Nationalism Never Becomes Prominent

@ OP, question: How much are we talking of nationalism as shorthand for:

"Primary political identities and loyalties are not as the citizen of a large state, and cut across or within large states (what we'd call internationalism or localism, lacking a more fitting term)"

rather than as shorthand for "States in theory are imagined to properly coincide with a single ethno-linguistic group".

The latter seems possible to imagine butterflying - it already doesn't really apply in the UK for just one example of a state with at least four "nations".

Removing the former out seems to preclude any kind of functioning large modern states, ones where individuals are willing to pay substantially into the state, economically, and become committed to and involved in its political and military processes.

On another note, just as another general question (without thinking about it too deeply), how much of the story of nationalism in Europe (and the world) is the story that groups were faced with the problem of collapse of existing states and empires due to war, and then had to find a political logic to put a viable state back together again? What happens if you're part of a multi-ethnic, dynastically defined empire and the dynasty collapses?
 
Nationalism-as-we-know-it? Maybe.

Nationalism in the general sense? Ha no.

Nationalism-as-we-know-it at the end of the day amounted to aping an idealized version of what France and Britain (and, originally, China[1]) were "doing right". It was fueled by the immediate context: Germany finally lost its national-level political organization (and Poland its independence) at about the same time the advantages of French "nationalism" were being demonstrated, while Northern Italy had just had a centuries-long demonstration of the costs of political disunity. NAWKI was only even relevant, though, because it was timed when Europe was steadily conquering the world.

If France overextended and was crushed a decade or so early, nationalism might well have played much less part in European history. Especially if she's dismembered a bit in defeat.

If the Hapsburgs and (to a much lesser extent) Ottomans have some extraordinary leadership and decent luck from the early-19th, that would make a difference too.

If Germany had not spent most of its early-modern history suffering from disunity and/or had salvaged the Holy Roman Empire as a political unit, they'd have been much less excited about nationhood.

A surviving multi-ethnic Poland-Lithuanian state would have joined the pushback against nationalism instead of being the darling of it.

But all that is small potatoes. At the end of the day, "modernity" involved small, relatively-homogenous European states astride the world. Would Nationalism be credible or relevant if modernity had been delivered by a smattering of large, hyper-diverse South Indian states?

Of course not. In such a TL ideas we recognize as nationalism would probably be identified as merely one variety of anti-colonialism, applicable only rarely by oddly uniform peoples.

[1] But we don't talk about that in polite company.
 
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Much of what I wanted to reply to has already been beautifully clarified by @Skallagrim and @Admiral Matt . It basically boils down to the distinction between the modern political philosophy "Nationalism", which has come to dominate the world in the 19th century and still exerts strong influence IOTL on the one hand, and "ethnic group identity" on the other hand. Eliminating the latter is maybe impossible, at the least it requires a PoD before the differentiation of languages. Eliminating the former is easy and has a lot to do with the French Revolution (not so much with the French enlightenment, I would think, it wasn`t really nationalist in nature).

But what about war, the levee en masse may have started the sort of massive inclusive armies but just because you keep a lid on Republicanism doesn't mean that the larger populations that industrial and agricultural advances bring about aren't going to be utilized. And the culture that would arise from the states of Europe truly tapping into their newfound manpower would have to be nationalistic at least to a degree, if not to keep the country together then at least as an organic consequence that can't really be stifled once it's started and it will be started, just by the nature of how Europeans dealt with conflicts between the others.

They're too combative amongst each other to not awaken the latent sentiments that form the bedrock of nationalism.
Wait, no nationalism doesn`t mean no republicanism. And mass levies, in turn, don`t require either of the two (look at Chinese history...).

The American Revolution didn't entail a state associated with one ethnic group occupying for years territory associated with another ethnic group.
I don`t get your point. Are you talking about Native Americans? I thnk you`re not, but I don`t know what else...

The problem is that both universalism and exclusionism can be totalist. Its just the flavor that differs.
Sure. I didn`t say a world without nationalism would necessarily be better. Just that it doesn`t require massive and early divergence from OTL.

