Ernst Renan had an interesting presentation on Nationalism, stressing that forgetting was necessary in order to forge a nation and keep it together. It's hard to find on the web. So here it is:
What is a Nation?
Ernst Renan
What I propose to do today is to analyse with
you an idea which, though seemingly clear, lends itself to the most dangerous
misunderstandings. [Consider] the vast agglomerations of men found in China,
Egypt or ancient Babylonia, the tribes of the Hebrews and the Arabs, the city
as it existed in Athens or Sparta, the assemblies of the various territories in
the Carolingian Empire, those communities which are without a patrie= and are
maintained by a religious bond alone, as is the case with the Israelites and
the Parsees, nations, such as France, England and the majority of the modern
European sovereign states, confederations, such as exist in Switzerland or in
America, and ties, such as those that race, or rather language, establishes
between the different branches of the German or Slav peoples. Each of these
groupings exist, or have existed, and there would be the direst of consequences
if one were to confuse any one of them with any other. At the time of the
French Revolution, it was commonly believed that the institutions proper to
small, independent cities, such as Sparta and Rome, might be applied to our
large nations, which number some thirty or forty million souls. Nowadays, a far
graver mistake is made: race is confused with nation and a sovereignty
analogous to that of really existing peoples is attributed to ethnographic or,
rather linguistic groups.
I want now to try and make these difficult
questions somewhat more precise, for the slightest confusion regarding the
meaning of words, at the start of an argument, may in the end lead to the most
fatal of errors. It is a delicate thing that I propose to do here, somewhat
akin to vivisection; I am going to treat the living much as one ordinarily
treats the dead. I shall adopt an absolutely cool and impartial attitude.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire or,
rather, since the disintegration of Charlemagne's empire, western Europe has
seemed to us to be divided into nations, some of which, in certain epochs, have
sought to wield a hegemony over the others, without ever enjoying any lasting
success. It is hardly likely that anyone in the future will achieve what
Charles V. Louis XIV and Napoleon I failed to do. The founding of a new Roman
Empire or of a new Carolingian empire would now be impossible. Europe is so
divided that any bid for universal domination would very rapidly give rise to a
coalition, which would drive any too ambitious nation back to its natural
frontiers.' A kind of equilibrium has long been established. France, England,
Germany and Russia will, for centuries to come, no matter what may befall them,
continue to be individual historical units, the crucial pieces on a
chequerboard whose squares will forever vary in importance and size but will
never be wholly confused with each other.
Nations, in this sense of the term, are
something fairly new in history. Antiquity was unfamiliar with them; Egypt,
China and ancient Chaldea were in no way nations. They .were flocks led by a
Son of the Sun or by a Son of Heaven. Neither in Egypt nor in China were there
citizens as such. Classical antiquity had republics, municipal kingdoms,
confederations of local republics and empires, yet it can hardly be said to have
had nations in our understanding of the term. Athens, Sparta, Tyre and Sidon
were small centres imbued with the most admirable patriotism, but they were
[simply] cities with a relatively restricted territory. Gaul, Spain and Italy,
prior to their absorption by the Roman Empire, were collections of clans, which
were often allied among themselves but had no central institutions and no
dynasties. The Assyrian Empire, the Persian Empire and the empire of Alexander
the Great were not patries either. There never were any Assyrian
patriots, and the Persian Empire was nothing but a vast feudal structure. No
nation traces its origins back to Alexander the Great's momentous adventure,
fertile though it was in consequences for the general history of civilization.
The Roman Empire was much more nearly a patrie.
Roman domination, although
at first so harsh, was soon loved, for it had brought about the great benefit
of putting an end to war. The empire was a huge association, and a synonym for
order. peace and civilization. In its closing stages, lofty souls, enlightened
bishops, and the educated classes had a real sense of the Pax
Romana, which withstood the
threatening chaos of barbarism. But an empire twelve times larger than
present-day France cannot be said to be a state in the modern sense of the
term. The split between the eastern and western (empires] was inevitable, and
attempts at founding an empire in Gaul, in the third century AD, did not
succeed either. It was in fact the Germanic invasions which introduced into the
world the principle which, later, was to serve as a basis for the existence of
nationalities.
What
in fact did the German
peoples accomplish, from their great invasions in the fifth century AD up until
the final Norman conquests in the tenth century? They effected little change in
the racial stock, but they imposed dynasties and a military aristocracy upon
the more or less extensive parts of the old empire of the west, which assumed
the names of their invaders. This was the origin of France, Burgundy, and
Lombardy, and, subsequently, Normandy. The Frankish Empire so rapidly extended
its sway that, for a period, it re-established the unity of the west, but it
was irreparably shattered around the middle of the ninth century; the partition
of Verdun' outlined divisions which were in principle immutable and, from then
on, France, Germany, England, Italy, and Spain made their way, by often
circuitous paths and through a thousand and one vicissitudes, to their full
national existence, such as we see it blossoming today.
