“PostScotland” and “Pre-Catalonia”: Legitimation of the New Nationalism in Old Europe
18 September 2014 held a referendum on independence in Scotland. On November 9 a referendum on independence is scheduled in another country - in Spain, in the region of Catalonia. The past referendum showed how the idea of Scottish independence moved from the category of implausible to possible or even probable. The Scottish incident showed the Europeans that the long established, developed and relatively prosperous communities relative to the rest of the world, such as Great Britain, were not as stable as it seemed to everyone before, in the face of national relations and new nationalism. In addition, the new separatist movements showed everyone their legal opportunities in Europe. Precedent should be fixed by new practices. Before the Scottish referendum, this method of developing regional separatism was known only in the New World to Canadian Quebec. The Scottish and Catalan precedents raise the question of how reliably ethnic conflicts were eliminated in the old Europe in the post-war period. At a time when the economic crisis is tormenting the European Union, challenging European supranational institutions and principles, the possible end of the union of peoples in Great Britain and the partial overcoming of Spanish identity in Catalonia will legitimize the national claims that Europe has been trying to remove from its national States. The Scottish referendum gave legitimacy to the new nationalism in old Europe.
The Scottish referendum has and will have an impact on other regions set up to gain national independence in the EU member states, such as Catalonia in Spain and Flanders in Belgium. Crisis points are noted in the Italian Tyrol and Romanian Transylvania. In the Polish Silesia, work is underway to design a different ethnic identity from the Polish Silesian. However, against this background, the British case is unique because the question was raised about the restoration of the historically existing statehood and the breakup of the state union of the two peoples, beneficial to the British nation, in the post-imperial period after the UK turned into a national state.
After a phase of intense rivalry with France, Great Britain became the center of a complex international system that existed from the end of the Napoleonic wars before World War II. The British Empire formed not only the international system of relations, but also influenced the internal political order of such emerging large countries that emerged on the basis of the British colonies such as the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. The British Empire was formed not only by force, but also by free trade, relying on the achievements of its own industrial revolution. Britain for two centuries was at the forefront of scientific and technological progress. Colonial and commercial expansion relied on the seafaring fleet, which, in turn, used the achievements of the industrial revolution, having gone from sail, through the steam engine to the steam turbine. From the very beginning of the construction of the British Empire side by side with the British fought, worked, migrated together in the colony of the Scots. The Scots "carried the burden" and benefited from the existence of the British Empire along with the British. The British Empire ceased to exist, but the dividends it received still benefit all British citizens.
However, until the point of growth of the British Empire, Scotland and England were historical enemies. Their struggle was rooted back centuries to the era of rivalry between the Celts and Germans. In the historical past, the British and Scots did not trust each other. Moreover, each of the parties had good reason for this. Interethnic rivalry was intertwined with a complex struggle and attempts at "reconciliation" through a union through conquest or through dynastic intrigue. Since the sixteenth century, tensions in relations have added religious differences within the framework of various Protestant systems and contradictions with Catholics. For both peoples, for a long time, coexistence on one island was associated with the problem of national security. At the same time, Scotland constantly gave the British reason to fear a foreign invasion of the island through its territory. Neighboring France has repeatedly tried to use Scotland as a convenient base for an attack on England, protected from the continent by the sea. The Scots, in turn, feared that English dominance would lead to the exploitation of Scotland and, possibly, to assimilation, that is, to the disappearance of the Scottish language and culture. Regarding the language, their fears were fully justified.
The union of 1707 of the year was the result of a decree by the parliaments of the two countries. The Union relied on the experience of the dynastic union, which, after 1707, was supplemented and consolidated by the creation of a single legislative body of the united country. England at the conclusion of the parliamentary union was guided by its old island geopolitics. Scotland, in turn, proceeded from financial problems that it was unable to solve on its own. In addition, Scotland, through a union at the expense of British overseas colonization, solved the problem of its own excess population. This gave a huge plus to a poor country.
As a result of the union of England and Scotland, Great Britain was created on the main British island. Moreover, since the 18th century, the British and the Scots acted as one people in the historical arena. Scotland and England began to project outward one national theme, but with their own flavor of historical peoples. National differences in cultural terms were overcome and by the end of the twentieth century, it seemed to have been overcome forever. The number of speakers of Celtic Scottish was reduced to a minimum, while the Scots themselves in the cities and mostly in the countryside switched from Scottish English to literary English. However, cultural and linguistic unification, as recent events have shown, has not eliminated Scottish nationalism.
The formation of a single British nation at a starting point in time was slightly ahead of the Enlightenment with the French Revolution, which proclaimed a nation-state the cornerstone of a new “free” world. The nation state has become the main political challenge to the traditional order with its international monarchist dynasties and the fragmentation of peoples between feudal possessions in Europe. Enlightenment put forward the idea of a nation united by a common economy, language, culture and history. Capitalism cemented this phenomenon. The nation has received the inalienable right to self-determination, primarily in relation to the traditional order. Democratic and republican forms of government were defined as an ideal for a nation-state. After the French Revolution, some countries in Europe, such as Germany and Italy, were forcibly united into nation states. Others, on the contrary, are dismembered. As a result of the First World War, the Habsburg empire collapsed, and nation states were created on its ruins in the wake of decentralization. It is believed that the second wave of the formation of national states in Europe followed in the 1992 year after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The idea of the right of the nation to national self-determination and the practice of the national state was used in the uprising against European imperialism and colonialism in the Western Hemisphere to create independent republics in North and South America. The second wave of the anti-colonial movement, raised after the Second World War, led to the self-determination of the new national states in the colonial territories, which were partially created on an ethnic basis or even invented without any correspondence to individual nations, effectively dividing many of the existing ethnic groups with borders. In the majority of cases, Republican democracy was again used as a form. The fundamental principles of the national state as an international standard were proclaimed first in the charter of the League of Nations, and then the United Nations.
