Nations and Nationalism JOHN BREUILLY Risorgimento Nationalism in the Light of General Debates About...

Risorgimento nationalism in the light

of general debates about nationalism

JOHN BREUILLY

London School of Economics, UK

This discussion of Alberto Bantis work on Risorgimento nationalism raisesimportant theoretical and conceptual questions about nationalism generally.Banti is well aware of these questions but comments on them principally toclarify his own approach.1 Here they are my central concern.

Nationalism can be treated as sentiments, or ideas, or political action.2

These three aspects may be connected both in general models and particularaccounts but nevertheless remain distinct dimensions. One can challenge anyclaim to causal priority; one aspect may empirically be especially prominent ina specic case; different scholars privilege one aspect over the others.

Bantis focus is upon nationalism as sentiments. This usually means anemphasis on cultural and social history (which roughly corresponds to adivision between study of the production and reception of such sentiment),while the concern with ideas privileges intellectual history, and that on politicsfocuses on the institutions, movements and actors who seek state power,tending to treat ideas in terms of ideology and sentiments as linked to interestsor as something capable of being manipulated.

We also need to relate Bantis arguments to debates about the modernity ofnationalism, and whether nationalism is grounded upon prior nationalidentities or whether such identities are better understood as nationalistconstructs.3 I see Banti as a modernist and a constructivist. He argues thatthe modern production and communication of nationalist sentiments aboveall those embodied in the Risorgimento canon furnishes the foundation ofthe committed forms of action which constitute nationalism as politics. Wecannot explain Italian unication without this nationalism. Unication in turnshaped the subsequent extension and deepening of Italian national identity.Banti wrenches the subject away from dominant paradigms which regardsnationalism as little more than a rationalisation for the pursuit of variouspoltical and economic interests but without returning to an older approachwhich treated it as the realisation of a prior national identity and mission.4

I make these preliminary points not to place Banti in a theoretical box byitself a sterile exercise but to enable me to demonstrate just how distinctiveand original is Bantis approach in terms of its combination of concepts whichare usually separate or opposed in nationalism debates.

To get some sense of this originality I need to introduce one furtherconcept: primordialism. This concept is linked to approaches that treat the

Nations and Nationalism 15 (3), 2009, 439445.

r The authors 2009. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009

nation, or some crucial prior condition of ethnic identity, as requiring a longand enduring history possibly even being a human universal on whichnationalism builds.5 However, if we dene primordialism to mean an intensesense of group identity that emotionally trumps other identities, we can detachthe concept from such long-run historical or a-historical connotations. One ofthe original and most persuasive sociological theorists of primordialism didprecisely this. Edward Shils explored how small groups of soldiers, quitepossibly strangers from diverse backgrounds before they entered the army,formed such primordial bonds with one another.6 Much of what Banti writesabout Risorgimento nationalists is reminiscent of Shils. Emotional depth ingroup identity does not require historical depth. Banti thus combinesprimordialism with a constructivist and modernist understanding of nation-alism.

This enables Banti to counter a criticism levelled at the theorist upon whosework he principally draws: Benedict Anderson (Anderson 1991). Anderson,like Banti, treats nation as an imagined idea generated by modern forms ofculture and communication. Anderson concentrates almost entirely uponliterature (print capitalism), and even here privileges forms such as news-papers and periodicals over novels and poetry. (Anderson also considerednetworks such as coffee houses or career paths in state service but connectedthese back to literary forms. Furthermore, in the second edition he stressedthe importance of modern state initiatives such as censuses and museums.)Bantis canon focuses on imaginative literature rather than reportage andextends to opera and visual art.