What in fact is the defining feature of these
different states? It is the fusion of their component populations. In the above
mentioned countries, there is nothing analogous to what you will find in
Turkey, where Turks, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Syrians, and Kurds are as
distinct today as they were upon the day that they were conquered. Two crucial
circumstances helped to bring about this result. First, the fact that the
Germanic peoples adopted Christianity as soon as they underwent any prolonged
contact with the Greek or Latin peoples. When conqueror or conquered have the
same religion or, rather, when the conqueror adopts the religion of the
conquered, the Turkish system - that is, the absolute distinction between men
in terms of their religion - can no longer arise. The second circumstance was
the forgetting, by the conquerors, of their own language. The grandsons of
Clovis, Alaric, Gundebald, Alboin, and Roland were already speaking the Roman
tongue. This fact was itself the consequence of another important feature,
namely, the fact that the Franks, Burgundians, Goths, Lombards, and Normans had
very few women of their own race with them.. For several generations, the
chiefs only married German women; but their concubines were Latin, as were the
wet-nurses of their children; the tribe as a whole married Latin women; which
meant that,.. from the time the Franks and the Goths established themselves on
Rgman territory, the lingua ,francica and the lingua gothica did not last too long.
This was not how it was in England, for the
invading Saxons undoubtedly brought women with them; the Celtic population took
flight, and, besides, Latin was no longer, or rather had never been, dominant
in Britain. If Old French had been generally spoken in Gaul in the fifth
century Clovis and his people would not have abandoned German for Old French.
The
crucial result of all this was that, in spite of the extreme violence of the
customs of the German invaders, the mould which they imposed became, with the
passing centuries, the actual mould of the nation. `France' became quite
legitimately the name of a country to which only a virtually imperceptible
minority of Franks had come. In the tenth century, in the first chansons
de geste, which are such a
perfect mirror of the spirit of the times, all the inhabitants of France are
French. The idea, which had seemed so obvious to Gregory of Tours,' that
the population of France was composed of different races, was in no way
apparent to French writers and poets after Hugh Capet. The difference between
noble and serf was as sharply drawn as possible, but it was in no sense
presented as an ethnic difference; it was presented rather as a difference in
courage, customs, and education, all of which were transmitted hereditarily; it
did not occur to anyone that the origin of all this was a conquest. The
spurious system according to which nobility owed its origin to a privilege
conferred by the king for services rendered to the nation, so that every noble
was an ennobled person, was established as a dogma as early as the thirteenth
century. The same thing took place after almost all the Norman conquests. After
one or two generations, the Norman invaders no longer distinguished themselves
from the rest of the population, although their influence was not any less
profound because of this fact; they had given the conquered country a nobility,
military habits, and a patriotism that they had not known before.
Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say
historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why
progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle
of] nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence
which took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose
consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is always effected by means
of brutality; the union of northern France with the Midi was the result of
massacres and terror lasting for the best part of a century. Though the king of
France was, if I may make so bold as to say, almost the perfect instance of an
agent that crystallized (a nation) over a long period; though he established
the most perfect national unity that there has ever been, too searching a
scrutiny had destroyed his prestige. The nation which he had formed has cursed
him, and, nowadays, it is only men of culture who know something of his former
value and of his achievements.
It is [only) by contrast that these great
laws of the history of western Europe become perceptible to us. Many countries
failed to achieve what the King of France, partly through his tyranny, partly
through his justice, so admirably brought to fruition. Under the Crown of Saint
Stephen, the Magyars and the Slavs have remained as distinct as they were 800
years ago. Far from managing to fuse the diverse [ethnic] elements to be found
in its domains, the House of Hapsburg has kept them distinct and often opposed
the one to the other. In Bohemia [for instance], the Czech and German elements
are superimposed, much like oil and water in a glass. The Turkish policy of
separating nationalities according to their religion has had much graver
consequences, for it brought about the downfall of the east. If you take a city
such as Salonika or Smyrna, you will find there five or six communities each of
which has its own memories and which have almost nothing in common. Yet the
essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common; and
also that they have forgotten many things. No French citizen knows whether
he is a Burgundian, an Alan, a Taifale, or a Visigoth, yet every French citizen
has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,' or the massacres that
took place in the Midi in the thirteenth century. There are not ten families in
France that can supply proof of their Frankish origin, and any such proof would
anyway be essentially flawed, as a consequence of countless unknown alliances
which are liable to disrupt any genealogical system.
