like independent beings’, he implored Americans, ‘you have been children long enough, subject to the control and subservient to the interest of the haughty parent’. A book of essays on history, particularly American history, Webster insisted ‘should be the principle school book in the United States’. In America ‘every child ... as soon as he opens his lips should lisp’ the lessons of history (Callcott, 1959). Mason Locke Weems wrote best selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Francis Marion and George Washington. His famous (and entirely fabricated) story of young Washington chopping down the cherry tree, then confessing to his father that he ‘could not tell a lie’, became part of the Washington mythology that every American child could recite. Another widely popular set of texts, William Holmes McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, combined similar anecdotal accounts of American heroes and constructed stalwart images of American virtue and Old World corruption. ‘Schoolmaster to the nation’, McGuffey saw his books as the ‘portable school for the new priests of the

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republic’. Ralph Waldo Emerson urged Americans to free themselves from European traditions and education and instead to create their own world, to ‘walk on our own feet ... work with our own hands ... speak our own minds’. The historian George Bancroft, author of a ten-volume History of the United States published between 1834 and 1874, laid down the New England version of US history in authoritative scholarly form (Zelinsky, 1988; Lynn, 1973; Sullivan, 1994; Mosier, 1947). It was at the primary and secondary level of education that most Americans became educated in the history of their nation and the world. History on the college level was generally taught only in support of classical education and there was little attention to America’s national history in the universities until later in the 19th century. By the 1820s history was a required component of public school curricula in several states and by 1860 most high school graduates would have three full years of history. With the new emphasis on schooling in America, which spread across the North from New England, there was an explosion of history textbooks. Nearly 440 editions of school textbooks were published for history courses in the US before 1860, most of them appearing after 1810. About 113 of these books were devoted to US history with roughly equal numbers on ancient and world history (Callcott, 1959; Elson, 1964). History, as taught in the American public schools, was both national and international, but it was rarely local or regional. Despite (or perhaps because of) the relative intensity of state loyalties, the weakness of American national identity, and the growing tensions between North and South in antebellum America, there was little attention to state or local history in schools. On the contrary, if the school curricula fashioned by the states had anything to say about it, American children would imagine themselves members of a national community and one with a specific historic mission in the history of the world (Callcott, 1959). Americans schooled in these lessons of American destiny came of age with a strong sense of their nation’s place in world history. Having grown up in New Hampshire during the 1820s, Thomas Low Nichols later recalled of his childhood schooling: ‘our history was American history, brief but glorious. ... We were taught every day and in every way that ours was the freest, the happiest, and soon to be the greatest and most powerful country in the world. This is the religious faith of every American. He learns it in his infancy, and he can never forget it. For all other countries he entertains sentiments varying from pity to hatred; they are the downtrodden despotisms of the old world’ (Cunliffe, 1959).

America’s manifest destiny What exactly was America’s historic mission? Few answered this with more enthusiasm than John O’Sullivan, who in 1839 wrote ‘The Great Nation of

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Futurity’ for his journal, The Democratic Review: ‘our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only’. The past was a litany of tyranny and oppression, O’Sullivan argued, and future progress in the world would require shedding the burden of tradition, escaping the past. ‘What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement’, he asked, ‘can cast his view over the past history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed?’ America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. ... We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. ... We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission – to the entire development of the principle of our organisation – freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. ... All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man – the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity? Of course, O’Sullivan shaded America’s flaws and exaggerated oppression in Europe, but he managed to transform one of the weakest elements in America’s claim to nationhood – the lack of a common past – into a major virtue. More famously, O’Sullivan coined a phrase that summarised an essential theme in America’s national ideology. He protested the intervention of foreign powers, particularly the British, who ‘in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions’. ‘Manifest Destiny’ soon became a slogan for the expansion of American territory in the war against Mexico that began one year later and in subsequent imperial adventures abroad (O’Sullivan, 1845; Doyle, 2005; Stephanson, 1995). Not long after O’Sullivan evoked his vision of America’s glorious destiny, the nation had become the scene of one of the bloodiest separatist movements in history. What American nationalists, from Paine to O’Sullivan, had heralded as a refuge from the internecine wars of the Old World became

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the dark and bloody ground of the most massive bloodbath between the Napoleonic wars and World War I. The American Civil War forced the US to explain to its soldiers and citizens, and to the international world, what it was fighting to preserve beyond territorial unity. It was, only after seventeen months of war, when the fate of the Union seemed perilous, that President Abraham Lincoln linked the war to the destruction of slavery in America. In his Gettysburg Address (Lincoln, 1863), Lincoln went further to define the Union cause as a continuation of the nation’s historic mission. The war, he avowed, was a test of whether ‘that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure’ and a Union victory would determine that ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ Lincoln fastened the war to the historic origins of the nation, as an experiment in self-rule and a model that would inspire the world. After the US emerged as a world power beginning in the 1890s its foreign policy continued to build on the foundations laid during the nation’s early history. The idea of America as a model republic that would win admiration and emulation by other peoples in the world coexisted with a corollary that America had a duty to spread its blessings to other nations, to lift the yoke of tyranny and allow people to follow America’s historic leadership towards liberty, self-rule and abundance. O’Sullivan’s evocation of America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ was frequently invoked during the 1898 incursions into Cuba and the Philippines, and the idea of America as a model republic continued to shape US foreign policy ever since. The neo-conservative vision of Iraq as a showcase of liberal democracy in the Middle East has become one of the more bizarre expressions of this long tradition. America’s version of nationalism does not ascribe unique or superior qualities to a historic people. The fundamental premiss is just the opposite: it is the idea that America embodies a universal and eternal human desire to enjoy the blessings of freedom, democracy and prosperity, and that people everywhere admire and wish to emulate what America has achieved. Faced, as they often have been, with foreign peoples rejecting the American model, it has been an American habit to blame this stubborn resistance on the tyranny of tradition. A nation born in repudiation of the past has often found it difficult to understand those unwilling to shed their past identities and vice versa.

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd rev. edn (London: Verso). Armitage, D. (2006) The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Blakemore, S. (1995) ‘Revisionist Patricide: Thomas Paine’s “Letter to George Washington” ’, CLIO, 24, Spring, 269–90.

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Breen, T. H. (1997) ‘Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising’, Journal of American History, 84, 13–39. Callcott, G. H. (1959) ‘History Enters the Schools’, American Quarterly, 11, 4, Winter, 470–83. Cremin, L. A. (1980) American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York: Harper and Row). Cunliffe, M. (1959) The Nation Takes Shape: 1789–1837 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Doyle, D. H. (2005) ‘Manifest Destiny, Race, and the Limits of American Empire’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Special Issue: Nation and Empire, 24–42. Elson, R. M. (1964) Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press). Foner, E. (1977) Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press). Grant, S-M. (2000) North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press). Greene, J. P. (1993) The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press). Greenfeld, L. (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Henretta, J. A. and G. Nobles (1987) Evolution and Revolution: American Society, 1600–1820 (Lexington, MA: Heath). Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (New York: Cambridge University Press). Jordan, W. D. (1973) ‘Familial Politics: Thomas Paine and the Killing of the King’, Journal of American History, 60, September, 294–308. Lincoln, A. (1863) ‘Gettysburg Address’, online at Yale University Avalon Project, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/gettyb.htm, date accessed 15 June 2007. Lipset, S. M. (2003), The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective, rev. edn (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publisheers). Lynn, R. W. (1973) ‘Civil Catechetics in Mid-Victorian America: Some Notes about American Civil Religion, Past and Present’, Religious Education, 68. McDonald, F. and E. S. McDonald (1980) ‘The Ethnic Origins of the American People, 1790’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 37, 2, April. Mosier, R. D. (1947) Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers (New York: Russell and Russell). Murrin, J. (1987) ‘A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity’ in R. Beeman and S. Botein (eds) Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press). O’Sullivan, J. L. (1839) ‘The Great Nation of Futurity’, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 6, 23, 426–30. O’Sullivan, J. L. (1845) ‘Annexation’, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 17, 1, 5–10, online at Cornell University, The Making of America, http://cdl.library. cornell.edu/moa, date accessed 20 March 2006. Paine, T. (1776) Common Sense, online at USHistory.org, http://www.ushistory.org/ Paine/commonsense/index.htm, date accessed 18 June 2007. Renan, E. (1882) ‘What is a Nation?, English translation online, http://www.cooper. edu/humanities/core/hss3/e_renan.html, date accessed 17 June 2007. Smith, A. D. (2000) The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England).

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Snyder, T. (ed.) (1993) 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait, excerpt online at U.S. Department of Education, http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp, accessed 14 August 2007. Stephanson, A. (1995) Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang). Sullivan, D. P. (1994) William Holmes McGuffey: Schoolmaster to the Nation (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickenson University Press). Webster, N. (1790) An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking ... (Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews). Zelinsky, W. (1988) Nation into State: The Shifting Symbolic Foundations of American Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press).

6 Rediscovering Columbus in Nineteenth-Century American Textbooks Christine Cadot*

In 19th century America, primary schools and churches were the only places where the vast majority of American citizens would receive their education. Schoolbooks also became sources that allowed future citizens to believe that history was a science capable of truth, as well as able to narrate and glorify the past and the future of a new nation. Meanwhile, it would also lay the moral groundwork for a future expansion (Kaestle, 1983; Schultz, 1973). By the 1820s, only five states had passed laws requiring that national history be taught at the secondary level in tax-supported institutions. By the 1830s and 1840s however, the interest for promoting national history in schools surged amongst intellectuals and politicians. Much has been said on these 19th century textbooks and the indoctrination of nation values. From Noah Webster to Emma Willard, numerous studies focused on the democratic and republican faith in American schoolbooks (England, 1963). As guardian of traditions (Elson, 1964; Carpenter, 1963), this child literature was also tracing polarities of good versus evil, youth versus age, innocence versus experience, virtues versus corruption, fake versus agreed-upon national heroes, and – though rarely noticed – the New World versus the Old.

Columbus as a traditional focus of essentialist discourses This chapter will not deal with another deconstruction of European or American discourses on the ‘Other’ (Todorov, 1997) or the ‘Incommensurable’ (Pagden, 1994), and neither will it attempt to seek the truth through the discourses on conquest and discovery of America by Columbus. It will rather focus on the representations of Europe, through narratives of the discovery of America in 19th century American textbooks. Therefore, our goal is not to track whom the authors spoke for, but rather to perceive the social changes of the time through narratives and iconographies. Our hypothesis is that nationalist discourses constructed a national subjectivity and 93

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a sense of belonging based on an ontological division between Europe and America. These narratives of the ontological division between the New World and the Old World were certainly not rigid through the 19th century, and neither were the narratives of the fiction itself: they were not set forever in American schoolbooks. We could use them as keys to understand the values the authors sought to inculcate but also the growing ambivalent views they held towards Europe and the European roots of the United States. This discourse on supposed growing oppositions between the United States and Europe provided one of the most powerful tools of nationalist discourses. In the present case, these discourses fitted well into the need for standardised mass literacy, public education (Gellner, 1964; 1983) and the spread of ‘printcapitalism’ (Anderson, 1980) which was supposed to promote adherence to cultural values, obedience to authority and national consciousness. The purpose of this paper is to bring forward the fact that American nationalistic representations of Selves and Others were not fixed for once in the 19th century. Most of the time, these narratives are presented as stories of context-traversing communities, defining the United States as Europe’s other. In fact, Columbus’s figures offered ideological fantasies which aimed at essentialising the grand narratives of a certain self, as many other political discourses did (Mouffe, 1994; Neumann, 1998). Amongst the many symbolic representations of the American past, Columbus has often and surprisingly been perceived as a figure constantly acclaimed by teachers and scholars for being the very symbol of the European immigration to the US. American textbooks of the 19th century used and also made inroads into the standard heroic myth of Columbus as the first to discover America, in the traditional view. Consequently, he was also described as the first to give a description of the New World to his European readership. But Columbus is actually more than a heroic tale. He also illustrates a moral fiction which allows us to track the social and economic changes associated with the rise of Jacksonian democracy and, particularly at the end of the 19th century, with WASP and non-WASP immigration waves. Moreover, it would also be interesting to reverse the situation in order to see how the new American nation rediscovered Columbus’ discovery. How do the narratives of this ‘fairytale’ make it possible for us to see, in a sense, the ideological representation of Europe in 19th century American textbooks? The narratives of the New World’s discovery tell us about what we might call an ‘Old World discovery’, as seen from the United States. At the same time, it offers the pupils a more appealing idea of the cement holding a community than the abstractions from the Social contract. Exploring fully why and how textbooks, and more generally curriculum materials, have been associated with the indoctrination of state values would take us too far afield. It is nevertheless important to note that studies have demonstrated for more than half of century that American textbooks offered standards of behaviour and standardisation of political beliefs linked

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in particular to a ‘Protestant, agrarian-commercial America: industry, thrift, practicality, temperance, honesty, plain living, patriotism and piety. These moral values were the props of the state. Without them, the flourishing republic of the New World could not endure’ (England, 1963, p. 164; see also Elson, 1964; Mosier 1947; Hauptman 1977). For first grade readers – which will be our prime material – textbooks scrutinised the meaning of the New World discovery and defined it in terms of the United States past, present and future, creating an agreed-upon national ‘myth’ and thus setting a time zero for American national history. It would be of very limited interest to trace here what could have been the right or false incorporation of any right or false scholarly research on Columbus’s encounters with the Native Americans. In fact, for most writers in the first half of the 19th century, history had to be made interesting in order to ‘exercise the (...) habit of thinking by introducing ideas rather than facts’ (Bigland, 1819, p. 4). Actual facts and details were being ‘kept at hand in books to consult as occasion requires’ (Willard, 1845, iii). Such a comparison would actually be difficult to do on the 19th century if we were to take into consideration the various patterns of teacher training curricula between states, and between private and public academies. Moreover, a huge difference exists between the beginning and the middle of the 19th century: history entered elementary schools programmes primarily through reading materials and became a completely independent subject in most schools in New England by the 1840s (Callcott, 1959). American textbooks of the 19th century present what seems to be a paradoxical way of dealing with what is presented as a lack of national past(s). While they were reiterating that the United States was born from a republican tabula rasa in 1776, they were also constantly trying to negotiate and renegotiate an earlier beginning for the American historical experience. Iconography can help us here visualise the beginnings of the American history and its relation to the European heritage. It allows us to perceive how Columbus has been absorbed into an unstable national mythology which began in 1777, in the first American textbook – paradoxically published in London. Its author, William Robertson, a Scottish clergyman, strongly influenced two generations of writers (Phillips and Phillips, 1992, p. 121). Of course, influential authors were often imitated, even in their choice of illustrations.1 But, unlike William Robertson, who ‘provided the precedent for beginning the history of the United States in Europe as a continuation of the centuries’ old quest for new commercial routes and markets’ (Phillips and Phillips, 1992, p. 121), most writers of the 1830s were also striving to create an innovative story, which would separate the American history from the European one and would ‘Americanize foreign stories for the use of our [American] schools’ (Grimshaw, 1826, endorsement of college presidents). Therefore, in the vast majority of textbooks published in the first half of the 19th century, Columbus was not exclusively a European hero. He was

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also serving as a figure which would legitimate the Jacksonian westward expansion of the country and, at the same time, the denial of any Native American right to citizenship. Moreover, the assertion that the American nation was young was a very powerful way to deny aborigines and slaves the right to take part in American history and thus to gain citizenship (Bouchard, 2000).

Mobilising discursive strategies in the temple of time In an attempt to set up what could be the Golden age of the American nation, textbooks’ authors were in fact trying to find a solution to outside threats and divisions within, promoting an idealised image of a primitive past (Smith, 1991, p. 55). As several textbooks explained, the history of a nation written by the ‘genius’ of that same nation had to enlighten the world. In this national history, Native Americans were only part of pre-historical records. But the Native American figures in Columbus’ discovery did not represent the only point of interest or the only trace of otherness in our survey. By tracking such changes in descriptions and shifts of historical approaches in the treatment of Columbus, we encountered subsequent themes and ‘Others’ as we proceeded through 19th-century textbooks. Of course, schoolbooks were making pure relative assertions in proclaiming that ‘the United States is a young nation’. Young nations only exist because older nations are said to be so. In this comparison, not only European nations, but ‘Europe’ itself was and still is assumed to be the competing political identity whose history is defined as old. There is indeed a paradox in the way textbooks tell us about American history – understood here as the history of the United States – because any quest to find an American hero brings with it its national mythology, i.e. a narrative of the Nation’s origin. In other words, the American paradox here consists in building a long memory from a short history. How else would it be possible to associate George Washington and Columbus in the same mythology, saying at the same time that the memory of the American nation should precede the birth of the American Republic and its tabula rasa? As we saw in the survey of our textbooks, there is usually no place for two origins in the same official history and textbooks usually hesitated between a short Republican mythology and a long European-like national history. One of the most influential educators in the 19th century United States, Emma Willard, provided one of the best illustrations of this opposition between a long European history and a short republican and American history. She managed to exemplify them together in the Temple of Time (Illustration 6.1) which may also illustrate a seemingly American paradox. In the Temple of Time, which typically illustrates Willard’s interest in the mapping of history (Schulten, 2006),2 one can see the name of Washington on the left column, representing 18th century America, partly hidden by a

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Illustration 6.1 Temple of Time (1845) Source: Willard (1845), n.p.

column representing the first half of the 19th century, named after Bolivar. The two sets of columns represent the impermeable cleavage between Europe and America: European heroes’ names are written on the 19 columns on the right side of the temple, while the left columns represent America, whose short history carries only two names. Whereas Washington’s name seems to eclipse everything which occurred prior in US history, Emma Willard’s history reflects a deep intellectual difference between Jeffersonian and Jacksonian years. This symbolic representation clearly breaks with contemporary methods of description, made of short paragraphs on countries, in catechism form. Columbus’s discovery is hidden behind Washington’s accomplishment, which also denies what could be understood as a common origin and mythology shared by the Unites States and Latin America (Willard, 1837). Nations and empire are not organised according to their physical location, but rather according to their contribution to the constitution of a clear impermeable separation between civilisations: the old European Empire and the new American Republic. This should not surprise us, given that the temple of time was first conceived in 1840, coincident with the acquisition of western lands in the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo and the compromise with Britain.

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‘The American temple was Willard’s way of conceptualising – historically and spatially – a nation unfolding before her eyes’ (Schulten, 2006, p. 560). The difference is even more visible in an American version of the temple of time, published in 1860 (Illustration 6.2). As the Civil War was well under way, Emma Willard clearly wanted to stress the common Republican origin of all the states of North America, using the art of perspective to offset the mass of European heroes. Though this new illustrated genre emerged slowly in America and Europe throughout the 19th century, Benedict Anderson (1983, chap. 10) stressed the central role played by graphics and maps in the rise of nationalism. He also mentioned the emergence of historical maps, designed to extend the nation’s lineage back in time. In our example, Washington is the pure republican hero, the Founding Father of the American nation, who eclipses every other pretender to the throne. His name clearly appears as a symbol of the republican tabula rasa, which could be figured by the empty columns that precede his name. For the author, ‘to them [Americans], the world are [sic] now looking for response to the grand question: “Can the people govern themselves” (...) it might teach our posterity what we as good citizen must desire them to know – the virtues which exalt nations and the vices which destroy them’ (Willard, 1854, p. v). This competition between old and new worlds is not a mere question of prestige. The textbooks, when using Washington as the unique father of the

Illustration 6.2 Temple of Time (1860) Source: Willard (1860).

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American nation, assert the superiority of a new history upon a motionless, fixed and frail European couterpart. We frequently found the textbooks putting the origin of the American memory in 1776, this famous romantic law of history, made of rises and declines, stating that since every political body was mortal as human beings, then the younger, the better. In a single (but numerous times re-printed) children’s textbook, Columbus’s voyage was therefore shortened to the minimum: I have no room to tell you the whole history of Columbus. It is enough to say that he made four voyages to America, including the first. He discovered many of the West India Islands and, during his last voyage, touched upon the continent (Goodrich, 1835, p. 178). But this competition between short and long histories is also a competition between a Latin and a Northern, non-catholic, America. Washington is also the figure of a religious and nationalistic antagonism between two identities that share the same discoverer, at least in some textbooks. Thus for Emma Willard, only the United States can truly be called ‘America’: America is to us the only name which can conjure up the spell of patriotism; and by this token we know that it is, and is to be the name of our country. And it is a noble name – dignified in prose – harmonious in poetry, and marching as we are in the van of the nations who are forming within the precincts of the new world, why should not our country have the distinguishing honor to bear the same name with the continent? (Willard, 1854, pp. xiii–xiv) Then, considering this problematic use of Columbus’s discovery, why did textbooks need Columbus’s figure? In the first half of the 19th century, we predominantly found textbooks which praised Columbus as a victim of the Spanish Crown and Europe’s perfidy. Of course, it was not Columbus’s treatment of Native Americans that was problematic, and neither was his maladministration in the Indies, as we can see in these two successive editions of the same textbook, showing a vanishing conquistador’s sword (Illustrations 6.3 and 6.4). At first sight, this heroic Columbian history has very little to do with the American Republic. But this myth actually has to deal with the United States as an Empire expanding westward. The problem, therefore, was no longer to break with a European heritage, but to find a way to legitimise the Indian genocide and the imperialistic expansion of the United States in a national myth. Until the Jacksonian period, the European hero Columbus was adopted by the United States as a useful incarnation of the European origin of the vigorous American people, coming from the East to the West, ‘guided by a kind

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Illustration 6.3 Discovery of San Salvadore Source: Goodrich (1825), p. 12.

Illustration 6.4 Discovery of San Salvadore Source: Goodrich (1829), p. 12.

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Providence’ and, moreover, whose voyages were operated ‘under Christian auspices and laws’: While we admire the lofty qualities of Columbus, and glance with wonder at the consequences which have resulted from his discovery, let us emulate his decision, energy and perseverance. Many are the occasions in the present world, on which it will be important to summon these to our aid; and by means of this, many useful objects may be accomplished (...). (Goodrich, 1822, p. 11) This ‘kind Providence’ was therefore justifying the answer that any good pupil would provide to the question: ‘Resolved, that the colonists were justified in taking land claimed by the Indians without paying them for it’ (Cooper et al, 1908). Every time Columbus was glorified for his achievement, he was also praised for his Christian faith. But anti-Spanish and antimonarchal prejudices tended to be more numerous during the 19th century, either minimising Columbus’s greatness or criticising Europeans’ ingratitude. In this respect, the fact that Columbus’s voyages never took place in what is now the territory of the United States was of very little importance. As other discoveries, such as the narrative of the Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery, Columbus’s discovery narrative helped formalise US supremacy over the Native Americans (Fenelon and Defender-Wilson, 2004), as well as frame and stress the misrepresentation of ‘Others’, understood here as Native Americans (first third of the 19th century), non-WASP immigrants, slaves or Black-Americans and finally non-Anglo-Saxon Europeans (last third of the 19th century). In the 1820s, the imagery of Columbus as a brave explorer making valuable discoveries in wild and quasi-empty territories of America did great service to the theme of discovery which became the core of Manifest Destiny ideologies. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court enacted in 1823 a judgment asserting that the Native American ‘right of occupancy’ was subordinated to the United States’ ‘right of discovery’: ‘Discovery is the foundation of title, in European nations, and this overlooks all proprietary rights in the natives’ and therefore ‘discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy either by purchase or by conquest’. 3 We found therefore a very clear appearance of the concept of Manifest Destiny in Reverend Emerson’s Questions and Supplement to Charles A. Goodrich’s History of the United States (1830), 15 years before the journalist John O’Sullivan mentioned it in 1845: We should study the history of our country because it is the history of faith, of patience, of meekness, of godliness, of brotherly kindness, of charity, of self-denial, of fortitude, of perseverance, of every Christian grace, and

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of more than heroic virtue. We should study the history of our country, because it is the history of an empire, manifestly destined to be more extensive, more populous, more mighty, more intelligent, more industrious, more enterprising, more wealthy, more virtuous, and more happy than the sun has yet beheld (...), because it is destined to give to the nations new lessons upon the science of civil government and social happiness, upon the arts, upon education, upon every thing, that exalts and adorns humanity. We should study the history of our country because it is the land of revivals, a garden that the Lord delights to bless, and because we have reason to believe, it is destined to do more than any other to send the gospel through the world; to enlighten, convert, and save mankind. (p. 10)

The new foundational epics of the post-civil war American republic The right of discovery, once handed down by the US Supreme Court and exercised through the Indian Removal, became the standard approach of every American textbook. Seconding this general observation, we could detect a progressive eclipse of Columbus’s figure in the representation of his landing after 1835. From 1820 to 1850, one can find numerous illustrations of how Columbus is progressively pushed from the foreground to the middle distance, then from the middle distance to the background of the pictures, being transformed into a nonexistent discoverer. Simultaneously, Native

Illustration 6.5 Situation of America in A.D. 1492 Source: Olney (1839), p. 3.

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Americans became central figures in Columbus’s landing, being exposed at the foreground of numerous illustrations and eclipsing Columbus as we read along. Several pictures were showing Native American hunters in a dark forest, adding tiny Columbus’s vessels in the background as a pretext to stress the savagery and uncivilised nature of Native Americans at the time of the discovery (Illustration 6.5). From the end of the Jacksonian period onwards, Columbus no longer exclusively represented the first American hero. A lot of Native Americans had already been expelled from their homes and lands. The belief that Native American tribes would disappear within the next century coincided with the removal of Columbus’s figure as a national and American hero who was from now on unnecessary to justify the Native American genocide. When the Mexican war began in 1846, Columbus was no longer praised for his heroic virtues and the lucidity of Queen Isabella, but for the historical evidence he would bring to the American course of Empire.4 Columbus’s character managed to represent a very malleable figure of American public history, discovered and rediscovered ‘as we have constructed and reconstructed our own national character’ (Schlereth, 1992, p. 937). But this malleable use of Columbus cannot be summarised as a masculine, 15th century European figure, sanctioning American manifest destiny along the 19th century. Indeed, from the first half of the century until the 1890s, the whole nature of the Manifest Destiny evolved into a racial Anglo-Saxonism (Horsman, 1981; Hofstadter, 1992). So did Columbus’ narratives. In fact, the Civil War and the development of Social Darwinism probably brought other questions to light. At the end of the 1860s, the problem was not to find a hero that could legitimise some ‘rights to conquer’, but a common cultural, if not racial, heritage that would limit the citizenship rights of African Americans, even if emancipated, as well as those of non-WASP immigrants. The problem was therefore no longer to conquer the Wild West or wilderness and its cortege of savagery, but to set up a core of doctrines based on so-called ‘scientific’ and historical evidences. At the same time, landfall controversies became more visible in textbooks, justifying numerous and various national claims over American territories. These controversies somehow blurred the precedent discourse on Columbus’s virtues. The Norse pre-Columbian discovery of America, though now probably indisputable, appears and reappears increasingly often in the textbooks at the end of the 19th century (Figure 6.1). In various textbooks published after 1860, the narratives of Leif the Lucky and Eric the Red frequently overshadowed the figure of Columbus. News icons of identity appeared that allowed to declare the specificity of the North American Continent, as sharing the same heroic figures and discoverers. Of course, these new Norse figures did not eliminate the Genovese hero from textbooks. More likely, they transformed him into a European figure against whom they could represent the true essence of an old Anglo-Saxon settlement. Consequently, the

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Number of textbooks

Number of illustrations

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1820– 1830

1830– 1840

1840– 1850

1850– 1860

1860– 1870

1870– 1880

1880– 1890

1890– 1900

Decades Total number of textbooks examined Textbooks with at least one illustration of Columbus Textbook with at least one illustration of the Norsemen Figure 6.1 century

Books with illustrations of Columbus and of the Norsemen over the 19th

Source: Cadot, C. (2005) Les Deux Atlantiques [The Two Atlantics], PhD dissertation, University Paris VIII.

adoption of several new heroes (John Cabot and his son, the Pilgrims, the Norsemen ...) brought the American nation an unexpected gain of 500 years of ‘Anglo-Saxon memory’.

Competing origin myths and Anglo-Saxonism As shown in the charts, gathered up from our examination of almost 500 textbooks, the nature of the judgment on Columbus differs strongly between the first half of the 19th century and its last decade (Figure 6.2). Norsemen narratives fuelled a public rhetoric that celebrated the discoveries of the first republicans, more than eight centuries before 1776. Norsemen and Pilgrims, as well as Cabot’s voyage under Henry VII, were examples that emphasised the masculinity and the republican morality of the discoverers, as well as the Christian values they were supposed to bring with them to the New World. As such, they were depicted by the historiography as new heroes who discovered a place, New England, which was traditionally presented as the cradle of the American Revolution. As Patricia Jane

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Number of textbooks

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1820– 1830

1830– 1840

1840– 1850

1850– 1860

1860– 1870

1870– 1880

1880– 1890

1890– 1900

Decades Total number of textbooks examined

Positive

Neutral

Figure 6.2 Value Judgement on Columbus5 Source: Cadot, C. (2005) Les Deux Atlantiques [The Two Atlantics], PhD dissertation, University Paris VIII.

Roylance (2007) wrote, ‘the Vinland hypothesis possessed enormous cultural cachet (...) in the 1830s and 1890s, due largely to its appeal to regional pride and its implication in racial politics’ (p. 435). For some textbooks eluding Columbus’s voyages, the American chronology begins with Cabot’s discovery of New England, the settlement of Jamestown or the landing of the Pilgrims, setting the origin of the English claim to the new territories of North America (Hildreth, 1831, p. 1). For authors of other numerous textbooks, the discovery of America by the Vikings revealed that American states sustained favourable comparison with Europe. By the later part of the 19th century, textbooks referred more widely to the perfection of the ‘Teutonic race’, the Vikings becoming the anti-figure of Columbus: ‘Did Leif Ericson’s voyage or that of Columbus require the greater heroism? Explain why’, asked a textbook (Cooper, 1898, p. 27). And therefore, ‘Resolve that Leif Ericson rather than Columbus should be called the discoverer of America’. Moreover, authors often questioned Columbus’s morality and behaviour. While Native Americans roamed through the vast forest and while ‘old Sweyn was flaunting the Danish raven in the face of Ethelred the Unready; while Robert I., son of Hugh Capet, was on the throne of France; while the Saxon Otho III swayed the destinies of Germany; and while the Caliphate of Bagdad was still flourishing under the Abbassides’ (Ridpath, 1897, p. 336), the Vikings were naturally depicted as the fierce ancestors of the American Insurgents: ‘They [the Vikings] were of the same blood as the bold Northman who overran England’ (McLaughlin and Cunningham, 1899, p. 5).

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‘These Norsemen and their kinsfolk, the Saxons, were the founders of the English nation. Most Americans, as descendants of the English, have some of the old Norse blood in their veins (Cooper et al., 1908, p. 13)’. At the end of the 19th century, Native American tribes and European people were represented as sharing the same non-republican nature while the desire of a republican government was flowing through the veins of an American people to-be: ‘From England, our forefathers brought the institutions and laws out of which our state and national government have since grown’ (Fiske, 1894, p. 2). This anthropology of the Norse and republican nature of the American people is not new and can be traced back to Jefferson or Franklin. But at the end of the century, the Vikings replaced Columbus as the ‘natural’, scientificallyproven, prototypical republican expansionists while the latter, as a European, was naturally abandoned to the disgrace of his fellows. Represented as sharing the same affected manners and opposed to the male and republican virtues of the ‘Anglo-Saxon race’, Native Americans non-WASP Europeans and, of course, African Americans were disregarded by the Republic’s historians. Native American narratives and Columbus’ diary are often qualified as ‘women’s babbling’ and sharing a same preference for bigotry and idols. Consequently, Columbus’s narratives through the 19th century allow us to trace back the perpetual reconstitution of selves and others, in particular of those others being incapable of liberty and independence. This perpetual re-appropriation of mythical figures is closely related to the regimes d’historicité (Hartog, 2003). A fixed representation of the past is inconceivable outside a particular temporal and spatial context which ‘dates’ a particular use of the myth. As Anthony Smith stated, we should not accept Raglan’s theses (Raglan, 1936; 1979), that heroes and mythological figures are everywhere the same. These figures are only meant to stir the imagination within the context of a peculiar habitat and epoch (Smith, 1995, p. 194). Today’s use of Columbus’s figure by Italian Americans, who regularly portray themselves as victims of prejudices, defamation and stereotypes, is another example of the very malleable nature of mythical figures. The Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), established in 1905, is one of the largest organisations that provide, amongst other campaigns, information on Columbus’s history. At first, OSIA’s aim was to create a support system for Italian immigrants during the great Italian immigration, which ended in 1923, and to offer support against the discriminations that Italian Americans suffered as nonWASP. Columbus’s figure provided them with legitimacy and pedigrees. Later, OSIA began lobbying to make Columbus Day a federal holiday in 1932. Today, their goal is to fight controversial charges against the explorer and defend his integrity – and subsequently the integrity of the Italian American community – against accusations of racism from Native American activists.6 Columbus’s figure and the First Amendment right to free speech became the tools that OSIA opposed to the ever-quoted 1980 discourse of Russell Means, the prolific Lakota activist, entitled ‘For America to Live,

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Europe Must Die’. The 1992 Columbus Centenary celebrations became battlegrounds, focusing on encounters between cultures and peoples, trying to elucidate the past, ‘but often failing to explain fully why those events have a bearing on today’s world’ (Warren, 1992, p. 72). As an illustration of this, one can note the vivid debates that persist on policies that recognise tribal self-determination or the role of native communities in the dynamics of local, state, national and international development.

Conclusion Coming back to our sources and their historicity, both mythologies of the American Empire and the Republic merge to serve the nation’s superior interest, using the non- ‘Anglo-Saxon Europe’ as a way to build the very efficient discourse of American exceptionalism. The division between short and long memories is practically relegated to the division between an imperialistic and a republican history. Both revealed the hand of God upon American society throughout 19th century textbooks. It would be too simplistic to say that Columbus and all his figures univocally became a public religion. It is not surprising that schoolbooks revealed values which were already dominant in society, rather than examined them critically. It is not surprising either that Columbus’s narratives and rivalries over American genesis uphold so strictly the distinction between European and American heroes, as they uphold a fundamental but malleable division that constructed the American political identity from the revolutionary times onwards.

Notes * This study is based on an analysis of 497 general history textbooks published between 1800 and 1900. Our materials represent the entire special collection of elementary schoolbooks of general history edited in the 19th century accessible at the Monroe C. Gutman Library, Harvard University. Re-edited volumes were not discarded. This analysis was made possible by a visiting scholarship at Harvard University. All cited textbooks and illustrations are available in the special collection of the Monroe C. Gutman Library at Harvard University. I am grateful to the librarians and archivists of the library. I particularly thank Gladys Dratch for her help. 1. See for example the textbook of Reverend Charles A. Goodrich (1824), whose history of the United States was reprinted almost 150 times. 2. Susan Schulten recalled this quotation from Willard: ‘In history, I have invented the map’, Emma Willard to Miss Foster, 5 November 1848, reprinted in J. Lord (1873), p. 228. 3. Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 5 L.Ed. 681, 8 Wheat. 543 (1823), see Newcomb (1993). For an extensive legal analysis of the decision, see Kades (2001). 4. A textbook even put in its frontispiece the final stanza of George Berkeley’s poem: ‘Westward the course of Empire takes its way’. See Berard (1856). 5. We have to explain here what has been qualified as ‘positive’ or ‘neutral’ value judgments. As these textbooks were written for an often very young audience, it was

108 Christine Cadot made easy to identify neutral, positive and negative judgments through very simple narrative forms. Semantic fields of negative values (‘coward’, ‘mistaken’ ...) were highly noticeable as well as semantic fields of positive virtues (‘brave’, ‘heroic’ ...). We did not notice ambivalent or opposing values semantic fields. Polysemous words were also carefully avoided by the authors. Neutral value judgments have to be understood as narrations from facts (i.e. ‘Columbus made four voyages’), without any subsequent commentary on Columbus’ virtues or defaults. 6. We can find on OSIA’s website, http://www.osia.org, a report entitled “Columbus: Fact vs. Fiction”, presenting assertions on the Vinland map, ‘which allegedly proves that the Vikings arrived in North America in 1000 AD’, presented as a forgery, as well as assertions on the contaminated nature of the American soil before the landing of Europeans.

References Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso). Berard, A. B. (1856) School History of the United States (Philadelphia: H. Cowperthawait & Co). Bigland, J. (1819) Letters on French History (Baltimore: John J. Harrod). Bouchard, G. (2000) Genèse des nations et cultures du nouveau monde (Montréal: Boréal). Cadot, C. (2005) Les Deux Atlantiques [The Two Atlantics], PhD dissertation, University Paris VIII. Callcott, G. H. (1959) ‘History Enters the Schools’, American Quarterly, 11, 4, 470–83. Carpenter, C. (1963) History of American Schoolbooks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Cooper, O. H., H. F. Estill and W. L. Lemmon (1898) History of our Country (Boston: Ginn). Cooper, O. H., H. F. Estill and L. Lemmon (1908) History of our country (Boston: Ginn Co). Elson, R. M. (1964) Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press). Emerson, J. (1830) Question for C.A. Goodrich History (Richardson: Lord and Holbrook). England. J. M. (1963) ‘The Democratic Faith in Schoolbooks, 1783–1860’, American Quarterly, XV, 15, 2, 191–9. Fenelon, J. V. and M. L. Defender-Wilson (2004) ‘Voyage of Domination, “Purchase” as Conquest, Sakakawea for Savagery: Distorted Icons from Misrepresentations of the Lewis and Clark Expedition’, Wicazo Sa Review, 19, 1, 85–104. Fiske, J. (1894) History of the United States (Boston, New York, Chicago: Houghton, Mifflin and Company). Gellner, E. (1964) Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Gellner, E. (1983/2004) Nations and Nationalism, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell). Goodrich, C. A. (1822) A History of the United States of America, 35e edn (Boston: Richardson, Lord & Holbrook). Goodrich, C. A. (1824) A History of the United States of America, 3rd edn (Hartford, D.F. Robinson & Co). Goodrich, C. A. (1825) History of the United States of America, 8e edn (Bellows Falls, Vt.: J.I. Cutler).

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Goodrich, C. A. (1829) A History of the United States of America, 17th edn (Bellows Falls, Conn.: J.I. Cutler & Co). Goodrich, S. (1835) The First Book of History for Children and Youth) 16th edn (Boston, Carter Hendee). Grimshaw, W. (1826) History of the United States (Philadelphia: John Grigg). Hartog, F. (2003) Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et Expériences du Temps (Paris: Seuil). Hauptman, L. M. (1977) ‘Mythologizing Westward Expansion: Schoolbooks and the Image of the American Frontier before Turner’, The Western Historical Quarterly, 8, 3, 269–82. Hildreth, R. (1831) An Abridged History of the United States of America, for the Use of Schools (Boston: Carter, Hendee & Babcock). Hofstadter, R. (1992) Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press). Horsman, R. (1981) Race and Manifest Destiny. Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Kades, E. (2001) ‘History and Interpretation of the Great Case of Johnson v. M’Intosh’, Law and History Review, 19, 1, 67–116. Kaestle, C. F. (1983) Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang). McLaughlin, A. C. (1899) A History of the American Nation (New York: D. Appleton & Co). Mosier, R, D. (1947) Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers (New York: King’s Crown Press). Mouffe, C. (1994) Le Politique et ses enjeux. Pour une démocratie plurielle (Paris: La Découverte/MAUSS). Newcomb, S. (1993) ‘The Evidence of Christian Nationalism in Federal Indian Law: The Doctrine of Discovery, Johnson v. McIntosh, and Plenary Power’, NYU Review of Law and Social Change, 20, 2, 303–41. Neumann (1998) Uses of the Other. The “East” in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press). Olney, J. (1839) A History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck). Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), http://www.osia.org. Accessed on 2 December 2008. Pagden, A. (1994) European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press). Phillips, C. R. and W. D. Phillips (1992) ‘Christopher Columbus in United States Historiography: Biography as Projection’, The History Teacher, 25, 2, 119–35. Raglan, L. (1936) The Hero: A study in Tradition, Myth and Dreams (New York: Meridian Book). Ridpath, J. C. (1897) Family History of the United States (Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland: Monarch Book Company). Robertson, W. (1777) The History of the Discovery and Settlement of America (London: W. Strahan). Roylance, P. J. (2007) ‘Northmen and Native Americans: The Politics of Landscape in the Age of Longfellow’, The New England Quarterly, 80, 3, 435–57. Schlereth, T. J. (1992) ‘Columbian Columbus, and Columbianism’, The Journal of American History, 79, 3, 937–68. Schulten, S. (2006) ‘Emma Willard and the graphic foundations of America’, Journal of Historical Geography, 33, 3, 542–64. Schultz, S. K. (1973) Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York, Oxford University Press).

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Smith, A. (1991) The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell). Smith, A. (1995) Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Oxford: Polity Press and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers). Todorov, T. (1997) The Conquest of America. The Question of the Other (New York: Harper Perrenial). Warren, D. (1992) ‘New Worlds, Old Orders: Native Americans and the Columbus Quincentenary’, The Public Historian, 14, 4, 71–90. Willard, E. (1837) History of the United States of America (New York, White, Gallaher & White). Willard, E. (1845) History of the United States (New York: Barnes & Co). Willard, E. (1848) ‘Letter to Miss Foster’, November 5, 1848, reprinted in J. Lord (1873) The Life of Emma Willard (New York: D. Appleton. and Company). Willard, E. (1854) Universal History in Perspective (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co). Willard, E. (1860) Abridged History of the United States, or Republic of America (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co).

7 Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Mexico D. A. Brading

I In September 1861, the former Minister of Justice, Ignacio Ramírez, publicly commemorated the Grito de Dolores, the day on which Miguel Hidalgo, a country vicar, called out the masses of central Mexico in rebellion against Spanish dominion. In evoking that moment, Ramírez declared that the Mexicans could not return to the epoch of the Aztecs, and still less consider themselves to be Spaniards; instead : ‘We come from the village of Dolores. We descend from Hidalgo, and we were born struggling like our father, for the symbols of our emancipation ...’. In September 1867, only a few months after the execution of Maximilian of Austria, the emperor imposed by the French army sent by Napoleon III, Ramírez explained that if the Father of the Country had notoriously failed to enunciate any significant doctrine, it was because he was solely inspired by the vision of an independent Mexico, liberated from colonial exploitation. In uttering the Cry of Dolores, Hidalgo had provided the Mexican people with a radical birthright, the inviolable duty of insurrection against domestic tyranny and foreign invasion (I. Ramírez, 1966, vol. I, pp. 136, 180–4). The problem with this style of discourse was that it implied a fundamental rupture with the Mexican past and distorted the intentions of the insurgent leaders. In 1810, Hidalgo gave his followers for their banner an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the universal and principal patron of New Spain, and the Indians and mestizos who joined his ill-disciplined movement marched to the war-cry of ‘Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe and death to the gachupines’, the latter the popular name for European Spaniards. Moreover, when José Maria Morelos, the priest who led the southern wing of the rebellion, convoked the Congress of Chilpancingo in 1813, he compared the Mexicans to the Israelites in Egypt suffering under Pharaoh, invoked the spirits of the Aztec emperors, and declared that: ‘We are about to re-establish the Mexican empire, improving its government’. Moreover, ‘Most Holy Mary of Guadalupe’ was acclaimed by Morelos as ‘the patron of 111

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our liberty’, whose feast day was henceforth to be celebrated as a national holiday.1 In effect, the struggle for independence was justified by a Catholic republicanism and an insurgent proto-nationalism which affirmed the existence of a Mexican nation unjustly conquered by the Spaniards and now about to regain its independence, with Hidalgo and Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec monarch, depicted as heroes united in common struggle against the Spanish foe. It was a doctrine that found expression in the Act of Independence of 1821, which grandly announced that, ‘The Mexican nation, which for threehundred years has neither had its own will nor free use of its voice, today leaves the oppression in which it has lived’ (F. T. Ramírez, 1967, pp. 122–3). If the neo-classical cult of founding fathers and republican heroes was promoted so widely throughout Spanish America in the 19th century, in part it was because democratic liberalism did not possess a strong theory of either the State or the Nation. Indeed, in the 1850s, Mexican Liberals, influenced by Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo and Edgar Quinet, preferred to celebrate the role of the people in the creation of their republican patria and, when they framed the Constitution of 1857, they specified that: ‘National sovereignty essentially and originally resides in the people’ (F. T. Ramírez, 1967, p. 613). Moreover they followed their French mentors in transforming the very meaning of the term patria when they affirmed that, without independence and the republic, no patria could exist or had ever existed in Mexico, and thereby condemned to oblivion two centuries of creole patriotism. When the Liberals swept to power, they consciously emulated the French Revolution and declared open war on the privileges, the wealth and the monastic institutions of the Catholic Church. And, when their legislation provoked a ferocious civil war, in 1859 the Liberal government, headed by President Benito Juarez, promulgated the Laws of the Reform, which separated Church and State, nationalised what remained of clerical property and dissolved the religious orders. The Church was thus thrust out of public life and reduced to a voluntary association of the faithful, sustained by their contributions. Although Liberals celebrated their Constitution as a sign that Mexico had entered the civilisation of the 19th century, the civil war and the French Intervention that followed inevitably entailed its suspension and, in consequence, throughout this period Juarez governed by virtue of ‘the special powers’ granted by Congress. It was during the 1860s that the president and his cabinet succeeded in creating an effective central government based on a coalition of state governors and regional caciques, which employed a loyal regular army to achieve a monopoly of violence within the territory of the republic.2 The leaders and servants of this authoritarian state, together with associated economic and cultural elites, composed a political nation that endured until 1910. All this proved too much for many intellectuals, and

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Ignacio Ramírez attacked the Indian president in biting terms: ‘Don Benito, you and all yours reduce politics to electoral intrigue, secret expenses, and corruption of deputies and the shedding of blood’. Moreover he lamented that the Indians, who still comprised at least a third of the population, could not be defined as Mexicans, since ‘these races still conserve their own nationality, protected by family and language’. What was the use of liberal institutions, when the rural masses remained ignorant of all that occurred beyond the confines of their locality and hence could not be described as citizens, since they lacked all idea of politics or public life? (I. Ramírez, 1966, vol. II, pp. 183–92, 495, 504). Ironically, Ramírez ended his political life as Minister of Justice in the first cabinet of General Porfirio Díaz, who was to govern Mexico autocratically until 1911.

II The entrance of positivism in Mexico occurred in 1867, when Gabino Barreda, who had studied with Auguste Comte in Paris, was entrusted with the establishment in the capital of the National Preparatory School. But, beyond the confines of this institution and its pupils, there occurred a certain shift in Mexican cultural life away from the abstract rhetoric of classical liberalism towards a newfound emphasis on scientific enquiry and empirical scholarship, which found expression in any number of initiatives. The most celebrated Mexican geographer in the late 19th century, Antonio García Cubas (1832–1912), had studied both in the Mining College and in the Academy of San Carlos, institutions which were the creations of the Bourbon Enlightenment of the late 18th century. It was in 1885 that he published his sumptuous Atlas Geográfico, Estadístico o Histórico y Pintoresco de la República Mexicana, which presented 13 maps of the country, each surrounded by illustrative scenes and explained by inset statistical graphs. The illustrations ranged from the natural grandeur of Mexico’s volcanoes and waterfalls to the artistic and archaeological splendour of its cathedrals, colleges, government ‘palaces’, pre-hispanic pyramids and Maya ruins. The presence of native peoples was registered in an ethnographic map accompanied by folkloric scenes. Where the Atlas scored was in its careful depiction of mining camps, plantation agriculture; its dramatic illustrations of highvaulting bridges carrying the newly constructed railways and the extension of telegraph lines across the country. In effect, the Atlas constituted a vibrant testimony, if physically unwieldy, a representation of Mexico past and present, and in its lavish illustration and exact statistics, it demonstrated to its selected readers the progress and newfound capacity of the state and its scientific servants (Collado, 1996, pp. 425–48 ; Iturriaga, 1992). In his Cuadro Geográfico of 1885, Garcia Cubas drew upon the national census of the early 1880s to provide an exact breakdown of the population,

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distributed according to the states of the federation and by ethnic categories. He offered this summary:

Mexican Population c. 1882–1883 European and American Spanish

1,985,117

19 per cent

Indigenous

3,970,234

38 per cent

Mixed

4,492,633

43 per cent

TOTAL

10,447,984

100 per cent

By way of exegesis, he defined the first group as being essentially European in their education and civilisation, with France rather than Spain their chief model, and concluded that ‘in this class of society resides, in general, the exercise of the professions and the vital element of capital’, be it in agriculture, mining, industry or commerce. As regards the indigenous population, he emphasised their heterogeneity, the diversity of their languages and culture, the sharp difference between the vigorous mountain communities and the peoples close to the Hispanic economy who were characterised by distrust, indolence and even degeneration. As for the ‘mixed’ sector, Garcia Cubas observed that ‘this race constitutes the working population of Mexican society’, since they were engaged in artisan activity, mining and certain forms of agriculture. But, whereas in an earlier publication he had emphasised the sheer vigour and independence of the mestizos, noting that they had fought both against Spain and the French Intervention, in the Cuadro he was content merely to indicate their aptitude for education and social cooperation.3 It was one thing to represent a country and its peoples through vigorous, accurate illustration; it was quite another to devise a narrative which explained the emergence of a Mexican nation. The founder of modern Mexican nationalism, as distinct from the proto-nationalism of the insurgents, was Vicente Riva Palacio (1832–96). The grandson of Vicente Guerrero, an insurgent hero, and the son of Mariano Riva Palacio, Liberal governor of the State of Mexico and a wealthy landowner, he entered politics at an early age and attained the rank of general during the French Intervention. Thereafter he figured as a literary journalist, an historical novelist, a poet, and historian, not to mention his term in office as Minister of Fomento under Porfirio Díaz and his last posting as Mexican minister in Madrid. Commissioned by President Manuel González to produce a history of Mexico, he attracted a small team of collaborators and published Mexico a través de los Siglos (1884–9), a profusely illustrated, lavishly bound set of five volumes printed in Spain. Riva Palacio reserved for himself the second

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volume which was devoted to the three centuries of Spanish rule, which was to say, the viceroyalty, and it was there that he expounded his theory of Mexican nationality (Monasterio, 1999, pp. 225–40). In addition to providing a narrative of events primarily focused on the 16th and 17th centuries, Riva Palacio inserted a chapter entitled ‘State of the Colony at the Close of the Sixteenth Century: Races and Castes’, in which he offered an analysis which betrayed his engagement with new social and biological theories (Palacio, 1884–9, vol. 2, pp. iii, 276, 341–7, 825). To start with, he observed that ‘to study the formation of a nationality it is necessary to have recourse to the cold, fleshless axioms of zoological philosophy and to the doctrines of the young but robust science of anthropology’. Moreover he further insisted that ‘the scientific period in which humanity now finds itself has given a new turn to the study and writing of history’. It could no longer confine itself to a simple ‘narrative of events’ but now had to examine social evolution, the influence of heredity, and view past societies as natural organisms subject to ‘the philosophical history of races and peoples’. In effect, as his uncompleted essay on Hernán Cortés demonstrated, Riva Palacio had succumbed to Charles Darwin and his theory of ‘the progress of the organism through natural selection’. Furthermore, he accepted that ‘struggle is the ineluctable condition of order in the universe, of the life of organisms; of the progress of nations; and of the well-being of individuals’. But, in addition to Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), he had also consulted his The Descent of Man (1871) both in French translation, where the great naturalist had discussed the formation of human races, defining them as ‘varieties’ of the same species rather than as separate species. In particular, Darwin argued that new races could emerge through ‘the crossing of distinct races’ which, if at first yielded highly heterogeneous mixtures, slowly consolidated into a relatively homogeneous type and overcame ‘any tendency to reversion’, the classic example of such a process being afforded by India, where Aryan invaders had intermixed with indigenous tribes (Palacio, 1884–9, vol. 2, pp. 471, 896–902; Palacio, 1997, pp. 250, 260–4).4 But, before Riva Palacio enunciated his Darwinian doctrine of Mexican nationality, he confronted the challenge presented by the recently published lecture of Ernest Renan, Qu’Est-ce qu’une Nation? (1882), a text which still figures in modern discussions of nationalism. It will be recalled that Renan argued that the individuality of nations could not be explained by the determinants of race, language, religion and geography, since exceptions to the operation of these factors could always be found, so that it was best to define a nation as ‘a living soul, a spiritual principle. ... a moral consciousness’, which was united by ‘the common possession of a rich heritage of memories’ and was animated by ‘current consent, the desire to live together’. To this Renan added that ‘an heroic past, great men, glory ... these form the social capital upon which a national idea may be founded’ and concluded that ‘a nation is a great solidarity’, its existence ratified by ‘a daily plebiscite’ (Renan, 1896, pp. 61–83;

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1947, vol. I, pp. 887–906). To these propositions Riva Palacio gave a qualified assent, accepting that no single determinant could account for the emergence of a nation, ‘not even race’, only then to add ‘but also it does not suffice to share an inheritance of memories of national glories or sufferings ... to form the soul of a nation’. Indeed, it was necessary to invoke all the factors that Renan had dismissed, since ‘nations, like individuals, ought to have a spirit, a national soul, but also a body, a material organism that is equally national’. In effect, Riva Palacio rejected any simple cultural or voluntaristic definition and emphasised the social and biological bases of nationality. Moreover, he further argued that, where a country was inhabited by different races, it was impossible to conceive of ‘a national soul’ and still less to form ‘a great moral personality’. As the example of the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon races demonstrated, each race had a different way of looking at men and things, and in countries where they were combined there only existed confederations rather than nationalities (Palacio, 1884–9, pp. 471–2). Turning to the case of Mexico, Riva Palacio consulted the Cuadro de Castas, the scheme of races that were often painted in the 18th century, and accepted their perverse logic, which was to say that, through intermarriage, mestizos were easily accepted into the Spanish category, whereas the descendants of mulattos exhibited atavism, or reversion to African types. This led to the conclusion that ‘with the passage of one or two centuries, the true Mexican, the Mexican of the future’ would be the mestizo. To demonstrate how this new race would emerge, Riva Palacio executed a remarkable intellectual manoeuvre when he declared that the American Indians, who formed but one race, had entered ‘a period of bodily perfection and progress superior to all other known races’. The reasons he offered to justify this opinion were taken from Darwin and consisted of the observable facts that Indians possessed little body hair, lacked wisdom teeth, and had ordinary molars rather than canine teeth. The purpose behind this affirmation can be observed when Riva Palacio then cited Darwin’s Variation of Animals and Plants where, in ‘the struggle for existence’, it was proven by experience ‘that races which are very perfected degenerate rapidly without a careful selection’. In effect this meant that, when Indians were crossed with other races, their mestizo offspring did not possess their physical characteristics. By 1600 both mestizos and mulattos had grown greatly in number in New Spain and already displayed a greater resistance to diseases than the Indians and exhibited a vigorous, even audacious character. On the one hand, Riva Palacio asserted the American Spaniards, the creoles ... entirely homogenised themselves with the mestizos’. In consequence, here was ‘the germ of a new people on earth’, that with the passage of years ‘would come to acquire the indisputable right of its autonomy, forming a new nationality’ (Palacio, 1884–9, pp. 473–9). Despite his philosophical pretensions, Riva Palacio failed to encounter any way to demonstrate his premature conclusions through citation of documents and elaboration of an historical narrative. Instead, he proffered

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a general conclusion in which he repeated and developed the affirmations already set forth in his chapter on races and castes. To start with he emphasised that ‘the history of the viceroyalty in New Spain is not the history of Mexican people’ since, as a colony governed by Spaniards, its history belonged to Spain. And yet, for all that: Mexico began to count the true history of its existence since the first children of the conquerors and of the women of the conquered land formed the nucleus of a new race that, over the passage of three hundred years, had to grow, extending across the face of New Spain and, surpassing the races to whom it owed its origin, to form first a society, after to conquer its independence and then to acquire the title of a people. The Mexicans had come to recognise that they formed a society and it was this society which had proclaimed itself to be a nation, conquering its autonomy through combat and the expense of blood. Riva Palacio then enlarged upon the special characteristics of the new race: In general, the mestizo was far from believing himself to be a Spaniard, and even when the father, the grandfather or the grandmother who were born in the peninsula gave him the right to be registered as a Spaniard in the parochial registers at the moment of his baptism, the experience of life proved to him that he was far from being considered one. At the same time, the Indians did not recognise mestizos as belonging to their communities. The result was that, as the mestizos grew more numerous and found that they were neither Indians nor could be accepted as Spaniards, then their class ‘had the necessity of amalgamating and recognising itself as Mexican’. In a word, the mestizos were pariahs and that was ‘the base on which was raised the unification of the new race; a unification that was the first step towards forming an independent nationality’ (Palacio, 1884–9, pp. 896, 904–5). However, independence could not have been achieved so easily had not the Spaniards extended their conquests to encompass the vast territories that lay between Guatemala and the northern frontiers, conquests that were necessary ‘to prepare for the advent of a free and strong nation in the New World’. Thanks to viceregal government the inhabitants of these territories possessed the same religion, language and laws and, indeed, ‘the administrative unity’ prepared almost perfectly ‘the structure of the independent nation’. As will be observed from these remarks, Riva Palacio employed the term ‘nationality’ to denote the new race or people, and the term ‘nation’ to denote the state which that nationality had founded, a state which inevitably adopted many of the structures of the viceregal regime. He concluded by drawing a comparison with the United States. Whereas the 13 colonies had been settled by

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immigrants from Great Britain and hence shared the same blood and formed the same race as their progenitors, by contrast, in Spanish America: The independence of the nation was conquered by a people that was entirely new on the face of the earth, a race that was born form the crossing of the American and European races and, being the descendant of both, bore physical and moral characteristics that were contrary to those received from its progenitors. As we can see, Riva Palacio followed closely the Darwinian description of the crossing of Aryans and indigenous tribes in India but, in so doing, provided a narrative based on history and social memory that was intensely populist and Liberal (Palacio, 1884–9, pp. 907–9, 914). Judged by the ethnic nomenclature of the viceregal regime, Riva Palacio’s argument would appear to be ill-founded since, according to the census of 1792, only 22 per cent of the population of New Spain belonged to the casta category, as against 18 per cent American Spaniards and 60 per cent Indians; and of the castas more than half were reckoned to be mulattos. The natural leaders and dominant strata in colonial society were the creoles, and yet they barely figure in Riva Palacio’s scheme of things. How are we to explain his misconception? The answer lies, so it would seem, in his unpublished essay on Hernán Cortés, where Riva Palacio identified both monarchists and republicans of post-independence Mexico as belonging to ‘the mestizo race’, but sharply divided by both ideas and ethnic identification, since the former first conceived of themselves to be ‘true Spaniards’, whereas the latter claimed descent from the Aztecs. In essence he implicitly united creoles with mestizos, assuming an underlying homogeneity of interests and type. And indeed, in point of fact, by the close of the 18th century, the official ethnic designations often bore only an arbitrary relation to somatic realities, so that the social difference between a poor creole and a mestizo was not great. The conceptual achievement of Riva Palacio was to absorb the creole element into the mestizo category and then proclaim the result to constitute a new race and the basis of a distinctive Mexican nationality.5