These differences in subject matter point to differences in intepretation.Anderson focuses on nationalism as idea, stressing its modernity as theimagining of a secular, horizontal community that demands sovereignty inthe territory it occupies. This connects to two major criticisms of Anderson.The rst is that he overstates the modernity and secularity of the idea ofnation. The second is that his approach cannot account for why people areprepared to die for this idea; it is a cognitive frame rather than an emotionalidentity.7

Banti focuses on nationalism as sentiment rather than idea. The works inhis canon do not establish acceptance of the idea of the nation through thenetworks and repetitions they invoke; rather they concentrate on endowing aparticular nation with moral qualities designed to elicit a sense of loyalty.Furthermore, Banti stresses the religious qualities of this sentiment. He doesthis not by treating nationalism as a secular religion but arguing that crucialto the success of the emotional appeal to the nation is how it draws uponstrongly rooted and long-established values. However, rather than seekingthese in earlier national sentiment or ethnic myths and memories handeddown over generations, Banti locates them in pre modern, non national valuesassociated with Catholicism, monarchy and family. Nationalism adopts theimagery employed in these earlier value systems (sacrice, martyrdom, saints,fathers of the people) and switches their emotional attachment to the nation.


440 John Breuilly

Thus Bantis arguments combine concepts which are usually separate, evenopposed: primordialism and constructivism, emotional appeal and modern-ism. In opposing the arguments that Risorgimento nationalism was limited inits appeal and its capacity to mobilise mass support and played only amarginal role in Italian state-formation, he argues that the emotional appealof this canon could reach acros localities and social differences to achievepopular resonance, adding that without this primordial commitment under-pinning collective action Italian unication (as opposed to dynastic conquestand reorganisation on the Italian peninsula) cannot adequately be explained.

This points to criticisms that can be made of Banti in relation to the speciccase of Risorgimento nationalism which are taken up by the other contribu-tors to this discussion. These include the principles of selection in constructinga canon, establishing the extent and nature of the impact of this canon onthose who take part in nationalist movements, demonstrating popular appeal,evaluating the role played by nationalism as emotion compared to national-ism as idea or politics, and moving from interpretation to explanation whichmust include such undeniably crucial non nationalist factors as militarysuccess produced by French, Prussian and German armies in 1859, 1866,and 18701. Those are issues for Italianists to debate; here I focus onconceptual problems concerning how Banti inteprets nationalism as primor-dial sentiment.

The major one concerns the relationship between the form and content ofsentiment. Banti makes the powerful point that nationalism appropriatessentiments of Catholicism, monarchism and family. It is indeed difcult to seehow the idea of nation if genuinely modern and not rooted in early ethnic ornational sentiments could achieve resonance, especially at a popular level,without exploiting already strongly rooted emotional idioms. The modernityresides in the forms of communication and the focus on nation, not in thedeep moral and emotional underpinnings of the message communicated.8

This is a persuasive interpretation so long as the form bridges old and newcontent. This was how appeals to the nation operated in early modernEurope; they were linked but also subordinate to religious and dynasticvalues. Whenever a national appeal ceased to be additive to these othervalues, and especially if it came into conict with them, it was rapidlymarginalised.9 In the early and mid-1840s, for example, there were combina-tions of Papal and national, Piedmontese dynastic and national, appeals.Mass support for the national cause then and into the early months of therevolution cannot easily be disentangled from the appeal of a Catholicpopulism oriented to the Papacy or monarchism in Piedmont. And, of course,there were other motives many of a mundane economic kind for masscollective protest at that time.

The argument can only be put to the test when nationalism becomesdetached from and opposed to these other sentiments. To put it crudely: whennationalist leaders identify the Catholic church as their major enemy and asktheir followers to to kill troops blessed by the Pope or when nationalists call


Debate on the new history of Risorgimento nationalism 441

for the overthrow of kings in the name of an Italian republic or whennationalists take up divisive social and economic programmes: those are themoments at which to gauge the distinctive emotional power of nationalism.Otherwise we cannot disentangle nationalist language from the other, andpresumptively older and deeper, discourses to which it attaches itself.

Let us assume that at such moments nationalism does exercise strongemotional sway over a large number of people. How is that to be explained?The problem is to explain how notions of kinship and sacrice which werestongly rooted in Catholicism and monarchism can suddenly be switched to anationalism which now reveals itself as anti-clerical and/or republican. I canenvisage arguments that one might advance, e.g. that anti-clericalism is notanti-Catholicism or anti-religion but actually a strong Christian sentimentwhich abhors the present structure and personnel of the church; that supportfor a Garibaldi gure is a form of displaced monarchism or even Pope-worship. There are studies, for example, of anti-clericalism a powerfulsentiment in many Catholic regions in the mid-nineteenth century which canalso be linked to the simultaneous growth of Catholic populist and revivalistmovements but so far as I know Banti has not explored these. However,whatever form the argument might take, Banti needs to reverse his originalinterpretative move, when these various sentiments reinforced each other, toaccount for how they now can oppose each other.

