Table Of ContentThe Ethnic Origins
of Nations
Anthony D. Smith
© 1986, 1988 by Anthony D. Smith
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First published 1986
First published in the USA 1987
First published in paperback 1988
14 2005
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Puhlication Data
Smith, Anthony D.
The ethnic origins of nations.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Nationalism—History. 2. Ethnic groups—Political activity—History.
1. Title.
JC311.S536 1986
320.5’4’09 86-11787
ISBN 0-631-15205-9; ISBN 0-631-16169-4 (Pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-0-631-16169-1 (Pbk)
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When our narrow rooms, our short lives, our soon ended passions and
emotions put us out of conceit with sooty and finite reality, here at
last is a universe where all is large and intense enough to almost
satisfy the emotions of man.
W. B. Yeats
There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and
reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the
collective ideas which make its unity and its personality.
Emile Durkheim
In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and
close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and 1 will
build it as in the days of old; . . .
And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall
build the waste cities, and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and
drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens and eat the
fruit of them.
And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be
plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the
Lord thy God.
Amos 9
Contents
Preface ix
Note to Maps xi
Maps xii
Introduction 1
1 Are nations modem? 6
‘Modernists’ and ‘primordialists1 7
Ethnic, myths and symbols 13
The durability of ethnic communities 16
Part I Ethnic communities in pre-modem eras
2 Foundations of ethnic community 21
The dimensions of ethnie 22
Some bases of ethnic formation 32
Structure and persistence of ethnie 41
3 Ethnie and ethnicism in history 47
Uniqueness and exclusion 47
Ethnic resistance and renewal 50
External threat and ethnic response 54
Two types of ethnic mythomoteur 57
4 Class and ethnie in agrarian societies 69
The problem of ‘social penetration* 70
Military mobilization and ethnic consciousness 73
Two types of ethnie 76
Ethnic polities 89
viii Contents
Ethnic survival and dissolution 92
Location and sovereignty 93
Demographic and cultural continuity 96
Dissolution of ethnie 98
Ethnic survival 105
Ethnic socialization and religious renewal 119
Part II Ethnie and nations in the modem era
The formation of nations 129
Western revolutions 130
Territorial and ethnic nations 134
Nation-formation 138
The ethnic model 144
Ethnic solidarity or political citizenship? 149
From ethnie to nation 153
Politicization of ethnie 154
The new priesthood 157
Autarchy and territorialization 161
Mobilization and inclusion 165
The new imagination 169
Legends and landscapes 174
Nostalgia and posterity 174
The sense of‘the past’ 177
Romantic nationalism as an ‘historical drama’ 179
Poetic spaces: the uses of landscape 183
Golden ages: the uses of history 191
Myths and nation-building 200
The genealogy of nations 209
Parmenideans and Heraclitans 210
The ‘antiquity’ of nations 212
T ranscending ethnicity? 214
A world of small nations? 217
Ethnic mobilization and global security 221
Notes 227
Bibliography 278
Index 303
Preface
Recently there has been a growing convergence of interests among historians
and social scientists, and the subject of their concerns has been the origins
and shape of the modern world. After some decades of archival empiricism,
on the one side, and abstract theorizing about ‘society’, on the other side,
several sociologically minded historians and historically concerned sociolog
ists have felt the need to bring the concerns and findings of their respective
disciplines together in a concerted effort to trace the various aspects of the
rise and nature of the modern world of capitalism, secularism and bureauc
racy. In the work of E. H. Carr, Seton-Watson, Hobsbaw'm, Kieman, and
Tilly, Skocpol, Barrington Moore, Wallerstein, Hechter, Gellner and
Armstrong, among others, we find these concerns informing their individual
contributions to the growth of an historical sociology and sociological
history.
One vital aspect of these concerns is the growth of nations and states.
More work has perhaps been done on the origins and nature of the
specifically modern form of the state; but there have also been a number of
attempts to grapple with the problems of ‘nation-formation’, both in the
West and in the Third World.
