Nationalism and the state

Nationalism and the state

608 Book Reviews devoted a maximum of time and effort to what Europeans would call leisure activities, such as ritual, songs, games and story tellin...

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608

Book Reviews

devoted a maximum of time and effort to what Europeans would call leisure activities, such as ritual, songs, games and story telling. Another relevant question is the duration of settlement of the aborigines and here evidence is presented for the possibility of a series of early migration streams that could have provided the base for a later population of the proposed size. From these assumptions the demographic history of the first halfo century of the Botany Bay settlement is reconstructed. Here Butlin employs his original perspective, namely looking at the process not as settlement (the European point of view) nor as catastrophe (the aboriginal), but as a clash of two incompatible cultures, where the Europeans prevailed. The incompatibility arose paradoxically because the aboriginal culture was better adapted to the continent. Their communal and developmental economy could maintain itself without disrupting the ecology, while the English immigrants had to depend for a long time on subsidies from the homeland. The English settlers survived by transforming a subsistence economy to agriculture and especially husbandry. As far as they had a communal culture--represented in prison and military conditions--it was quickly privatized; soldiers, mainly officers, became entrepreneurs on their own, convicts served out their terms, and free immigrants began arriving. In all aspects the two economies were incompatible. European land use and social organization made the aboriginal economy impossible, and European society supplanted the aboriginal. Butlin takes care not to accept the traditional claim that a superior or better adapted culture improved the economy of the country, but he also avoids the other extreme of fashionable revisionism of blaming everything on the vicious actions of the Europeans. The principal damage was the spread of disease to a susceptible population and this was unintentional; even the economic measures that destroyed indigenous means of subsistence were unintentional by-products of rational introduction of agriculture. Just as unintentional was the preparation of land over several millennia by the aborigines, which helped the Europeans in introducing agriculture. All this makes for a fascinating story. The deficient data that are available cannot give a definite answer to many questions; the author mines a wealth of data and piles plausible argument upon argument to make a consistent presentation. The links of imagination that fill in the lacunae will be colored by necessity by the author's perspectives and even prejudices. It is not very clear where demographic and economic research ends and where imagination and 'dreamtime' takes over. He takes care of presenting the two cultures as at least equivalent and uses a terminology that substitutes displacement for settling. He looks at the end result as an unavoidable tragedy, given the dynamic and expansionary nature of Western culture. In using this perspective the book tells us as much about current society and ideological discussions as it does about its ostensible subject matter. Kurt W. Back

Duke University, USA

Nationalism and the State, John Brueilly, 2nd edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 474, £40.00 H.B., £14.99 P.B. John Breuilly updates this second edition of Nationalism and the State (originally published in 1982) to take into account the dramatic collapse of the USSR and its satellite states in East Central Europe in 1989-1991.

History of European Ideas

Book Reviews

609

Breuilly's main argument is that nationalism should be understood as a form of politics linked to the development of the modern state. He contends that to focus upon culture, ideology or identity--as many recent works on nationalism have done--is to obscure the fundamental point; namely that nationalism is about politics or control of the state. Thus, the central task Breuilly assigns himself is to relate nationalism to the objectives of obtaining and using state power. To do this, he adopts a typology in part one based upon the relationship between the nationalist movement and the state concerned. According to Breuilly's typology, national movements are either opposed to nation-states or to non-nation states, and may either seek to separate, reform or unite with that pre-existing state. This classification yields six categories of national movements examples of which Breuilly goes on to discuss using the method of comparative history. Part two examines nationalist movements in non-nation states: reform nationalism in sixteenth and seventeenth century England and France; German, Italian and Polish unification nationalism in the nineteenth century; separatist nationalism in nineteenth century Hapsburg and Ottoman lands; reform nationalism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan and China; and anti-colonial nationalism of the past fifty years. Part three goes on to explore evidence of nationalism within nation-states: unification nationalism in the new states of Africa and the Middle East; reform nationalism in interwar Germany, Italy and Romania; separatist nationalism in developed countries like Great Britain and Canada; and nationalism in East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union after 1989-1991. This final case study is likely to be of most interest to readers of the second edition. In it, Breuilly argues that recent accounts of nationalism in post-communist East Central Europe have been exaggerated. He claims that the central political question confronting states in this region--Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia aside--is not opposition from national minorities claiming special rights and political arrangements but instead how to deal with economic and political reform (pp. 352-353). Breuilly in fact believes these latter concerns cut across ethnic cleavages thus unifying disparate national groups (p. 353). Even more controversially, he sees limited potential for minority nationalism to become a significant political issue. The 'only possible case' Breuilly can identify where he 'could' potentially envisage a minority raising powerful demands for federalist arrangements or border changes is that of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania

