Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality [Paperback]

I am very tired of the idea that an historian must be absolutely neutral. That is not true. When you prefer Middle ages to Ancient history you are making a choice. An historian cannot be like the Caesar's wife. It is not his job. His job is to create an opinion, and to provoke a discussion.

Nationalism in Europe has been a main source of troubles in Europe since 1918. And its new revival in the 80's shows that it has not been solved. I think it is quite an anachronism specially when we are trying to build up the European Union. If really we are living in a global world I think thi sidelogy must die, like many others before it.

"The basic characteristic of the nation and everything with it is its modernity." Even the very vocabulary of nationality is relatively new. Especially invaluable is Hobsbawm's chapter on popular proto-nationalism as he discusses all the elements that supposedly "cause" nationalism and finds them all insufficient. Many Central and Eastern European peasants did not view themselves so much as members of particular nationalities but as peasants. The term "Estonian" for instance only came into use in the 1860s. Languages appear stronger, yet dialects were so common up until the late nineteenth century that only half of the French in 1789 spoke the language, while only 2.5% of pre-unification Italy spoke what is now Italian. Nationalists often had to write their own grammars and dictionaries, and in the process the various Yugoslav groups turned three major dialects into the language we now know as Serbo-Croat. And where "there are no other languages within earshot, one's own idiom is not so much a group criterion as something that all people have, like legs." Ethnicity is not an undisputed concept: some of the most clearly defined ethnic groups are those like the Scots highlanders, or the Berbers or Afghan Pushtus who are hostile to any state. Many of the greatest fighters for Greek independence were Albanians, while Hungary's greatest 19th century poet, Petofi, was in fact a Slovak. Religion has its own ironies: many of the leaders of the Arab independence movement were Copts, Maronites and other Christians. Religions try to be universal so often they will separate Lithuanians from Russians, but not from Poles. The Catholic Church was the only all-Italian institution in 1859, but Italian nationalism had to make its way without it. Many pre-modern revolts against foreign invaders are less nationalistic than social and religious. When the citizens of Berlin offered to defend that city, Frederick the Great told them to mind their own business and let professionals handle the job.

Hobsbawm goes on to discuss how the modern state in the nineteenth century had its own reasons to encourage patriotism and national consciousness. He discusses how nationalist movements in Georgia, Armenia and Finland were dominated by socialists. "What would the future of Hebrew have been, had not the British mandate in 1919 accepted it as one of the three official languages of Palestine, at a time when the number of people speaking Hebrew as an everyday language was less than 20,000?" After discussing the rise of fascism, the Popular Front and the end of the Cold war, Hobsbawm ends memorably with this image: "The owl of Minerva which brings wisdom, said Hegel, flies out at dusk. It is a good sign that it is now circling round nations and nationalism."