The following pages are concerned w ith a few aspects of this larger debate
and are offered in the hope of placing the modem and Western develop
ments in a broader historical context. The aim of this book is to analyse some
of the origins and genealogy of nations, in particular their ethnic roots. For,
while attention may legitimately be focused on the constant elements of
‘nationhood’ in the modem world and the universal trends that govern their
formation, the variations between nations are equally important, both in
themselves and for their political consequences. My belief is that the most
important of these variations are determined by specific historical experi
ences and by the ‘deposit* left by these collective experiences. Hence the
importance attached here to the various ‘myths’ and ‘memories’, ‘symbols’
and ‘values’, which so often define and differentiate nations. These in turn
x Preface
require a study of pre-modem ethnic formations because it is here, above all,
that we may trace the historical deposit of collective experiences, and
because ‘ethnicity* has provided, in a very general manner, a potent model
for human association which has been adapted and transformed, but not
obliterated, in the formation of modem nations. The ‘roots’ of these nations
are to be found, both in a general way and in many specific cases, in the
model of ethnic community prevalent in much of recorded history across the
globe.
My belief in the importance of ethnic roots in the formation of nations was
greatly stimulated and encouraged by the writings and lectures of the late
Professor Hugh Seton-Watson with whom I had the good fortune to be able
to discuss many of these issues and to whose memory this book is dedicated
in profound gratitude. One of the foremost historians of nationalism,
especially in Eastern Europe, Professor Seton-Watson did much to encour
age the study of ethnicity and nationalism in the younger generation; his
early death represents a great loss to the community of scholars interested in
the problems of the historical roots of modem states and nations, the subject
of his most important work.
I am also much indebted to the work of other scholars in the field, notably
Professors John Armstrong, Walker Connor and Ernest Gellner. For the
study of ethnic myths and symbols in premodem eras, the work of ancient
historians like Henri Frankfort and Richard Frye as well as Armstrong’s
pioneering book, Nations before Nationalism, has been invaluable. My interest
in the subject was also stimulated by a conference on ‘Legitimation by
Descent’ organized by Susan Reynolds and her colleagues. Chapters 2, 3
and 4 were presented in an early form to the ‘Patterns of History’ and the
‘Nationalism’ seminars at the London School of Economics and the
Wednesday Evening Historical Sociology Society. I am grateful to the
members of these seminars for their helpful comments, as well as to other
members of my Department with whom I have discussed the issues that
form the subject of this book. I need hardly add that responsibility for the
views expressed, as for any errors and omissions, is mine alone.
Finally I would like to record my gratitude to Blackwells and Sean Magee
for undertaking the publication of this work, and to Patricia Crone and John
Hall for their helpful comments on the text. I should also like to express my
appreciation for the forbearance of my family during the writing of this book,
and to my wife for her assistance with the bibliography and maps. Without
them, this book could not have been written.
Department of Sociology Dr Anthony D. Smith
London School of Economics January 1986
Note to Maps
The following maps indicate the rough location of many of the ethnic
communities in the ancient Near East and medieval Europe discussed in the
text, as well as their migrations and incursions. Apart from strictly geog
raphical features, an attempt has been made to classify and denote by a
distinctive typeface the peoples (<ethnie), states, countries or areas and cities,
which flourished in the relevant period. (Thus, ethnie are denoted by Roman
capitals, states or kingdoms by italics, and so on). Inevitably, the categories
overlap, since given proper names (for example Egypt, Assyria, Persia) may
at different times signify ethnie, countries or states. This is particularly the
case with ethnically designated areas or countries like Judah/Judea or
Armenia, which took their names from ethnie which setded in the area and
which gave their names to kingdoms; areas were often named after ethnic
ancestors like Judah, the son of Jacob. In addition, Greek and Roman
authors often designated areas at the periphery of their world by ethnic
names, for example Germania and Britannia, particularly areas of unknown
extent inhabited by ‘barbarian* tribes and/or language groups. The reader is
asked to bear this in mind in interpreting the information on the maps.