This is a common problem in such primordialist accounts and thesolution often takes the form of positing an emotional need which can besatised in different ways. However, this does not seem to be a route thatBanti would wish to take too far because it does not easily t in with hisaesthetic/cultural approach.10

Further problems concerns the way in which nationalist sentiments are notsimpy mobilised by emotional appeals centred upon a canon, but areeffectively organised and coordinated. Nationalism as sentiments stressesemotion, commitment, loyalty, identity. Nationalism as idea or ideologyhighlights perception, understanding. If sentiment motivates a particularjourney, ideology provides a map and suggests routes. The criticism ofAnderson about sacrice is well taken (maps do not compel journeys) but itmay be that nationalism often works less as a motivating force and more as aform of knowledge.11 Furthermore, once established as an idea whichexplains and justies the pursuit of national self-determination, it can be apowerful factor in international public opinion which plays such an importantrole in Italian unication.

Those who focus on nationalism as politics frequently nd the key toeffective, coordinated nationalist action in the institutional context. RecentlyPhilip Roeder has argued that without institutions, in particular states orstate-like bodies, to channel action and to provide both instruments andtargets of collective political action, nationalist emotion will lack direction.12

Arguably this is exemplied in the ssiparous exile politics of mid-nineteenth-century Italian nationalism. Mazzinian nationalism, for example, as politics,


442 John Breuilly

was in decline in the 1850s, and the primacy of Italian nationalism asorganised action and politics shifted to the National Society and Piedmontesestate interest. Nationalism as emotional motivation, as cognitive map and asinstitutionally shaped political action linked to pursuit of interest all matter,but they do so in different combinations in various cases. There seems littlepoint in positing the primacy of one aspect.

To develop this point one can compare the broad story of Italiannationalism and state formation with the other two major unicationnationalisms of nineteenth-century Europe: that of Poles and Germans.Bantis interpretation persuades in the Italian case in a way which I think itdoes not for the other two cases. (Though maybe that is because they stillawait their Banti!) In the case of Germany, I suggest that is because one statewithin the German political system Prussia came to so dominate theunication process that it marginalised nationalism as free-oating sentimentof the kind Banti considers and also privileged a particular version of thenationalist idea which welded German cultural identity to Prussian stateinterest. The statist element in German unication the contending role ofAustria, the involvement of the medium states in the wars of 1866 (on thelosing side) and 18701 (on the winning side) is much more important thanin the Italian case. Piedmonts role is crucial but it does not occupy the spacethat Prussia does. The other Italian states lacked the capacity to shape theprocess either as allies or opponents of Piedmont, and indeed lacked thedegree of territorial integrity and control and even legitimacy one nds insmall and quite new, German states.13

Nevertheless, Piedmont did provide a coordinating state institution. Polishnationalists by contrast had nothing of the kind but were divided betweenthree powerful multinational dynasties which in their different ways resolutelyopposed Polish national self-determination. Yet the sentiment and idea ofnationalism was arguably more powerful in the Polish case than in either theGerman or Italian cases. There was a strong and specic idea drawing on theexistence of a Polish state up to a few decades earlier; movements which weregiven backing by Napoleon in a way which was never the case with Germanyor Italy; the infusion of romantic sentiments of martyrdom and sacrice in thenineteenth century with a national poet Adam Mickiewicz who was farmore central than any single literary gure in German or Italian nationalistcanons; an international and exile network unparalleled in mid-nineteenth-century Europe; models of direct action in the form of conspiracies andinsurrections; and nally instances of military-political opposition to statepower, especially against Russia in 18301 and in 1863, far more impressivethan any counterparts in German and Italian nationalism. It would be easyenough to explain failure simply in terms of a less promising political context;Polish nationalists confronted three dynastic empires, not just one (and theweakest one at that) as did Italy, and neither Britain nor France was preparedto offer any signicant support. However, one could go further and say thatthe very elaborate and well-rooted form of the national idea in the Polish case



actually weakened it. It was so clearly identied with old, aristocratic andgentry-ruled Poland that it had great difculty extending its appeal beyondthose groups, apart from the urban intellectuals and exiles who gurecentrally in all such nationalist movements.

