National success

Eighty years ago one of the most successful, most liberal, most enlightened European empires came to a sorry end. The dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian empire left a resentful Austrian rump surrounded by rampant nation-states, each with its own version of ethnic nationalism, mostly concocted in the 19th century from various myths and legends. Vienna was a grandiose imperial capital without an empire. The reason for the end was defeat in the Great War. But the empire had become a crumbling, decadent edifice well before then. Its last years produced a wonderful generation of satirists, musicians, playwrights, dream-interpreters and dreamers of various degrees of madness, including one notoriously mediocre painter of picture postcards.

The anniversary of the collapse of Kakania (as Robert Musil called his native empire) is a good opportunity to think again about the nature of nation-states. How are they put together? What keeps them together? What is their ideal form? And what makes them dangerous? Without nationalism we would not have had democracy. But nationalism of a lethal kind has also caused the murder of millions. To trace the shape of 20th century nation-states we must return at least to the beginning of the 19th century, when many of them were formed.

When Prince Ludwig of Bavaria built Walhalla, his neo-classical temple of German unity near Regensburg on the Donau, in 1830, he had a clear idea of nationhood. For a Dutch visitor to Walhalla it is a rather troubling idea. The national heroes, enshrined in Walhalla in the classical manner as Roman busts, include the usual poets and thinkers of the German tongue: Goethe, Kant, Herder and, as a kind of postwar atonement, Albert Einstein. There are also, as you would expect, a number of German military heroes. But included too - disconcertingly for a Dutchman - are such Dutch national heroes as Admiral Tromp, Hugo Grotius and the father of the Fatherland himself, William of Orange.

To Ludwig, and indeed to any German patriot of the time, and later times too, the inclusion of Dutch historical figures in a German temple made perfect sense. Nationhood was based primarily on language, and a shared worship of heroes and poets who spoke it. Dutch is a branch of the German tree. So Dutch heroes should feel at home in Walhalla. And yet this notion of nationhood, developed in response to Napoleon's terror, was not shared by the Dutch. For the Dutch nation was forged not out of cultural romanticism, but from prosaic political institutions born in the war of independence against Spain. None of the Dutch founding fathers was a poet. The most important one was a lawyer.

I was reminded of Walhalla when I picked up a curious little book in a second-hand bookstore in Amsterdam, entitled The Face of the Netherlands. It was published in 1943, written by one SS-Obersturmführer Ernst Leutheusser as a guide for SS officers stationed in Holland during the war. It is not an unsympathetic guide. On the contrary. Leutheusser stresses the fraternal relationship between two Nordic peoples. The historical nature of that relationship is explained by the SS Obersturmführer as follows. There are really two parts of the Netherlands, he writes. There is the authentic, eastern half of the country, largely agricultural, facing Germany, and populated by people of good Saxon stock, who feel they are part of Europe because Europe, so to speak, is in their blood. Then there is the western seaboard with its cities, dominated by merchants who look towards Britain and the oceans beyond, for opportunities to enrich themselves through trade. This is the "deracinated" (entwurzelt) half of the country, whose traders and patricians have turned against their European roots. Regrettably, their "materialistic, bourgeois-capitalist mentality" (materialistische, bürgerlich-kapitalistische Gesinnung) has infected the rest of the Netherlands, which alienated the nation from Europe. But we should rest assured, for under the benevolent tutelage of the Third Reich this would soon be put right.

Reading this Nazi document, I was curiously moved; the deracinated enemy it describes is precisely the Europe with which I can identify. It is by no means confined to the Netherlands. You can draw a historic arc, from the Baltic states to the Hanseatic cities of northern Germany and all the way down to Lisbon via the British Isles and the Dutch coast; an arc of ports and great commercial cities, populated by people of many different creeds and races, suspicious of bureaucratic authority and aristocratic despotism. Beyond these cities, towards the east, lies the continental hinterland, where the twin sirens of blood and soil have produced great romantic poetry and a history of ferocious violence.

