4 - State violence in the origins of nationalism

Summary

Theories of nationalism concur that nationalism is a political idea that is historically determined and structured over the longue durée, whether by modernity and industrial order, or the power of the state, or beliefs about ethnicity and culture. Nationalist political mobilizations are generally held to be epiphenomena that, if not quite extraneous to the logic of the metatheories, are considered to be much less important. When Gellner synthesized his ideas about nationalism he employed literary, botanical, and other metaphors to dismiss the idea that nationalism could be an “old, latent, dormant force.” Nationalism, according to Gellner, was the political “crystallisation of units” that were suitable for the conditions of industrial society. Most nationalisms, he argued, were “determined slumberers” who refused to be awakened, indeed, they went “meekly to their doom” in the dustheap of history (Gellner 1983: 47–49). In a famous statement, lifted from Sherlock Holmes (but which is actually a reversal of Holmes's deductive thinking), he asserted that most nationalisms do not project themselves violently:

Nevertheless, the clue to the understanding of nationalism is its weakness at least as much as its strength. It was the dog who failed to bark who provided the vital clue for Sherlock Holmes. The numbers of potential nationalisms which failed to bark is far, far larger than those which did, though they have captured all our attention.

(Gellner 1983: 43)