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Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction

Throughout history, humanity has borne witness to the political and moral challenges that arise when people place national identity above allegiance to geo-political states or international communities. This book discusses the concept of nations and nationalism from social, philosophical, geological, theological, and anthropological perspectives. It examines nationalist conflicts past and present, including recent struggles in the Balkans and the Middle East. Above all, this fascinating and comprehensive work clearly shows how feelings of nationalism are an inescapable part of being human.
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Steven Grosby

A Very Short Introduction


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Acknowledgements ix
List of illustrations xi


The problem 1
What is a nation? 7
The nation as social relation 27
Motherland, fatherland, and homeland 43
The nation in history 57
Whose god is mightier? 80
Human divisiveness




Further reading
Index 135



This page intentionally left blank


Of the many scholars whose work on nations and nationalism has
influenced my thinking on these subjects, three merit special
mention: John Hutchinson, Anthony Smith, and Edward Shils.
From John Hutchinson, I have acquired a greater appreciation for
the component of cultural symbolism in the formation of the
nation. The important work of Anthony Smith must be the point
of departure for anyone wanting to understand nations and
nationalism, as Smith has clarified the problems of this entire field
of study. Over the years, I have returned again and again to the
writings of Edward Shils, understanding better each time his
insight that all societies consist of a continual interplay of creativity,
discipline, acceptance, and refusal, against a shifting scene of the
different pursuits of humanity. I gratefully acknowledge a research
fellowship from the Earhart Foundation that afforded me the time
to complete this book.

This page intentionally left blank

List of illustrations


Shrine to the Japanese
sun goddess at Ise

8 ‘Proto-Hebrew’ alphabet
from ‘Izbet Sartah

© Ancient Art and Architecture


Map of Kurdistan


3 The regions of France 23

9 The


5 The Arc de Triomphe


© Richard Glover/Corbis


The Oregon territory



The Merneptah Stele


Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
© Ancient Egypt Picture Library


© Bibliothèque Nationale,


7 Memorial at Yad Vashem,


© World Religions Photo


© Martin Leissl/Visum/Panos

4 The Armenian

6 The longbow

Journal of the Institute of
Archaeology of Tel Aviv
University, Tel Aviv

Mary of Czestochowa 85
© akg-images

The Yasukuni shrine to
war dead in Tokyo
© Ancient Art and Architecture

The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions
the earliest opportunity.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter 1
The problem

What is so important about the existence of nations? Throughout
history, humans have formed groups of various kinds around
criteria that are used to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’. One such group
is the nation. Many thousands, indeed millions, have died in wars
on behalf of their nation, as they did in World Wars I and II during
the 20th century, perhaps the cruellest of all centuries. This is one of
the reasons why it is so important to understand what a nation is:
this tendency of humanity to divide itself into distinct, and often
conflicting, groups.
Evidence of humans forming large, territorially distinct societies
can be observed from our first written records. Writings from the
Sumerian civilization of the area of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
from approximately 2500 BCE record beliefs that distinguished the
‘brothers of the sons of Sumer’, those of Sumerian ‘seed’, from
foreigners. During the 16th century BCE, Egyptians thought
themselves to be distinct from both the ‘Asiatics’ to their east and
the Nubians to their south.

I [the Egyptian Pharaoh Ka-mose] should like to know for
what purpose is my strength . . . I sit here [in Thebes] while
both an Asiatic and a Nubian have his slice of Egypt . . . A


man cannot dwell properly when despoiled by the taxes of
the savages. I will grapple with him, and rip open his belly.
My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatics.
From a speech of Pharaoh Ka-mose


In the early Chinese writings from the period of the Warring
States (481–221 BCE) to the Qin and Han Periods (221 BCE to
220 CE), distinctions were drawn between the self-described
superior Chinese and those who were viewed by them to be less
than human aliens, the Di and the Rohn. In the tenth chapter of
the book of Genesis, there is recognition of territorial and
linguistic divisions of humanity into what the ancient Israelites
called gôyim.

These are the sons of Shem according to their clans and
languages, in their lands according to their nations (gôyim).
These are the clans of the sons of Noah according to their
lineage in their nations (gôyim).
Genesis 10:31–32

In the 5th century BCE, the historian Herodotus asserted a
‘common Greekness’ among the Hellenes.

Then there is our common Greekness: we are one in blood
and one in language; those shrines of the gods belong to us
[both the Spartans and the Athenians] all in common, and
the sacrifices in common, and there are our habits, bred of a
common upbringing.
Herodotus, The History


Plato and Aristotle divided humanity between Hellenes and
bárbaroi, the barbarian peoples from Asia Minor. The Greek
‘bárbaros’ may have its origin as an onomatopoeic designation for
the foreign speech of the peoples from Asia Minor that was
incomprehensible to the Hellenes. However, in the aftermath of
Greek wars with Persia, it acquired a tone of contempt that
continues to this day in our use of the term ‘barbarian’. Moreover, in
his description of the ideal republic, Plato described a familiarity
that bound together all those born as Hellenes, as if they were all
members of the same familial household. As a consequence, he
thought the barbarians were not only foreign to the Hellenes but
also their enemies by ‘nature’.

I assert that the Greek stock (génos) is, with respect to itself,
its own [as if of the same household] and akin; and with
Greeks fight with barbarians and barbarians with Greeks,
we’ll assert that they are at war and are enemies by nature.
Plato, The Republic

Plato used the term génos to refer to this familiarity that bound
together all those born as Hellenes. What is the character of those
societies designated by such terms as the biblical Hebrew gôy and
the Greek génos? These societies have something to do with birth,
territory, and being related in some way, a kinship of some kind.
Were these ancient societies ‘nations’?
Such divisions, where one group differentiates itself from and
opposes another, continue at the beginning of the 21st century: both
Chechens and Ukrainians consider themselves to be different from
Russians; Kurds distinguish themselves from both Iraqis and
Turks; the Taiwanese seek an existence separate from mainland
China; Slovaks and Czechs have separated, forming distinct

The problem

respect to the barbarian, foreign and alien. Then when


national states; Kashmir is considered by some not to be part of
India; and so on. The goal of this book is to examine this tendency
of humans to separate themselves from one another into those
distinct societies that we call nations.
Having recognized this, it must also be acknowledged that human
beings exhibit another tendency, when they engage in activities in
which it seems not to matter who were their parents, where they
where born, or what language they speak. These activities, rather
than asserting divisions within humanity, bring people together.
For example, scientists are concerned with understanding the
physical facts of the universe, such as the nature of light. Light
itself is not English, French, or German; and there is no English,
French, or German scientific method. There is only science. To
speak of a supposedly racial or national scientific method, as when
the Nazis insisted that there was an ‘Aryan science’, is to betray
the character of science by introducing considerations that have
no place in understanding the physical aspects of the universe.
Other notable examples of activities and their corresponding
conceptions that bring humans together are the monotheistic
religions and commerce. Furthermore, throughout history,
empires, such as the Roman and Ottoman, have sought to unify
their peoples as a political alternative to nations. Thus, while an
individual often understands himself or herself as a member of a
particular nation, one may also recognize oneself as a part of
If a proper examination of the question ‘what is a nation?’ requires
consideration of the tendency of humans to assert distinctions, then
it must also take into account those activities that unify humanity.
To fail to do so will only result in a misapprehension of the
significance of the nation in human affairs; and it is precisely an
inquiry into that significance that is the focus of this book. We are
concerned, above all, with the question ‘what does the existence of
nations tell us about human beings?’ But what is a nation, and what
is nationalism?

Many wrongly use the term ‘nationalism’ as a synonym for ‘nation’.
Nationalism refers to a set of beliefs about the nation. Any
particular nation will contain differing views about its character;
thus, for any nation there will be different and competing beliefs
about it that often manifest themselves as political differences.
Some may view their nation as standing for individual liberty, while
others may be willing to sacrifice that liberty for security. Some may
welcome immigrants, and support policies that make it easy for
them to become citizens; while others may be hostile to
immigration. To take another example, consider disputes today in
India. Some members of that nation have a narrow, intolerant view
of their country by insisting that it should have only one religion,
Hinduism; while others think that there should be freedom of
religion such that Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians are rightly
members of the nation.

In contrast to nationalism, the nation is a particular kind of society.
But what kind of society is the nation? The answer to this question
will be pursued in the next chapter.
However, clarifying further what we mean by the terms ‘nation’
and ‘nationalism’, and addressing the other questions raised
briefly in this first chapter, involve other related problems: what is
a social relation?; what is a territory?; what is kinship?; the

The problem

Distinctive of nationalism is the belief that the nation is the only
goal worthy of pursuit – an assertion that often leads to the belief
that the nation demands unquestioned and uncompromising
loyalty. When such a belief about the nation becomes predominant,
it can threaten individual liberty. Moreover, nationalism often
asserts that other nations are implacable enemies to one’s own
nation; it injects hatred of what is perceived to be foreign, whether
another nation, an immigrant, or a person who may practise
another religion or speak a different language. Of course, one need
not view one’s own nation and its relation to other nations in such
a manner.


appearance of the nation in history; the relation of the nation to
religion; and the tendency of humanity to divide itself into
different nations. Each of these problems will be taken up in the
chapters that follow.