My point here is not to indulge in that great Dutch national sport of reminding Germans of their war guilt, but to look at very different concepts of nationhood. One concept stresses ethnic identity (mostly mythical, but no less powerful for that), language, culture, poetry, history and romantic feelings about the land. The other is based on political institutions. Both concepts have led to excesses. Both can adopt benign or malign forms. And the two often coexist. That is to say, the nationalism of every nation has romantic as well as constitutional, political elements. The question is: where do we place more weight - on culture, or on shared political institutions?

In one important though perhaps obvious respect, the SS Obersturmführer was right. Cities living off trade tend to resist the romance of blood and soil, because trade is indiscriminate; you trade with anyone who can pay. You need common rules, or laws, to avoid being robbed. And because trade is about the pursuit of self-interest, you need a degree of civil liberty, too. This is not poetic, nor grand, nor expressive of deep culture, but it is how liberal institutions are born. As Voltaire said in the Dictionnaire Philosophique: "To be free is to be dependent only on laws." Voltaire admired traders. They fitted his Enlightenment view of the nation as a rational community. When he lived in England, from 1726 to 1729, he especially admired the London stock exchange where, he said, Jews, Christians and Muslims did business together as though they all "professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts."

The idea of the nation as a rooted, organic, natural community is more attractive to the inhabitants of rural areas. Agriculture is, after all, tied to a sense of continuity, landscape and tradition. Traders are mobile, farmers stay on the land. As far as the Netherlands is concerned, it is true that people in the eastern provinces often regarded the coastal cities, especially Amsterdam, as dens of vice and rootlessness. Whether, as Leutheusser thought, this made the rural Dutch feel more European, is another question. I doubt whether many of them thought much about the world beyond their villages.

I was born in Holland, of a Dutch father and British mother. Perhaps it is because I have roots in two nations that I lack a romantic view of the nation-state. Although I happen to live in Britain, a country whose people are not officially citizens, but subjects of Her Majesty, The Queen, I look to the nation-state not as a source of poetry, but of institutions which protect the rights and liberties of citizens. I find constitutional patriotism (Verfassungspatriotismus) more sympathetic than other forms of patriotism. But this is not to say that the rationalists of the French Enlightenment, and the subsequent revolution, were entirely right, and that the poets and folk historians of nationhood, such as Herder, were entirely wrong. Even though there are nations without states, there is no state without one or more nations. And nations have histories and cultures.

What Herder disliked about the French philosophes was the idea that it was possible to come up with a rational blueprint for organising society which could be made to fit anywhere, as a universal solution to the human condition. The problem with this French model was not only its arrogant universalism, but also its flawed conception. The grande nation, produced by the French Revolution, was more than a set of institutions safeguarding individual rights and freedoms. In fact, in some ways it was hostile to individual freedoms. The Jacobin state is an instrumental expression of Rousseau's idea of the will of the people. Rousseau was scathing about British party politics, because parties represent special interests, which dilute the will of the people. Because the will of the people transcended all special interests, it was all right for the state to be authoritarian, in the name of democracy. And because the French state was considered to be supremely rational, it was only logical that it should serve as a model for the rest of mankind. Napoleon put this notion into practice, not always with disastrous results - there were still libertarian leftovers from the French Revolution. But when the same notion was applied more than 100 years later, in the name of communism, it was invariably disastrous.

One thing all communist states had in common was that the cultural diversity of peoples was expressed only in folklore: official exhibitions of folk-dancing, folk-singing, folk-costumes and folk what-not. The ideal of the Soviet empire, as of China today, was that all peoples, regardless of history, language or culture, should be governed in the same way, by the communist system; culture was a matter of decoration. The result was the death of culture, including folk culture. There is nothing more deadening in China than the spectacle of people belonging to "national minorities" marching through Beijing dressed in their "national costumes."

This is not to say, however, that people speaking different languages, or believing in different gods, cannot be represented by the same government. Nationalists, such as Margaret Thatcher, often use the collapse of the Soviet empire as a warning against European federalism: that is what happens, they say, when you force different nations to live under one political roof. They forget that the Soviet system did not simply reduce national cultures to folklore, but robbed people of their freedom. There is no reason why different peoples should not thrive if they are governed by common institutions which protect liberties and individual rights. But it would be foolish to pretend that this can be done without difficulties.