The modern nation is therefore a historical
result brought about by a series of convergent facts. Sometimes unity has been
effected by a dynasty, as was the case in France; sometimes it has been brought
about by the direct will of provinces, as was the case with Holland,
Switzerland, and Belgium; sometimes it has been the work of a general
consciousness, belatedly victorious over the caprices of feudalism, as was the
case in Italy and Germany. These formations always had a profound raison d'etre. Principles, in such cases, always emerge
through the most unexpected surprises. Thus, in our own day, we have seen Italy
unified through its defeats and Turkey destroyed by its victories. Each
defeat advanced the cause of Italy; each victory spelled doom for Turkey;
for Italy is a nation, and Turkey, outside of Asia Minor, is not one. France
can claim the glory for having, through the French Revolution, proclaimed that
a nation exists of itself. We should not be displeased if others imitate us in
this. It was we who founded the principle of nationality. But what is a
nation? Why is Holland a nation, when Hanover, or the Grand Duchy of Parma, are
not? How is it that France continues to be a nation, when the principle which
created it has disappeared? How is it that Switzerland, which has three
languages, two religions, and three or four races, is a nation, when Tuscany,
which is so homogeneous, is not one? Why is Austria a state and not a nation?
In what ways does the principle of nationality differ from that of races? These
are points that a thoughtful person would wish to have settled, in order to put
his mind at rest. The affairs of this world can hardly be said to be ruled by
reasonings of this sort, yet diligent men are desirous of bringing some reason
into these matters and of unravelling the confusions in which superficial
intelligences are entangled:
II
If one were to believe some political
theorists, a nation is above all a dynasty, representing an earlier conquest,
one which was first of all accepted, and then forgotten by the mass of the
people. According to the above-mentioned theorists, the grouping of provinces
effected by a dynasty, by its wars, its marriages, and its treaties, ends with
the dynasty which had established it. It is quite true that the majority of
modern nations were made by a family of feudal origin, which had contracted a
marriage with the soil and which was in some sense a nucleus of centralization.
France's frontiers in 1789 had nothing either natural or necessary about them.
The wide zone that the House of Capet had added to the narrow strip of land
granted by the partition of Verdun was indeed the personal acquisition of this
House. During the epoch when these acquisitions were made, there was no idea of
natural frontiers, nor of the rights of nations, nor of the will of provinces.
The union of England, Ireland, and Scotland was likewise a dynastic fact. Italy
only tarried so long before becoming a nation because, among its numerous
reigning houses, none, prior to the present century, constituted itself as the
centre of [its] unity, Strangely enough, it was through the obscure island of
Sardinia, a land that was scarcely Italian, that [the house of Savoy] assumed a
royal title.' Holland, which - through an act of heroic resolution - created
itself, has nevertheless contracted an intimate marriage with the House of
Orange, and it will run real dangers the day this union is compromised.
Is such a law, however, absolute? It
undoubtedly is not. Switzerland and the United States, which have formed
themselves, like conglomerates, by successive additions, have no dynastic
basis. I shall not discuss this question in relation to France, for I would
need to be able to read the secrets of the future in order to do so. Let me
simply say that so loftily national had this great French royal principle been
that, on the morrow of its fall, the nation was able to stand without her.
Furthermore, the eighteenth century had changed everything. Man had returned,
after centuries of abasement, to the spirit of antiquity, to [a sense of
respect for himself, to the idea of his own rights. The words patrie and
citizen had recovered their former meanings. Thus it was that the boldest
operation ever yet put into effect in history was brought to completion, an
operation which one might compare with the attempt, in physiology, to restore
to its original identity a body from which one had removed the brain and the
heart.
It must therefore be admitted that a nation
can exist without a dvnastic principle, and even that nations which have been
formed by dynasties can be separated from them without therefore ceasing to
exist. The old principle, which only takes account of the right of princes,
could no longer be maintained; apart from dynastic right, there is also
national right. Upon what criterion, however, should one base this national
right? By what sign should one know it? From what tangible fact can one derive
it?
Several confidently assert that it is derived
from race. The artificial divisions, resulting from feudalism, from princely
marriages, from diplomatic congresses are, [these authors assert], in a state
of decay. It is a population's race which remains firm and fixed. This is what
constitutes a right, a legitimacy. The Germanic family, according to the theory
I am expounding here, has the right to reassemble the scattered limbs of the
Germanic order, even when these limbs are not asking to be joined together
again. The right of the Germanic order over such-and-such a province is
stronger than the right of the inhabitants of that province over themselves.