Chapter 2
What is a nation?

The nation is a territorial community of nativity. One is
born into a nation. The significance attributed to this biological fact of birth into the historically evolving, territorial
structure of the cultural community of the nation is why the
nation is one among a number of forms of kinship. It differs
from other forms of kinship such as the family because of the
centrality of territory. It differs from other territorial societies such as a tribe, city-state, or various ‘ethnic groups’ not
merely by the greater extent of its territory, but also because
of its relatively uniform culture that provides stability, that
is, continuation over time.

There are a number of complications to this definition of the nation
that require careful examination.

Time, memory, and territory
Nations emerge over time as a result of numerous historical
processes. As a consequence, it is a pointless undertaking to attempt
to locate a precise moment when any particular nation came into
existence, as if it were a manufactured product designed by an


engineer. Let us examine why this is so. All nations have historical
antecedents, whether tribe, city-state, or kingdom. These
historically earlier societies are important components in the
formation of nations. For example, the English nation emerged out
of the historically earlier societies of the Saxons, Angles, and
Normans. However, these historical antecedents are never merely
just facts, because key to the existence of the nation are memories
that are shared among each of those many individuals who are
members of the nation about the past of their nation, including
about those earlier societies.
There would, for example, have been no nation of ancient Israel had
there not been memories about the past, such as the exodus from
Egypt, Moses and his bronze snake (which was kept in the
Jerusalem Temple until the reign of King Hezekiah (714–686
BCE) ), and the reigns of David and Solomon. There would have
been no nation of England had there not been memories about the
Saxon King Alfred (849–899 CE) and the ‘good old law’. Likewise,
memories about the Piasts (10th–12th centuries CE) and their
kingdom were components in the emergence of Poland as a nation,
as were those about the Yamato Kingdom (4th–7th centuries CE),
with its worship of the sun goddess Amaterasu at Ise, for the
Japanese nation.
The events described by such memories may not be factually
accurate: for example, the ten plagues in the ancient Israelite
account of the exodus from Egypt, or that the Japanese emperor is a
descendant of Amaterasu. Every nation has its own understanding
of its distinctive past that is conveyed through stories, myths, and
history. Whether historically accurate or not, these memories
contribute to the understanding of the present that distinguishes
one nation from another. This component of time – when an
understanding of the past forms part of the present – is
characteristic of the nation and is called ‘temporal depth’.
These memories also form a part of the conception that one has

of oneself. As the mind of the individual develops within various
contexts, such as the family or different educational institutions, it
seeks out those various and fluctuating traditions that are ‘at hand’.
The child learns, for example, to speak the language of his or her
nation and what it means to be a member of that nation as
expressed through its customs and laws. These traditions become
incorporated into the individual’s understanding of the self. When
those traditions that make up part of one’s self-conception are
shared by other individuals as part of their self-conception, one is
then both related to those other individuals, and aware of the
relation. The relation itself, for example living in the same
geographical area or speaking a common language, is what is meant
by the term ‘collective consciousness’. This term in no way implies
the existence of a group mind or a combination of biological
instincts, as if humans were a colony of ants. Rather, it refers to a
social relation of each of a number of individuals as a consequence of
those individuals participating in the same evolving tradition.

What is a nation?

1. The main sanctuary of the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu at Ise


When those individuals not only participate in the same tradition
but also understand themselves as being different from those who
do not, then there exists a self-designating shared belief, which is
called a ‘collective self-consciousness’, that is, a distinctive culture.
Properties or qualities of a tradition are recognized which
distinguish it from any other; they are the boundaries of the social
relation that allow us to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’. To return to
our examples, those who accept, and by doing so participate in, the
tradition of the Israelite exodus from Egypt distinguish themselves
from those who do not. Those who worship the Japanese sun
goddess Amaterasu distinguish themselves from those who do not.
Those who speak one language understand themselves to be
different from those who speak a different language. The nation is a
social relation of collective self-consciousness.
This distinguishing, shared self-awareness is expressed in and
influenced by the everyday conduct of the individuals who make up
the social relation of the nation, for example the clothes one wears,
the songs one sings, the language one speaks, or the religion one
observes. It is sustained by various institutions, such as the
Jerusalem Temple for ancient Israel, or the shrine at Ise for Japan,
or the Parliament for England, that bear those traditions around
which the social relation of the nation is formed. Those institutions
provide a structure for the nation. Thus, the nation is formed
around shared, self-designating beliefs that have such a structure.
However, the nation is formed around shared traditions that are not
merely about a distinctive past, but a spatially situated past. Where
there is a spatial focus to the relation between individuals, then
place becomes the basis by which to distinguish one person from
another. The inhabitants of a location understand themselves to be
related to those whose self-understanding contains a reference to
that location. The location, thus, is no longer merely an area of
space; it has become a space with meaning: a territory. Usually this
self-understanding revolves around birth in a territory. One thereby
recognizes oneself to be related to those who have also been born in

that territory, even if they were born before you. In such a situation,
there exists a territorially formed ‘people’ that is believed to have
existed over time; and this is what is meant by the term ‘nation’.
This relation is conveyed by variation of a term that simultaneously
refers to both the territory and its population, for example EnglandEnglish, France-French, Germany-Germans, Canada-Canadians,
Kurdistan (literally, ‘land of the Kurds’)-Kurds, and so forth. This
variation implies the following conception: a people has its land,
and a land has its people. The nation is a social relation with both
temporal depth and bounded territory.

However, the characteristics (and the traditions that bear them)
that contribute to the self-image of the individual are many and
varied. Clearly, not all aspects of the self and the many social
relations one forms are about being a member of a nation. If one is a
scientist, one understands oneself as participating in a world
community of scientists pursuing physical, biological, or
mathematical truths. If one is an adherent to a monotheistic world
religion such as Christianity or Islam, then one may understand
oneself in terms of universal brotherhood. However, central to the
existence of the nation is the tendency of humanity to form
territorially distinct societies, each of which is formed around its
own cultural traditions of continuity. The nation is a territorial

What is a nation?

The act of seeking out and laying a claim to a past and its location
establishes continuity between that past and its location with the
present and its location. This continuity is viewed as justifying the
order of the present because it is understood as necessarily
containing that past. For example, during the early 20th century,
many Jews thought that modern Israel could only be located in the
area of the eastern Mediterranean because that was where their
past – ancient Israel – had existed. The belief in such a continuity
provides an understanding of the self and its place in the world.
When one says, ‘I am English’, one recognizes, perhaps often
implicitly, various characteristics about oneself, for example having
been born in the territory of England, which makes one English.

relation of collective self-consciousness of actual and imagined


The nation, kinship, and community
There are usually other understandings of the nation that support
the belief in its continuity. It may be understood as having to do
with the eternal, hence continuous, order of the universe, usually as
an act of the gods, for example the Sinhalese belief that Sri Lanka is
uniquely sanctified as a Buddhist land because of the acts of the
Buddha on the island, or that the United States of America
embodies the order of God’s nature as proclaimed in the
Declaration of Independence. Often the continuity of the nation is
thought to be a result of a supposed descent from a common
ancestor, examples of which are the ancient Israelite belief that the
Israelites were descendants of Abraham, the belief that the
Japanese are descendants of the first emperor, the Romanian belief
that the Romanians are descendants of the ancient Dacians, and,
for China, the belief that there is a Han race. Such beliefs in a
supposedly common descent are in many cases without factual
basis; yet they appear repeatedly throughout history. What
accounts for their persistence; and how do such beliefs help us to
understand what is a nation?
Humans are preoccupied with vitality; that is, a concern with the
generation, transmission, sustenance, and protection of life itself.
The obvious social relation formed around this preoccupation is the
family. However, the numerous individual families of the nation
understand themselves to be just that; thus, the continuation of the
nation into the future is understood as entailing the continuation of
the families into the future. From everything we know historically
and anthropologically about humans, they have always formed not
only families, but also larger groups of which families are a part.
Parents transmit to their own offspring not only their ‘flesh and
blood’, but also their own cultural inheritance – their language,
customs, and so forth – of the larger group, of the nation. This

cultural inheritance is usually viewed by the parents as being quite
precious to their existence. This inter-generational transmission of
one’s culture may be part of the reason for the tendency to view the
nation as a form of kinship, because what is being transmitted is a
part of one’s self to one’s descendants. However, there is another
reason for this tendency.
As discussed, birth within the territory is also recognized to be
the criterion for membership in the nation. There is thus a
commingling of recognition of two lines of descent: descent in the
territory of the nation and descent from parents who are members
of the nation. This criterion of birth, and the traceable relations
formed as a result, is why the nation is a form of kinship.

biological descent, for example a child is related to his or her
parents because the child is recognized as being descended
from them through birth. Broader relations of descent are
also perceived, resulting in, for example, the acknowledgement of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

This fact is not to lend credence to beliefs such as that the Germans
are descended from ancient Teutonic tribes, or that the Japanese
are descended from the emperor, or that there is a Han race. All
nations are formed over time out of a combination of different
populations, and all nations have immigrants. Although for those
immigrants to become members of the nation, they must usually
undergo a legal process of ‘naturalization’; that is, they must be
transformed as if they had been born in the national territory.
This focus on birth places the nation within the continuum
of groups of kinship. It is this element of kinship that the
prolific scholar of nations and nationalism Anthony Smith has

What is a nation?