III In a jocular literary portrait of Justo Sierra, published in 1882, Vicente Riva Palacio lamented that the romantic young poet of 1868 and 1869, so full of achievement and promise, had retreated into public life and now proclaimed himself to be a positivist, so that ‘instead of talking of Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Tasso, Petrarch, whom he knew so well, he now expatiates on Auguste Comte, Stuart Mill, Bain and Spencer’. Just as in the religion of Zoroaster, where two opposing powers dispute the fate of humanity, so too in Justo Sierra ‘there are two forces that contend for his spirit: poetry and positivism,

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Victor Hugo and Spencer’, a conflict that left him victim of ‘a kind of spiritual bigamy’ (Palacio, 1996, pp. 74–5). Of Sierra’s youthful veneration for Victor Hugo there can be no doubt, since in 1869 he saluted the French poet as a genius equal to Shakespeare and, as late as 1875, he identified the French Revolution with romanticism and recalled that, as a ‘young man of seventeen’, he had been enchanted by Jules Michelet’s history of that great upheaval (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. III, pp. 65–78, 251, 417; Dumas, 1986). In 1878, however, Sierra helped to launch La Libertad, a review founded to advance the cause of ‘political positivism’. Its basic principle was that ‘man is a little cell in that great natural organism called society’ and that society was subject, as Spencer had demonstrated, to ‘the necessary laws of evolution’, which largely consisted in ‘a double movement of integration and differentiation, in a march from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous ...’. As applied to Mexico, it demanded recognition of the danger that ‘the inflexible laws of progress’ might well crush Mexico, since the country possessed ‘an abortive nationality, badly endowed for the struggle for life’, especially when compared to that ‘marvellous collective animal’, the United States, which stood poised to devour its territory. Yet Mexico was cursed with a breed of Liberal politicians who parodied French Jacobinism, voicing metaphysical dogmas and parading their devotion to a ‘radical democratic creed’ (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. IV, pp. 133–4, 181, 238–9). In his enthusiasm for uttering hard truths, Sierra mocked the adulation of the Mexican Constitution of 1857, which he dismissed as ‘a beautiful poem’, framed by intellectuals who had read too many European books but who had little idea of Mexican history, customs or necessities, so that all they succeeded in doing was to write ‘a book which is always closed’. In a word, the Constitution had never been observed. As it was, the country desperately needed ‘a centre of authority’ which, owing to the absence of the ‘spiritual power’ advocated by Comte, inevitably had to be supplied by ‘public authority’. It was now time for the Liberal party ‘to convert itself into a government party, profoundly conservative and addicted to free institutions’. In effect, ‘the moment has arrived to initiate an era of organic conservation of our country’ (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. IV, pp. 150–1, 173, 223, 239). In 1889, Justo Sierra published an extended essay entitled México Social y Político, in which he sought, among other things, to rebut the views expressed only a year before by the French sociologist, Gustave le Bon who, contrary to Darwin, had defined human races as separate species and had argued that the mestizo offspring of inter-racial unions were morally inferior to their progenitors. In particular, he described Latin America as composed of ‘bastard populations, without energy, without a future and completely incapable of offering the weakest contribution to the progress of civilisation’ (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. IX, 126–33; le Bon, 1888, pp. 525–32).6 In response to this broadside attack, launched at a time when European imperialism was engaged in the annexation of Africa, Justo Sierra admitted

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that the Indian communities of Mexico remained submerged ‘in incurable passivity’, afflicted by drunkenness, high infant mortality, a poor diet, and illiteracy, so that in their present condition they could never become ‘an active agent of civilisation’. But he was quick to add that they could be transformed by the provision of education and improved nutrition. At the other end of the social scale, the creole landowners and the lawyers and clergy who served them constituted ‘a pseudo-aristocracy without roots in the past, without tradition, history, blood or future’. They exhibited little patriotism, kept the peons on their estates in virtual slavery, and did not invest their capital in the country, so that ‘not a single great work of common utility’ could be attributed to them (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. IX, 127, 143–5). By contrast, so Sierra affirmed, ‘the mestizo family ... has constituted the dynamic element in our history’. Whereas Alexander von Humboldt had calculated in 1804 that within the five million inhabitants of New Spain there were only 1.3 million mestizos, in 1885 the leading Mexican geographer, Antonio García Cubas, had counted 43 per cent of the population of the Mexican republic as mestizos, as against 38 per cent indigenous and 19 per cent American Spaniards. As these changing proportions clearly indicated, elements of both the Indian and white stratas had been absorbed into the mestizo ranks which, by then, obviously constituted ‘the Mexican family’. But Sierra then defined the mestizos as a revolutionary cadre in Mexico which, acting ‘on the basis of new ideas now common in civilised society, has broken the power of the privileged classes like the clergy, which had obstinately impeded the constitution of our nationality’. They had destroyed the power of monarchy, expropriated the wealth of the Church, encouraged the entrance of foreign capital and promoted education, and thus were responsible for ‘the colossal improvements in the material order’ which had characterised Mexico in recent years. Moreover, within the economic sphere, it was clear that agriculture was dominated by creoles and Indians, whereas mestizos ‘constitute, in contrast, the majority of the urban and industrial population’, and were ‘more informed, more active and more capable of being transformed’ that was the case with their rural counterparts (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. IX, pp. 127–33). As will be observed, Sierra thus adopted Riva Palacio’s concept of the mestizo as the basis of Mexican nationality and then enlarged it to encompass a political dimension in which the Liberals of the Reforma were identified as mestizos. But there existed an internal contradiction in Sierra’s essay between these buoyant assertions and his admission that industry of any scale in Mexico depended on foreign entrepreneurs and investment, and that the mestizo workers in these enterprises were paid low wages. In a striking image he compared Mexico to a great ocean liner which remained anchored at port owing to a lack of sufficient fuel to impel it forward. Was it not necessary to reject Spencer’s doctrine of the ‘benevolent inactivity of the State’ and, by means of public intervention in the sphere of education, seek to create a people more fit for ‘the struggle for life’ and thereby provide a cure for ‘our unhappy social inferiority?’ And yet he freely admitted that ‘the great

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industry, the Mexican industry par excellence ... is the bureaucracy’, which sustained the middle class. In effect, the new Liberal Party, which had emerged victorious in the 1870s, embraced liberty as a symbol and chose dictatorship as a means of government. The passive and incoherent condition of native communities signified that all Mexican governments had to exercise more power than was granted by the 1857 constitution, but in so doing they ‘continued the same policy of conservation, of order, in a word, authoritarian, initiated by Juarez’ (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. IX, pp. 140–8, 163–5). In his México: Su Evolución Política (1990), Sierra described the tumultuous history of the 19th century and invoked the categories of Hipolyte Taine, which was to say, ‘the environment, the race and history’. He affirmed that the Insurgency and the Reforma constituted for Mexico ‘two violent accelerations of its evolution’, two stages in its emancipation from Spain and the colonial regime and, above all, ‘two stages in the same work of creating a national person, master of itself’. But, owing to the social constitution of Mexico, its history and geography, that national person required dictatorship and when in 1865 Juarez ‘transformed the president into a dictator’, all true patriots applauded, since only through that measure could the republic have been saved. The result was that, during the struggle against the French Intervention, Mexico lost the lives of 300,000 of its citizens. But ‘it acquired a soul, national unity ... the republic was the nation’ and ‘from that moment the Reforma, the Republic and the Patria became the same thing’. As will be observed, what we here encounter is a romantic political history in which the hero is not the new race, the mestizo nationality proposed by Riva Palacio; instead, it is the moral person, the nation personified, who is the suffering, struggling and conquering protagonist in this war for survival and independence. But if that national person or soul were to express its will, it required embodiment, a State, in a political regime. After all, Sierra admitted that, during the wars of the Reforma and the French Intervention, Liberal generals often had to recruit their armies by forced levy, drawing their men from ‘the passive mass that constituted the basis of our nationality (mestizos and Indians), masses without any spontaneity’. In effect, the epic story that Sierra related was the prise to power of a new political nation, a Liberal nation which came to inhabit state offices across the republic. Moreover, Sierra concluded his great work by admitting that in Mexico ‘there is no other class of action than the bourgeoisie’ albeit, since ‘the mestizos ... are the true national family, in it the dominant bourgeoisie has its centre and its roots’. The political nation which exercised power under Porfirio Díaz could thus be defined as much in class as in ethnic terms (Sierra, 1948–96, vol. XII, pp. 250–2, 346, 358, 387).7

IV The intellectual heir of Vicente Riva Palacio and Justo Sierra was Andrés Molina Enríquez (1868–1940), who converted their ideas about mestizo

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nationality and the Liberal patria into an integrated ideology of revolutionary nationalism. Educated in the radical, authoritarian tradition of Mexican Liberalism, a Social Darwinist, and an ardent advocate of agrarian reform, Molina Enríquez was a provincial lawyer who played a significant role in the drafting of the agrarian article of the 1917 Constitution, but otherwise occupied a series of modest bureaucratic positions. It was in Juárez y la Reforma (1906) that he most obviously echoed his mentors, since he referred to ‘the mestizo element, which is to say ... the radical Liberal party’, whose victory during the Reforma signified the transition from the creole-governed disintegration after Independence to the ‘integral’ epoch of President Porfiro Díaz. After exclaiming that ‘for us mestizos, Juàrez is almost a god’, he asserted that, when by reason of the special powers granted him during the French Intervention the Indian president acted as ‘an absolute dictator’, his government appeared as well-nigh perfect to the mestizos. Indeed, he defined the Reforma as inaugurating ‘the definitive, interior construction of nationality’, which thus marked the beginning of national history in Mexico (Enríquez, 1972, pp. 93, 114,143, 150; Benítez, 1992; Shadle, 1994). Although Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales (1909) was funded by General Bernardo Reyes, at that time a popular contender for the presidential succession, it was written in the prodding prose of a sociological treatise. Indeed, when in 1912 Luis Cabrera warmly commended it in Congress as offering the best analysis of the current agrarian crisis, he also described it as ‘remarkably tedious’.8 It opened with a patient exposition of Taine’s three determining factors, ‘the environment, race and the historical moment’, even if it was the geography of the central plateau, the interconnected series of basins that constituted the cereal zone, which occupied all the exposition. But, if we turn at once to the closing pages, then we encounter the essential, nationalist purpose of the author, since here he readily admitted that Mexico did not as yet form a true patria. In effect, there does not exist among all the units which compose the population that occupies the territory, the unity of origin, the unity of religion, the unity of type, the unity of customs, the unity of language, the unity of evolutionary development, the unity of desires, of purpose and of aspirations that, taken together, determine the unity of the ideal. But he dismissed the possibility that the United States might intervene to thwart ‘a movement or revolution in our country that we can call nationalist’, and concluded with a ringing exhortation to his compatriots: It is now time ... that we look for our Road to Damascus, seeking to multiply our numbers, to grow in well-being, to acquire a consciousness of our collective being ... forming a notion of the patria that will serve us at

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home to co-ordinate all our efforts and abroad to maintain our common existence in security. It is now time to form a nation in the true sense of that word, the Mexican nation, and make this nation the absolute sovereign of its identity, master and lord of its future. The burden of his long book was to explain just how this grand objective could be achieved (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 8–11, 292, 359–61).9 To start with, Molina Enríquez presented an idiosyncratic theory of social evolution by natural selection, albeit as much Lamarckian as Darwinist in its operation. He contrasted two forms of society, based probably on Herbert Spencer’s primitive and militant stages of human development, but here presented as enduring antitheses. In the first category, so he averred, survival of the fittest occurred on an individual basis within the social group, whereas in the second category, survival of the fittest was conducted collectively in a struggle between groups, and thus required a greater degree of social organisation. The first class had a power of resistance and was thus characterised by ‘its more advanced selection’, whereas the second class had a power of action and was characterised by ‘its more advanced evolution’. Contemporary China offered an example of the first type since, although its individuals were admirably fitted for survival, the race as such was backward and weak. By contrast, France offered an image of the second type since, through competition and warfare it had produced examples of human perfection, even if it was now in decline (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 248–63; Spencer, 1876–96, vol. II, pp. 245–6). In a later work, La revolución Agraria en Mexico 1910–1920 (1932–6), Molina Enríquez identified this contrast as embodied respectively in Asia and Europe, the former composed of great families of pacific agriculturists, patriarchal in their mode of political authority, and the latter engaged in constant warfare, endowed with strong, absolute states and sustained by individual property rights (Enríquez, 1986, vol. I, pp. 19–28). Applying this theory to Mexico, Molina Enríquez affirmed that the indigenous peoples of America ‘possess a powerful racial force’ since, through a long process of selection they had adapted to the environment in a superb fashion. All this was but prologue to his central affirmation that the mestizos, who had sprung from the irregular unions of Indian women and Spanish conquerors and who for centuries were regarded with disdain by both creoles and natives, surviving as virtual pariahs, had struggled for survival in harsh conditions and had thereby developed incomparable powers of resistance, qualities born of their adaptation to the American environment. Although ‘the type of the mestizo was and is the type of an inferior race’, nevertheless, in character ‘the mestizo, who has always been poor, is vulgar, rude, mistrustful, restless and impetuous; but also stubborn, faithful, generous and long-suffering’ (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 42, 257). But Molina Enríquez converted cultural deficiency into ethnic strength when he affirmed:

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Neither the native nor the mestizo, in spite of the improvement that the latter has achieved, are distinguished, as we have had occasion to remark, either by their beauty or for their culture, nor in general for the refinement of races of more advanced evolution, but rather for the conditions of their incomparable adaptation to the environment, by the quality of their powerful animal vitality. (Enríquez, 1909, p. 263) In tracing the dramatic history of the 19th century, when mestizos entered politics and, in the person of Porfirio Díaz, conquered the presidency, Molina Enríquez drew explicitly upon Ernst Haeckel’s History of Creation, where he encountered the dictum that ‘hybridism is a source of the origin of new species’. More important, Haeckel not merely combined Darwin and Lamarck in happy synthesis, but also cited Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants, where it was argued that every genetic form possessed its ‘inner constructive force’ or ‘original type’, which was perpetuated by genetic inheritance, albeit modified by adaptation to external forces (Haeckel, 1892, vol. I, pp. 83–93, 304–6). In effect, the mestizo race, which was ‘nothing more than the native race advantageously modified by Spanish blood’, possessed its own organic vitality and indeed was destined to absorb the native peoples into its ranks. All this led Molina Enríquez to affirm that, since the mestizos were the only true Mexicans, then: ‘It is thus absolutely necessary that all our population should be re-founded in the mestizo element, so that it is transformed into a true nationality’ (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 263, 328). There was, however, an obstacle to the achievement of this objective and that was the survival of the creoles, the American Spaniards, whose numbers and influence had been reinforced during the late 19th century by European immigrants, who dominated the import trade and had latterly invested in manufacturing industry. For Molina Enríquez, the creoles constituted an essentially foreign element in Mexico, an exotic graft on the main trunk of the nation, who always looked abroad for inspiration and support. Creoles never could forget their ancestry and had supported the French Intervention and Maximilian’s short-lived empire. Although few in numbers, they constituted an aristocracy and readily welcomed immigrants from Europe or the United States. Indeed, they were not ‘Mexican in spirit’ and agreed with foreigners in their contempt for the Mexican populace since, ‘in our country it is a widely held opinion on this point that we are a people of social units who know less, who are capable of less, who do less, and who are worth less than the social units of other peoples of the world’. At the other end of the social scale, Molina Enríquez encountered the reverse problem, which was that the native peoples of Mexico comprised a series of communities which, by reason of their different languages, their poverty and rural isolation, rarely participated in national life, since all their loyalties, their patriotic sentiments, were centred on their local communities (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 229–31, 292–5). In framing this critique, he cited

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Theodore Roosevelt’s The American Ideal (1897), where ‘true Americanism’ was portrayed as threatened by the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of the sea-board elites, who imagined Europe to be superior to America, and by ‘the patriotism of the village’, which exalted the little community at the expense of ‘the great nation’ (Roosevelt, 1969 [1897], pp. 15, 19–22, 32). Not content with mere assertions, Molina Enríquez provided a tabulated scheme in which he boldly established the correlations of race, class and occupation. To start with, he identified the privileged class as a broad category, which included all foreigners and creoles, some mestizos and a few Indians. By occupation the creoles divided into landlords, the upper clergy, moderate Liberals and new men, which was to say, the children of recent immigrants, business men. If the creoles and foreigners dominated economic life, by contrast the mestizos in the privileged class comprised the political ‘directors’, professional men, army officers and the skilled working class. The only Indians in this category were the lower clergy. The diminutive middle class was embodied in a single group, the mestizo proprietary farmers and rancheros. Finally, the lower class was entirely composed of Indians and divided into soldiers, unskilled workers, day-labourers and the inhabitants of the pueblos, the traditional peasantry (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 220–1). This table is obviously an ideological construct that warrants close inspection, since its simplifications reveal the preconceptions of its author. To start with, Molina Enríquez also cited a recent census, which divided the Mexican population into three groups, listing Indians at 35 per cent, mestizos at 50 per cent and creoles at 15 per cent (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 197). Judged numerically, the table was wildly skewed. At best, the occupations ascribed to mestizos could not have amounted to more than a fifth of the population. Moreover, there were many creoles in the professions apparently dominated by mestizos. Indeed, judged by occupation, the overwhelming majority of the Mexican population was here defined as Indians. But if we conjugate the table from the side of occupation and political affiliation, then it makes more sense. Which is to say, that for Molina Enríquez the ethnic categories were defined, not by somatic appearance, but by economic and political employment. Several bishops at this time were obviously mestizo, but their occupation belonged to the creole interest. If rancheros were defined as middle class, it was obviously because proprietary farmers constituted the ideal agrarian basis of a Liberal society. In effect, if we recall that most politicians in this epoch were educated as lawyers, then the distinction between creoles and mestizos is found in a contrast between the economic interests of the landlords and merchant-industrialists and the political interests of the bureaucracy and the professions. When Molina Enríquez thus defined mestizos as the only true Mexicans, he thereby justified the right of the Mexican state, which they dominated, to reform or destroy the social and economic interests defined as creole, which impeded the consolidation of Mexican nationality.

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None of all this would have proved significant had not Molina Enríquez expounded it alongside a slashing attack on the great landed estates, the haciendas, which had dominated the rural scene for three centuries. In this area he drew upon Wistano Luis Orozco’s Legislation y Jurisprudencia sobre Terrenos Baldíos (1895), where all land titles in Mexico were traced back to the mercedes or grants issued by colonial authorities after the Spanish Conquest acting on behalf of the Spanish Crown, which retained, however, ‘eminent domain’ in all its American possessions. At the same time, viceroys had respected the rights of Indian communities to retain possession of ancestral lands sufficient for their maintenance. However, during the Reforma, the Liberals had exhibited an ‘insolent disdain’ for the customary tenure of these communities, with the result that many natives lost their land. Where Orozco scored was in his comparison of two districts in the state of Zacatecas, where Villanueva presented the desolate spectacle of an area ruined by the malign monopoly of six great estates owned by absentee landlords, who obdurately refused to lease their lands to tenants, yet lacked capital to exploit their property adequately. By contrast, the town of Jerez benefited from the enterprise of 2,000 proprietary farmers and stockmen, rancheros, where land was freely bought and sold according to the operation of inheritance and individual talent. Orozco condemned the hacienda as a feudal institution established in the wake of the Spanish Conquest and defined it as ‘a great social crime in its origin and a great social cancer in its history and in its present state’. Moreover, ‘democracy is thus impossible in a population which is feudally constituted’ (Orozco, 1895, vol. I, pp. 346–7, 441–3, vol. 2, 904, 937–46, 960, 1084, 1097). In Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales, Molina Enríquez echoed and extended Orozco’s analysis, praising the Spanish Crown for creating two types of land tenure in New Spain, types appropriate to the evolutionary development of the Indian and Spanish sectors. The hacienda originated in the mercedes or land grants issued to individual settlers, whereas the prescriptive rights of native pueblos were confirmed in mercedes which were issued to the community rather than to individuals. But, at all times, so Molina Enríquez argued, the Crown preserved its patrimonial right of reversion over all landed property. Tragedy struck when, during the Reforma, the Lerdo Law of 1856 confused the corporate ownership of land by Church institutions, notably the religious orders, and the communal tenure of native villages. Haciendas owned by the Church were simply sold to creole landlords and investors. But Indian lands were then either sold, if they had been on lease, or were partitioned on an individual basis. But the process was rarely accompanied by issue of notarised land titles and ‘in our system of property, in reality prescription has not been recognised’. The result was that many mestizo farmers actively sought to expropriate former native holdings, albeit often in alliance with native elites (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 28–32, 50–62, 116–21). In addition to the failure of the Reforma to provide adequate Titulación, it also

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did not endow the federal executive with a ‘juridical personality’, so that the State, as such, could not become a landowner. Legislation was thus required to create ‘a new personality, the National Sovereignty’ and also provide native communities with a constitutional existence, which they had lost, at much the same time (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 149–52). Where Molina Enríquez advanced beyond Orozco was in his account of the great estate, where he drew upon his experience as a provincial notary to assert that: ‘within the territorial limits of an hacienda, the proprietor exercises the absolute dominion of a feudal lord. He shouts, he strikes, he punishes, he imprisons, he violates women and he even kills’. Many of the managers of these estates were often Spanish immigrants of the worst type. But Molina Enríquez also framed an economic analysis of haciendas of the central, cereal zone, excluding properties in the arid north and the tropical south. Most estates, so he observed, sought to encompass all types of terrain within their boundaries, so that, for example, they could pasture the livestock they employed in the cultivation and transport of their produce. So also, they paid low wages to their peons, but also provided regular maize rations from their own harvest. Where possible, haciendas were planted with magueys to produce pulque, at that time the favoured alcoholic beverage of the populace, since it yielded a safe, regular income. However, as regards their main activity, cereal production, they were in competition both with rancheros and Indian communities, which sold their surplus in local markets. Only after this surplus was exhausted did haciendas enter the market and sell at higher prices. Molina Enríquez’s analysis led him to conclude that ‘the hacienda is not a business ... among us, the hacendado as a good creole is not an agriculturist, but on the one side a feudal lord, and on the other, a rentier: the true agriculturist among us is the ranchero’. The conclusion was inevitable: the time had come for the great estate to be destroyed (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 85–6, 90–106). With Díaz still president in 1909 and his patron, General Reyes, hoping for a peaceful succession, all Molina Enríquez could suggest was that the State should intervene to impose a territorial tax on all haciendas and impose heavy death duties on their owners, measures that could be supplemented by a land-bank to purchase and partition estates. But, when the rebellion led by Francisco Madero succeeded in ousting Díaz from office in 1911, then he moved swiftly to criticise Wistano Luis Orozco for his defence of ‘the eternal inviolability of the sacred principle that guarantees the rights of property’, and to assert that the destruction of the feudal system embodied in the Mexican hacienda required ‘the violent action of a bloody and implacable revolution’, similar to that which had occurred in France after 1789. He demanded the ‘brusque’ expropriation of all haciendas and their partition into ‘properties that did not exceed five hundred hectares’ (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 108–10, 2001, pp. 438–42). But his proclamation, which earned him a long spell in prison, was overtaken by the Plan of Ayala, issued in November

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1911 by the peasant movement led by Emiliano Zapata, which called for the distribution of a third of all hacienda land among the native pueblos. It was in answer to that movement, which dominated the state of Morelos, where the great sugar plantations commanded the open plains, that Luis Cabrera, a leading politician and former associate of Molina Enríquez, lauded Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales as offering Mexican remedies for Mexican problems, which was to say, that it recommended a return to the land system of New Spain, where Indian communities had held land in communal tenure, protected by prescription and the Crown (Cabrera, 1972, vol. I, pp. 141–9, vol. IV, p. 243). It was thanks to Cabrera, by then a cabinet minister, that Molina Enríquez was appointed as legal advisor to the Constituent Congress that met at Queretaro in 1916. There he prepared successive drafts of Article 27 of the Constitution, which was defined as a reformed version of its Liberal predecessor of 1857. According to contemporary accounts, at first he sought simply to insert a statement that the Mexican Republic inherited all the rights over landed property once held by the Spanish Crown. But after criticism, the agreed text opened with the resounding declaration: ‘The ownership of the lands and waters within the limits of national territory correspond originally to the nation, which has had and has the right to transmit dominion over them to individuals, constituting private property’. As such, the nation always retained the right to impose on private property whatever measures that the public interest demanded, be it for more efficient exploitation or for more equitable distribution of ownership. At the same time, the article called for the destruction and partition of all latifundia, the maintenance of small agricultural properties, and the provision of land for all ‘nuclei’ of population. Supplementary clauses called for the return of all communal lands of the pueblos lost owing to the operation of the Lerdo Law and subsequent legislation; and resurrected the principle of communal tenure in the form of ejidos (Enríquez, 1996, pp. 162, 170–90).10 Here then, Molina Enríquez actively intervened to devise the constitutional foundation for the programme of agrarian reform that within two decades was destined to destroy the traditional haciendas of Mexico and endow a wide range of rural communities with land held in communal tenure. When Article 27 was later attacked as communistic, in 1922, Molina Enríquez offered a robust defence of its provisions, arguing that it did little more than to endow the Mexican nation with the primordial rights over land and water that had once been exercised by the Spanish Crown. The 1917 Constitution was a revision of its 1857 predecessor in a philosophical sense, since it followed Comte in defining the rights of society as superior to the rights of the individual. It thereby marked the transition from classical laissez-faire Liberalism to an interventionist, collective form of Liberalism. For all that, the clause which defended the maintenance of the small property, defined as 200 hectares of unirrigated land, expressed

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the traditional Liberal vision of a rural society based on the proprietary farmer. Some years later, he attacked the proposals of the National Agrarian Party, which confused the land needs of Indians and mestizos, since the latter were better served by the provision of individually own properties. Moreover, as he later admitted, the concession of communal tenure to Indian communities in the form of ejidos, had been originally envisaged as a transitional phase, especially since in most cases these lands were cultivated in separate plots on a family basis (Córdova, 1978, pp. 465–78; Enríquez, s.d., pp. 32–4). Educated in the principles of Comtean positivism in an epoch when Mexico was the fiefdom of Porfirio Díaz, Molina Enríquez never acquired any taste for democratic, representative government. Moreover, his great mentor, Herbert Spencer, had argued that ‘hybrid societies’, composed of different races, were inherently unstable and could only be organised on the basis of ‘compulsory co-operation, since units much opposed in their natures cannot work together spontaneously’. As we have seen, Molina Enríquez had long since venerated Juárez and his dictatorial mode of government. So to, in Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales he praised ‘the inspired, happy and fortunate policies of our present president’ and declared that, thanks to the abrogation of the authority of both Congress and the courts and the concentration of political power in the presidency, Díaz had introduced ‘the integral policy that, in reality, is the viceregal policy, adapted to the circumstances...’. What is remarkable, however, is that, in his Revolución Agraria, published in the 1930s, he remained faithful to his idol, portraying Díaz as manifesting a perfect equilibrium of Indian and Spanish elements, a combination which issued into ‘an attractive example of the mestizo type’. Once more, he lauded ‘the dictatorship of Don Porfirio’, since ‘it had encountered in its structure and in its very stability the definitive formula of national governments’. The president had rightly perceived that ‘for mestizos and Indians the spontaneous and natural form of government was dictatorship’, even if he chose to dignify it by observance of constitutional forms of election (Spencer, 1876–96, vol. I, pp. 594–6; Enríquez, 1909, pp. 63–5, 1986, vol. IV, p, 13, vol. III, p. 161, vol. IV, pp. 13–18, 29). To cap his tribute, he cited an article of Ireneo Paz, where that journalist converted eulogy into blasphemy when he answered his own query: ‘In what does General Díaz seem like God? In that he makes men from nothing and he makes them in his own likeness’ (Enríquez, 1986, vol. III, p. 164). But in the same way that the Reforma betrayed the Indians, so in his last years Díaz betrayed the mestizos. He allowed José Ives Limantour, the brilliant son of French immigrants, to become Treasury Minister and leader of the Científicos, a group of lawyers and financial ‘experts’, who came to occupy important positions in the government and who eventually succeeded in certain key states in replacing mestizo state governors by well-born creole landowners. The same group established close relations with

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foreign investors and immigrants and, at times, promoted the creole sons of these men to high office. So also, they encouraged large-scale American investment, with the result that Mexicans had to endure the brusque manners, the lack of courtesy, and the unscrupulous dealings of American businessmen. Indeed, so Molina Enríquez lamented, the very language of commerce in the capital had become English. All these foreigners and new creoles betrayed a general contempt for the Mexican populace. Moreover, the last years of Díaz’s presidency were accompanied by the savage exploitation of the Yaqui and Maya Indians. By then, so Molina Enríquez observed: ‘The great national interests are concentrated in the hands of a privileged minority that, thanks to its situation, with increasing avidity sucks all the riches of the country’.50 Wages for labourers in both town and country were kept low and foreign workers were preferred to Mexicans. It was in this context that Molina Enríquez observed that, were the Americans ever to invade Mexico again, the only possible response would be to destroy the railways and retreat to the mountains to conduct guerrilla warfare. He further commented that: ‘Among nations, as among individuals, the progressive disappearance of the weak is a condition of progress that obeys, as Spencer said, the action of an immense and benevolent Providence’. It was thus up to each nation to preserve itself by ‘natural, collective selection’, which in Mexico entailed authoritarian government and the creation of a unified nationality. However, he adopted the mantle of a prophet and predicted that once the population had increased to 50 million, as against the 15 million of his own day, then the mestizo race would cross the frontier of the United States and ‘not only will it resist the clash with the American race of the North, but in that clash it will conquer’ (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 265–9, 344, 352). As we have seen, Molina Enríquez concluded Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales with the admission that Mexico did not as yet constitute a true patria, since its population was not united by common ideals or common nationality and that it was necessary to create a true nation. Prior to this stirring exhortation, he attempted, without much success, to clarify the distinctions between patria, race and nation. His discussion started by citing Justo Sierra’s definition of the patria as ‘the altar and the home’. From that he inferred that the patriarchal family, rather than the individual, was the basis of society, which was thus ‘an extended association of brothers’. Yet he also asserted that the patria was ‘the unity of the common ideal’, albeit without specifying the character of that ideal. But he then argued that, if the patria possessed its own territory and property system, then it possessed its own ‘integral force’ that would operate to create mutual interdependence and social unity and thereby was likely to initiate that movement’ from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in which consists, according to the formula of Spencer, in evolution and progress’ (Enríquez, 1909, pp. 273, 281–5, 338). What clearly emerged from this discussion was a certain confusion

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between the concepts of patria and nation and the enduring influence of the Liberal tradition on the public doctrines of revolutionary nationalism. In a pamphlet published in 1925, Molina Enríquez struck a personal note, when he confessed that: In spite of the colour of health and the flowing beard that give my face, which is half- Arab and half-Jewish in profile, an appearance of the Spanish type, in the depths of my being, owing to the unions of Aragonese and Andalucian ancestors with Indian units (my maternal grandmother was an Indian of pure blood), I feel myself to be an Indian at heart and an Indian in culture. (Enríquez, s.d., p. 5) Whether the Otomis who inhabited Jilotepec, the district where he was born, would have accepted him as such is doubtful, since his mother descended from a family of landowners. What this affirmation indicated was the rise of indigenismo in Mexico during the 1920s and the dwindling influence of evolutionary sociology. For all that, in 1936, Molina Enríquez saluted the ‘sublime genius’ of Comte and described himself as ‘a positivist of absolute convictions’. However, in his Revolución Agraria, he now criticised the common illusion of Karl Marx and what he called the ‘first theory of evolution’ that assumed that all peoples had to follow ‘a common trajectory, in which some appear as advanced and others as backward’ (Enríquez, 1935, pp. 3–5, 17, 1986, vol. V, pp. 11–12). It was in this context that, in part, inspired by Lenin’s Imperialism, he launched a fierce attack on ‘England’, not merely for its criminal attack on Germany but, more importantly, for the hegemonic financial power it had exercised in the 19th century. It was that dominance which had ‘overturned the normal functions of money’ and created ‘two morbid institutions whose exuberant weeds have invaded everything’, which was to say, ‘limited companies and banks’. These companies created fictitious capital, floated their shares on the Stock Exchange, and concentrated capital, so that countries like Mexico were exploited and their wage-levels reduced. At the same time, he denied that industrialisation was ‘a necessary stage and a superior stage in the life of all peoples...’, since it led to social disequilibrium and ‘the painful slavery of the absolute regularisation of economic life’. It was far preferable for Mexico to create a distinct industrial regime, which would enable the Indians to enjoy ‘their rights to life, to space, to the sun and to liberty’, in short, so one infers, a regime of village artisan industry (Enríquez, 1986, vol. V, pp. 16–31, 41–59, vol. III, pp. 17–35).11 If we recall that for Comte and Spencer, not to mention Marx, the central event in the 19th century was the Industrial Revolution, then the response of Molina Enríquez to that phenomenon is highly significant. For here we encounter a radical nationalist who argued that Mexico should pursue its own particular path of economic and social development, a path which

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included the destruction of the great estate in favour of communal tenure and small proprietary farms and the development of artisan industry, all presented as forms of economic endeavour that best fitted the aptitudes of the Indians and mestizos who formed the mass of the Mexican population. Not for nothing did Molina Enríquez adorn his last book with reproductions of the mural paintings of Diego Rivera, whom he praised, since ‘his manner of feeling and of expressing the palpitations of the Indian soul, is what has made him one of the greatest artists of the world’ (Enríquez, 1986, vol. I, p. 147). It was the same populist viewpoint which led him to condemn his erstwhile mentor, Justo Sierra, for having created the National University, since it had become ‘a fortress for creoles’, who spent their time and energy ‘in the swamp of Byzantine discussions...’ (Enríquez, 1986, vol. III, pp. 78–80, 91, vol. V., p. 10). In the last volume of La Revolutión Agraria (1936), Molina Enríquez interpreted the Mexican Revolution from the angle of his agrarian and racial preoccupations. He had already cited the dictum of a revolutionary general that: ‘not everyone who joins the revolutions is a bandit, but all the bandits join in’. For his part, he argued that: ‘Every revolutionary plan that alters, reforms, suspends or changes the fundamental law of the nation, which is to say, its political constitution, has to have constitutional force, if of course that plan achieves victory (Enríquez, 1986, vol. I, p. 86, vol. IV, pp. 70–1). It was on that score that he condemned Francisco Madero’s decision to convoke elections to legitimise his successful rebellion against Porfirio Díaz as a counter-revolutionary measure. Moreover, in line with his preference for indo-mestizo generals, he praised the short-lived regime of Victoriano Huerta, since that general had called himself ‘a Huichol Indian’ and had appointed an Indian to his cabinet. As was only to be expected, he strongly endorsed Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa, the popular leaders, since both these mestizos advocated land reform, be it in the form of ejidos or individual small properties. Indeed, he named Villa as ‘the greatest man of the revolution’ and judged his eventual defeat as a great setback for the cause of Mexican nationality (Enríquez, 1986, vol. V, pp. 133–41, 143–50). But the eventual victor of the revolutionary wars, Venustiano Carranza, he dismissed as a conservative, Creole landlord. He concluded with a final message for his readers: The Revolution that began in 1910 has not yet ended: it has been one among the many episodes (the most profound and transcendental) of the agrarian struggles since Independence, to destroy the latifundia that are the mother roots of the organisation of society by castes that still continues; and which has not been terminated, because the Indians and the indo-mestizos, paralysed by an incomprehensible inferiority complex, have not succeeded in freeing themselves from the apparent social superiority and the perverse political action of the Spaniards, the creoles and the creole-mestizos. (Enríquez, 1986, vol. V, p. 193)

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In effect, although Molina Enríquez had praised the Spanish Crown for devising two parallel systems of property rights, appropriate for Spaniards and Indians, the colonial system of New Spain had been founded on a hierarchy of ethnic castes and the rural predominance of the great estate. And, although Lázaro Cárdenas was to succeed in his campaign to destroy the traditional hacienda, the creation of a common nationality shared by all the inhabitants of the Mexican republic was, as yet, more of an ideal than a reality. But that president implicitly accepted Molina Enríquez’s diagnosis of Mexico’s political necessities, when he so powerfully reinforced the authoritarian structures of the governing party that it remained in power until 2000.

Notes 1. On the proto-nationalism of the Mexican insurgency see D.A. Brading (1991, pp. 583–602, 634–46). 2. On Juárez and the Reforma see Richard N. Sinkin (1979). 3. See António Garcia Cubas (1885, pp. 16–24); for an earlier view of mestizos see Collado (1996, pp. 434–55). Note that the 1992 facsimile edn. does print the full text of the Cuadro Geográfico. 4. See Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, chap. VII, ‘On the Races of Man’, where Darwin writes: ‘In some cases the crossing of distinct races has led to the formation of a new race ... Whether a heterogeneous people, such as the inhabitants of some of the Polynesian islands formed by the crossing of two distinct races with few or no pure members left, would ever become homogeneous, is not known from direct evidence. But, as with our domesticated animals a cross-bred can certainly be fixed and made uniform by careful selection in the course of a few generations, we may infer that the free intercrossing of a heterogeneous mixture during a long descent would supply the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to reversion; so that the crossed race would ultimately become homogeneous, though it might not partake in equal degree of the characters of the two progenitors’ (pp. 297–8). 5. For the colonial population see Fernando Navarro y Noriega (1813), Vicente Riva Palacio (1997, pp. 256–7). 6. Contrary to Darwin, Le Bon defined human races as separate species and argued that the mestizo offspring of inter-racial unions were morally inferior to their progenitors. He wrote: ‘Jamais les metis n’ont fait progresser une societé: le seul rôle qu’ils peuvent remplir est de degrader’. He described Latin America as composed of ‘populations bâtardes, sans énergie, sans avenir et complètement incapables d’apporter la plus faible contribution aux progrès de la civilisation’. 7. Note that this work was first published in Justo Sierra, 1900–4, tome I, vol. 1, pp. 34–314; tome II, pp. 415–34. It was the 1940 edition which was first entitled Evolución Política del Pueblo Mexicano. 8. On his relations with Reyes and Cabrera, see Andres Molina Enríquez, 1986, vol. IV, pp. 45–8, 154–61; vol. V, pp. 115–16, 151–62), La revolución agraria de Mexico 1910–20, 5 vols., 3rd edn facs. (Mexico, 1986). 9. The best modern edition is Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales (1909) y otros textos (1911–22), prólogo de Arnaldo Córdova (Mexico, 1978).

134 D. A. Brading 10. For the text of Article 27 see Tena Ramírez, 1967, pp. 825–34. 11. He was a great admirer of ‘Napoleon the Great’, see 1986, vol. V, p. 3.

References Benítez, A. B. (1992) Mexico Mestizo. Análisis del Nacionalismo Mexicano en torno a la Mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enríquez (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica). Brading, D. A. (1991) The First America. The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Cabrera, L. (1972) Obras Completas, 4 vols (Mexico). Collado, M. C. (1996) ‘Antonio Garcia Cubas’ in A. P-S. Llorens (ed.) En Busca de un Discurso Integrador de la Nación, 1848–1884, vol. IV of J. A. Ortega y Medina and R. Camelo (eds) Historigrafia Mexicana ed (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma do México). Córdova, A. (1978) Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales (1909) y otros textos (1911–22) (Mexico). Cubas, A. G. (1885) Cuadro Geográfico, Estadístico, Descritpivo é Histórico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Obra que Sirve de Texto de Atlas Pintoresco (Mexico). Darwin, D. (1922) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray). Dumas, C. (1986) Justo Sierra y el Mexico de Su Tiempo, 1848–1912, 2 vols (Mexico: Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). Enríquez, A. M. (s.d.) ‘La Guerra del Pacifico’ in offiprint of Los Anales del Museo Nacional de México, 2nd época, 5ª (Mexico). Enríquez, A. M. (1909) Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales (Mexico: Impr. de A. Carranza e Hijos). Enríquez, A. M. (1935) Clasificación de las Ciencias Fundamentales, 2nd edn (Mexico: DF). Enríquez, A. M. (1972) Juárez y la Reforma, 5th edn (Mexico). Enríquez, A. M. (1986) La Revolución Agraria de México 1910–1920, 5 vols., 3rd edn (Mexico : Porrúa). Enríquez, A. M. (2001) ‘Las Derrotas de Degollado’ in A. M. Enríquez Con la Revolución a Cuestas, estudio introductorio y selección de A. B. Benítez (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica). Haeckel, E. (1892) The History of Creation, 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd.). Iturriaga, J. E. (1992) ‘Prólogo’ in A. G. Cubas Atlas Geográfico, Estadístico, Histórico y Pintoresco de la República Mexicana (Mexico). le Bon, Gustave (1888) ‘L’Influence de la Race dans l’Histoire’, Le Revue Scientifique, 525–32. Monasterio, J. O. (1999) ‘Patria’, Tu Ronca Voz me Repetia ... Biografia de Vicente Riva Palacio y Guerrero (Mexico : UNAM). Navarro y Noriega, F. (1813) Memoria sobre la Población del Reino de Nueva España (Mexico). Palacio, V. R. (1884–89) ‘História del Virreinato’, vol. 2 in México a través de los Siglos, 5 vols (Mexico). Palacio, V. R. (1996) Los Ceros (Galeria de Contemporáneos), edited by J. O. Monasterio (Mexico: Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura). Palacio, V. R. (1997) Ensayos Históricos, edited by J. O. Monasterio (Mexico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes).

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Orozco, W. L. (1895) Legislacion y Jurisprudencia sobre Terrenos Baldios, 2 vols. (Mexico). Ramírez, I. (1966) Obras, fasc. edn. of 1889, 2 vols. (Mexico: Editorial Nacional). Ramírez, F. T. (1967) Leyes fundamentales de Mexico 1808–1967 (Mexico: Porrúa). Renan, E. (1896) ‘What is a Nation?’ in The Poetry of the Celtic Races and other Studies (London). Renan, E. (1947) Oeuvres Completes, 10 vols (Paris : Calmann-Levy). Roosevelt, T. (1969 [1897]) American Ideals and Other Essays Social and Political (New York: AMS Press). Shadle, S. F. (1994) Andrés Molina Enríquez. Mexican Land Reformer of the Revolutionary Era (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press). Sierra, J. (ed.) (1900–4) México: Su Evolución Social, 3 tomes in 2 vols (Mexico: J. Ballescá y Compañia). Sierra, J. (1948–96) Obras Completas, 17 vols (Mexico). Sinkin, R. N. (1979) The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building (Austin: University of Texas Press). Spencer, H. (1876–96) Principles of Sociology, 3 vols (London).

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Part II Present Representations of National Histories

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8 Eternal France: Crisis and National Self-Perception in France, 1870–2005 Robert Gildea

Her glorious fatherland is henceforth the pilot of humanity’s vessel. Jules Michelet (1972 [1831], p. 227) We have all peasant ancestors. Claude Michelet (1975, p. 14) The rejection by the French electorate of the European Constitutional Treaty on 29 May 2005 effectively brought the movement towards a federal Europe to a stop. It might be interpreted as purely contingent, an aberrant victory of the ‘little French’, Eurosceptic tendency that had been held at bay by the pro-European liberal élite in the Maastricht vote of 1992 but now took its turn to triumph. France was divided into Europhile and Europhobe tendencies which were fairly evenly balanced and a further vote would see the majority pass back to the Europhiles. The effectiveness of the anti-federalist campaign, however, suggested that the result of 2005 was not an unexpected event but the expression of a deep-seated anxiety about outside threats to French national identity which has in fact manifested itself frequently at times of national crisis. The Past in French History, published in 1994, postulated two basic models of French national identity. One was that of a confident France defined by a striving after greatness. ‘France cannot be France without greatness’, De Gaulle began his Mémoires de guerre in 1954, echoing the notion of the ‘great nation accustomed to conquer’ evoked by the poet Marie-Joseph Chénier in 1797. The second was an open, generous conception of la patrie as the bearer of universal values of liberty and civilisation. In 1792 the Convention declared ‘in the name of the French nation that it will provide fraternity and aid to all peoples that seek to recover their liberty’, a manifesto that was confirmed in the 1946 Constitution of the Republic. There 139

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was a final section on the cult of Joan of Arc as a national icon contested between Right and Left, but there was no deeper understanding of the role of Joan of Arc in French national consciousness (Gildea, 1994, pp. 112–13, 135, 154–65). The shock of the 2005 vote prompted me to explore another model of French national identity to which the cult of Joan of Arc gave a clue but which needed to be placed in a much wider context. This model was that of a closed, fearful, defensive view of the fatherland in the older sense of an ancestral homeland, indeed of an ‘eternal France’, whose identity was constructed against the ravages of change in a turbulent and menacing world. In search of this image I decided to examine moments of national crisis in French history since 1870 in search of the elaboration and development of this model. The defeat of France in 1870 has often been seen to have given rise to desires for revenge which found catharsis in 1918, a view argued by Wolfgang Schivelbusch in his comparative analysis of the impact of defeat in the American South in the Civil War, France in 1870 and Germany in 1918 (Schivelbusch, 2003, pp. 10–35). However, Bertrand Joly has taken the opposite line that while the French could not forget their humiliation they did not think in terms of an offensive war against Germany to retake AlsaceLorraine (Joly, 1999). This echoes more nearly the sense of Ernest Renan in his much-quoted 1882 lecture, What is a Nation?, in which he wrote, ‘Yes, suffering unites more than joy. As far as national memories are concerned, mourning is more potent than triumph, because it imposes duties and dictate a collective effort’ (Renan, 1947, p. 904). After 1870 the French entered a long period of mourning during which they constructed a first version of closed, fearful but eternal France. The First World War was a French victory which might have laid these demons to rest, but it was a Pyrrhic one, leaving a million and a half French dead, a tenth of them at Verdun. The closed, fearful view of France remained and may indeed be regarded as a cause as well as an effect of the armistice of 1940, which was the most serious crisis for France in modern times. While de Gaulle issued his call to continue the struggle from London, Pétain himself struck a deeper chord by announcing, ‘I will not abandon French soil and accept the suffering that will be imposed on the fatherland and its sons. The renaissance of France will be the fruit of this suffering’ (Pétain, 1974, p. 448). After 1945 France recovered her national sovereignty, national unity and her empire, but the scars of four years of German occupation and virtual civil war were slow to heal. Significantly, De Gaulle, addressing liberated Paris from the Hôtel de Ville on 25 August 1944 paid homage to ‘the only France, true France, eternal France’. ‘In the last 145 years France has been invaded on seven different occasions’, he reflected in 1945. ‘There is not a single power in the universe that has suffered so much’ (De Gaulle, 1970, pp. I, 40, 656). In the postwar period France experienced the rapid economic

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growth and modernisation of what became known as the Trente Glorieuses. With the return of De Gaulle in 1958 she exchanged the incubus of colonies in revolt for leadership of Europe and an independent nuclear deterrent, so that national greatness was once more part of the agenda (Cerny, 1980). And yet traditional France, represented by its peasants, artisans and shopkeepers, resisted modernisation through Poujadism and farmers’ revolts, and even as France became a modern, urban society in the 1960s it developed, as we shall see, a cult of the home-loving Gaul, Astérix. France reached a high-point of confidence when Jacques Delors, who as finance minister converted the French socialists to the idea of Europe and, as president of the European Commission, drove through the Single European Act of 1986. He proclaimed that far from losing her identity in the European Union, ‘France will be even more France than she is today because she is stronger economically and more influential intellectually and politically’ (Delors and Clisthène, 1992, p. 152). Yet the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany was felt in France very much as a defeat, with the leadership of Europe passing squarely from France to Germany. Subsequently, in the later 1990s, globalisation was seen in France as yet another defeat, this time at the hands of Anglo-Saxon ultra-liberalism which brushed aside countries such as France that refused to sacrifice their standard and quality of life to the demands of global competition. Viviane Forrestier’s treatise Economic Horror, denouncing this threat, sold 350,000 copies in France alone (Forrestier, 1996; Gordon and Meunier, 2001). These defeats, it may be argued, were traumatic events which turned the French away from notions of national greatness or a universal mission to spread liberty and civilisation to a closed and fearful concept of eternal France. Responses to traumatic events, in the sense of bodily or more often psychological wounds, have been analysed as taking one of two forms. For Freud, they could result in a ‘compulsion to repeat’ the experience or ‘defensive reactions’ against them (Freud, 1964, pp. 74–6). American neuroscientist Alan Schore argues that responses switch between hyperarousal or ‘frantic distress’ on the one hand and on the other dissociation, disengagement from the stimuli of the external world as a defensive strategy and, what he calls, ‘metabolic shutdown’ (Schore, 2003, pp. 67–8, 124). ‘Dissociation’, say other psychiatrists, ‘defends against traumatic experiences associated with external events’, just as ‘repression defends one from forbidden internal wishes’ (Vermetan et al, 1998, pp. 116–17). Whether trauma can affect not only individuals but also communities has been keenly debated. Kai Erikson argues that when catastrophic events impact on communities ‘the shared experience becomes almost like a common culture, a source of kinship’, making it possible to speak of a ‘traumatized community’ (Erikson, 1994, pp. 230–7; Caruth, 1995, pp. 185–8). Cathy Caruth suggests that trauma cannot be experienced purely individually but only collectively, through a process of witness, that implicates not only the

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current generation but, as in the case of the Holocaust, future generations too (Caruth, 1996, p. 136). My argument here is that the shared experience of war, defeat and occupation created a receptive environment for a particular model of the French nation that was inward-looking and fearful but also protective and nurturing, a community or home, which espoused continuity across moments of crisis. Genres of writing, theatre and film, commemorations and the creation of lieux de mémoire built up over time a common culture of eternal France that was characterised by three elements. The first was that of the land of one’s ancestors, the ancestral territory for which its descendants were prepared to die and indeed had died and in which they were buried. The second was that of the land of France as its soil, which had been made plentiful by the work of generations of peasants and rural artisans, organised in patriarchal families and villages which provided the economic and moral backbone of the nation. The third was the ‘great ancestors’, the national heroes who had saved the fatherland, in particular Joan of Arc, who drove out the English, and Vercingétorix, who had rallied Gaul against the Romans in 50 BC, and in doing so became its martyrs. Together these elements provided a history of survival that could be passed on to future generations in order to permit them to survive.

The land of one’s ancestors The amputation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 was a massive blow to the integrity of the ancestral territory. The impact was felt not only by locals, forced to choose between France and the Reich, but by the French of the interior. Maurice Barrès, whose home town of Charmes in Lorraine was occupied by the Prussians during the 1870 war, when he was a boy, became obsessed by the fact that the bodies of the soldiers of that war were buried in what was now German soil. He went on a pilgrimage to the battlefields of the war of 1870 almost every August in the 1890s on the anniversary of the clashes in Alsace, the high-point of which was the visit to Reichshoffen, site of the last charge of the cuirassiers (Barrès, 1925, pp. II, 115–30). At the time of the Dreyfus Affair, Barrès developed a cult of French soldiers buried in German soil in order to promote a sense of solidarity with the lost provinces and an idea of a French nation rooted in la terre et les morts. ‘At Chambière’, outside Metz, where 7,200 French soldiers from the war of 1870 were buried, he told the Ligue de la Patrie Française in a lecture of 1899, ‘where the sand is mixed with our dead, our heart persuades our mind of the great destiny of France and imposes on all of us a moral unity’ (Barrès, 1925, pp. I, 92; Chiron, 2000, pp. 21–2). In 1918, the ancestral territory of Alsace-Lorraine was recovered and the French were reunited with their dead. ‘Today’, reflected Maurice Barrès, returning to the cemetery of Chambière, ‘we see the sons of France stretched out among their avenged fathers, in the re-conquered soil. It is

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a great tribute to French loyalty’ (Barrès, 1920, p. 626). Victory, however, had come at a massive cost, especially to soldier-peasants. Homage to the sacrifice of those who had defended the fatherland was paid in every town and village where war memorials were erected by public subscription. Unveiling that of Capoulet-Juniac (Ariège) in 1935, Marshal Pétain said that the peasants ensured the ‘solidity’ of the infantry, ‘retaining the passionate commitment to fight so long as the enemy trampled on French soil. In the darkest hours – I will recall it before this monument’, said Pétain, ‘it was the calm and determined look of the peasant which sustained my confidence’ (Pétain, 1974, pp. 17–18). The cult of the land of ancestors goes a long way to explain the decision to sue for armistice in 1940. And yet the defeat left one and a half million French soldiers prisoners of war in German camps. Vichy therefore developed less a cult of soldiers who died in the campaign of 1940, who were much fewer than the casualties of the Great War, than a remembrance of the POWs, who generally repaid the compliment with a fervent Petainism (Vinen, 2006, pp. 181–212). The absence of the POWs was a principal reason for the state of mourning that now became official in France, with the result that dancing, for example, was banned until the national territory was liberated (Gildea, 2000, pp. 197–212). Although after 1945 France was again free and whole, it still bore the scars of occupation and division. Its suffering was marked less by the graves of combatant soldiers than by those of civilians who had died during the liberation of France, usually innocent people who had been massacred in collective reprisals inflicted by the Germans on communities suspected of harbouring ‘terrorists’. The most famous instance of a massacre of innocents was at Oradour-sur-Glane near Limoges, torched by the SS Division Das Reich on 10 June 1944, killing 642 inhabitants, the ruins of which were consecrated as a historic monument in 1946 to bear witness to Nazi barbarism (Farmer, 1999, pp. 59, 94). The scars of these massacres made it difficult for the French to accept the European project of the 1950s, in particular the proposed European Defence Community (EDC), which looked to re-arm Germany within the framework of a European army. Debate on the EDC coincided with the trial at Bordeaux in JanuaryFebruary 1953 of members of the Das Reich Division for the Oradour massacre. The majority of soldiers on trial were not in fact Germans but annexed Alsatians drafted against their will into the German army. The sentencing of 13 Alsatians to long years of hard labour or prison provoked powerful protest in Alsace, and the National Assembly responded by amnestying the condemned soldiers. The population of the Limousin in which Oradour was situated, feeling that their suffering and fears of German re-armament had not been heard, registered sharp opposition to the EDC in public opinion polls taken between 1953 and 1955, while Alsace, hoping that European cooperation would end their being torn between France and Germany, was the French region most in favour of the plan (Rioux, 1984, pp. 37–53).

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After de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, France accepted the European Community as a customs union, so long as her farmers were protected under the Common Agricultural Policy, and forged ahead as a great power by developing a nuclear deterrent or force de frappe. Michel Debré, prime minister in 1958–62, became defence minister in 1970, after the fall of de Gaulle, and immediately went on a pilgrimage to Alsace, for the centenary of the Franco-Prussian war, visiting the battlefields of Froeschwiller and Wissembourg in the steps of Barrès, declaring that only nuclear weapons could adequately defend the French nation (Debré, 1994, pp. 65–6, 137–8). He had much less devotion to other parts of France, some of which were scheduled to become military bases linked to the nuclear weapons programme. He proposed to extend the military base at Larzac on the limestone plateau of the Causses in south-west France, seeing it inhabited by only a few sheep-farmers, ‘still living more or less as they had done in the Middle Ages’. The plan was contested, however, in a way which revealed two very different views of the land: as a resource to defend the land of one’s ancestors, and as a resource made fertile by labour of generations of farmers. A united front of local farmers, post-1968 gauchistes, conscientious objectors, radical Christians and Occitan nationalists waged a ten-year non-violent campaign against the army to preserve the land. Among these was José Bové, a conscientious objector who in 1975 with his wife Alice squatted on land owned by the army and was briefly imprisoned in 1976 as one of a group which occupied the military base. Success came when François Mitterrand rose to power in 1981 and abandoned the Larzac project (Lebovics, 2004, pp. 24–55; Bové, 2000, pp. 6–20; Alland, 1995; Williams, 2008).

The land as soil This conception of the land, articulated by the Larzac movement, was that of the land of France, made fertile by the labour of the peasant, with tools provided by the rural artisan. It was a regular element in the construction of eternal France, within which patient labour on the family farm was seen to be the bedrock of the patriarchal family, nurturing new generations of peasants, and of the rural community, which maintained the economic and spiritual balance between the healthy countryside and the corrupting influence of the city. Its relationship with war was more ambivalent, for though the land bred soldier-peasants for whom the defence of the fatherland and the defence of their own farms were supposed to be the same thing, in reality the land was generally loath to lose its sons to wars from which many would not return. Both before and after the First World War there was a widespread cult of the land and rural community among writers. In part they were conservative novelists who found much in common with the Vichy regime. Henri Pourrat won the Figaro’s literary prize in 1922 for his Gaspard des Montagnes, the adventures of a native of the unforgiving soil of the Auvergne, presented

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as a popular story-tale and aspiring to reveal the peasant soul (Pourrat, 1922). The material and moral integrity of France, he argued in his Man with the Spade. A History of the Peasant (1941), was threatened by loss to the countryside of migrating labour and dead soldiers. After her defeat in 1940 she would only find salvation in ‘her old blood’, that of the peasant married to the soil. Following the visit of Marshal Pétain to his Auverge village in October 1940 he wrote The French Leader, exalting the Marshal’s ability to communicate directly with real men, whether peasants or peasant-soldiers, and to draw on the ‘earthly wisdom’ that they embodied (Pourrat, 1941, 1942). The cult of the soil, however, was by no means a monopoly of reactionaries. Marcel Pagnol, the son of an instituteur in Provence, made his breakthrough when he bought the film rights to the rustic novels of his exact Provençal contemporary, Jean Giono, and set up his own film company. Filming on location in Provence, Pagnol used powerful comic actors such as Fernandel to make the Giono’s stories less epic and more familiar, such as La Femme du Boulanger (1938) in which the village rallies round to restore the baker’s unfaithful wife to him and with her their supply of bread (Castans, 1987; Mény, 1978, pp. 61–8; Dehayes, 2001; 39–66; Bowles, 2005a, 2005b). At the height of the Popular Front, Pagnol appealed to a French public which was nostalgic about a village life that even for city-dwellers was only a generation away. Untainted by the occupation, Pagnol was elected to the Académie Française in 1949 and brought his second wife to the screen in 1952 with Manon des Sources, the story of another shepherdess who wreaks slow vengeance on the peasant family who killed her father by blocking up the water source. He published a novel version of Manon des Sources as L’Eau des Collines in 1962, preceded by Jean de Florette, and after the death of his father in 1951 he took up autobiography, exploring his childhood before the First World War in Provence, learning to hunt with his father and uncle, and eventually invited to stay at a château by an old colonel who had taken part in the famous cavalry charge at Reichshoffen in 1870. These texts became beloved in French schools by setters of dictation and morceaux choisis, and provoked correspondence with whole classes about whether such and such an anecdote or character were true (Pagnol, 1957, 1958, 1971; Castans, 1987, pp. 297–329).