There is thus created a kind of primordial right analogous to the divine
right of kings; an ethnographic principle is substituted for a national one.
This is a very great error, which, if it were to become dominant, would destroy
European civilization. The primordial right of races is as narrow and as
perilous for genuine progress as the national principle is just and legitimate.
In the tribes and cities of antiquity, the
fact of race was, I will allow, of very real importance. The tribe and the city
were then merely extensions of the family. At Sparta and at Athens all the
citizens were kin to a greater or lesser degree. The same was true of the
Beni-Israelites; this is still the case with the Arab tribes. If we move now
from Athens, Sparta, and the Israelite tribe to the Roman Empire the situation
is a wholly different one. Established at first through violence but
subsequently preserved through [common] interest, this great agglomeration of
cities and provinces, wholly different from each other, dealt the gravest of
blows to the idea of race. Christianity, with its universal and absolute
character, worked still more effectively in the same direction; it formed an
intimate alliance with the Roman Empire and, through the impact of these two
incomparable unificatory agents, the ethnographic argument was debarred from
the government of human affairs for centuries.
The barbarian invasions were, appearances
notwithstanding, a further step along this same path. The carving out of the
barbarian kingdoms had nothing ethnographic about them, their (shape] was
determined by the might or whim of the invaders. They were utterly indifferent
to the race of the populations which they had subdued. What Rome had fashioned,
Charlemagne refashioned in his own way, namely, a single empire composed of the
most diverse races; those responsible for the partition of Verdun, as they
calmly drew their two long lines from north to south, were not in the slightest
concerned with the race of the peoples to be found on the right or left of these
lines. Frontier changes put into effect, as the Middle Ages wore on, likewise
paid no heed to ethnographic divisions. If the policies pursued by the House of
Capet by and large resulted in the grouping together, under the name of France,
of the territories of ancient Gaul, this was only because these lands had a
natural tendency to be joined together with their fellows. Dauphine, Bresse,
Provence, and Franche-Comte no longer recalled any common origin. All Gallic
consciousness had perished by the second century AD, and it is only from a
purely scholarly perspective that, in our own days, the individuality of the
Gallic character has been retrospectively recovered.
Ethnographic considerations have therefore
played no part in the constitution of modern nations. France is [at once]
Celtic, Iberic, and Germanic. Germany is Germanic, Celtic and Slav. Italy is
the country where the ethnographic argument is most confounded. Gauls,
Etruscans, Pelasgians, and Greeks, not to mention many other elements,
intersect in an indecipherable mixture. The British isles, considered as a
whole, present a mixture of Celtic and Germanic blood, the proportions of which
are singularly difficult to define.
The truth is that there is no pure race and
that to make politics depend upon ethnographic analysis is to surrender it to a
chimera. The noblest countries, England, France, and Italy, are those where the
blood is the most mixed. Is Germany an exception in this respect? Is it a
purely Germanic country? This is a complete illusion. The whole of the south
was once Gallic; the whole of the east, from the river Elbe on, is Slav. Even
those parts which are claimed to be really pure, are they in fact so? We touch
here on one of those problems in regard to which it is of the utmost importance
that we equip ourselves with clear ideas and ward off misconceptions.
Discussions of race are interminable, because
philologically- minded historians and physiologically-minded anthropologists
interpret the term in two totally different ways.' For the anthropologists,
race has the same meaning as in zoology; it serves to indicate real descent, a
blood relation. However, the study of language and of history does not lead to
the same divisions as does physiology. Words such as brachycephalic or dolichocephalic
have no place in either history or philology. In the human group which created
the Aryan languages and way of life, there were already [both] brachycephalics
and dolichocephalics. The same is true of the primitive group which created the
languages and institutions known as Semitic. In other words, the zoological
origins of humanity are massively prior to the origins of culture,
civilization, and language. The primitive Aryan, primitive Semitic, and
primitive Touranian groups had no physiological unity. These groupings are
historical facts, which took place in a particular epoch, perhaps 15,000 or
20,000 years ago, while the zoological origin of humanity is lost in
impenetrable darkness. What is known philologically and historically as the
Germanic race is no doubt a quite distinct family within the human species, but
is it a family in the anthropological sense of the term? Certainly not. The
emergence of an individual Germanic identity occurred only a few centuries
prior to Jesus Christ. One may take it that the Germans did not emerge from the
earth at this epoch. Prior to this, mingled with the Slavs in the huge
indistinct mass of the Scythians, they did not have their own separate
individuality. An Englishman is indeed a type within the whole of humanity.