Kinship refers to recognized traceable lines or relations of

rightly sought to capture in his argument for the existence of what
he characterizes as the ‘ethnic’ element in the nation.

Similar to the nation, one is born into an ethnic group.
Because of this characteristic of birth, both the ethnic group
and the nation are often perceived as being ‘natural’ relations. Despite this perception, both of these forms of kinship
incorporate other cultural traditions, such as language and
religion, as boundaries of the social relation. While it is
sometimes difficult to distinguish clearly an ethnic group
from a nation, ethnicity tends to emphasize beliefs in descent
from a supposed common ancestor or ancestors, as if the
ethnic group were an extended family, while the focus of the

nation is territorial descent. Important to realize is that kinship is an ambiguous relation, as it is a consequence of the
perception of being related. Usually any nation contains
within it numerous ethnic groups.

The nation is a community of kinship, specifically a bounded,
territorially extensive, temporally deep community of nativity. The
term ‘community’ refers to a level of self-consciousness of the
individual such that one recognizes oneself to be necessarily and
continually related to others, as occurs, for example, through birth.
The obvious example of a community is the family, where one is
always related to other members of the family, irrespective of
disagreements between those members. Important for
understanding the nation is to recognize that relations that are
perceived to enduringly bind one individual to another are possible
not only within a family, but also within the territorially extensive,
modern nation.
There have been those who have thought, because of these

enduringly binding relations, that the nation designates an idyllic
condition of a conflict-free unity. Such a romantic view of the nation
can be found in the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder in the
18th century and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in the 19th century.
However, no community is free from conflict. Even within the
family, there are jealousies and resentments. In the village – often
appealed to as a romantic example of a community – there exist
many different kinds of attachments as cause for conflict. There are
friendships and animosities, groupings distinguished by economic
activities and their corresponding interests, for example farmers
and traders, and usually competing families.

would be more seriously disturbed by the loss of a guinea, then by the
that fortress, would have sacrificed his life a thousand times rather

The problem is how to account for the combination of sentiments of
self-interest and self-sacrifice.
There appear to be a number of incomparable purposes of human
conduct, or even areas of understanding to which the concept of
usefulness does not apply, for example ‘beauty’. Nonetheless, one
can still agree with Aristotle that ‘every partnership is constituted
for the sake of some good’ and thus isolate the defining purpose of
the nation. However, the isolation of that defining purpose is an
abstraction that obscures the unavoidable presence of many
different factors in the formation and continued existence of any
social relation, such as the pursuit of power over another. Having
noted this qualification, the character of the nation revolves around

What is a nation?

In contrast to the romantic view of the nation, the actions of the
members of the nation involve many different, even contradictory,
pursuits. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith
caught well these contradictory pursuits when he observed:

the classificatory distinction of a ‘we’ in contrast to a ‘them’ arising
from the significance attributed to the circumstances of birth: the
relations formed as a consequence of being born in the nation’s
territory. Thus, that ‘we’ has attributed to it a relation of kinship
that indicates a shared locational preoccupation with the
generation and sustenance of life, and its transmission over time.


The preoccupation with vitality involves establishing different kinds
of limits or boundaries to respectively different kinds of relations of
vitality. Humans draw a distinction between their own children and
those of another. One usually does not love another’s children as if
they were one’s own. And one does not usually love another nation
as if it were one’s own. Such a limitation on the recognition of, and
the love for, what is understood to be one’s own is a consequence of
the preoccupation with the continuation of the self, both its
biological and cultural components. The love that one has for one’s
nation is designated by the term ‘patriotism’.
The widely used term ‘love’ as an expression of the attachments that
the individual has to his or her nation is not altogether satisfactory
because we also employ the same term to describe the attachments
one has to one’s paramour, children, friends, and god. Indeed, some
individuals have genuinely loved all of humanity. What such a wide
use of the term indicates is that, in each of these instances, the
individual puts aside, or ‘transcends’, his or her own self-interest for
the sake of others. However, understanding properly the character
of such attachments should take into account not only the act of
self-transcendence common to all of these attachments, but also the
different objects of those attachments. Thus, it may be more helpful
to distinguish the love for one’s paramour or children from the ‘love’
for one’s nation by understanding patriotism as signifying
attachments of loyalty to a territorial community. There are often
different aspects to the patriotic attachments that one forms to
one’s nation, as a consequence of the different factors involved in

the historical formation of a particular nation. One may, for
example, be loyal to one’s nation because of its laws, or its customs,
or its religion. There are usually many and differing, even
conflicting, views of the nation that correspond to these different
factors. However, inescapable is the fact that the individual often
shows a preference for his or her fellow nationals.

When one divides the world into two irreconcilable and warring camps – one’s own nation in opposition to all other
nations – where the latter are viewed as one’s implacable
enemies, then, in contrast to patriotism, there is the ideology
of nationalism. Nationalism repudiates civility and the differences that it tolerates by attempting to eliminate all differing views and interests for the sake of one vision of what the
nation has been and should be. For example, a French
nationalism might consist of the belief that to be a good member of the French nation, one must hate everything English
and German; and anyone who does not, isn’t ‘truly’ French.


What is a nation?

This preference need not take the form of a prejudice against, or
hatred of, those who are not members of one’s nation. Patriotism
need not deny varying and different pursuits by the members of the
nation. It need not reject differing conceptions of the nation held by
members of the nation, as nationalism often does. Indeed, in so far
as patriotism implies a commitment to the well-being of one’s
country, it provides the basis for working out the differences,
involving reasonable compromise, between the individual members
of the nation and their differing conceptions of what the nation
should be out of a concern for promoting that well-being. The
process of working out these differences through compromise is
politics. The concern for the well-being of the nation that includes
the willingness to compromise is central to the civility between the
members of the nation that makes politics possible.

Nationalism knows no compromise; it seeks to sweep aside the
many complications that always are part of life as it actually is. As a
systematic, uncompromising, and unrealistic view of the world, the
ideology of nationalism is relatively recent, appearing, for example,
in the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Addresses to
the German Nation (1808) and later in the writings of such authors
as the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96) and the
French journalist Charles Maurras (1868–1952). One may perhaps
observe anticipations of it in much earlier periods, for example in
the Roman Cato the Elder’s (234–149 BCE) reported hatred of all
things Greek.


The formation of a nation
The relatively greater territorial extent of the nation indicates the
search for, and the establishment of, a medium between, on the one
hand, the precarious isolation of the tribe or city-state, which can
be dominated by a larger society; and, on the other, the imperial
rule of empire that apparently inescapably involves bureaucratic
despotism. The territorial community of the nation indicates
an area of cultural familiarity and loyalty between these two
alternatives that allows for self-rule. Its existence implies, as Ernest
Renan observed in his essay ‘What is a nation?’, a coming together
over time of previously distinct populations that have much in
common; it implies a bounded territorial community of custom
and law.
There is thus, as the French sociologist Dominique Schnapper
observed, a duality to the nation. On the one hand, there is the
appeal to the temporal continuity of a territory and a significance
attributed to territorial relations as a consequence of birth, both
of which account for the character of the nation as a territorial
community of kinship. We may formulate this part of the duality as
the acceptance of a limiting tradition that distinguishes one nation
from another. On the other hand, there is the uneven coming
together of previously distinct localities into a national territory and

their respective populations into a nation that is abetted by
numerous factors, such as: a developing self-understanding
conveyed through history, a law of the land, a common religion,
usually a common language, and an authoritative centre with
institutions capable of sustaining the nation over time (for
example, London as the centre of England with the institution
of Parliament). This part of the duality represents innovative,
expansive tendencies of human conduct in the sense that previously
local customs are supplanted, rarely entirely, by a law of the land,
a common culture, and a loyalty – patriotism – to the nation with
its national territory. The nation represents an uneasy balance of
tradition and innovation.