The ‘great ancestors’ ‘The cult of ancestors’, declared Renan, ‘is the most legitimate cult of all. Our ancestors made us who we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (I mean the genuine article), that is the social capital on which a national idea is based’ (Renan, 1947, pp. 26–7). The period after 1870 saw the development of the cult of two national heroes and martyrs, Joan of Arc and Vercingétorix, the Gallic chief who had defeated Julius Caesar at the battle of Gergovia in 52BC before succumbing to him at Alésia and being taken to Rome for execution.

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Imagined hand in hand for the Salon of 1872 by the sculptor Chatrousse, they symbolised an eternal France that went back to ancient Gaul and a united France, despite the battles that took place between rival political and religious factions to ‘own’ their memory. The epic journey of Joan of Arc was commemorated in towns and cities that erected equestrian statues to her at the end of the 19th century, from the famous Frémiet statue on the Place des Pyramides (1875) to those in Chinon, Orléans, Reims and Rouen. The cult of Vercingétorix, the Gallic chief, was embedded in the rural landscape rather than in the city, but the site of his defeat at Alésia was disputed between partisans of Alise-Sainte-Reine (Côte d’Or), which raised a great statue to him there in 1865, and those of Alaise (Doubs), each side sponsoring frantic excavations (Legall, 1963, pp. 38–46). The Great War brought the apotheosis of the cult of Joan of Arc. The need of the average poilu for supernatural protection and above all the ‘miracle of the Marne’, when German troops were checked before Paris, already abandoned by the government as in 1870, turned her into a national heroine. Barrès, now president of the Ligue des Patriotes, campaigned for a national festival in her honour from December 1914, arguing that she was making a reality ‘the generous dream of eternal France’. Joan was canonised in 1920 and the first national festival in her honour was held on 8 May 1921. Her cult reached a high point under Vichy, with nation-wide celebrations on 10 May 1942, but after the Liberation she was equally fêted by de Gaulle and the Communist Party (Gildea, 1994, pp. 160–4). Alongside Joan, Vercingétorix was rehabilitated as a national hero under Vichy. Archaeological digs were resumed at Gergovia, north of ClermontFerrand, by Strasbourg professors and their students who had been relocated to Clermont after the German re-annexation of Alsace. This plateau was chosen for the second anniversary of the Légion Française des Combattants, on 30 August 1942, to commemorate the victory of Vercingétorix over the Romans and the birth of the fatherland. Although or because half of France was under German occupation and Vichy was fighting a losing battle with the Allies and Free French for control of her colonies, sachets of earth were sent from communes of all parts of France and the Empire to be buried in the monument that topped the plateau as a symbol of French national unity (Erhard, 1982, pp. 307–14; Dietler, 1994, p. 592). In de Gaulle’s France, the Vercingétorix legend was recreated by the humourist René Goscinny and artist Alberto Uderzo in the strip-cartoon character Astérix. Where school textbooks in the 1960s portrayed the Gallic village as an assemblage of peasant huts which compared unfavourably with the clean streets and running water of the Roman town, the Astérix series proclaimed the superiority of the Gauls to all other civilisations, including the Roman. Astérix’s village is the only place in Gaul to have resisted the Romans by a typical Gallic combination of cunning and magic. However, resistance is at the service not of any high ideals but of the home sweet home,

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good food and good company beloved of the average Frenchman, who by the 1960s lived in the city but yearned for his roots or a second home in the countryside and was nostalgic for traditional values. It is ironic and eloquent that at the moment when France seemed to recover confidence in its own influence in the world the attention of the reading public, particularly young people who made May 1968, should be absorbed by the exploits of Gallic heroes ranged against a world in which everyone else was ‘fous’ (Vidal et al, 1997, pp. 59–76; Paleaux, 1982, pp. 437–43). As the embodiment of a certain idea of France, superior but parochial, Astérix became a symbol around which to analyse France’s predicament. In The Astérix Complex of 1985, for example, commentator Alain Duhamel exposed the contradiction between France’s European and indeed global ambitions and her instinctive retreat to the cult of national heroes and heroines. France, he argued, had ceased to become a great power on its defeat in 1940 and with the loss of its empire 20 years later. It still had much to be proud of, with pro-European sentiment much stronger among the French than ten years before and France being now the world’s third nuclear power, third exporting power and fifth industrial power: ‘we are no longer living in the age of the Basque beret, the baguette and pétanque’. And yet, he observed, while the French wanted their country to retain ‘a role and a voice’, they ‘aspire even more to tranquillity, stability and if possible prosperity’. Like Astérix, he concluded, the average Frenchman was ‘passionately attached to his village and convinced that nothing in the world can match it’ (Duhamel, 1985, pp. 10, 217–35).

The Maastricht debate We are now better placed to understand the near-rejection of the Maastricht Treaty by the French electorate in 1992 and its rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005. This may be studied at the level of political debate, concentrating on issues of national sovereignty and economic and social well-being. It is my contention, however, that if we are to grasp the force and meaning of the current hostility of the French people to the European project we need to understand powerful references that continue to be made to the idea of an eternal France. When the Maastricht Treaty was debated in the French Assembly in May 1992, Foreign Minister Roland Dumas defended it as being squarely in the tradition of the European project started in 1950. During the referendum campaign another Socialist minister Elisabeth Guigou argued that ‘France has never been a country closed in upon itself, in its bunker’ (Le Monde, 16 September 1992). The treaty was approved by the National Assembly on 13 May 1992 by 398 votes to 77, with 99 abstentions and carried by the narrowest of margins in the referendum of 21 September 1992 by 51per cent in favour to 49 per cent against. For many politicians, Maastricht represented

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an unacceptable challenge to French national sovereignty, which was the guarantee of French republican democracy against the technocrats of Brussels who were seen as vehicles of international finance-capitalism. The Communist Party, perennially hostile to Europe as a supranational instrument of capitalism, together with the National Front, came out against the treaty. While most socialists backed the treaty, a dissident Jean-Pierre Chevènement organised a conference in his base at Belfort on the 1991 anniversary of the battle of Valmy to denounce ‘the new Holy Alliance of capital’ and defend the ideal of a strong, Jacobin republic, guarantor of the universal values of 1789 (Chevènement, 1993, p. 255, 1995). The Gaullist RPR (Rassemblement pour la République) was divided between those who argued that de Gaulle would have endorsed Maastricht and those, led by Philippe Séguin, biographer of Napoleon III, who argued that he would have rejected it as an affront to French sovereignty and that under the treaty the French would be allowed only ‘their cheeses, a few of their customs, because folklore doesn’t upset anyone ... perhaps the Marseillaise, so long as we change the words’ (Journal Officiel, 5 May 1992). Michel Debré, who had campaigned against EDC in the early 1950s, played on the issue of wartime legitimacy by arguing, ‘Laval would have said yes, de Gaulle no’ (Debré, 1994, pp. 175–6, 221). The centrist UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française) were mainly in favour of the treaty, but Philippe de Villiers, who had made his reputation during the bicentenary of the Revolution in 1989 denouncing it as the perpetrator of genocide in the Vendée, where he was a deputy and a sponsor of the medieval fantasy theme park of Le Puy du Fou in the Vendée, led the charge against the treaty from the viewpoint of conservative, Catholic French values. An analysis of the deeper reasons for the near-rejection of the Treaty were given by Alain Duhamel, author of The Astérix Complex, in his 1993 essay Les Peurs Françaises. He argued that instead of seeing Europe as a French idea and indeed French vocation, France was now afraid of Europe because after German reunification it had lost the power to influence it. And yet, he argued, the worst outcome would be ‘a turning inward, a closing down, a return to the past, a cold-sensitive protectionism, an archaic irredentism, an anachronic isolationism represented by each extremity of the political chessboard, the Communist Party and the National Front’ (Duhamel, 1993, p. 72). Unfortunately, in the years leading up to the referendum of 1992, the cult of eternal France, a sublimation of this defensive reflex, was still very much in evidence. The reunification of Germany in 1989 provoked fears that a Europe that had once been controlled by France would now be controlled by Germany, posing a threat as in 1870, 1914 and 1940 to the ancestral homeland. Fantasies were nourished of a return of the Bismarckian Reich, with a population of 80 million and a powerful industrial economy, fuelling Pangerman ambitions (Lipiansky, 1991, p. 263). In September 1984, Mitterrand had linked hands

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with Chancellor Kohl at Verdun, using the memory of the losses on both sides to cement a common friendship and proclaim that ‘Europe is our common fatherland’ (Le Monde, 25 September 1984). In December 1989, however, a Pancho cartoon in Le Monde featured an anxious Mitterrand asking Kohl, ‘You haven’t said anything about the Oder-Neisse’ line and a Kohl replying, ‘Nor about Alsace-Lorraine’ (Le Monde, 10–11 December 1989). Repressed fears about German claims to Poland and Alsace-Lorraine were again in the open. Attachment to the land and to rural life was powerfully manifest in the literary and cinema world of the 1980s. The census of 1982 revealed that for the first time the rural population in France grew faster than the urban population, as people fled the inner cities and suburbs for the calm of the countryside, using cars to commute to work and provisioned by out-of-town supermarkets. A ‘Brive school’ of rural writers from the Corrèze was cultivated by the publisher Robert Laffont and given publicity by the Brive Book Fair from 1981. Consciously constructed against the nouveau roman and prestigious prizes of Paris, a gastronomic train was laid on for the Paris media to visit the fair, presided over in 1997 by Jacques Chirac’s wife Bernadette, and much was made of the huge publishing success of the school (Cloonan, 1999, pp. 225–34; Poole, 2002, pp. 177–86). Its leading light was Claude Michelet, son of Resistance hero Edmond Michelet, who had spent his childhood on the family property in the Corrèze during the war, resented having to go to Paris when his father became a minister in 1945, and returned to raise cattle and sheep in 1960, claiming that ‘the family farm is the last bastion of liberty’ (Michelet, 1975, p. 148). He married a country girl, raised a large family and gave birth after 1979 to a fictional Corrézian family, the Vialhe, who maintain their farm and their rooted values in the face of recurrent wars and political, economic and social change throughout the 20th century (Michelet, 1979). Meanwhile, on the screen, Marcel Pagnol’s tragicomic accounts of families seeking paradise in the Provençal countryside enjoyed a new lease of life through Claude Berri’s 1986 Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, starring in the title roles Gérard Dépardieu and Emanuelle Béart, and Yves Robert’s dramatisations of his autobiography, La Gloire de Mon Père and Le Château de Ma Mère in 1990. The election of a socialist president in 1981 should have made a great difference to the heroes who were now celebrated. On the day of his inauguration, 21 May 1981, François Mitterrand laid wreaths at the Panthéon at the tombs of the socialist Jean Jaurès, the resister Jean Moulin, and the slavery abolitionist Victor Schoelcher. Yet as if to reassure a population that could not believe that French national unity was safe with socialism, Mitterrand also resumed the cult of France’s great ancestors. On 8 May 1982, he celebrated Joan of Arc Day at Orléans, hailing her a ‘lesson of resistance’ and a ‘lesson of national unity’ as left-wing councillors and activists shuffled uneasily in the right-wing town (Libération, 10 May 1982; Le Monde, 1 May 1982). Three years later, on 17 September 1985, he commemorated the first act of the nation’s

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history and demonstration of ‘national cohesion’, namely the election in 52 BC of Vercingétorix as chief of the combined armies of Gaul and beginning of the Gallic uprising, at Bibracte in the Morvan, close to his electoral base in the Nièvre (Le Monde, 19 September 1985; Dietler, 1994, pp. 592–3).

The European Constitutional Treaty debate The close call of the Maastricht vote might have reflected a momentary loss of confidence, after which France recovered her self-belief and openness. This was not to be. From the mid-1990s a new threat to the French nation and its way of life came from globalisation, which was commonly perceived to be an instrument of Anglo-American power. The cult of eternal France received additional impetus, although the image did not always remain the same. The French ancestral homeland was still seen as a graveyard, but what was remembered about the First World War was less honourable death for the fatherland than the suffering of the ordinary soldiers and their families. At Biron in the Dordogne a new monument designed by the German sculptor Jochen Gerz was unveiled in 1996, covered in red brass plaques on which villagers’ thoughts were transcribed. ‘All my childhood I saw my grandmother cry for her sons’, ran one. ‘She lost two, the third had only one foot and the fourth had to go. She nearly lost her mind, the poor woman. She cried with grief, anger and fear’ (Becker, 2006, pp. 30–5). During the commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the armistice in November 1998, socialist premier Lionel Jospin visited Craonne, site of huge losses in the battle of the Chemin des Dames in April 1917 which until then had been avoided by official celebrations. Jospin argued that those who had been shot for mutiny, objecting to mindless massacre, as an example to others, should be integrated into the ‘collective national memory’, while the mayor of Craonne, presenting him with a scarf of a soldier who had died at the Chemin des Dames, called the suicidal offensive of 1917 ‘the first great crime against humanity’ (Offenstadt, 2002, pp. 212–37). The cult of the land and the farming families who produced traditional French food and maintained traditional values was no less powerful than before. Globalisation meant that the United States could impose prohibitive duties on French produce such as Rocquefort cheese in retaliation for EU restrictions on the import of hormone-treated beef used by McDonalds. In defence of the Rocquefort-producing sheep-farmers of the Causses, Larzac veteran José Bové and his friends from the Peasant Confederation dismantled the McDonald’s restaurant at Millau, on the edge of the Larzac plateau, in August 1999. Refusing to pay bail, he went to prison until popular subscription fired by his stand against industrial junk food, colloquially known as the mal-bouffe, secured his release. Photographed outside the courtroom with blue eyes and Gallic moustache, chained fists held above his head, he was instantly recognised as a modern-day Vercingétorix (Bové, 2000,

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p. 780; Bové and Dufour, 2002, pp. x, 13, 53). The cult of the land was maintained by new generations of the rural novel edited by Robert Laffont. Bernard Blangenois, whose Une Odeur de Neige (1997), featuring a prostitute saved by an honest but damaged man of the woods, won the ‘Terre de France’ prize, was hailed in Libération as ‘the heir of Giono’ (Blangenois, 1997; Libération, 3 April 1997). Meanwhile the defence of France’s rural way of life was politicised by the 1.4 million strong hunting lobby, whose own political party, Chasse, Pêche, Nature et Traditions, headed by Jean Saint-Josse, a mayor of the Pyrénées-Orientales, battled against European attempts to limit the hunting season. Broadening its mission to ‘the defence of the values of rurality and the interests of the rural world’, it won 6.8 per cent of the vote in the 2002 European elections (Knapp, 2004, Ch. 10). France’s grand ancestors, meanwhile, successfully made the move to France’s blockbuster culture. Former Gaullist premier Edouard Balladur complained in his Jeanne d’Arc et la France: Le Mythe du Sauveur that Joan of Arc was no longer ‘a central figure in the national imagination’, but he must have missed The Messenger: the Story of Joan of Arc, made in 1999 by Luc Besson, director of Le Grand Bleu (Balladur 2003: 9). Rivalry over the site of the battle of Alésia continued with the decision of the Conseil Général of the Côte d’Or in 2001 to establish an archaeological park at Alise-Sainte-Reine, finally to see off the claims of Alaise in the Doubs. Christian Goudineau, a professor at the Collège de France with media exposure, confronted myth and reality with his Dossier Vercingétorix (2001) and played on the Astérix reflex with his Par Toutatis, la Belle Querelle! Que Reste-t-il de la Gaule? (2002). Meanwhile Astérix and Obélix, with Gérard Depardieu as Obélix, hit the big screen in 1999 with Claude Zidi’s Astérix et Obélix contre César, which played to 8 million viewers in 12 weeks, and Alain Chabat’s even more successful 2002 Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopatre, which attracted 11 million viewers in only four weeks (Le Monde, 21 April 1999, 27 Feb. 2002). As with the Maastricht Treaty, the rejection of the European Constitution by the French electorate on 29 May 2005 by a dramatic 55 per cent against 45 per cent can be interpreted at different levels. At one level it was simply a way of opposing the Chirac government and at another a sign that the political class had lost touch with the country at large. It was a rejection of an European project that was seen to be a slave to the free market, the vehicle of globalisation rather than defending against it, dissolving the original western European core of Europe in a vast area extending to eastern Europe, the Balkans and soon Turkey, sources of cheap labour, unfair competition and immigration. It was denounced as an ultra-liberal Anglo-Saxon model, fear of which now replaced the fear of Germany that had surged up in 1989. It was also, however, informed by a desire to preserve eternal France, an image which was refashioned in the light of each crisis and recycled across the full range of media, but always reflected the desire of the French people to hand on a history that had ensured their survival.

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Arguing for the constitution, Jacques Chirac said that it was not only the ‘daughter of 1989’, the inevitable result of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the ‘daughter of 1789’, a ‘Europe with a social vocation’ (Le Monde, 5 May 2005). The opposition of the Far Right, whether the National Front or Philippe de Villiers’s Mouvement pour la France was predictable, but it was opposition on the left that destroyed the constitution. While most of the Socialist leadership backed it, Laurent Fabius, who had supported Maastricht, came out against the ‘English-style constitution’ that would rip up France’s social protection and solidarity in the name of free trade (Fabius, 2004, pp. 58–62). He went as far as to meet José Bové in his Rouen constituency and his supporters attended the huge ‘Fête du non de gauche’ at Place de la République on 21 May 2005 which included Marie-George Buffet’s PCF (Parti Communiste Français), Olivier Besancenot’s Trotskyist LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire), José Bové’s Confederation Paysanne and ATTAC, the Association pour une Taxation des Transactions pour l’Aide des Citoyens et Citoyennes, campaigning for a tax of global speculation for the benefit of its victims, which claimed 30,000 members by 2003 (Hewlett, 2004, pp. 9–11; Waters, 2006, pp. 141–52). The verdict of the electorate was welcomed as a victory of ‘the people’ by Marie-Georges Buffet and of ‘the depths of the country’ by Philippe de Villiers. But what was the deep meaning of the vote? Essentially, it took place in a country that had lost confidence in itself, its greatness and its mission, unable to adjust to the shocks of globalisation and Anglo-Saxon dominance, and had retreated into the closed, fearful nationalism we have been exploring, nurtured by fantasies of an eternal France. In 2003 France had been rocked by a debate triggered by Nicolas Bavarez’s La France qui Tombe. France, for Bavarez, had suffered a ‘diplomatic Agincourt’ over the Iraq war, opposing the conflict in line with public opinion but losing any ability to count in world affairs alongside the United States and Great Britain. Similarly, she had become the ‘weakest link of Europe’, failing to make connexions with the new eastern European members of the European Union. She had retreated behind the ‘Maginot lines’ of ‘French exceptionalism’ and was at risk of becoming ‘a museum and a centre of distribution, research and high value-added production’ (Bavarez, 2003, pp. 20, 49–55, 61, 120). During the debate on the constitution in 2005, this loss of confidence was deplored by German intellectuals including Günter Grass who sent an open letter to their ‘French friends’ in ‘the classic country of the Enlightenment’ asking, ‘do the majority of French people want to bury themselves in the same bunker as the left-and right-wing nationalists?’ (Le Monde, 3 May 2005). At a meeting of Mitterrandists commemorating the anniversary of the Socialists coming to power on 10 May 1981, Jack Lang declared that ‘French navel-gazing is not in the tradition of François Mitterrand’, but it was clearly the reflex of the moment (Le Monde, 12 May 2005). Meanwhile

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Dany Cohn-Bendit, veteran of May 1968 and co-leader of the Green members of the European Parliament, having been pelted with tomatoes while campaigning for the constitution in Montpellier, attacked what he called the ‘Asterix complex’ of the French people (Agence France Presse, 12 April 2005). In this epithet, recycled from Duhamel’s book of 1985, he castigated the retreat of the French into their embattled national village, in which they could eat wild boar to their heart’s content and dismiss the rest of the world as ‘fous.’

Escaping the past? A final question must be: is there a way out of France’s introspection, some escape from the myth of eternal France that has provided succour and yet which the French must relinquish for one of the other two models of national identity: greatness or the universal mission of liberation? Greatness is a difficult option: it is 30 years since Giscard d’Estaing asserted that France was only a medium-sized power. More inviting is a return to the liberating mission, which France has in fact begun by recognising the victim status of persecuted minorities. President Chirac led the way in 1995 by accepting the responsibility of the French state for the deportation of Jews from Vichy France in 1942. In January 2007, he unveiled a monument in the Panthéon to the French ‘righteous among nations’ who had saved Jews during the Second World War, in a gesture which portrayed the French as a nation of rescuers where they had once been portrayed as a nation of resisters. A number of ‘lois mémorielles’ were passed from the Loi Gayssot of 13 July 1990 which outlawed racial and religious discrimination and especially the denial of the Holocaust. The loi of 21 January 2001 recognised the Armenian massacre and that of 21 May 2001 condemned slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity. The clause of the law of 23 February 2005 which recognised the wrongs done to pieds noirs and harkis when the French left Algeria in 1962 and which also called on French schools to ‘teach the positive role of the French presence overseas and notably in North Africa’ was subsequently overturned. In this way the expansive idea of a liberating mission of France has been rekindled to challenge the fearful and inward-looking idea of eternal France.

References Alland, A. (1995) Le Larzac et après. L’Étude d’un Mouvement Social Novateur (Paris: L’Harmattan). Balladur, E. (2003) Jeanne d’Arc et la France: Le Mythe du Sauveur (Paris: Fayard). Barrès, M. (1920) Chronique de la Grande Guerre, 1914–1920 (Paris: Plon). Barrès, M. (1925) Scènes et Doctrines du Nationalisme (Paris: Juven). Bavarez, N. (2003) La France qui Tombe (Paris: Perrin).

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Becker, A. (2006) ‘Politique Culturelle, Commémorations et leur Usages Politiques. L’Exemple de la Grande Guerre dans les Années 1990’ in C. Andrieu, M-C. Lavabre and D. Tartakowsky (eds) Politiques du Passé. Usages Politiques du Passé dans la France Contemporaine (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence), pp. 30–5. Blangenois, B. (1997) Une Odeur de Neige (Paris: Robert Laffont). Bové, J. (2000) La Révolte d’un Paysan (Villeurbanne: Éditions Golias). Bové, J. and F. Dufour (2002) The World is not for Sale. Farmers against Junk Food (London and New York: Verso). Bowles, B. (2005a) ‘Politicizing Pagnol. Rural France, Film and Ideology under the Popular Front’, French History, 19, 1, 112–42. Bowles, B. (2005b) ‘Marcel Pagnol’s The Baker’s Wife: Cinematic Charivari in Popular Front France’, Historical Journal, 48, 2, 437–69. Caruth, C. (ed.) (1995) Trauma. Explorations in Memory (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Caruth, C. (1996) Unclaimed Experience. Trauma, Narrative and History (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Castans, R. (1987) Marcel Pagnol (Paris: J-C Lattès). Cerny, P. (1980) The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological Aspects of De Gaulle’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Chevènement, J-P. (1993) La République, l’Europe et l’Universel Colloque, Belfort, 21–2 Septembre 1991 (Belfort: IRED). Chevènement, J-P. (1995) France-Allemagne. Parlons Franc (Paris: Plon). Chiron, Y. (2000) La Vie de Barrès (Paris: Godefroy de Bouillon). Cloonan, W. (1999) ‘Marketing La France Profonde: l’École de Brive’, Modern & Contemporary France, 7, 2, 225–34. Debré, M. (1994) Combattre Toujours, 1969–1993. Mémoires V (Paris: Albin Michel). De Gaulle, C. (1970) Discours et Messages (Paris: Plon). Dehayes, T. (2001) Marcel Pagnol à l’École de Jean Giono? (Pont-Saint-Esprit: La Mirondole). Delors, J. and Clisthène (1992) Our Europe. The Community and National Development (London and New York: Verso). Dietler, M. (1994) ‘ “Our Ancestors the Gauls”: Archaelogy, Ethnic Nationalism and the Manipulation of Celtic identity in Modern Europe’, American Anthropologist, 96, 3. Duhamel, A. (1985) Le Complexe d’Astérix (Paris: Gallimard). Duhamel, A. (1993) Les Peurs françaises (Paris: Gallimard). Ehrard, A. (1982) ‘Vercingétorix contre Gergovie?’ in P. Viallaneix and J. Ehrard (eds) Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois Actes du Colloque International de Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand: Association des Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Clermont-Ferrand). Erikson, K. (1994) A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma and Community (New York and London: Norton). Fabius, L. (2004) Une Certaine Idée de l’Europe (Paris: Plon). Farmer, S. (1999) Martyred Village. Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press). Forrestier, V. (1996) L’Horreur Économique (Paris: Fayard), translated as The Economic Horror (1999) (Cambridge: Polity). Freud, S., (1964) ‘Moses and Monotheism [1937–8]’, The Complete Psychological Works XXIII (London: Hogarth Press). Gildea, R. (1994) The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

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Gildea, R. (2000), ‘Les Années Noires? Clandestine Dancing in Occupied France’ in M. Cornick and C. Crossley (eds) Problems in French History (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 197–212. Gordon, P. H. and S. Meunier (2001) The French Challenge. Adapting to Globalisation (Washington DC: Brookings Institute Press). Goudineau, C. (2001) Le Dossier Vercingétorix (Arles: Actes Sud-Errance). Goudineau, C. (2002) Par Toutatis, la Belle Querelle! Que Reste-t-il de la Gaule? (Paris: Seuil). Hewlett, N. (2004) ‘New Voices, New Stage, New Democracies?’ Modern & Contemporary France, 12, 1, 9–22. Joly, B. (1999) ‘La France et la Revanche (1981–1914)’, Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 46, 2, 325–47. Knapp, A. (2004) Parties and the Party System in France. A Disconnected Democracy? (Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan). Lebovics, H. (2004) Bringing the Empire Back Home. France in the Global Age (Durham and London: Duke University Press). Legall, J. (1963) Alésia, Archéologie et Histoire (Paris: Fayard). Lipiansky, E. M. (1991) L’Identité Française. Représentations, Mythes, Idéologies (Paris: l’Espace Européen). Mény, J. (1978) Jean Giono et le Cinéma (Paris: J-C Simoën). Michelet, C. (1979–) Des Grives aux loups, 4 vols. (Paris: Robert Laffont). Michelet, C, (1975) J’ai Choisi la Terre (Paris: Robert Laffont). Michelet, J. (1972 [1831]) ‘Introduction à l’Histoire Universelle’ in P. Viallaneix (ed.) Oeuvres complètes, vol. I (Paris: Flammarion). Offenstadt, N. (2002) Les Fusillés de la Grande Guerre et la Mémoire Collective, 1914–1999 (Paris: Odile Jacob), pp. 212–37. Pagnol, M. (1957) La Gloire de mon Père (Monte Carlo: Éditions Pastorelly). Pagnol, M. (1958) Le Château de ma Mère (Monte Carlo: Éditions Pastorelly). Pagnol, M. (1971) Le Temps des Secrets (Paris: Clun de l’Honnête Homme). Paleaux, D-H. (1982) ‘De l’Imagerie Culturelle au Mythe Politique: Astérix le Gaulois’ in P. Viallaneix and J. Ehrard (eds) Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois Actes du Colloque International de Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand: Association des Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Clermont-Ferrand). Pétain, P. (1974) Actes et Écrits (Paris: Flammarion). Poole, S. (2002) ‘ “Mais le Vieillard Est Grand”: Positive Ageing in the Modern Roman du Terroir’, Modern & Contemporary France, 10, 2, 177–86. Pourrat, H. (1922) Les Vailances, Farces et Gentillesses de Gaspard des Montagnes (Paris: Albin Michel). Pourrat, H. (1941) L’Homme à la Bêche. Histoire du Paysan (Paris: Flammarion), pp. 251–62, 282. Pourrat, H. (1942) Le Chef Français (Marseille: Robert Laffont). Renan, E. (1947) ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’, Conférence faite en Sorbonne le 11 Mars 1882, Oeuves completes, vol. I (Paris: Calmann-Lévy). Rioux, J-P. (1984) ‘L’Opinion Publique Française et la CED’, Relations Internationales, 37. Schivelbusch, W. (2003) The Culture of Defeat. On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery (London: Granta Books). Schore, A. N. (2003) Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self (New York and London: Norton). Vermetan, E., J. D. Bremner and D. Spiegel (1998) ‘Dissociation and Hypotizability: a Conceptual and Methodological Perspective on Two Distinct Concepts’ in

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J. D. Bremner and C. R. Marmer (eds) Trauma, Memory and Dissociation (Washington, DC, and London: American Psychiatric Press). Vidal, G., A. Goscinny and P. Gaumer (1997) René Goscinny. Profession Humoriste (Paris: Dargaud). Vinen, R. (2006) The Unfree French (London: Allen Lane), pp. 181–212. Waters, S. (2006) ‘A l’Attac: Globalisation and Ideological Renewal on the French Left’, Modern & Contemporary France, 14, 2, 141–52. Williams, G. (2008) Struggles for an Alternative Globalization; An Ethnography of Counter-Power in Southern France (Aldershot: Ashgate).

9 Cuisine, Nationality and the Making of a National Meal: The English Breakfast Kaori O’Connor

Introduction The cultural turn in history – and the concomitant historical turn in anthropology – have brought material culture to the fore as a medium and interdisciplinary method for the study of society over time. To what early anthropologists called the classic domains of material culture – food, housing, and clothing – have now been added all the other material forms in which cultural values and social identity are embedded. Yet although landscape, consumer goods and interior design have now become commonplace subjects of cultural histories, food has yet to find as central a position in the cultural historian’s repertoire, although for anthropologists it has always been a primary form of material culture (Firth, 1940; Douglas, 1970, 1971; Goody, 1982, 1998; Mintz, 1985, 1996; Sahlins, 1976). This is a striking lacuna, for as the anthropologist and cultural theorist Mary Douglas (1997, p. 7) put it succinctly, ‘food is not feed’. That food is essential to life gives it a fundamental physiological importance, but it is the symbolic aspect of food, and the insights it provides into society and history, that accounts for the importance accorded to it in anthropology. Recently, anthropological attention has focused on the links between food, identity, nationality and ethnicity (Mintz and Du Bois, 2002). Today, it is a commonplace that particular foods, meals or cuisines are held to be emblematic of nations, sub-national places, ethnicities, regions and communities (Anderson, 1991; Creed, 2004; Applegate, 1999). As Palmer (1998) observed, it is through food rather than political rhetoric that most people experience the nation in everyday life. To the people who consume it, national fare is never perceived as a value-free, symbolically-neutral source of nutrition that has come haphazardly into being. Instead, it is seen as a cultural system with a past, a purpose and meanings that are central to social identity and survival, making cuisine a powerful political instrument and a revealing barometer of social change. 157

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This chapter focuses on the English breakfast, one of the best-known national meals in the world, in order to answer three questions – why are national meals considered so important by the people who eat them; how do they come into being; and what can food tell us about nations and their pasts?

The anthropology of food Once past the basic level of food security, all societies make choices about food. Over time, these choices are accepted as the ‘natural order of things’, and become embedded in ‘cuisines’ or ‘foodways’ of various complexities. Besides ingredients, these terms include etiquette, cookery techniques, ways of serving and combining foods, medical beliefs and moral values which reflect and sustain the distinctions that make up the larger social order (Goody, 1982, 1998). These distinctions are the primary constituents of identity – the way people see themselves in relation to members of their own group, and in relation to other groups; and the way in which they are seen by others. Food also situates people in time and space, a relationship that is embodied in the contemporary use of the French term terroir. Since the 1980s, in the context of EU food labelling, the term has been applied to the customs of an area, its traditions, production techniques, cuisine, soil, climate, the characteristics of local inhabitants, significant persons or events associated in some way with the food or locale, all of which are considered to be constituents of the patrimoine or heritage that contribute to the uniqueness of the final food product. Although couched in the language of contemporary commerce, anthropologists see terroir as a reiteration of older beliefs rooted in an era when people were relatively immobile, literally anchored in the landscape. For generation upon generation, people worked and hunted over the same land, watered it with their sweat and blood, lived off its produce, and were finally laid to rest in it until ancestors, land and food were transmuted into one, through the alchemy of time. In eating food that was locally grown and prepared in the customary manner, people daily participated in a form of ritual that linked them to place and past. Despite modernity, urbanisation, globalisation and increased mobility, the profound and complex relationship between people, food, place, ancestors, past and identity endures, often articulated along the following lines, from The Times of 12 December 1931, cited by Florence White (1932), an ethnographer of English folk cookery – ‘It is a common saying that a man is what he eats, and equally common that character is destiny, so that it seems logical that if we eat what our foregathers ate, we shall become like them and enjoy some of their good fortune’. Taken together, these beliefs, found in all societies in all periods of history, account for the importance given to foodways by the people who consume them and for the current anthropological discourse of national cuisines and emblematic meals (see Rogers, 2003).

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National foods and myths Can foods be ‘national’? Some historians, notably Flandrin and Montanari (1999; Montanari, 2006) reject the validity of ‘national’ cuisines, meals and foods, on the grounds that cuisines and ingredients do not stop at national borders, which in any case are always shifting. Instead, they advocate a regional model, as in ‘Mediterranean cuisine’. Flandrin and Montanari also argue that many traditions linked to the origins of national fare are no more than gastronomic myths perpetuated for narrow nationalistic purposes. The example they cite is the widely-held belief that pasta was brought from China to Venice by Marco Polo. Against this, they assert that pasta-like noodles were known and eaten in Italy before Polo’s journey; that there is reasonable doubt that Polo ever reached Cathay; and that the purpose of the story was to enhance the reputation of the Republic of Venice as the leading European presence in the Orient trade. Be this as it may, for the authors to dismiss the tradition as an improbable invention (Flandrin and Montanari, 1999, p. 1) is to fall prey to a culinary fallacy of misplaced concreteness that overlooks the importance of myth in cuisine, nationality and identity. The strength and importance of popular beliefs about food can be seen in the way they resist attempts to deconstruct them. The belief that Marco Polo brought pasta from China continues, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. In America, the annual Thanksgiving feast, the emblematic meal of American nationhood, flourishes even though its ideology and iconography of Native Americans and Pilgrims eating happily and peaceably together is contradicted by everything now known about the early relations between these two groups (Siskind, 1992), let alone the events of later times, and there are many similar examples. Food beliefs persist because they are a form of what anthropologists call ‘origin myths’. These myths reaffirm cultural values and assumptions, consolidate identity, create community, mobilise sentiments, validate social exclusions and inclusions and endorse a society’s self-image – all with reference to a past which is presented as historic, but which is invariably largely or wholly mythic. From an anthropological perspective, myths that are believed become social facts and self-fulfilling prophecies, and what interests anthropologists is not whether something actually happened, but how, why and when food myths come into being, how particular foods take on iconic status, and how they empower national and ethnic identity. The process through which foods take on cultural meanings over time is called a ‘cultural biography’ (Kopytoff, 1986); what follows is a cultural biography of the English breakfast.

The making of the English breakfast The English breakfast is a culinary mystery. Early English cookbooks have recipes for lunch and for dinner, but no recipes at all for breakfast. Large

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cooked breakfasts do not figure in English life and letters until the 19th century, when they appeared with dramatic suddenness. Subsequently, the English breakfast became a cultural and culinary landmark. As Countess Morphy (1936), a well-known food writer of the 1930s put it – ‘Breakfast is the English meal par excellence ... one of the great national institutions of England’, echoed in the novelist Somerset Maugham’s observation, ‘To eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day’. Why and how did breakfast come to be England’s national meal, and what is the ‘real’ English breakfast? Culinary biographies begin with the ingredients and the emergence of distinctive foodways. Paleobotany and archaeology have revealed that many of the foods and techniques now thought of as ‘typically English’ were imported from the continent in the course of successive waves of migration in the relatively recent past. Pheasants, walnuts, apples and fallow deer, for example, were among the many edible things introduced by the Romans, while the Anglo-Saxons brought in rye and the Danes new ways of curing and preserving fish. The cuisine that developed during the Anglo-Saxon period was plain and simple, compared to the spiced and elaborate foods favoured by the Romano-British elite (Hagen, 1992). Pork was the staple meat, and pigs were herded in the forests where acorns and beech-mast gave their flesh a fine flavour. Fresh pork was usually eaten only once a year, in late autumn when pigs were killed in order to avoid the expense of feeding them over the winter. Otherwise pork was salted, smoked or pickled, prepared in the form of hams, bacon, sausages, meat puddings and mixtures of cereal, offal, herbs, blood and fat stuffed into a casing for cooking, like a modern-day haggis. Wealth was reckoned in flitches of bacon, which were prepared in quantity for domestic use, for the payment of land-rents and the settling of debts, and as gifts. Boiling, particularly suitable for salted meats, was the main method of cooking. If this was old England, its emblematic dish was not roast beef but boiled pork. As for breakfast, it was the least important meal of the Anglo-Saxon day as it had been for the Romans, and many people seem not to have eaten one. Only two meals a day were commonly taken, one at about noon and the other in the early evening. Ironically, it was only when Old English had become established as a common language and political accommodation between Anglo-Saxons, Britons and Danes seemed within reach, that another wave of migration – the Norman Conquest of 1066 led by William of Normandy – swept the Anglo-Saxons from power. The Norman elite spoke French and were part of a cosmopolitan continental culture. The Anglo-Saxon nobles and commoners spoke English, led a largely rural existence, were insular in their outlook and felt a unifying sense of dispossession by the Norman newcomers. Just as there were now two main languages and cultures, there were two cuisines – plain Anglo-Saxon food, considered to be inferior fare by the Norman elite, and the elaborate, spiced French ‘high’ cuisine of the royal court. French

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continued to be the language of fashion and power in England for some 300 years after the Conquest, but the ‘tyranny’ of French cooking went on for much longer. There was, however, one omission. Despite its luxury in other regards, the elite French way of eating did not include breakfast as a substantial formal meal (Flandrin, 1996), and the first of the two meals of the day continued to be eaten shortly before noon. Under the Normans, society was much more hierarchical than it had been during the Anglo-Saxon period and by the 13th century it consisted of the king and royal family at the top, followed by the greater and lesser nobility, knights, people of the middling sort comprising wealthy merchants and members of the growing urban elite, free commoners and peasants. From the knightly ranks there emerged the group who would one day be closely linked to the English breakfast – the squires. Squires stood midway in status between nobles and commoners and were considered socially superior to merchants, however rich the latter might be. Squires and their families evolved into the peculiarly English institution called the gentry (Moore, 1981). Becoming lesser landowners, they based themselves in the countryside on estates where they enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy, away from the urban centres of power where they had little influence. In this, they considered themselves to be the cultural heirs of the Anglo-Saxons. This, more than increasing national prosperity, changes in grain prices, foreign wars or advances in sheep husbandry accounts for the strong identity that the country gentry had from the outset, which they consolidated by taking a generally inward-looking ‘little England’ perspective, intermarrying, involving themselves in local affairs and indulging wholeheartedly in country ways and pursuits such as hunting, creating a country lifestyle and community that they saw as entirely separate from, and equal if not superior to, that of court and town. At the heart of the gentry’s lifestyle were their country estates and houses which exerted a compelling fascination on those outside the circle of privilege, coming to represent all that was best in England and all they aspired to. Gentry families were linked by kinship and marriage over many generations, providing a social network for the round of country house parties that were a feature of country life. These visits, lasting several days, allowed the host to show off the excellence of his estate’s produce. It was on country estates that ‘good plain English cooking’ flourished, a cuisine recognisably rooted in Anglo-Saxon foodways. In addition to its links with place and past, plain cookery had a moral dimension. As the writer Joseph Conrad (1925) later put it, ‘Good cooking is a moral agent. By good cooking I mean the conscientious preparation of the simple food of everyday life ... The decency of our life is for a great part a matter of good taste, of the correct appreciation of what is fine in simplicity’. One gentry ideal was to own all the land in all directions as far as the eye could see, another was to be entirely provisioned from one’s own estates, so that all the food put upon the table had come from one’s own soil, rivers, forests and moorlands. The elite fondness for

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venison, salmon, and game stemmed from the fact that these are all products of country estates, once legally available only to their owners. Three factors had a particular impact on the emergence of the English breakfast – tea, towns and technology. Tea transformed English life, at all levels of society. The national thirst for the drink was a principal impetus in the establishment of England’s international trading empire, which brought many foreign goods and influences into the country in addition to tea, resulting in profits that created a sizeable new group of nouveaux riches. Domestically, tea changed centuries-old patterns of consumption. When tea was introduced to England in the 1650s, the upper classes – the only ones who could afford it – made tea drinking the height of fashion, and were soon holding breakfast parties where tea was offered to guests, along with bread, butter jam and two other foreign novelties, coffee and chocolate. New types of furniture and serving ware had to be provided for this new kind of meal, and the first breakfast tables appeared, smaller and lighter than dining tables, followed by imported tea ware and then the first domestically-produced teapots and teacups and finally by whole breakfast services of matched cups, saucers, milk ewers, slop and sugar basins and bread and butter plates. As time went on, tea and coffee services grew more elaborate and breakfast tables got bigger, although the food at these breakfasts still consisted of bread, toast or cake. As tea grew cheaper, it became a popular mania in all classes of society, helping to popularise the practice of taking breakfast. However, even in Jane Austen’s time at the end of the Georgian period, among people of leisure a good two hours elapsed between arising and eating, and this time was spent shopping, letter-writing or taking exercise (Lane, 1995). As agriculture gave way to industry, the bases of the nation’s economy and of individual prosperity shifted. Labourers deserted the countryside for the growing towns and the new factories made possible by innovative technology. The whole rhythm of daily life changed, as machinery and not nature now began to dictate the hours of sleeping, working and eating. Slowly, the lot of the workers began to improve and the growing professional middle class along with those involved in foreign trade became wealthier. All started to entertain social aspirations that were potentially destabilising at a time of social unrest in Europe. A strong anti-industrial and anti-business feeling grew up in many quarters, expressed as the widespread fear that foreign influences and imported goods, especially foreign edibles often glossed as ‘French food’, might weaken the fibre of the nation. This was exacerbated by what was seen as the decadence of the Georgian aristocracy, which critics compared to the excesses that had brought about the fall of the Roman Empire. The loss of England’s American colonies and the events of the French Revolution increased these concerns, as did the accelerating rates of industrialisation, urbanisation and social change. Traditionalists who saw England as a land of proud countrymen were stung by Napoleon’s remark that it had become a nation of shopkeepers. In this volatile period there grew up a deep nostalgia

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for a more secure past and a heart-felt need to affirm traditional English identity and values, and strengthen the national vision and sense of purpose.

The apogee of the English breakfast The accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 is a useful reference point. The early years of the Victorian era saw the rise of the new urban middle classes and the decline of the traditional country gentry, many of whom could no longer afford to live off their land in the manner to which they had been so long accustomed. Instead of one group seeking to overthrow the other as happened on the continent, heritage facilitated an accommodation. In response to the social and economic changes of the time, there came an upsurge of patriotism in many forms, including literature, art, architecture, popular culture and landscape. Even as much of the countryside fell empty as the workers were drawn to the towns, country life and the English landscape were glorified – particularly Sussex, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset and other southern counties that had been at the heart of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and now came to represent the English countryside as a whole (Kumar, 2003). Above all, the gentry and their lifestyle came to represent ‘the real England’ and Englishness. This new nationalism looked to an idealised, even mythologised past, with the reign of Elizabeth I, Gloriana, celebrated as a golden age, and the whole medieval period glossed as ‘Merrie England’ and ‘the Olden Time’ (Mandler, 1997a, 1997b). Personages from the Anglo-Saxon past became popular cult figures, especially King Alfred (Keynes, 1999; Melman, 1991; Readman, 2005). Medieval pursuits such as archery were revived as elite sports and there was a vogue for historical romances, notably Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, in which food serves as a metaphor for cultural values, differences and identity, the simple cookery and home-produced ingredients of Cedric’s great hall contrasted with the spiced, complex and imported Norman foods served at Prince John’s banquet (Vanden Bossche, 1987). As Cedric the Saxon declares ‘Far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror.’ The two styles of eating, English and French, had continued since the Conquest, despite the fact that most of the 18th century had been spent fighting the French. Now, however, Victorian patriotism and the need for social unity demanded a thoroughly English emblematic repast, just as the new employment patterns required a hearty meal early in the morning, before work commenced. Georgian tea and cake breakfasts were too insubstantial for the purpose. The French hold over lunch and dinner still obtained in fashionable and cosmopolitan circles, but there was no such thing as a substantial French breakfast, and no distinctive French breakfast foods. So the first of the two daily meals of old was brought forward and served earlier, becoming the English breakfast, England’s national meal.

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The 1800s are often described as the ‘masculine century’, a time of gender polarisation with masculine activity centred in the public arena and feminine activity in the private sphere, especially within the home. Breakfast was considered a masculine meal, in contrast to afternoon tea, which was considered a feminine repast. The decoration and furnishings of Victorian dining and breakfast rooms tended to enhance masculine associations, with dark furniture and ornate dark sideboards rather like secular altars, on which the food was displayed in the manner of offerings. Ancestral portraits–authentic or not – were a favoured embellishment, emphasising the links between past and present through food and communal eating, and demonstrating a respect for tradition. A man’s mission, whatever his place in society, was seen as securing the livelihood that would support his domestic establishment and family, while the role of women became the sustaining of masculine enterprise, not least through the provision of the meal that prepared him for his daily work. As The Young Ladies’ Journal noted, ‘breakfast should be regarded as one of the most, if not the most important meal of the day’. The very future of home, hearth and, ultimately, the nation and Empire was thought by many to depend on the English breakfast. Breakfast imposed a new order and discipline on daily life. While the timing of meals had always been somewhat flexible among the country gentry, the times and composition of meals now needed to be as regular as possible, reflecting the changed realities of commercial and family life. Since time was now money, every minute had to be properly accounted for in the new moral and material economy. Religion offered the Victorians stability and moral certainty during a time of great change, and promoted the Protestant work ethic which further legitimised the status of the selfmade man and affirmed the Christian sense of certainty and superiority that sustained the expansion of Empire. In many households, the day began with morning prayers – led by the head of the household and including the family servants – which were celebrations and ritual enactments of spiritual, social and family values, sealed by the taking of breakfast. Over time, lengthy morning prayers were discontinued, but the breakfast meal retained a distinctive sacramental quality, put in secular terms by Leigh Hunt in this way – ‘Breakfast is a forecast of the whole day. Spoil that and all is spoiled.’ As nearly as possible, English breakfasts approximated to the old country ideal of locally produced or identifiably ‘English’ food, whether naturalised or not, plainly cooked and served bounteously. Of course there was not just one English breakfast, there were many, depending on who was eating, when and where, but the ultimate English breakfast, the meal of heart’s desire, was the country house breakfast, like the one described by Ethel, Lady Raglan (in White, 1932): I always remember what a great feature was made of the breakfasts at my grandfather’s house parties at Port Eliot, and of the numerous courses that succeeded each other. There would be a choice of fish, fried eggs

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and crisp bacon, a variety of egg dishes, omelettes and sizzling sausages and bacon. During the shooting parties, hot game and grilled pheasants always appeared on the breakfast menu but were served of course without any vegetables. On a side table was always to be found a choice of cold viands; delicious home-smoked hams, pressed meats, one of the large raised pies for which Mrs Vaughan (the cook) was justly famous, consisting of cold game and galantine, with aspic jelly. The guests drank either tea or coffee, and there were the invariable accompaniments of homemade rolls, piping hot, and stillroom preserves of apple and quince jelly, and always piled bowls of rich Cornish cream. The meal usually finished with a fruit course of grapes or hothouse peaches and nectarines. These lavish breakfasts, unique to England, never failed to astonish foreign visitors. When the American historian John Motley encountered one of these gargantuan meals for the first time, he noted – ‘When I reflected that all these people would lunch at 2 and dine at 8, I bowed my head in humiliation and the fork dropped nerveless from my grasp.’

English breakfast cookbooks It was during this period that cookbooks emerged as a powerful force in mass culture. In England during the 19th century, the parallel rise of the print media and the middle classes produced a form of literature that was a central part of the civilising process (Elias, 1994). Ostensibly created to educate readers in the ways of the gentry as an aid to social advancement and self-improvement, it actually served as a form of social control. From the viewpoint of the upper classes, it was desirable that the nouveaux riches and middle classes become gentrified to a degree sufficient to quiet potential unrest, but not so gentrified that they would pose a threat. Instead of closing the social gap, codes of ‘correct’ behaviour kept a social distance between the gentry and the aspiring middle classes. Social life became a minefield, with the newly rich and those below them under tremendous pressure to avoid showing by thought, word or deed that they were not ‘one of us’. The literature of gentrification and self-improvement was also a literature of myth. It depicted a highly idealised world, in which few people actually lived and behaved exactly as described on an everyday basis, a world to which in any case very few of the readers would actually ever gain full entrée. Nonetheless, these books acted as a conduit of dreams and aspirations, and in the climate of the times, to know how things should be done – even if the opportunity to put knowledge into practice never or rarely arose – was regarded as a worthy accomplishment in itself, a form of proto-gentrification. Out of all the new publications, cookbooks were among the most avidly read. Anthropologists and culinary historians have long recognised that cookbooks are not just collections of recipes. In all cultures and periods

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of history, cookbooks have been unique records of a society’s systems of production and distribution, ideas about gender and domesticity, social and cosmological schemes, systems of class and hierarchy, and visions of the ideal life (Appadurai, 1998; Helstosky, 2003; Zlotnick, 1996; Humble, 2005). No cookbooks ever produced rival those of England in this period for detail, depth and scope because it was a society that was in the process of reinventing itself en masse. It is precisely because they were so numerous and detailed, that they make it possible to trace important culinary moments – such as the emergence of the English breakfast as a cultural and social institution. The encyclopaedic Book of Household Management written by Isabella Beeton and updated after her death in 1865 was the most influential English cookery book of the 19th century, a remarkable work of social history and domestic ethnography that documents Victorian gentrification and aspirations through material culture. In the first (1861) edition, this is all Mrs Beeton had to say on the subject of breakfast – ‘It will not be necessary to give here a long bill of fare of cold joints, &c, which may be placed on the side-board and do duty at the breakfast table. Suffice it to say that any cold meat the larder may furnish, should be nicely garnished and be placed on the buffet’ followed by a few suggestions and no recipes. When a new edition of the work now called Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management appeared in 1888, it had a new extensive chapter on breakfast including menus, recipes and table-settings for an English country house breakfast. There was plenty of competition. Georgiana Hill’s The Breakfast Book had appeared in 1865 and Mary Hooper’s Handbook for The Breakfast Table in 1873. In 1884, Miss M. L. Allen’s Breakfast Dishes for Every Morning of Three Months was published. The year 1885 saw the publication of Breakfast and Savoury Dishes by Rose Owen Cole, quickly followed by Rose Brown’s The Breakfast Book, The Dictionary of Dainty Breakfasts by Phyllis Browne, Fifty Breakfasts by Colonel Kenney-Herbert and many similar publications. Breakfast cookbooks came into being because people had to be told how to prepare and present a meal that had never existed in that form before. Yet no Victorian cookbook declared breakfast to be a new meal. Even as it was being introduced, its antiquity and authenticity were taken for granted. It was a myth that fulfilled a social need. Following the recipes and homilies in these volumes, the middle-middle and lower-middle classes breakfasted off economical dishes like pasties, rissoles, meat puddings and stuffed fresh herrings, and poor households off simpler fare, but economy and social class were not the only factors that dictated breakfast menus; locality was also involved. The Welsh breakfast included laver or laverbread (porphyra seaweed), served with bacon and cockles, while the Irish breakfast boasted white and black puddings (blood sausages). Scottish breakfasts were known for the excellence of the baked goods and porridge, and for smoked fish, particularly finnan haddock and kippered

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herring, which often took the place of bacon. These meals have always been treated as regional variations of the English breakfast, at least by the English, not as national dishes in their own right. It has never been considered correct to call the meal the British breakfast, even though the country became formally known as The United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and has been The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1927. It is not a Four Nation (Kearney, 2006) meal, in the sense that Welsh, Scottish (McNeil, 1946) and Irish breakfasts are equal to the English breakfast. They are the periphery that defines a centre that is not strictly or solely geographical (Howell, 2005). The English breakfast is the national dish of a mythic and indivisible England, a repast that binds its people together as one.

The fall and rise of the English breakfast The English breakfast emerged from the First World War only to begin a new battle on the home front. Throughout the 1920s, the growing taste for all things modern and American made the English breakfast seem old fashioned, although to its partisans that was its very appeal. American packaged cereals posed a serious threat. Convenience was the real advantage of these products, but they were sold as health foods so women would not feel guilty about serving them to their families. By far the greatest threat was posed by what was known as the ‘servant problem’. Pre-war British society was dependent on a large population of domestic servants, and of all servants the cook was widely considered the most important. In 1905, The Lady’s Realm magazine had advised its readers ‘The first meal of the day is difficult to vary sufficiently to tempt capricious appetites unless one possesses a first-class cook’. After the First World War, the appeal of domestic service declined sharply and servants became both scarce and expensive. Women of the gentry and middle classes who could no longer afford to employ a cook and had never learned to cook themselves, contributed to the decline of the English breakfast at home, leading to a rise in men breakfasting outside the home, often in commuter trains. The breakfast menu of the Great Eastern Railway offered porridge, haddock, cold fowl and ham, sausage, bacon and eggs, cutlets, steaks and chops, in addition to tea, coffee and seasonal fruit. The Second World War struck the English breakfast a blow from which it never fully recovered. Foodstuffs were strictly rationed and fuel was in short supply, so as little cooking as possible became the rule. Yet so iconic was the English breakfast that in 1940, a year into the war, the food writer Ambrose Heath wrote a breakfast cookbook, the first since the Victorian heyday of the meal, to show how breakfast could still be produced in wartime. In the same year, seeking to mobilise patriotic feeling as enemy bombers flew over London, George Orwell wrote in The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) that English civilisation was ‘... somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields

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and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover, it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature.’ To Orwell and countless others, despite the fact that it was only a century old, the English breakfast was much more than a meal. It had become the symbol of home, family, nation, custom, all that was worth fighting for, and all that had been worth fighting for in a past beyond memory, but not beyond feeling. Rationing continued for years after the war ended in 1945, and when breakfast foods were once again freely available, much had changed. Women were going out to work in their numbers further restricting the time spent on cooking at home and, with democratisation of society in the post-war years, what came to be described as the ‘working class café’ with its menu of bacon-eggs-chips-and-beans (Davies, 2005) came into its own, now commonly though inaccurately described as the ‘Full English’ breakfast. As with previous incarnations of the meal, this version of the English breakfast was assumed to be authentic and rooted in the past, but this is not the case. The Victorian urban poor ate street food such as penny pies and puddings (Mayhew, 1969) purchased from hawkers. Establishments, however humble, in which they could sit and eat food cooked to order at leisure were beyond their means and, even when their lot improved, visits to cafés were a rarity. Freshly cooked eggs and bacon were not cheap, and as for tinned baked beans – regarded today as the quintessential working class food – they were a highly expensive luxury food imported from America and sold only at Fortnum and Mason’s exclusive establishment in London until the end of the 1920s, when they began to be produced in the UK (Alberts, 1974). In the ‘working class breakfast’ can be seen the English breakfast of old, adapted to new circumstances. In time-poor early 21st century Britain, breakfast is a meal honoured more in the breach than in the observance, often consisting of drinks or snacks purchased outside the home and consumed on the run. Yet although it is no longer common daily practice, the English breakfast is enjoying a revival as a ritual meal and cultural event. There are blogs (Russell Davies, 2008, London Review of Breakfasts, 2008) devoted to the English breakfast in its many variations with reviews of restaurants that specialise in breakfasts, even new books on breakfast (O’Connor, 2006; Gill, 2008). Working class cafés are no longer the sole bastion of breakfast. Smart restaurants and brasseries are now offering elite dishes like kedgeree, grilled kippers and duck eggs from the meal’s Victorian heyday and it has once again become a fashionable meal for entertaining. After a long period of postcolonial doubt, the revival of the English breakfast can be seen as a reassertion and reinvention of Englishness.

Conclusions Is the English breakfast an invented tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1984) or an example of the inventiveness of tradition? Anthropologists would say the latter. The move from two daily meals to three and the regularisation

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of mealtimes are the direct result of the switch from agriculture to industrialisation and from country to town (Palmer, 1984). By re-creating the idealised country lifestyle in town, the English breakfast helped to mitigate the perceived ills of urbanisation. The vogue for gentrification – of which culinary gentrification is a fundamental form – helped to stabilise society in a period of great change. Gender polarisation and religion both contributed to the emergence of breakfast, but these Victorian confluences are only part of the story. The English breakfast became a symbol of the nation, an emblem of civilised gentility and a link to a past made real through belief. Its ideal form, the country house breakfast, was a meal eaten by the members of the privileged classes at a particular point in historical time when economic and social circumstances, including a substantial part of the population in domestic service, favoured it. It was admired and emulated because its elite associations suited the national mood of certainty as Britain approached the zenith of Empire and world power. Imperialism spread the fame of the English breakfast. At home and abroad, it signified a certain social order and defined ‘Englishness’. The heyday of the English breakfast lasted roughly a century, from the accession of Queen Victoria to the outbreak of the Second World War. However, it was the outcome of a very much longer culinary tradition and socio-cultural heritage that included beliefs about the morality of food and the historical specificities of contesting English and French foodways (Mennell, 1985), and it was much more than just a meal. Once established as the national meal it was eaten in some form by members of all classes in a unifying cultural practice. And so it remains, even though its symbolism, mythology and history have been largely forgotten. Every national cuisine has a history and every national meal has a biography that begins with the basic ingredients and becomes a cultural narrative over time. Through studying them, we can better understand nations, their pasts and their futures.

