Transcript Nations, States and a Global System

Nations, States and a Global System
Constructing the Nation
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Language
Print-Capitalism
War
Genocide
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983)
• National identity replacing religious communities
and dynastic realms
• Three conceptions lost their grip:
– That a particular script-language had privileged access
to the truth
– Divine right
– That cosmology was indistinguishable from history
• Driven by vernacular print-capitalism seeking a
larger market which
– Gave fixity to language creating a national dialect
– Created market zones
– Built literacy
• In North America, printing developed when
printers discovered a new source of income:
the newspaper
• Newspapers in Spanish America tended to
be rather localized owing to
– Long travel times
– Lack of simultaneity of experience
National Homogeneity
State
England / UK
Spain
France
Italy
Germany
Netherlands
Japan
Russia
China
Nigeria
India
USA
North Korea
Iraq
Iran / Persia
Afghanistan
Created c.
c. 900 AD
c. 700 AD
768 AD
1861
1871
1579
660 BCE
862 AD
221 BCE
1960
1947
1776
1945
1932
1925
1919
% Largest Ethnicity
84
91
95
92
92
83
99
80
92
29
30
52
100
60
51
42
The Rise of the State
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Leviathan (Hobbes)
Natural Rights (Locke)
Social Contract (Rousseau via Tilly)
Stationary Bandit (Olson)
Transaction Costs (North)
Class Conflict (Marx)
Historical Challenges
Lipset and Rokkan identify four conflict-creating challenges
to state formation in European history:
• State building (creating the bureaucracy)
• The Reformation
• Industrial Revolution (the Peasant Question)
• Democracy (integrating the mass in politics)
Hypotheses:
1. If the challenges were simultaneous, unstable and
conflictual conditions arise.
2. The issues which exist at the time of the first elections
will be critical in the future. They “crystallize” onto the
party system.
Recurrent Challenges
• Succession of Leadership
• Ethnic & Regional Conflict
– Relative Deprivation (Rich v. Poor)
– Regional fear of cultural loss
– Removal of Cold War pressure
Creating political obligation
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Results
Habit or Tradition
Personality or Charisma
Identity
Procedures
Socialization
Agenda and Framing
Political Recruitment
The 30 Years War
• Spain’s struggle for European hegemony
• Resisted most strongly by France which was
afraid of encirclement by Habsburg domains
• Spain, Austria, HRE, Poland, Catholic German
states versus France, Sweden, Denmark, England,
United Provinces (Netherlands) and Lutheran
German States
• The French coalition won
Peace of Augsburg (1555)
• German Princes (numbering 225) could choose the religion
(Lutheranism or Catholicism) for their realms according to
their conscience (the principle of cuius regio eius religio).
• Lutherans living in an ecclesiastical state (under the
control of a bishop) could remain Lutherans.
• Lutherans could keep the territory that they had captured
from the Catholic Church since the Peace of Passau
(1552).
• The ecclesiastical leaders of the Catholic Church (bishops)
that converted to Lutheranism had to give up their territory
(archbishoprics/bishoprics).
The Spark
In 1618 the Bohemian Estates deposed Emperor
Matthias (as King of Bohemia) in the Defenestration
of Prague. They went on to establish a Bohemian
nobles' republic following the model of PolandLithuania and elected Frederick Count Palatinate
King of Bohemia. However, Bohemia held one of the
seven electorates within the Holy Roman Empire; to
accept the loss of Bohemia, for the House of
Habsburg, would also jeopardize her hold on the
Imperial crown (for among the 7 electors, three were
protestant princes - Brandenburg, Saxony, Palatinate;
Bohemia would be the fourth).
Trying to end it
Germany's Princes repeatedly were close to a
peace, so in 1635, when the religious
situation of 1627 was agreed upon as to be
'frozen'. In the last decade of the war, foreign
interest kept the war going; both France and
Sweden had not suffered any damage at
home and could afford to continue a war
economically fought at the expense of
Germans. Eight million would die.
The Peace of Westphalia
The Terms
The whole package of settlements is known as the Peace of Westphalia. One of its provisos
was that the practice of electing a King of the Romans in the emperor's lifetime was
abolished. The title of the "Peace of Exhaustion" is probably a more apt title for this
series of peace settlements that brought to an end the Thirty Years War.
France gained the bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun; Breisach and Philippsburg; Alsace
and part of Strasburg.
Sweden gained West Pomerania, Wismar, Stettin, Mecklenburg; the bishoprics of Verden
and Bremen which gave her control over the estuaries of the Elbe and Weser.
Brandenburg gained East Pomerania; the archbishopric of Magdeburg and Halberstadt.
Bavaria kept the Upper Palatinate and the Electoral title that went with it. The Lower
Palatinate was restored to Charles Louis, the son of Frederick and an 8th Elector's title
was made for him.
Saxony kept Lusatia.
Bohemia remained an hereditary domain.
Upper Austria was restored to the Habsburgs - Bavaria had taken control of it.
Spain recognized the United Provinces as a sovereign state.
Political Consequences
• With Spain weakening and Germany fractured and bled dry, France
was now seen as the dominant power of Europe.
• It helped establish post-war Sweden as a new force in Europe.
• The edicts agreed upon during the signing of the Peace of Westphalia
were instrumental in laying the foundations for what are even today
considered the basic tenets of the sovereign nation-state. Aside from
establishing fixed territorial boundaries for many of the countries
involved in the ordeal (as well as for the newer ones created
afterwards), the Peace of Westphalia changed the relationship of
subjects to their rulers. In earlier times, people had tended to have
overlapping political and religious loyalties. Now, it was agreed that
the citizenry of a respective nation were subjected first and foremost to
the laws and whims of their own respective government rather than to
those of neighboring powers, be they religious or secular.
Levels of Analysis
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1. Individual
2. State
3. Systemic (Global)
4. Regional