Because the nation exhibits only a relative cultural uniformity, it
is often difficult to distinguish it from other territorial societies.
It is tempting to avoid this difficulty by formulating categories
that are differentiated by degrees of cultural uniformity, thereby
distinguishing one form of territorial relation from another. For
example, seemingly somewhat amorphous ‘ethnic groups’ that lack
a culturally unifying centre or institutions, such as the Aramaeans of
the ancient Near East or the Vandals, Avars, and Picts of the early
Middle Ages, and even culturally more cohesive societies, such as
the ancient Hellenes or Sumerians, are to be distinguished from the
culturally relatively uniform nation. While there is merit to these
distinctions, one should resist pursuing them too far because

What is a nation?

A nation will territorially encompass a number of different
localities. While the spatially smaller village, city, and region
continue to exist, they are understood by their inhabitants to be
parts of the nation. Thus, the common culture of the nation is only
relative; it is rarely complete such that the inhabitants of the village,
city, and region within the nation cease to recognize themselves as
inhabitants of such localities. However, during periods of intense
patriotic enthusiasm, such as during a war, the attachments of the
inhabitants of the local village, city, or region to the nation may
become dominant; but such a situation can only be episodic.

historically the processes involved in the formation of the nation are
always complicated, making such distinctions difficult in any
particular instance. For example, what is one to make of Great
Britain, which contains England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern
Ireland? Should Kurdistan or Kashmir or Quebec be designated as
regions, ethnic groups, ‘proto-nations’, or nations?


The complications suggested by these questions indicate that we are
dealing with uneven processes of an understanding of the self
involved in the always historically complex formation of a shared
self-understanding, a collective self-consciousness.
Nonetheless, our use of the term ‘nation’ implies the continuation
over time of a relatively uniform territorial culture. Thus, a number
of developments that allow for such a continuation and culture may
be ascertained. A nation requires a relatively extensive, bounded
territory or an image of such a territory, the existence of which
usually involves the following: a self-designating name, a centre
(with institutions), a history that both asserts and is expressive of a
temporal continuity, and a relatively uniform culture that is often
based on a common language, religion, and law. Still, it is more
faithful to the historical evidence to realize that each of these
characteristics is rarely found to be absolute or complete; rather,
they are processes in the development of interests, practices,
and institutions, all of which are beset with ambiguities and

Nation, state, and empire
The recognition by the individual that he or she is a member of a
nation is but one among a number of the parts of the image that one
has of oneself. Described graphically, it is but one layer of a multilayered self-consciousness. The layer that represents the
recognition of being a part of a territorial kinship may or may not
coincide with the recognition that one is a citizen of the political
and legal relation of the state.

2. Kurdistan, designated by areas that contain a Kurdish majority but which spans
sections of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey

The state may be loosely defined as a structure that, through
institutions, exercises sovereignty over a territory using laws
that relate the individuals within that territory to one
another as members of the state.


The legal and political relation of the state is analytically distinct
from the cultural community of the territorial relation of kinship,
the nation. For example, the imperial states of the AustroHungarian Empire and the Soviet Union contained many different
nations. Furthermore, nations have existed in the absence of a
state, as did Poland during the 19th century and as does Kurdistan
The necessity for distinguishing nation from state does not imply
that there does not exist a complex connection between these two
forms of social relation. On the one hand, nations have been
consolidated through a state’s exercise and extension of sovereignty
over time; for example, the expansion of what was becoming the
French nation during the 12th through 16th centuries from the
Capetian Île de France to encompass today the territory of France
from the Atlantic Ocean, on its western border, to the Pyrenees,
on the southern border, with the northern and eastern borders
fluctuating over the years depending upon the outcome of war,
the latter being often an important factor in the formation of both
a nation and a state.
The consolidation of the nation, in this case of the French nation,
does not eclipse the various, at times pronounced, regional
attachments. Indeed, it is historically rare for one nation to have a
state and for one state to have a nation; many of the world’s states
are sharply divided by regions that sometimes appear to be
‘proto-nations’, such as Quebec in Canada or the Basque region in

What is a nation?

3. The regions of France

Nevertheless, the state’s exercise of sovereignty entails the
promulgation of law throughout the area being governed, thereby
incorporating various regions into the legal regulation of the state.
Furthermore, the effectiveness of ruling is dependent upon the
standardization of communication, language and script,
throughout the area under the authority of the state. Thus, for
example, certainly one factor in territorially extensive China, with
its diverse regions, becoming ‘Chinese’ was the standardization
of Chinese script throughout what was becoming China as early as
221 BCE, under the direction of the chancellor Li Ssu. Similarly,
an Armenian script was created around 405 CE.


4. The 36 letters of the Armenian alphabet, created by Mesrop
Mashtots around 405 CE

Other cultural policies of the ruling centre of the state, such as the
adoption of a particular religion and its propagation throughout
the area being ruled, have often contributed mightily to the
relative cultural uniformity of a territory. This is apparent in
Eastern Orthodoxy, a tradition in which each nation has its own
saint and church, such as Saint Sava for the Serbian Orthodox
However, the consolidation of a relatively uniform territory and
culture of a national community is rarely exclusively the result of a
particular policy or set of policies being adopted and propagated by
the ruling centre of the state over a formless population. On the
contrary, acceptance of such policies often requires an appeal by the
ruling centre to pre-existing traditions, whether to language,
religion, or legal code. Thus, the particular policy that the ruling
centre chooses to propagate is rarely one capriciously chosen as if it
were invented out of thin air, even if that policy represents an
audacious transformation of a previously existing tradition. For

example, in 1501 CE the Safavid Isma‘il appealed to the previously
existing tradition of Shi‘ite Islam to distinguish Persia from the
Ottoman Empire, which observed the Sunni form of Islam. The
history of the consolidation and stable existence over time of every
state reveals this appeal to, and transformation of, previous
traditions in the effective exercise of sovereignty over a territory. In
other words, the state, although distinct from the nation, generates
a territorial community of kinship such that what emerges over
time is a national state.
The exception to this phenomenon of the convergence between two
forms of human relation, the state and the nation, is the empire,
which contains many nations. We may, today, be witnessing the
emergence of the empire of the European Union.


What is a nation?

There are no culturally obvious limitations to the expansion of an
empire. Its boundaries arise often out of military concerns, as, for
example, the construction of the Great Wall of China, begun under
the direction of General Meng T’ien in 221 BCE; Hadrian’s wall as a
demarcation of the northwestern boundary of the Roman Empire
in Britain; or the defeat of the Muslim forces under the command of
Amir ‘Abd-al-Rahman by Charles Martel in 732 CE near Tours that
checked the expansion of Islam. The protest to this more or less
limitless extension of the sovereignty of an empire has been the
assertion of cultural distinctiveness and political independence by
various national communities of territorial kinship within, or
threatened by, an empire, for example the Judaeans, from 66 to
72 CE and again from 132 to 135 CE against the rule of the Roman
Empire, and, in the 20th century, India against Great Britain. The
explicitly political objection to empire has been that it denies
nations the freedom to determine their own affairs, as expressed by
the claim to the right of self-determination. However, it may not
always be clear exactly the nature of the ‘self’ that seeks
independence, because such a ‘self’ is in the process of being
formed, as is occurring today in Northern Ireland, the Kashmir,
Macedonia, and Eastern Turkestan.


The development of cultural distinctiveness through political
sovereignty leads us to consider historically the relation between
state and nation from the opposite direction: namely, when the
nation seeks to become a state. How is this movement from nation
to national state to be understood, and, crucially, why does it tend to
The nation seeks a state out of the necessity to protect and preserve
the lives of its members; that is, so that the nation, through its
representatives and institutions, can act to secure its protection and
preservation in the world. If the national state fails to fulfil this
purpose (through military defeat or other means), then it risks the
possibility of breaking up, because the attachments of the members
of the nation to that nation may be withdrawn. New loyalties may
then emerge, thereby undermining the existence of the nation. Be
that as it may, the determination as to whether the nation forms the
state or the state forms the nation is beside the point, as, to varying
degrees, depending upon the nation in question, both complicated
processes are involved.
The formation of a national state, whether historically a
development from state to nation or from nation to state, is
burdened with the complications of innumerably different
attachments and processes. As was observed, one consequence of
these complications is that many national states contain
pronounced regional attachments or even other nations. Once
again, the territorial relation of the nation is culturally only
relatively uniform. Why this is so requires a discussion of the
character of the social relation.