One mark of a free country is the right of minorities to live according to their own traditions. But what if those traditions contravene the laws of the majority? Should Muslim men in a European country be allowed to have more than one wife? If it is the aim of the state to impose one common set of values on all its citizens, this poses a problem. Because of its Jacobin tradition, this is more true of France than Britain. But it should be possible, in a liberal state, to protect the cultural and religious rights of minorities by law. One way to do this is to separate customary laws (concerning marriage, religion and so on) from civil laws.

The best example of a multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic state is India. Muslims and other minorities in India do indeed have special legal rights. Muslims can choose to marry according to Muslim customary laws. These laws are not part of the Indian civil code, which is secular. But this solution is not perfect. Customary laws are used by conservative clerics to impose strict views on people who are too uneducated or too weak to resist them. Muslim women, for example, can easily be forced into marriages they do not want. Furthermore, the use of legal exceptions irritates members of the majority and can cause political unrest. Even though Hindus have their own customary laws, the "special treatment" for Muslims became a rallying point for the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP. The BJP wants to abolish customary laws; it maintains that India is a Hindu nation. Herder-and Margaret Thatcher-would say that this is only natural: the cultural majority claiming its national identity. And yet as soon as the BJP had a chance of becoming the ruling party in India, it dropped much of its Hindu chauvinist rhetoric in order to attract minority votes. Democracy proved stronger than cultural chauvinism.

Are democratic institutions alone enough to hold a state together? The Indian example shows that a liberal state can contain many peoples, with different cultures, languages and religions. However, although a state can consist of several nations, there are no examples of successful states without a dominant language, culture or religion. India is not a Hindu state, but it is impossible to imagine India without Hinduism.

The US, like France, is built on a political ideal which is held to be universal, and thus fit for export. It is, however, a liberal, not a Jacobin ideal: the liberty to pursue individual happiness. Everyone, irrespective of race, creed or culture, can become a US citizen. The only loyalty demanded of US citizens is loyalty to the constitution, a pure example of constitutional patriotism. But even the US has a dominant language, English; a dominant religion, Christianity; and its political culture is based on British traditions. How important is this? After all, people don't emigrate to the US from all over the world to become Christians or to learn English. They go because they want to be free, make money and pursue that elusive thing called happiness. Yet to achieve these goals, they do end up, on the whole, having to learn English. And their children adopt habits and values which are recognisably American.

So it seems to be the case that a free country needs two things: liberal political institutions and a dominant language or culture. What is not needed is a dominant race or ethnic group. Britain is an interesting example. Like India, it is a state composed of several nations: English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. Among Her Majesty's subjects are people of many different religions: Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and so on. Britain also contains various forms of nationalism. You need only go to a football match between England and Scotland to see this in action. Moreover, the cultural and ethnic diversity of Britain will be noticed by any visitor to London. Yet English culture still dominates to such a degree that many English people forget to note a difference between Britain and England. Britain is a political expression of nationhood; England is a cultural, historical one. But for Britain to function as a state, its various national and ethnic components have had to adapt themselves to English culture-or at least to speak English.

The US idea of adapting to the dominant culture is that of the "melting pot." This is different from the Indian ideal, which is often described as a "salad bowl." The melting pot is, of course, a myth. The different cultures which go into the pot don't dissolve into a national soup. But some myths are more useful than others. This one has the merit that it is inclusive. It excludes no one on the basis of race or culture. The greatest impediment to the establishment and functioning of a liberal state is the confusion between ethnicity and nationality. In Germany (at least until the new government changes the law) someone born in Berlin, with Turkish grandparents, is considered less German than a Russian-speaking person from Kaliningrad who happens to have had a grandfather who served in the Wehrmacht.

Germany is not the only country hampered by the ethnic idea of nationhood. It is possible, in theory, for a white or black person to become a Japanese citizen, but the Japanese still fail to distinguish between nationality and ethnic origin. A person born in Japan, who speaks nothing but Japanese, but whose great-grandparents were Korean, is still not regarded as Japanese. Similarly, people of many races are officially citizens of the People's Republic of China, but to be Chinese is still regarded as a cultural, national and an ethnic condition. A man whose grandparents left China for San Francisco, Amsterdam or Kuala Lumpur can still think of himself as Chinese, although he may speak no Chinese language.