However, the type of what is quite improperly called the Anglo-Saxon race"
is neither the Briton of Julius Caesar's time, nor the Anglo-Saxon of Hengist's
time, nor the Dane of Canute's time, nor the Norman of William the Conqueror's
time; it is rather the result of all these [elements]. A Frenchman is neither a
Gaul, nor a Frank, nor a Burgundian. Rather, he is what has emerged out of the
cauldron in which, presided over by the King of France, the most diverse
elements have together been simmering. A native of Jersey or Guernsey differs
in no way, as far as his origins are concerned, from the Norman population of
the opposite coast. In the eleventh century, even the sharpest eye would have
seen not the slightest difference in those living on either side of the
Channel. Trifling circumstances meant that Philip Augustus did not seize these
islands together with the rest of Normandy. Separated from each other for the
best part of 700 years, the two populations have become not only strangers to
each other but wholly dissimilar. Race, as we historians understand it, is
therefore something which is made and unmade. The study of race is of crucial
importance for the scholar concerned with the history of humanity. It has no
applications, however, in politics. The instinctive consciousness which
presided over the construction of the map of Europe took no account of race,
and the leading nations of Europe are nations of essentially mixed blood.
The fact of race, which was originally
crucial, thus becomes increasingly less important. Human history is essentially
different from zoology, and race is not everything, as it is among the rodents
or the felines, and one does not have the right to go through the world
fingering people's skulls, and taking them by the throat saying: 'You are of
our blood; you belong to us!' Aside from anthropological characteristics, there
are such things as reason, justice, the true, and the beautiful, which are the
same for all. Be on your guard, for this ethnographic politics is in no way a stable
thing and, if today you use it against others, tomorrow you may see it turned
against yourselves. Can you be sure that the Germans, who have raised the
banner of ethnography so high, will not see the Slavs in their turn analyse the
names of villages in Saxony and Lusatia, search for any traces of the Wiltzes
or of the Obotrites, and demand recompense for the massacres and the wholesale
enslavements that the Ottoss inflicted upon their ancestors? It is good for
everyone to know how to forget.
I am very fond of ethnography, for it is a
science of rare interest; but, in so far as I would wish it to be free, I wish
it to be without political application. In ethnography, as in all forms of
study, systems change; this is the condition of progress. States' frontiers
would then follow the fluctuations of science. Patriotism would depend upon a
more or less paradoxical dissertation. One would come up to a patriot and say:
'You were mistaken; you shed your blood for such-and-such a cause; you believed
yourself to be a Celt; not at all, you are a German.' Then, ten years later,
you will be told that you are a Slav. If we are not to distort science, we
should exempt it from the need to give an opinion on these problems, in which
so many interests are involved. You can be sure that, if one obliges science to
furnish diplomacy with its first principles, one will surprise her many times
in flagrant delit. She has better things to do; let us simply ask her to tell
the truth.
What
we have just said of race
applies to language too. Language invites people to unite, but it does not
force them to do so. The United States and England, Latin America and Spain,
speak the same languages yet do not form single nations. Conversely,
Switzerland, so well made, since she was
made with the consent of her different parts, numbers three or four
languages. There is something in man which is superior to language, namely, the
will. The will of Switzerland to be united, in spite of the diversity of
her dialects, is a fact of far greater importance than a similitude often
obtained by various vexatious measures.
An honourable fact about France is that she
has never sought to win unity of language by coercive measures. Can one not
have the same sentiments and the same thoughts, and love the same things in
different languages? I was speaking just now of the disadvantages of making
international politics depend upon ethnography; they would be no less if one
were to make it depend upon comparative philology. Let us allow these
intriguing studies full freedom of discussion; let us not mix them up with matters which would undermine their serenity.
The political importance attaching to languages derives from their being
regarded as signs of race. Nothing could be more false. Prussia, where only
German is now spoken; spoke Slav a few centuries ago; in Wales, English is
spoken; Gaul and Spain speak the
primitive dialects of Alba Longa; Egypt speaks Arabic; there are countless other examples one could quote. Even if
you go back to origins, similarity of language did not presuppose similarity of
race. Consider, for example the proto-Aryan or proto-Semitic tribe: there one
found slaves speaking the same language as their masters, and yet the slave was often enough a different
race to that of his master. Let me repeat that these divisions of the
Indo-European, Semitic, or other languages, created with such admirable
sagacity by comparative philology, do not coincide with the divisions
established by anthropology. Languages are historical formations, which tell us
very little about the blood of those who speak them and which, in any case,
could not shackle human liberty when it is a matter of deciding the family with
which one unites oneself for life or for death.