References Alberts, R. C. (1974) The Good Provider: H. J. Heinz and His 57 Varieties (London: Arthur Barker). Allen, M. L. (1884) Breakfast Dishes for Every Morning of Three Months (London: J.S. Virtue & Co). Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edn (London: Verso). Appadurai, A. (1988) ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30, 1, 3–24. Applegate, C. (1999) ‘A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of Sub-national Places in Modern Times.’ American Historical Review, October 1999, 1157–82. Beeton, I. (ed.) (1888) Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (London: Ward Lock). Brown, R. (1898) The Breakfast Book (London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co).

170 Kaori O’Connor Browne, P. (Hamer, S. S.) (1898) Dictionary of Dainty Breakfasts (London: Cassell and Co). Cole, R. O. (1885) Breakfast and Savoury Dishes (London: Chapman and Hall). Conrad, J. (1925) ‘Preface’ in J. Conrad (1925) Handbook of Cookery (London: William Heineman). Creed, G. W. (2004) ‘Constituted Through Conflict: Images of Community (and Nation) in Bulgarian Rural Ritual.’ American Anthropologist 106(1), 56–70. Davies, R. M. (2005) Egg, Bacon, Chips and Beans: Fifty Great Cafes and the Stuff That Makes Them Great (London and New York: Harper Collins). Douglas, M. (1970/1996) Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London and New York: Routledge). Douglas, M. (1971) ‘Deciphering a Meal’ in C. Geertz (ed) Myth, Symbol and Culture (New York: W. W. Norton), pp. 61–81. Douglas, M. (1997) ‘Introduction’ in J. Kuper (ed.) The Anthropologists’ Cookbook, 2nd edn (London and New York: Kegan Paul), pp. 215–21. Elias, N. (1994) The Civilising Process (Oxford: Blackwell). Firth, R. (1940) The Work of the Gods in Tikopia (London: London School of Economics). Flandrin, J-L. (1996) ‘Mealtimes in France Before the Nineteenth Century’, Food and Foodways, 3, 4, 261–82. Flandrin, J-L. and M. Montanari (1999) ‘Introduction’ in J-L. Flandrin and M. Montaranri (eds) A Culinary History of Food (New York and London: Columbia University Press). Gill, A. A. (2008) Breakfast at the Wolseley (London: Quadrille). Goody, J. (1982) Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Goody, J. (1998) Food and Love: A Cultural History of East and West (London and New York: Verso). Hagen, A. (1992) A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption (Pinner, England: Anglo Saxon Books). Heath, A. (1940) Good Breakfasts (London: Faber and Faber). Helstosky, C. (2003) ‘Recipe for the Nation: Reading Italian History through La scienza in cucina and La cucina futurista’. Food and Foodways 11(2–3), 113–40. Hill, G. (1865) The Breakfast Book (London: Richard Bentley). Hobsbawm, E. J. and T. Ranger (eds) (1984) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hooper, M. (1873) Handbook for the Breakfast Table (London: Griffith and Farran). Howell, D. L. (2005) Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press). Humble, N. (2005) Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food (London: Faber and Faber). Kearney, H. (2006) The British Isles: A History of Four Nations, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kenny-Herbert, A. R. (1894) Fifty Breakfasts (London: Edward Arnold). Keynes, S. (1999) ‘The Cult of King Alfred the Great’ in M. Lapidge (ed.) Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kopytoff, I. (1986) ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditzation as Process’ in A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Process (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Kumar, K. (2003) The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Lane, M. (1995) Jane Austen and Food (London and Rio Grande: The Hambledon Press). London Review of Breakfasts (2008), http://londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com, last accessed in May 2008. Mandler, P. (1997a) ‘Against “Englishness”: English Culture and the Limits to Rural Nostalgia 1850–1940’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6, 7, 155–76. Mandler, P. (1997b) The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). Mayhew, H. (1969) Selections from Mayhew’s London, originally published 1851, editd by Peter Quennell (London and New York: Spring Books). McNeill, F. M. (1946) Recipes from Scotland (Edinburgh and London: The Albyn Press). Melman, B. (1991) ‘Claiming the Nation’s Past: The Invention of an Anglo-Saxon Tradition’, Journal of Contemporary History, 26, 575–95. Mennell, S. (1985) All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Mintz, S. W. (1985) Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking). Mintz, S. W. (1996) Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom (Boston: Beacon Press). Mintz, S. W. and C. M. Du Bois (2002) ‘The Anthropology of Food and Eating’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 99–119. Montanari, M. (2006) Food Is Culture (New York: Columbia University Press). Moore, D. C. (1981) ‘The Gentry’ in G. E. Mingay (ed.) The Victorian Countryside, vol. 2 (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Morphy, C. (1936) British Recipes: The Traditional Dishes of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales (London: Herbert Joseph Limited). O’Connor, K. (2006) The English Breakfast: The Biography of a National Meal, with Recipes (London and New York: Kegan Paul). Orwell, G. (1941) The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (London: Secker and Warburg). Palmer, A. (1984) Moveable Feasts: Changes in English Eating Habits (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). Palmer, C. (1998) ‘From Theory to Practice: Experiencing the Nation in Everyday Life’, Journal of Material Culture, 3, 2, 175–99. Readman, P. (2005) ‘The Place of the Past in English Culture, 1890–1914’, Past and Present, 186, 147–201. Rogers, B. (2003) Beef and Liberty (London: Chatto and Windus). Russell Davies (2008), http://russelldavies.typepad.com/eggbaconchipsandbeans, last accessed in May 2008. Sahlins, M. D. (1976) Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Siskind, J. (1992) ‘The Invention of Thanksgiving: A Ritual of American Nationality’, Critique of Anthropology, 12, 2, 167–91. Vanden Bossche, C. R. (1987) ‘Culture and Economy in Ivanhoe’. Nineteenth Century Literature, 42, 1, 46–72. White, F. (1932) Good Things in England (London: Jonathan Cape). Zlotnick, S. (1996) ‘Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, 16, 2/3, 51–68.

10 National Restoration and Moral Renewal: The Dialectics of the Past in the Emergence of Modern Israel Allon Gal*

As a consciously man-made, modern movement, apparently revolting against millennial-old religious passivity – awaiting for miraculous times when the redemptive Messiah would bring about the ingathering of the world-dispersed Jews back to their homeland – Zionism supposedly pursued a revolutionary, past-negating course in Jewish history. Moreover, the culture of the new Jewish community in Palestine (or Eretz-Israel, the Land of Israel, the traditional Hebrew term) before the establishment of the State of Israel (the Yishuv) and in the emerging State throughout some subsequent decades even sharpens the riddle as the makers of this culture often professed it to be thoroughly new, of a non-Judaic nature, a bona-fide ‘genuinely made-in-Eretz-Israel product.’ A careful and sensitive examination, though, will produce a rather different, richer and much more dialectical historical phenomenon. The challenging historical question is, therefore, how this radical, modern, nationalist movement nevertheless related itself to the past of the Jewish people.

The relevance of the past to modern democratic Jewish nationalism The beginning of the answer is that Zionism’s birth patterns were shaped by European liberal triumph. Instructively, much of the early Zionist thought took place during the flourishing period of Middle European Liberalism (roughly between 1840–1875). The forerunners of Zionism felt part and parcel of general liberal awakening, in which looking for relevant chapters in the national past was quite typical. Now, two of the three prominent forerunners of Zionism related their treatises on Jewish political independence to a traditional religious context; in fact, they were noted rabbis: Rabbi Jehuda Alkalay (Bulgaria, 1798–1878) 172

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and Rabbi Zevi H. Kalisher (Germany, 1795–1874). Secular former Marxist Moses Hess (Germany and France, 1812–75) also found his rationale (largely relying on the German-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, 1817–91) in the Biblical period, especially in the relatively progressive polity and in the social legislation of the Torah. Thus, generally speaking, they did not hope for a blunt nationalist revival against oppression; their terms of reference were quite liberal for their own times, as were many of the elements of the Jewish past they now sought to renew (Katz, 1971, pp. 271–80). Though these three famous thinkers (who developed a close ideological exchange among themselves) did not cultivate any organisational movement, their historical importance was great. Their liberal nationalist ideas were echoed throughout the 1860s and for generations thereafter; and their enlightened kind of ideological Zionism (in the case of Hess, a human-centred socialism) – that searched the remote national past for progressive elements – came to be rather typical of the future Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) and later of political Zionism’s trends. Importantly, the liberal legacy of the forerunners of Zionism was destined to be restored, or re-created, even in the harsh circumstances of later times in East Europe. Even assuming that this legacy was not a major factor, the significant phenomenon in the oppressive context of Eastern Europe was that the major trends of Jewish nationalism there were antithetical to these oppressive patterns; the typical reaction was aimed at a different kind of regime, in principle; and the envisaged independent state had to be modelled, as was commonly believed, in the light of a uniquely moral historical past.1 Typifying Love-of-Zion thought was the writer and famous editor of the Hebrew monthly Ha-Shahar (The Dawn), Perez Smolenskin (1840–85). Though he faced cruel anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, his corresponding emerging nationalism was not militant, nor did he turn to the Jewish past for aggrandising elements. Conceiving that Jewish nationalism as veritably progressive, he regarded it primarily as a matter of the noble spirit. The Jewish people had received its Torah in the wilderness before conquering its land and founding a polity. Apart from the Torah, Israel was sustained by its national-humanistic messianic hope. Thus he envisioned a free and highly spiritual new Israel (Avineri, 1981, pp. 56–64; Patterson, 2007, 18, pp. 691–4). The formula of Noblesse Oblige, it seems, was at the heart of Smolenskin’s ideology, the ‘Noblesse’ being the antiquity of the Jewish nation, and the ‘Oblige’ the obligation to develop spiritually and to diligently make a living in the ancient homeland, as he proposed (during 1875–81) (Hertzberg, 1970, pp. 144–53). The Jewish East-European masses whose representatives eventually led the political Zionist movement (the World Zionist Organisation was established in 1897) – despite having suffered terribly from anti-Semitism – generally, as was the case with Hibbat Zion, did not replicate oppressive patterns in their world-view; on the contrary, they conceived the future Jewish state

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in democratic and social-democratic references and, accordingly, they embraced chapters and figures of the nation’s past that were of precise relevance to their enlightened vision. This phenomenon compels us to accept the basic thesis that there have been significant elements in Jewish civilisation that were ready-made for modern adaptation. This compatibility helps to understand the dialectics of Jewish past as it worked through the modern Jewish national renascence. 2 Now it is far beyond the scope of this article to systematically describe how all ‘past orientations’ prevailed in the ideologically colourful Zionist movement, democratic and pluralistic as it was. It will suffice here to concentrate on typical cases and issues within the chronological frame from roughly mid-19th century – the period of the pre-state Zionist Palestine/ Eretz Israel community – until approximately the first two decades of the State of Israel (established in 1948). By way of introduction, let us note that, and it is immensely intriguing indeed that the major rightist trend in the Zionist movement, the one purportedly destined to emphasise the nationalistic past, actually was the least conscious of and informed of the past of all Zionist constituencies. I’m referring here to the Revisionist movement and its leader Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880–1940), who according to his own autobiography had ‘no inner contact with Judaism.’ Known as he was for his weak interest in Jewish heritage (for most of his life), he was peculiarly attracted to the figure of Samson (perhaps also, much less though, to Gideon, the valiant judge), the only Jewish super-human figure in the Bible. This nature-bound hero was never prominent in the Zionists’ mainstream conscience. The relative distance of the Revisionists from the uniqueness and richness of Jewish heritage stands in glaring contrast to the social and liberal Zionists’ immersion in the Jewish cultural-spiritual past (Avineri, 1981, pp. 173–5; Shimoni, 1995, pp. 238–49; Don-Yehiya, 2004, pp. 159–86; Naor, 2006, pp. 131–70). This departure from the course of Jewish history entailed also a dubious attitude to enlightened values ingrained in Jewish tradition. Samson was the most pagan of biblical heroes and Jabotinsky’s hero expressed deep admiration for the Philistines’ power and cults of the leader. As his novel Samson (first written and published in Russian in 1926) reveals, Jabotinsky was attracted to mass rallies in which a multitude of human beings act as one organism at the command of their leader. On becoming acquainted with the pagan social and political system of the Philistines, Samson expresses envy for the disciplined order of their hierarchic polity (Avineri, 1981, pp. 174–5; Naor, 2006, pp. 136–41). In line with this historic novel, Jabotinsky raises ceremonialism, associated as it is with his ‘integral kind’ of nationalism, to the level of a leading principle: ‘Man’s pre-eminence above a beast is – ceremony. The difference between a civilized person and a brute is – ceremony. Everything in the world is ceremony.’ (Avineri, 1981, p. 174). This line of social philosophy

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stood in contradiction to the legacy of the great Jewish prophets who were the historic-spiritual paragons of the liberal and labour trends in Zionism. Typically, Isaiah, I: 10–17, was often quoted by these trends in praise of social justice instead adhering to religious ceremonialism. It is important to clarify that Jabotinsky’s integral political course was ambivalent regarding democracy and that the revisionist movement, which never was influential in the World Zionist Organization, bolted it in the mid 1930s, staying quite marginal since it gradually rejoined the WZO through the second half of the 1940s and all along the period discussed in this article (Shimoni, 1995, pp. 247, ff). By a way of difference from Jabotinsky, as implied above, the established Zionist leaders, figures such as liberal Zionist Chaim Weizmann (president of the WZO from 1920 to 1931 and from 1935 to 1946, and the first president of independent Israel) and labour Zionist David Ben-Gurion (chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine in the crucial years from 1935 to 1948 and Israel’s first prime minister), though seculars (like Jabotinsky), were deeply immersed in Jewish heritage and quite often referred their cultural positions and political attitudes to past events, historic and spiritual figures and sanctioned values. Weizmann’s vision of and yearnings for the remote past (while not alienating Jewish history in its continuum) were for the old glorious times when Jewish kings ruled and the prophets assertively raised their eloquent orations. His emotional and intellectual cherishing of Jewish civilisation was quite characteristic of mainstream Zionism; in his keen pursuit of the prophetic aspect of Zionism, his favourite motto was prophet Isaiah’s ‘Zion Shall be redeemed in righteousness’ (Reinharz, 1985, pp. 84, ff.; Weisgal, 1971, pp. 75–8; Rose, 1986, p. 420). David Ben-Gurion, the foremost leader of the Zionist movement since the early 1940s, who was known for his immense interest in the Bible, exemplifies the interweaving between the pursuit of democratic socialism and the enchantment with the Bible and the First Commonwealth period. True, one of Ben-Gurion’s favourite Biblical figures was Joshua, the conqueror of the Promised Land; yet, Ben-Gurion admired Joshua not particularly in his role as a warrior, but rather as a leader who paved the way for a gradual settlement that showed bravery and stamina (as in the Alt-Noth school of biblical analysis). Moreover, Ben-Gurion accepted Joshua as a prophet, confronting the heathen, a disciple of Moses and a resolute advocate of Monotheism amidst his own people (Uffenheimer, 1989; Dinur, 1973, pp. 7–9; Shapira, 1997, pp. 217–47). Furthermore, Ben-Gurion admired the Hebrew prophets and persistently praised their spiritual, social and ethical legacy. He initiated, supported and personally participated in endeavours to study the Bible and disseminate its national and universal values. David Ben-Gurion named his son ‘Amos’, perhaps the most socially conscious of the great prophets. The ethno-symbols associated with his life and work

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reflected both the pursuit of a vigorous nationalist restoration and the urge for an ethical-spiritual renewal for and by Jews (Uffenheimer, 1989; Dinur, 1973, pp. 7–9; Shapira, 1997, pp. 217–47; Ben-Gurion, 1997 [1957], p. 198; Gal, 2004a, pp. 13–28). The religious Zionists, in contrast to David Ben-Gurion’s course, did adhere to Jewish tradition throughout the generations; yet, their yearnings too were focused on the olden periods of independence. But while the secular labour Zionists were magnetically attracted to the First Commonwealth and its reflections in the Bible, the religious Zionists were often oriented towards the Second Commonwealth where the religious factor was prominent. Typical of this trend in Zionism were the teachings of Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon (Fishman) who represented it in the Executive of the Jewish Agency from the mid-1930s until the establishment of Israel and who served as a minister in all Israeli governments for about 15 years thereafter. Following the example of the Second Commonwealth, Maimon advocated the reestablishment of a Sanhedrin in Israel as the highest religious authority for Jews throughout the world. Maimon also developed a comprehensive ideology according to which the national character of the Jewish people was shaped in olden times by the landscape and ancient history of Eretz Israel; coming back to the historic homeland would then harmonise the people with the geo-historical features of the Land of Israel (Luz, 1988, chaps. 8, 9; Schwartz, 1997, pp. 172–87). Instructively, however, even in this ‘organic’, semi-mystical kind of Zionist orientation towards the past, the social motif was not ignored at all. Rabbi Maimon emphatically argued that the unity of the People of Israel with the Land of Israel would bring also a moral awakening of the nation, in the presumably precise spirit of Eretz Israel’s eminent prophets (Schwarz, 1997, pp. 174–6; Shimoni, 1995, pp. 151–65). The socialist religious Zionists, those who established the Religious Kibbutz Federation (in 1935), paid even smaller tribute to the tradition as it was formulated by the rabbis through the ages. They spoke in the name of a Holy Rebellion and bound it to remote events that took place in the Middle East, primarily the Sinaitic Revelation (the giving of the Torah). This reliance on the past enabled them to reinterpret the Holy Scriptures in keeping with their own religious-socialist ideology (Fishman, 1992, pp. 59–64). Vital layers that were embedded in the historical past enabled religious pioneers to invigorate their religious beliefs. Thus parents were urged to give their newborn children Biblical names of earlier periods, for ‘by doing so, we shall bring the spirit of those periods into our lives, act it out and activate it into real force.’ Similarly, regarding security problems of some kibbutzim, they referred to Biblical Nehemiah’s faithful ones who were boldly ready to guard at night and labour in the day. ‘How fortunate that we are worthy enough to resemble the generation of Ezra and Nehemiah’ the builders of the religious new collective society boasted (Fishman, 1992, pp. 83–4).

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In conclusion, the three trends that were at the core of the endeavour to build a Jewish Palestine – ‘general’ or liberal Zionists, labour Zionists and religious Zionists – shared a nationalist ethos wherein essential chapters of the past were revered as both politically glorious and socially ethical.

The relevance of the past to Western Zionists Zionism in the Western world, especially the English-speaking countries, developed its own parameters regarding the Jewish people’s past. Zionists in these countries, particularly in the United States, never counteracted the Diaspora in their places of residency, and tended to find positive experiences in the long galut (exile, dispersion) period. Virtually all important American Zionist leaders were engaged in some way in publicising historical chapters of the flourishing of Diaspora centres. American Zionism by its genuine ideological nature was strongly inclined ‘to do historical justice’ to the past accomplishments of the Jewish Diaspora, dating back to the Spanish Golden Age during the middle ages, back via the 4th and 5th centuries’ great Babylonian centre, further back to the Hellenistic-Roman period and as far back as Ahasuerus-Xerxes’ Persia. It is not by chance that the largest and most genuine of all American Zionist organisations, Hadassah (the Women’s Zionist Organisation of America), was named after a heroine (‘Hadassah, that is, Esther’, Esther II: 7) of the legendarily victorious Diaspora of Persia way back in the 5th Century BC (Gal, 1992, pp. 1–20). The eloquent lecture of Henrietta Szold (1860–1945), the founding mother of Hadassah and its spiritual moulder, given upon the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is perhaps a conspicuous example of the out-reaching humanistic concept of the past held by more than a few Zionist circles in the democratic-pluralistic countries (Szold, 1925, pp. 334). The approach of Louis D. Brandeis (1865–1941) is perhaps more instructive, as he most effectively led American Zionism according to ideas which were keenly and very clearly adapted to the American setting. In his rationale for the movement, Brandeis also tended to refer positively to the long exilic experience. Though often referred to as the modern epitome of prophetic Judaism (he was labelled ‘Isaiah’ by President Franklin D. Roosevelt), he himself believed that ‘the life of the Jews through twenty-five hundred years, and particularly since the destruction of the Temple, had been such to make those ideals [democracy and social justice] realities, to enforce the ideas as the practice of life’. Among all the prophets, Brandeis saw in Daniel, who lived in Babylon and (like Hadassah/Esther and Mordecai) won the battle there, the towering symbol of Jewish faithfulness, integrity, wisdom and indeed decisive success against great odds (Gal, 1992, pp. 4–5). This interest in the past Diaspora’s experiences notwithstanding, American Zionists, like their European co-nationals, were positively interested also in the First and Second Commonwealths. After all, despite their staying on

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in the United States, they did support the establishment of the Jewish State in Eretz-Israel and devotedly worked for its sustenance; ‘renew our days as of old’ (Lamentations V:21) certainly expressed the sentiments of the bulk of them. Yet, their engagement in the past sovereign periods was rather mellow compared with the passionate involvement of European Zionists, especially those who personally shared the Eretz-Israel pioneering endeavour. Furthermore, often associated with the American Zionist interest in Jewish history and in its continuity was a sharp sensitivity to the lot of minorities, outside the Jewish homeland as well as inside the Jewish state. The socially compassionate element of the Zionist interest in the past was therefore somewhat different in countries of different geo-cultural world regions. In countries where Zionism did not negate the Diaspora, the ethical element was reflected more in the aspiration for inter-communal and international harmony; while in countries of despair from Diaspora life (where it was often labelled galut in the meaning of exile), it seems that the pursuit of social justice was more typical (Gal, 1999, pp. 361–88).

The relevance of the past: interim conclusions However, the chapters that forcefully attracted the pioneering Zionists were chosen chiefly from the old independent periods of the nation, that is, the First and the Second Commonwealths. Though the long autonomous Jewish life in the Diaspora offered many striking elements of social responsibility, communality and the serving elite – the historical galutic roots of all these were ‘subjectively’ marginalised by the Zionists in Eretz Israel. Indeed, Zionists could relate themselves socially to many pertinent chapters in the Jewish past – from earliest ancient history to the two Commonwealths and throughout Diaspora communal experience. However, the Diaspora experience, though it ‘objectively’ offered a most interesting legacy and at times applicable communal progressive elements was not considered a past to be proud of. After all, Zionism (that is, the European-classical one) came to negate ‘those two thousands years of exile,’ and the exilic experience was quite stubbornly depicted as miserable, even sickening (Avineri, 1995, pp. 676–9).3 Again, for the Eretz-Israeli Zionists, especially the secular ones (and they were the decisive majority), the Bible was the major medium connecting them to past nationhood and heritage. This orientation was deep and almost always kept its two-dimensional character. The Bible’s primary significance for them was nationalist – the book adeptly unfolded a history of a wholesome and vigorous Jewish independent life in the historic homeland; and this happened ‘without a Diaspora’. Thus, the pioneers enthusiastically adopted also the language of the Bible and, consequently, became even more intimately related to the First Temple period. In numerous ways, the Bible was indeed the bedrock of the new Hebrew culture in Eretz-Israel (Aberbach, 2005, pp. 235–42; Shavit, 1998, pp. 9–29; Shapira, 1998 [1994], pp. 251–72).

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At the same time, mainstream Zionists, who were chiefly social liberals and democratic, humanist socialists, identified also with the social and moral contents of the Bible. With its prophetic vision of a world of justice and righteousness and of the brotherhood of man, the Bible had an immense potential for directing them towards democratic patterns and social reform. The Bible’s concrete nature of thought, its concern with the deed, its practical application of lofty ideals, all had tremendous meaning for their social-moral pursuit (Shapira, 1998 [1994], pp. 251–72). Theoretically then, two main interpretations of the Bible’s relevance to Zionism developed in the Yishuv and Israel. The one emphasised an independent, wholesome national life, its heroes being the valiant judges and the great kings; and the other approach underlined spiritual and ethical values, deriving its historical, ethnic symbols largely from the Torah’s moral-social legislation and the prophets’ lives and legacy. In reality though, not only did these two attitudes not exclude one another, but they were more often than not firmly interwoven. Indeed, most core ethno-symbols, as we shall see, reflected both dimensions of the Zionist cause – the urge for a full-blooded independent national life and the aspiration for a special society endowed with Jewish ethics and universal ideals (Shapira, 1997, pp. 155–74; Aberbach, 2005, pp. 223–32, 235–40). Eventually, the two sets of values – the particularistic ones and the egalitarian-universalistic ones – were firmly expressed, in the context of the old history, in the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel (14 May 1948); the Declaration is the foundation and the fountain of the state’s ensuing Basic Laws (Hirschler, 1994, pp. 320–21).

The two-dimensional role of collective memories, historical symbols and myths The Biblical period Historical ethno-symbols played a major role in the course of the Zionist movement and the rise of the State of Israel. In this part of the article I will try to demonstrate that, interwoven with the leading Zionist ideologies hitherto discussed, the myths, symbols, memories and traditions – often titled ‘historical ethno-symbols’ – conveyed the same two clusters of values: the overt nationalist and the social-ethical ones.4 Two fundamental ethno-symbols ingrained in Zionism are intimately associated with two counter-exilic historical endeavours: the exodus from Egypt (whether it is partly myth is irrelevant to our discussion) and the return from the Babylonian exile (Almog, 1987, Chap. 2; Almog et al., 1998 [1994], pp. i–xi, 237–71; Smith, 1999, pp. 8–19, 172–5, 203–24; Smith, 2003, pp. 85–94 ff). The Exodus is indeed a major historical ethno-symbol for both secularist and religious Zionists. Passover has been meaningfully celebrated by

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Zionists of all shades. Importantly, the story about the pilgrimage from an enslaving empire to the Promised Land is not merely nationalist as it is consistently loaded with social-ethical values of universal significance. Thus, Egypt is not only an empire that oppresses the Jewish people, but is itself an essentially detested ‘beit avadim’ (a house of slavery). As a result, the liberated Hebrew nation needed to reshape itself on new foundations, antithetical to the Pharaoh’s Egyptian ones – free farmers and artisans obeying only God. The kings in the new Jewish state should also humbly obey God’s commandments. Of central importance was the envisaged freed nation’s leading ideal, perhaps also embedded in Eretz-Israel’s special geo-economics, namely ‘every man under his vine and under his fig tree’ (1st Kings V:5, Micah IV:4; Walzer, 1985; Feliks and Gibson, 2007; Feliks, 2007; Schweid, 2004, Chap. 2). Now the modern national trend of return to the Land of Israel persistently explicated and elevated the Exodus story to a major, noble ethno-symbol. In contradistinction to the Egyptian ‘beit avadim’, now presumably akin to an exploitative kind of capitalism, the ideal was of the urban and rural workers and labourers living decently in liberty. Thus, for the bulk of the Yishuv, democratic as it was, especially for the cooperatives and in the kibbutzim, the Biblical story and the related ethno-symbols were deeply meaningful (Schweid, 2004, pp. 229–40). Beyond the Passover’s traditional Haggadah, many variations were creatively elaborated and used by rural and urban pioneers alike. Among the secular ones, however, the miraculous aspects of the narration were marginalised, while emphasis was laid on the national and social elements, all with a strong flavour of a blossoming spring (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 1983, pp. 49–50; Tzur and Danieli, 2004, pp. 10–42; Ariel, 1962, pp. 227–82).5 The Zionists were pained that the Jewish people had become detached from Nature during their long Exile; therefore, intertwined with the historic homeland and the Zionist ethos of tilling the land was the urge to return to authenticity and to come close to nature. Yet, this desire rarely crystallised into a Blut-und-Boden pattern; there was no nature-like hero in the whole range of Zionist ethno-symbolism. Perhaps the closest to this image was the already-mentioned Biblical Samson – associated with a power cult – whose linkage with the secessionist rightist movement, was discussed above. Historically, the ‘back-to-the-soil’ urge in the firm liberal/labour majority of the Zionist endeavour took a rather refined course. The great prophets’ legacy was always present and the running phrase among Zionists in Eretz-Israel was ‘Zion shall be redeemed with judgment and those who return to her with righteousness’ (Isaiah I:27). Indeed, the prominent figures here were prophets such as Elijah, the spirited defender of Navot’s farm against the corrupting and dispossessing foreign influences, and Amos, Micah and Isaiah, eminent pursuers of justice and ethics (Schweid, 2004, pp. 229–40; Uffenheimer, 1973, Chs. 2–6; Urbach, 1985, pp. 175–279).

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Obviously, the quest for national restoration encompassed past judges and kings such as David, as symbols of national heroism and sovereignty. But the Biblical kings were often conceived as restrained by some degree of public awareness, humbled at times by the criticism of the prophets, and having soft spots (Halpern, 2007, pp. 450–6). Of the agricultural Biblical holidays adopted and adapted by the Zionists, one is Shavu’ot (Pentecost), which, in ancient times, celebrated the first fruits and the harvest. After the destruction of the Second Temple, in rabbinic times, the ancient agricultural festival gradually became an anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. While religious Zionists did not neglect this tradition, mainstream Zionism emphasised the agricultural festival to which they gave nationalist and social meanings. The nationalist aspect of the holiday is unmistakable: Jewish labour in the homeland has yielded successful results. The celebrations also reflect democratic and social values: at the heart of the ceremony are mass rallies offering first fruits to the democratic authorities of the nationalised land – the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet Le-Israel). The social and nationalist aspects originate from the well-known Zionist interpretation of the Biblical injunction: ‘The land shall not be sold forever for the land is Mine’ (Leviticus XV:23), as does the institution of the Jubilee Year, which stipulates that all landholdings that have changed hands revert to their original owners in the 50th year (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 1983, pp. 50–1, 156–7; Shelem, 2007; Ariel, 1962, pp. 303–26). The Second Commonwealth period The Shivat Tzion endeavour (from 520 BC up to the conclusion of the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls in 433 BC), like the Exodus, provided the Zionists with some of the most fundamental ethno-symbols. The building up of Jewish Jerusalem by the returnees and the hostility they experienced from local ethnic groups became powerful elements in the Zionist collective memory. Thus, the labour Zionist movement in Eretz-Israel, which often refers to Ezra and Nehemiah, is ever-inspired by the latter’s phrase: ‘With one of his hands each laboured in the work, and with the other hand he held a weapon’ (Nehemiah IV:11; Ben-Gurion, 1997, pp. 7, ff). An agricultural holiday – in that ‘constructive vein’ – adopted and adapted by the Zionists is the Tu Bi-Shevat. The main ceremony which was creatively taken from this rather minor festival going back to the Second Temple era, is the planting of trees. In its Zionist version the ceremony came to celebrate the Zionist vow to redeem the largely desolate land. This holiday too reflects social values, for example, the achievement of a national goal via hard work (menial labour included) and by constructive means. The holiday has also become the official anniversary of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, adding a further socio-political significance to that date (Ariel , 1962, pp. 167–85). Three uprisings of roughly this period have been etched into the nation’s memory; they have carried also social-ethical dimensions. The Maccabean

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revolt against the rule of the Hellenistic Seleucids (168–164 BC) was commemorated in the Zionist mind as double-faceted – first, as a national revolt against a despotic-imperialist power and, second, as the building-up of a militia-like, people’s army that enabled the astonishing success of the small nation. Hanukkah, the holiday celebrating the Maccabees’ victory, was, like Passover, adopted and adapted by the Zionists, secular and religious alike. Among the secular Zionists, the religious aspect, namely, the miracle of the Temple menorah (the candelabrum of the Temple that burnt for eight days on a scanty supply of oil) was played down, while the national and the social-popular factors became prominent (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 1983, pp. 51–3; Ariel, 1962, pp. 127–66). The Zionist movement also drew on the Jewish uprisings against Roman domination. Thus, it embraced the fall of Masada, the last fortress in the Great Revolt against Rome (66–73 CE). Jewish religious tradition had hardly acknowledged these revolts, focusing instead on the destruction of the Temple. In the Yishuv and later in the State of Israel, a civil religion developed which was partly composed of historical ethno-symbols, including, following the Zionist example, the fall of Masada. Jewish youth movements and Israel Defence Force units climbed Masada to hold various ceremonies of honour. The popular Zionist cry, ‘Masada shall not fall again!’ became the national symbol of the persistence of the nation’s will to survive against all odds. This nationalist zeal was interwoven with a vehement rejection of Rome’s social value system which was depicted as thoroughly oppressive and cruel; and this rejection was also prominently integrated into the Zionist ethos (Neusner, 1987; Herr and Rocca, 2007, pp. 409–11; Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 1983, pp. 40–4, 148–51; Yadin, 1966, Introd., Chaps. 1, 2, 15).6 One uprising which has been etched deeply into the nation’s memory, is the revolt led by Shimon Bar-Kokhba and Rabbi Akiva (132–135 CE). The traditional, annual day that tenuously commemorates this calamitous revolt is Lag ba-Omer. The holiday, upgraded in the Zionist movement and later in the Israeli educational system as well, symbolised – in the Zionist mainstream reinterpretation, as in the case of Masada – both the nation’s unyielding spirit of freedom and an abhorrence of ‘Roman values’ characterised by inhuman slavery, brutal warfare and emperor worship. The main Zionist custom of Lag ba-Omer adapted by the Zionists was the public lighting of bonfires. It came to symbolise both of these basic ideas (Abramsky, 1961, pp. 3–45; Herr and Rocca, 2007, pp. 409–11; Ariel, 1962, pp. 283–302).7

The state of Israel: the symbol and the flag Zionism and the State of Israel also embraced traditional Jewish symbolic objects, most notably the menorah and the Shield of David. The menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum), described in the Bible as a prominent feature of the Tabernacle erected by the People of Israel in the wilderness, as

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well as in the Jerusalem Temple, had for centuries served as a Jewish symbol in synagogues and had been historically used as an emblem by a variety of Zionist organisations and associations. Eventually, it was adopted as the symbol of the State of Israel. Significantly, the design of the menorah, now flanked by two olive branches symbolising both peace and prosperity, is based on the representation on the Arch-of-Titus; this adoption expresses the idea of Judaea Resurrecta – the restoration of Jewish sovereignty, about 2,000 years after the last Hasmonean prince used the same symbol on his coins (Strauss, 2007). At the same time, the menorah is also the symbol of light and enlightenment, motifs conspicuous in major Zionist and Israeli historical ethno-symbols (Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 1983, p. 114). The Shield of David (Magen David), at the centre of the Israeli flag, is a Jewish symbol several hundred years old. The early pre-Herzlian Hibbat Zion societies used it as a national emblem. Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, who was unaware of the emblems used by that movement, made the following entry in his diary in the middle of the year 1895: ‘The flag that I am thinking of – perhaps a white flag with seven gold stars. The white background stands for our new and pure life; the seven stars are the seven working hours; we shall enter the Promised Land in the sign of work.’ Eventually, the Zionist flag was given a white background with the Shield of David in its midst and two blue horizontal strips inspired by the tallit (prayer shawl). Israel adopted the Zionist flag, in which two ethno-symbols stand for continuity and self-reliance – the tallit and the blue Shield of David, respectively; while the white background stands, however elusively, for Herzl’s social-ethical vision of purity (Simon, 2007, pp. 67–9).

Conclusions In conclusion, two major motifs characterised Jewish modern nationalism in its orientation towards the past: the hope for a wholesome national revival as in days of old and the urge for an ethical renewal meaningfully interwoven with the enlightened family of nations. This composed ideology has consistently permeated mainstream Zionism since its inception and it was clearly expressed, in historic connections, in the State of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. A major characteristic of Zionism’s symbols is their Jewish historical, ethnic, and religious inspiration. Many of these symbols draw, first, on past periods of Jewish experience of sovereignty in their historic homeland; second, on the many Jewish uprisings against foreign domination which have marked Jewish historical experience; and, third, on the historic endeavours of Jewish communities to reject the condition of exile. Another basic characteristic of Zionism’s ethno-symbolism is its strong bent towards moral and social renewal. Typically, the nationalist renaissance was conceived also in ethical-universalistic terms. Significantly, the same historical

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memories and myths – rich, complex and multi-layered as they were – that nurtured the nationalist drive, also served to nourish the moral quest. These qualities of the historical ethno-symbols that I have discussed above eventually combined to produce a modern, democratic, enlightened national state which at the same time based itself on Jewish history and traditions millennia old. By way of a brief epilogue, let me note that since the late 1960s, some changes have occurred, due partly to globalisation processes and the protracted conflict with the Arabs: the ‘thinning-out’ of the secular camp’s historical culture, the ‘normalisation’ and capitalisation of the Israeli economy and the rise of fundamentalism among religious Zionists. Nevertheless, currents for sustaining Israel’s two pillars of being ‘Jewish and democratic’, also persistently worked well. Thus, in 1980 and again in 1992 developments occurred that have linked the State of Israel to the two afore-mentioned basic elements in its Declaration of Independence. The per se historical Jewish element of the State of Israel was sustained in 1980 when the Israeli parliament passed the Foundations of Law Act according to which ‘Where the court ... finds no answer in statute law or case law or by analogy, it shall decide the issue in the light of the principles of freedom, justice, equity and peace of the Jewish heritage.’ And the more universalistic development took place in 1992 with the enactment of two Basic Laws – Human Dignity and Freedom, and Freedom of Occupation; these two laws came to protect fundamental rights while sharpening the two main qualities of Israel – being ‘a Jewish and a democratic state’ (Elon, 2007, pp. 358–61; Rubinstein and Medina, 1996, pp. 907–1170; Yakobson and Rubinstein, 2003, pp. 215–85). In my judgment, the composed, Judaic and social-democratic tradition in Israel – as it was shaped and sustained by the historical forces, ideologies and ethno-symbols outlined above – is vibrant and still developing (Gal, 2004b, pp. 524–33).

Notes * This article is an expanded version of my presentation at the 16th annual conference, ‘Nations and Their Pasts: Representing the Past, Building the Future’, of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, 28–30 March 2006. 1. For an in-depth discussion of the founders of Israel’s vision of a ‘moral state’ see e.g., Liebman and Don-Yehiya (1983, pp. 86–7, 214 and passim); Zionism as a ‘moral renewal’ is analysed in Smith (2003, pp. 52–65, 85–94); For a fine discussion of ‘moral awakening’ and ‘moral innovators’ in cultural nationalism of various national movements see Hutchinson (1987, pp. 30–40; 2005, Chap. 2). 2. The scholarly literature of this fundamental theme is vast and still dynamically evolving. The rich, pioneering work of the late Daniel Elazar (of Bar Ilan University), is partly being carried on in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; and see, e.g., his seminal ‘Communal Democracy and Communal Liberalism in the Jewish Political Tradition’ (1993). A coordinated and ambitious work is being

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3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

pursued in the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem. Two of the four scheduled volumes have been published by Yale University Press (2000, 2003) and the leading editor is Michael Walzer. Works by the latter, pertinent for our subject, are Universalism and Jewish Values (2001) and the collection edited by him, Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (2006). For the relevance of the Bible and the First Commonwealth for the modern polity see Eliezer Schweid’s comprehensive and analytical work, The Philosophy of the Bible as a Cultural Foundation in Israel (2004). For the conceptual and the social-legal linkages between Jewish religious tradition (Halakha) and the State of Israel’s system, see Menachem Elon (2007) and see Aviad Hacohen (2003–4) for the monumental contribution of Elon. See note 3, infra. Beyond Avineri’s article and its references, the works of David Novak powerfully interpret Jewish polity throughout the gamut of Jewish history, the Halakha included, as adjustable to – and partly pioneering of – modern enlightened society (for example, Novak, 1992, 1995, 1998). See also Louis Jacobs (1992); L. E. Goodman (1991); M. Sokol (2002); A. Steinberg (1982, Section B) and Eisenstadt (1992, Chs. 1, 2, 9). See note 2, supra. The following discussion on historical symbols is based on Gal (2007). For a comparative discussion of American/European Zionisms’ ethno-symbols see Gal (1999, pp. 362–6); this section of the article discusses chiefly ‘classic’ European Zionism. Ariel (1962) is used in this and subsequent discussions as an historical source typical of the labour/liberal approach to holidays and history in the period discussed here. See also, Baruch and Levinsky (1956); Eyali (1953). For a historical survey of the First and Second Temples, see Ben-Sasson (1976, Vol. 1). Cf. Zerubavel (1995, Chs. 5, 8, 11); as in this and in other cases, this study ignores the social-moral renewal aspect altogether. Cf. Zerubavel (1995, Chs. 4, 7, 10); and see note 6, supra.

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Smith, A. D. (2003) Chosen Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Sokol, M. (ed.) (2002) Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy: Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives (Northvale: Jason Aronson). Steinberg, A. (1982) History as Experience: Aspects of Historical Thought – Universal and Jewish (New York: Ktav Publishing House). Strauss, H. (2007) ‘Menorah’ in F. Skolnik and M. Berenbaum (eds) Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, vol. 14 (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA; and Jerusalem: Keter Pub.), pp. 49–55. Szold, H. (1925) ‘Our Own Alma Mater’, The New Palestine, VIII, 13, 334. Tzur, M.and Y. Danieli (eds) (2004) The Kibbutz Haggada: Israeli Pesach in the Kibbutz, in Hebrew (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi). Uffenheimer, B. (1973) Ancient Prophecy in Israel, in Hebrew (Jerusalem: Magnes Press). Uffenheimer, B. (1989) ‘Ben-Gurion and the Bible’ in M. Cogan (ed.) Ben-Gurion and the Bible: The People and Its Land, in Hebrew (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press), pp. 54–69. Urbach, E. E. (1985) On Zionism and Judaism, Essays, in Hebrew (Jerusalem: The Zionist Library). Walzer, M. M. (1985). Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books). Walzer, M. M. (2001) Universalism and Jewish Values: Twentieth Annual Morgenthau Memorial Lecture on Ethics and Foreign Policy, http://www.cceia.org/resources/publications/morgenthau/114.html, last accessed on 19 August 2008. Walzer, M. M. (ed.) (2006) Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Walzer, M., M. Lorberbaum and N. Zohar (eds) (2000) The Jewish Political Tradition, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press). Walzer, M., M. Lorberbaum and N. Zohar (eds) (2003) The Jewish Political Tradition, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press). Weisgal, M. (1971) So Far: An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Yadin, Y. (1966) Masada: In Those and These Days, in Hebrew (Haifa: Shikmona Publishers). Yakobson, A. and A. Rubinstein (2003) Israel and the Family of Nations: Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights, in Hebrew (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House). Zerubavel, Y. (1995) Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

11 Crafting Iranian Nationalism: Intersectionality of Aryanism, Westernism and Islamism Azadeh Kian and Gilles Riaux

Contemporary Iranian history is marked by periods of nationalist ferment. The Tobacco Protest Movement (1891–92), the Constitutional revolution (1906–11) and the Movement for the Nationalisation of Oil (1951–53) are the most well-known examples of nationalist protest against foreign encroachment. Nationalist fever is usually explained by referring to the solid foundations of the Iranian nation that guarantee its extraordinary resistance to hazards of history (Wilberd, 1958; Frye, 1975; Clawson and Rubin, 2005). Iran is distinguished from its regional environment by its peculiarities: it is an ancient empire, an ethno-linguistically and religiously diverse country that was shaped in a long period of time (almost 7,000 years). Situated at the cross roads of the Middle East, Central Asia, Caucasus and South Asia, Iran is ethno-linguistically attached to the Indo-European world and has been one of the main constituents of the civilisational currents of the Iranian, Indian and Islamic worlds. Finally, the majority of Iranians are Shi’ite and Persian as opposed to the Sunnite and Arab majority in the Middle East. This point finds an echo in the crucial importance of the modern Persian language in the Iranian identity and in state structures as Persian has long been the language of the administration. Due to Iran’s strategic situation (Caspian Sea in the north, Persian Gulf in the south), the country was coveted by both the British and the Russians in the 19th century. The rivalry of these two great powers over Iran finally helped the country to escape colonisation and its destructuring impacts, contrary to the major part of the Muslim world. The country however, was integrated into the sphere of influence of the British in the south and the Russians in the north. The minority status of Iran in the region permitted the intersection of Shi’ism (which became Iran’s official religion in the 16th century under the Safavid dynasty, rival of the Ottoman Empire, the Sunnite Caliphate) and Iranian nationalism, making possible the permanent shift between hierarchal national and religious identities. Iran is also characterised by what Eric Hobsbawn calls a historic 189

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nation (1990). This permanence of political existence has facilitated the construction of national identity in a long historical process. Even the 1979 Revolution that toppled the monarchy did not lead to the collapse of the state, nor did it provoke a historical rupture. All these peculiarities that make Iran an exception in the Middle East contribute to the wealth of the narrative of Iranianness (iraniyyat) in which Iranian nationalists can draw elements to present the undeniable and deeply rooted nature of the Iranian nation. In their efforts to construct a national history, Iranian nationalists, like their counterparts elsewhere, as the transnational paradigm of nationalism shows (Thiesse, 2006), re-interpret history. The very diversity and wealth of the available sources, however, provided various rival interpretations of Iran’s history. This in turn created discontinuity in the use of history by nationalists who either aspired to a Western oriented version of nationalism or its Islamist version. This rivalry has concealed the profound continuity of nationalism as the structuring force of the modern Iranian political system. Our assumption is based on the intersectionality of nationalism in the Iranian society which, from the end of the 19th century onwards, has become a common political reference for various social groups. In the 20th century, the intellectual sphere was first predominated by the advocates of Iran’s Westernisation, and later by those who advocated the return to Islamic sources. This has influenced the ideological outlines of nationalism that political power promoted. Two conceptions of Iranian nationalism constructed as ideal types can be distinguished: Westernised nationalism under the Pahlavis that drew from the pre-Islamic references, and Islamist nationalism of the republican era that considers Shi’ism as the foundation of Iranian identity.

Emergence of the idea of nation The opening of Iran to the Western world in the 19th century led to important changes, especially in social structures and political thought. The emergence of the modern middle class and the idea of the nation, in the modern sense of the term, were among the most crucial of them. This opening of the country, however, occurred in an uneven context where Iran was dominated by European powers although the country was not colonised. The loss of Caucasia to Russia (in 1813) and Herat to the British (in 1857) contributed to the emergence in Iran of the idea of the nation in its territorial dimension (Kashani-Sabet, 2002). Secular intellectuals who played a crucial role in the construction of nationalist ideology became the symbolic figures of the modern middle class. They endorsed a narrative of progress that fabricated the universality of European trajectory and according to which Western societies already

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constitute the future to which others are called to and that they should attain. Through this linear vision, these intellectuals saw the history of their own country as a variation of a meta-narrative called the history of Europe thereby implying Western cultural, social, political and technological superiority (Chatterjee, 1993; Spivak, 1999). They imitated this idealised model, advocated a modernist project based on law, science and progress thinking that it would civilise or rather Europeanise the Iranian nation. Among the intellectuals of that period, Fathali Akhoundzadeh (1812–78) and Mirza aqa khan Kermani (1855–1896) were the most influential, both in Iran and within the Diaspora. Influenced by European Orientalists, especially Arthur de Gobineau (who lived in Iran during the 1850s), they were both anti-Arab and glorified the pre-Islamic heritage of Iran. They declared that Islam and its laws have had a devastating impact on the society and advocated that Islam be substituted by the nation. Kermani, son of a landowner, was French speaking, materialist and knew the works of some Western political philosophers. He referred to the expression ‘Aryan nation’ (mellat-e aryan), dreamt of the resurrection of Iran’s glorious past and was a vehement opponent of the declining Qajar dynasty (1779–1925). Kermani’s political activities forced him to leave Iran for Istanbul in 1886. He was extradited by the Ottomans in 1896 and executed in Iran. Akhoundzadeh, son of a village headman in Iranian Azerbaijan, lived in Tbilisi (which by then belonged to the Russian empire). In his writings, he admired Western civilisation, advocated the separation of religion and state, criticised gender and religious inequalities. He declared that Islam was incompatible with modernism and was the first Iranian intellectual to have discussed aspects of Islam which he considered irrelevant to democratic constitutionalism (Kian-Thiébaut, 1998).

Political materialisation of the idea of nation The Tobacco Protest Movement (1891–92) was the first organised resistance to foreign (Western) encroachment. It was led by merchants/entrepreneurs whose interests were jeopardised by the concession of production, sale and export of tobacco granted in 1890 by Nasir al-Din Shah to Major Talbot, a British citizen. The involvement of clerical authorities was decisive in the victory of the movement especially when the Grand Ayatollah Shirazi published a religious edict forbidding the people to smoke. The edict was largely followed throughout Iran and the use of tobacco was boycotted. Even in the Shah’s harem, those of his wives who smoked put away their water pipes. The success of the Tobacco movement laid the foundations of the Constitutional Revolution (1906–11) during which Iranians belonging to different social and ethnic groups were mobilised together against Russian and British colonialists and for the first time defined themselves as a nation. The Iranian nation in its modern and plural version was materialised politically through a movement that had a project of living together

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(Cottam, 1979) even though according to some specialists the national consciousness is very old in Iran (Ahmadi, 2004). During the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 a three pronged alliance was formed to set limits to the absolutist power of the king and that of British and Russian colonialists: modernist intellectuals, merchant/entrepreneurs and opponent clergymen. The participation of religious authorities in social movements of modern Iran shows that religious and nationalist elements are not incompatible. In this perspective, threats against the territorial integrity of Iran and the continuity of the Iranian state strengthened the rapprochement between religion and nation. Despite the failure of the constitutionalist regime, the three pronged alliance of intellectuals, clergymen and merchants (bazaris), marked future crucial nationalist movements like the Nationalisation of Oil (1951–52) against British control of Iran’s national wealth, or the nationalist-Islamic 1979 Revolution against the Shah’s dependence on the United States. The power relations between the three major actors also determined which one of the main components of Iranian identity (Iranianness or Islamity) would be ideologised for political purposes during or following the mobilisation. The Nationalisation of Oil is one of the major social movements in contemporary Iran that enhanced nationalist feelings amongst the population and mobilised popular support by the nationalist elite. Nationalist-Democratic Mohammad Mossadeq was elected Prime Minister in 1951 and for the first time in the Middle East he nationalised the Iranian oil which belonged to the British (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company). The British, whose interests were jeopardised, organised an economic embargo against Iran and broke off diplomatic relations. During the Cold War, one of the main goals of the American administration in the Middle East was to maintain Iran (which shared almost 2000 km of borders with the ex-Soviet Union) in the Western camp and to secure the stability of the oil market (Gasiorowski, 1991; Kinzer, 2003). The British finally succeeded in persuading the American administration that if Mossadeq was not toppled, Iran would inevitably join the communist camp. The August 1953 coup d’etat organised by the CIA, the British MI6 and the royal court contributed to the decline of Western ideological legitimacy in Iran. It also consolidated the autocratic power of the Shah and led secular nationalists to side against both the Shah and the West and Western modernity. This ideological context facilitated the rise of political Islam and led ultimately to the political-ideological rapprochement between religious and secular opponents.

Western-oriented nationalism and the myth of eternal Iran Under the Pahlavis (1925–79), the idea of social, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity of the nation that had marked the Constitutional Revolution

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disappeared when the nationalist ideology substituted Persianness for Iranianness. Western-oriented nationalism served to enforce the power of Persian, Shi’ite men over women, and ethnic and religious minorities. Nationalism as an ideological construction is therefore a modern political phenomenon and as John Breuilly (1993) argues nationalism is about politics and politics is about power and state control. Iran is amongst a few Muslim countries where the idea of nation existed prior to the construction of a modern state by Reza Shah (1925–41), the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. As a consequence, the legitimacy crisis of the modern, centralised, authoritarian, Jacobin state did not result in the weakening of the nation. In fact, the idea of nation emerged out of a complex web of relations between Iran and the West in the 19th century. Inspired by European Orientalism, the intellectual advocates of Western-oriented nationalism attempted to found a new Iranian identity, based on the Persian language and on a pre-Islamic past (Vaziri, 1993). These two elements made Iranian nationalism an attractive ideology, totally endorsed by the new dynasty. This new conception of identity leaned on language and territory, in accordance with the dominant model in Europe, especially in France (Braudel, 1999). Concerning the language, the task of making Persian a national language was easy. Modern Persian benefits from rich linguistic materials. It has been an administrative language for 11 centuries, related to European languages, and possesses a very rich literary heritage. Modern Persian language goes back to the 9th century with origins in middle Persian of the Sassanians, who ruled Iran from the 3rd to the 7th century. This has made possible the transmission of cultural Persian heritage especially through poetry and literature (Richard, 2007, p. 21). In the Book of Kings (Shâhnâmeh) completed in 1010, Ferdowsi, a great epic poet, tells the legendary history of the kings of Iran, from its origins to the advent of Islam, in order to keep up Iranian pride. He writes in Persian, ‘purified’ from Arabic influence. One understands why the Book of Kings, which even illiterate Iranians know by heart thanks to the storytellers who recited it throughout the centuries in popular cafés, has become the symbol of the permanence of the Iranian nation and national pride for Western-oriented nationalists. The latter aspired to an ahistorical history They were nostalgic of Iran’s pre-Islamic past and despised the ‘Arab invaders’, their language and religion (Islam) which they still hold responsible for the decline of the Iranian civilisation and the ills of the contemporary Iranian society. In addition to Persian as a national language, Iran’s history was re-interpreted to serve the present. This classical phenomenon of nationalism had to show ‘the continuity and unity of the nation through the ages, despite oppressions, setbacks and betrayals’ (Thiesse, 2006, p. 209). The continuity and unity of Iran was therefore maintained through more than 25 centuries of imperial history, in order to show the extraordinary

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endurance of the ancient civilisation and the Aryan race (nezhad-e asil-e arya’i) throughout time. Here again, Iranian nationalism benefited from the works of European Orientalists who posited an Iranian historical continuity, despite the changes that had occurred. According to Sir John Malcom: ‘Though no country has undergone during the last twenty centuries, more revolutions than the kingdom of Persia, there is perhaps none that less altered in its condition. [ ... ]. And the Persians as far as we have means of judging, are at the present period, not a very different people from what they were in the time of Darius and the Nousheervan’ (1815, cited in Atabaki, 2002). Two periods were clearly distinguished, one was glorified, the other was slandered. The pre-Islamic past was glorified and associated with the grandeur of Persian culture and Zoroastrian religion. On the contrary, Islamic culture was qualified as foreign to Iranian traditions and was rejected as such. It was accused of being the cause of ruin during several centuries of foreign domination when the Arab, Turkish and Mongol conquerors controlled successively the country. The reference to pre-Islamic Iran was useful for several reasons. It accused Islam to be the cause of the country's decline and attempted to weaken the European influence by stressing the imperial grandeur and the exceptional refinement of the Iranian civilisation. Reference to pre-Islamic Iran became a means to emphasise the willingness to renew the glorious epoch in order to obtain the aura. One illustration of this attempt under Reza Shah was the change in the name of the town of Ourmiyeh, which became Rezaiyeh. The name of the king was thus identified with the most symbolic place of the Zoroastrian religion (Lewis, 1982, p. 101). The discovered continuity with pre-Islamic Iran, as developed in the national history was extended to the current territory of Persia which thereby became the receptacle of the nation. This new relationship to territory was reflected in the blatant way in which the power elite proceeded to change the international denomination of Persia by calling the country Iran. A memo, transmitted in 1934 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to embassies and international organisations, said that ‘Iran was the birth country and the land of the Aryans. It is therefore natural that we take advantage of this name, especially in these days when great nations in the world start looking at the Aryan race in such a way that indicates the grandeur of the race and of the civilization of ancient Iran’ (Kashani-Sabet, 2000, p. 218).

Authoritarian modernisation under the Pahlavis: from nationalism to Westoxication The construction of the nation-state under Reza Shah was a collective undertaking of a group of individuals whose aim was both to unify the country around a common cultural, social and economic denominator, and to secure political sovereignty. This needed territorial consolidation, centralisation and expansion of public administration, monopolisation of the

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means of coercion and the elimination of political rivals (especially powerful tribal leaders by Reza Shah and landowners by his son). However, political modernisation or the integration of the population in the political system, expansion of their rights and the intensification of their obligations remained absent from societal projects conducted by the authoritarian-modernising state. This type of nation-state building aimed at cultural and linguistic uniformity of a multiethnic Iran, which was supposed to promote allegiance to the new regime. Persian thus became compulsory in the administration and educational institutions and in 1923 the use of other languages in public institutions was forbidden. This measure intended to erase ethnic identities in favour of Persianity. The state’s promotion of a new national identity is remarkably crystallised in the architectural creations of that period. The architectural style of public buildings was modelled on modern European buildings, though they were slightly modified on the facade through a touch of pre-Islamic (mainly Achemenian and Sassanian) motif, demonstrating the rediscovered continuity with a pre-Islamic past. Reforms conducted to construct the nation-state contributed tremendously to the development of the modern middle-class whose members became officers of the national army or state employees. They conceived and constructed the nationalist ideology and conducted the nationalist project. At their advent, members of the emerging modern middle-class were overwhelmingly members of the aristocracy, gentry and other groups from the upper classes. Under Reza Shah, with the expansion of both education and administration, the modern middle class started to include the sons of the merchants and the clergy who abandoned religious schools in favour of newly created secular schools as well as the Tehran University. A number of implemented reforms especially the ones on secularisation of national education, judiciary or the suppression of Islamic courts were against the raison d’être of the clerical institution. The clergy and their merchant class allies, however, did not mobilise collectively against the Shah’s reforms. The reason was twofold. First, the majority of the clergymen were quietists and therefore against the intervention of the clerical institution in politics. Second, they were too traditionalist to compete with the modernism and nationalism of the ruling elite. The imperial regime’s loss of legitimacy was also rooted in its trial to conceal the religious component of Iranian national identity, especially following the 1963 land reform and the ‘ghettoisation’ of the religious authorities. These attempts failed, however, because on the one hand religious belief and culture were deeply rooted among the population, and on the other religious institution and new interpretations of Islam (especially Ali Shariati’s teachings) as both a cultural and political alternative to Westernisation policies of the Shah had strong bases in the society. The Shah, like his father, tried to justify his policies by appealing to a combination of Western acculturation and the pre-Islamic past. The official line tended to deny that Iran

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belonged to the Islamic civilisation, and attempted to erase 14 centuries of Islamic history. To mark the separation from the Islamic world, the Shah ordered the organisation of the Persepolis ceremonies for the 2,500th anniversary of the Iranian monarchy in 1971 and later changed the calendar accordingly. The feeling of humiliation and outrage was shared by a wide range of people, who witnessed their history being manipulated by the Shah. Instead of diminishing the importance of Islam, this extravaganza multiplied its cultural and political importance. Even secular intellectuals clamoured for the return to the hegira calendar. Westernisation policies, the abasement of the population, including the literati, to mere consumers of Western products and the increasing dependence of the Shah on Western powers, especially the United States, caused major conflict between the Shah’s regime and the people. Cultural alienation of the majority of Iranians led to cultural resistance and ultimately enforced Islamist counter culture. Authoritarian modernisation and state secularisation which did not recognise freedom of expression and thought alienated the modern middle-class, especially secular intellectuals, provoking their opposition against the Westernised elite. State monopoly over cultural and political discourse led the more radical intellectuals to downplay Western political values. A number of them even advocated a ‘purified oriental identity’ against an ‘infected occidental identity’ (Boroujerdi, 1992). Jalâl Al-e Ahmad (1923–69), a former communist activist from a clerical family published a book entitled Westoxication that gained tremendous popularity among the educated middle class (1982). He contributed to the revival of Islamic culture by denouncing Westernisation and Westernised intellectuals whom he accused of imitating the West.