Chapter 3
The nation as social relation

Nations are human creations. However, a proper understanding of
the nation requires that it be distinguished from other forms of
human creation. The nation has the form of a ‘social relation’. In
order to clarify the character of the social relation and, thus, better
understand what a nation is, it will be useful to contrast the social
relation with another form of human creation: the tool.
The tool – a hammer, for instance – is a material object whose
purpose, as an extension of the hand, is to make human labour
more efficient in the shaping of the external world. One can
understand the nation as a tool in the organization of life. For
example, some evolutionary biologists argue that kinship is a
mechanism for establishing an efficient means for an exchange of
benefits, because that exchange occurs among individuals who, as
fellow kinsmen, trust one another. However, the description of the
nation as a tool, whatever its merits, obscures important differences
between these two forms. Let us consider another social relation,
the custom of greeting between two individuals, in order to
distinguish further these two forms, the tool and the social relation,
thereby clarifying the character of the nation as an example of the



The social relation
Two individuals, each with their own interests, happen upon one
another. These two individuals are merely ‘interacting’, as they have
randomly encountered one another; there is no social relation.
However, as one extends his or her hand to the other, these two
individuals are no longer interacting. They are now ‘participating’
in that custom of greeting known as the handshake. There now
exists a social relation – the custom of greeting and its performance
– between these two individuals. What are the components of this
social relation? Firstly, there is the meaning of this custom of
greeting. The two individuals in a sense ‘find’ the meaning of this
custom. Where is the meaning located such that it is found? It is
located within the consciousness of each of many individuals who
recognize and accept the meaning of the handshake as a tradition
signifying the acknowledgement between two individuals. Secondly,
what is the material out of which the social relation of the custom of
the handshake is formed? It is made up of living human beings who
make actual the custom by performing it.
The material of the form of the social relation, living human beings,
is to be contrasted with that of the tool. The material out of which
the tool is formed is inanimate matter. If a hammer is not used, it
still remains a tool because it has been established materially out of
iron and wood. The tool survives as an object separate from the
human beings who live with it. In contrast to the tool, the existence
of the social relation of the custom of greeting is dependent upon
its performance, which, in turn, requires the recognition and
acceptance of the meaning of the handshake. Also, this custom has
no separate, material existence distinct from the individuals who
participate in, and thereby constitute, the social relation. Thus,
the social relation has a dual character: it is at the same time both
inter-individual – the two individuals making actual the custom of
the greeting – and trans-individual – the meaning of the custom
of the handshake in which the two individuals participate by
acknowledging that meaning.

When an individual is born, he or she must fit himself or herself
into the already existing nation, which continues to exist when that
individual dies. This temporal character of ‘already existing’ and
‘continuing to exist’ indicates that the traditions around which the
social relation of the nation is formed, for example the national
language, are trans-individual; that is, their existence is not
dependent upon any one individual, and, in this sense, they are
‘objective’. The use of the term ‘objective’ does not necessarily imply
material objects, although the trans-individual traditions of the
social relation of the nation may be embodied in and sustained by
physical objects such as history books and symbols, monuments
and flags.
However, if these traditions are no longer accepted and, thus, not
reaffirmed by each generation, then that book of national history
or monument or emblem remains merely that and nothing more.
For example, the Annals of Tilgath-pileser III, King of Assyria

The nation as social relation

As with all social relations, the material out of which the nation is
formed are living human beings. In contrast to the tool, the nation
does not exist as an object separate from those humans who
constitute it. Like the custom of the handshake, where the
individuals find the custom of greeting and keep it alive by
performing it, the nation is constituted and sustained by individuals
who participate in, and by so doing affirm, territorially bounded
traditions. These traditions exist primarily in the understanding
that each of the many individuals has of himself or herself, for
example as having been born in a particular territory. That is why
the nation is a form of a shared self-consciousness – a collective
self-consciousness, as described in the previous chapter. To be sure,
there also exist national institutions of various kinds, for example
churches and law courts, which embody, sustain, and propagate
those traditions. However, these national institutions are also
formed around the continued acceptance and performance of
such traditions. The nation has both an inter-individual and a
trans-individual structure.

(744–727 BCE), or the Annals of the Hittite King Hattusili I
(1650–1620 BCE), exist only as objects of interest to historians of
the ancient Near East because there is today no Assyrian or Hittite
nation. The Roman emblem SPQR – an acronym representing
‘Senate, People, and Republic’ – is of interest only to historians of
ancient Rome, or to the visitors of a museum who view the emblem
as an artefact of a society that no longer exists. Similarly, the
Assyrian, Hittite, and Latin languages, because they are no longer
spoken, are ‘dead’.


In contrast to these examples, documents such as the American
Declaration of Independence, or monuments such as the Lincoln
memorial in Washington, DC, or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, or
Buckingham Palace in London, are not ‘dead’ artefacts of past
They are in a sense ‘alive’ because the traditions they represent are
sustained by continuing to be acknowledged. As these traditions are
borne by a state of self-consciousness, they must in each generation
be reaffirmed in order for the nation to exist. This dependency on
the renewed acknowledgement, however transient and partial, by
(some of ) the members of the nation indicates that the form and
content of the national traditions are susceptible to change. In
contrast to the hammer, their form and content are not thoroughly
stable or ‘fixed’; they are, thus, only relatively objective.

The modification and invention of tradition
Certainly, customs change. They may fade away by not continuing
to be acknowledged and performed, or may even be intentionally
rejected. Similarly, the trans-individual traditions of the nation and
the institutions that embody those traditions undergo change. A
nation may transform its tradition of political representation from a
monarchy to a constitutional monarchy as the English did. It may
even reject altogether such a tradition, as the French did at the end
of the 18th century. In this latter instance, since the tradition of the

The nation as social relation

5. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris

monarchy and the institutions that sustained it were no longer
acknowledged, they lost their legitimacy. In political theory, this loss
of legitimacy is known as the ‘withdrawal of consent’. If this
happens, the nation risks breaking up, not because the material of
the social relation of the nation, that is, the people, are no longer
there, but because the will of each of a number of individuals to
continue to understand himself or herself as a member of the nation
is no longer there.
The reaffirmation of tradition is never merely a matter of
unthinking, changeless repetition, even though those customs that
bear national traditions, for example the kind of clothes one wears


or the kind of songs one sings, may sometimes be performed in a
seemingly thoughtless manner. The reaffirmation of tradition and
its transmission from one generation to the next necessarily
involves modification to the tradition. Traditions undergo
modification because the situation in which the present generation
finds itself is always different from that of the previous generation;
new problems emerge that elicit corresponding new interests.
Often, this unavoidable modification is almost imperceptible, as
with the gradual evolution of a language; occasionally, it is a radical
transformation, as when revolutions occur. Either way, what it
indicates is that no nation can be thoroughly stable as if it were, like
a tool, formed out of lifeless material.
Some scholars of nations and nationalism have made much of the
fact that traditions undergo modification, drawing attention to
examples of various, often radical transformations of how the past is
selectively appropriated, such that they speak of the ‘invention’ of
tradition. An example of such an invention is the Scottish tartan
kilt. Although preceded by the full-length plaid, which, when
belted, left the legs exposed, the kilt was invented in the 18th
century. Despite its relatively recent appearance, the kilt has been
portrayed as emblematic of the continuity of the ancient culture of
the Highlands of Scotland into the present. Likewise, the tartan –
cloth distinctively patterned for each Scottish Highland clan –
although often assumed to be of considerable antiquity, made its
appearance during the early 19th century. Such facts are useful in so
far as they clarify that nations (and their customs) are not unitary
structures that have always existed. Thus, attempts to read the
existence of a united English nation or a Great Britain back into the
society of the Celtic King Arthur (early 6th century CE) should
obviously be rejected.
However, to concentrate one’s attention on the so-called invention
of tradition is to ignore the problems posed by the existence of
nations in better understanding human conduct. Granted both the
occasional invention, and certainly the selective appropriation of

the past to serve the concerns of the present (for example, the
exploitation by the 17th-century Dutch of Tacitus’ history of the
Batavian rebellion against Rome in their effort to establish the
antiquity and continuity of a Dutch collective self-consciousness),
one is still confronted with the tasks of understanding why humans
both seek out and radically transform traditions to justify the
present, and why those traditions are presented as asserting, or are
exploited in the service of establishing, various forms of kinship that
distinguish one group from another.