This exclusive concern with language, like an
excessive preoccupation with race, has its dangers and its drawbacks. Such
exaggerations enclose one within a specific culture, considered as national;
one limits oneself, one hems oneself in. One leaves the heady air that one
breathes in the vast field of humanity in order to enclose oneself in a
conventicle with one's compatriots. Nothing could be worse for the mind;
nothing could be more disturbing for civilization. Let us not abandon the
fundamental principle that man is a reasonable and moral being, before he is
cooped up in such and such a language, before he is a member of such and such a
race, before he belongs to such and such a culture. Before French, German, or
Italian culture there is human culture. Consider the great men of the
Renaissance; they were neither French, nor Italian, nor German. They had
rediscovered, through their dealings with antiquity, the secret of the genuine
education of the human spirit, and they devoted themselves to it body and soul.
What an achievement theirs was!
Religion cannot supply an adequate basis for
the constitution of a modern nationality either. Originally, religion had to do
with the very existence of the social group, which was itself an extension of
the family. Religion and the rites were family rites. The religion of Athens
was the cult of Athens itself, of its mythical founders, of its laws and its
customs; it implied no theological dogma. This religion was, in the strongest
sense of the term, a state religion. One was not an Athenian if one refused to
practise it. This religion was, fundamentally, the cult of the Acropolis
personified. To “swear on the altar of Aglauros" was to swear that one
would die for the patrie. This religion was the equivalent of what the act of
drawing lots [for military service], or the cult of the flag, is for us.
Refusing to take part in such a cult would be the equivalent, in our modern
societies, of refusing military service. It would be like declaring that one
was not Athenian. From another angle, it is clear that such a cult had no meaning
for someone who was not from Athens; there was also no attempt made to
proselytize foreigners and to force them to accept it; the slaves of Athens did
not practise it. Things were much the same in a number of small medieval
republics. One was not considered a good Venetian if one did not swear by Saint
Mark; nor a good Amalfitan if one did not set Saint Andrew higher than all the
other saints in paradise. In these small
societies, what subsequently was regarded as persecution or tyranny was
legitimate and was of no more consequence than our custom of wishing the father
of a family happy birthday or a Happy New Year.
The state of affairs in Sparta and in Athens
already no longer existed in the kingdoms which emerged from Alexander's
conquest, still less in the Roman Empire. The persecutions unleashed by
Antiochus Epiphanes in order to win the east for the cult of Jupiter
Olympus, those of the Roman Empire designed to maintain a supposed state
religion were mistaken, criminal, and absurd. In our own time, the situation is
perfectly clear. There are no longer masses that believe in a perfectly uniform
manner. Each person believes and practises in his own fashion what he is able
to and as he wishes. There is no longer .a state religion; one can be French, English,
or German, and be either Catholic, Protestant, or orthodox Jewish, or else
practise no cult at all. Religion has become an individual matter; it concerns
the conscience of each person. The division of nations into Catholics and
Protestants no longer exists. Religion, which, fiftytwo years ago, played so
substantial a part in the formation of Belgium, preserves all of its [former]
importance in the inner tribunal of each; but it has ceased almost entirely to
be one of the elements which serve to define the frontiers of peoples.
A community of interest is assuredly a
powerful bond between men. Do interests, however, suffice to make a nation? I
do not think so. Community of interest brings about trade agreements, but
nationality has a sentimental -side to it; it is both soul and body at once; a Zollverein' is not a patrie.
Geography, or what are known as natural
frontiers, undoubtedly plays a considerable part in the division of nations.
Geography is one of the crucial factors in history. Rivers have led races on;
mountains have brought them to a halt. The former have favoured movement in
history, whereas the latter have restricted it. Can one say, however, that as
some parties believe, a nation's frontiers are written on the, map and that
this nation has the right to judge what is necessary to round off certain
contours, in order to reach such and such a mountain and such and such a river,
which are thereby accorded a kind of a
priori limiting faculty? I know of no doctrine which is more arbitrary or
more fatal, for it allows one to justify any or every violence. First of all,
is it the mountains or the rivers that we should regard as fanning these
so-called natural frontiers? It is indisputable that the mountains separate,
but the rivers tend rather to unify. Moreover, all mountains cannot divide up
states. Which serve to separate and which do not? From Biarritz to Tornea,
there is no one estuary which is more suited than any other to serving as a
boundary marker. Had history so decreed it, the Loire, the Seine, the Meuse,
the Elbe, or the Oder could, just as easily as the Rhine, have had this quality
of being a natural frontier, such as has caused so many infractions of the most
fundamental right, which is men's will. People talk of strategic grounds. Nothing,
however, is absolute; it is quite clear that many concessions should be made to
necessity. But these concessions should not
be taken too far. Otherwise, everybody would lay claim to their military
conveniences, and one would have unceasing war. No, it is no more soil than it
is race which makes a nation. The soil furnishes the substratum, the field of
struggle and of labour; man furnishes the soul. Man is everything in the
formation of this sacred thing which is called a people. Nothing [purely] material
suffices for it. A nation is a spiritual principle, the outcome of the profound
complications of history; it is a spiritual family not a group determined by
the shape of the earth. We have now seen what things are not adequate for the
creation of such a spiritual principle, namely, race, language, material
interest, religious affinities, geography, and military necessity. What more
then is required? As a consequence of what was said previously, I will not have
to detain you very much longer.