The exclusive Westernised nationalism and its discontents Gender The idea of nation carried by secular modernist/nationalists was permeated with an Orientalist influence and articulated in gendered terms. The condition of women served to define the demarcation between the ‘civilised’ world of Europe and the ‘barbarian world’ of Islam (Moallem, 2005). The nation, politics and knowledge were identified with the male gender, whereas the homeland was identified with the female gender. The concept of honour (namous) which had a religious connotation became tightly linked to the masculinity of the nation. The portrayal of mother homeland as a sick body, a weak female figure, made the discourse of protection of women and the defence of honour available to nationalism but it also made women subject to men’s possession and protection. Modernity redefined homosexual desire from natural to unnatural, blaming it on women’s seclusion and gender segregation. Heteronormalisation of eros and sex that

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called for heterosocialisation of public space and a reconfiguration of family life (as the building block of the nation) became a condition of achieving modernity, while homoeroticism and same-sex practices came to mark the country as backward. The concept of nation-state was thus crafted as an heteronormalised patriarchal order. Patriotism was linked with manliness. The symbolics of the modern Iranian state as a male collective in charge of protecting the female homeland became completely masculine (Najmabadi, 2005). Gender inequality thus became the paradigmatic form on which the nation lies (Ivekovic, 2003). Modernist/nationalists, whose project was focused on law, science and progress, aimed to transform the home by educating women, bringing them into public life and recreated them as companionate wives of the nation’s men. ‘This transformation of woman from a subject of the household to its manager was at once a regulating and an empowering moment although women’s education was oriented toward rearing an educated (male) citizenry’ (Najmabadi, 2005, pp. 194–5). The aim of the modernist/nationalists was not to free women from religion but from superstition which they argued was enforced through female socialisation. With the construction of the modern state, women were included in the general programme of modernisation and national development. They obtained the right to education and to work and later gained political rights (1963). But the implemented reforms did not challenge gender social relations within the family that was ruled, until 1967, by Islamic laws. The goal of the Pahlavi rulers was not to question gender inequalities but to facilitate regulated access of educated and modern women to the public sphere. Sustaining patriarchal authority within the family thus proved indispensable to the strengthening of patriarchal political order personified by the monarchy (Kian-Thiébaut, 2007). Ethnicity Westernised nationalism associated a pre-Islamic past with Persian culture and Zoroastrian religion while rejecting the Islamic culture. Arab, Turkish and Mongol dynasties of Iran were presented as the main obstacles to the return of the glorious Persian traditions. This conception denied the ethnic diversity of a state which is the direct heir of an ancient empire. The process of exclusion of ethnic features can be analysed through the case of the Turkish-speaking group, known as Azeris or Azerbaijanis, which is the second largest ethnic group in Iran after the Persians. Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946), one of the most prominent nationalist intellectuals, produced a solid research work on the ancient Azari language and origin of the Azerbaijani people. Arguing that ancient Azari language had been closely related to Persian language and that the influx of Turkic words began only with the Seljuk invasion (1038), Kasravi believed that the true national language of Iranian Azerbaijan was closely related to Persian (Kasravi, 1993). Therefore he advocated the linguistic assimilation of Persian and Azarbaijan,

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which symbolised a revival of an ancient tradition. His innovative thesis was in tune with an educational preoccupation of the time. A leftist intellectual considered: ‘If compulsory primary education is not possible all over Iran, it must be implemented in Azerbaijan at any cost, not only for education but also for political reasons’ (Arani, 1924, p. 24). Another intellectual figure, who developed a comprehensive approach of ethnic identity, clarified the reasons and modalities of such a policy: ‘What I mean by the national unity of Iran is a political, cultural and social unity of the people who live within the present day boundaries of Iran. This unity includes two other concepts, namely, the maintenance of political independence and the geographical integrity of Iran. However, achieving national unity means that the Persian language must be established throughout the country, that regional differences in clothing, customs and the like must disappear, and that local chieftains must be eliminated. Kurds, Lors, Qashqa’is, Arabs, Turks, Turkmens, etc., shall not differ from one another by wearing different clothes or by speaking a different language. In my opinion, until national unity is achieved in Iran the possibility that our political independence and geographical integrity be endangered will always remain’. (Afshar 1925 cited in Atabaki and Zürcher 2004: 8) Such an exhortation to uniformity invited all members of ethnic groups to conform their way of life to a new model defined in a Persianised and pro-Western manner. Each non-conforming element was regarded as a sign of backwardness and a possible threat to modernity. In the beginning, nationalist intellectuals did not have a crucial impact on the Iranian society; only the empowering social classes were affected by their normative expectations. But with the extension of modernisation and industrialisation policies under Mohammad Reza Shah (1941–79), different ethnic minorities became increasingly affected by the exclusive tendencies of Westernised nationalism and its drive to uniformity (Riaux, 2008).

From Islamism to Shi’ite nationalism During the 1979 Revolution, secular and religious actors shared a definition of national identity that was founded on both Iranianness and Islamity. They were influenced by the Shi’ite cultural model and symbolic interpretations, the signification of which had been transformed by cultural, social and economic change which the politics of the modern state had generated. As for the religious actors, their demands had been shaped within the models and vocabulary of a modern political domain. They did not advocate the return to the golden age of Islam and they were sensitive to egalitarian discourse and the political engagement of left-wing secular actors (Kian-Thiébaut, 1998).

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Islam served as a mobilising ideology during the Revolution and, in its aftermath, it was appropriated by new leaders who were influenced by Arab Islamists, especially the Egyptian Seyed Qutb. The Islamic Republic founded its legitimacy partially on Islam, partially on the public will. But the Islamist power elite also attempted to draw parallels between central myths of Shi’ism (especially the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, the third Imam) and the present time (Ram, 1991, p. 38). This is written in the preamble of the Constitution: ‘ In the course of its revolutionary accomplishment, our nation has purified itself from the impure dust and mold. It cleansed itself from imported ideologies. It has returned to authentic Islamic doctrinal positions and world views. At the present, the nation intends to construct its own exemplary society according to Islamic criteria’. Here we can observe similarities with Westernised nationalism: the revival of a heroic tradition. In Islamist discourse, it is no longer the Achemenian Iran that should be revived but Islam of the first Imams (not the Prophet). The empowerment of the nation is derived from traditions that Westernised nationalism had tried to erase. But this religious tradition breaks the bond between language, territory and nation suggested by Westernised nationalism. The Persian language was demoted to a lower rank, falling behind Arabic, the language of revelation. In 1982, Hashemi-Rafsanjani, one of the main figures of the Islamic Republic maintained: ‘We accept Arabic as the language of Islam and the most sacred language. We believe that in the future, Arabic, not Persian, will become the international language of Islam’ (Paul, 1999, p. 210). In those years, the majority of Arab countries and more widely the states in the Muslim world were preoccupied with the possibility of their own radical Islamist groups being contaminated by the Iranian model. They also feared the destabilising impacts resulting from close ties with the Iranian regime. The adoption by Iran of a revolutionary foreign policy in the 1980s that united the export of Shi’ite ideology and ‘third-worldist’ ideals led to further concern amongst its neighbours and to the hostility of the United States. In order to weaken the Islamic regime, that was qualified as ‘the revolutionary center of the Muslim world’, the United States, Europe and the Arab countries (with the exception of Syria) supported President Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran (1980–88). The war isolated Iran in the region but allowed Islamist Iranian leaders to appeal to both nationalism and Islamism in order to mobilise male citizens to defend the ‘Islamic motherland’. Martyrdom as a process of remasculinisation entered the symbolic language of gender identity but did not create agency for women because they entered the sphere of martyrdom only as family members (Moallem, 2005, p. 109). The war both consolidated the regime and state institutions and enforced Iranian nationalism but combined it with Shi’ism. By stressing the Shi’ite dimension of Iranian identity, the power elite excluded Iranian religious groups, especially Sunnites, from the political community. This official nationalist-Shi’ite discourse was also detrimental to the integration

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of Afghan refugees and migrants whose number rose to almost 3 million in 1991 and most of whom were Sunnites.

Towards a heterogeneous nationalism The gradual return of nationalism was not limited to integrating a rhetoric that put forward the Shi’ite dimension. It also reflected the expectations of the new elite that the Islamic regime had generated. Composed of young men and influenced by Islamist ideology, the new elite became overwhelmingly present in ministries, provincial governments, municipalities, courts, parliament, state-owned enterprises and even in the revolutionary Guards (Pasdarans) and the Bassidj (militia). From their lower- to middle-class origins, these graduates of institutes of higher learning experienced a very rapid upper social mobility. They, nonetheless, were more interested in the Iranian nation-state rather than in an international Islamic republic or in exporting the revolution (Ashraf, 1994, p. 129). The return of nation-state was accompanied by a partial discovery of the foundations of Westernised nationalism, thereby making the ideological content of nationalism increasingly heterogeneous. Among the foundations of this newly constructed heterogeneous nationalism, the Persian language appeared as the most permanent one. In 1988, when Ali Khamenei, the current leader, was President of the Republic, he made a speech entitled ‘the splendor of the Persian language and the need to protect it’. In his speech, that was still unimaginable a few years earlier, he acknowledged the national language to be the most important and original element of cultural identity of all nations, and declared that Persian was ‘the language of the true revolutionary Islam’. He even compared Arabic to Persian and argued for the expressive superiority of Persian over Arabic asking himself whether Hafez (the great Iranian poet of the 14th century) was translatable into Arabic (Paul, 1999, p. 81). With the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997, elements of Westernised nationalism were systematically integrated into Iranian secularised, heterogeneous nationalism. Khatami argued that ‘the distinguished Iranian nation had a great Islamic and national heritage’ (Menashri, 2001, p. 81). He stressed the double heritage to propose a redefinition of Iranian nationalism that would take into account the elements that had been excluded by Westernised nationalism and Islamist revolutionary ideology. At the international level, he reproduced the same conception by proposing to develop a ‘dialogue among civilisations’. In his view, international relations should no longer be interpreted through distorted religious or imperialist views but through culture. In this discourse, Iran is said to belong to a civilisation defined by several criteria, including the Persian language, Iran’s ancient history and Shi’ite Islam. The redefinition of nationalism suggested by former President Khatami, however, led to the reintegration of Westernised nationalism’s exclusivist tendency, especially with regard to ethnic groups (Riaux, 2004). More

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importantly, it went against a political system that is founded on Shi’ism as the political ideology of the state apparatus, and against state policies that consolidate social hierarchy founded on religious and gendered identities.

Conclusion: nuclear technology – new motto of Iranian nationalism? Iranian leaders face an important legitimacy crisis that is both political and economic. In order to consolidate the regime and re-legitimise their rule, the leaders of the Islamic Republic have attempted to mobilise national solidarity by referring themselves more to “Iranianness” than to “Islamity”. They have instrumentalised nationalism for political purposes and they have used, with some success, the nuclear issue in their strategy of re-legitimisation. Their goal has also been to downplay the importance of political, economic and social problems in the country. In order to construct a national consent around access to nuclear technology, the leaders, conservatives and reformers alike have almost exclusively appealed to nationalism or patriotism both inside Iran and among the Diaspora. In their discourse, Iran’s access to nuclear technology has become the new motto of Iranian nationalism (Kian-Thiébaut, 2005). The Islamic Republic leaders have suggested that Iran would become a regional power again by mastering nuclear technology and in this respect they have attempted to revive the myth of eternal Iran and the Iranian nation, stressing the power that the country has exerted in history. The mobilising force of Iranian nationalism will not be denied as long as the Iranian nation-state continues to benefit from the allegiance of Iranians, especially from those who are nostalgic of a glorious Iranian history. Nevertheless, the exclusion of women, ethnic and religious groups including Sunnites, embedded in both Westernised and Islamist versions of Iranian nationalism, may diminish inevitably its social base, unless ethnic and religious minorities as well as women are included in the Iranian citizenship and its intersectionality is rediscovered.

References Ahmadi, H. (2004) ‘Din va melliyyat dar iran : hamyari ya keshmakesh (Religion and Nationality in Iran. Cooperation or Rivalry?’ in H. Ahmadi (ed.) Iran: hoviyyat, melliyyat, qawmiyyat (Iran. Identity, Nationality, Ethnicity) (Tehran: Mo’aseseh-ye Tahqiqat va Tawse’i-ye Oloum-e Ensani), pp. 53–114. Al-e Ahmad, J. (1982) Plagued by the West (Gharbzadegi), translated by Paul Sprachman (Delmor: Columbia University). Arani, T. (1924) ‘Azerbayjan ya yek Mas’aleh-ye Hayati va Mamati-ye Iran’, Farhangestan, 1. Ashraf, A. (1994) ‘Charisma, Theocracy, and Men of Power in Postrevolutionary Iran’ in A. B. M. Weiner (ed.) The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press).

202 Azadeh Kian and Gilles Riaux Atabaki, T. (2002) ‘Beyond Essentialism. Who Writes Whose Past in the Middle East and Central Asia?’, Inaugural Lecture at the University of Amsterdam, 13 December 2002, http://www.iisg.nl/research/beyond-essentialism.pdf. Atabaki, T. and E. J. Zürcher (eds) (2004) Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London: I.B. Tauris). Boroujerdi, M. (1992) ‘Gharbzadegi. The Dominant Intellectual Discourse of Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Iran” in S. K. Farsoun and M. Mashayekhi (eds) Iran: Political Culture in The Islamic Republic (New York: Routledge), pp. 30–56. Braudel, F. (1999) L’Identité de la France (Paris: Flammarion). Breuilly, J. (1993) Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Chatterjee, P. (1993) The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Clawson, P. and M. Rubin (2005) Eternal Iran. Continuity and Chaos (New York: Palgrave McMillan). Cottam, R. (1979) Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press). Frye, R. N. (1975) The Golden Age of Persia (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson). Gasiorowski, M. J. (1991) US Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Hobsbawn, E, J. (1990) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press). Ivekovic, R. (2003) Le Sexe de la nation (Paris: Léo Scheer). Kashani-Sabet, F. (2000) Frontier Fictions. Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Kashani-Sabet, F. (2002) ‘Cultures of Iranianness: The Evolving Polemic of Iranian Nationalism’ in N. R. Keddie and R. Matthee (eds) Iran and the Surrounding World. Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press), pp. 162–81. Kasravi, A. (1993) Azari ya zaban-e bastan-e Azerbayjan (Bethesda: Iranbooks). Kian-Thiébaut, A. (1998) Secularization of Iran. A Doomed Failure? The New Middle Class and the Making of Modern Iran (Paris: Peeters). Kian-Thiébaut, A. (2005) La République Islamique d’Iran. De la Maison du Guide à la Raison d’Etat (Paris: Michalon). Kian-Thiébaut, A. (2007) ‘Modernité, Genre et Religion en Iran’ in F. Rochefort (ed.) Le Pouvoir du Genre. Laïcités et Religions 1905–2005 (Toulouse: PUM), pp. 201–15. Kinzer, S. (2003) All the Shah’s Men. An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (New Jersey: Wiley). Lewis, P. G. (1982) ‘The Politics of Iranian Place-Names’, Geographical Review, 72, 1, 99–102. Menashri, D. (2001) Post Revolutionary Politics in Iran. Religion, Society and Power (London: Franck Cass). Moallem, M. (2005) Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister. Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (Berkeley, Los Angeles; London: University of California Press). Najmabadi, A. (2005) Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards. Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press). Paul, L. (1999) ‘Iranian-Nation and Iranian-Islamic Revolutionary Ideology’. Die Welt des Islams, 39, 2, 183–217. Ram, H. (1991) ‘The Myth of Early Islamic Government: The Legitimization of the Islamic Regime’, Iranian Studies, 24, 1, 37–54.

Crafting Iranian Nationalism 203 Riaux, G. (2004) ‘La Radicalisation des Nationalistes Azéris en Iran’, CEMOTI, 37, 15–42. Riaux, G. (2008) ‘The Formative Years of Azerbaijani Nationalism in Post Revolutionary Iran’, Central Asian Survey, 27, 1, 45–8. Richard, Y. (2007) ‘De la Perse à l’Iran : Un Héritage Menacé?’, Questions Internationales, 25. Spivak, G. C. (1999) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Mass. Harvard University Press). Thiesse, A-M. (2006) ‘Les Identités Nationales: Un Paradigme Transnational’ in C. Jaffrelot and A. Dieckhoff (eds) Repenser le Nationalisme (Paris : Presse de Science po). Vaziri, M. (1993) Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity (New York: Paragon House). Wilberd, D. N. (1958) Iran: Past and Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

12 The Union Des Populations Du Cameroun, from Vilification to National Recognition: The Evolution of State Discourses on the Nationalist Political Party in Post-Colonial Cameroon Carine Nsoudou

Introduction Similarly to historiography, war crimes trials, novels or movies, the press can be considered as a ‘vector’ of collective memory (Wood, 1999). Maurice Halbwachs (1992) sees collective memory as performative – that is, a reconstruction and an appropriation of the past used to meet or influence present needs. Accordingly, collective memory emerges at specific times and places often through institutionalised memorial activities such as special observances meant to mark an important social or historical event. The press, then, is one of the primary modes through which collective memory is transmitted across generations. The media, as agents of diffusion of social memory, can participate in the regulation of its strength and intensity in the public space. It is not only a primary means of revitalisation and enrichment of collective and individual memories but it can also be a potential source of frustration. Owing to their role as channels of memory and agents of information, the media play an important role in memory construction as collectors and transmitters of past and current events, and perhaps more importantly, the interpretation of those events. The diachronic analysis of state discourse and articles published in the Cameroonian state-affiliated and controlled newspapers enables one to apprehend the evolution of the historical and political representations of the radical nationalist party called the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) and the political use of its past by the political authorities from 1960 onwards. 204

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As the spearhead of radical nationalism during colonisation, the UPC suffered a backlash owing to its failure to take over power, for the benefit of a party supported by the French colonial authority. Having resorted in the mid-1950s to guerrilla warfare, which was finally subdued in the 1970s, the UPC and its diehard followers were banned from the political scene and their armed resistance violently put down. In the 1990s, the context of political liberalisation allowed the UPC supporters to be reintegrated into the Cameroonian political life and the party’s first leaders, previously labelled as ‘terrorists’ and ‘enemies of the Nation’, to be elevated to the status of national heroes by the Parliament. By changing its rhetoric and removing the stigmas that had scarred UPC’s history, the regime in place purposely reconfigured the onetime distressed UPC memory into a ‘patrimony memory’, thus reconciling and homogenising both popular and official memories. Opting alternately for historical and political discourses of exclusion or inclusion, the ruling political actors addressed in different ways the political party’s lasting influence and symbolic inheritance, trying to crush it or to use it for their own ends. As a means of political socialisation and communication, the state controlled and affiliated media is indisputably indicative of the propaganda diffused at a given time so as to create a sociocognitive dynamic (Balle, 1985), although compared with radio, the press’s impact on the population seems less important in Cameroon. The low purchasing power and high illiteracy rate account for the intellectual and economic urban elite’s preference for newspapers but the relatively popular practice of collective readings significantly increases the print media’s audience. The end of political pluralism in 1966 was accompanied by an impoverishment of the media landscape. The dynamic political, faith-based and union newspapers issued in the 1950s and early 1960s were mainly superseded by a press set to enhance the prestige of the regime (Bayart, 1973). Since the independence of French Cameroon in 1960, some newspapers became the mouthpieces of political power elites by publishing the recurring and in extenso political leaders’ statements, by featuring quotes from presidents on the front pages and, more generally, by supporting or even praising the regime for its socio-economic and political policies. Three newspapers, la Presse du Cameroun (the Press of Cameroon), l’Unité (the Unity) and Cameroon Tribune stand out because of their unconditional identification with and approval of the successive Cameroonian administrations. La Presse du Cameroun, though not controlled by the state, is included for analytical purposes along with the other above-mentioned newspapers on account of their overwhelming agreement with and consistent support of the political stances as well as some major similarities in their editorial lines. This independent general interest daily created in 1955 (ceasing to exist in 1975) by a Frenchman, Michel de Breteuil, adopted a non-political stand at the beginning – from 1960 displayed an unequivocal support for Cameroon’s first President Ahmadou Ahidjo, thus becoming

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a non-official organ of the power. L’Unité was created in 1960 as the mouthpiece of the Cameroon Union, the ruling party since 1958, and of the Cameroon National Union, its avatar founded in 1966. With the epigraph of Ahmadou Ahidjo, ‘la vérité finit par triompher’ (truth eventually triumphs), this weekly which mainly focused on national news, was clearly a propaganda arm of the government. On 1 July 1974 the first issue of the third newspaper reviewed, Cameroon Tribune was released. This bilingual government daily was elevated to the status of state organ, the headlines and cover stories bearing quotations from President Ahidjo and his successor Paul Biya and featuring an inset portrait of the latter. Although the editorial line gave first preference to government and sport news, a noticeable interest was subsequently given to political, economic and social issues. Analysing these newspapers allows us insight into how UPC’s political activities as well as its resurrected and transformed historical status were used to influence and to enhance the stability of subsequent Cameroonian political regimes. Such an analysis allows us to identify the underlying confrontation between rival political legitimacies, the opposition between official narratives and other actors and witnesses’ memories and interpretations of the nationalist resistance put down by the French colonial and Cameroonian authorities. The state-controlled and affiliated press became the sound box of an official state discourse on history, constructed and reconstructed at the expense of a repressed memory at length, driven underground. This official history proved intentionally forgetful of entire historical sequences of the struggle waged by the UPC, purposely underestimating the responsibilities and the complicities on the regime’s side. The survival of a dissident collective memory likely to thwart the regime’s political activities attests to the strength of an alternative representation of the national past that ruling power failed to absolutely quash. This competing memory remained a powerful lever of political controversies, compelling the Cameroonian state as a political actor and producer of memory discourses, to make strategic adjustments in the reading of Cameroon’s history in response to challenges to state political monopoly and to its authority to narrate history (Olick, 2003, p. 8; Wood, 1999, p. 1). Before exploring the discursive changes that occurred in the state controlled and affiliated press since 1960, it is important to provide a brief overview of UPC activities during the colonisation.

The colonial context The radical nationalist party Cameroon, a German protectorate from 1884 to 1914, was divided into two distinct territories administered by France and Britain under mandates given by the League of Nations in July 1922. The British zone was split into two parts, the Northern Cameroons administered as an integral part of

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Northern Nigeria and the Southern Cameroons administratively attached to Southern Nigeria. In 1946, French and British Cameroons were placed under the United Nations Organisation trusteeship system until their independence on 1 January 1960 for the French zone and on 1 October 1961 for the Southern Cameroons. Both entities reunited on the latter date. Similarly to the southern part, the British northern part determined its future through a plebiscite supervised by the United Nations. Instead of voting in favour of a reunification with former French Cameroon, this entity chose to join the Nigerian federation, which had been granted independence in October 1960. The UPC’s political activism and military struggle impacted on the events leading to such a denouement, but to a lesser extent in British Cameroons. Spearhead of the Cameroonian nationalism and anticolonialism (Joseph, 1977) since its inception in 1948, the UPC structured the Cameroonian political scene, demanding that political authority be given to native Cameroonians, presented as the sole rightful claimants to determine their national destiny (Le Vine, 1984). The UPC principally claimed French Cameroon’s independence and its reunification with British Cameroons. The party benefited from the support of many segments of the Cameroonian population, the diverse ethnic origins of its leaders and militants increasing its credibility and its representativeness. It stood out from the other political movements as the only Cameroonian mass party due to its strong geographical implantation and its bonds with the French Communist party, resulting in UPC supporters being dubbed the ‘stooges of communism’ by the political parties backing French colonisation such as the Evolution Sociale Camerounaise (Cameroon Social Evolution) and the Bloc Démocratique Camerounais (Cameroon Democratic Bloc). From 1955, UPC leaders used the German spelling of the name Cameroon, Kamerun so as to buttress their demand for a return to the 1914 frontiers, using the nostalgia for a mythified past and the alienation inherent in French colonial domination as the basis for Cameroonian radical nationalism (Smith, 1983). Driven by the UPC, a culture of political opposition developed in French Cameroon which took the form, among others, of a massive inflow of petitions sent to the United Nations. In reaction to the UPC’s political virulence and growing popular support, the French colonial administration appointed in December 1954 Roland Pré as High-Commissioner in order to bring the nationalist party to heel. The confrontation between UPC followers and the colonial police forces in May 1955, particularly in Yaoundé and Douala, marked the onset of colonial repression. The decree of 13 July 1955 outlawed the UPC and its closely related organisations, the Jeunesse Démocratique Camerounaise (Cameroon Democratic Youth) and the Union Démocratique des Femmes Camerounaises (Cameroon Women Democratic Union). A wing of the party led by Felix-Roland Moumié, the president of the party and the two

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vice-presidents, Ernest Ouandié and Abel Kingué, found shelter in British Cameroons. Another wing led by the most charismatic and emblematic UPC leader, the secretary-general Ruben Um Nyobè, seen by some as the ‘Cameroonian Hô Chi Minh’1, went underground. In 1955, this wing’s militants formed the first maquis (i.e. guerrilla warriors hidden in the bush or in the mountains) in the Basaa region2 located in the South of Cameroon, making Cameroon the only sub-Saharan African country in which France waged a military and psychological struggle (Michel, 2000), setting up ‘pacification zones’ in some parts of the territory. Political and military defeat of nationalism Marginalised on the political scene and engaged in guerrilla warfare, the UPC helplessly witnessed Ahmadou Ahidjo come to power. As the leader of the Cameroon Union, a political party supported by the French colonial administration, he was considered by the UPC as a ‘stooge of colonisation’. Ahidjo, appointed Prime Minister on 18 February 1958, appropriated the popular nationalist demands for independence and reunification. In order to crush the UPC uprising, Ahmadou Ahidjo vested himself with the full powers of an autocrat and declared a state of exception. The campaign of extermination against UPC brought about the murders of its main leaders later called ‘historic leaders’: Ruben Um Nyobè in September 1958; FélixRoland Moumié, assassinated in October 1960 in Geneva by French secret agents at the instigation of the Cameroonian regime; and Ernest Ouandié, publicly put to death in January 1971.3 The latter’s death marked the end of the UPC’s last armed resistance inside Cameroon. Ahmadou Ahidjo, elected president in April 1960, enjoyed the support of many UPC militants in exchange for their return to politics. Théodore Mayi Matip, Ruben Um Nyobè’s comrade in arms from 1949 to 1958 and chairman of the Jeunesse Démocratique Camerounaise, dissociated himself from the ‘historic’ UPC declared illegal by the French and therefore relegated to operating in exile, and formed a more politically acceptable party to the authorities, the ‘legal’ UPC in 1960. He first opposed Ahmadou Ahidjo’s idea of a single unified political party, for fear that such consolidation of power would result in a ‘fascist-type dictatorship’ and was consequently sentenced to imprisonment for his opposition. In 1966, Mayi Matip finally accepted Ahidjo’s offer, similar to those received by other political party leaders, to form along with the Cameroon Union, the Cameroon National Union. In exchange, he became the first vice-speaker of the National Assembly. In terms of legitimacy, Ruben Um Nyobè’s death triggered a competition between the ‘legal’ UPC and the ‘historic’ UPC which had found shelter in Guinea, Ghana and Egypt following the UPC’s banishment from British Cameroons in 1957. At the same time, the UPC committees kept functioning in Paris in spite of their exiled status. The military and political defeat suffered by the original UPC, coupled with internal disagreements as

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well as underground activities, caused the party’s collapse and the collective trauma of Cameroonians convinced that the UPC would prevail over the colonial administration and the postcolonial regime. Achille Mbembe describes the situation as follows (1996, p. 8): ‘The Cameroonian experience resulted in a “miscarriage” as the nationalist movement failed to turn its cultural hegemony over much of the native elites and the working classes into a political takeover.’ The UPC had been the centrepiece in the political spectrum for the decade leading up to independence and a fundamental political experience in Cameroonian history. Still, its failure structured its supporters’ attitudes after 1960, repressing the UPC symbolic capital in the political unconscious (Joseph, 1977), UPC leaders’ names being tabooed and disgraced by the regime (Mbembe, 1992).

Criticism of the present, repudiation of the past If the political statements and articles published in the state-controlled and state-affiliated press dealt with events which occurred after independence, the resistance lingering in the 1960s which was a continuation of the uprising launched in 1955 gave the declarations issued and published a retrospective dimension. Discrediting the present was actually also a means to bring into disrepute the immediate past. But although Ahmadou Ahidjo’s administration denied the nationalist party’s historical scope, misrepresented the UPC’s past and repressed its memory, his regime’s legitimacy hinged on a historical paradox and a twist of history. Ahidjo incorporated the UPC’s nationalist demands as a chief component of his own political agenda, while at the same time reviling the UPC as antithetical to his party’s political platform. Criminalisation Between 1960 and the mid-1970s, the press conveyed a stereotyped representation of the struggle waged by the UPC. From the onset of former French Cameroon’s independence in January 1960, the UPC was likened to a criminal rebellion in la Presse du Cameroun. ‘Rebellion’, ‘revolt’, ‘terrorism’, ‘crime’, ‘subversion’ were some of the terms used to denigrate the UPC. The editorial strategy was to present the views of political authorities that denounced the UPC, thus trying to influence public opinion that the UPC was political anathema to Cameroonian stability and future prosperity. This strategy was characterised by the journalists’ refusal to contextualise the UPC struggle and aimed at impressing the public opinion without providing it with essential elements for the understanding of the complex political situation, resorting to what Francis Balle (1990) calls the ‘rule of exaggeration and distortion’, namely the silencing of any information likely to damage state ideology at the service of political elites. ‘Nationalism and Crime Must not Be Mistaken’, ‘Brutal Murders and Lootings in the Banana

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Region’ or ‘New Terrorist Outrages in Douala’, the editorial staff repeatedly used catchy and simplistic headlines to knock the UPC off its political pedestal by mis-describing its commitment to independence. The strategy was to manipulate public opinion by arousing the readers’ emotion, their indignation and fear. Logically, the picture of the UPC uprising painted in the press never resembled the depiction of a fight for national liberation. The UPC and its followers were described as an antipatriotic group committing acts of plunder: ‘People do not show their independence by looting, arsoning, and killing.’4 Contrarily, President Ahidjo was regarded as a rallying person and commended for his action in favour of conciliation, reconciliation and pacification: ‘He decided to forgive the nation’s enemies in a clement way that surprised the world.’5 President Ahidjo was elevated to the rank of a providential man whose mission consisted in preserving the public order and safeguarding the national unity endangered by a political opposition seen as subversive (Tchaptchet, 1997). The emphasis on the affective dimensions of the regime’s political representations was recurrent. The description of the political rulers’ action against the UPC alternated images of toughness and benevolence, playing on seduction, no regime being able to ‘subsist during a long time by only resting on brutal coercion, making it necessary to make oneself accepted, respected or even loved’ (Braud, 1996, p. 10). The rhetoric harshness used by La Presse du Cameroun and L’Unité to portray the UPC as well as the fact that these newspapers made no mention of the UPC leaders’ names, even when they got executed, revealed the UPC’s enduring capacity to destabilise Ahidjo’s regime. Marginalisation and self-exclusion According to the state media, the UPC and its followers were described as having opted for illegality and criminality, thereby excluding themselves from the political life of the nation, becoming ‘enemies [of the state] on the inside and the outside.’ The exiled UPC wing was denied any claim to legitimacy in the Cameroonian political community and its opposition to the ruling elites was labelled as ‘antinational’.6 ‘The men of Conakry’s declaration is eccentric but worrying [...] Let’s rise to mobilise our forces and say no to the stateless exiles in order to thwart their devilish and malevolent plan.’ The war against the UPC was a means for Ahmadou Ahidjo to strengthen his political authority and a justification for the regime’s shift towards authoritarianism and the establishment of a police state. To stimulate a national consensus in its favour, the Cameroonian regime launched a smear campaign with an ethnicised representation of the UPC as the cornerstone. From the moment he attained the presidency, President Ahidjo postured as the ‘Father of the Nation’, stating in L’Unité in 1968: ‘National unity means there is no Duala, no Bamileké, no Fulbe, no Basaa in the process of the national construction ... but everywhere and always Cameroonians’.7 He

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advocated an ethnic levelling, accusing the UPC of making ethnic distinctions. In 1980, President Ahidjo officially formulated the concept of ‘dosages et équilibres ethniques et régionaux’ (ethnic and regional proportions and balance), a policy which recommended a balanced development at regional and ethnic level to achieve social and economic ‘harmony’. In the early 1960s, Ahmadou Ahidjo had already propounded ethnic balance as one of his major political projects and tribalism as the stumbling block to national identity and unity’s achievement. The alleged tribalistic threat posed by the UPC to the creation of a unified pluralist nation was used to deflect the ‘criticism of colonialism [and then Ahmadou Ahidjo’s regime] by the arms’, as Achille Mbembe (1992, p. 185) calls the UPC, from its pan-ethnic identity and therefore from its legitimacy to speak on behalf of the people. UPC leaders such as Ruben Um Nyobè, Théodore Mayi Matip, and Abel Kingué hailed from the Basaa and Bamiléké tribes and the party’s rank and file was largely, but not only, based on them. La Presse du Cameroon displayed a blatant tendency to limit the UPC following to these tribes: ‘the UPC and the clergy are led by the Basaa people. Is it not a Basaa scheme to lay down the law in the country?’8 The media consistently portrayed the UPC as a parochial group that engaged in ‘clan terrorism’,9 running anti-UPC articles that linked the UPC’s political goals to an anti-nationalistic tribalism, resulting in anti-UPC headlines such ‘Help Us Quell Terrorism and Tribalism’.10 The creation of Cameroon Tribune in 1974 heralded a new period which saw a movement away from reviling the UPC news towards discussion of economic issues. As long as the Cameroonian economy thrived due to newly discovered and exploited oil resources, the regime remained secure and serene. The dissident voice of the UPC was effectively neutralised within the political commons, while mentioning the UPC became merely a gesture of insubordination against state authority punished by the regime.

Deconstruction and reconstruction of the official memory discourse Forerunners of change The 4 November 1982 is a turning point in Cameroon’s postcolonial history. On this day, Ahmadou Ahidjo unexpectedly resigned for health reasons and was succeeded by his Prime Minister and constitutional successor, Paul Biya. The change allowed some freedom in the press and in the radio as a consequence of the more liberal political stand taken by Biya who ran for president as the ‘candidate of the National New Deal’ in the January 1984 elections. His electoral success turned him into the legal and legitimate president of Cameroon. Cameroonians immediately backed a politician endowed with a reputation for strictness and tolerance but also supported him for praising democratisation and liberalisation and condemning tribalism and corruption (Courade, 1996). Anxious to uncontestedly take control

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of the ruling class, the new president who had received the endorsement of Ahmadou Ahidjo, then called a ‘hero’ by Cameroon Tribune, presented himself as Ahidjo’s political heir. As Georges Courade (1996, p. 12) describes, members of the still active UPC Parisian committees, reassured by Paul Biya’s gestures of political openness displayed towards them during his first official visit to France in May 1987, declared themselves ready to support him if he was willing to move Cameroon onto the path of democratisation. President Biya’s promises, however, were mostly empty as it turned out that UPC followers were unable to return to Cameroon because they were denied access to Cameroon’s embassy in France. UPC renaissance accounts for Paul Biya’s duality towards the party. The exiled UPC in Paris had begun a process of reorganisation in the 1970s, notably with the foundation of the Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (National Manifest for the Establishment of Democracy, Manidem) in 1974. The Manidem, a strategic framework set up to carry on the UPC work, progressively mobilised new elements outside Cameroon and created networks inside Cameroon. Conscious of the UPC’s resurgence, President Ahidjo ordered new arrests in 1976, especially in Douala. This clampdown failed to prevent the party’s reshaping and the establishment of a six-point minimum programme, demanding the neocolonial dictatorship’s demise, the suspension of the ‘autocratic and annexationist’ Constitution of May 1972,11 the formation of a ‘Provisional National Coalition Government for Democracy, Progress and Peace’, a general and unconditional amnesty for all UPC followers and the restoration of civil liberties. The forcefulness of the UPC’s policy statements in exile, urging democratisation and civil and political liberties for Cameroon, contributed to Biya’s eventual rupture with Ahidjo’s policies and to his affirmation to be willing to move towards a different direction than that of his political mentor. This break with Ahidjo’s policy pertained as much to political ideology as it did to historical memory. From 1984, Cameroon Tribune hinted at this change by now qualifying the UPC uprising as a ‘liberation struggle’12 rather than an anti-nationalist movement. In 1987, departing from Ahmadou Ahidjo’s political rhetoric, Paul Biya applied his own idea of Cameroonian history in a book entitled, For the Communal Liberalism, whose extracts were published in Cameroon Tribune: The history of Cameroon does not start in 1960 with independence. Our country’s independence has been conquered after a hard fight by many dignified native children whose names have unfortunately remained taboo during the quarter of century that just passed. Today, things have changed. History has reasserted itself in this country which is and will remain yours. Long live the Cameroonian nationalism.13

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With this rather stark change in political language, Paul Biya aimed to thwart the potentially deleterious and contagious effects of a flourishing UPC in exile and its influence within the political landscape of Cameroon. The impact of the political reconfiguration In November 1982, Cameroon Tribune described Paul Biya as acting ‘under the double sign of commitment and loyalty’14 to the person who according to him remained the ‘Father of the Cameroonian nation as well as the architect of its unity and development’,15 namely Ahidjo. However, despite Biya’s declared loyalty to his political predecessor, he still faced a succession of crises and Cameroon Tribune’s rhetoric of devotion towards Ahidjo developed into a bitter discourse against him, acknowledging that Biya’s former political affiliation with Ahidjo’s authoritarian political commitments had begun to change. On 22 August 1983, Paul Biya announced that a ‘plot against the Republic’s security’ had been uncovered involving his predecessor. At the end of the trial in February 1984, Ahmadou Ahidjo, exiled in Senegal since 1983, was sentenced to death in absentia, but was eventually reprieved by Biya. This conspiracy, as well as the attempted coup carried out in April 1984 by the republican guard, was presented by Cameroon Tribune and interpreted by the public as the subversive activities of a former dictator against a liberal reformer. Yet, some events made many Cameroonians dubious about the new regime’s capacity to implement the much-awaited reforms. In the mid1980s, a programme of structural adjustment was imposed on Cameroon by the International Monetary Fund in order to overcome the country’s financial problems and economic crisis. Cameroon, which had suffered the aftershocks of the absence of agricultural development and the mismanagement of natural resources, also faced the emergence of an Anglophone ‘problem’, the minority Anglophone Cameroonians increasingly resenting what they viewed as their second-class citizenship (Courade, 1996). In addition to these socio-economic grievances, in March 1985, the Cameroon National Union underwent a strictly nominal change to become the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), without any real institutional or political changes, leaving many Cameroonians politically frustrated. Additionally, the years 1989 and 1990 witnessed major international upheavals one of which was the collapse of the communist block. On 20 June 1990, French President François Mitterrand delivered a speech that linked economic development to democracy and was critical of post-colonial African countries in regards to democratisation. These events contributed to stirring up popular protest movements which, although failing to sweep away the Cameroonian regime, made it waver, announcing the impending memory reversal undertaken by the political authorities to stabilise the situation. Compelled by a series of events such as those described above, Biya gave in to popular pressure and the democratisation process began in

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earnest in 1990. The creation of a National Coordination for Democracy and Multipartyism in February 1990 under the aegis of Yondo Black, a lawyer, and of a new political party, the Social Democratic Front, founded by an Anglophone bookseller, John Fru Ndi, in May 1990, were at first declared illegal but enjoyed popular support despite the ensuing police and judiciary crackdown. Moreover, the Church, under the leadership of Cardinal Tumi, dissociated itself from the government. To break this downward political spiral, in July 1990 President Biya announced the establishment of a pluralist and ‘integral’ democracy. This period of liberalisation saw the abolition of laws of political exclusion and the enactment of legislation on civil liberties. This process culminated in the 19 December 1990 law on the liberalisation of political life and the lifting of the restrictions and taboos on Cameroonian nationalist history, both changes presented by Cameroon Tribune as exemplifying the New Deal and thus brushing aside any accusations of political opportunism on the part of Paul Biya. Despite the concessions granted and the reconfiguration of the Cameroonian political scene, the year 1991 witnessed a radical neutralisation of state authority, a heightened competition for political control and in some cases, the paralysis of some important cities such as Douala, the economic capital. The democratic transition proceeded, punctuated with the successive legalisation of political parties including the UPC in February 1991. In order to mitigate the increasingly harsh popular criticisms against an administration deemed unable to satisfy the needs and democratic aspirations of the people, the regime used the legalised UPC as a political supporter. Cameroon Tribune in 1991 announced that influential UPC followers such as the writer Mongo Beti and the Manidem’s leaders, Michel Ndoh and Woungly Massaga, had rallied behind the CPDM and urged UPC supporters to back the ruling party. A resurgent and powerfully symbolic UPC seemed nevertheless likely to politically challenge the entrenched power-base of Biya and his party. The UPC, the party once branded as the ‘enemy of the nation’ under Ahmadou Ahidjo, was now revived in the new political climate of democratisation and, in an attempt to constrain the political influence of the UPC, the regime began to use the media to its advantage, allowing the press to describe the UPC as its own enemy. Cameroon Tribune ran stories ‘informing’ its readers about the party’s disarray, its internal disagreements and ongoing infightings as well as the conflicts over personal authority, but avoiding any references to the party’s historical anticolonial struggle. From the beginning, the liberalisation process suffered setbacks, as many opponents of the regime were put under arrest and on trial. On 27 December 1990, Pius Njawe, chief editor of the privately-owned newspaper Le Messager published an open letter to President Biya written by the journalist Celestin Monga and entitled ‘La Démocratie Truquée’ (the rigged democracy). In January 1991 their summons turned them into freedom heroes in the eyes of the people. The administrative censorship against the independent press

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conveying ‘irreverent representations of the power’ (Sindjoun, 1996, p. 58) threw doubt on Paul Biya’s genuine democratic intentions. From March 1991, in the course of the popular mobilisation catalysed by the trials, huge protests called for the launch of the operations ‘Villes Mortes’ (dead cities) which paralysed the country’s economic life for six months. These protests, combined with a campaign of civil disobedience, aimed at forcing the regime to accept the setting up of a sovereign national conference (such as that which took place in Benin in February 1990) capable of laying the foundations for a new institutional order. Riots and demonstrations, in which slogans such as ‘Biya Must Go’ were chanted, spread all over the territory. Demonstrators set fire to pictures of Paul Biya, while some portraits of the deceased ‘historic leaders’ of UPC surfaced. This reappearance of a militant past meant the mobilisation of history by a concurrent political logic contradicting the dominant discourse, what Henry Rousso (1998, p. 31) describes as: ‘This besieging of the public space by the outlaws of History almost always expresses itself not only through a political action, but also, what goes together, by an appropriation of a past, a specific history.’ Biya announced new constitutional reforms and the scheduling of new elections to regain political control and legitimacy. In June 1991, he argued that setting up a national conference was unwarranted, a position that provoked yet more intense popular protests. In reaction to the latter, a state of emergency was declared in seven out of the ten Cameroonian provinces. With anticipated legislative elections scheduled for 16 February 1992, a conference gathering the government, the opposition and the civil society opened in October 1991 with the goal of defining the electoral process and the framework for independent media. Once some of the demands listed in the Manidem’s minimum programme were satisfied, the political tensions began to recede. Disagreements divided the political opposition between those in favour of holding a national conference prior to any election, such as the Social Democratic Front, and those proposing an unconditional participation in voting, which included the UPC whose legalisation in February 1991 was followed by periods of clashing and cooperation with Biya’s ruling party. Indeed, by taking part in the opposition movement of 1991, the UPC opted for a head-on confrontation with a regime accused of being the heir of Ahmadou Ahidjo, a regime perceived and denounced by this party as illegitimate because of its abstention from waging war for national independence. The October 1992 election, considered rigged by the opposition and by some international observers, saw the narrow win of Biya over the Social Democratic Front. The government formed opened up to UPC members in spite of the absence of a joint manifesto on political principles, ushering in a process of clientelisation of the opposition (Bigombe and Menthog, 1996, p. 119). Earlier on, in the wake of the March 1992 legislative election, boycotted by the radical opposition gathered around the Social Democratic Front, the CPDM shared the Parliament’s 180 seats with the

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moderate opposition parties, such as the UPC. The UPC’s mercurial attitude pertained to its recurrent wish to participate fully at all levels of politics, like the ‘legal’ UPC of Théodore Mayi Matip in the 1960s. Political fortunes being inconstant, the presidential election of 1997, boycotted, amongst others, by the Social Democratic Front, witnessed the landslide victory of Paul Biya over his nearest contestant, the UPC candidate, Henri Hogbe Nlend. But six years later, the results of the June 2003 legislative election enabled Frédéric Kodock, the UPC’s secretary-general, to negotiate a position in the government. As Georges Courade and Luc Sindjoun (1996, p. 6) argue, Paul Biya resorted to the same techniques as Ahmadou Ahidjo to manage the political contradiction: ‘The political continuity has remained completely secured by a combination of interventions: liberal rhetoric, repression and electoral channelling of the protests based on a permanent undercover action and a temporal control of the agenda.’ Biya’s regime fell back on some mechanisms for dispute resolution. As we have seen, the UPC’s political potency had been relatively belittled by the satisfaction of some demands of the Manidem’s programme and the political clientelisation of the party. The situation of socio-political confrontation forced the regime to also adopt a historical discourse differing from the previous one.

The management of a surging antagonistic memory Fictive patrimonisation Confronted with the threat posed by the protest movement and the urgency of meeting some political claims while limiting the destabilisation of the regime, Biya strove to halt the upsurge of and to reduce the ‘causticity’ of a recalcitrant UPC memory, by transforming the official discourse on the ‘historic’ UPC from that of a debased political movement as described by Ahidjo’s regime into that of a political party that has always fought for Cameroon’s freedom. For its part, the UPC, which had kept claiming status as the most patriotic and nationalist party, presented itself as the only political movement having constantly displayed a genuine preoccupation with democracy and democratisation. UPC members gave ‘hagiographical’ accounts of the lives and fight of UPC’s ‘historic leaders’, describing the UPC as the ‘immortal soul of the Cameroonian people’. In order to build a national cohesion behind him and to prevent a struggle over control of how history should be interpreted, Biya endeavoured to promote a dispassionate relationship with UPC memory. The popular mobilisation compelled the state to turn to history and its propaganda machinery to proceed to a partial reclamation of this problematic memory. Pierre Nora (1986, p. 649) defines ‘patrimony memory’ as the transformation of the memory’s traditional stakes into a common property and a collective heritage itself bringing about the depletion of the classical oppositions. This memory’s patrimonial shift expresses

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itself also by the re-emergence of the national repressed unconscious and the liberated return of often painful episodes of the collective consciousness. The regime and Cameroon Tribune then presented the UPC memory as a ‘patrimony memory’, albeit deprived of ‘external supports’, material or not, be it monuments, the setting of commemoration dates or the building up of specific archives. If Biya theoretically accepted the integration of the UPC memory into the public space by allowing the formerly disgraced UPC leaders’ names to have currency again, the UPC memory was the subject of an artificial and tentative nationalisation and revitalisation. Ruben Um Nyobè, Ahmadou Ahidjo or even Ernest Ouandié’s names attained a social recognition and a public visibility through Cameroon Tribune whose memory discourse nonetheless did not provide any historical clarity or accuracy about the UPC, the meaning of its fight or the circumstances surrounding its ‘historic leaders’ deaths. The newspaper presented an oversimplified descriptive version lacking nuances, leaving unanswered a number of questions, essentially unanalysed. The re-insertion of the former outlaws into the national community prompted an allegedly inclusive historical revisionism, while Ahmadou Ahidjo had explicitly vilified his most challenging political opponent. Biya’s subterfuge consisted in making all Cameroonians, regardless of their political leanings, the heirs of the original UPC movement. Thus he appropriated the ‘historic’ UPC’s legacy as a celebrated collective inheritance, standing apart from any previous strategy consisting in discrediting and rejecting the UPC leaders and members as enemies of the state. In a context of political turmoil, Biya used the meanings of the UPC’s anticolonial fight for the population as values which appeared politically expedient to identify oneself with (Braud, 1996, pp. 173–4). Placing his action in the UPC political tradition and misappropriating for his own benefit the UPC’s symbolic legacy, Biya used these consensual historical references as sources of political legitimacy. By doing so, he protected himself, as the head of state, from any possible calls for the redressing of historical grievances and for public apologies to the victims of the UPC repression which could have adversely affected his power. This manipulation allowed him to blur the boundaries and to situate his action in a ‘significative duration, a lineage, a tradition, that is to say in a system of values and of perennial experiences time has given depth to’ (Rousso, 1998, p. 19). The process of rehabilitation of Cameroonian nationalism’s main figures started in August 1990 with the names’ clearing of two prominent figures of the Cameroonian proto-nationalist movement who fought against the Germans and were hanged on 8 August 1914, Martin Paul Samba and Rudolph Douala Manga Bell, also called ‘heroes of the nation’ by Cameroon Tribune. Later, in January 1991, on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of independence, without mentioning specific names, Cameroon Tribune referred to UPC members who opposed colonial rule as ‘freedom martyrs’, ‘dignified children of

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Cameroon’ deserving the ‘eternal gratitude’ of the nation, adding: ‘At the cost of their blood and other indescribable sufferings that will forever remain engraved in our memories, the Cameroonian people stood behind the freedom fighters who fought against the colonial order.’16 The government press mentioned a ‘devoir de mémoire’ (duty of memory) towards those who had been at the forefront of the anti-colonial struggle, asserting the necessity to rewrite Cameroon’s history. These ‘commitments’ were blatant political posturings and lasted only for the time necessary for the regime to neutralise political competition. After the emphatic description of UPC’s heroic fight for Cameroon’s independence and democracy, a shift of emphasis made the portrayal of UPC’s historical significance less important, accounting for Cameroon Tribune’s lack of interest in memorial activities organised by the UPC from the 1990s. In September 1994, UPC followers commemorated on their own their fallen members during the ‘Semaine des Martyrs’ (Week of the martyrs), a commemoration devoted to the remembrance of the nationalist fight and to the exegesis of the UPC’s ideology. Cameroon Tribune did not provide coverage of these events which were laconically announced after the fact. Paradoxically, Cameroon Tribune paid considerable attention to historically significant foreign events such as the anniversaries of the massacre at Sharpeville in South Africa, the birth of Martin Luther King and the death of the scientist Cheikh Anta Diop, while none of the Cameroonian ‘martyrs’ anniversaries were honoured by extensive articles. A timely rehabilitation The 16 December 1991 law that rehabilitated Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix-Roland Moumié, Ernest Ouandié and Ahmadou Ahidjo was presented in Cameroon Tribune as an illustration of the New Deal. This memorial law can be considered as a strategic concession made to settle points of contention. The rehabilitation occurred at the height of a period during which the power and legitimacy of the government were challenged. It was carried out in order to finally neutralise the influence of Ahidjo’s heritage but above all to rein in the weight of the UPC’s legacy as an organisation that led the anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian fight and accordingly the party’s power to mobilise the population. Thereby, Biya aimed at securing the support of the people nostalgic for two Golden ages, respectively a period of economic growth symbolised by Ahidjo and of the ‘historic’ UPC’s uncompromising political and armed fight against oppressive and despotic domination. Cameroon Tribune contributed to the dulling of a political objection and of a dissenting collective memory. The purely strategic and utilitarian character of this approach (Gronbeck, 1998; Dionisopoulos and Goldzwig, 1992) was nevertheless mentioned in the newspaper underlining that the law had been designed to ‘ease the socio-political atmosphere of the country.’ The agreement reached between the regime and the recently legalised UPC for its political collaboration alienated the party from many Cameroonians

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who viewed this arrangement as a compromise of principle, diminishing the UPC’s room for political manoeuvre and eroding the symbolic capital of the party which had enjoyed the aura imparted to it by the martyr status of its emblematic figures. Unfinished, this rehabilitation did not give rise to a true liberation of the UPC’s social memory. No national commemorative practices honouring the UPC’s fight and its charismatic leaders have been established. Likewise, no memorial site dedicated to the anti-colonial and nationalist struggle waged by the UPC has been elevated to the status of a national celebration’s place. Cameroon Tribune’s tone regarding the UPC evolved and can be contrasted with those of L’Unité and La Presse du Cameroun. In the beginning of the UPC’s transformation from villain to hero, the UPC was portrayed as an integral part of Cameroonian history. As time passed, the UPC’s historical role became increasingly less important in the way it was pictured in the press. This incomplete integration of the UPC’s past into the national history was the result of the regime’s willingness not to be constrained to either a ‘travail de mémoire’ (a work of memory) or a national ‘devoir de mémoire’ towards the ‘historic’ UPC’s struggle. Unlike Algeria, which in the early 1980s experienced what Benjamin Stora (1998) called the ‘temps de l’écriture de l’histoire’ (the time of history writing), during which the authorities organised a campaign to collect and to record the testimonies of those Algerians who fought against the French in the war for independence, in Cameroon, the rehabilitation has not been followed by an official ‘unearthing’ of the UPC memory. The lack of any official attention reflects an ambiguous attitude of the political rulers towards great historical names perceived by Cameroonians as the sole icons of the nationalist struggle. Indeed, under the Biya administration and until the early 1990s, UPC memory proved tricky as it remained a vivid resource of political identity owing to the trauma related to the repression and the guerrilla warfare which kept structuring the Cameroonian political imagination. The state reaffirmed its hegemony in the official discourse on history and consequently resorted to memory silencing which de facto constituted a denial of history. Paul Biya carried on what Achille Mbembe (1990, p. 117) called a ‘tradition of violence and ostracism against dead.’ None of the figures rehabilitated, neither the colonial history’s vanquished nor the victors of the nationalist movement, were entitled to state funerals. Although it did not apply to those convicted of high treason, including the 1984 coup perpetrators, the 23 April 1991 amnesty law concerning political prisoners was described in Cameroon Tribune as a means to attain ‘civic peace’ (Ricoeur, 2000, p. 587). This law actually contributed to the political insidious undermining carried out by Biya’s regime. The amnesty and rehabilitation laws’ promulgation proved to be double-edged. These laws wiped out UPC stigmatisation and theoretically enabled the UPC historical figures to spring back to what was seen by many as their rightful place in

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national history. They equally exposed UPC memory to the risks of what Paul Ricoeur (2000, p. 589) calls an ‘amnésie commandée’ (ordered amnesia) which deprives collective and individual memories of the ‘salutary identity crisis allowing a lucid appropriation of the past and of the traumatic resonance.’ This institutionally orchestrated oblivion resulted in the lack of criticisms of the original UPC’s and of Ahidjo regime’s actions towards that party from a historical viewpoint. Moreover, it resulted in Cameroon Tribune’s silence from the mid-1990s on what many Cameroonians hold as the most glorious chapters in Cameroon’s history.

Conclusion The state-controlled and affiliated press constructed and presented over 40 years a discontinued and contradictory representation of the UPC. The excessive stigmatisations under Ahmadou Ahidjo as well as the rehabilitation of the UPC’s ‘historic leaders’ and the abuse of silence under Paul Biya’s administration marked some ruptures in the official discourse on history as they were inherent to the evolution of the political situation. By contrast, the difficulties to mention by name the UPC’s emblematic leaders were a permanent trait under both regimes. These stands proved the threat posed by an overly lively UPC memory and by the ever impressive symbolic stature of some figures Ahmadou Ahidjo vainly attempted to deconsecrate. In order to counter the possible emergence of an ‘excess’ of memory resulting from the rehabilitation and the amnesty law, Paul Biya’s administration reacted by a strategy of deliberate oblivion. Cameroon Tribune’s silence as well as the absence of memorial projects, commemorations and state funerals in tribute to the rehabilitated figures revealed the state’s willingness to make these figures disappear into oblivion or at least to keep these ‘heroes’ in limbo. This oblivion was devoid of pacifying virtues and in consequence unable to genuinely contribute to the founding of the nation (Renan, 1997). Contrarily, this oblivion which ostracised these political and historical figures, attested to the refusal of any duty of history on the part of the regime. Still, as Benjamin Stora argues (1998, p. 319): ‘No people, no society, no individual can live and define its identity in a state of amnesia: an unofficial, individual memory finds some shelter when the power wants to imprison it or to abolish it’. The independent press such as the newspapers Le Messager or Mutations but also some websites assume the functions of vectors and outlets of UPC memory. In their pursuit of a clarified, articulate and shared history, these websites and press set themselves off as counterweights to the absence of memory discourse in Cameroon Tribune. Dismissing the historical oversimplifications conveyed by the regime and allowing the circulation of UPC alternative historical representations, they make up for the situation of history’s deficiency maintained by the administration and prompt critical historical debates so far eluded in the state-controlled and affiliated press.