Variation: ethnic and civic nations

The ‘civic’ criterion of birth in the territory is more likely to facilitate
equality before the law, and thus liberty, because all who are born in
the territory of the national state are members of the nation and, as
such, entitled to citizenship, irrespective of the origin or language or
religious beliefs of one’s parents. Nevertheless, this contrast
between the ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ conceptions of the nation should not
be overdrawn because the historical development of all nations
contains a combination of both criteria. Indeed, the criteria for the
determination of membership in the nation have usually shifted
depending upon whether a nation has been a source for emigration
or an object of immigration at any particular point in time. The

The nation as social relation

As observed in the previous chapter, the flux that is characteristic of
all social relations underscores the difficulty in providing precise
criteria for the definition of the nation. Even the criteria for
membership in a nation, and from one nation to another, undergo
over time degrees of modification, for example changing laws of
immigration and citizenship. Sometimes membership in the
national state is a result of birth to parents who are recognized to be
members of the nation, although usually it is a result of birth in
what is perceived to be the territory of the nation. The former is
often referred to as the ‘ethnic’ conception of the nation, while the
latter is the ‘civic’ conception of the nation. This distinction may
have important political consequences.


important point is to recognize that all nations are, to one degree or
another, always undergoing change.
This character of only a relative stability – the continuation over
time – of the social relation of the nation is not only a consequence
of the present generation facing tasks different from those of
previous generations. Those traditions that form the conceptual
core or centre – the trans-individual, relatively objective, meaning –
around which the social relation of the nation is formed are not
uniform. There is not only the preoccupation with territorial
relations of vitality, kinship; there is also economic exchange; and
there are religious beliefs that may exist in tension with both that
preoccupation with vitality and trade. For example, there have been
times when the well-being of the nation has been thought to require
restrictions on free trade through tariffs on imports, as occurred
with the mercantilism of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the
economic protectionism between World Wars I and II. Religious
beliefs have at times been obstacles to economic activity, as when
Christianity prohibited the charging of interest on borrowed money.
These different traditions with their different interests unevenly
come together to form the tension-filled and only relatively stable
centre of the nation. The relation between such different traditions
within the centre also undergoes change, as one tradition may at
any particular time become more important than the others. For
example, during a war, an outburst of patriotism may compromise
the beliefs of the monotheistic religions in the brotherhood of
It was observed in the previous chapter that there is a duality to
the nation: traditions of kinship that are limiting, and the
transformation of these traditions such that they become
generalized in the service of creating a more expansive culture.
Numerous factors, for example war, religion, and economic
exchange, may contribute to this undermining of previously local
attachments to village or region in favour of attachments to the
territorially larger nation. Another factor is law, promulgated by a

recognized, authoritative centre such that there emerges a ‘law of
the land’ that encompasses those localities. Our task here is to
examine how law may be a factor in the formation of a territorially
extensive nation.

Law and the nation

Nevertheless, legal innovation did take place in the Islamic Middle
East to deal with relations between these two poles, the village and
the universal community of the faithful. For example, legal means
(the hiyal) developed to create business firms and to engage in
trade between different localities and regions – means that were not
directly provided by Islamic law, the Shari‘ah. Furthermore, in the
Islamic Middle East, territorially extensive solidarities did
occasionally emerge, two examples of which were the Iranian and
the Berber-dominated Maghrib, especially Morocco. Perhaps the
military conflicts between the Turkish Ottomans and the Egyptian
Malmuks (1250–1517 CE) also indicate a degree of competition in
territorial solidarities within the otherwise universal community of

The nation as social relation

It should first be acknowledged that the development of written law
codes has not always resulted in a territorially extensive, national
law of the land. The Islamic Middle East did not develop such a law
for much of its history. There instead existed throughout the
politically imperial ummah (the community of the faithful) various
codes of law – Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, Hanbali – each derived from a
particular interpretation of Islamic law, the Shari‘ah. While in any
particular region, one law code might be more prevalent than the
other three, the Muslim could still choose between them. The
simultaneous existence of these different codes of law could only be
an obstacle to the formation of the territory of a nation, unified
through adherence to an authoritative law of the land. Thus, for
much of the history of the Islamic Middle East, loyalties generally
gravitated between the village of one’s birth and the ummah, with
various institutions, notably religious orders such as the Sufi,
mediating between these two objects of attachment.


the faithful. Nonetheless, the different law codes that permeated
Islamic civilization and the conservative legal principle of taqlid
(obedience to the Islamic tradition) represented an obstacle to the
consolidation of nations, each with its own ‘law of the land’.
Of course, other patterns of legal relation are to be observed. In
contrast to the impression one gets from many analyses that insist
on a sharp historical break between pre-modern and modern
societies, there were numerous written law codes throughout
antiquity and the Middle Ages. Indeed, as the legal historian R. C.
van Caenegem remarked about law in the medieval world, there
was, if anything, too much of it, and it was greatly cared for.
Medieval Europe produced numerous written legal texts, among
them Ranulf Glanvill’s Treatise on the Laws and Customs of
England (1187) and the Treatise (1260) by Henry of Bratton
(Bracton). The importance of a tradition becoming materially
‘embodied’, in this case law being written down in a book, is that it
increases the likelihood of that tradition becoming stable, hence
continuing over time. The physical expression of a tradition can
take different forms. For example, languages become stable through
written alphabets, as occurred in the ancient Near East, and
through the translation of the Bible into different languages: Coptic
(4th century CE), Armenian (5th century CE), Old Slavonic (9th
century CE), and French (12th century CE). Traditions can take
physical shape in the form of buildings, for example the Temple in
Jerusalem for ancient Israel and Canterbury Cathedral for medieval
England. When this happens, there is a greater likelihood that the
social relation formed around that materially embodied tradition
will achieve the stability necessary for a national culture to emerge.
A spectrum, albeit abstract, of legal relations contributing to the
formation of territorial structures in the European Middle Ages can
be observed.
First, there is the canon law of the Church that actually exists
beyond this spectrum because its jurisdiction as the law of the

believers in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour transcends territorial
divisions. This is not to deny the inevitable involvement of the
medieval Church, as a religious institution, into the affairs of this
world, as can clearly be seen, for example, in the Investiture
Struggle at the end of the 11th century CE over who, the Pope or the
King, had the power to appoint bishops. Nonetheless, I put aside
consideration of canon law, except to note its contribution to the
tradition of an imperial Europe.

In contrast to the personal relation between the king and his
kinsmen or his retainers, or the personal and legal relation
exclusively between the local lord and his vassal characteristic of
feudalism, such relations were undermined in medieval England by
a more expansive territorial relation established through a law of

The nation as social relation

At one end of the spectrum, one finds territorially distinct urban
principalities in northern Italy and independent regional states in
Germany. While there were developed local codes of law, there was
no unifying centre with its own legal institutions, such as an
authoritative higher court or legislative body, capable of legally
unifying these distinct principalities and states into a nation. In
France, on the other hand, after the re-emergence of a strong
monarchy in the 13th century, there was indeed a centre, including
a royal court and the Parlement of Paris. These and other
developments, such as the emergence of a French Catholic Church
known as ‘Gallicanism’, were significant influences on the
formation of a territorially extensive French nation. Compared to
the urban principalities in northern Italy and the independent
German states, one observes the process of the emergence of the
nation of France near the end of the 13th century. Nonetheless, the
French kingdom remained legally diverse – a condition abetted by
the revival, beginning in the 12th century, of the imperial Roman
law in southern France in contrast to the north. However, a
different pattern of legal relation appears in England as early as the
end of the 12th century, so much so that one observes the
emergence of a national law of the land.


the land. Some of the legal developments during and subsequent to
the reign of Henry II (1133–89) support this observation. There
emerged a permanent court of professional judges at the centre (the
Curia Regis); and local disputes at the local courts were increasingly
adjudicated in accordance with the law of the land by the frequent
visits of travelling judges. Also at the local level throughout
England, by the time of Henry II, the institution of the jury (initially
a body of neighbours summoned by some public official to give up
on oath a true answer to some question, but by the early 13th
century the means by which to be judged by one’s peers) had
become the norm, thereby involving the common man in judicial
procedures. The result of these and other developments was that
the king, as representative of the nation and its laws, and his agents
(the travelling judges) were seen as protectors of the property and
rights of the individual and the public order, that is the ‘king’s
peace’, throughout the land.
Other legal developments supporting the establishment of a
territorial relation of the nation include the formation of a national
army, as can be seen in King Henry II’s edict of 1181, the Assize of
Arms, that comprised not only the wealthy man with horse and
armour but also the poor ‘who need only have bow and arrows’. The
call of the poor to the army represented another legal intrusion of
the nation into the relation between local lord and tenant. A
consequence of this latter legal and military development was to
broaden the feeling of responsibility for the country’s defence.
Common service in war resulted in the awareness that all, the poor
and the wealthy, were part of not only their local communities but
also their nation. Technological developments also played a role in
furthering the attachment of the poor infantrymen to the nation. At
the end of the 13th century, the introduction of the powerful,
armour-piercing longbow provided the means for a poor foot
soldier to be militarily superior to a knight.
Then, in 1215, there was the Magna Carta with its 14th clause,
which by 1295 culminated in the institution of a legislating

parliament, constituted by representatives of the counties and
towns throughout England (in contrast to both the Parlement
of Paris, which was primarily a court of judicial review, and the
French Estates General, which did not meet between 1614 and
The result of these legal developments was the emergence of the
territorial relation of the national community of England, where
the king was bound to the law. There were, to be sure,
anticipations of such a development in other societies at other
times. As the historian Fritz Kern has argued, there was a right to
resist the king in German medieval law, and in antiquity there
was the apparent subordination of the ancient Israelite king to
the law, as suggested by Deuteronomy 17. However, it was in
medieval England where these developments were so