III
A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.
Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul or spiritual
principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is the possession in
common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the
desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that
one has received in an undivided form. Man, Gentlemen, does not improvise. The
nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of endeavours,
sacrifice, and devotion. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most
legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past, great
men, glory (by which I understand genuine glory), this is the social capital
upon which one bases a national idea. To have common glories in the past and to
have a common will in the present; to have performed great deeds together, to
wish to perform still more - these are the essential conditions for being a
people. One loves in proportion to the sacrifices to which one has consented,
and in proportion to the ills that one has suffered. One loves the house that
one has built and that one has handed down. The Spartan song -'We are what you
were; we will be what you are" 3
- is, in its simplicity, the
abridged hymn of every patrie.
More valuable by far than common customs
posts and frontiers conforming to strategic ideas is the fact of sharing, in
the past, a glorious heritage and regrets, and of having, in the future, [a
shared] programme to put into effect, or the fact of having suffered, enjoyed,
and hoped together. These are the kinds of things that can be understood in
spite of differences of race and language. I spoke just now of 'having suffered
together' and, indeed, suffering in common unifies more than joy does. Where
national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for
they impose duties, and require a common effort.
A nation is therefore a large-scale
solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in
the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It
presupposes a past; it is summarized, however, in the present by a tangible
fact, namely, consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life.
A nation's existence is, if you will pardon the metaphor, a daily plebiscite,
just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life. That, I
know full well, is less metaphysical than divine right and less brutal than
so-called historical right. According to the ideas that I am outlining to you,
a nation has no more right than a king does to say to a province: 'You belong
to me, I am seizing you.' A province, as far as 1 am concerned, is its
inhabitants; if anyone has the right to be consulted in such an affair, it is
the inhabitant. A nation never has any real interest in annexing or holding on
to a country against its will. The wish of nations is, all in all, the sole
legitimate criterion, the one to which one must always return.
We have driven metaphysical and theological
abstractions out of politics. What then remains? Man, with his desires and his
needs. The secession, you will say to me, and, in the long term, the
disintegration of nations will be the outcome of a system which places these
old organisms at the mercy of wills which are often none too enlightened. It is
clear that, in such matters, no principle must be pushed too far. Truths of
this order are only applicable as a whole in a very general fashion. Human
wills change, but what is there here below that does not change? The nations
are not something eternal. They had their beginnings and they will end. A
European confederation will very probably replace them. But such is not the law
of the century in which we are living. At the present time, the existence of
nations is a good thing, a necessity even. Their existence is the guarantee of
liberty, which would be lost if the world had only one law and only one master.
Through their various and often opposed
powers, nations participate in the common work of civilization; each sounds a
note in the great concert of humanity, which, after all, is the highest ideal
reality that we are capable of attaining. Isolated, each has its weak point. I
often tell myself that an individual who had those faults which in nations are
taken for good qualities, who fed off vainglory, who was to that degree
jealous, egotistical, and quarrelsome, and who would draw his sword on the
smallest pretext, would be the most intolerable of men. Yet all these
discordant details disappear in the overall context. Poor humanity, how you
have suffered! How many trials still await you! May the spirit of wisdom guide
you, in order to preserve you from the countless dangers with which your path
is strewn!
Let me sum up, Gentlemen. Man is a slave
neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the course of
rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains. A large aggregate of men,
healthy in mind and warm of heart, creates the kind of moral conscience which
we call a nation. So long as this moral consciousness gives proof of its
strength by the sacrifices which demand the abdication of the individual to the
advantage of the community, it is legitimate and has the right to exist. If
doubts arise regarding its frontiers, consult the populations in the areas under dispute. They undoubtedly
have the right to a say in the matter. This recommendation will bring a smile
to the lips of the transcendants of politics, these infallible beings who spend
their lives deceiving themselves and who, from the height of their superior
principles, take pity upon our mundane concerns.
