What Is a Nation?
"What Is a Nation?" (French: Qu'est-ce qu'une nation ?)[1] is an 1882 lecture by French historian Ernest Renan (1823–1892) at the Sorbonne, known for the statements that a nation is "a daily plebiscite", and that nations are based as much on what people jointly forget as on what they remember. It is frequently quoted or anthologized in works of history or political science pertaining to nationalism and national identity. It exemplifies a contractualist understanding of the nation.
Nationhood in Renan's time[edit]
Renan begins his essay by noting that there is frequent confusion between the idea of nationhood and of racial or linguistic groupings, a form of confusion which he says can produce "the gravest errors". He promises to conduct an autopsy-like examination, "in an absolutely cold and impartial fashion."
He claims that nations existing at the time of writing in 1882, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia, will continue to exist for hundreds of years, and that any nation trying to dominate them will be quickly pushed back to its own borders, by a coalition of other nations; "The establishment of a new Roman or Charlemagnian Empire has become an impossibility."
Renan believes that nations developed from the common needs of the people, who consisted of different social groups seeking a "collective identity". He praises the eighteenth century for its achievements related to humanity and the restoration of the pure identity of man, one which was free from misconceptions and socially established variances. Renan discredits the theory that race is the basis for the unification of people. It is important to note that France was quite ethnically diverse during the French Revolution and the rule of Napoleon, but it nevertheless managed to set the stage for nationalism. Renan also asserts that neither language nor religion are basis for solidarity because language "invites people to unite, but does not force them to do so" and "religion has become an individual matter." For example, the United States and the United Kingdom both speak English but do not constitute a single, united nation and countries no longer operate on the notion of religions operating against each other, forcing people to choose between one or the other.
Renan believed that a unique element of the European nation-forming experience was the mixture of races, origins and religions, where conquering people often adopted the religion and manners, and married the women, of the people they conquered. For example, "at the end of one or two generations, the Norman invaders were indistinguishable from the rest of the population". Nonetheless, they had a profound influence, bringing with them "a nobility of military habit, a patriotism" which did not exist in England before.
Falsely assumed foundations of nationhood[edit]
Renan presents and attacks the factors that are generally viewed as providing the basis for nationhood. He begins with race, which fails for nations such as France, as it is "Celt, Iberian, German... The most noble countries, England, France and Italy, are the ones where the blood is most mixed."[4] He next attacks language as the basis for national unity, as it "invites us but does not force us, [sic] to unite". Many countries, such as Switzerland, are home to speakers of any number of languages, while many nations that share a common language are nonetheless distinct. Nor is modern nationhood founded on religion, which, Renan observes, is currently practiced according to individual belief. "You can be French, English, German, yet Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or practicing no religion". Geography and mutual interest similarly fail to define the nation, as nations often exist separated by tremendous social or geographical bounds: "Mountains don't know how to carve out countries". Upon concluding that these commonalities are insufficient in defining the nation, Renan comes to present nationhood in his own terms.
Legacy and criticism[edit]
Political historian Karl Deutsch, in a quote sometimes mistakenly attributed to Renan, said that a nation is "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours".[11]
Benedict Anderson's 1983 work Imagined Communities, which states that a nation is an "imagined political community", argues that Renan contradicts himself when he says French people must have forgotten the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, yet does not explain what it is. In other words, Renan assumes that all his readers will remember the very massacre he says they have forgotten. Anderson also points out that the reason many French citizens of Renan's time knew anything of these massacres was because they learned of them in state-run schools. Thus, the state itself preserved the knowledge which needed to be forgotten for national identity.[12]
In a 1995 book, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism, Princeton University political theorist Maurizio Viroli called Renan's essay "the most influential late nineteenth-century interpretation of the meaning of nation", because of its focus on the "spiritual principle" as opposed to race, religion or geography.[13]
Other authors, like Joxe Azurmendi, consider that really there is no such opposition to the reasons based on race, geography, history and so on. He argues that Renan maintains his intellectual background but subtly, i.e. the arguments he explicitly used in What is a Nation? are not consistent with his thinking. The concept of "daily plebiscite" would be ambiguous. Azurmendi also argues that the definition is an opportunist idealization and it should be interpreted within the context of the Franco-Prussian War and the dispute concerning the Alsace-Lorraine region.[14]