Scott Horton: Armenia and the Unfinished Business of Ethnonationalism
Catholic University historian Jerry Z. Muller writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that Americans have a tendency to under-assess the importance of nationalism as a political force around the world. Indeed, he takes a particular focus on ethnic nationalism—the tendency to define the nation-state in terms of a particular ethnic group.
Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that it is a product not of nature but of culture, often deliberately constructed. And ethicists scorn value systems based on narrow group identities rather than cosmopolitanism.
But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away. Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly. But for those who remain behind in lands where their ancestors have lived for generations, if not centuries, political identities often take ethnic form, producing competing communal claims to political power. The creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation. In areas where that separation has not yet occurred, politics is apt to remain ugly.
A familiar and influential narrative of twentieth-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union (EU). After the fall of the Soviet empire, that transnational framework spread eastward to encompass most of the continent. Europeans entered a postnational era, which was not only a good thing in itself but also a model for other regions. Nationalism, in this view, had been a tragic detour on the road to a peaceful liberal democratic order.
Muller’s thesis seems instinctively right. In fact, modern history has known a number of waves of strong nationalism—usually ethnically defined—following the collapse of empires. Certainly this was an important aspect of the troubles that followed the end of the Great War, which witnessed the birth of an array of new nation-states in the rubble of the great empires that perished.
One of those nations was Armenia, to which Muller gives only passing mention. By one measure, of course, Armenia is a very ancient nation, hardly something modern. It was chronicled and discussed by writers of antiquity, and was identified around 300 CE as the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Armenian states rose and fell over the centuries and the location of Armenia on the map kept moving—though it usually fell in a swath between the Mediterranean and the Caucasus Mountains. As the modern age arrived, Armenia was divided between three empires—the Ottomans, the Russians and the Persians. But ancient as the nation was, in terms of statehood under the Westphalian system, it has been a fairly marginal and modern appearance. The Armenian Republic was founded in the waning days of the Great War, but maintained its independence only fleetingly before being reincorporated into Turkey and appearing, albeit as a nominally autonomous republic, as a part of the Soviet state....
Read entire article at Harpers
Americans also find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that it is a product not of nature but of culture, often deliberately constructed. And ethicists scorn value systems based on narrow group identities rather than cosmopolitanism.
But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away. Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly. But for those who remain behind in lands where their ancestors have lived for generations, if not centuries, political identities often take ethnic form, producing competing communal claims to political power. The creation of a peaceful regional order of nation-states has usually been the product of a violent process of ethnic separation. In areas where that separation has not yet occurred, politics is apt to remain ugly.
A familiar and influential narrative of twentieth-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union (EU). After the fall of the Soviet empire, that transnational framework spread eastward to encompass most of the continent. Europeans entered a postnational era, which was not only a good thing in itself but also a model for other regions. Nationalism, in this view, had been a tragic detour on the road to a peaceful liberal democratic order.
Muller’s thesis seems instinctively right. In fact, modern history has known a number of waves of strong nationalism—usually ethnically defined—following the collapse of empires. Certainly this was an important aspect of the troubles that followed the end of the Great War, which witnessed the birth of an array of new nation-states in the rubble of the great empires that perished.
One of those nations was Armenia, to which Muller gives only passing mention. By one measure, of course, Armenia is a very ancient nation, hardly something modern. It was chronicled and discussed by writers of antiquity, and was identified around 300 CE as the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Armenian states rose and fell over the centuries and the location of Armenia on the map kept moving—though it usually fell in a swath between the Mediterranean and the Caucasus Mountains. As the modern age arrived, Armenia was divided between three empires—the Ottomans, the Russians and the Persians. But ancient as the nation was, in terms of statehood under the Westphalian system, it has been a fairly marginal and modern appearance. The Armenian Republic was founded in the waning days of the Great War, but maintained its independence only fleetingly before being reincorporated into Turkey and appearing, albeit as a nominally autonomous republic, as a part of the Soviet state....