I'm not certain about that. Foundations for nationalism arose back during the Renaissance (like in Italy), and in many regions outside of Western Europe, it evolved naturally without the need of direct contact with the French Revolution.
I have no idea what you are referring to, could it be that you actually mean "ethnic group identity" and not Nationalism?
 
Come to think of it, gonna suck to be a religious minority, isn't it? Secular nationalism has had a certain appeal to them, part of why there were so many Christians among the founders and leadership of Baathism. Secular nationalism also had a bit of an appeal to Jews in various parts of Europe, as it offered a way to be accepted without having to renounce their religion.
 
Come to think of it, gonna suck to be a religious minority, isn't it? Secular nationalism has had a certain appeal to them, part of why there were so many Christians among the founders and leadership of Baathism. Secular nationalism also had a bit of an appeal to Jews in various parts of Europe, as it offered a way to be accepted without having to renounce their religion.
Unless the dominant nation defines itself through religion. For example the distinction between Croats / Serbs / Bosnians, who all speak the same language really...

Actually, many nationalisms weren`t so secular. German national liberals were often staunchly anti-Catholic, Polish nationalists were fiercely Catholic...
 
I have no idea what you are referring to, could it be that you actually mean "ethnic group identity" and not Nationalism?
...yes? That's what nationalism is, an allegiance to a nation. At least, that has always been what nationalism meant to me, and what nationalism is explained as in our curriculum.
 
Unless the dominant nation defines itself through religion. For example the distinction between Croats / Serbs / Bosnians, who all speak the same language really...

Actually, many nationalisms weren`t so secular. German national liberals were often staunchly anti-Catholic, Polish nationalists were fiercely Catholic...
The Yugoslavs had different alphabets and histories. Anyways, when that finally came around during the breakup of Yugoslavia, religoin was just one of the things used to differentiate people further (though it had happened in the past of course, with the Catholicism of Croats signifying their falling under the sway of Germans, Italians, etc, the Orthodoxy of Serbs coming from their ancient practices and the dmominatin of the Turks over the peninsula keeping any new upstarts out, yada yada. And I would say that nationalists and nationalism vary. Almost understandable why the Poles were so militantly Catholic, Protestant Prussians, Orthodox Russians, and Islamic Turks were seen as their main enemies, though at different points. Guess we could also look into stuff with the Catholicism of Irish nationalism, but then we would need to look at the ethnicities of the Protestents, which were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and English Episcopalians for the most part. Religion got to be just another excuse for war rather than an actual cause for it.
 
...yes? That's what nationalism is, an allegiance to a nation. At least, that has always been what nationalism meant to me, and what nationalism is explained as in our curriculum.
Ethnic-based group identity has not "risen" in modernity, and not even in the Middle Ages. Classical antiquity is full of such accounts of groups asserting their identity. Were the Markomanni nationalists? Or the Egyptians who rebelled against the Ptolemies? And the Romans who differentiated between who could at which time acquire citizenship and who couldn`t?
You may use the term in this way; I won`t, but if you do, then "nationalism" has been there for many millennia.

I would propose, as an alternative, to define nationalism as a political philosophy which sees statehood, culture, social structure and ethnic affiliation as necessarily or at least ideally connected with each other in an organic way, and which thus demands one state for each ethnic group, who can then proceed to live according to its perceivedly "genuine" traditions, espousing a coherent culture which is seen as relatively homogeneous.

This political philosophy is a child of the turn of the 18th/19th centuries and would not necessarily have arisen without the French Revolution.
 
then "nationalism" has been there for many millennia.
Alright, it looks like you didn't understand what I'm saying, so I will try to get a bit more in detail.

In Lithuania, we have this concept called "political nation", which, in a Commonwealth context, means the nobility which was able to participate in the political processes of the Republic of Both Nations, but on a wider scale, it refers to the higher strata of the society, who were more educated, had a say in national affairs and thus had some semblance of a national identity even without the majority of the populace having it.