In the Polish and German cases one could probably identify a canon ofromantic nationalist works and a core of committed nationalists using quasi-religious tropes of kinship and sacrice. Yet state institutions and socialinterests loomed too large, in one case promoting and in the other caseblocking the path to nation-state formation. Arguably what is important inthe Italian case is the space available to the emotional project of nationalism.Austria lacked the power to prevent any effective mobilisation and coordina-tion, unlike the situation in the territories of the former partitioned Poland;and Piedmont could only partially control the forms nationalism took prior tounication, unlike Prussia in Germany.

I have only considered how general concepts used in nationalism debatescan be related to Bantis interpretation of Risorgimento nationalism. It wouldbe fruitful to reverse the procedure. General debates threaten to freeze intospecic oppositions: primordial versus constructivist, modernist versus per-ennialist, rational choice versus emotional force. Banti combines some ofthese opposed concepts. He argues that nationalism can be modern, con-structed and yet possess emotional depth. He links a cultural analysis ofnationalism, which generally takes on a rather determinist form nationalculture as the template on which political and economic arrangements cometo be based to an account of nationalist action as commitment, choice,will.14 Such powerful and original ways of arguing could galvanise conceptualdebate. Bantis work and the critiques it has stimulated raise issues whichextend beyond the concerns of historians of nineteenth-century Italy andEurope.

Notes

1 Brice refers to such reections by Banti in the opening of her contribution to the discussion,

citing in particular Banti 2000b.

2 I elaborate this distinction in Breuilly 1994.

3 From a very large literature I refer readers to two very different but useful introductions:

Ozkirimli and Smith.

4 This links to the distinction between Risorgimento and revisionist historiography made by

Korner and Riall in their introduction to this collection of essays. For a more detailed account of

the historiography see now Riall, 2009.

5 Ozkirimli, chapter 3; Smith, chapter 7.

6 See Shils. This collection reprints essays specically on primary groups in the army, notably:

Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II and Primary Groups in the

American Army as well as his classic essay on primordialism: Primordial, Personal, Sacred, and

Civil Ties, originally in British Journal of Sociology, 8/2 (1957), pp.13045. My thanks to Steven

Grosby for advising me about the work of Shils and primordialism. Clifford Geertz also operates

with a constructivist concept of primordialism.


444 John Breuilly

7 A similar criticism can be made of Gellner whose arguments establish why in the modern

world nations and national identity appear natural. But many things which appear natural in a

particular culture (indeed, for Gellner culture is precisely the process of naturalising objects and

relationships) do not become objects of love or hate. Gellner 2006.

8 Riall, 2007 on Garibaldi provides a good example of this modernity, e.g. how new mass print

media was used, initially by Mazzini, to present Garibaldi as composite saint and hero.

9 I argue these points about the pre modern evocations of the national in Breuilly 2005.

10 This links to the points made in Rialls essay about the problematic recourse Banti has to

Freud.

11 For a strong, recent statement of ethnic or national identity as a cognitive frame related to

uncertainty reduction rather than as either an emotional commitment or a calculable interest, see

Hale 2008, especially Part 1.

12 Roeder 2007.

13 See Green 2001.

14 In this sense his account bypasses the sterile opposition of civic to ethnic nationalism which

Chabod revived for an Italy/Germany contrast after 1945, and which Emilio Gentile disputes in

his account of fascism. However, the fascist stress on both organic nationality and the power of

will connects to Bantis account. For the points about Chabod and Gentile see the introduction by

Korner and Riall. For a more general debate about the civic/ethnic distinction see Zimmer 2003b

and Brubaker 2004.



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