Contents
- 1 Ambiguity in usage
- 2 History
- 3 Defining nation
- 4 See also
- 5 Notes
- 6 References
- 7 Further reading
- 8 External links
A nation is a grouping of people who share real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin, often possessing or seeking its own government.[1] The development and conceptualization of a nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,[2] although nationalists would trace nations into the past along uninterrupted lines of historical narrative.
Benedict Anderson argued that nations were "imagined communities" because "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", and traced their origins back to vernacular print journalism, which by its very nature was limited with linguistic zones and addressed a common audience.[3] Although "nation" is also commonly used in informal discourse as a synonym for state or country, a nation is not identical to a state. Countries where the social concept of "nation" coincides with the political concept of "state" are called nation states.
Ambiguity in usage
In the strict sense, terms such as "nation," "ethnos," and "people" (as in "the Danish people") denote a group of human beings. The concepts of nation and nationality have much in common with ethnic group and ethnicity, but have a more political connotation, since they imply the possibility of a nation-state. Country denominates a geographical territory,[citation needed] whereas state expresses a legitimized administrative and decision-making institution. Confusingly, the terms national and international are used as technical terms applying to states. International law, for instance, applies to relations between states, and occasionally between states on the one side, and individuals or legal persons on the other. Likewise, the United Nations represent sovereign states, while nations are free, per se, are not admitted.[4]
History
Etymology and early use
The English word "nation" comes from the French word "nation" (itself derived from the Latin term natio) (nātĭō, stem nātiōn-), meaning:[5][6]
- The action of being born; birth; or and
- The goddess personifying birth; or
- A breed (like a dog), stock, kind, species, race; or
- A tribe, or (rhetorically, any) set of people (contemptuous); or
- A nation or people.
As an example of how the word natio was employed in classical Latin, consider the following quote from Cicero's Philippics Against Mark Antony in 44 BC. Cicero contrasts the external, inferior nationes ("races of people") with the Roman civitas ("community").:
"Omnes nationes servitutem ferre possunt: nostra civitas non potest."
("All races are able to bear enslavement, but our community cannot.")[7]
St. Jerome used this "genealogical-historical term ... in his Latin translation of New Testament to denote non-Christians — that is, 'others.'"[8] An early example of the use of the word "nation" in conjunction with language and territory is provided in 968 by Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, who, while confronting Nicephorus II, the Byzantine emperor on behalf of his patron Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, declared:
"The land...which you say belongs to your empire belongs, as the nationality and language of the people proves, to the kingdom of Italy.'" (Emphasis added.)[9]
Although Liutprand was writing in Latin, his native tongue was Lombard, a Germanic language.
A significant early use of the term nation, as natio, was at mediaeval universities (see: nation (university)), to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all at the University of Paris, who were all born within a pays, spoke the same language and expected to be ruled by their own familiar law. In 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson was twice elected procurator for the French natio (i.e. the French-born Francophone students at the University). The division of students into a natio was also adopted at the University of Prague, where from its opening in 1349 the studium generale was divided among Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish nations.
Political nation and the constitution of the state
In the domain of political sciences, the political nation is the holder of the sovereignty which shapes the fundamental norms governing the functioning of the state.
From the French Revolution up to today, the differences and similarities between the concepts of "political nation" and "people" have been object of heated debates. A related debate concerns the concepts of national sovereignty and popular sovereignty.
A classical distinction exemplifies "national sovereignty" in the French Constitution of 1791. In this system, sovereignty is held by a parliament elected by census suffrage. This contrasts with the Constitution of 1793, in which the population is understood as a conjunct of individuals. This idea would eventually lead to direct democracy and universal suffrage. Nevertheless, these sense already started to get blurred in the very same revolutionary period. Many authors employed the words with divergent meanings. Following Guillaume Bacot,[10] the differences started to become merely a matter of terminology, and between 1789 and 1794 the unified revolutionary concept of sovereignty was used.
"Nation" and "people" were used In 1789 by the abbot Sieyès as synonyms, with a socio-economic meaning. But only shortly thereafter, he changed the meaning of his words, establishing a fundamental difference for his ideas of sovereignty and the constitutional state. He defined the nation then as emanating from natural law, prior to the state. "People" was determined as following from the concept of nation after the creation of the State. For Sieyès, the nation is the holder of sovereignty, which it exerces through the pouvoir constituant. After the establishment of a constitution, "people" is defined as the holder of the pouvoir constitué. In short, the people is defined by Seyès as a nation organized by a constitution.
Nicolas de Condorcet only uses the word "people", but he agrees with Seyès in emphasizing the dinstinction between pouvoir constituent and pouvoir constitué as the basis for the functioning of a liberal and democratic state.
For those two authors, the role of holder of sovereignty ("nation" or "people", as the case may be) is exhausted after the use of the pouvoir constituent". What remains is only a reminder of the foundation of the State, which could only become manifest in exceptional case, e.g. rebellion against a tyrant.
The ideas of Sieyès and Condorcet lay the foundation for a basic idea of a constitutional state, still common today: this kind of state has no sovereign (cf. Martin Kriele, Ignacio de Otto)
In international relations, the nation is not a subject in international law, but the State is.