The problem with ethnic nationalism is that it excludes people from sharing a nationality on biological grounds. This makes it almost impossible to absorb immigrants, because the very idea of immigration is scarcely recognised. The history of Berlin - originally a city composed largely of immigrants - shows that this was not always so. But now, foreigners who wish to immigrate to Germany or Japan, or indeed to most European countries, can only enter as asylum-seekers, and when it becomes clear that they come in search of a better economic life, they are denounced as imposters or criminals. In fact, as the experience of the US shows, economic self-interest is often a good basis for loyal citizenship. But this is unacceptable - perhaps even unimaginable - to those who base their idea of nationhood on culture and race.

From the point of view of ethnic nationalists, liberalism always smacks of greedy self-interest. Because liberal institutions strive to be culturally and ethnically neutral, they are regarded as shallow and materialistic. That is how many 19th and 20th century German nationalists saw Britain and its empire - and how many people see the US today. The British empire was a product of trade; the German empire would be based on Kultur. Richard Wagner, for example, said that the British empire was only "a tradesman's till," while the German empire would ennoble the world through the "German Geist." Kaiser Wilhelm II thought that old empires were undermined by "universalism." The essence of the nation, he said, was "to define itself against other nations according to national character and its unique racial characteristics."

Ethnic nationalism fosters the idea of the state as a national family, with an authoritarian father at its head. Obedience to political authority is enforced as a cultural, or even racial, value. This stifles debate and stands in the way of democracy. Critics of communist regimes are enemies of the people, but critics of authoritarian regimes in China, Japan or pre-war Germany, are enemies of the race. Even dissidents can be hampered by their cultural and racial notions of politics. In the case of China they are often less interested in whether certain ideas will set them free than in whether they are sufficiently Chinese.

Where does this leave us today, with our grand European project? It leaves us in a mess. For the aspiration to unify Europe after the second world war developed from disillusion with the nation-state. The first architects of European unity were convinced that nationalism had almost destroyed Europe twice; only a united Europe would destroy nationalism. They were not wrong about the destructive power of nationalism. The problem is that the medicine they prescribed could be as dangerous as the illness it was meant to cure.

The greatest failure of the nation-state, and thus the greatest disillusion about its institutions, was in Germany. The Germans, it is usually agreed, learned their lesson from the Nazi catastrophe. Henceforth the Germans would be good Europeans. Indeed, the shock of defeat was so great that many Germans wanted to be anything but Germans. The irony is that the shame of being German is often linked to the kind of ethnic nationalism which caused the disaster in the first place. For if your sense of nationhood is cultural and ethnic, rather than political and institutional, you will have to bear the guilt of your ancestors for ever. It is in the blood. The idea of a united Europe offered an escape from being German.

But the German refuge was a Europe built mainly by French constitutional architects, steeped in rationalist French traditions. This is what is causing such tensions with Britain, which has a different nationalist tradition, based neither on ethnicity nor universalist ideals, but on political institutions which most British people believe to be the most democratic in the world. (This is a questionable claim, but most Britons believe it.) So while being part of a united Europe makes the Germans feel less German, it makes the British feel less free. This is bound to lead to some unpleasant reactions, not just in Germany and Britain. For the EU is neither democratic nor culturally coherent. In other words, the combination of liberal institutions and a dominant language or culture doesn't exist.

I argued earlier that self-interest makes loyal citizens and trade is a good basis for liberal institutions, so you might think that a federal Europe would be ideally suited to those Europeans whom SS Obersturmführer Leutheusser most detested: deracinated traders from the Baltics down to Lisbon. After all, is not the EU built upon economic interests? To be sure, many businessmen favour the EU. And Brussels bureaucrats do their best to make European trade more efficient. But in fact economic decisions are dictated by political aims, driven by well-meaning leaders who are still convinced that without European unity there will be war. But European unity without European citizenship is meaningless. And without democratic European government there can be no European citizenship. We have arrived, out of the ruins of two world wars, at something that is neither a nation nor a state, but which could easily undermine the political arrangement which has proved rather more successful than the liberal empire with which we began: the liberal nation-state.