The Lithuanian nobility of the 16th-18th centuries is a great example - they definitely had a Lithuanian identity in the time period, even if they usually did not speak the language, they recognized their nation's history, culture and traditions, and in all terms had most factors of a national identity checked out. Meanwhile, the absolute majority of the Lithuanian people did not have any of that, and we even have a term for these people - "tutejszy" ("local"), named after the common answer Russian census makers got from people in the Vilnius region in 1897 ("What is your nationality?" "I'm a local").

In this context, at least in the way I was explained in my curriculum, the rise of "nationalism" in the period during the 18th-19th centuries meant the shift of national identity from being solely limited to the political nation to be universal, or at least nearly universal, throughout all strata of the population. And the other features of nationalism, like the desire to create a nation-state, arise from there.

In a Lithuanian example, the tutejszy I mentioned earlier split up along linguistic and cultural lines in the late 19th century, through the same process.

And thus, in my opinion, something like the rise of universal education across Europe held a much larger impact on the development of modern nations than the French Revolution ever did (not to reduce it's importance, however; it was still a very important event and could certainly delay nationalism).

Can't comment much on your interpretation of nationalism, though, it's too unfamiliar to me.
 
In Lithuania, we have this concept called "political nation", which, in a Commonwealth context, means the nobility which was able to participate in the political processes of the Republic of Both Nations, but on a wider scale, it refers to the higher strata of the society, who were more educated, had a say in national affairs and thus had some semblance of a national identity even without the majority of the populace having it.

The Lithuanian nobility of the 16th-18th centuries is a great example - they definitely had a Lithuanian identity in the time period, even if they usually did not speak the language, they recognized their nation's history, culture and traditions, and in all terms had most factors of a national identity checked out. Meanwhile, the absolute majority of the Lithuanian people did not have any of that, and we even have a term for these people - "tutejszy" ("local"), named after the common answer Russian census makers got from people in the Vilnius region in 1897 ("What is your nationality?" "I'm a local").

In this context, at least in the way I was explained in my curriculum, the rise of "nationalism" in the period during the 18th-19th centuries meant the shift of national identity from being solely limited to the political nation to be universal, or at least nearly universal, throughout all strata of the population. And the other features of nationalism, like the desire to create a nation-state, arise from there.

In a Lithuanian example, the tutejszy I mentioned earlier split up along linguistic and cultural lines in the late 19th century, through the same process.

And thus, in my opinion, something like the rise of universal education across Europe held a much larger impact on the development of modern nations than the French Revolution ever did (not to reduce it's importance, however; it was still a very important event and could certainly delay nationalism).
These cultural differences never cease to amaze me. I love international forums like this one.

Over here in Germany, it was very much the other way round. The nobility was, throughout the Middle Ages and into modernity, very cosmopolitan, it carried with it old ideals whose horizon was "Christendom" or "the West", it was very interconnected and intermarried across the continent. And it was staunchly opposed to the idea of Nationalism, which in Germany was pretty much a bourgeois concept and closely wedded to liberalism at first. (It was Bismarck and Prussian military unification which severed the ties between nationalism and liberalism, but that`s another story.)

OK, examining your concept of nationalism more closely, I still don`t quite understand where you see Nationalism emerging. How you described Lithuanian nobility in the 16th-18th centuries would certainly apply to, say, a native Greek speaker in the Roman Empire around the times of Caesar or Augustus: they had a distinct sense of being Hellenes, and the more educated they were, the more this was imbued with philosophical, religious, literary etc. concepts. And that`s just one very self-evident example, I´m sure you could find hundreds across history. Is that already Nationalism? Or was the moment when the people you called "tutejszy" "split" into different nations by self-concept the moment when Nationalism emerged? In that case, I think even poor Hellenes in antiquity were aware of being Hellenes. Was that Nationalism already? Because the limitation of the concept of nationality to an elite is not exactly something I would say one can easily extrapolate from the Baltic situation and map it onto much of the rest of the world.