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Notes 1. M. O. Lacamp, 3 February 1956, ‘Péril Rouge en Afrique Noire’, Le Figaro, p. 5. 2. Ruben Um Nyobè’s death marked the end of the military resistance in the maquis of the Basaa region. The anticolonial resistance reorganised itself in the Bamiléké region through the setting up of a maquis active from 1958 to 1971. 3. The deaths of the UPC’s ‘historic leaders’ differed from each other. Ruben Um Nyobè’s death was physical as well as symbolic because it meant the death of a legend endowed with invincibility and invisibility’s abilities and also the death of a legend praised for his integrity and commitment. This legend because of its mobility permeated a significant part of the population. Once dead, owing to the importance of this figure, the authorities poured cement over his body which was finally buried at the cemetery of the Eséka’s Presbyterian mission and was granted a miserable tomb. Abel Kingué who died in Egypt and was not assassinated on the orders of Ahmadou Ahidjo occupies a special place in the ‘pantheon’ of the UPC ‘martyrs’. Félix-Roland Moumié who was murdered in Switzerland is buried in Conakry. Ernest Ouandié was promptly interred after having been shot. Although he does not have the prestige of the above mentioned leaders, Osendé Afana enjoys a significant recognition. He led important activities in Egypt and Guinea in the leadership of the exiled UPC, and then joined the underground resistance where he died, beheaded in 1966. As for President Ahidjo, he died in exile in 1989 and was buried in Senegal. 4. M. Nséké, 22 September 1961, ‘Luttons contre le Terrorisme’, La Presse du Cameroun, p. 1. 5. ‘Un Homme Consacre sa Vie au Service de la Nation’, 6–13 March 1968, L’Unité, p. 1. 6. Ahmadou Ahidjo, 8–15 November 1967, L’Unité, p. 1. 7. Ahmadou Ahidjo in L. M. Tchatchoua, 25 September–20 October 1968, ‘La Réunification du Cameroun Sept Ans après’, L’Unité, p. 1. 8. P. Mendouga, 4 February 1960, ‘La Période des Passions’, La Presse du Cameroun, p. 1. 9. C. R. Ndoumbé-Nkotto, 23–24 September 1961, ‘Terrorisme Sanguinaire, Terrorisme Moral, Terrorisme de Clan: Fléau du Mungo’, La Presse du Cameroun, p. 1. 10. A. Ngouem, 11 October 1961, La Presse du Cameroun, p. 1. 11. The Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon of 1972 abolished the federal system to which Anglophone Cameroonians were much attached and which had been introduced in 1961 when the British Cameroons unified with the former French Cameroon. 12. M. Mintsa, 9 March 1984, ‘Quelle Amnésie’, Cameroon Tribune, p. 1. 13. Paul Biya, 22 Mars 1988, Cameroon Tribune, p. 3. 14. P. Biya, 7–8 November 1982, Cameroon Tribune, p. 1. 15. P. Biya, 18 January 1983, Cameroon Tribune, p. 2. 16. ‘Réhabilités: Ahmadou Ahidjo, Ruben Um Nyobè, Félix-Roland Moumié, Ernest Ouandié’, 19 December 1991, Cameroon Tribune, p. 3.

References Balle, F. (1985) ‘Médias et Politique’ in M. Grawitz and J. Leca (eds) Traité de Science Politique, vol .3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France), pp. 574–81.

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Balle, F. (1990) Médias et Sociétés (Paris: Montchrétien). Bayart, J-F. (1973) ‘Presse Écrite et Développement Politique au Cameroun’, Revue Française d’Études Politiques Africaines, 88, 48–63. Bigombe, P. and H-L. Menthog (1996) ‘Crise de Légitimité et Évidence de la Continuité Politique’, Politique Africaine, 62, 15–23. Braud, P. (1996) L’Émotion en Politique. Problèmes d’Analyse (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques). Courade, G. and L. Sindjoun (1996) ‘Le Cameroun dans l’Entre-Deux’, Politique Africaine, 62, 3–14. Dionisopoulos, G. N. and S. R. Goldzwig (1992) ‘The Meaning of Vietnam: Political Rhetoric as Revisionist Cultural History’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 78, 1, 6 1– 79. Gronbeck, B. E. (1998) ‘The Rhetoric of the Past: History, Argument and Collective Memory’ in K. J. Turner (eds) Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), pp. 47–60. Halbwachs, M. (1992) On Collective Memory, edited and translated by . A. Coser (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press). Joseph, R. (1977) Radical Nationalism in Cameroon (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Le Vine, V. T. (1984) Le Cameroun du Mandat à l’Indépendance (Paris: Présence Africaine). Mbembe, A. (1990) ‘Le Cameroun après la Mort d’Ahmadou Ahidjo’, Politique Africaine, 37, 117–22. Mbembe, A. (1992) ‘La Palabre de l’Indépendance au Cameroun’ in J-F Bayart, A. Mbembe and C. Toulabor (eds.) Le Politique par le bas en Afrique Noire (Paris: Karthala). Mbembe, A. (1996) La Naissance du Maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun, 1920–1960 (Paris: Karthala). Michel, M. (2000) ‘ “Action Psychologique” et “Propagande” au Cameroun à la Fin des Années 50’, La Guerre d’Algérie au Miroir des Décolonisations Françaises: En l’Honneur de Charles-Robert Ageron: Actes du Colloque International, Paris, Sorbonne, 23, 24, 25 Novembre 2000, 360–78. Nora, P. (dir) (1986) Les Lieux de Mémoires. La Nation (Paris: Gallimard). Olick, J. K. (2003) Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection (Durham and London: Duke University Press). Renan, E. (1997) Qu’Est-ce qu’Une Nation? (Paris: Mille et Une Nuits). Ricoeur, P. (2000) La Mémoire, l’Histoire, l’Oubli (Paris: Le Seuil). Rousso, H. (1998) La Hantise du Passé. Entretien avec Philippe Petit (Paris: Les Éditions Textuel). Sindjoun, L. (1996) ‘Le Champ Social Camerounais: Désordre Inventif, Mythes Simplificateurs et Stabilité Hégémonique de l’État’, Politique africaine, 62, pp. 57–67. Smith, A. D. (1983) Theories of Nationalism (New-York: Holmes and Meier Publishers). Stora, B. (1998) La Gangrène et l’Oubli. La Mémoire de la Guerre d’Algérie (Paris: La Découverte). Tchaptchet, J-M. (1997) Parole à l’Afrique: Presse et Démocratie (Genève: Service de Liaison Non-Gouvernemental des Nations-Unies). Wood, N. (1999) Vectors of Memory. Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe (New-York, Oxford: Berg).

13 Refashioning Sub-National Pasts for Post-National Futures: The Xhosa Cattle Killing in Recent South African Literature Jennifer Wenzel

Introduction: the cattle killing and the Xhosa ‘nation’ The ‘sub-national past’ in my title is an anti-colonial millenarian movement in southern Africa, the Xhosa cattle killing of 1856–57. During the first half of the 19th century, the Xhosa people had fought a series of wars against the British Cape Colony, whose eastern frontier steadily encroached into Xhosa territory. By the 1850s, the amaXhosa had faced not only decades of colonial encroachment and assaults on their chiefs’ authority by Cape Colony Governor Sir George Grey (1854–61), but also drought, crop blight and an unprecedented epidemic of bovine lungsickness, a disease that devastated the herds of cattle in which the Xhosa economy, culture and identity were centred. In the midst of these challenges, the 1850s saw the rise of several millenarian prophecies among the amaXhosa, which culminated in a prophecy delivered in 1856 by a young woman known as Nongqawuse, who claimed to have been visited by ancestors long dead. They promised the return of ancestor-warriors who would help the amaXhosa to drive the whites into the sea, but only if they killed their cattle and threw away their grain – in other words, only if they destroyed their culture and livelihood. Over 400,000 cattle were killed in compliance with the cattle-killing prophecy, and when the ancestors and new cattle failed to appear as promised in 1857, approximately 40,000 people died of starvation and 50,000 more left their land to seek food and work in the Cape Colony. Those who remained were forced from their homesteads into compact villages and altogether the amaXhosa lost more than 600,000 acres of land.1 The aftermath of the cattle killing was the beginning of the end of the autonomy of the Xhosa nation. Before 1857, colonial discourse largely conceived of the Xhosa people as a nation, rather than as a tribe or some other form of polity. Colonel 223

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John Maclean described in 1855 the lack of interest among the amaXhosa in the European civilising mission offered by missionaries and colonial administrators: the [Xhosa,] contented like the North American Indian with his barbarous state, and apathetic as to improvement, has in addition to these other characteristics, that he clings tenaciously to his old customs and habits, is proud of his race, which he considers pure and superior to others, is therefore eminently national, is suspicious, and holds aloof from others (Imperial Blue Book, 1856, p. 18). Maclean was the Chief Commissioner of British Kaffraria, a military colony directly east of the British Cape Colony that had been established in 1847 in the aftermath of the seventh frontier war between Europeans and the amaXhosa. British colonial policy towards the ‘eminently national’ amaXhosa and their system of chiefship had shifted along with the colonial boundary; the arrival of Sir George Grey, Governor General of the Cape Colony from 1854–61, marked an unprecedented assault on the authority of the chiefs, whom Grey aimed to co-opt as paid employees of the colonial state. Grey’s attempts to ‘civilise’ the amaXhosa through mission-sponsored education, colonial jurisprudence, access to European doctors (and suppression of indigenous healing practices) and through wage labour (sometimes forced) were frustrated not least by the overlapping and competing political geographies of the British colonial territories and the Xhosa chiefdoms. Grey’s policies amounted to what I would call an anti-national colonialism, aimed at breaking the stubborn autonomy of the amaXhosa. Grey’s efforts in the early years of his tenure, however, did not have nearly so great an impact as the devastating aftermath of the cattle killing, which is sometimes referred to as the Xhosa ‘national suicide’. This phrase first appears in a letter by Tiyo Soga, the first Xhosa convert ordained as a Christian minister. Returning from his ordination in Scotland to Africa in July 1857, only a few months after the failure of the cattle-killing prophecy, Tiyo Soga lamented, ‘My poor infatuated countrymen are now most bitterly reaping the fruits of having been the dupes of designing impostors. ... They have actually committed national suicide’ (Soga, 1983, p. 137). Many 19th century colonial observers remarked that the Xhosa cattle killing had accomplished what more than a half century of frontier wars had failed to do, in terms of subjugating the amaXhosa to colonial rule; missionary William C. Holden wrote in The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (1963 [1866]) about the amaXhosa in the aftermath of the cattle killing, ‘Their power was broken, their strength wasted, and their counsels defeated to a greater extent than all the powder and steel of the British troops had been able to effect’ (Holden, 1963 [1866], p. 294). After the failure of the prophecy, Sir George Grey capitalised upon the desperation of the amaXhosa by making

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famine relief conditional upon individuals signing labour contracts to work on farms in the Cape Colony (Peires, 1989, pp. 250–261), which scattered Xhosa survivors throughout the colony and struck another blow to the structure of Xhosa society. In the aftermath of the cattle killing, the Xhosa became, in the eyes of the colonial government, no longer ‘an independent “nation” with whom treaties had to be made, [but rather] a “conquered people” with no right in the land’ (Lester, 2001, p. 184). To refer to the Xhosa cattle killing as a sub-national past, then, betrays an anachronistic perspective rooted in the 20th century formation of a South African nation-state. My aim in this chapter is to trace the relationship between the cattle killing as an event in the history of the Xhosa ‘nation’ and the broader trajectories of nationalism in southern Africa in the century and a half since the event. The eastern Cape of southern Africa was not only the site of the cattle killing in the mid-19th century, but also the cradle of South African nationalism at the turn of the 20th century: the mission-educated, petit-bourgeois urban African elite began to imagine broader ‘national’ alliances of black South Africans across ethnic boundaries, a vision realised in organisations like the South African Native National Congress (later known as the African National Congress, ANC), founded in 1912, or the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), founded in 1919. Recurrent invocations of the cattle killing during the struggles against segregation and apartheid reveal the uneasy relationship between the elite nationalism of the ANC, working towards securing rights or capturing the nation-state, and the ‘prophetic nationalism’ of subaltern communities more immediately concerned with the restoration of justice and social health (Crais, 2002, pp. 142, 122). Whether the cattle killing falls under the rubric of prophetic nationalism depends crucially on the meaning of nation. Mindful of Neil Lazarus’s warning against assuming that peasant uprisings were either directed against the colonial order or the product of ‘nationalist consciousness’ (Lazarus, 1999, p. 111), I also think it important to historicise, rather than reify, notions of the nation and nationalism. From both Xhosa and colonial perspectives, the Xhosa nation was a casualty of the cattle killing. Unifying the Xhosa national polity through the various chiefs’ compliance with the prophecy was a central aim of the cattle-killing movement, but the archive offers little evidence that the 1856–57 cattle killing had a broader appeal beyond the amaXhosa. In colonial discourse until the late 1850s, nation denoted the amaXhosa (or other peoples) discretely; events in the 1850s eastern Cape are part of a global recalibration of the conceptual relationship between empire and nation in the wake of mid-19th century European nationalism and the rise of liberalism that underwrote high imperialism’s civilising mission. In 1859, John Stuart Mill distinguished between civilised nations and barbarians: ‘barbarians have no rights as a nation, except a right to such treatment as may, at the earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one’ (Mill,

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1859, p. 772). In the long view, Grey’s antinational colonialism broke the Xhosa nation, thereby enabling the rise of a more recognisably ‘modern’ nationalism in the early 20th century. In later ‘nationalist’ projects’ invocations of the cattle killing, the content and constituency of the nation is radically different in each context. How, then, could a millennial vision of a renovated Xhosa world inform struggles for a new South African nation? How does an apocalyptic vision survive an apocalypse to evoke future transformation? In this chapter, I trace answers to these questions in literary texts, whose authors have manipulated the iconic images of the cattle-killing prophecy and its aftermath – harvesting, sacrifice, rebirth, devastation – to speak to contemporary predicaments of colonialism, segregation and apartheid, as well as the evolving modes of organised resistance to them. The cattle killing has played a crucial role in intersections between literary and cultural history and broader efforts to define a Xhosa, black South African, or non-racial nation.

Killing to save: reading the past in the present One instructive example of an author re-imagining the Xhosa cattle killing as a South African story – as a story of the broader nation – is The Girl Who Killed to Save: Nongqause the Liberator, a play by the Zulu playwright and journalist H. I. E. Dhlomo, published in 1936 by the Lovedale mission press. The Lovedale mission had been founded in the 1820s to evangelise the amaXhosa, and its school and printing press were crucial institutions in the British civilising mission. Conventional readings of The Girl Who Killed to Save hold that Dhlomo stages the cattle killing as a providential event that broke Xhosa resistance to the blessings of European civilisation. In the wake of the events of 1856–57, some missionaries had indeed made such claims; in remarking on the efficacy of the cattle killing in breaking the Xhosa nation, William C. Holden observed in 1866 that the event ‘prov[ed] how God by the most simple means can accomplish the most important results’ (Holden, 1963 [1866], p. 295). Readers who perceive similar sentiments in The Girl who Killed to Save tend to cite a remarkable statement about the cattle killing in the play: If these poor people carry out their scheme and starve themselves, it will be no national suicide at all. It will be a necessary process of metamorphosis. It will be the agony of birth. [...] This great cattle-killing drama which we witness to-day will prepare the Xosa national soil–soul–for the early propagation of the message of the missionary, the blessings of medical science, the law and order of the administrator, and the light of education. (Dhlomo, 1936, p. 23) These instrumentalist claims for the cattle-killing prophecy are made in the third scene of The Girl who Killed to Save, in which colonial figures including

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an administrator responsible for a Xhosa chiefdom, his wife, and her brother discuss rumours and official intelligence regarding the prophecy.2 The subsequent scene depicts the devastating aftermath of the Xhosa embrace of the prophecy, as these same characters organise a famine relief effort and some of them continue to philosophise about its significance for the future of the amaXhosa. Critics have often assumed that the statement quoted above, voiced by the administrator’s brother-in-law, Hugh, reflects Dhlomo’s own views about the event. In this sense, the play’s title, The Girl Who Killed to Save, would refer ironically to the Christian evangelisation of the Xhosa people that Hugh imagines as the ultimate consequence of Nongqawuse’s actions. I argue, instead, that the play dramatises the cattle killing as a catalyst that makes possible, and necessary, the construction of a broader national culture and a struggle for identity and rights on a multi-ethnic, ‘national’ scale: the Xhosa, the Zulu and other peoples were ‘pacified’ individually and could continue their struggle against the depredations of colonial modernity only by joining together.3 In other words, if the destruction of the Xhosa nation was a providential event, the providential aspect was its role in catalysing a revitalised and reconfigured African identity asserted against European presence in southern Africa, rather than a colonised African identity uncritically grateful for the ‘gift’ or ‘blessing’ of European domination. The example of The Girl who Killed to Save highlights two important ideas in reading the literary afterlives of the cattle killing: first, what makes such texts compelling is the way in which the dynamics of the mid-1850s cattle killing and the authors’ contemporary circumstances speak to one another. In the mid-1930s, Dhlomo felt acutely the increasing pressures of segregation, to which black South African nationalist organizations like the ANC or the All-Africa Convention were compelled to respond. In other words, the mid-1930s represented a time of crisis for the emergent black elite: new segregationist legislation severely challenged their faith in the European promise of a universal, non-racial civilisation and clearly demonstrated the need for broader political alliances across ethnic lines. Second, in reading these texts’ historical conjunctures of sub-national pasts and national presents – conjunctures of Xhosa responses to overwhelming, overlapping crises in the 1850s and black South African responses to segregation in the 1930s – we should not lose sight of their literary aspects, the ways in which, for example, a play like The Girl who Killed to Save stages a contest among different characters’ voices and views in order to examine a range of possible meanings for a historical event. In other words, texts that recuperate the cattle killing from the distance of decades or centuries are mediated both temporally and discursively: they not only read the historical event through the lens of their present, but they also make use of the techniques of literary representation to construct an imagined world that transcends the claims of historical analysis. Reading with an eye towards the multivalent possibilities of representation and interpretation is particularly important when we consider how

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deeply contested the meaning of the Xhosa cattle killing has been – nearly as contested, we might say, as the constituency of the South African nation itself. In the late-apartheid era, the story of the cattle killing was invoked in two diametrically opposed ways, both of which reflected the growing insurgency of the anti-apartheid struggle. In the wake of the student protest that sparked the Soweto uprising in June 1976, the apartheid state, as well as co-opted Bantustan rulers, invoked the cattle killing in their warnings against participation in the struggle. George Matanzima, Prime Minister of Transkei, referred to Nongqawuse’s dangerous leadership in condemning ‘school unrest’ in 1980, and Gatsha Buthelezi, Chief Minister of KwaZulu, blasted the international sanctions movement of the 1980s by warning black South Africans against ‘false prophets who urged them to destroy the country’s assets. This was what the Xhosa prophetess Nongqawuse had done in the last century’. These leaders equated the tactics of the anti-apartheid struggle with the catastrophic destruction of cattle and grain in the Xhosa cattle killing.4 From the perspective of comrades in the struggle, however, these very Bantustan rulers, as well as informers and other collaborators, were ‘black agents of “the system” ’, not to be trusted because they had put the interests of the apartheid state above those of their own people (Peires, 1990, p. 51). In other words, this contempt for collaborators with the state in the late apartheid period echoed – sometimes explicitly – suspicions among the amaXhosa that the cattle killing was a hoax orchestrated by Sir George Grey or his allies, or that Nongqawuse acted (wittingly or unwittingly) as his instrument. More than a century after the event, then, divergent narratives of the Xhosa cattle killing served to refract these incompatible views of the relationships among harm, sacrifice, nationalist mass action and the state. In the past decade, authors have invoked the Xhosa cattle killing in order to address the achievements and disappointments of the emergent post-apartheid nation. If the afterlives of the cattle killing invite us to re-think what it means for an anti-colonial movement to fail, can they also help us to re-imagine the unrealised hopes of the anti-apartheid struggle? Such questions are particularly evocative precisely because of South Africa’s international status since the late 1970s – as a site where frustrated hopes for African decolonisation might be redeemed. In this sense, the end of apartheid offered a second chance to get decolonisation right. The cattle killing, then, might be seen either as a utopian prophecy belatedly realised in the transition to democracy or as a monumental disappointment sadly repeated in the gap between apartheid’s formal end and its persistent legacies. In the remainder of this essay, I examine two recent texts that invoke the cattle killing in order to measure the hopes invested in South Africa against the actual achievements of the new South African nation-state and its role on the continent and in the world – Zakes Mda’s novel, The Heart of Redness (2000), and Jeremy Cronin’s poem ‘The Time of Prophets’ (1997).

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The ‘new South Africa’: prophecy fulfilled or unfailed? We commonly associate the election of 1994 with ‘freedom’ or the birth of democracy, but the demise of the apartheid regime also meant the literal reconfiguration of the South African nation-state. A democratic South Africa had to confront and dispense with the apartheid-era fiction of ‘multinationalism’, which had aspired to transfer the citizenship of black South Africans to putatively sovereign states of the ethnically-defined Bantustans or homelands, thus stripping them of political rights within South Africa. The first of the homelands to be granted ‘independence’ in 1976, Transkei, had been the site of the Xhosa cattle killing more than a century earlier. Redrawing the political map of South Africa to re-incorporate Bantustans like Transkei into the nation-state represents one more layer of a palimpsestic history in which the place of the amaXhosa within a broader polity has repeatedly been contested. Such contests – in both the 19th and 20th centuries – drive the plot of Zakes Mda’s novel The Heart of Redness, which sets incompatible versions of the cattle killing against each other. The Heart of Redness interweaves two narrative threads about conflicts between ‘Believers’ and ‘Unbelievers’ in the cattle-killing prophecy: the first a 19th century plot about the cattle killing, the second a plot about the descendants of the 19th century characters, now living in a ‘new and democratic South Africa’. The novel is gently cynical about the democratic transition, acknowledging, on the one hand, the suffering of what it calls the ‘Middle Generations’ who lived during the century and a half between 1857 and 1994, and outlining, on the other, the gap between apartheid-era dreams of liberation and the disappointments and compromises of the negotiated settlement between the ANC and the apartheid state. In the contemporary South Africa depicted in the novel, the anti-apartheid struggle was not a false prophecy, but its vision has not yet been fully realised. A particular target of critique is the new black elite – what the novel calls the ‘Aristocrats of the Revolution’ and their ‘Club of Sycophants’, a tiny minority who reap the economic and political benefits of the new dispensation (Mda, 2000, p. 33). The novel’s 20th century protagonist, Camagu, had spent more than two decades in exile before returning in 1994 to vote; when the novel opens a few years later, we see him preparing for a ‘second exile’ in the United States because his lack of connections to the Aristocrats and the Sycophants has shut him out of jobs that would allow him to contribute to the badly-needed economic development of the new nation (Mda, 2000, p. 27). Instead of leaving South Africa a second time, Camagu finds himself in Qolorha, a coastal village in the former Transkei homeland, and the very site where Nongqawuse received the cattle-killing prophecy in the 1850s. Camagu is pulled into the conflicts between the Believers and the Unbelievers in the village. The 20th century descendants of the 19th century Xhosa Believers

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and Unbelievers agree on almost nothing, but their theories of the past assume that ‘the sufferings of the Middle Generations’, which are ‘only whispered’ (Mda, 2000, p. 137), were the consequence of the cattle killing: the Unbelievers maintain that the false prophecy misled the superstitious people to destroy themselves, while the Believers lament that the prophecy failed only because the original Unbelievers did not kill their cattle. The 20th century Believers and Unbelievers also bitterly disagree about the future of Qolorha and a proposed development, identified by the government as a ‘project of national importance’, that would build a seaside casino and watersports complex on the site where Nongqawuse was visited by the ancestors. The Believers’ and Unbelievers’ opinions about this project invert their 19th century ancestors’ responses to prophecy: while the Believers in the 19th century had embraced the cattle-killing prophecy, in the 20th century tourism conflict it is the Unbelievers who seem committed to a disastrous course of action, because they believe that the casino will bring jobs, electricity, and ‘civilisation’ to the village. The novel thus juxtaposes 19th and 20th century projects of ‘civilisation’ (and land-grabbing) on offer from alien forces with the coercive support of the state. The much-heralded prospect of tourists surfing and riding cable cars and roller coasters over the bay echoes the 19th century prophecy’s vision of armies of ‘new people’ marching on the sea. In the novel’s 19th century plot, colonial ambitions in southern Africa compete with the desires of the Xhosa Believers for a renovated world; in the 20th century, it is the new South African nation-state – a nation-state achieved in part through anti-colonial ideals resonant with those in the cattle-killing prophecy – that demands new sacrifices and promises new miracles for the Xhosa village of Qolorha in promoting its development project ‘of national importance’. In addition to juxtaposing 19th and 20th century plots, then, the novel scrambles the connotations and constituencies of ‘nations’ and ‘nationalisms’ committed (or opposed) to prophetic visions. It is Camagu who recognises, in an ‘inspired moment’, that the very history that is a source of shame and contention in Qolorha can also secure its future: the declaration of the village as a ‘national heritage site’ for its connection to the cattle killing would allow an injunction against commercial development (Mda, 2000, p. 201). Camagu explains the social and environmental costs of the tourism project, pointing out the speciousness of its prospective benefits: perhaps a few jobs and electrification, which should be a public, rather than privatised, imperative (a true project of ‘national importance’). Instead, he devises a small-scale ecotourism strategy. Camagu turns away from his disillusion with the emptiness of nation-building slogans and towards locally-controlled development, while strategically exploiting the benefits of the cattle killing’s status as ‘national heritage’. He also decides to stay in South Africa rather than return to the US for a second exile, yet his disavowal of the national project in favour of more local commitments does suggest another kind of exile – a post-national exile from the idea of

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the ‘new South Africa’. Within the local scale of the village, Camagu can envision a future where recalibrated dreams of liberation might be realised. Thus, like Nongqawuse before him, Camagu becomes a kind of prophet of an alternative future for Qolorha. The Heart of Redness breaks with the trajectory of reading and writing of the cattle killing in terms of expanding notions of South African nationalism – focusing instead on the deep divides in the afterlife of this history in a single Xhosa village. The novel’s privileging of the local frame is balanced by its attention to the global aspects of the 1850s prophecy, which promised deliverance by Russians, whom the Xhosa understood to be a ‘black race’ (or even Xhosa ancestors) who had recently been fighting the British in the Crimean War. The Xhosa were particularly impressed with the Russians when they learned that the former Governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Cathcart, had been killed in the Crimea; they found in the news of the Crimean conflict an indication of potential British vulnerability and a possibility of solidarity with a fellow ‘black’ nation against a common enemy. Even before Nongqawuse emerged with her prophecy in 1856, other prophets had begun to speak of imminent deliverance by Russians, expected to arrive in ships or to emerge from underground with new cattle. In the novel, the leader of the 20th century Believers, Zim, stands at a seaside cliff, watching for the same Russian deliverers whom his 19th century Believing predecessors expected, knowing they won’t appear, ‘but he waits for them still, in memory of those who waited in vain’ (Mda, 2000, p. 176). Zim understands that while the Russians of the 1850s were ‘black and were the reincarnation of amaXhosa warriors [. ...] today’s Russians are white people’ (p. 176). He interprets the Cold War and its pressures upon apartheid-era South Africa in terms of the cattle-killing adherents’ incorporation of the Crimean War into the logic of the prophecy: After all, sons and daughters of the land who have spent decades in exile, some living in the houses of the very same Russians, have said as much. But the spirit of the ancestors continues to direct [the Russians’] sympathies. That is why they fought the English. That is why all those who benefited from the sufferings of the Middle Generations hated them. That is why they armed and trained those sons and daughters of the nation to bring to an end the sufferings of the Middle Generations. It is with a sense of pride that he stands on the hill. That he pines. That he waits for the Russians even though he knows they will not come. They have already come in a guise that no Believer expected. They came in the bodies of those who fought to free the Middle Generations. (Mda, 2000, pp. 176–7) Zim sees the afterlife of the cattle-killing prophecy in the incarnation of the Russians who aided the struggle against apartheid. He commemorates

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the first Believers’ disappointment, at the same time that he recognises the prophecy’s unfailure (to adapt the idiom of the novel) in the form of a realisation that exceeds (temporally and substantially) its adherents’ expectations. The cattle-killing prophecy in The Heart of Redness is at once failed and unfailed; it unites and revitalises a community, but it also turns brother against brother in a feud that does not die with them. This idea of unfailed, rather than failed or false prophecy, is important for imagining the broader relevance of the cattle killing to the post-apartheid era. Unfailure at once realises and confounds the expectations of the prophecy’s original adherents, by incorporating present (and unforeseen) circumstances into the structure of anticipation within an extended temporal frame. Camagu comes to Qolorha in pursuit of a woman named NomaRussia; seeking deliverance in the ‘mother of Russia’, Camagu finds something else entirely. If, as I have been suggesting throughout this essay, we can see an analogy between the immediate failure of the cattle-killing prophecy and the disappointments of the post-apartheid era, then the novel’s engagement with the radical patience of unfailure suggests a way of keeping past dreams of liberation alive as an inspiration for future movements. At the end of the novel, the Believers and Unbelievers do not inhabit an acolonial world – a world in which the colonial conquest never happened, as was imagined in the cattle killing – but the novel’s articulation of what I am calling unfailure invites us to understand the transition to democracy as realising, however obliquely, at least some of the hopes invested in Nongqawuse’s prophecy. Unfailure means that the possibility of justice is never quite fulfilled and never quite forgotten. Although the novel holds that pasts are abusable as well as usable, to live utterly without a past is as unthinkable as to live utterly within one. The novel’s openness to the vitality of incomplete sub-national pasts also enables us to imagine the national present as unfinished.

New cattle killings and children of Nongqawuse The Xhosa cattle killing survives into the South African ‘post-antiapartheid’ era (in Loren Kruger’s phrase) as much as a warning against false hopes as an inspiration for future dreaming (Kruger, 2001, p. 113). Jeremy Cronin, a freedom fighter, poet and now Member of Parliament, also draws on the cattle killing’s promise of external deliverance by ‘Russians’ in a poem called ‘The Time of Prophets’ (1997), which astutely compares the cattle killing’s failed promise of help from ‘beyond the seas’ to South Africa’s post-apartheid obeisance to global markets, foreign investment and the World Bank (Cronin, 1997, p. 36). Cronin figures the neo-liberal compromise – a retreat from the radical nationalisation of resources imagined in the 1955 Freedom Charter – as yet another ‘great sacrifice’: ‘These things had been heard in this land before’, Cronin writes, and continues, ‘Despite moral intuition, commonsense, and ancient wisdom, despite concrete evidence/[...] the

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cosmology of the World Bank prevailed/[...] The time of a new cattle-killing was at hand’ (Cronin, 1997, pp. 37, 38). In the poem, the elders and even Nongqawuse herself warn against this fraudulent ‘winning-nation formula’; the ‘new cattle-killing’ is not an anti-colonial nationalist movement, as in the 19th century, but rather renewed subjugation to international economic interests, in other words, an accession to neo-imperialism (Cronin, 1997, p. 38). These examples of the literary afterlives of the cattle killing demonstrate how the Xhosa vision and its aftermath continue to be re-imagined after the formal end of the South African struggle for national liberation. In its ultimate aims to ameliorate the harms of colonial conquest and to drive the whites into the sea, the cattle killing was arguably genocidal, envisioning at least a geographic extermination of Europeans that implies a physical extermination as well. One of the fundamental questions of millennial dreaming, whether voiced or unvoiced, is who will be included in the new world, and who will be destroyed? This question, too, has a particular relevance in thinking about competing visions and versions of South African nationalism: what is the role of white South Africans after apartheid? I argued above that the African National Congress emerged in the early 20th century out of the recognition of a need for a broader nationalist movement that could transcend ethnic boundaries and forge solidarity among black South Africans, yet the society that the ANC worked towards creating was generally imagined, along the lines of South African liberalism, as a non-racial society – that is, a society constituted without regard to race, rather than out of any racial nationalism, black or white. The opening declaration of the 1955 Freedom Charter proclaims ‘that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people’ (Congress of the People, 1987, p. 242). The tension between this non-racial vision as an ideal and the importance of black nationalist solidarity in struggling against the realities of a racialist, repressive state pervades the history of the anti-apartheid struggle, adding a final layer of complication in the constituency of a South African ‘nation’. As both Deputy President and President of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki has played an important role in guiding the economic policies that Jeremy Cronin decries as a ‘new cattle killing’ in his poem ‘The Time of Prophets’. Yet in his famous ‘I am an African’ speech, delivered in May 1996 to mark the adoption of South Africa’s new constitution, Mbeki performed an expansive, non-racial version of South African citizenship, and he invoked the cattle killing in a rather different way than Cronin or Mda. In his speech, Mbeki claims an impossible lineage from the southern African landscape, from its flora and fauna, as well as from the Khoi and the San peoples, European migrants, Malay slaves, Zulu and Xhosa warriors, Boer concentration camp victims, miners and indentured Asians. ‘I am the

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child of Nongqause’, Mbeki says without elaboration (Mbeki, 1996). He confronts unflinchingly the historical role of each of these groups, ‘all of whom are my people’, bearing witness to the costs of injustice and the dignity of struggle and celebrating South Africans’ achievement of ‘the right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African’. The speech also bears implicit witness to a textual lineage, echoing the 1955 Freedom Charter in its ‘firm assertion [ ... ] that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. [ ... ] the people shall govern’. Mbeki’s speech acknowledges a brutally divisive past at the same time that it welcomes the constitution as the foundation for a new South African citizenship in a new, non-racial South African nation5. Although Mbeki’s expansive vision of the South African nation might seem, at first glance, to repudiate the cattle-killing prophecy’s genocidal vision of whites being swept into the sea, and although Mbeki has spoken in recent years of the reality of the ‘two South Africas’ that belie the non-racial ideal of his earlier ‘I am an African’ speech, we can find in the historiography of the cattle killing an analogous moment of hope for the renovation of society as a whole. At one point in 1856, Mhlakaza, the uncle of Nongqawuse who managed the dissemination of the prophecy, urged the British and the Dutch to embrace the prophecy and kill their cattle as well, explaining that ‘the people that have come have not come to make war but to bring about a better state of things for all’ (quoted in Peires, 1989, p. 107). In other words, the Xhosa cattle-killing prophecy might be seen not as a sub-national, ethnic movement with genocidal overtones, but instead as an early vision of the kind of non-racial nation that was a goal of the 20th century anti-apartheid struggle. But it is no simple matter to read this inclusive vision of cosmic renovation in terms of the post-apartheid nation, because not all South Africans see majority rule as the path to a better world and many of those who do have yet to see that better world realised in their own lives6. Rethinking ‘failed resistance’ in southern African history in terms of its literary afterlives allows us to attend as seriously to the utopian potential of unfailed dreams of liberation as to the reasons why they have not yet been realised in the new South Africa.

Notes 1. These figures come from the 1857 census of Commissioner John Maclean (Maclean, 1906, p. 129), and from historian J. B. Peires’ surmises about the tens of thousands who sought work in the Colony surreptitiously, in addition to the 29,000 who formally entered the labour channelling system set up as ‘famine relief’ by Governor George Grey (Peires, 1989, p. 267). Peires offers a figure of 150,000 as the total number of Xhosa people displaced by the cattle killing and the consequent attacks by the Colony on the amaXhosa (pp. 319–20). He estimates that 85 per cent of Xhosa men complied with the order to kill cattle (1987, p. 43), although many men would have had few or no cattle because of the epidemic that had been decimating herds

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since 1853. On the history of the cattle killing, see Peires (1989), The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856–7. Dhlomo’s characters are based on the historical figures Charles Pacalt Brownlee, commissioner of the Ngqika Xhosa in 1856–57, his wife Frances Thomson Brownlee and her brother Hugh Thomson. For a more extensive discussion of this text, see my article, ‘Voices of Textual and Spectral Ancestors: Reading Tiyo Soga alongside H. I. E. Dhlomo’s The Girl Who Killed to Save’ (Wenzel, 2005). Sindiwe Magona’s 1998 novel, Mother to Mother, a fictionalised account of the 1993 murder of US Fulbright student Amy Biehl, examines the sacrifices of the anti-apartheid struggle after Soweto in precisely such terms. In its depiction of the human costs of the struggle, the novel invokes the sacrifice that Nongqawuse demanded in the cattle-killing prophecy. This dynamic appears in other transition-era South African government documents. See my essay, ‘The Pastoral Promise and the Political Imperative’, for a reading of how such documents posit a racial past and a national future (Wenzel, 2000). See, for example, Achille Mbembe’s diagnosis of a ‘Nongqawuse syndrome’ in contemporary South Africa, in which the disappointments of democracy (pandemic disease, persistent poverty and violence) foster self-destructive nativism and populism (Mbembe, 2006). As I argue elsewhere, Mbembe emphasises the cattle killing’s most disastrous outcomes over its utopian aspirations (Wenzel, 2009).

References Congress of the People (1987) ‘Freedom Charter’ (1955) in W. Campschreur and J. Divendal (eds) Culture in another South Africa (New York: Olive Branch), pp. 242–45. Crais, C. C. (2002) The Politics of Evil: Magic, State Power, and the Political Imagination in South Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press). Cronin, J. (1997) Even the Dead: Poems, Parables and a Jeremiad (Cape Town: D. Philip Publishers; University of the Western Cape: Mayibuye Books). Dhlomo, H. I. E. (1936) The Girl Who Killed to Save (Nongqause the Liberator) (Alice, Cape Province: Lovedale Press). Holden, W. C. (1963 [1866]) The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (Johannesburg: Struik). Imperial Blue Book 2096 (1856) J. Maclean-W. Liddle, 4 August 1855, p. 18. Kruger, L. (2001) ‘Black Atlantics, White Indians and Jews: Locations, Locutions, and Syncretic Identities in the Fiction of Achmat Dangor and Others’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 100, 1, 111–43. Lazarus, N. (1999) Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). Lester, A. (2001) Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London and New York: Routledge). Maclean, J. (1906) A Compendium of Kafir Laws & Custom (1857) (Grahamstown: J. Slater). Magona, S. (1998) Mother to Mother (Cape Town: David Philip). Mbeki, T. (1996) ‘Statement on Behalf of the ANC, on the Occasion of the Adoption of the New Constitution’, 8 May 1996, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/ mbeki/1996/sp960508.html, last accessed on 22 August 2008.

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Mbembe, A. (2006) ‘South Africa’s Second Coming: The Nongqawuse Syndrome’, Open Democracy, 14 June 2006, http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_ democracy/southafrica_succession_3649.jsp, last accessed on 22 August 2008. Mda, Z. (2000) The Heart of Redness (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Mill, J. S. (1859) ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’, Fraser’s Magazine, December, 766–76. Peires, J. B. (1987) ‘The Central Beliefs of the Xhosa Cattle-Killing’, Journal of African History, 28, 1: 43–63. Peires, J. B. (1989) The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856–7 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press; Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Peires, J. B. (1990) ‘Suicide or Genocide? Xhosa Perceptions of the Nongqawuse Catastrophe’, Radical History Review, 46/7, 47–57. Soga, T. (1983) The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga edited by D. Williams (Cape Town: Published for Rhodes University Grahamstown by A.A. Balkema). Wenzel, J. (2000) ‘The Pastoral Promise and the Political Imperative: The Plaasroman Tradition in an Era of Land Reform’, Modern Fiction Studies, 46, 1, South African Fiction after Apartheid, 90–113. Wenzel, J. (2005) ‘Voices of Textual and Spectral Ancestors: Reading Tiyo Soga alongside H. I. E. Dhlomo’s The Girl Who Killed to Save’, Research in African Literatures, 36, 1, 51–73. Wenzel, J. (2009) Bulletproof: Afterlives of Anticolonial Prophecy in South Africa and Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

14 A Season of War: Warriors, Veterans and Warfare in American Nationalism Susan-Mary Grant

I do not desire to see military roads established for the purpose of conquest but of defence; and as a part of that preparation which should be made in a season of peace for a season of war. I do not wish to see this country ever in that complete state of preparation for war for which some contend; that is, that we should constantly have a large standing army, well disciplined, and always ready to act. Henry Clay, 13 March 18181 In 1814, members of the United States’ House of Representatives found themselves embroiled in an increasingly heated debate over the appropriate means of raising additional troops for the war that the nation was then engaged in; its second armed conflict against Great Britain. In January of that year, leading American spokesman, nationalist and politician Daniel Webster reminded the House that ‘[u]nlike the old nations of Europe, there are in this country no dregs of population, fit only to supply the constant waste of war ... Armies of any magnitude can here be nothing but the people embodied,’ he asserted, ‘and if the object be one for which the people will not embody, there can be no armies.’ The issue remained unresolved between those who would utilise the state militias, and those who preferred that a more regular, federal force be raised to deal with the military threat to the nation’s borders. A suspicion both of military coercion and of standing armies, along with the belief that America was never intended for ‘a great military nation’ informed much of the debate, but one main assumption underlay it. The American fighting man, the symbol of the nation’s military prowess, was perceived to be the citizen-soldier, a New World Cincinnatus, exemplified by George Washington during the Revolutionary war and found again in the War of 1812, a war fought by an army ‘collected hastily from the plough, the loom, and the workshops – without discipline, without even 237

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the rudiments of the military science,’ yet nevertheless capable of ‘deeds of heroism and of gallant daring that would have done honour to the best days of Greece and Rome.’2 Such emotive rhetoric on the part of American politicians in a time of national crisis may not be surprising. Nations and nationalism are after all, as has been argued, derived from the idea of ‘the people embodied’ in a military capacity before the broader political, cultural and social expressions of that nationalism became visible, or even feasible. Warfare, as Sir Michael Howard has observed, is not only ‘the universal norm in human history’ but ‘a principal determinant in the shaping of nation-states,’ and so ‘[f]rom the very beginning the principle of nationalism was almost indissolubly linked, both in theory and practice, with the idea of war’ (Howard, 2002, p. 1 and 1991, pp. 42, 39). Specifically, the levée en masse of the French revolutionary wars is identified as both ‘a crucial institutional context for the rise of nationalism as one of the dominant ideologies’ of the modern era and ‘our first evidence that national consciousness was no longer restricted to the aristocracy or other elites’ (Morillo, 2006, p. 30; Connor, 2004, p. 42; Poole, 1999, p. 106; Hewitson, 2006, p. 350; Leonhard, 2006, p. 252; Conteh-Morgan, 2004, pp. 113–14). In the American case, the concept of ‘a people’s conflict,’ although invoked in the context of the Revolutionary War by the early nineteenth century, is more usually linked to the Civil War of 1861–65, and comparisons have been made between America’s mid-century sectional crisis and the same decade’s Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 in the process of exploring the origins of the modern nation-state and of modern nationalism (Resch, 1999, p. 3; Förster and Nagler, 1997; Taithe, 2001, p. 21; Morgan, 1989, pp. 153–4). The significance of the citizen-soldier in these nationalist wars has been somewhat undermined by an emphasis on the elites, on the ways that elite political groups construct and regulate the social and emotional climate necessary for the modern war (Conteh-Morgan, 2004, p. 114). In the American case, however, the perspective of civilians, including elites, contrasts uncomfortably with that of both military elites and the common soldier of the conflict in a literature that stresses the uniqueness of the American warrior in the age of nationalist warfare. Historians have, to a great extent, concurred with Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant, who believed that European armies were no more than ‘machines ... a class of people who are not very intelligent and who have very little interest in the contest in which they are called to take part.’ American armies, by contrast, comprised ‘men who knew what they were fighting for’ (Grant, 1999, p. 627; McPherson, 1997; Hess, 1988, 1997; Frank, 1998; Linenthal, 1982; Herrera, 2001). Neither America’s citizens nor elite spokesmen, however, always saw the citizen-soldier in such positive terms. The Continental Army of the Revolutionary War had been ‘treated by its citizens with a level of hostility that seemed more appropriate for enemy troops’ (Resch, 1999, p. 1). During America’s war with Mexico (1846–48), Unitarian minister and

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Transcendentalist Theodore Parker expressed a similar hostility in observing that the ‘soldier’s life generally unfits a man for the citizen’s. When he returns from a camp, from a war, back to his native village, he becomes a curse to society and a shame to the mother that bore him.’3 Parker’s damning indictment of the effects of military service upon the individual provides a clue to the complexities of the citizen-soldier ideal in the context of American nationalism and, perhaps, to that of other nations, too. It has been argued that in France the war veteran of the 18th and 19th centuries ‘remained separate from his neighbours because of the habits he had acquired, the sights he had seen and the things he had done,’ and for much of that period he ‘retained his more disreputable qualities as a vagabond, a spendthrift, a thief, a braggart and a libertine’ even in peacetime (Hopkin, 2000, p. 117). Similarly, it is not necessarily in the course of a conflict but in its aftermath that the contradictory responses to the American citizen-soldier emerge most clearly. Between civilian elite rhetoric and war’s battlefront a shadow is cast over the citizen-soldier, a challenge to the belief that American nationalism finds its fullest and most potent expression in individual voluntarism in times of war. Beyond the fog of war lies an even more impenetrable mist into which the figure of the citizen-soldier too often disappears at war’s end, reappearing only when, years later, he or his dependents apply for a pension. In this regard, the American Revolutionary War soldier has attracted considerable scholarly attention over the years, (Royster, 1979; Carp, 1984; Resch, 1988, 1999; Purcell, 1996, 2002, 2003; Teipe, 2002) but few studies of America’s Civil War pursue the combatants after the ceasefire. The focus of many studies tends to be on the soldier’s perspective, not on the wider society’s attitudes towards the soldier. Consequently, the interest in ‘what they fought for’ understandably dissipates at the point when they stopped fighting. In addition, and unlike the case of France, American culture has no literary or cultural representation of the veteran similar to La Ramée through which attitudes towards the citizen-soldier can be followed beyond the battlefield. When the citizen-soldier of America’s 19th-century nationalist wars lays down his arms and becomes the warrior-veteran to all intents and purposes he disappears from view; it is important, however, that he should be brought back into focus, since it is in the elusive figure of the warrior-veteran, and in the persistently ambivalent responses of the nation to this figure, that the achievements, and limitations of the nationalism expressed through and emerging from warfare can best be measured, its political, social, cultural and emotional parameters defined.

Minute men, militias and martial myths ‘America’s national origin, and the first expressions of national character were,’ as Marcus Cunliffe highlighted, ‘largely military in form.’ America

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was ‘a nation fashioned on the battlefield no less than in the council chamber – brought into existence through violence’ (Cunliffe, 1968, p. 68). As a consequence, the ‘American military tradition,’ it has been argued, ‘rests on several pillars, some explicitly articulated, others substantially less so. Among the most significant yet elusive of these pillars is the principle of citizen service ... a responsibility incurred solely because of one’s membership in the political community of citizens’ (Kestnbaum, 2000, p. 7). In the American case, this tradition is divided between three main pillars of military involvement; the regular army, the militia, and the volunteer soldier. This ‘polymorphous’ aspect to citizen service in the United States does not consist merely in a division between the regular army and membership of the militia and voluntary, or conscripted military service; rather, it highlights the ambiguity within republican ideology regarding not just standing armies but soldiers more generally, and in the development of that ambiguity both gender and race were crucial contributory factors. (Kestenbaum, 2000, pp. 7–8) Nevertheless, the main contradictions inherent in the figure of the citizen-soldier were present at the creation and grounded in colonial society as this developed before and during the Revolution. It is hardly surprising that a martial stereotype, specifically the ‘Minuteman’ of the nation’s colonial and Revolutionary past, should become the symbol of that new nation in arms, the template for the ideal national warrior. The Minuteman, the elite of the colonial militia, became the very ‘embodiment of the citizen-soldier,’ a new kind of warrior ‘fighting in a new war, a war not only for colonial liberty, but for the birth of universal freedom which would spring from the new world,’ a world in which war itself ‘was translated ... from wars of conquest or the sport of kings to sacred wars of purification, wars of regeneration, which had universal import’ (Linenthal, 1982, pp. 51, 54). The Minuteman was a crucial component in the millennial ideology of new world nationalism, a nationalism that emerged in the nineteenth century and positioned itself as both distinctive to America and universal in its implications. The Minuteman was portrayed as a ‘versatile warrior’ capable of swapping the ploughshare for the sword in an instant, but the ‘instinctive’ nature of this ability revealed not simply that all ‘Americans could become warriors should the cause demand it,’ but that American nationalism itself was a voluntary act paradoxically grounded in, and only achieved through martial force (Linenthal, 1982, p. 52). This juxtaposition of voluntarism and violence extended to that of soldier and citizen, warrior and veteran, defence and attack and, in time, male and female, free and slave, black and white; these defined both the growth of nationalism in the New World and the nature of the martial myths on which that nationalism was predicated. The American attitude towards the citizen-soldier was ‘tainted with ambiguity.’ In some respects this was an inheritance from ‘English distrust of military control,’ but the reality of warfare during the colonial period did

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little to dissipate such suspicions (Linenthal, 1982, pp. xvi, 1; Cunliffe, 1968, pp. 31–7, 40). Whilst the colonial militias are ‘usually regarded as both politically healthy and militarily inefficient, but in any case relatively uncomplicated,’ the reality was rather different, particularly as regards the militias’ role in colonial warfare and the degree to which they actually represented the people in arms (Shy, 1990, p. 31). The colonial militias did, to some extent, represent what Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle have identified as an affiliative group; they represented ‘the community as it ought to be,’ but the colonial – and later – militias were also linked to the dominant totem domain by their official military function, albeit one exercised sporadically (Marvin and Ingle, 1999, p. 6; Cunliffe, 1968, p. 38). Members of the colonial militias existed on the border between military and civilian society; as such, they were only intermittently ‘socially liminal with respect to civilian society,’ an unsettling situation in itself and one made more so by the changing nature of the militias prior to the Revolution and the growing disjunction between the militia groups, which became ‘hallmarks of respectability or at least full citizenship in the community,’ and those who actually bore arms in the defence of colonial communities (Marvin and Ingle, 1999, p. 101; Shy, 1990, pp. 37–8). So far from military obligation reinforcing communal values, and by extrapolation reinforcing the idea of the citizen-soldier as upholder and defender of such values, in fact it was those groups who ‘fell outside the militia structure,’ Shy suggests – and he identifies ‘friendly and domesticated Indians, free Negroes and mulattoes, white servants and apprentices, and free white men on the move’ specifically – who comprised ‘precisely the men ... most willing to go to war.’ Between 1650 and 1750, as the social composition of colonial forces shifted towards the unemployed and dissolute, communal defence increasingly became the responsibility of those positioned, usually either racially or economically, outside the community itself (Shy, 1990, pp. 38–9). The popular memory of colonial conflict did not focus on the discrepancy between the ideal and the reality of warfare or on the social positioning of those in the front-line, but was aware that the citizen-soldier ideal masked a more complex and potentially unsettling reality. For the late-18th and early-19th centuries, this partly accounts for the ambiguity accorded the warrior in American society. This holds especially true for the final and most significant of all colonial wars, the American Revolution. The Revolution reinvigorated both the idea and the image of warfare in the New World, by repeating the pattern, established in the course of colonial conflict, of ‘what a major armed struggle must – and ought to – look like’; in the process, it also reinvigorated the American citizen-soldier ideal (Shy, 1990, pp. 279, 127–8; Linenthal, 1982, p. 64). Developing the pattern of the colonial era, as the Revolutionary War continued, it was those at the economic edges of society who ended up in the ranks. This aspect of recruitment effectively ‘inverted the historical relationship between military service

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and citizenship ... Now, citizenship flowed from military service, rather than service forming the expression of citizenship,’ since what the Continental Congress had done essentially, was construct ‘a new national army’ out of the ‘unpropertied and untaxed’ (Kestnbaum, 2000, pp. 21–2). This process of tying ‘citizens as soldiers more tightly to the regime, and its fate to their actions as one nation’ can be interpreted both as the increasing democratisation of and through the military and as a nationalising force in its own right; at the national level, however, it was not the pattern that popular recollections of that conflict highlighted, which suggests that the broadening of the polity via military involvement was not interpreted in wholly positive terms (Kestnbaum, 2000, p. 25; Morgan, 1989, p. 162). There were, of course, different kinds of troops involved in the Revolutionary War, although the exigencies of a long war meant that they frequently overlapped: those who served in the regular forces – the Continental Army – and militia troops, whose periods of active duty tended to be short-term and sporadic. The Minuteman was a figure associated with the militia, and was the acceptable public face of a force that was far from universally esteemed at the time, and has remained the subject of historical debate ever since. Yet the negative attitudes of military regulars – including Washington himself – notwithstanding, the revolutionary militia proved a powerful instrument, not only in the achievement of separation from Great Britain but in the development of that nationalism, constructed around the belief in popular sovereignty, emerging in the American colonies during and after the Revolution (Morgan, 1989, pp. 165–7; Herrera, 2001, p. 27). Shy has described the process of transforming the Revolution from the reality of a civil conflict in which many colonists – not just the Loyalists whose allegiance remained with the British crown – either refused to serve or did so reluctantly into the paradigmatic act of American nation-formation as one of ‘hothouse nationalism’ (Shy, 1990, p. 243). In this particular hothouse, however, not all growth could be forced, and some could not be prevented; out of colonial warfare and the Revolution emerged not only the Minuteman ideal, but the persistent memory of the risks, and costs involved in turning a civilian into a soldier. It has been noted how the ‘poets, ministers, and artists of the Revolutionary period set a pattern for understanding and visualising American war experience and the American warrior,’ but the assumption that this pattern was a wholly positive one, albeit masking certain unpleasant realities, is in need of revision (Linenthal, 1982, p. 64). For those involved in fighting, the ‘war experience’ did not end with the war, and the question of how the soldier was turned back into the citizen was heavily freighted. In theory, it may have taken a mere minute to transform the springtime farmer into the winter soldier – as Robert Gross phrased it – but the implications of this process were fraught with danger (Gross, 2001, p. 3). Washington’s objection to militia troops was rooted not just in his belief that a voluntary

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force was no military match for a regular, trained army, but that the militia fomented not control but disorder; that on the other side of the coin of manly virtue and the voluntary assumption of arms for the cause lay a surfeit of independence, ‘a masculinity of disorder and unruliness that had to be disciplined and taught hierarchy and obedience. In this view,’ Stefan Dudink and Karen Hagemann propose, ‘manly independence remained indispensable to the revolution, but it was not a quality that, in its desirable form, could simply be presumed to exist in American citizens’ (Dudink and Hagemann, 2004, p. 9). At the time of the Revolution, of course, there were no such beings as ‘American citizens.’ The complexity of the citizen-soldier ideal in this environment lay not just in a traditional opposition to standing armies, nor to the suspicion that individual soldiers might not represent the beau ideal of the warrior. During the Revolutionary era, and in the context of a national identity that was predominantly rooted in Englishness, in a conflict fought over the rights of Englishmen, what the colonists were being asked to do, and what many of the sermons preached to them prepared them to do, was ‘to kill other Englishmen’ (Purcell, 1996, pp. 622, 625, 638; Greenfeld, 1992, p. 403). This perhaps explains why so many of the colonists became ‘reluctant revolutionaries,’ and why a New England town like Concord, forever associated with the Minuteman, ‘arrived at its strategic position in 1775 only after a great deal of foot-dragging’ (Gross, 2001, p. 10). The colonists found themselves in a war that only hindsight proves to have been a war to form a nation. From a contemporary perspective, it was, as minister Ebenezer Baldwin described it, ‘a most unnatural War,’ and he expressed dismay that ‘those of the same Nation, of the same common Ancestry, of the same language of the same professed Religion, and heirs of the same Privileges, should be imbuing their hands in each others Blood.’4 Baldwin was writing in 1776, but his words were equally applicable almost a century later, by which time America was engaged in another conflict fought mainly by volunteer troops, the Civil War of 1861–65. By that point, the Revolution had already established its sacred, if somewhat sanitised position in the national story, and both North and South relied on it for both inspiration and justification for their respective causes. The link between the Minuteman of the Revolutionary era and the Civil War soldier was frequently made explicit: both ‘were models of common virtue, common courage, and American patriotic death’ (Linenthal, 1982, p. 51). The martial myths that helped sustain the Civil War soldier had been honed since the Revolution through the War of 1812 and the Mexican War that Theodore Parker so vehemently opposed. The War of 1812, fought as it was against a familiar enemy, readily positioned itself as part, albeit a subsidiary part, of the national narrative and as a conflict that reinforced, rather than challenged, American nationalism. American Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin enthused that this war had ‘renewed and reinstated the national

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feelings which the Revolution had given and which were daily lessened. The people have now more general objects of attachment with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more American; they feel and act more like a nation.’5 It is instructive in this context that Gallatin invoked the Revolution as the standard by which national sentiment might be measured. As David Waldstreicher has argued, the War of 1812, ‘in its inflated military dimension, provided a link to the passing Revolutionary generation. The symbolic pull of the surviving revolutionaries grew continually stronger and yet, at the same time, became increasingly amorphous and abstract’ (Waldstreicher, 1997, p. 294). By the time of the Civil War, the Revolution was all things to all people: neither the side fighting to save the Union nor the other fighting to form a separate nation saw any contradiction in their respective invocations of the Revolution’s legacy; for soldiers on both sides, the martial ideal to which they aspired derived from 18th-century precedent, and was a voluntary one. John A Logan, one of the founders of the Union veterans’ organisation, the Grand Army of the Republic, reinforced the significance of the volunteer soldier: ‘One day he was a civilian quietly following the plow,’ wrote Logan, ‘upon the next he became a soldier, knowing no fear and carrying a whole destroying battery in his trusty rifle’ (Logan, 1887, p. 105). Logan’s belief in the efficacy – moral and military – of the volunteer soldier provides weight for Carol Smith-Rosenburg’s claim that ‘[c]lassical republicanism remained a significant political discourse and a central component of European “American” national identity far into the nineteenth century.’ In its emphasis on voluntary martial bravery combined with moral rectitude it helped construct ‘the new nation’s self-image as “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” ’ (Smith-Rosenburg, 2004, pp. 66–7; Herrera, 2001). The popular portrayal of both the Revolution and the Civil War during the remainder of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century did nothing to undermine that image. As the post-Civil War physical landscape became increasingly saturated with martial imagery in the form of soldier-statues, both nationalist conflicts were invoked, and nowhere, perhaps, more overtly, and more revealingly than in Concord, Massachusetts, site of the opening battle of the Revolution. As the centennial of America’s emergence as a nation approached, the town commissioned the sculptor Daniel Chester French to produce a statue to commemorate the Battle of Lexington and Concord (1775). Despite its Revolutionary theme, the resultant statue of an individual Minuteman had more to do with the Civil War than with the Revolution, and it is in the ‘discursive field of the common Civil War soldier monuments’ that, Philip Kowalski argues, French’s work belongs. In its representation of the Anglo-Saxon male as generic, ‘everyman citizen-soldier,’ French’s Minute Man (1875) made explicit the Cincinnatus myth as Logan understood it (Kowalski, 2007, p. 51; Linenthal, 1982, p. 51). The figure represented holds both musket and plough, his liminality made

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explicit by his position between these symbols of war and peace; French’s Minute Man is the ultimate symbol of voluntarism and violence at the heart of America’s national constructions. The ambiguity that surrounded the citizen-soldier ideal was present in French’s work, too. In common with Civil War soldier statuary, his Minute Man was a racially coded symbol; as the ultimate Anglo-Saxon warrior, he implicitly privileged only one version of the warrior ideal in America’s martial mythology. In a memorial landscape filled with white echoes of the Civil War, despite the fact that it had been a conflict in which African American regiments had been instrumental in both saving the Union and ending chattel slavery, such an overt representation of the Anglo-Saxon warrior can be read as an attempt to ‘stabilise “Americans” new national image’ by invoking what was perceived to be a simpler national past that could soothe ‘Anglo-American uneasiness about industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and the Union’s role in the Civil War’ (Smith-Rosenberg, 2004, p. 71; Kowalski, 2007, p. 51). The degree to which this was effective, however, is questionable. Smith-Rosenburg, in particular, identifies three ‘faces of modernity’ through which Americans presented themselves ‘as virtuous republicans, the equals, indeed superiors, to Englishmen and Europeans.’ These comprised ‘the face of the capitalist, the face of the genteel and feeling man, the face of the white racist’ (Smith-Rosenberg, 2004, p. 72). Yet if a fourth face is added, the face of battle – to borrow John Keegan’s phrase-the fabric of the nationalism predicated on this republican ideal, woven around the martial mythology of America’s revolutionary past, begins to unravel, and at no time more obviously than when the battle in question has ended (Keegan, 1976).