(p. 352). Breuilly's first claim is highly debatable, but (this chapter was written in late 1992) the later one by 1994 can no longer be sustained. There is now clear evidence of national oppositions demanding minority rights and political autonomy not only in Transylvania but also in Slovakia, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, the Baltic states and Georgia, among others. Moreover these issues have not remained matters of domestic politics; instead they have been taken up at the international level through organizations such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe which have both recognized the serious threat these national minority questions pose to international as well as to domestic stability. Nor is this the only problematic case study. In the understandable attempt to fit as many examples as possible into his typology, Breuilly's analysis ultimately suffers from a certain superficiality and some unfortunate errors of fact. For instance, his brief discussion of Quebecois nationalism confuses Toronto (capital city of the English speaking province of Ontario) with Montreal and as a result erroneously cites the former as the centre of Quebecois separatism (p. 332). More importantly, Breuilly fails to appreciate the origin of Quebecois nationalism as a reaction against the economic and political hegemony of a privileged anglophone Canadian not American (p. 334) elite based in Montreal which stood in the way of an emerging Quebecois urban middle class in the 1960s. Similarly, his discussion of Yugoslavia does not consider the civil war in Croatia

Volume 21, No. 4, July, 1995

610

Book Reviews

and the early emergence there of Serbian separatist nationalism within the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina which provided one of the first indications of the kind of national extremism we now see in Bosnia. Nevertheless, these comments and criticisms notwithstanding, John Breuilly's fundamental point is certainly fight. Nationalism is more than just a sociological or cultural phenomena: it is also a powerful political instrument which, as Nationalism and the State reminds us, has played an important part in both the creation and the reform of modern states throughout the world. Jennifer Jackson

University College, Oxford

A.J.P. Taylor: The Traitor within the Gates, Robert Cole (St Martin's Press: New York, 1993), 285 pp., $39.95 cloth. When, in 1951, I was admitted to Oxford as a student, my tutor Trevor-Roper suggested that I should prepare myself by reading the works of the great multi-volumed historians of the past: the names he chose were Gibbon, Macaulay and Froude. Would you, today recommend A.J.P. Taylor as a preparation for the study of history? If you are tempted to, read Robert Cole's book first. As an undergraduate, I attended Taylor's lectures and I was fascinated, spell-bound, and made copious notes. But when I reread the notes, they were disappointing. Taylor was a magician, whose speciality was to tear the veil off respectability, to show that the obvious was untrue and that almost anything could be made more interesting by being turned upside down or inside out. He was nonconformity carried to its limits, or so it seemed. Like all magicians, he was a dramatic performer giving his lectures without notes. It is not surprising that he was the first historian to be a television star, offering instant entertainment with brilliant epigrams which he brought out like rabbits from a hat. His amazing memory contained a massive armoury of explosive detail, which he shot at anyone in whom he spotted a trace of complacency. All those who enjoyed seeing the Establishment revealed as human rather than divine could not help having Taylor as a sort of Robin Hood hero. I never got to know him as a person, even though he became my doctoral supervisor. There was no alternative to him, for very few Oxford scholars were interested in European history in the 1950s and none had done archival research on 19th century France. When I met him, Taylor provided me with a few letters of recommendation to set me on my way, but I saw no more of him till I handed him my bound thesis. His friendships were not easy ones. He stopped speaking to Namier, after decades of apparent friendship, when he thought the latter had not supported him sufficiently in the contest for the Regius chair at Oxford. In the end, the socialist Taylor said that the only friend he truly loved was the capitalist Lord Beaverbrook. The surprising feature of this book is that it deliberately avoids investigating Taylor as a person, his relations with his three wives and six children, or his attitude to money, or why he wore bow ties. At first, it might seem that this would make the reader feel that the book was incomplete. But Robert Cole concentrates on the value of Taylor's writings with such fairness and lucidity that his book is a pleasure to read, highly instructive, and it does give one the materials with which to make one's own judgement as to whether Taylor is a historian to recommend to the next generation of students.

History of European Ideas