Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?” (1882)

Section I: History [187]

187: a sort of equilibrium has been reached in Europe whereby nations are here for the foreseeable future:

A kind of durable balance has been established. Centuries may pass, but France, England, Germany and Russia, in spite of all their adventures, will retain their distinct historical individuality, like pieces on a draught [i.e., checkers]-board, the squares of which are ever varying in size and importance, but never quite blend completely.

[Note however, that on p. 204 Renan writes “Nations are not eternal”]

However, “nations thus conceived, are a fairly recent phenomenon in history”. That is, Renan appears to agree with Hobsbawm, although R. thinks they date back perhaps to the Treaty of Verdun of 843 (which, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, “represented the beginning of dissolution of Charlemagne’s empire into political units that foreshadowed the nations of Western Europe. It was superseded in 870 by the Treaty of Mersen.”)

188: distinguishing mark of the states that are obvious nations (in contrast with Turkey): the fusion of the populations by intermarriage, and adopting the religion and language of the conquered.

Violent origins are essential, but must be forgotten:

To forget and –I will venture to say—to get one’s history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation; and thus the advance of historical studies is often a danger to nationality.... Unity is always realized by brute force. [190]

Renan writes later [204] that “Nowadays it is a good, and even a necessary, thing that nations should exist” and thus appears to be arguing that it is justified to create a false history as an exercise in nation-building, an odd thing for someone who elsewhere praises “reason, justice, truth” [197] so highly.

Section II: Various FALSE criteria [192]

DYNASTY [192]

We are told by certain political theorists that a nation is, above all, a dynasty representing a former conquest that has been at first accepted, and then forgotten, by the mass of the people.

Great families (i.e., for example, monarchical families) had a role in the establishment of France and the unification of England, Ireland and Scotland, and Holland has become associated with the House of Orange. HOWEVER, Switzerland and the US have had no involvement with dynasties. Thus, a nation can exist without a dynastic principle (i.e., dynasties are not necessary components of nations. Indeed, national right exists in opposition to dynastic right (that is, a nation can refuse by right to cede territory to control by a dynasty) which means that dynasty and nation are not co-extensive.

RACE [194]

anthropological/zoological definition vs. historical/philological

“the zoological origins of the human race[s] are vastly anterior to the origins of culture, civilization and language [i.e., the philological determinants of race]” [196]

Race, then, as we historians understand it, is something that is made and unmade. The study of race is of prime importance for the man of learning engaged on the history of human kind. It is not applicable to politics. The instinctive consciousness which has presided over the drawing of the map of Europe has held race to be no account, and the leading nations of Europe are those of essentially mixed breed. [197]

Thus, race has not been the determinant of nations. But a further point is that it shouldn’t be, for three reasons:

1. this is unjust (only the will of the people, not to whom they are related, should determine who rules them)
2. it is unsafe—if Germans use it as an excuse to annex areas with largely German populations, then slavs can make the same claim about areas currently under German control. “It is an excellent thing for us all to know how to forget” [198]
3. It is unstable: who counts as a member of a particular race depends on the state of science. Definitions change (e.g., from appearance to DNA measurement)—if national boundaries were drawn on racial grounds, that would mean that national boundaries would have to change every time scientific definitions altered.

LANGUAGE [198]

Objections:

1. Not sufficient for nations: United States and England are two nations speaking one language
2. Not necessary for nations: Switzerland is a nation (but, c.f. p. 186, when it is referred to as a “confederation”) but has several languages
3. Similarities of language are often achieved by repression (although, of course, the origin of most nations is bloody)
4. Unstable—See (3) above: philological definitions change as much as anthropological definitions.
5. “The political importance ascribed to languages comes from regarding them as tokens of race” but
1. Race, as we have seen, is not a suitable determinant of nations
2. languages are not co-extensive with races. The Welsh are still Welsh, despite the fact that they now overwhelmingly speak English., etc. etc. [199]
6. Languages are not bearers of civilization:

Above French, German or Italian culture, there stands human culture. Consider the great men of the Renaissance. They were neither French, nor Italian, nor German.

RELIGION [200]

There used to be official state religions, like the cult of Athens itself, but these were “the equivalent of our drawing lots for military service or of our cult of the national flag” [200]—that is, you declared yourself “not Athenian” by refusal to comply, but there was no proselytising as there is for contemporary religions. “State religion has ceased to exist” [201]

COMMUNITY OF INTEREST [201]

Not sufficient: “Community of interest brings about commercial treaties... a Customs Union is not a country”

GEOGRAPHY [201]

It is not the soil any more than the race which makes a nation. The soil provides the substratum, the field for struggle and labour: man provides the soul. Man is everything in the formation of this sacred thing that we call a people.” [202]

Section III: Nation as “daily plebiscite”[202]

“A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” made up of two elements:

1. A common heritage in the past
2. “actual agreement, the desire to live together, and the will to continue to make the most of this joint inheritance” in the present [203]

Common suffering unites more strongly than common rejoicing. Among national memories, sorrows have greater value than victories; for they impose duties and demand common effort. [203]

The existence of a nation is ... a daily plebiscite, just as that of the individual is a continual affirmation of life. [203]

This is a subjective definition. Objections:

1. UNSTABLE – will encourage secession.
   BUT: everything changes. Nations will not always exist, even if it is currently a good thing if they do because “Their existence is the guarantee of liberty, which would be lost, if the world had by one law and one master.” [204]

SUM:

Man is the slave neither of his race, nor his language, nor his religion, nor of the windings of his rivers and mountain ranges. That moral consciousness which we call a nation is created by a great assemblage of men with warm hearts and healthy minds: and as long as this moral consciousness can prove its strength by the sacrifices demanded from the individual for the benefit of the community, it is justifiable and has the right to exist. If doubts arise concerning its frontiers, let the population in dispute be consulted: for surely they have a right to a say in the matter.” [205]