`Consult the populations, for heaven's
sake! How naive! A fine example of those wretched French ideas which claim to replace diplomacy and
war by childishly simple methods.'
Wait a while, Gentlemen; let the reign of the transcendants pass; bear the scorn of the powerful with patience. It
may be that, after many fruitless gropings, people will revert to our more
modest empirical solutions. The best way of being right in the future is,
in certain periods, to know how to resign oneself to being out of fashion.
Notes
(Notes followed by an asterisk are the
translator's.)
A lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, 11 March
1882. 'Qu'est-ce qu'une nation%', Oeuvres Completes (Paris, 1947-61), vol. I,
pp. 887-907. An earlier translation, which I have consulted, is in A. Zimmern
(ed.), Modern Political Doctrines (London, 1939), pp. 186-205.
2* I have left patrie in the original French
because it seems to me that to translate it into another European (or, indeed,
non-European) language would be to eliminate the kinds of association the term
had, in a very large number of countries, throughout the epoch of
liberal-democratic nationalism. Parrie draws with it a whole cluster of complex
and interlocking references to the values of the patria of classical
republicanism. For an observer like Marx, these values were destroyed forever
in the black farce of 1848. In another sense, as Marx's arguments in The Eighteenth
Brumaire allow, they
continued to influence the leaders of liberal, nationalist revolutions
throughout the nineteenth century - although, obviously, if one were to phrase
it in Italian terms, the Cavourian moderate rather than the Mazzinian or
Garibaldian radical wing. It may be worth noting that, in the domain of
scholarship, Fustel de Coulanges' The Ancient City (1864), a study which profoundly influenced
Emile Durkheim and which Renan himself had very probably read, shattered the
vision of classical republicanism which men such as Robespierre and Saint Just
had entertained.
The doctrine of natural frontiers was given
its definitive formulation in the course of the French Revolution, and was
subsequently applied to other European countries, such as Germany or Italy; it
was this doctrine that fuelled the irredentist movements of the second half of
the nineteenth century. Justification of territorial claims often rested upon
the interpretation of classical texts, such as Tacitus's Germania or Dante's
Commedia.
4* The partition of Verdun (AD 843) ended a
period of civil war within the Frankish -Empire, during which the grandsons of
Charlemagne had fought each other. Two of the newly created kingdoms, that of
Charles the Bald (843-77) and that of Louis the German (843-76), bear some
resemblance, in territorial terms, to modern France and modern Germany.
Furthermore, much has been made of the linguistic qualities of the Oaths of
Strasbourg, sworn by Louis and Charles to each other's armies, in Old French
and Old High German respectively. This has often been regarded as the first
text in a Romance language (as distinct from Latin) and, by extension, as the
first symbolic appearance of the French (and German) nations.
5* 'Gregory of Tours (c. X39-94) was a
Gallo-Roman and Bishop of Tours from 573 to 594. His History of the Franks
is an account of life in
Merovingian Gaul.
6* Upon the occasion of the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew, in 1572, many thousands of Huguenots were killed. This was an
event with momentous repercussions for the history of France in general, and
for the development of political theory in particular.
7 The House of Savoy owes its royal title to
its acquisition of Sardinia (17?0).
8* The Pelasgians were believed, in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to
have been the original inhabitants of Italy.
9 I enlarged upon this point in a lecture,
which is analysed in the Bulletin of the Association scienrifique de
France, 10 March 1878, 'Des
services rendus aux Sciences historiques par la Philologie'.
10 Germanic elements are not more
considerable in the United Kingdom than when they were in France, when she had
possession of Alsace and Metz. If the Germanic language has dominated in the
British isles, it was simply because Latin had not wholly replaced the Celtic
languages, as it had done in Gaul.
11 Aglauros, who gave her life to save her patrie,
represents the Acropolis
itself.
12* Zollverein is the German word for customs
union. Both participants in bourgeois, national revolutions and later
commentators emphasize the relation between the nationalist cause and free
trade within a single territory. However, E.J. Hobsbawm's comments, on pp.
166-8 of The Age of Revolution (London, 1962), shed some light upon Renan's
aphorism, in that the vanguard of European nationalism in the 1830s and 1840s
was not so much the business class as 'the lower and middle professional,
administrative and intellectual strata, in ocher words, the educated classes'.
At another level,
335
Renan's
observation reflects his shock at the defeat of France by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian
war, which is expressed in both major and occasional writings.
13*
Such epitaphs were part of the habitual repertoire of early-nineteenth century
nationalism, as Leopardi's 'patriotic' canzoni
make plain.
336