Pensions and prostheses: paying the price of war At the core of America’s martial mythology lies the idea of sacrifice, ‘regenerative death’ in the nation’s name (Linenthal, 1982, pp. 57, 59; Marvin and Ingle, 1999). This concept poses something of a conundrum as far as the figure of the citizen-soldier is concerned; although theoretically conceived of as an individual capable of the transformation from civilian to soldier and back again, in the context of American nationalism the second part of that process becomes problematic. If the citizen-soldier of the American nation marches to war under a flag whose ‘mission is to organize death,’ as Marvin and Ingle have argued, a flag symbolic of the ‘blood sacrifice’ at the heart of modern American nationalism, then that rather begs the question of what happens to those citizen-soldiers who did not make the ultimate sacrifice, and instead made the return march back to the nation (Marvin and Ingle, 1999, p. 25). Certainly the symbiosis between war and nationalism has, to a large extent, been predicated on the relationship between the dead and the living, if not on death itself; it is in the ‘deep horizontal

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comradeship’ of the imagined community that Benedict Anderson locates a willingness ‘to die for such limited imaginings,’ and the ‘cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers’ that, he proposes, best signify ‘the modern culture of nationalism’ (Anderson, 1992, pp. 7, 9). Here, however, a distinction must be made between the ceremonial, essentially political nationalist constructions attendant upon the commemoration of the war dead, by both living veterans and the wider civilian society, and the nation’s cultural and social response to war’s survivors, the re-imagining of the nation in the aftermath of war. In the case of American nationalism, the post-war response to war veterans in the 18th and 19th centuries highlights the ambiguity surrounding the citizen-soldier, and throws into sharp relief many of the unsettling components of a nationalism that was open to all in theory, but effectively closed to some in practice. The first of these components was the citizen-soldier himself. The assumption, attendant upon the citizen-soldier ideal, was that the individual, volunteer soldier would lay down his arms and readily return to peace-time pursuits; the reality proved rather less straightforward, not least for the many disabled survivors of war who were physically or mentally unable simply to pick up their pre-war lives where they had left them. In such cases, the cultural values identified as influential in the raising of armies in the first place actually operated against individual soldiers when those armies were disbanded. ‘Self-government, democracy, individualism, egalitarianism, and self control,’ it has been argued, ‘were the values most consistently discussed by a wide variety of people in and out of uniform’ in the Civil War era; these were ‘basic to the very definition of American nationalism’ (Hess, 1988, pp. 1–2). The self-governance aspect of the citizen-soldier ideal, however, ‘an indispensable component in the make-up of the republican character’ and presented in almost wholly positive terms by many scholars, may have worked in the citizen-soldier’s favour in times of war; when he made the transition from citizen-soldier to warrior-veteran, it became more of a liability than an asset (Herrera, 2001, p. 27; Hess, 1988; Frank, 1998). For Revolutionary troops, homecoming was a more muted affair than many had anticipated. ‘They did receive thanks,’ Charles Royster acknowledges, ‘but not the prompt and lasting distinction they had been promised. Veterans of the Revolutionary War did not acquire unique admiration until the nineteenth century’ (Royster, 1979, p. 329). Contemporary observers paint an even gloomier picture of the veterans’ welcome in 1783 and after; one noted how these men ‘returned to the bosom of their country, objects of jealousy, victims of neglect.’ America – the newly-created nation – welcomed her homecoming heroes ‘with indifference,’ Resch asserts, and ‘quickly forgot them ... Continental Army veterans,’ he argues, felt only ‘the sting of the nation’s ingratitude’ (Resch, 1999, pp. 1–2; Teipe, 2002). Resch identifies the Revolution’s designation as a ‘people’s war,’ as one fought and won not

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by regular troops but by volunteer forces, as the reason for the refusal on the part of the general population to honour the returning veterans. In the context of ‘the republican ideal that military service was a citizen’s duty and that fighting for the cause of liberty was its own reward’ there was little impetus to set the veteran apart as an individual whose actions were deserving of praise or even recognition. In this case, and unlike the later Civil War, the idea of a people’s conflict as ‘a fundamentally cultural, ideological, and nationalistic’ version of war, ‘an epochal uprising of a virtuous citizenry against corruption and tyranny,’ worked against those who had served in the front-line, according them no special status and denying the fact that such service may have had a deleterious effect, physically, mentally, financially or morally (Resch, 1999, p. 3). In the denial of difference between citizen and soldier lay a denial of the danger posed by the armed man; the emphasis on virtue displaced the threat of violence, and a nation created by military might could be presented as one constructed through moral force. Republican emphasis on independence, virtue and self-governance also worked against veterans in the matter of pensions. As early as 1776 the Continental Congress allowed for pension payments for veterans disabled through conflict, but the implementation of the act was the responsibility of individual states. New York, for example, passed resolutions in 1779, 1783 and 1786, respectively, to provide such support to invalid soldiers; in 1789, with the Revolutionary War won, the Constitution ratified, and the first Congress established, responsibility for such payments transferred from the state to the central government, but by 1816, only just over 2,000 veterans drew such support.6 Scholars are not fully agreed on the implications of pension payments to veterans, however, even after the pension act of 1818, which provided for service pensions for all indigent veterans, and not just support for disabled troops. Emily Teipe’s study argues that Revolutionary war veterans faced continuing indifference, despite the expansion of pension legislation in 1818 and, later, in 1832 to include service pensions for all veterans (Teipe, 2002; Waldstreicher, 1997, p. 294). Resch argues that the 1818 act was transformative as far as attitudes towards veterans were concerned: after 1818, he suggests, ‘Continental Army soldiers emerged from obscurity to eminence. They were no longer dangerous “hirelings and mercenaries” who posed a threat to liberty. Instead, the pension act honored them as virtuous republican warriors’ (Resch 1999: 4). By the time of the 1818 act, however, and certainly after 1832, the Revolution’s veterans were no threat, either physically or, in terms of pension payments, financially; few enough were still around by 1832, and even some of those who had fought in the War of 1812 were approaching old age. The mutually reinforcing images of the veteran that Resch identifies post1818 – republican warrior and suffering soldier – were not exactly flip sides of the same coin, but rather the extremes of a spectrum; the shift from fear and suspicion of the returning soldier to their elevation ‘to an esteemed

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social status’ may have had as much to do with the aging process – on the part of civilians as much as the veterans themselves – as with a shift in views either of the Revolution specifically or national identity more broadly. Certainly, the aging Revolutionary veteran came to be seen as a potential reservoir of nationalist capital, as Abraham Lincoln made evident in his acknowledgment of ‘the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment.’ The revolutionary war’s veterans were ‘living history’ and, ‘every family’ had, ‘in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother ... a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received ... a history ... that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.’7 That Lincoln should identify not just veterans, but visibly wounded veterans as the ‘pillars of the temple of liberty’ privileges the physical and physiological evidence of war over the oral or written narrative; the Revolution is quite literally written on the bodies of its former soldiers. Yet, more significantly, Lincoln also privileged age over youth. The veterans he invoked were not young, or even middle-aged ‘citizen-soldiers’ but these men in later maturity; crippled both by war and by age, the purpose they served was ruminative rather than revolutionary, their mangled limbs provide proof of the nation’s authenticity. Through the destruction of individual physical bodies, Lincoln suggested, the national body’s existence was both validated and protected. Yet if the ‘image of the suffering soldier became a powerful force forging the nation into a democratic republic,’ it was never an unambiguous one, and the Revolutionary veteran became as much a partisan political symbol as a unifying national one (Resch, 1999, pp. 5, 65). During the period of the Early Republic, both Federalists and Republicans used the symbolism of the veteran as evidence of their own patriotism, and the debate over pension legislation, essentially one between those who regarded the nation’s veterans as deserving of national recognition and support and those who feared what they regarded as the deleterious effects of creating a dependent class that would subvert civic, national republican values, was never fully resolved. During the Civil War, northern elites reiterated many of these arguments, and this paradigmatic ‘people’s war,’ revealed that the debate over how best to establish and sustain ‘the people’ remained ongoing. Parallels with the Revolution were obvious; the Civil War was another American conflict ‘fought by the entire society and within that society,’ but not the least of these battles lay in the social and political arena, and concerned the costs – financial and social – of war (Frank, 1998, pp. 185–6). Henry Whitney Bellows, for example, president of the largest civilian voluntary relief organisation of the Union, the United States Sanitary Commission, was concerned at what would happen when the armies came home. He was

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fearful that the ‘returning soldiers, by their military service, have become more or less detached from their previous relations,’ and concerned that military service had rendered them ‘not only physically but morally disabled.’ Echoing Theodore Parker’s concerns during the War of 1812, Bellows believed that veterans would ‘exhibit the injurious effects of camp life in a weakened power of self-guidance and self-restraint.’8 Despite such fears, Civil War veterans did not face the battle over pensions that Revolutionary soldiers had; through the General Pension Act of July, 1862 the Union established the ‘baseline’ of pension legislation that lasted until 1890, providing support for disabled veterans and for war widows (Skocpol, 1992, p. 106). Between 1861 and 1885, 555,038 individuals claimed pensions, of which 300,204 were granted. After 1890, an extension to pension provisions resulted in some 63 per cent of Union veterans receiving assistance from the state; a big jump from the 2 per cent that had received support in 1866. By 1893, veterans’ benefits accounted for over 40 per cent of the federal budget (Vinovskis, 1990, pp. 21–2, 24, 27; Skocpol, 1992, p. 109). For disabled troops there were additional precedents to follow: a Naval Home for disabled veterans had been in existence in Philadelphia since 1812, and the Soldiers’ Home in Washington, DC, since 1853. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the growth of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) system in the 1870s and 1880s, matched in the former Confederacy by the establishment of institutions for southern veterans, offered some support for the citizen-soldiers of America’s conflicts. Both the federal government – for Union veterans – and the former Confederate states earmarked substantial funds for the furnishing of prostheses to veterans who had lost limbs in the war. None of this largesse necessarily eased the ambiguity surrounding the returning soldier, however, and in some cases exacerbated it. If time improved the image of the Revolutionary veterans, it had the opposite effect for Civil War soldiers. As with the Revolutionary War, the initial impulse at the conclusion of the Civil War was to try to forget. In some respects, this is inevitable. Albion Tourgée, who became a leading lawyer and author in the later 19th century and been wounded in the Civil War, was not surprised that in the immediate post-war period, people’s interest in the conflict, and in those who fought it, was not high; as he observed ‘when the returning heroes have been fairly welcomed home ... the people turn away from the agony of strife and seek relief in lighter themes’ (Tourgée, 1887, p. 1). Tourgée made this observation at a time when interest in the Civil War was enjoying something of a revival, a factor he saw as significant for American nationalism. At the same time, in the political arena, the war veteran and his benefits was a source of heated – and sometimes vitriolic – debate. Concerns over fraudulent claims – not entirely groundless concerns – undermined the image of the Civil War veteran as deserving citizen-soldier of the republic (Skocpol, 1992, pp. 122–4). Revealingly, negative cartoon images of the grasping veteran that appeared in

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the 1880s and early 1890s did not portray the Civil War veteran as most of them were by that point, old men; instead, it was the youthful Union soldier who was presented as draining the federal coffers. This was, it must be stressed, only one image of the veteran that existed alongside other, more positive ones in a physical landscape in which commemorative soldier statues were springing up at a remarkable rate. Yet these, as French’s Minute Man, represented white citizen-soldiers. The exclusion of African American troops from the commemorative landscape did not, however, render these individuals invisible in the real-life social and political geography of post-Civil War America. Indeed, as far as American nationalism in that period was concerned, the challenge offered by the African-American veteran, whose claim to the nation was irrefutable in the traditional context of having fought for it, only added to the ambiguity surrounding the warrior-veteran. Further contributing to the unsettling imagery of the American warrior in this period, too, was the fact that former Confederates were also American warriors; defeated American warriors. Late-19th century Americans, in short, had a plethora of citizen-soldier/ warrior-veteran imagery to absorb, much of it unsettling since fundamental to what it meant to be American, to the nature of American nationalism. So the static image of the youthful Civil War soldier, resting his rifle usually atop a column, looked down on a world in which the living veteran continued to be as much a figure of contention as of consolidation; symbolic both of national sacrifice and ongoing sectional, racial, social and political strife in the nation beneath him.

Conclusion It was once observed that Americans were ‘a martial but not a militaristic people,’ more impressed with the pageantry than with the reality of war (Thompson, 1989, p. 7). In its public form, American nationalism acknowledges the role of war in the nation’s creation via Independence Day, Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, all commemorative both of the cost of nationalism in the New World and, at a fundamental level, of the inclusive nature of that nationalism. Now, as in the American past, one route to citizenship, a fast-track to inclusion in the American nation, lies through a willingness to fight for the nation. Under ‘special provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act’ serving members and ‘certain veterans of the US armed forces are eligible to apply for United States citizenship.’ The echo of both Revolutionary and Civil War era debates over republican virtue and the selfreliance that the nation’s citizen-soldiers have ever been deemed to require, however, can be read in the injunction that such putative martial citizens be of ‘good moral character,’ and have an understanding of ‘U.S. government and history.’9 Americans in the 21st century reach back into the nation’s past for guidance on the citizen-soldier ideal, and for confirmation that their

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nation has ever revered those who fight, and die in its name. In this respect, the link between nationalism and sacrifice in warfare does not necessarily set America apart from other nations; America’s Unknown Soldier conveys the same universal message; he is both ‘yet another unknown in the mechanized world of modern warfare’ and simultaneously ‘a triumphant symbol of traditional romantic war images ... images, nostalgias, lost illusions and dire warnings about the place of war and the warrior in future American wars’ (Linenthal, 1982, pp. 111–12). It is through the figure of the living warrior-veteran, however, not that of the dead citizen-soldier, that scholars can better trace the lineaments of American nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the role of the past in the creation of the modern American nation. The nationalist wars of the 19th century consolidated the ideal of ‘the people embodied,’ the martial expression of citizenship and belonging that lies at the heart of modern nationalism; through the raising of its citizen armies, the nation was created and its nationalism defined. More overtly than other nations, however, America constructed an image of the ideal citizen-soldier and placed it at the heart of its nationalist constructions; a figure deliberately constructed as a counterpoint to the troops of European armies, an informed republican warrior, whose sacrifice defined the nation. This construction did not allow for a coherent post-war image of the warrior-veteran to emerge; instead he became an ambiguous and sometimes unwelcome reminder both of the violence at the heart of American nationalism and, in the aftermath of the Civil War, of the nation’s failure to live up to the ideals of liberty and equality that the Union had fought for. As such, the Civil War veteran, as the Revolutionary veteran before him, offered a challenge to the nation as much as a symbol of its survival through war; a living and persistent challenge to match national ideals to reality, not simply to acknowledge the sacrifice of the citizen-soldier, but to continue to support the warrior-veteran beyond a season of war.

Notes 1. Henry Clay, House of Representatives, 13 March 1818, in The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, 2 Vols. (New York: Van Amringe and Bixby, 1844): I, 309–10. 2. Daniel Webster (1814); Morris S. Miller (1814); and George M. Troup (1814). 3. Theodore Parker, ‘A Sermon of War,’ 1846 (1863, p. 17). 4. Ebenezer Baldwin, The Duty of Rejoicing Under Calamities and Afflictions (New York: Hugh Gaine, 1776): 21–22, quoted in Purcell (1996, p. 621). 5. Albert Gallatin quoted in Dangerfield (1965, pp. 3–4). 6. This figure from the US Government Department of Veteran Affairs, http://www1. va.gov/opa/feature/history/history1.asp, accessed on 15 August 2008. 7. Abraham Lincoln (1953, I, pp. 108–115, quotations 109, 114). 8. Sanitary Commission Report, No. 90, 1865 (Henry Whitney Bellows). 9. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USICS) (2007), ‘Naturalization Through Military Service,’ 24 October 2007, www.uscis.gov/military, accessed on 10 December 2007.

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References Anderson, B. (1992) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. revised edn (London and New York: Verso). Carp, W. (1984) To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). Conteh-Morgan, E. (2004) Collective Political Violence: An Introduction to the Theories and Cases (London and New York: Routledge). Connor, W. (2004) ‘The Timelessness of Nations’, Nations and Nationalism, 10, 1–2 (January/April), 35–47. Cunliffe, M. (1968) Soldiers and Civilians: The Martial Experience in America, 1775–1865 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode). Dangerfield, G. (1965) The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (New York: Harper & Row). Dudink, S. and K. Hagemann (2004) ‘Masculinity in politics and war in the age of democratic revolutions, 1750–1850’ in S. Dudink, K. Hagemann and J. Tosh (eds) Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press), 3–21. Förster, S. and J. Nagler (eds) (1997) On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Frank, J. A. (1998) With Ballot and Bayonet: The Political Socialization of American Civil War Soldiers (Athens: The University of Georgia Press). Grant, U. S. (1999) Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. First published in two volumes, 1885 and 1886, reprint (London: Penguin Books). Greenfeld, L. (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Gross, R. A. (2001) The Minutemen and their World 1976 reprint (New York: Hill and Wang). Herrera, R. (2001) ‘Self-Governance and the American Citizen as Soldier, 1775–1861’, Journal of Military History, 65, 1 (January), 21–52. Hess, E. J. (1988) Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union (New York and London: New York University Press). Hess, E. J. (1997) The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas). Hewitson, M. (2006) ‘Conclusion’ in T. Baycroft and M. Hewitson (eds) What is a Nation?: Europe 1789–1914 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). Hopkin, D. M. (2000) ‘La Ramée, the Archetypal Soldier, as an Indicator of Popular Attitudes to the Army in Nineteenth-Century France’, French History, 14, 2, 115–149. Howard, M. (1991) The Lessons of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Howard, M. (2002) The Invention of Peace and the Reinvention of War Revised edn (London: Profile Books). Keegan, J. (1976) The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (London: Jonathan Cape). Kestnbaum, M. (2000) ‘Citizenship and Compulsory Military Service: The Revolutionary Origins of Conscription in the United States’, Armed Forces & Society, 27, 1 (Fall), 7–36. Kowalski, P. J. (2007) ‘From Memory to Memorial: Representative Men in the Sculpture of Daniel Chester French’, Journal of American Studies, 41, 1, 49–66.

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Leonhard, J. (2006) ‘Nation States and Wars’ in T. Baycroft and M. Hewitson (eds) What is a Nation?: Europe 1789–1914 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), 231–54. Lincoln, A. (1953) ‘Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois’ 27 January 1838 in R. P. Basler (ed.) The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press). Linenthal, E. T. (1982) Changing Images of the Warrior Hero in America: A History of Popular Symbolism (New York and Toronto: The Edwin Mellon Press). Logan, J. A. (1887) The Volunteer Soldier of America (Chicago: R. S. Peale and Co). Marvin, C. and D. W. Ingle (1999) Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McPherson, J. M. (1994) What They Fought For, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press). McPherson, J. M. (1997) For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press). Miller, M. S. (1814) ‘House, December 8, 1814, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 777’ in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Annals of Congress), Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwac.html, accessed on 10 December 2007. Morgan, E. S. (1989) Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America 1988 reprint (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co.). Morillo, S. and M. F. Pavkovic (2006) What Is Military History (Cambridge. Polity Press). Parker, P. (1863) ‘A Sermon of War’ 1846 in F. P. Cobbe (ed.) The Collected Works of Theodore Parker, Vol. IV, Discourses of Politics (London). Poole, R. (1999) Nation and Identity (London and New York: Routledge). Purcell, S. J. (1996) ‘ “Spread this Martial Fire”: The New England Patriot Clergy and Civil Military Inspiration’, Journal of Church and State, 38, 3, 621–38. Purcell, S. J. (2002) Sealed With Blood: War, Sacrifice, and Memory in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press). Purcell, S. J. (2003) ‘Commemoration, Public Art, and the Changing Meaning of the Bunker Hill Monument’, Public Historian, 25, 2, 55–71. Resch, J. (1988) ‘Politics and Public Culture: The Revolutionary War Pension Act of 1818’, Journal of the Early Republic, 8, 2, 139–58. Resch, J. (1999) Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press). Royster, C. (1979) A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). Sanitary Commission Report (1865) No. 90, 1865 (Henry Whitney Bellows). Shy, J. (1990) A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence Revised Edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Skocpol, T. (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Smith-Rosenberg, C. (2004) ‘The republican gentleman: the race to rhetorical stability in the new United States’ in S. Dudink, K. Hagemann and J. Tosh (eds) Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press), 61–76. Taithe, B. (2001) Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil, 1870–1871 (London and New York: Routledge). Teipe, E. J. (2002) America’s First Veterans and the Revolutionary War Pensions (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press).

254 Susan-Mary Grant Thompson, W. F. (1989) The Image of War: The Pictorial Reporting of the American Civil War 1959 reprint (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press). Tourgée, A. W. (1887) ‘The Renaissance of Nationalism’, The North American Review, 144, 362 (January), 1–11. Troup, G. M. (1814) ‘House, December 2, 1814, 13th Congress, 3rd Session, 707’ in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Annals of Congress), Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwac.html, accessed on 10 December 2007. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USICS) (2007), ‘Naturalization Through Military Service,’ 24 October, 2007, www.uscis.gov/military, accessed on 10 December 2007. US Government Department of Veteran Affairs [11 February 2008], http://www1. va.gov/opa/feature/history/history1.asp, accessed on 15 August 2008. Vinovskis, M. A. (1990) ‘Have Social Historians Lost the Civil War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations’ in M. A Vinovskis (ed.) Toward a Social History of the American Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–30. Waldstreicher, D. (1997) In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). Webster, D. (1814) ‘House of Representatives, January 14, 1814, 13th Congress, 2nd Session, 945–6’ The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Annals of Congress), Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/ lwac.html, accessed on 10 December 2007.

15 Sinocentricism and the National Question in China Eric Hyer

Introduction Ethnonationalist forces held in check during the Cold War re-emerged with raucous consequences that have altered the political map of the world. Ongoing conflicts are predominantly ethnonationalist wars waged by ‘nations’ against ‘states’ in a struggle to reconcile state and national identity (see, Nietschmann, 1987). Such movements claim ‘nationhood’ based on historical, cultural and linguistic characteristics. The re-emergence of such ethnonationalist movements has made relevant again a discussion of the national question in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This chapter analyses China’s discourse on the national question within a broad historical context and shows how an underlying sinocentricism (Huaxia zhongxin zhuyi) has informed Chinese views of the national question and China’s national identity despite different ideological and political affinities. Before taking up the debate over the national question in modern China it is necessary to give historical context to the following discussion by outlining the origins and evolution of the Chinese nation and state. The Chinese national myth that is invoked to legitimise the government’s rule over a vast country is especially problematical because the conceptualisation of the Chinese ‘nation’ and ‘state’ as developed over the past century seeks to incorporate an ethnically diverse group of nations into the modern state of China and assumes a national harmony within a unified Chinese state. Rather, it is important to keep in mind that historical ‘China’ was not a well-defined and clearly delimited Chinese nation-state, constituting a single nation and a single state, but rather a more fluid concept that implied more than just a single nationality unified by culture and language living within a single uncontested state. The classic Chinese historical novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms opens with ‘states wax and wane, coalesce and cleave.’ China’s own history reflects these truisms. Ancient China was first unified under the Qin dynasty (221–6 BCE) after a period of warfare among various city states that only 255

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constituted a small portion of contemporary China. Over time, however, Chinese expanded from the Chinese central plan in all directions incorporating territory and assimilating minority nationalities. The greatest periods of expansion were during the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1911), both nomadic nations that conquered and ruled China for over 300 years further expanding the boundaries of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ as they assimilated Chinese customs and practices to a great degree, especially the Manchu who were thoroughly sinified. During the Qing dynasty, the territory directly administered by Beijing was pushed to the furthest extent as the Manchu incorporated China’s periphery into their empire. However, with the advent of Western and Japanese imperialism, China was reduced in size as the Qing dynasty was forced to cede control over lands that Chinese now consider ‘lost territory,’ including Mongolia, parts of Manchuria, lands along the border in Central Asia, such as the Pamir Mountains, and areas in South Asia ‘lost’ as the British pushed the borders of India northward. Thus, ‘China’ has evolved in its meaning and geographical identity. ‘Zhongguo’ could refer to the central geographical location of a particular city state of ancient China, or indicate the ‘Middle Kingdom’ of China as it evolved over the centuries. Contemporary ‘China’ is the result of centuries of Chinese dynasties waxing and waning, but modern Chinese nationalists harbour viscerally held irredentist visions of a Middle Kingdom that once controlled lands now incorporated by other countries or recognised as independent nation-states. To comprehend the rationality of the People’s Republic of China’s conceptualisation of the Chinese nation and state, it is first necessary to understand these historical roots. Chinese today hold on to the ‘distilled essence’ – a clear notion of the geographical realm, as well as the material and cultural primacy – of what was historical China, a greatness achieved during the Qing dynasty (Mancall, 1984). This historical, cultural and psychological mindset provides the substance of the contemporary Chinese conceptualisation of China’s national identity (Cranmer-Byng, 1973, pp. 67–79). These factors inherited from the Qing dynasty that established the modern nation, and that the contemporary regime feels obligated to defend, have a significant impact on China’s sensitivity towards nationality and territorial issues (Perdue 1998a, p. 285). Understanding contemporary Chinese conceptualisations of the nation and state entails historical, geopolitical and cultural dimensions. Tu Wei-ming, the renowned Chinese historian, points out that Chinese ‘know reflexively what China proper refers to’ and the ‘impression that geopolitical China evolved through a long process centering around a definable core remains deeply rooted’ (Tu, 1991, p. 3). Chinese perceptions – ‘expressions of a historical existence’ – do not vary with political ideology, but are the result of a common historical and cultural legacy of all Chinese. The strong sense of

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Chinese nationalism that developed early in the 20th century was buttressed by an image of the past glory of a ‘united’ empire during the Qing Dynasty. Chinese views of the Chinese nation and state are not monolithic but share many common threads. More traditional views assume that Chinese expansion was based on cultural assimilation because of China’s superior culture and was not colonial in nature. One Chinese scholar, adopting this argument concludes that China’s ‘unity of humanity and peaceful penetration’ resulted as China ‘spread her civilization over all the people of the Far East, but she did not impose any claim of government through conquest. All these inherent tendencies in spirit, together with the ways of living, customs and laws, developed along their natural lines, made of the Asiatic peoples a unity’ (Djang, 1935, pp. 4–5). Others argue that the various ethnic groups that inhabited the periphery of China were not forcefully conquered, but ‘unified’ within the Chinese ‘cultural-state.’ Thus, the Chinese state emerged over millennia, not by military conquest but rather developed as an all-embracing cultural entity ruled over by the emperor. Thus, an ‘essentialist view that all the basic features of the contemporary nation-state are found in the distant past without fundamental alteration’ is a common thread in Chinese historiography. And it assumes that ‘the maximal borders attained by the Qing empire in the mid-eighteenth century’ constitutes the ‘ideal boundaries defining a timeless national culture’ (Perdue, 1998b, p. 255). This idealised conceptualisation of the Chinese nation and state has persisted even to the present as a nationalist myth and wields great influence over the contemporary understanding of the ‘national question’ in China and the government’s specific policies towards minority nationalities and self-determination. Historically Chinese, including the present regime, assume China is a unified multinational state, the territorial boundaries of which correspond roughly to the Manchu Qing dynasty. This policy denies the national identity of non-Chinese minorities and subsumes them as ‘Chinese minorities’ within the Chinese state that came into existence through a historical process based on a growing sense of cultural unity as ‘Chinese.’ This characterisation is an attempt to render the national question moot, as far as the right to self-determination or secession is concerned, by assuming that the minority nationalities are an integral part of the Chinese nation-state. The only relevant national question in the eyes of the Chinese government is the relationship between the different ‘Chinese nationalities.’ The People’s Republic of China has employed a rather subtle means to subvert ethnic nationalist movements by denying minority nationalities in China the fundamental elements of ‘nationhood.’ For example, the PRC does not recognise the minority nationalities within the present borders of China as ‘nations.’ The term ‘Chinese’ (Zhongguo ren) includes the numerous ethnic groups in China – all of which are included within the ‘Chinese nation’ (Zhonghua minzu). The term Minzu has a ‘cultural’ connotation that

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includes non-Han (non-Chinese) ethnic groups (Jagchid, 1979, pp. 234–6).1 Unlike the Soviet Union, which granted ‘union republic’ status to larger nationalities, the PRC only recognises the ‘cultural independence’ of the various minority nationalities within autonomous regions directly under the control of the central government. Also unlike the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution which, at least in principle, recognised the right of self-determination, the PRC has never, since it was established, recognised the aspirations for national independence by the non-Chinese nationalities currently under Beijing’s control. China has shown no patience with secessionist movements, as was clearly demonstrated in Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang in recent years. The following discussion focuses on the evolution of elite leaders’ views regarding the territorial limits of China and the right of the non-Chinese inhabitants of China’s periphery to national self-determination. The views of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong on these issues are examined. These two issues are salient because national identity based in part on territoriality is deeply imbedded in the conception of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu) and homeland (zuguo) that are such central components in Chinese national identity (Duara, 1995, pp. 70–71). Using a historical narrative of China’s territoriality and ethnic identity, Sun, Chiang and Mao constructed images of China that served their sinocentric nationalist ends.

Marxism and the national question in China Communists adopted various approaches to the analysis of the national question. ‘Classical Marxism’ equates the ‘national question’ with the ‘class question.’ This analysis concludes that class consciousness will outweigh national identity and therefore, as the class question is solved, national antagonism and nationalist aspirations will consequently disappear. Lenin faced a daunting task as a revolutionary practitioner taking power in a disintegrating multinational Czarist empire. His ‘strategy’ was to offer the right of national self-determination in order to co-opt other nationalities during the struggle to gain power. However, after gaining power, the regime denied the right of self-determination but adopted less coercive policies towards minority nationalities in order to dampen secessionist movements; the regime hoped that in the long-term this would facilitate assimilation and thus bring an effective end to the national question (Connor, 1984, ch. 2). Many assume that the Chinese Communists represent a radical departure from China’s past and that Mao adopted Leninist views on the national question in China. In fact Mao’s views are strikingly similar to views held earlier by Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, Sun’s successor as leader of the Nationalist Party (KMT). While the vocabulary Mao used may reflect the language of the Comintern, closer analysis reveals the underlying sinocentricism that is deeply rooted in China’s cultural and historical traditions. Mao, like many

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younger Chinese of his generation, was obsessed with ‘national salvation’ in the face of Western imperialism. Young Mao greatly admired the first Qin emperor who unified China under one government. Mao’s idealisation of this classic period in China’s national development motivated his modern nationalism and obsession with the survival of ‘China’. Thus, an analysis of the national question in the People’s Republic of China, cast in the terminology of Marxism-Leninism, obscures the underlying sinocentricism that is common to Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communists alike. Chinese identity runs deep and the development of the notion of ‘China’ developed over millennia. The issue is further complicated by the unifying ideology of Confucianism and its impact on the very essence of what it means to be Chinese; Confucianism stresses cultural identification over racial and ethnic categories and a Confucian culturist ideology is deeply embedded in China’s nationalist discourse (Duara, 1995, p. 74), With this in mind, I adopt the rather straightforward definition of national identity as the ‘self-image that is tied to [the] nation, together with the value and emotional significance [Chinese] attach to membership in the national community’ (Gries, 2004, p. 9).

Evolution of Sun Yat-sen’s views Sun claimed China was a united nation inhabited by one people. He asserted that ‘China, since the Ch’in [Qin] and Han dynasties, has been developing a single state out of a single race’, and that eventually ‘all names of individual people inhabiting China’ would die out, thus uniting all minority nationalities with the Han in a ‘single cultural and political whole’ (Sun, 1929, p. 6; Sun, 1970, pp. 181–2). He marvelled that China was a nation ‘with such a prestige that small nations came to her and of their own free will demand to be annexed’. He felt that minority nationalities considered it an honour to be part of China (Chang and Gordon, 1991, p. 44). Following the revolution in 1911, the Nationalists adopted policies that reflected Sun Yat-sen’s assimilationist views and independence movements were strongly opposed. After Mongolia asserted its independence in 1911 with the fall of the Qing dynasty, Sun could not resign himself to the permanent separation of Mongolia from China and in 1923, while negotiating for Soviet assistance, he extracted a statement from the Soviet representative that ‘it is not, and never has been, the intention or the objective of the present Russian government to carry out imperialistic policies in Outer Mongolia, or to work for Outer Mongolian independence from China’ (Brandt, 1966, p. 70). However, political realities forced Sun Yat-sen to modify his all-encompassing, sinocentric view and ‘culturalist’ vision of China. Under the influence of Wilsonian idealism and more directly Comintern advisors, Sun accepted the principle of national self-determination as defined by Stalin – self-determination as the right of a nation to ‘arrange its life according to its own will. It has the

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right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign and all nations are equal’ (Stalin, 1942, p. 23). Accordingly, at the First National Convention of the Nationalist Party held in January 1924, a declaration was issued which stated: ‘We hereby repeat solemnly that we recognize the right of self-determination for all peoples in China, and that a free united Republic of China based upon the principles of free alliance of the different peoples will be established after the downfall of imperialism and militarism’ (Hsu, 1933, pp. 128–9). The sinocentric views of Sun Yat-sen are common among most all Chinese who hearken to the unification of the Qin dynasty or the territorial greatness of the Qing when they conceptualised ‘China’. Published in 1925, Zhongguo sangdi shi (history of China’s lost territory) continues to be cited as an example of the grandiose territorial claims Chinese make. A chapter entitled ‘Territory During the Halcyon Days of the Qing Dynasty’ asserts that ‘areas inhabited by Han, Manchu, Mongols and Muslims were already united’ during the Qing dynasty, and argues that modern China should claim territories included in the Manchu empire as Chinese. The author offers two reasons for this: First, the territory inherited by the Republic [of China] comes directly from all that was controlled by the Qing during its final days, and has undergone no change at present; and secondly, all areas inhabited by the Han, Manchu, Mongols, Moslems and Tibetans are in fact unified, which was completed during the Qing. (Xie, 1925, p. 6)

Chiang Kai-shek and the national question Following the death of Sun and with the dominance of the KMT by Chiang Kai-shek, a hypernationalist, Nationalist Party policy on the national question took on a more strident and sinocentric tone. Though Chiang Kai-shek had fundamental ideological differences with the Chinese Communists, he was equally gripped by the concern over China’s ‘salvation’ and the unification of China as it was before the fall of the Manchu Qing dynasty. The ‘Provisional Constitution of the Political Tutelage Period,’ written in 1931, defined China in the broadest possible terms: ‘The territory of the Republic of China consists of the various provinces and Mongolia and Tibet’ – Mongolia had become independent with the fall of the Qing dynasty and Tibet was independent de facto, but not recognised as such by the KMT (China Yearbook, 1934, 1934, p. 466). To Chiang, the Japanese invasion represented the climax of a century of imperialism in China and the defeat of Japan would symbolise the end of an era of humiliation and the rebirth of a united China with the restoration of all lost territory. Chiang Kai-shek outlined his views in China’s Destiny published in the early 1940s. He rejected the notion that China was ever an imperialist or

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colonial power and he defined China, territorially and culturally, in the broadest, most inclusive terms: The territory of the Chinese state is determined by the ... limits of Chinese cultural bonds. Thus, in the territory of China a hundred years ago ... there was not a single district ... that was not permeated by our culture. The breaking up of this territory meant ... the decline of the nation’s culture. Thus, the people as a whole must regard this as a national humiliation, and not until all lost territories have been recovered can we relax our effort to wipe out this humiliation and save ourselves from destruction. (Chiang, 1947, p. 34) He also rejected the right of national self-determination: ‘The Chinese nation has lived and developed within these river basins, and there is no area that can be split up or separated from the rest, and therefore, no area that can become an independent unit’ (Chiang, 1947, p. 35; see also, pp. 39–40). To this end, a public education policy was initiated to assimilate the non-Chinese population. The curriculum was designed to ‘reconstruct their cultures’ as well as teach a ‘clear understanding of the Chinese race and nation’ (China Handbook, 1937–43, 1943, pp. 403–4; China Handbook, 1937–45 [revised and enlarged], 1975, p. 341). Following the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, however, the realities of realpolitik forced Chiang Kai-shek to suppress his sinocentric views on the national question; the change was necessary in order for the KMT to facilitate an alliance with the Soviet Union. Mongolia independence was a reality grudgingly accepted by Chiang Kai-shek because Stalin demanded it at the Yalta conference in 1945 with the acquiescence of the United States and Great Britain. This change in KMT policy was set forth in a statement made by Chiang on 24 August 1945, just ten days after the conclusion of the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance with the USSR: if frontier racial groups situated in regions outside the provinces have the capacity for self-government and a strong determination to attain independence, ... our government should, in a friendly spirit, voluntarily help them to realize their freedom; ... and as equals of China we should entertain no ill will or prejudices against them because of their choice to leave the mother country. (Chiang, 1969, vol. 2, p. 857) The statement would also appear to include Tibet as an area that qualified for independence, but unlike Mongolia, Tibet had no patron. At the time, Xinjiang too was independent of Chinese control but subject to significant Soviet influence. This recognition of an independent Mongolia was later characterised as a benevolent act by China: a ‘momentous decision ... on the assumption that

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by consenting to these infringements upon her territorial sovereign rights to a wartime ally, China might contribute to the cause of peace’ (China Presents, 1949, p. 11). One Chinese scholar characterised the treaty in the same light as previous treaties China was compelled to conclude: China was of course free to resist such arbitrary measures. But the brutal fact was that she had been at war with Japan for eight long years. She could not fight three more enemies. The only path open to this war-torn country was the signing of a new unequal treaty with the Soviet Union! (Kao, 1980, p. 175) The KMT, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, rejected the right of self-determination, but as its power base declined, it resentfully recognised the Mongolian People’s Republic as an independent state, a recognition that was subsequently withdrawn after 1949 on the grounds that the Soviet Union had broken the treaty of friendship with the ROC and therefore the KMT government, now isolated in Taiwan, was not bound by its recognition of Mongolian independence. This Nationalist claim to Mongolia was only relinquished after Taiwan’s democratisation and the election of an opposition party to power in 2000.

The national question and the Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) looked to the Soviet Union as a model to follow on the national question. However, when the CCP came to power it did not establish a federated state, as it had called for previously, but for historical and nationalistic reasons declared that China was a ‘united nation of multiple nationalities’. This policy, it was argued, was the ‘outgrowth of the historical development of the past several thousand years’ and rooted in the glorification of the Qin dynasty’s unification and the Qing dynasty’s expansion of the empire (Weng, 1950, p. 6; see also, Hudson, 1960, pp. 53–54). CCP policy initially supported the right to self-determination but after gaining power, claimed that in countries that had experienced a socialist revolution, the assertion of self-determination by minority nationalities was ‘reactionary’ (Renmin Ribao, 2 October 1951 cited in Dreyer, 1976; Moseley, 1966, pp. 5–8). The CCP initially accepted Stalin’s argument that ‘Leninism broadened the conception of self-determination and interpreted it as the right ... to complete secession, as the right of nations to independent existence as states. This precluded the possibility of ... interpreting the right of self-determination to mean [merely] the right to autonomy’ (Stalin, 1942, p. 183). The CCP’s view of nationality conflict accepted the Marxist view that it was fundamentally the result of class conflict. In theory, nations were artificial constructs used by capitalists to suppress the proletariat. But when the proletariat seized power, nations and nationalism would vanish. Reality did not unfold as

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theory predicted. In fact, in the PRC, the opposite was the case. The threat to the unity of China, caused by secessionist movements, did not diminish after the Communist revolution. The CCP reluctantly accepted the ‘loss’ of Outer Mongolia as a fait accompli, but in Tibet the new Communist regime forcibly annexed Tibet, while for a number of years, Xinjiang, with the acquiescence of Moscow, resisted control by the central government in Beijing. Secessionist movements in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia have persisted to the present. Before gaining power, the CCP naively supported the right of self-determination and held out the possibility that various regions would become independent national entities. This reflected the influence of Chinese sinocentric idealism regarding the willingness of non-Chinese groups to be included in the Chinese nation, as well as Leninist strategy – an attempt to placate the various non-Chinese inhabitants of the border areas in order to establish a united front to oppose the Japanese and then the Nationalists. But Mao believed that the inhabitants of these areas were just one factor to be considered, one that could be transformed, envisioning the eventual inclusion of the vast territories inhabited by non-Chinese nationalities as part of a unified China (Moseley, 1966, p. 19).

Self-determination, federation and secession The Manifesto of the Second National Congress of the CCP held in July 1922 spelled out the Party’s vision of China: The establishment of a Chinese Federated Republic by the unification of China proper, Mongolia, Tibet, and Sinkiang into a free federation. (Brandt, 1966, p. 64; see also, Zhu, 1930, pp. 272–4, 278) This statement left many issues unclear. Did ‘China proper’ include Manchuria? Xinjiang had become a province of China several decades earlier and if it needed to be liberated it was from Soviet domination. Did Mongolia include both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia? The Mongolian People’s Republic had become independent the previous year. During the Jiangxi Soviet period (1927–35), the CCP’s position on the national question became more precise. At the First All-China Congress of Soviets held in November 1931, a resolution on the ‘Question of National Minorities’, declared that: the Chinese Soviet Republic categorically and unconditionally recognizes the right of national minorities to self-determination. This means that in districts like Mongolia, Tibet, Sinkiang, Yunnan, Kweichow, and others, where the majority of the population belongs to non-Chinese nationalities, the toiling masses of these nationalities shall have the right to

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determine for themselves whether they wish to leave the Chinese Soviet Republic and create their own independent state, or whether they wish to join the Union of Soviet Republics, or form an autonomous area inside the Chinese Soviet Republic. ... The Chinese Soviet Republic shall also support ... national minorities that have already won their independence. (Kun, 1934, pp. 78–83) Article 14 of the Fundamental Law (constitution) of the Chinese Soviet Republic spelled out the right of self-determination: The Soviet government of China recognizes the right of self-determination of the national minorities in China, and to the formation of an independent state for each national minority. All Mongolians, Tibetans, Miao, Yao, Koreans, and others living on the territory of China shall enjoy the full right of self-determination, i.e., they may either join the Union of Chinese Soviets or secede from it and form their own state as they may prefer. (Brandt, 1966, p. 223) Although the CCP rhetorically supported self-determination and the right of secession, it was not the ideal it wished to achieve – a unified multinational state as symbolised by the Qing dynasty. A call was issued to unite behind the CCP in order to establish ‘a single state ... without national barriers, and to uproot all national enmity and national prejudices’ (Kun, 1934, pp. 78–83). The Long March from Jiangxi to Yan’an marked a watershed in the CCP’s policy, but the CCP continued to publicly support the right of self-determination in order to maintain the anti-Japanese united front. In ‘Nationalities Policy in Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Warfare’, Liu Shaoqi argued that the ‘right of minority nationalities to independence and autonomy must be recognised before they would sincerely form an alliance with China and rise to resist Japan. Without recognising the right of nationalities to self-determination, there can be no national alliance on an equal footing’ (Liu, 1969, p. 17). In December 1935, the Communists issued a statement calling on the Inner Mongolians to ally with the CCP in order to oppose Japan and appealed to the Mongols’ sense of nationalism by urging them to ‘preserve the glory of the Genghis Khan era.’ The statement maintained that Japan was attempting to occupy the ‘entire nation of Inner Mongolia’ but also condemned the ‘Chinese warlords headed by the shameless Chiang Kai-shek, who not only consider themselves the suzerain, but have even designated the entire region of Inner Mongolia a province ... in order to destroy gradually the Mongolian nation.’ The CCP declared that ‘no other nation may occupy or seize under any excuse the territory of the nation of Inner Mongolia’.

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Aware of Mongolian sensitivities about China’s historical encroachment into Mongolia, the declaration stated: We feel that the people of Inner Mongolia have the right to solve all their internal problems, and no one has the authority to interfere by force in their living, habits, religion, ethics, and all other rights. ... [Inner Mongolia] may, according to the principle of self-determination, organize its own life and form its own government. ... It also has the right to establish its separate entity. ... [T]he nation is supreme, and all nations are equal. ... (Mao, 1978, vols. 5–6, pp. 6–8)2 The following year, a call was directed to the Muslims (Hui) of Northwest China, but reference to a ‘nation,’ as in the statement on Inner Mongolia, was absent: According to the principle of national self-determination, we advocate that the affairs of the Moslems must be completely handled by the Moslems themselves, that, in all Moslem areas, the Moslems must establish their independent and autonomous political power and handle all the political, economic, religious, custom, ethical, education, and other matters. (Mao, 1978, vols. 5–6, pp. 35–7)3 While upholding the right of national self-determination in order to facilitate the organisation of a united front, Mao nevertheless revealed his desire for a united China, which included much of the former Qing Empire. An interview conducted by Edgar Snow with Mao in July 1936 was revealing: It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty below the great wall. This means that Manchuria must be regained. We do not, however, include Korea, formerly a Chinese colony, but when we have re-established the independence of the lost territories of China, and if the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies to Formosa. As for Inner Mongolia, we will struggle to drive Japan from there and help Inner Mongolia to establish an autonomous state. With regard to the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR), Xinjiang and Tibet, Mao observed: When the people’s revolution has been victorious in China, the Outer Mongolian republic will automatically become a part of the Chinese federation, at its own will. The Mohammedan and Tibetan peoples, likewise,

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will form autonomous republics attached to the Chinese federation. (Mao, 1937, pp. 40–41; also in Snow, 1961, p. 96) The shift away from support for the right of self-determination and secession to the policy of establishing ‘autonomous regions’ became clearer at the Sixth Party Congress held in November 1938. Addressing the issue, Mao remarked: [O]ur present task is to unite all nationalities and fight together with them against the Japanese. ... In the common struggle against Japan, they will have the right to handle their own affairs and at the same time to unite with the Hans in building a unified country. (Weng, 1950, p. 9; see also, Renmin Ribao, 6 Sept. 1953, p. 1) And although it was already independent, later it became clear that this was merely a position adopted out of tactical necessity because future statements confirm that the Chinese Communists were not reconciled to the fact that Outer Mongolia had asserted its independence at the end of the Qing dynasty and that it was unlikely that it would ever again become part of China. Nevertheless, at times, statements were made which still supported the earlier, more liberal position on the national question. For example, in ‘On Coalition Government,’ written in 1945, Mao supported the ‘right of self-determination and of forming a union with the Han people on a voluntary basis’; he also criticised Chiang Kai-shek for his chauvinistic views expressed in China’s Destiny (Mao, 1965, vol. 3, pp. 305–6).4 But the CCP’s move towards a more sinocentric concept of the national question is clear in the textbook The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, used in training Party cadre. Originally published in 1939 it describes the territorial boundaries of China: The present boundaries of China are: Bordering on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the northeast, northwest and a portion of the west. In a portion of the west and the southwest bordering on India, Bhutan and Nepal. In the south bordering on Siam, Burma, Annam and close to Taiwan. In the east close to Japan and bordering Korea. A revised edition, published in 1952, demonstrates how CCP views were also circumscribed in light of political considerations: The present boundaries of China are as follows: Bordering on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the northeast, northwest and a portion of the west. Bordering on the Mongolian People’s Republic in the north. In a portion of the west and the southwest bordering on Afghanistan, India, Bhutan and Nepal. In the south bordering on Burma and Vietnam. In the east bordering on Korea and close to Japan and the Philippines.

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In the earlier edition several neighbouring states are classified as ‘vassal states’ (fan): After defeating China in war, the imperialist states then stole several of China’s vassal states and a portion of her territory. Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, the Ryukyus, Penghu islands and Port Arthur; England occupied Burma, Bhutan, Nepal and Hongkong; France occupied Annam; and a tiny state like Portugal even occupied Macao. (Mao, 1945, p. 1) In the later edition this was revised to read: After defeating China in war, the imperialist states not only occupied several surrounding states which originally received the protection of China, but also stole or ‘leased’ a portion of China. For example, Japan occupied Taiwan and the Penghu islands and ‘leased’ Port Arthur; England occupied Hongkong; and France ‘leased’ Guangzhouwan. (Mao, 1952, p. 1) That the Communists had adopted a narrower interpretation of self-determination and now considered it to mean self-government within a federated Chinese state became clear in a July 1944 interview with Gunther Stein in which Mao stated: Outer Mongolia is part of China. ... China must first recognize Outer Mongolia as a national entity. Then organize a sort of United States of China to meet their aspirations. We believe they will come to join. The same is true concerning Tibet. ... The Mohammedans should also be given a chance to form their state. Manchurians are no longer a separate nationality. Nor are Formosans. (United States Senate, [1969] p. 982; see also, Stein, 1945, pp. 244–5, 442–3)

Conclusion From the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 until it came to power in 1949, the Party’s nationalities policy evolved from one which supported the right of self-determination and secession to one that resembled the assimilationist and sinocentric policy advocated earlier by Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek. Although this position was at times moderated, it is clear that Mao and other leaders of the CCP believed in a unified China that incorporated all the nationalities that had been controlled by earlier dynasties. The idea of a voluntary federation such as that advocated during the Jiangxi Soviet was abandoned. The concept of self-determination had evolved to mean autonomy within a united China. The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, convened on 29 September 1949, drafted the Common Program which established the policies of the PRC. There was no mention of the right of national self-determination. China was characterised as a ‘big fraternal and

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co-operative family composed of all nationalities’ and ‘splitting the unity of the various nationalities’ was prohibited (Hinton, 1980, p. 55). Later, in the constitution drafted at the First National People’s Congress, secession was no longer considered a legitimate right, and regions inhabited by minority nationalities were regarded ‘inalienable parts of the People’s Republic of China’ (Documents of the First Session, 1955, art. 3, ch. 1). The ‘Program for Enforcement of National Regional Autonomy’ provided for the establishment of autonomous regions, but stated that ‘all national autonomous districts shall be an inseparable part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China’ (Survey of China Mainland Press 394, August 1952, p. 9). With the establishment of the Communist government in 1949, it was claimed that the past practice of exploitation and antagonism between nationalities would disappear. It was argued that ‘any nationality, if it succeeds in secession, will not only lose for certain the great achievements of liberation and equality which have already been effected, but will also fall for certain under the yoke of imperialism once more’ (Wang, 1958, p. 11). The establishment of a multinational unified state was the culmination of the dual forces of modern Chinese nationalism and traditional sinocentricism harking back to the great dynasties in Chinese history. Some form of federation, although initially advocated because of the Soviet model, was rejected due to the historical legacy and the nationalistic desire for a strong, unified China. However, this change in policy was not, it was argued, the result of ‘armchair theorising’, but a decision ‘closely linked with the objective conditions in China’ that ‘evolved from a long period of experience and struggle’ (Weng, 1950, pp. 6–7) The transition from the policy adopted in the early days of the Party and the Jiangxi Soviet period to the policy espoused in 1949 was determined by what were said to be national developments: [T]he Communist Party ... consistently advocated self-determination and federalism from the day the party was founded until the period of the Anti-Japanese War. It was only with the period of China’s third revolutionary war that these slogans ceased to be emphasized. ... Led and instructed by the Chinese Communist Party, the people of each nationality had already greatly heightened their ... patriotic consciousness, greatly changed and transcended their original situation of mutual antagonism, and gradually formed bonds of equality, unity, mutual help, and cooperation as a basis for realizing common political aims and interests. Therefore, the establishment of a united, multinational state was the desire of the great bulk of the people of all nationalities in our country. (Chang, 1966, pp. 67–8) The question of Outer Mongolia was not raised at the time, but other minority nationalities were not considered suitable for ‘nation-statehood,’ because: in political, social, economic, cultural, and other respects, these people, like other national minorities, were ill prepared for separation; all the national minorities (including those of Sinkiang and Tibet), because of

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cultural and historical conditions, and especially because of close economic relations, formed with the Han a single, unbreakable unit. (Chang, 1966, pp. 71–4) Published in 1950, ‘Sino-Soviet Friendship: A Study Guide’ argued that ‘the unity or separation of each nationality is based upon certain historical conditions and what is most advantageous to that particular nationality’. Regarding the right to exercise self-determination in the future it said: Some people inquire: ‘Since we recognized Mongolia’s independence, in the future shouldn’t we recognize the independence of Inner Mongolia, Tibet, etc.?’ We respond by saying ... Mongolia gained independence under these historical conditions. ... Therefore, our position is to continue to recognize and guarantee their independence, and do not need them to be reunified with China as one country. ... What of Inner Mongolia, Tibet and other nationalities presently within China? Well, we were liberated at about the same time. The present problem is to join forces to build a strong new China together, not to be divided and independent. ... Only in this way will the best interests of all nationalities presently within China be served. We must not forget that specific historical conditions derive from the basic interests of the people. This should be the basis upon which we view issues. (Zhong-Su youhao, 57–8) Thus it was appropriate for these areas to ‘overcome the remnants of local nationalism as well as any feelings of solitariness, exclusiveness, and aimless xenophobia, all of which are harmful’ (Chang, 1966, p. 74). Officially stated rationale aside, other factors account for this change in CCP policy. The significant shift in policy began after the rise of Mao Zedong. Mao, much like Chiang Kai-shek, betrayed a deep concern for ‘national salvation’ through the eventual inclusion of the vast territories inhabited by non-Chinese nationalities and considered as part of a unified China during the Qing dynasty. Mao was a more chauvinistic and sinocentric Chinese nationalist and did not support the policy of federalism, as other Party leaders had (Moseley, 1966, pp. 68, fn. 18). On several occasions, Mao evidenced his obsession with the disintegration of the Chinese empire during interviews with Edgar Snow and Gunther Stein, cited earlier. Mao’s initial support for national self-determination was due to his idealistic view of the historical unity of China and as a tactic he believed that denouncing the chauvinistic policy of the Nationalists would win non-Chinese groups’ support for the CCP, but it is doubtful that Mao’s support of the right of self-determination and secession was heartfelt. Mao’s and others’ flirtation with idealism regarding the national question ended with the Long March, during which the CCP experienced devastating confrontations with the non-Chinese they encountered. This convinced the Communists that these minorities would not willingly be integrated as part of a Chinese nation and therefore had to be denied the option of

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self-determination (Dreyer, 1976, pp. 67–70). Mao and other leaders of the CCP were also clearly aware of the possibility of foreign powers taking advantage of these minority nationalities’ animosity towards the Chinese. Soviet assistance had been crucial to the Mongols in their struggle for independence and the situation in Xinjiang and Tibet was yet undecided. This was cause for real concern, since these: minority nationality areas are mostly located in border areas of the motherland, [and] imperialism, reactionaries and modern revisionists will use every means possible to unite with these reactionaries in minority nationality areas in order to subvert the motherland. Among the nationalities they encourage nationalist sentiments, sow seeds of dissension among various nationalities, and plot to carry out their evil plan to split the unity of the nation. (Minzu Tuanjie, 1963, p. 3) The new government dismissed such nationalist-separatist movements as reactionary because circumstances had changed. Chinese argued that the need for secession no longer existed, because: Today, the liberation of all China has been basically completed. ... The position of the national minorities within the country is entirely different from that of the past. The problem that for so many years was unsolvable has been fundamentally solved. (Weng 1950, p. 6) Since 1949, despite the lip service to the ideal of a unified multinational state, Beijing has pursued a policy of integrating and assimilating (sinifying) the minority nationalities. During the 1950s, autonomous regions, counties and townships were established and the ‘economic and cultural development’ of the ‘fraternal nationalities’ was encouraged. But the underlying policy of solving the national question by slowly assimilating minority nationalities was fairly transparent. In ‘On the Rectification Campaign and Socialist Education Among the Minority Nationalities’, written in the latter 1950s, the case for a united China of multiple nationalities was made in terms not unlike those used earlier by Chiang Kai-shek in China’s Destiny: In remote days, China was already a country... practicing the system of centralism. ... [T]he historical development of our country led to the formation of an irresistible and inevitable trend, namely, the trend toward a united people’s China. ... On such a historical foundation, the various nationalities of China set up in 1949 the united People’s Republic of China. Any nationality attempting secession is acting contrary to the trend of the long historical development and its basic requirement. (Wang, 1958, p. 9) In a 1957 speech, Zhou Enlai, after condemning the ‘two types of Chauvinism’ – Han chauvinism and local-nationality chauvinism–argued

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that assimilation is a ‘progressive act if it means natural merger of nations advancing towards prosperity. Assimilation as such has the significance of promoting progress’ (Zhou, 1980, p. 19). From the late 1950s until the 1970s, the Marxist belief that ‘the national question is essentially a class question’ and Mao’s dictum that ‘national struggle is a matter of class struggle’ were invoked, and a hard line on the national question was adopted. The policy was still an assimilationist one, but became a heavy-handed policy of sinification under the guise of class struggle. Since the 1980s, this ‘leftist’ policy has been condemned because it mistakenly ‘synchronized the rise and disappearance of nationalities with the rise and disappearance of classes, lumping the national problem and the class problem together’. But the policy remains one of ‘progressive assimilation’ over the long term. The current view is that the national question ‘came into being after a history of several hundred or several thousand years, and will continue to exist for a long time to come’ (‘Is the National Question’, p. 18). This view is based on the assumption that non-Han peoples are economically and culturally drawn to China and willingly accept sinification as was the case throughout history, and with the eventual end of ‘national differences’, the national question will cease to exist. Despite the return to a more conciliatory policy towards minority nationalities by the Chinese after the Cultural Revolution, it is clear that the world has embarked on a renewed period of national independence movements. The independence movements following the break-up of the Soviet Empire have had a demonstration effect that has invigorated ethnonationalist movements around the world; the impact on the national question in China is already evident in the well publicised situation in Tibet, but also the lesser known Muslim revolts in Xinjiang that attempt to establish an Islamic republic and the stirring of a renewed nationalist movement in Inner Mongolia. The national question and China’s national identity remain in flux and nationalism remains one of the strongest forces in China today.