The nation as social relation

6. The armour-piercing longbow


There were, of course, any number of complications that invited
territorial ambiguity—Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Henry II’s
claim to Anjou and Normandy in France. There were also other
complications in the creation of a national community, for example
controversies over religion that resulted in the executions on the
orders of the king of Thomas Becket (1170) and Thomas Cranmer
(1556), both archbishops of Canterbury; and political conflicts that
led to the execution of the Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas
More (1535), and the revolution led by Cromwell. Once again, it is
the character of the social relation of the nation that it is only
relatively stable. What matters here is that there were established
both a tradition of public, territorially unifying law – a law of the
land – in the collective self-consciousness of the English, and
institutions, however occasionally beleaguered, that sustained that
These legal developments in the history of medieval England
represent the emergence of a legal code consistently applied
throughout what is, as a result, established: the territorial relation
of a nation. Clearly, political factors that are difficult to predict
(such as ambitious and able kings who desire to extend their
power) influenced this creation of a national body of territorial law.
Moreover, legal developments sometimes follow a course of their
own that often appears coincidental. The tradition of the ‘good old
law’ in England, conveyed by the English common law (‘common’
in the sense that it was applicable throughout England), was
recognized and reaffirmed, for example, in the Magna Carta. One
can only speculate how different the legal and national
development in medieval England might have been if the revival of
imperial Roman law on the European continent had taken firm
hold in England before that tradition of common law was
reaffirmed and codified. The point of indulging this speculation is
to indicate that many, seemingly accidental factors may contribute
to such a development; and, thus, to underscore how misguided it
is to insist on one, primary cause for the development of the

The national law of the land expands the social relation in the sense
that its consistent application throughout the land results in the
fusion of previously culturally distinct populations into a nation.
However, this expansion is limited by the other side of the duality
characteristic of the nation: kinship, albeit that of a spatially
extensive, yet bounded territorial relation. A limitation to the
consistent application of the law was one’s status – not whether or
not one was a noble or a vassal, but whether or not one was English.
Beginning in the 13th century and continuing until 1870, no
foreigner could hold real property in England, nor did a foreigner
have a right to recourse in the local courts. It was thought that land
that was understood to be English land was only for the English.

The nation is often described by the metaphor of familial relations
and, indeed, has sometimes been considered as some kind of

The nation as social relation

The nation has been defined as a relatively extensive, territorial
relation of nativity. We have further formulated the purpose of the
nation as a territorially extensive, yet bounded, social relation for
the generation, transmission, and sustenance of life. When the
nation is a national state, it is also a structure for the protection of
life. To be sure, very few social relations, even those whose primary
purpose is the existence of life itself, can be adequately understood
solely in terms of that purpose. This is so for the nation; and it is so
even for the quintessential relation of vitality, the family, which is
often a means for the inter-generational transfer of wealth, and of
religion. This is merely to recognize, yet again, that human pursuits
are varied. The problems that confront human life – how death is
faced, how the tensions between men and women are settled, what
should be the relation between the individual and his or her society,
how human existence in relation to the universe is to be understood
– are multi-faceted. These and other problems of life, and the
diversity of traditions associated with them, come together uneasily
into a conceptually diverse centre, around which respectively
different national communities are formed, as each nation works
out its own response to these complex problems.


extended family. This is understandable because both the nation
and the family are social relations of kinship. Nonetheless, there
is an important difference, and to understand this will require
a more detailed examination of the relation between territory and


Chapter 4
Motherland, fatherland,
and homeland

Those interested in understanding nations and nationalism must
consider the significance of certain words employed widely in
everyday speech, specifically, motherland, fatherland, and
homeland. Each of these three words is a combination of two terms.
The first and second words combine, respectively, the terms
‘mother’ and ‘father’, both of which refer to the relational descent
of the child from those directly responsible for its biological
generation, with the term ‘land’, which conveys the image of a
bounded, yet extensive territory. The third word, ‘homeland’,
combines reference to the familial dwelling and its immediate area
in which the infant was conceived, nourished, and came to maturity
with that image of a more extensive territory. This combination of
terms implies a classificatory category of kinship. However, it is a
form of kinship that revolves around the image of a bounded
The idea that these three words share is the concept of one’s ‘native
land’. This is found in all periods of history and throughout all
civilizations, ranging from the biblical Hebrew ‘ezrach ha ‘arets
(native of the land) and the ancient Greek patrís to the Latin patria
(fatherland) and the Arabic watan (originally, the village or town of


one’s birth, and later nation) as in mahabbat al-watan (love of the
homeland). The appearance of these three words at any particular
point in time may or may not indicate the existence of a nation.
However, all three refer to the land of one’s birth, ranging from
village to tribal territory to nation. The continued use of these three
words signifies that the image of a definite area of land can be a part
of the self-understanding of the individual who, in turn, recognizes
himself or herself to be related to those for whom that territory is
also a native land. Thus, the category of kinship must be extended to
include the classification and evaluation of the self as a consequence
of the recognition of not only familial descent, but also descent
within a particular territory.
Even the nomadic tribes of the ancient Near East could be
territorial. These pastoralists often named their tribes after a
particular town or region. Other examples of territorial kinship
from the earliest civilizations are societies such as the ‘house of the
ancestor’, where, for example, a city-kingdom was designated as the
‘house’ of the founder, and the ‘ethno-geographic’ tribe, the gayum,
of ancient Mari (18th century BCE). Examples from other
civilizations and historical periods are ancient Greek city-states, the
medieval English vill or township, and the modern nation.
The English word ‘nation’ is derived from the Latin noun natio,
which, in turn, is from the Latin verb nasci that means ‘to be born
from’ (and from which is also derived the Latin noun nativus,
‘native’). Thus, the Latin natio and nativus, as well as the above
examples of the biblical Hebrew ‘ezrach (native) and the Arabic
watan, refer to one’s origins; but there is an imprecision as to what
is meant by those origins. This imprecision is a consequence of the
fact that while familial descent, traced from either the mother or the
father, is different from territorial descent, these two forms of
kinship are neither mutually exclusive nor historically demarcated.
These two lines of descent have, throughout history, overlapped
with one another. How is territory a factor in the formation of

Much of what is implied by this joining together of references to
familial descent and territory in the words motherland, fatherland,
and homeland is the transmission of a cultural inheritance from
one generation to the next that takes place as a result of descent
within a territory. Nonetheless, there is a further factual and even
biological basis to this metaphorical attribution of motherhood or
fatherhood to a territory, because the parental power to generate
and transmit life is dependent upon the sustenance that is provided
by the land in the form of fruits, produce, and so on. Implicit in this
attribution is the recognition that the land itself is a source of life, as
Plato observed in his recounting of Aspasia’s speech in The
Menexenus about the physically nourishing ‘motherhood of the

land . . . It is right that we should begin by praising the land
which is their mother . . . For as a woman proves her
she alone and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for
human food.
Plato, The Menexenus

The description of land as mother or father is a recognition of
its generative power. To be sure, the expression of this recognition
has varied historically and by civilization. In antiquity, it took the
form of the acknowledgement of the god or gods of the land.
Islamic civilization, on the other hand, has historically been
relatively resistant to the development of images of territorially
extensive motherlands and fatherlands, especially compared to
Judaeo-Christian civilization, in which that recognition has been
sustained by the image of the land of ancient Israel as one of
milk and honey. Even today, implicit recognition of this power

Motherland, fatherland, and homeland

They are children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own

exists, as expressed in the wide use of the words ‘motherland’ and

Home and homeland


This phenomenon of attributing qualities of parentage to an
inanimate object (land) can be seen in another example drawn from
everyday speech that has a bearing on our understanding of the
nation: the distinction between the words ‘house’ and ‘home’. By the
word ‘house’, we generally mean a physical, spatial structure that is
not a home, but that has the capacity to become one. By the term
‘home’, we usually mean that the physical structure of the house has
in some way become pervaded by the spirit or power or even moral
qualities of its inhabitants. It is as if the house, when it becomes a
home, has become a part of the family.
The modern nation is recognized by its members as being more
than merely a spatial setting – a house – for the random interaction
between individuals. It is viewed as a home, where the ‘spirit’ of past
and current generations has filled up that spatial setting, making it
a homeland, a territory. This spirit of past and current generations
are those traditions that contribute to organizing an area of space
into a territory and that, as such, provide meaning around which
the territorial relation is organized. Such territorially specific
traditions both structure and provide meaning to the conduct of
the participants in that culture. Consider, for instance, that the
Sinhalese view their territory as a holy land, Sri Lanka. To take
another example, note how President Lyndon B. Johnson described
the land of the United States of America as being a partner in
covenant, as if it were a person with moral expectations.