Cultural nation
The concept of cultural nation poses one of the major problems in the humanities since there is no consensus how to define it. A base line would be to say that the members of a cultural nation are aware of constituting an ethical-political body together, which is differentiated from others by the members sharing a number of defining cultural features. Those features can include language, religion, tradition, or shared history. All this can be taken as a sign of a historically evolved distinct culture. The question whether a nation needs to have an associated territory is subject of debate.
The concept of cultural nation is normally coupled with a historical doctrine taking as a principle that all humans can be divided into groups called nations. In this sense, we are dealing with an ethical and philosophical doctrine which is at the basis of the ideology of nationalism. The members of a nation are distinguished by a common identity and generally by a shared origin and the sense of common ancestry.
National identity specially refers to the distinction of specific features of a group. A vast array of different criteria are used, with a range of different applications. Like this, small differences in pronunciation or different dialects can be sufficient to categorize someone as a member of a different nation. On the other hand, some persons can have diverging personalities and beliefs, live in different places and speak different languages and still see each other as members of the same nation. Furthermore, there are cases in which a group of persons defines itself as a nation not based on the features they have, but for the features they lack or dislike. The feeling of belonging to a nation is then used as a defense against other groups, even if these other groups would appear to be closer in matters of ideology cultural practices. Finally, members of a nation can emphasize their common history despite ethnic and linguistic differences, as is the case of Switzerland, which sees it self as a "Willensnation" (nation by will).
The cultural nation and the state
A state which identifies itself explicitly as the home of a cultural nation is a nation-state. Many of the modern states are in this category or try to legitimize their existence in this way, although there might be disputes and contradictions as to the appropriateness of this. Because so many of the states are nation-states, the words "nation", "country", and "state" are often used synonymously.
If the cultural nation is conceptualized as exclusively ethnic, and not as requiring a territory, a number of nations without land can be found. A prominent example would be the "gypsy nation"-- a cultural nation can exist without having an independent state, and not all independent states are cultural nations. Many independent states are simply administrative unions of different cultural nations or peoples.
Other examples of cultural nations without states are the Jews before the creation of the state of Israel. On the other hand, states like Belgium consist of several cultural nations, most prominently Flemish and Walloons. The question of whether the state of Canada harbours one cultural nation or two (English Canadian and Québécois) has been object of political debate as well. It could also be said that the nations of the English, Scottish and Welsh are also nations without states as they exists as a larger sovereign state known as the United Kingdom.
Liberalism and the nation
Liberalism, starting in the 17th century with authors like John Locke was the main philosophical current which alimented systematic theories of nationhood and its political implementations. Opposing the theoretical principles of the Ancien Régime, the 17th century liberals called into question the bases of absolute monarchism, and especially the sovereignty of the monarch. They introduced the concept of "citizen", to replace the older notion of "subject". Furthermore, the sovereignty passed from the hands of the absolute monarch into the hands of the nation. The criteria for nationhood were based on rationalism, individual liberty and equality before the law, largely ignoring ethnical or cultural considerations. Thus, the concept of nation employed was the political nation, and not the cultural nation.
In the American Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Human Rights, the requirements for nation formation were the same for everybody. The will of the individuals to constitute a political community was sufficient to form a nation.
Romanticism and the nation
The military victories of Napoleon Bonaparte, who in theory pretended to extend the values inherited from the French Revolution, led to a surge of nationalist reactions against the invader. German nationalism stood out and rejected American and French liberalism, leading to a different conceptualization of nation, the cultural nation.
The principal proponents of German nationalism were intellectuals and writers following idealism and romanticism, such as Herder or Fichte. This current defined essentially in opposition to the values of aforementioned Revolutions. Against rational change towards progress and justice it put the weight of history and traditions; against cosmopolitism, the particularity of each people; against reason, instinct.
The nation as defined by these theorists has an inalienable right to give itself its own political organization, i.e. constitute a state. But in distinction to the liberal model of the United States or France, this type of nation is thought to be beyond the sum of individuals with the will to form a nation. Every people thus has its own traits which define it and serve to distinguish it from other peoples. This cultural personality (Volkgeist (Herder)) allows the people to identify who is the political subject that can legitimately constitute the state. But this identity cannot be seen by the mere expression of the will of a group of individuals at a given moment. It is something more transcendent, given that the people at the base of the romanticist nation are seen as a living and persisting organism, and a moral entity greater than the sum of its parts. For German romanticist nationalist, the Volksgeist was objective, while universal suffrage was subjective. That is to say, the conception of romanticists was the exact opposite of the ideas earlier brought forward by the liberals.
The socialist nation
Marx and Engels considered nation states as a product of "bourgeois revolution" and a further step within the logic of their theory of historical materialism. Given their importance, they considered nation states a better starting point for the subsequent gradual evolution towards socialism than the former "nations without history" because the nation states had a higher number of proletarians.
In 1917, after the Russian Revolution. the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power. Inspired by internationalism, they put terms to the Russian nationalism, up to then very influential. Nevertheless, national interests continued to be important in practice afterwards, and the soviet leadership of the Communist International frequently covered up national interests.