Notes 1. Use of the term minzu causes confusion. Often translated as ‘nation’ in English, it is more accurately translated as ‘ethnic group.’ Although the term guojia can be translated as ‘nation’ it is more accurately translated as ‘nation-state.’ Thus, using the term minzu wenti to mean ‘national question’ is misleading because in Chinese the term has the connotation of ethnic relations among minority groups all considered to be ‘Chinese’, and includes no notion of the right to ‘nationhood.’ 2. For a substantially altered version which also offers the possibility to ‘unite in a federation with other peoples’, see Chang (1966, pp. 51–2). 3. For a variation see Chang (1966, pp. 52–3). 4. Later editions of ‘On Coalition Government’ changed the right of self-determination to the right of self-government. For comparison of versions see Brandt, et al. (1966, p. 308).

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References Brandt, C. et al (eds) (1966) A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (New York: Atheneum). Chang, C. (1966) ‘A Discussion of the National Question in the Chinese Revolution and of Actual Nationalities Policy (Draft)’ in G. Moseley The Party and the National Question in China (Cambridge: MIT Press). Chang, S. H. and L. H. D. Gordon (1991) All Under Heaven: Sun Yat-sen and His Revolutionary Thought (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press). Chiang, Kai-shek (1947) China’s Destiny (New York: Roy Publishers). Chiang, Kai-shek (1969) The Collected War-time Messages of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, 2 vols (New York: Kraus Reprint Co). China Handbook, 1937–1943 (1943) (New York: Macmillan Co). China Handbook, 1937–1945 (1975), revised and enlarged (De Capo Press). China Presents Her Case to the United Nations (1949) (New York: Chinese Delegation to the United Nations). China Yearbook, 1934 (1934) (Shanghai: The North-China Daily News and Herald, Ltd). Connor, W. (1984) The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Cranmer-Byng, J. (1973) ‘The Chinese View of Their Place in the World: An Historical Perspective’, China Quarterly, January–March, 53. Djang, C. (1935) ‘Chinese Suzerainty: A Study of Diplomatic Relations between China and Her Vassal States (1870–1895)’, Ph.D. dissertation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University). Documents of the First Session of the First National People’s Congress of the CPR (1955) (Peking: Foreign Language Press). Dreyer, J. T. (1976) China’s Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Duara, P. (1995) ‘Deconstructing the Chinese Nation’ in P. Duara Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Gries, P. H. (2004) China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press). Hinton, H. (1980) The PRC, 1949–1979, A Documentary Survey (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc). Hsu, L. S. (1933) Sun Yat-sen: His Political and Social Ideals (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press). Hudson, G. F. (1960) ‘The Nationalities of China’, St. Anthony’s Papers, 7. ‘Is the National Question Essentially a Class Question?’ (1980) Beijing Review, 23, 34. Jagchid, S. (1979) ‘The Failure of a Self-Determination Movement: The Inner Mongolian Case’ in W. O. McCagg, Jr. and B. D. Silver (eds) Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers (New York: Pergamon Press). Kao, T-T. (1980) The Chinese Frontiers (Aurora, Ill: Chinese Scholarly Publishing Co.) Kun, B. (1934) Fundamental Laws of the Chinese Soviet Republic (New York: International Publishers Co., Inc). Liu, S. (1969) ‘Nationalities Policy in Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Warfare’, Survey of China Mainland Magazines, 645. Mao, Tse-Tung (1937) China: The March Toward Unity (New York: Workers Library Publishers).

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Mao, Tse-Tung (1965) Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press). Mao, Tse-Tung (1978) Collected Works of Mao Tse-tung (1917–1949,) 6 vols. (Arlington, VA: Joint Publication Research Service), pp. 71911–4. Mao, Zedong (1945) Zhongguo geming yu Zhongguo Gongchandang (Zhangjiakou: Xinhua shudian). Mao, Zedong (1952) Zhongguo geming yu Zhongguo Gongchandang (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe). Mancall, M. (1984) China at the Center: 300 Years of Foreign Policy (New York: The Free Press). Minzu tuanjie (1963), no. 8. Moseley, G. (1966) The Party and the National Question in China (Cambridge: MIT Press). Nietschmann, B. (1987) ‘The Third World War’ Cultural Survival Quarterly, 11, 3. Perdue, P. C. (1998a) ‘Boundaries, Maps, and Movement: Chinese, Russian, and Mongolian Empires in Early Modern Central Eurasia’, The International History Review, 20 June, 2. Perdue, P. C.(1998b) ‘Comparing Empires: Manchu Colonialism’, The International History Review, 20 June, 2. Renmin Ribao, 2 October 1951. Renmin Ribao, 6 September 1953. Snow, E. (1961) Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press). Stalin, J. (1942) Marxism and the National Question: Selected Writings and Speeches (New York: International Publishers). Stein, G. (1945) The Challenge of Red China (New York: McGraw-Hill). Sun, Yat-Sen (1929) San Min Chu I, trans. F. W. Price. (Shanghai: The Commercial Press). Sun, Yat-Sen (1970) Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary: A Programme of National Reconstruction for China, reprint (New York: AMS Press). Survey of China Mainland Press, (August 1952), no. 394. Tu, W-M. (1991) ‘Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center’, Daedalus, Spring, 120, 2. United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Laws (91st Cong. 1st sess.) [1969] The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China, 2 vols. (Wash., D.C.: Government Printing Office). Wang, F. (1958) ‘On the Rectification Campaign and Socialist Education Among the Minority Nationalities’, Current Background, 495. Weng, T-C. (1950) ‘China’s Policy on National Minorities’, People’s China, 1, 7. Wilber, C. M. (1976) Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University Press). Xie, B. (1925) Zhongguo sangdi shi (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju). Zhong-Su youhao guanxi xuexi shouce (1950) (Shanghai: Zhanwang zhoukan). Zhou, E. (1980) ‘Some Questions on Policy Towards Nationalities’, Beijing Review, 23, 9. Zhu, X. (1930) Zhongguo geming yu Zhongguo shehui ge jieji (Shanghai: Lianhe shudian).

16 Nation, History, Museum: The Politics of the Past at the National Museum of Australia Ben Wellings

Introduction The National Museum of Australia opened its doors to the public on 11 March 2001. Located in Canberra, the federal capital, the Museum was the centre-piece of celebrations marking the centenary of Australia’s federation. As such, the Museum’s director, Dawn Casey, described the AU $155 million, state-of-the-art institution as ‘a gift to the nation’. But for some, this was not the sort of present that Australia wanted. In officially opening the Museum, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, seemed somewhat under-whelmed, struggling to find anything positive to say about the new edifice. In his speech, the Prime Minister parsimoniously claimed that ‘Whatever may be said and whatever has already been said about the Museum ... [it] will change in a very profound way the enjoyment of life for people who live in the national capital’ (Howard, 2001). Not everyone was as dismayed as John Howard, however. For some commentators, the idea of a national museum offered the hope of redemption and renewal, rather than just a monument to a troubled past. Whilst the National Museum of Australia was criticised for presenting Australian history ‘negatively’, it was argued in other quarters that such an institution could help re-establish a coherent national narrative which would in turn help restore a sense of national cohesion. Accordingly, two years after its opening, the Museum underwent a period of government review, in which a cohesive and positive national narrative was recommended in order to overcome the fragmentation of national consciousness that had been brought about by the so-called ‘history wars’ of the 1990s.

Unsettling histories In a land where it is commonplace to bemoan the ‘lack of history’, the past was fiercely contested in the years preceding the opening of the National 274

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Museum of Australia (NMA). Such ‘history’ or ‘culture wars’ need explaining by scholars of nationalism. John Hutchinson has argued that contestation over national history has been a crucial element in helping to define the forms of a dominant national narrative. He argues that ‘rival symbolic repertoires, in appealing to multiple class and status groups, do not so much express sectional struggle as different visions of the nation’ (Hutchinson, 2005, p. 87). On one level, this seemed true of Australia in 2001: radically different visions of the national past – and consequently the nation itself – crystallised around arguments about history in general and the National Museum in particular. But Hutchinson may go too far when making the case for ‘the independent power of divergent, deep-seated historical memories’ attached to an ethnic sub-stratum (Hutchinson, 2005, p. 85). The link between ethnicity and nationality in Australia is far from straightforward. Thus it would be a mistake to understand the ‘history wars’ as a robust debate carried out within the safe confines of a secure and dominant ethnic group. What caused the intensity of the debate in Australia’s case was a questioning of the moral legitimacy of the national community due to new understandings of the past, versus a reaction to this sense of contrition and an attempt to re-impose a cohesive and cohering national narrative. It will be worth spending some time outlining the history of this debate itself in order to explain its intensity. The idea of establishing a national museum for Australia had been raised during the debates immediately before and after Federation in 1901. However, the National Museum of Australia only began collecting artefacts once it was established by an Act of Parliament in 1980. Thus the period of its existence coincided with a significant shift in understandings about Australia’s past. Since the late 1960s, historians in Australia increasingly began to concern themselves with the effects of contact and colonisation on Australia’s indigenous peoples. This newer approach entailed criticism of prevailing narratives of the past which were increasingly seen as involving conscious or unconscious acts of forgetting with regard to the more disturbing aspects of Australia’s history. These prevailing national narratives were discernible by the middle of the 20th century. An indicative summary of these narratives may be taken from the opening pages of an illustrated survey of Australia and its principal colony, Papua New Guinea, entitled Displaying Australia. Produced for American service personnel at the end of the Second World War, the book was dedicated to: the Pioneer Men and Women of Australia whose labour and sacrifice have laid the foundation of a Great White Nation. On their memories the sun shall never set, nor in the hearts of the Australian people shall they be forgotten. We shall continue to remember that they died from hunger and thirst and exhaustion that future generations of Australians should enjoy the heritage of our race, while the fruits of their seeking materialise in the creation of a National soul. (Australia Story Trust, 1945, p. 3)

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In sum, the dominant national narrative was one which stressed the civilising effects of hard-working, egalitarian white settlers, given added legitimacy in the 20th century by Australia's successful participation in the global struggles against totalitarian imperialism. But despite this, as Ann Curthoys points out, the dominant national narrative prior to the 1970s defined Australians not as victors, but as victims: convicts as victims of empire; settlers as victims of the environment; and the Anzacs as victims of British incompetence (Curthoys, 2003, p. 188). It was this deep-seated sense of victim-hood that made it difficult for many Australians to identify their forebears as perpetrators of criminal, inhuman and immoral acts towards Australia’s indigenous peoples. However, in the latter half of the 20th century, it was exactly this that they were asked to do. By the early 1980s, many historians were writing a version of history that challenged longer established national narratives of victim-hood and civilisation in Australia. Worse was to come. In addition to the official celebrations in Sydney Harbour in 1988 to mark the Bicentenary of the settling of the Australian continent by the British, there was a counter-demonstration by indigenous peoples and their non-indigenous supporters. Far from celebrating the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the counter-demonstration mourned the invasion of the Australian continent and the subsequent dispossession and destruction of indigenous societies and cultures. Australia’s past became even more intimately connected with present politics during the 1990s through three related political and legal processes. These processes were ‘Reconciliation’ running from 1991 to 2001; the High Court of Australia’s decision on native land title in the Mabo case of 1992; and the parliamentary enquiry into the so-called ‘Stolen Generations’ in 1997. Through these political issues, debates about history began to permeate popular consciousness. The Mabo decision in particular, created a profound shift in understandings of the past within the Labor government of the day. Prime Minister Paul Keating strengthened this re-working of the popular narrative in his speech at Redfern Park, Sydney in December 1992. For Keating, Mabo established ‘a fundamental truth and [laid] the basis for justice’ (Keating, 1993 [1992], p. 5). Keating portrayed historical revision as a test of national self-knowledge that would begin with an act of recognition: Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases; the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. (Keating, 1993 [1992], p. 4) It was this last issue that generated the most emotive politicisation of the past was that of the ‘Stolen Generations’ – offspring of mixed marriages between Aborigines and settlers who were forcibly removed from their parents by Australian governments. If the history of dispossession was

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disconcerting, then the issue of assimilation and possible genocide proved profoundly challenging. The 1997 Bringing Them Home report questioned the assimilationist policies carried out by State and Commonwealth governments during the 20th century (Wilson, 1997, p. 37). In particular it documented, through the use of oral testimonies, the forced removal of so-called ‘half-caste’ children from their indigenous families and their placement in government institutions or with white families. The authors stated that ‘we can conclude with confidence that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970’ (Wilson, 1997, p. 37). The Report, which shocked parliamentarians and public opinion alike and recommended an apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’, continued: Official policy and legislation for Indigenous families and children was contrary to accepted legal principle imported into Australia as British [sic] common law and, from late 1946, constituted a crime against humanity. (Wilson, 1997, p. 275) This notion that Australia could be ranked amongst regimes that had committed crimes against humanity jarred with the ideas of progress and enlightened attitudes that had previously permeated narratives of the Australian past. All three of these issues – Reconciliation, Mabo’s abolishment of the legal fiction of terra nullius and the legacy of child removal policies – politicised popular understandings of the past. But not everyone in the Australian community felt comfortable with the need to atone for past sins perpetrated by settlers against Australia’s first human inhabitants. John Howard, Prime Minister of a Liberal-National Party coalition between 1996 and 2007, made it clear that he did not support the view of Australia’s past that had emerged in the preceding decades. Howard refused to apologise to the ‘Stolen Generations’ on behalf of the federal government of Australia and the Australian nation for something that he maintained the current generation of Australians had not done and could not therefore have been responsible for. In this stance, he was supported by, and drew strength from a group of historians, politicians and public figures who sought to counter what they saw as an overly-negative and damaging view of Australia’s past.

Unity and legitimacy By the mid-1990s, the debate about history was causing concern in official circles. In 1994, the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee noted that ‘there is an increasing equation of Australian history with self-criticism, to the extent that it may be undermining an appropriate pride in Australian achievement’ (Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee, 1994, p. 2).

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The previous year, Geoffrey Blainey, Professor of History at Melbourne University, gave a public lecture, entitled ‘Drawing up a Balance Sheet of our History’, subsequently published in the journal, Quadrant. In this lecture, Blainey addressed the issue of the historiographical shift in understandings of Australia’s past: To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of Australian history. This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly everything that came after was believed to be pretty good. Now the very opposite is widely preached. (Blainey, 1993, p. 11) Blainey went on to outline the case for the Australian achievement: economic success; the triumph of the colonists over the harsh environment; Australia’s long-standing record of democratic government. But most importantly, Blainey coined a term for revisionist attitudes to the past: ‘black-armband history’ (Blainey, 1993, p. 11). The term ‘black armband history’ was broadly applied to any view of history that certain conservatives in Australia deemed unduly negative. Some versions of black-armband history were indeed quite simplistic, although no more so than some of the more triumphal Australian narratives. Other proponents of this revisionist history were more sophisticated, but were nevertheless placed in the black-armband camp, sometimes by choice. Henry Reynolds, a leading figure in this debate, never denied the link between the past and present in his own writing: ‘I thought from the beginning of my career that historical writing was inescapably political – the history of race relations especially so’ (Reynolds, 1999, p. 244). In this political contest over the past, Reynolds’s conclusions adopted an openly partisan position (in opposition to the covert one assumed by earlier narratives). He stated that ‘black-armband historians’ do not feel the need to be correct themselves as much as desiring to correct the history distorted by several generations of nationalist and self-congratulatory writing, which had banished the Aborigines from text to melancholy footnote and thereby expurgated most of the violence and much of the injustice ... Black-armband history is often distressing, but it does enable us to know and understand the incubus which burdens us all. (Reynolds, 1999, p. 258) It was in response to such a position that critics of ‘black-armband’ history attempted to re-assert a unitary, anti-pluralist vision of the Australian nation via the re-establishment of a singular and legitimating national narrative.

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Some of the intellectual foundations of this response were laid in the mid-1980s. In 1984, conservative philosopher Roger Scruton visited Australia and publicly defended the legitimacy of the occupation of Terra Australis. His intervention was significant in that it prefigured the attempt to deny the legitimacy of the past as an area grievance, and then replace the narrative of dispossession with an older narrative concerning ‘progress’. For Scruton ‘progress’ inevitably crushed people under its wheel. ‘This is what happens. It would have happened anywhere, whatever the intentions of the original settlers. It couldn’t but have happened because of the inevitable fate of one of a weak culture faced with a strong one’ (Scruton, 1985, p. 77). Geoffrey Blainey agreed. A decade after Scruton, Blainey argued that the different technical capacities of the British and the Aborigines were crucial in explaining the fact of British colonisation, even if the consequences of this conquest were unavoidably harsh: Here were the inhabitants of the land which had just invented the steam engine meeting people who, making no pottery and working no metals, did not know how to boil water. Here was an utter contrast in peoples ... even with goodwill on both sides they were incompatible. (Blainey, 1994, p. 22) However, it was the change of government in 1996 which truly began the ossification of public opinion about the past into a Manichean debate that pitted ‘black armbands’ against ‘white blindfolds’. John Howard, although economically a neo-liberal, was a social conservative whose interest in the past was selective and ambivalent. Whilst encouraging and re-popularising the Anzac legend, he was keen to disassociate himself and the Australian people from other aspects of the Australian past. In government, Howard adopted Blainey and Scruton’s ‘balance sheet’ approach to Australian history, whereby unfortunate episodes in the past could be relativised next to other collective achievements. ‘I do not believe it is fair or accurate to portray Australia’s history since 1788 as little more than a disgraceful record of imperialism, exploitation and racism. Such a portrayal is a gross distortion and deliberately neglects the overall story of great Australian achievement that is there in our history to be told’ (Howard, 2000, p. 90). But John Howard was not the only politician to adopt Blainey’s ideas. In 1997 Senator Pauline Hanson rejected the popular notion that Australia was acquired peacefully. Hanson argued that ‘we took this land by appropriation; we took it because, in the words of Professor Blainey, the Aborigines could not defend it’ (Hanson, 1997, p. 230). Hanson, a former chip shop owner, was the sole parliamentary representative of the One Nation Party, created in 1996. Hanson’s parliamentary career was short-lived, but significant. Like Blainey, Hanson’s underlying concern was for the cohesiveness of the national community. Therefore her critiques of indigenous sovereignty became bound up

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with critiques of multiculturalism and other perceived threats to national unity. She argued that, ‘a truly multicultural country can never be strong or united. The world is full of failed and tragic examples, ranging from Ireland to Bosnia to Africa and closer to home, Papua New Guinea’ (Hanson, 1997, p. 7). Crucial to Hanson’s understanding of the cohesive national community was the denial of indigenous sovereignty in Australia; a sovereignty that, following the Mabo decision, was ‘spreading like a cancer to attack family homes’ (Hanson, 1997, p. 49). In her maiden speech in Parliament, Hanson stated: I am fed up with being told ‘This is our land’. Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here and so were my parents and children. I will work beside anyone and they will be my equal but I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago. (Hanson, 1997, p. 4) Outside of parliament, it was former media studies academic, Keith Windschuttle’s interventions in the debate which were particularly significant and influential, supported as he was by Quadrant and Australia’s only national newspaper, The Australian. Windschuttle was best known for his critique of the methodology of Aboriginal history, claiming that it was too reliant on oral history and many of the claims about massacres could not be documented. Windschuttle did indeed expose some research based on faulty evidence, but he went further, consequently arguing that ‘the notion of sustained “frontier warfare” is fictional’ (Windschuttle, 2002, p. 3). He also rejected the notion that genocide in Australia could have taken place. To compare the intentions of Governor Philip or Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, or any of their successors, to those of Adolf Hitler, is not only conceptually odious but wildly anachronistic. There were no gas chambers in Australia or anything remotely equivalent. The colonial authorities wanted to civilise and modernise the Aborigines, not exterminate them. (Windschuttle, 2002, p. 9) The emotional intensity of Windschuttle’s claims were such because he knew that the stakes in this debate were high. At the outset of his best – known book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History he argued that ‘the debate about Aboriginal history goes far beyond its ostensible subject: it is about the character of the nation and the calibre of the civilisation Britain brought to these shores in 1788’ (Windschuttle, 2002, p. 3). Windschuttle’s concerns were underpinned not only by a desire to counter the claims of indigenous sovereignty, but to restore the moral legitimacy of the nation and the wider civilisation from which it came. Although best known for his ‘fabrication’ thesis, Windschuttle was fundamentally motivated by a desire to prevent the ‘break-up of Australia’ (Windschuttle,

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2000a). Central to Windschuttle’s argument was the idea ‘that the principle reason massacre stories have been invented and exaggerated over the past two hundred years was to justify the policy of separating Aboriginal people from the European population’ (Windschuttle, 2000d, p. 6). Beyond this, Windschuttle claimed he was defending nothing less than ‘the legitimacy of the British occupation of the Australian continent and of its commitment to the rule of law and civilised values’ (Windschuttle, 2000b, p. 20). Mark McKenna has demonstrated how such debates about history were not merely an academic exercise or political debate far-removed from Australians’ lives (McKenna, 2002, pp. 202–15). McKenna documented the ‘culture of forgetting’ that pervaded local history and politics in the part of New South Wales in which he lived. He also showed the ways in which differing and un-reconciled versions of the past complicated social relations amongst Australians from the 1960s onwards, but particularly during the 1990s. By the turn of the new century remembering the past in Australia had become, in the words of one Bega Aboriginal woman who had her brother and sister removed to government homes, ‘a very hurting thing’ (quoted in McKenna, 2002, p. 212). So by the time the centenary of Australia’s federation came around, the public debate about its past was characterised by guilt, pain, denial and defensive pride.

Re-imagining the National Museum It was into the heat of this historical and political debate that the National Museum of Australia opened its doors in 2001. As we have seen, for some, indigenous sovereignty and newer understandings of the past threatened the legitimacy and the unity of the Australian nation. For conservatives, the National Museum of Australia held out the possibility of healing a divided nation by presenting the Australian past in a more cohesive and consensual way. But to perform this function it would first have to be removed from the intellectual grip of black-armband history. This debate about the Museum’s function fits into John Hutchinson’s understandings of the role of so-called ‘culture wars’ in creating a dynamic yet enduring sense of national identity. Hutchinson argues that we can understand these divisions ... as arising out of powerful collective experiences such as state-religious schisms; revolutions or civil wars and colonisations; and religio-national conflicts, whose consequences have been formative and memories of which have been carried by social institutions. Round such ‘memories’ rival repertoires develop as mobilisers of collective action. (Hutchinson, 2005, pp. 87–8) This much was true in turn-of-the-century Australia. But for some, the National Museum was the institution which should help transcend or even

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eradicate such ‘rival repertoires’, thereby strengthening the nation. The means of this transcendence was to shift the debate about history – and the Museum’s displays – away from a vision of plurality and towards one where an imposed consensus was paramount (Hansen, 2005). The Museum, housed in an unconventional building, was designed with three main galleries: Tangled Destinies, dealing with human interactions with the Australian environment; Nation, charting the development of Australian national identity; and First Australians, devoted to indigenous cultures of Australia. In designing the exhibits under these broad themes in the 1990s, the curators, bureaucrats and historical advisors charged with this task were conscious of the Museum’s role as a nation-building institution and the need to accommodate new understandings of the Australian past in the design of the galleries. Anticipating the opening of the Museum, the NMA’s director Dawn Casey, argued that There can be no better time to reconsider our national narrative, to negotiate our way through the conflicting demands of many stakeholders and explore new possibilities in the interpretation of Australia’s history. (Casey, 2001b, pp. 6–7) Casey also revealed something of the expectations that the museum profession had of new museums: ‘Increasingly both the museum sector and the public view the role of the museum as a fulcrum for debate and interpretation of a whole range of social and political issues in which objects become just one part in the story of a people, a culture, an event or a symbol’ (Casey, 2001a, p. iii). Sophia Milosevic Bijleveld has described the modern museum as a crucial national institution linking personal and collective memory (Bijleveld, 2006). It was this linking function that made the National Museum such a vividly-contested institution. Graeme Davison, advisor to the Museum during installation of the galleries, posed a solution to balancing the tensions between the role of a government-funded national museum presenting a singular narrative and an institution representing the nation’s diversity. Davison suggested that ‘Rather than suppressing difference by imposing an institutional consensus, might it not be better if national museums recognized that the imagined community that we call the nation is by its very nature plural and in flux?’ (Davison, 2001, p. 26). No, responded the critics, it would not be better at all. Keith Windschuttle quickly paid a visit to the newly opened Museum and had much to say. Unlike the Prime Minister, Windschuttle did not need to be even slightly diplomatic about his impressions of the NMA. ‘The building is full of cryptic symbols for the conference-going architectural cognoscenti, but it is a very uncomfortable enclosure for the typical visitor, the poor mug tax-payer who has funded it all’ (Windschuttle, 2001, p. 16). More importantly, he was critical of the so-called ‘social history’ approach taken in presenting

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Australian history. Describing the NMA as ‘a profound intellectual mistake’ Windschuttle argued: Another problem for social history – and this is one from which the National Museum suffers the most – is lack of coherence. By abandoning the traditional approach to history based on a narrative of major events and their causes, in favour of equal time for every identifiable sexual and ethnic group, history loses its explanatory power and degenerates into a tasteless blancmange of worthy sentiment. (Windschuttle, 2001, p. 16) Windschuttle’s views were indicative of conservative commentators and some Museum Council Members close to the Liberal government, even if, as the NMA’s Director Dawn Casey argued, most visitors claimed to have enjoyed their time at the Museum (Casey, 2003, p. 18). However, it was not the one-third of the Museum devoted to indigenous Australia that most irked Windschuttle (the Gallery of First Australians was, he claimed, his favourite part), but the seeming lack of a singular narrative. It was this criticism which was picked up and developed by the governmentsponsored review, delivered in July 2003. When the Review of the National Museum of Australia Its Exhibitions and Public Programs (hereafter Review) was released, it again exhibited the growing concern about fragmentation and legitimacy on the right of Australia’s political spectrum. In reflecting on the vision of the NMA, the authors of the Review understood the need to ‘give some sense of the diversity of views, customs and beliefs that occupy the shared cultural space that is modern Australia’, but noted that this risked ‘presenting an assembly of ill-coordinated fragments, merely serving to confuse the visitor’ (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 7). One of the main criticisms levelled by the Review was that the NMA failed to develop compelling narratives (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 32). This conclusion was taken up by organisations such as The Australian newspaper, which concluded that ‘primary themes in the nation’s history are absent from the National Museum of Australia, which has failed to adequately tell the story of the country’ (The Australian, 16 July 2003). On the issue of settler-indigenous conflict the Review steered a central path. The Review acknowledged the difficulty of presenting ‘darker episodes of Australian history’, but said that the Museum must do so to help create a mature citizenry. In this regard, the NMA was contrasted with another Canberra-based institution, the Australian War Memorial, although it admitted that the Memorial’s task was somewhat easier: ‘The Australian War memorial gains gravitas through recalling tragedy – its task is much easier here, in that tragedy is supportive of national mythology, not at odds with it’ (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 10). Most significantly, the Review found that there was no ‘systematic bias’ towards black-armband history or a left-leaning interpretation of the past, but that this existed only in ‘pockets’ that could be easily rectified (Carroll et al., 2003, pp. 36–5). In fact, like Windschuttle,

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the Review praised the Gallery of First Australians as one of the better parts of the Museum (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 20). What this seemed to suggest was not that the issue of indigenous history itself that irritated the Museum’s critics, but that it was the fragmentary and allegedly de-legitimising recounting of the national past that was cause for most concern. Another of the main issues which concerned the Review Panel related to the perceived lack of gravity and solemnity accorded to the presentation of Australian history. This in part rested on a misunderstanding of Benedict Anderson’s ideas as they were applied to the Nation Gallery of the Museum. Anderson’s notion of ‘the imagined political community’ had indeed been influential when conceiving the layout of the Gallery, which progressed from imagining and mapping the continent of Terra Australis, to creating a political community, to quotidian ways of perceiving Australian-ness. However, the Review Panel confused Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined’ with ‘imaginary’ in attempting to counter a perceived fragmentation of the national story: The Panel is inclined to read more consensus than plurality at the core of that national collective conscience. The concept of ‘imagined communities’, which is drawn from Benedict Anderson’s book of that title, implies that that the national character is a sort of fictitious construct, fluid and subject to rapid change, and therefore ephemeral. (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 9) This passage in the Review continued: This view underestimates the deeper continuities in culture – for instance the degree to which the portrait of the courageous warrior hero developed in Homer’s Iliad three millennia ago has shaped later images and stories, including, in the twentieth century, both the Australian Anzac legend and American Western film genre. (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 9) This link between the Australian nation and classical European and Western civilisation was important. By explicitly linking Australian identity to narratives and concepts wider than the nation alone, ‘European’ or ‘Western Civilisation’ provided a greater depth to the legitimacy of settler Australia. Such concerns guided the Chair of the Museum’s Review Panel, sociologist John Carroll, in making recommendations about the NMA’s presentation of history. The Review was overall very positive about the National Museum, given that it was only two years since it had opened. But the Review argued strongly that the Museum should work to present visitors with a (re)integrating story, in other words a ‘compelling narrative’ (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 7). This overall recommendation was interesting in light of Carroll’s previous works on Australian nationalism, collective guilt and the role and decline of narrative in the Western world. The loss of a compelling story lies at the heart of Carroll’s work dating back to the 1980s.

Nation, History, Museum 285

Writing in 1982, Carroll addressed the problem of authority in new nations. ‘New nations, like new organisations, have great difficulty establishing rites that carry much authority, for such things depend in part on time – on tradition’ (Carroll, 1982, p. 218). So for Carroll, the nation, indeed any nation – let alone Australia – would never be enough to solve this crisis of authority, although Western Civilisation could. Here he began to link symbols of Australian identity with classical European civilisation: ‘There is something of the grand drama and ethos of The Iliad in Australian Rules Football at its best’ (Carroll, 1982, p. 219). But coupled with this lack of tradition-derived authority was a growing pessimism about the role of culture in general and Australian culture in particular. A crippling sense of guilt was eroding the very foundations of Western Civilisation. ‘At the close of the second millennium the West is lost in a crisis of meaning. Like a rudderless ship it pitches and rolls in the swell of existence’ (Carroll, 1998, p. 1). The thrust of Carroll’s argument was that Western societies were fragmented, guilt-ridden and lost. Australia was no exception; and given the collective guilt that many historians and politicians were allegedly encouraging, this problem was particularly acute in Australia. But although the diagnosis was bleak, the prognosis was sunny. The answer to Australia’s (and the West’s) existential anxieties lay in the re-establishment of a cohesive and cohering narrative: ‘Without the deep structure of archetypal story, life has no meaning’ (Carroll, 2001, p. 9). In public lectures, books and the Review, Carroll stressed the need for more grand narratives, to rebuild a sense of unity and consensus that had been lost. ‘Of course, we have to recover the Dreaming. Of course, we have to recover the Stories, connect our everyday lives into them, so their pneuma may overwhelm our ordinary coffee time’ (Carroll, 2001, p. 214). Guilt then, had redemptive qualities. In this way, one battle in the overall defence of Western civilisation and the Australian nation was fought out at the National Museum of Australia. Fittingly, for a debate about history that initially had so much to do with contested land ownership, it was the land itself which became the symbol of unity and redemption. Here, according to Carroll, was a subject which provided scope for real drama; of man and woman pitted against creation: ‘Drought, bushfire, blasting heat, hurricane, and the sheer monumental vastness of nature, of oceans, cliffs, deserts, mountains, and the sky itself – much larger and brighter than in Europe – will always make a man feel a nobody on this continent’ (Carroll, 1982, p. 224). The theme of land also provided an outlet and explanation for expressions of Australian distinctiveness and grandeur beyond the Vegemite jars, Hill’s Hoist washing lines and Victa lawnmowers of the Nation Gallery’s exploration of everyday Australian symbols: Of all the continents of the world, Australia’s history is unique – its mobility and varied liaisons have shaped the development of its unusual fauna and flora, the productivity of its land, and the presence of its vast

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mineral resource base. These qualities have, in turn, influenced the national character, from the time the humans first set foot here. (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 31) Furthermore, the Review called for a greater development of this theme of human interaction with the Australian environment, a theme which it acknowledged was already well covered in the Museum. In particular, the Review argued that it was the concept of ‘land’ running through all the Galleries that should ‘provide a macro-theme interlinking the permanent exhibitions’ (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 32). The shared land of the Australian continent would link Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and link the tradition-starved settler Australians with the continuing cultures of their Aboriginal predecessors and the deep time of the continent itself. By locating the essence of Australia’s distinctiveness in its land, the Review attempted to create the Museum as a place of reconciliation; reconciling Australian humans with their occupancy of the continent and soothing their existential doubts whilst providing a fun day out: ‘The visitor, on exiting, feels awed and stunned, and reflective; more engaged than ever before by the Australian story; better understanding some of its main themes and traits, and the characteristics of the people; more respectful and curious about the past, and more thoughtful about the future. The visitor feels impelled to tell others: “You have to go there!” ’ (Carroll et al., 2003, p. 71).

Conclusion The ‘history wars’ and the debate about the style and content of the National Museum of Australia illustrate the importance of history and the past to our understanding of nationalism. But although these debates could be understood as contests between the supporters of one culture versus another, it was the contest over the legitimacy of the nation which was paramount. In Australia, debates over indigenous-settler relations posed the greatest threat to the unity and legitimacy of the present-day Australian nation. It was this threat to unity that the Museum Review sought to overcome, in part by recommending a more cohesive narrative when telling the national story and in part by connecting symbols of the Australian nation with grander themes of European and Western Civilisation. The intended result was a national institution dedicated to displaying ‘the Australian Story’ and providing visitors with a cohesive narrative in which the land of Australia itself finally gave a sense of belonging for all the humans sharing it. But in February 2008, even as the Review’s recommendations were being interpreted and implemented, the National Museum was one of the locations around the nation that screened live the new Prime Minister’s apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’. Given the conservative adherence to the unity and legitimacy

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of Australia, Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s apology arguably did more to heal the divisions of the past than the Review could have hoped for – or, more importantly, conceived of.

References The Australia Story Trust (1945) Displaying Australia. A Pictorial Survey of the Progress of a Young Nation (Sydney: The Australia Story Trust). The Australian (2003) ‘Museum Told It’s Lost the Plot’, 16 July 2003. Bijleveld, S. M. (2006) ‘Afghanistan: Re-imagining the Nation Through the Museum – the Jihad Museum in Herat’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 6, 2, 105–24. Blainey, G. (1993) ‘Drawing up a Balance Sheet of Our History’, Quadrant, July-August, 10–15. Blainey, G. (1994) A Shorter History of Australia (Milson’s Point, NSW: Mandarin). Carroll, J. (1982) Intruders in the Bush. The Australian Quest for Identity (Melbourne: Oxford University Press). Carroll, J. (1998) Ego and Soul. The Modern West in Search of Meaning (Pymble, NSW: Harper Collins Publishers). Carroll, J. (2001) The Western Dreaming. The Western World is Dying for Want of a Story (Pymble, NSW: Harper Collins Publishers). Carroll, J., R. Longes, P. Jones and P. Vickers-Rich (2003) Review of the National Museum of Australia Its Exhibitions and Public Programs. A Report to the Council of the National Museum of Australia (Canberra: Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts). Casey, D. (2001a) ‘Preface’ in D. McIntyre and K. Wehner (eds) National Museums: Negotiating Histories (Canberra: National Museum of Australia). Casey, D. (2001b) ‘The National Museum of Australia: Exploring the Past, Illuminating the Present and Imagining the Future’ in D. McIntyre and K. Wehner (eds) National Museums: Negotiating Histories (Canberra: National Museum of Australia). Casey, D. (2003) ‘Culture Wars: Museums, Politics and Controversy’, Open Museums Journal: New Museum Developments and the Culture Wars, 6, September. Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee (1994) 2001: A Report from Australia. A Report to the Council of Australian Governments by the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service). Curthoys, A. (2003) ‘Constructing National Histories’ in B. Attwood and S. Foster (eds) Frontier Conflict: the Australian Experience (Canberra: National Museum of Australia). Davison, G. (2001) ‘National Museums in a Global Age: Observations Abroad and Reflections at Home’ in D. McIntyre and K. Wehner (eds) National Museums: Negotiating Histories (Canberra: National Museum of Australia). Hansen, G. (2005) ‘Telling the Australian Story at the National Museum of Australia’, History Australia, 2, 3, 90.1–90.9. Hanson, P. (1997) The Truth. On Immigration, the Aboriginal Question, the Gun Debate and the Future of Australia (Ipswich, Qld: P. Hanson). Howard, J. (2000) ‘Practical Reconciliation’ in M. Grattan (ed.) Reconciliation. Essays on Australian Reconciliation (Melbourne: Black Inc). Howard, J. (2001) ‘Address at the Opening of the National Museum, Canberra’, copy obtained by the author, National Museum of Australia, 2003. Hutchinson, J. (2005) Nations as Zones of Conflict (London: Sage).

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Keating, P. (1993 [1992]) ‘Speech by the Honourable Prime Minister, PJ Keating MP. Australian Launch of the International Year for the World’s Indigenous People. 10 December 1992’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 3, 61, April, 4–5. McKenna, M. (2002) Looking for Blackfellas Point. An Australian History of Place (Sydney: UNSW Press). Reynolds, H. (1999) Why Weren’t We Told? A Personal Search for the Truth About Our History (Ringwood, VIC: Viking). Scruton, R. (1985) ‘Does Australia Belong to the Aborigines?’, Quadrant, 29, 1/2, January/February, 76–8. Wilson, R. (1997) Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission). Windschuttle, K. (2000a) ‘The Break-Up of Australia’, Quadrant, September, 8–16. Windschuttle, K. (2000b) ‘The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History Part I: The Invention of Massacre Stories’, Quadrant, October: 8–21. Windschuttle, K. (2000c) ‘The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History. Part II: The Fabrication of the Aboriginal Death Toll’, Quadrant, November, 17–24. Windschuttle, K. (2000d) ‘The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History. Part III: Massacre Stories and the Policy of Separatism’, Quadrant, December, 6–20. Windschuttle, K. (2001) ‘How Not to Run a Museum’, Quadrant, September, 11–19. Windschuttle, K. (2002) The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Volume One: Van Diemen’s Land, 1803–47 (Sydney: Macleay Press).

Further References Attwood, B. and S. Foster (eds) (2003) Frontier Conflict: the Australian Experience (Canberra: National Museum of Australia). Carroll, J. (1985) Guilt. The Grey Eminence Behind Character, History and Culture (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul). Elder, B. (1998 [1988]) Blood on the Wattle. Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788. Expanded Edition (Sydney: New Holland Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd). Manne, R. (2001) In Denial. The Stolen Generations and the Right (Melbourne: Black Inc). Marsh, R. (1999) ‘ “Lost”, “Stolen” or “Rescued”?’, Quadrant, June, 15–18. McGregor, R. (2006) ‘The Necessity of Britishness: Ethno-Cultural Roots of Australian Nationalism’, Nations and Nationalism, 12, 3, 493–512. McIntyre, D. and K. Wehner (eds) (2001) National Museums: Negotiating Histories (Canberra: National Museum of Australia). National Museum of Australia (2003 [2000]) ‘Statement of Aims and Objectives for Historical Interpretation in the NMA’, approved by NMA Council 1 December 2000, and 7 April 2003. Pitty, R. (1993) ‘Australian Racism after Mabo’, Beyond the Headlines, 1, 17–42. Veracini, L. (2006) ‘A Pre-history of Australia’s History Wars: The Evolution of Aboriginal History During the 1970s and 1980s’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 52, 3, 439–54.

Conclusion Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne

‘Do nations have navels?’, famously asked Ernest Gellner in his address to the Warwick Debates held on 24 October 1985. The question related to a long-standing discussion on the study of nationalism, as to whether nations had always existed or were the byproducts of specific modern historical phenomena. Navels, according to Gellner, were not essential for the emergence of nations, as there was a plethora of cases that showed us that the absence of a pre-modern ethnic past, identity and self-consciousness did not hinder the emergence of modern nationalist projects that ultimately resulted in the creation of nation-states. Estonia was one example that he offered to corroborate this argument. As far as we are concerned, this is not an issue that was worth discussing in the preceding pages, as there is already a good number of books that have reflected at length on this classical debate. This volume, on the other hand, sought to go beyond such a paradigmatic schism in the field. Our aim was to emphasise the importance of the past and, to use Gellner’s terminology, of navels – real or constructed – to the formation of modern national identities. We were, therefore, not preoccupied with the origin of the nation itself, nor with the length of its real history. Rather we tried to understand the present modern perception of the nation’s raison d’etre with its key structuring elements located in a distant past. For even though a large number of modern nations do lack a pre-modern navel that should adorn them with a perennial sense of identity and belonging, the fact that nationalists have gone out of their way to create a connection with a far-fetched past while portraying it as authentically as possible, begs the question of how important both the past and the writing of national histories is to the modern world. By dividing this book into two parts we aimed to answer that question. Part I showed how modern nations have been constructed alongside national histories; whereas Part II deliberated on present representations of national histories. Whether a nation has had a long or short history was not relevant to our argument. Rather, what we aimed to understand was how different 289

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nations have constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed its history to legitimise its perennial existence and its future ambitions. Hence the goal of this book was not to take sides in the ‘navel debate’, but to show how crucial the past is, real or imagined, to shaping national maps of identity. Amongst the contributions presented here, some have referred to old nations, others to new nations; some have alluded to real pasts, others to imagined collective memories; some have dealt with the representation of distinct historical events, others with the representation of cultural and literary artefacts. Despite this amalgamous diversity in contributions, the common thread that united these essays together was the account they gave of the use of the past made by nationalism as well as of its impact upon national identities and national projections, in the literal sense of the term. In sum, this book’s main argument was that pasts or navels, are important in the construction of nations. However, they do not have necessarily to be real: they can be imagined and socially constructed in a fundamental attempt to shape national histories and identities. Here lies the key element of the foundation and sustenance of the modern nation.

Index Aborigines 96, 276–80, 288 Ahidjo, Ahmadou 205–6, 208–22 Akhoundzadeh, Fathali 191 Alsace 140, 142–4, 146, 149 amnesia 47, 52, 58, 220 ancestors 48, 55, 71, 105, 131, 142–3, 145, 149, 151, 154, 158, 223, 230–1 Anderson, Benedict 79, 84, 87, 98, 246, 284 anti-clericalism 15 antiquity 47, 49–52, 79, 86, 166, 173 anti-Semitism 173 Anzac legend 279, 284 apartheid 69, 225–35 appropriation 10, 106, 204, 215, 220 aqa khan Kermani, Mirza 191 architecture 10, 163 art 10, 53, 55, 77, 87, 98, 102, 163 Astérix 141, 146–8, 151–4 atheism 31 authenticity 30, 78, 166, 180, 248 authoritarism 17, 63, 69, 72, 112, 121–2, 130, 133, 193–6, 210, 213 autonomy 10, 20, 41, 117, 161, 223–4, 260, 262, 264, 267–8 Aztec 10, 111–12, 118 Ben-Gurion, David 175–6 Berlin Wall 141, 152 Bible 174–9, 182 Biya, Paul 206, 211–20 boundaries 21, 127, 198, 217, 224–5, 253, 256–7, 266 Brandeis, Louis D. 177 breakfast (English– ) 2, 20, 157–69 Britishness 81 Byzantium 48–52, 58–9 capitalism 20, 148, 180 print-capitalism 94 finance-capitalism 148 Catholicism 30, 32 cattle 149, 223–34 castes 117, 132–3 Chinese Communist Party 262, 266–8

Christianity 8, 30, 47, 50, 74 citizenship 79, 96, 103, 213, 229, 233–4, 241–2, 250–4 citizen-soldier 237–51 civil liberties 212, 214 Civil War (US) 15, 86, 90, 98, 103, 140, 238–9, 343–51 civil wars 29, 40–2, 81, 112, 140, 281 clergy 47, 49, 86, 95, 120, 125, 192, 195, 211, 253 Cold War 192, 231, 255 Columbus 16, 93–107 colonialism 14, 30, 63, 207, 211, 226, 273 colonisation 48, 189, 205–8, 222, 228, 275, 279, 281 commemoration 65, 71, 74–5, 142, 150, 217, 220, 246, 253 Commonwealth 175–8, 181, 185, 277 communism 13, 20, 36, 41, 207, 272 conquest 2, 78, 93, 101, 117, 126, 160–3, 232–3, 240, 257, 279 constitutionalism 30, 32, 191 cookbooks 159, 165–7, 169–71 corruption 8, 14, 57, 82–3, 86–7, 93, 113, 212, 247 creole 16, 79, 112, 116–32 cuisine 157–69 culture culture wars 275, 281 Hebrew culture 178 Islamic culture 196–7 Darwin, Charles 115, 116, 124 Darwinism 16, 35, 103, 111 decolonisation 228 De Gaulle, Charles 139–41, 144–8 democratisation 168, 211–13, 216, 262 diaspora 46, 177–8, 191, 201 discovery 14, 93–105, 200 dynasty 11–12, 57, 79, 84–5, 189–93, 197, 267–8 Qing Dynasty 255–66 education 16, 24, 47–8, 54–5, 57, 75–6, 87–8, 91–4, 102, 114, 120, 182, 195–8, 224, 261, 265, 270

291

292

Index

elections 70–2, 132, 149–51, 200, 211, 215–16, 229, 262 elite 9, 12, 16, 48–9, 52, 55–8, 67–8, 73, 77, 112, 125–6, 160–3, 168–9, 178, 192–6, 199–200, 205, 209–10, 225, 227, 238–40, 248, 258 Empire American Empire 107 British Empire 79, 80, 82 Byzantine Empire 49–50, 59 German Empire 13 Habsburg Empire 12, 35 Mexican Empire 111 Ottoman Empire 12, 15, 17, 46–7, 49, 53, 55, 58, 189 Qing Empire 257, 265 Roman Empire 19, 162 Russian Empire 191 Soviet Empire 271 Englishness 20, 163, 168–9, 171, 243 Enlightenment 1, 9–10, 34, 40, 46–9, 51, 83, 113, 152, 183 epics 11, 102 Eretz Israel 174, 176, 178 ethnicity 31–2, 35–7, 42–3, 83, 157, 197, 275 ethnonationalism 255, 271 European Union 21, 31, 36, 141, 152 European Constitution 20, 139, 150–1 exceptionalism 31, 33, 91, 107, 152 exegesis 114, 218 exile 11–12, 40–1, 64–5, 177–80, 183, 208–13, 229–31 Exodus 81, 179–81, 188 Fallmerayer, Jakob Philipp 49–50 fascism 20, 32, 41 federation 114, 176, 207, 263, 266–8, 275, 277 First World War 40, 140, 144–5, 150, 167 flag 17, 19, 79, 182–3, 245 folklore 11, 48, 51–2, 59, 148 food 147, 150, 157–64, 167–71, 223 foreigners 124–5, 130 forgetfulness 31, 274, 285 French Revolution 112, 119, 162, 238 gender 37, 41–5, 164, 166, 169, 191, 196–9, 201–2, 240

gentry 161, 163–5, 167, 195 Gallatin, Albert 243–4 Gellner, Ernest 19, 289 globalisation 21, 141, 150–2, 158, 184 Grey, Sir George 223–4, 226, 228 guilt 167, 281, 284–5 Hadassah 177 Hegel, Georg W. Friedrich 9, 20 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 32, 35, 40 heritage 47, 51, 64, 70, 73–4, 95, 99, 103, 115, 158, 163, 169, 174–5, 178, 184, 191, 193, 200, 216, 218, 230 heroes 36–7, 64–5, 73–4, 104–7, 112, 145–7, 214 Hidalgo, Miguel 11–12 hierarchy 10, 32, 89, 161, 166, 174, 189, 201, 243 historiography 1–3, 11, 13–15, 25, 29, 30–45, 50, 65–7, 72–5. history Aboriginal History 280 black armband history 278 end of history 14, 20 history wars 274–5, 286 micro-history 21 official history 15, 50, 96 206 patriotic history 73 social history 67, 166, 282–3 universal history 8–10, world history 21, 53–4, 88 Hellenism 47, 50, 52 Hobbes, Thomas 8 Hobsbawm, Eric 35, 77–8 holiday 17, 106, 112, 181–2, 185–7 Holocaust 36, 142, 153 Howard, John 274, 277, 279 iconography 95, 159 identity 1–3, 8, 10, 13, 32–44, 47–8, 51, 53, 72, 77–90, 96, 99, 103, 107, 123, 139–41, 153–63, 193–201, 211, 219–20, 223, 227, 243–4, 248, 255–9, 271, 281–5, 287–90 independence 1–2, 10–12, 14, 17, 41, 63, 78–80, 83–6, 106, 112–14, 117–22, 132, 172, 176, 183, 198, 205–12, 215, 217–18, 229, 243, 247, 258–62, 264–6, 269–71 idioms 12–13, 16, 21, 232

Index 293 immigrants 9, 87, 101–3, 106, 118, 124–30 imperialism 17, 30, 69, 119, 131, 169, 171, 225, 233, 256, 259–60, 265, 268, 270, 276, 279 inferiority 32, 120, 132 inheritance 116, 124–6, 205, 240 intellectuals 9–11, 13–14, 46–53, 58, 62–5, 69–71, 86, 93, 112, 119, 152, 190–2, 196–8 Iranianness 190–3, 198, 201 Islam 15, 17, 22, 25, 27, 53–54, 56–57, 60, 189–202 Islamism 17, 189, 198–9 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 174–5 Jackson, Andrew 94–5, 97–9 Jacobinism 10, 119, 148, 193 Joan of Arc 140, 142, 145–6, 149–51 Judaism 174, 177, 185–8 Kai-shek, Chiang 258–62, 264, 266–7, 269–70 Kemal, Mustafa 57, 59 Kenyatta, Jommo 63 Khatami, Mohammad 200 Korais, Adamantios 15, 46–9, 52 language 10–12, 21, 31–2, 53–5, 59, 70, 81–3, 86–7, 113–17, 122, 124, 130, 158, 160–1, 189, 193–200, 213, 243, 255, 258, 272–3 Larzac movement 144 legend 77, 146, 279, 284 legitimacy 14, 21, 51, 57, 65, 70–1, 77, 106, 148, 192–3, 195, 199, 201, 208–11, 215, 217–18, 275, 277, 279–86 liberalisation 205, 211, 214 liberation 14, 32, 47, 62, 64, 70–3, 78, 143, 146, 153, 210, 212, 219, 229–34, 268–70 Lincoln, Abraham 90, 248 literature 10, 33, 48, 52–3, 55, 77, 87, 163–5, 223, 238 Maastricht Treaty 139, 147–52 Machiavelli, Nicolo 7 Manifest Destiny 88–9, 103 Marxism 37, 258–9

Masada 11, 182 Mbeki, Thabo 233–4 media 52, 64, 71, 149–51, 165, 204–5, 210–11, 214–15 mediation 31, 33 Megali Idea 51 memory collective memory 3, 8–9, 62, 150, 179, 204, 206, 218, 290 long memory 96 popular memory 52, 241 memorialism 62 memorial law 218 mestizo 16, 111, 114–32 Michelet, Jules 35, 112, 119, 139 middle-class 195–6, 200 migration 20–1, 35, 50, 81, 94, 106, 151, 160, 250 minority 130, 189, 213, 229, 256–9, 262, 264, 270–1 Minzu 257–8 mission 30–3, 38, 50–2, 57, 83, 86–90, 141, 151–3, 164, 210, 224–6, 245 Mitterrand, François 144, 148–9, 152, 213 mobilisation (popular) 192, 215–16 model 11, 64–5, 71, 78–9, 83–5, 90, 114, 139–42, 151–3, 159, 191, 193, 198–9, 243, 262, 268 modernity 46, 56, 58, 196–8, 245 Molina Enríquez, Andrés 121–33 Montesquieu 10 monuments 64, 143, 146, 150, 153, 185, 217, 228, 244, 253, 274, 285 motherland 2, 30, 55–6, 270 Mugabe, Robert 15, 65, 69, 72 Multiculturalism 280 Museum 34, 152, 274–86 myth origin myths 104, 159 martial myths 239, 245 national myth 95–6, 99, 255, 283 narratives class 36 counter-narratives 2, 32, 40 ethnic narratives 35 master narratives 2, 14, 33–7, 40–2 national narratives 29, 32–3, 36–9, 275–6

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Index

Nationalisation of Oil 189, 192 nationalism American nationalism 77, 80, 82, 85, 237, 239, 240, 243, 245–6, 249–51 anti-colonial nationalism 12, 78 banal nationalism 19–20 Chinese nationalism 257, 268 heterogeneous nationalism 200 Iranian nationalism 189–201 Jewish nationalism 172–3 hot nationalism 19 methodological nationalism 30, 38 patriarchal nationalism 68 proto-nationalism 10, 112, 114 radical nationalism 205–7 Westernised nationalism 190, 192–3, 196–7, 199–200 nationality 25–6, 32, 77, 113–25, 130, 133, 157–59, 255–6, 262, 267–70 Nation-state 10, 13–14, 16–22, 26–7, 62, 188, 194–7, 200–1, 225, 228–30, 238, 255–7, 268–71, 289 Native Americans 11, 16, 95–6, 99, 101–6, 159 newspapers 84, 204–6, 210, 214, 217–20, 280, 283 New World 93–5, 98–9, 109–110, 240. Nora, Pierre 216 novel 52, 145, 151, 174, 204, 228–32 Ogot, Bethwel 64 Old World 1, 3, 82–9 orientalism 53, 193 origins 34, 52, 56, 77–8, 90–1, 96, 159, 193, 200, 207, 238, 255 Orozco, Wistano Luis 126–7 O’Sullivan, John 88–90 otherness 96 Pagnol, Marcel 145, 149 Paine, Thomas 10, 82–9 parliament 18, 30, 33, 79, 82, 84, 153, 181, 184, 200, 205, 215, 232, 275–80 past mythologised past 163 pre-historical past 96 pre-Islamic past 53–4, 57, 193–7 sub-national 223–32

patriotism 11, 19–20, 47, 62–73, 81, 121–5, 146, 163, 167, 197–201, 210, 216, 243, 248, 268, 278 pensions 245–9 Persianness 193 Pétain, Philippe 140, 143–5 pluralism 17, 73, 205 political party 204, 208, 214, 216 positivism 113, 118–19 posterity 7, 98 propaganda 40, 82, 205, 216 progress 8–12, 30–4, 77, 89, 102, 113–16, 119, 130, 173, 178, 190–1, 197, 212, 271, 277, 279, 284 Qing Dynasty see dynasty race 10, 16, 35–9, 42, 46, 53, 56, 63, 70, 106, 113–26, 129–30 Ramírez, Ignacio 111, 113 reconciliation 210, 276–7, 286–7 Reconquista 30 redemption see forgetfulness rehabilitation 51, 217–20 religion 8, 13, 33–7, 42–5, 81–3, 107, 115–18, 122, 164, 169, 182, 189–94, 197, 243, 265 Renan, Ernest 77, 115–16, 140, 145 repression 31, 141, 207, 216–19 reunification 41, 148, 207–8 revolution American Revolution 104, 239–41 Constitutional Revolution 189–92 French Revolution 112, 119, 162, 238 revolutionary war 132, 237–41, 246–9 Riva Palacio, Vicente 114–21 romanticism 30, 119 school 16–17, 19, 245, 52–5, 59–60, 66–7, 77–8, 87–96, 107–9, 113, 145–6, 149, 153, 170, 175, 184, 195, 226–8. secession 15, 86, 180, 257–70 Second World War 32, 36, 40–1, 153, 167, 275 self-determination 13, 27, 107, 257–70 Shah, Reza 191–8 Sierra, Justo 118–21, 130–2 sinocentricism 255, 258–9

Index 295 slavery 11, 69, 81, 84, 87, 90, 96, 101, 120, 131, 149–53, 180–2, 233, 240, 245 Smith, Anthony 78, 196 soil 87, 108, 140–5, 158, 161, 180, 226 sovereignty 51, 70–3, 79, 112, 127, 140, 147–8, 181–3, 194, 265, 279–81 Spencer, Herbert 118–23, 129–31 statue 77, 146, 244, 250 stereotype 10, 37, 106, 209, 240 Stolen Generation 276–7 Stora, Benjamin 219 suicide (national) 224–6 symbol 3, 17, 36, 78, 94, 98, 111, 121, 146–7, 177–86, 190, 193–4, 198–9, 205, 209, 214, 217–21, 237, 240, 244–53, 260, 264, 275, 282–6 ethno-symbols 175, 179–86 tabula rasa 95–8 Taylor, Charles 7 temple of time 96–8 terra nullius 277 territory 1, 35, 89, 101, 112, 119, 122, 128, 130, 142–3, 193–4, 199, 208, 215, 223, 256, 260–4, 267–8 terroir 158 textbook 26, 54–5, 57, 59, 88, 93–107

theology 39 Thucydides 7–8 Tobacco Protest Movement 189–91 Torah 173, 176, 179, 181 translation 47, 54–5, 115 transnationalism 12, 21, 35–8, 41–2, 190 trauma 141, 154–6, 209, 219–20 unification 13, 117, 260–3 Union des Populations du Cameroun 204–20 upheaval 9, 18–9, 41, 119, 213 utopia 14, 20–2, 46, 228 Vercingétorix 142, 145–6, 150–1 veterans 244–50 Victoria (Queen) 163–9 Webster, Daniel 237 Westernisation 190, 195–6 Willard, Emma 93, 96–9 Xhosa people 223–7 Yat-sen, Sun 15, 258–60, 267 Zedong, Mao 15, 258, 269 Zionism 24, 172–88