They [the Puritans] came here – the exile and the stranger,
his own man. They made a covenant with this land.


was meant one day to inspire the hope of all mankind; and it
Lyndon Baines Johnson, A Time for Action

These territorially bounded traditions exist over time, having been
sustained through various kinds of institutions and practices
ranging from patriotic clubs to days of celebration or remembrance
that designate events understood to signify the existence of the
territorial relation of the nation, for example Independence Day in
the United States, Bastille Day in France, the Coronation in
England, and Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. This cultural
inheritance must not be viewed as something external to the
individual, like a coat to be put on and taken off. It forms part of
the image that you have, not only of yourself, but also of those
other individuals who are related to you by virtue of inheriting those
territorially bounded traditions.
In the terms of the previous chapter, an image of a territory
becomes a conceptual point of reference in the trans-individual
meaning of the social relation around which the inter-individual
activities are structured. This image is not only spatially expansive;
it is also temporally deep. The individual participant in the social

Motherland, fatherland, and homeland

The boundaries of a territory are never merely geographical; they
indicate the spatial limit to many of those traditions that are passed
from one generation to the next. It was not uncommon, for
example, for the territorial boundaries of the ancient Greek
city-states to be designated by the respective sanctuaries of their
god or gods. Thus, the individuals who dwell within a territory do
not merely interact with one another; they participate in
territorially bounded traditions that, in turn, influence their
conduct: the god or gods they worship or the language they speak
or the laws they accept.


relation recognizes as being related not only those in the present
who share in those territorial traditions, but also those in the past
who performed activities in that territory. For example, even though
she lived 400 years ago, Queen Elizabeth I is recognized today as
being English. Thus, the territory and its past are recognized as
being one’s own, as belonging to oneself and to those who are
territorially related to oneself.
The possession of both a past and an extensive, yet bounded area of
land is key to the nation as a community of territorial descent.
Clearly, not all past activities are viewed as being so significant that
they become traditions that are continually brought into and, by so
doing, contribute to the formation of the meaning of the social
relation in the present. However, those traditions, and the
institutions that sustain them, that are understood to have
contributed to determining one’s existence are kept ‘alive’ by each
generation continuing to acknowledge them as being significant.
The victory of England over Spain during the reign of Elizabeth I
remains signficant because it is recognized that England exists
today as a result of that victory. The Holocaust is acknowledged
annually in Israel through a day of remembrance because it is
recognized that Israel exists today as a home for Jews. Significant
past events are often embodied in monuments, as meaningful
points of reference in the present, for example the memorial at Yad
Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel.
Because it is recognized that one’s own life, as an inhabitant of that
territory and as a member of the nation, is dependent upon those
past activities that have made that territory – your home – possible,
a trans-generational, territorially located kinship is formed with
references to that past that encompasses those in the present.

The territorial contamination of the blood
This temporally deep, territorial kinship can be seen in the recourse
to the idiom ‘founding fathers’ of the nation. There thus develops a
‘territorial contamination of the blood’; that is, an understanding of

7. Memorial at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, to the millions of Jews
murdered in the Nazi death camps


kinship that refers to territorial relation. Such a ‘contamination’
is the implication of the terms ‘motherland’, ‘fatherland’, and
‘homeland’; and the very idea of the ‘native land’. This metaphorical
infusion of biological descent into spatial location is sustained
because those inherited territorially bounded traditions are
understood as defining part of you. Indeed, in so far as your
existence as a member of a nation (and, thus, elements of your
self-understanding) is in fact dependent upon those activities of
past generations that have secured the land necessary for life, then
what is involved in this metaphor is not merely metaphorical!
The human tendency to form attachments to the image of the native
land, containing the recognition, however implicit, of the generative
power of the earth, suggests something fundamental about human
conduct. By the latter, I do not mean to imply that all of human
conduct can be understood as an expression of this tendency.
Science, international trade, and the world religions signify that
there are pursuits that are relatively indifferent to the
preoccupation with the native land. I also do not mean to imply
that the territorially extensive social relation of the nation is not
a human creation that has been made possible by innumerably
complicated historical developments, some of which will be
examined in the next chapter. However, I do mean to imply the
persistence of one among several different preoccupations of the
human mind, the expressions of which vary across time and
There are probably behavioural components to this preoccupation
with the native land, entailing various strategies of adaptation to
ensure the efficient use and allocation of limited resources in the
propagation, transmission, and protection of life that, in turn, are
dependent upon control of an area of land and its resources. It is
likely that the significance attributed to the attachment to the
spatial location of the home also has a behavioural component.
The boundaries or spatial limits of the home provide the enclosed
structure that is seemingly necessary for familiarity to develop.

This is certainly the case with the territorially extensive homeland
of the nation. It, too, is viewed as a home; it, too, is a structure of
anxiety-reducing familiarity. As you return to your national
homeland from a foreign country, you may experience a feeling of
relief. You immerse yourself again in the familiarity of your own
language and customs. That is one reason why those familiar
patterns of activity – inherited traditions – that structure our
conduct and which we call ‘culture’ are so important to the

The problem raised by the existence of nations is not only why
humans should organize themselves in divisive ways; but also how
is it that an individual considers the territorially extensive nation to

Motherland, fatherland, and homeland

Humans seek the familiar because what is familiar is also habitual;
and, as such, the structured familiarity of the home provides
comfort as it limits the anxiety-provoking multitude of possibilities
of action that present themselves for consideration to human
beings. In this regard, a parallel can be drawn between the
behavioural component in the formation of an animal’s spatial
habitat and the structured familiarity of the home. However, there
is an important difference between the human home and the
animal habitat. The human home is not instinctually determined
like a beehive for bees, or restricted to a particular environment like
the Arctic for polar bears; humans live in many different
environments in which they create their homes. Thus, even if there
are behavioural components to the human tendency to form
spatially bounded structures of familiarity, the very variability of
those structures and their locations indicates the intervention of the
human imagination in their formation. The role of the imagination
in the spatial attachments formed by human beings is clear when
those attachments extend to areas that have never been physically
experienced by the individual but which are nonetheless considered
to be part of his or her home.


be his or her own. What is involved in the phenomenon of
ownership such that the individual considers an extensive area of
land and a distant past to be his or her possession, and that, as such,
is a factor in kinship? The inheritance of a territorially bounded
culture is part of the answer to this question. But there is more to it
than that. Perhaps it is the case, as John Locke argued in the Second
Treatise of Government (1690), that when one fashions or possesses
a physical object, that object is considered to be one’s own because,
through these activities, one has put a part of oneself into it. For
Locke, this act of putting one’s labour into an object justifies a right
to what, as a consequence, Locke thought now becomes one’s
property. However, our concern with this phenomenon of
possession lies in a direction that Locke did not pursue: the
consequence of this fashioning such that a physical object is
considered to be a part of oneself, and, thus, a factor in the
formation of kinship.
When one puts a part of oneself into an object such that the object
becomes one’s own, and furthermore is considered in some way to
be a part of oneself, one’s experiences extend into the physical
object. This extension of the self into a physical object occurs at two
levels. First, there is the actual fashioning of the material object,
for example the building of a home or the clearing and cultivation
of an area of land. The second level is the contemplation of,
including the significance attributed to, that object, so that your
memories contain references to that object, even to the extent that
the image that you have of yourself is extended to include that
physical object.
Clearly, not all objects that are fashioned through a person’s efforts,
for example the making of a tool, become factors in the formation of
kinship. However, those that are integral to life and that are
perceived to be so may become such factors. The most obvious
example of this process is the relation of the parents to the child. As
the child contains a part of the parents, the child is considered by
the parents to be an extension of themselves, and, as such, to be

The complication in our understanding of kinship posed by the
nation is that the object into which one has put a part of oneself and
which, as a consequence, one considers one’s own, is not another
living human being, but the inanimate land. However, land is also
viewed as being integral to life, to the life of the individual and to his
or her family, where there is a home; and to the larger community of
which he or she is a member. When one builds a house, one puts
one’s labour into a physical object, making it one’s own. When one
clears the land so that it can bear crops, one makes that land one’s
own. In both of these instances, through one’s activities there occurs
an extension of the self into these physical objects; but these are not
just any physical objects. They are objects upon which one’s own life
and the life of one’s family are dependent. The home is the location
for the generation and transmission of the life of the family; it is
also a structure for the protection of that life; and the cultivated
land sustains life. This is surely a part of the significance that
humans attribute to their own home and its immediate area. These
are structures upon which your life and the lives of those who are
related to you depend; where aspects of yourself have been
imparted to those structures in ways that have not been imparted to

Motherland, fatherland, and homeland

their own. This example of one relation of kinship, the family, is
relatively straightforward because it deals with the transmission of
life itself in the creation of another life. The various forms of this
biological extension of the self, ranging, for example, from
matrilineal to patrilineal descent, is what is often understood by the
category of kinship. Needless to say, complications immediately
intrude into this extension because the parents impart to the child
not only a biological inheritance but also, as the child matures, a
cultural inheritance – their traditions. The incorporation of such
traditions into the self-image of the child allows for an extension of
kinship as one recognizes a relation with those other human beings
who share or have shared in those traditions. This is above all the
case when those cultural traditions include a claim to biological
ancestry, as is the case in Japanese, Israelite, and Armenian


other structures; where, as a consequence, there is recognized a
spatial differentiation –