Once again, in the case of Germany, for most of the 18th century and before that, say an aristocrat from the Habsburger family who was asked of their nationality would look slightly irritated by the question (especially if asked in Croatian or Hungarian or Czech). People in Bavaria or Hesse might say they were "locals", like in your example, but if you asked them what language they spoke, they would probably say "teutsch" straight away. (If you asked someone in Bohemia, though, for example, they might have said "German" or "Czech" or "Moravian" more easily..) By 1840, this had changed a lot. Your average Bavarian, Austrian or Hessian burgher (and sometimes even peasant) would proudly declare themselves German, while their nobles would find the question criminally offensive by now. And another forty years later, all classes would declare themselves German. That was a political process driven by the bourgeoisie, sometimes oppressed and sometimes exploited and seized upon by the reigning nobility.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
In Lithuania, we have this concept called "political nation", which, in a Commonwealth context, means the nobility which was able to participate in the political processes of the Republic of Both Nations, but on a wider scale, it refers to the higher strata of the society, who were more educated, had a say in national affairs and thus had some semblance of a national identity even without the majority of the populace having it.

In this context, at least in the way I was explained in my curriculum, the rise of "nationalism" in the period during the 18th-19th centuries meant the shift of national identity from being solely limited to the political nation to be universal, or at least nearly universal, throughout all strata of the population. And the other features of nationalism, like the desire to create a nation-state, arise from there.

And thus, in my opinion, something like the rise of universal education across Europe held a much larger impact on the development of modern nations than the French Revolution ever did (not to reduce it's importance, however; it was still a very important event and could certainly delay nationalism).

How you described Lithuanian nobility in the 16th-18th centuries would certainly apply to, say, a native Greek speaker in the Roman Empire around the times of Caesar or Augustus: they had a distinct sense of being Hellenes, and the more educated they were, the more this was imbued with philosophical, religious, literary etc. concepts.

It's certain that education was a big factor in the emergence of nationalism. But we should keep in mind the extent to which both the ideal and the practical form of universal education were tied to Enlightenment thought and (again!) the legacy of the French revolution.

First of all, the Enlightenment is probably going to lead to wider education throughout Europe. It is this period, and this intellectual climate, that spurred on that development. So when @Augenis points to universal education, that's ultimately pointing to the Enlightenment-- which I think is valid here.

But then there's the how. As of the French revolution, the French Republic's attitude towards universal education became current throughout Europe. This approach explicitly involved state education, with a state-mandated curriculum. Specifically, it involved the goal of educating young people in a "national language", which worked to wipe out local languages (which had up until then been widely spoken... everywhere). That centralism was rather typically French, and without the French revolution, while you still have the Enlightenment itself leaving a legacy, the exact nature of that legacy may well be different.

Think... more privately funded schools, with less involvement by the government. The church is likely to have a bigger role. Without French revolutionary thought, Enlightenment and religion are also less opposed (compare the USA, where no specific anti-religious sentiments became part of revolutionary thought). So religion would remain, perhaps, more relevant to one's identity than in OTL. Local languages would remain widely-spoken for longer in many areas as well, so I can see schools educating the youth in Latin and in these local languages side by side far more often than was the case in OTL.

All things being said, when it comes to identity, this means that when asked about it, answers like "I'm a Catholic" or "I'm a local" will be considerably more likely than in OTL, all throughout Europe. Combine this with 'no French revolutionary war' = 'non-national polities like the HRE keep on existing', and the whole concept of the nation-state simply doesn't get the kick-start it got in OTL. Doesn't mean national identity somehow doesn't exist, but it may well keep it from attaining its OTL prominence.
 
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I wonder if no/a different Thirty Years' War might be the way to go here. Without the concept of Westphalian sovereignty taking off, people might feel more comfortable owing allegiance to both (e.g.) the nation of Bohemia and the House of Hapsburg, in which case the lack of one-to-one correspondence between the borders of Bohemia and the land ruled by the Hapsburg monarch wouldn't seem like much of an issue.
 
What POD would be the best to set back the development of nationalism in Europe? How long could it be delayed? Perhaps there being no Black Death in Europe and the feudal system continuing on for a couple more centuries?
No age of enlightment in Europe ? No sophisticated ideas of nationalism, liberalism and people´s sovereignty in the 19th Century ? No french Revolution, no napoleo, no Code Civil ? Also no German Bible by Luther previous ?
 
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