However, the nation state, existing as a pure principle, in practice faces the reality that it cannot be mono-ethnic. In each nation state there are certain ethnic minorities. In addition, cultural differences within one ethnic group make themselves felt. Ethnic identity, connected, in fact, not with blood and soil, but with culture, is changeable in practice, as culture itself is changeable and historical. At its very formation, nation states faced this problem. They solved it differently and often through conflict and blood, as it was, for example, in France during the French Revolution or in the Hapsburg Empire during the 1848 revolution of the year. The situation of peaceful inter-ethnic cohabitation in the previous period was replaced by the opposition of the peoples. The confrontation led to conflicts. The culture of national states in Europe suppressed the culture of national minorities and assimilated them. In some cases, national construction was accompanied by attempts to subordinate minorities, in others, minorities began to demand independence, appealing to the right to create their own ethnic state. To overcome the conflict in Vienna, the principle of cultural autonomy was invented. Often internal conflicts were aggravated by external ones. The right of nations to self-determination required a revision of the borders, which often in the case of a solution to the issue once again divided the existing nations. In addition, the hard part of national self-determination is the need to make decisions and live with them further. Not everyone stood up to this challenge and temptation.
The paradox of Britain is that the British nation began to take shape a little earlier than the start of the era of nation states. The British nation was born as the privileged ethnic core of the British Empire. After the liquidation of the Empire, Great Britain became an ordinary national state. Privileges in fact have been lost. However, this result was fraught with a split of the British nation. Obviously, a possible rejection of the union of Scotland with England would create a second national state on the British Isles.
The idea of a national state after the period of wars 1914-1945 in the world was brought to the point of absurdity. In Europe, in order to avoid conflict between national states, the principle of invariance of the borders of existing states was adopted. The doctrine was imperfect, which became clear already in the situation of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The transformation of the internal administrative borders into the borders of the new national states gave rise to new bloody interethnic conflicts. However, neither the collapse of Yugoslavia nor the collapse of the Soviet Union were recognized in Europe as a dangerous precedent for itself.
The right to national self-determination and the principle of the national state turned out to be fundamentally flawed, since in each new historical period, new conflicts sprang up in a new historical cycle. One of the reasons for the creation of the European Union was the desire to overcome the practice of national self-determination in Europe through the creation of a supranational structure.
Nationalism, as one of the key products of the national state, demonstrates its strength in the pursuit of national self-determination. At the same time, nationalism has a certain inertia to move towards its logical conclusion. Therefore, there is no reason to trust any moderate assurances of any European nationalists - Scottish, Catalan or Walloon, who dress in the clothes of the regionalists. In particular, in the event of the termination of the union of Great Britain and the creation of two national states on one island, no one can guarantee the preservation of good relations between the two peoples, bearing in mind the fact that relations between them have been conflicting in the past. And it was precisely to the conflicts that Scottish nationalism began to appeal when it began to virtually generate the modern historical memory of the Scots. It is enough to pay attention to the individual works of the 1980-1990-game cinema. In the case of Scotland, as we have seen, rational motives have become a means of exhorting separatist aspirations — possible economic and financial problems, difficulties in relations with the European Union, or difficulties with national defense. From an economic point of view, for Scotland and the Scots, possible achievements are doubtful, but the shocks, on the contrary, are real. However, in the case of nationalism, and the Scottish case is again confirmed, the bourgeois theory of human behavior, which asserts the priority of maximizing economic benefits, does not work. People in this situation are guided rather by abstract motives that are derived from culture than the motive of economic gain. The situation in the USSR in 1989-1992 demonstrated this maxim of the rule of irrationalism over rational. The alliance center’s 1991 sanctions against Lithuania were the result of a misunderstanding of the situation at its core. A referendum held in Scotland showed that almost half of the Scots prefer economic uncertainty to the tried-and-true alliance of nations. In addition, the irrational lies in the field of the demand for freedom, when freedom is already a reality of the existing civil society in the UK.
Separatist conflicts in Europe to a greater extent should be viewed as a product of culture, with the condition that the latter, although connected, but not directly with the economy. National identities basically depend on historical memory, which can be controlled by means of culture. Historical memory can be fictitious. The social movement for Scottish independence is based on an emotional desire for a strong, egalitarian and socially responsible policy. In terms of individual consciousness, the Scots believed that Scotland, conditionally speaking, could become a semblance of neighboring Norway. There are no rational arguments against separatism, based on references to tax revenues or the safety of bank accounts. Nationalism replays any economic logic. People are interested in economic well-being, but not to the detriment of everything else, and most importantly, culturally constructed ideals.
“The great forces of the Empire, long being disunited, seek to unite again, and after a long unification they break up again - the same is said in the people” - this is how Luo Guan-Zhong begins his story in Three Kingdoms, one of four classical Chinese novels. Separatist aspirations in Europe and the associated nationalism are not a kind of regularity of the modern stage of history. History has always been a battleground of nations. The national state attempted to squeeze this phenomenon into a rigid framework, restricting the living movement of peoples. This only creates excessive conflict.
Eliminate the phenomenon can not be. It is possible to change the essence of statehood from national to another, but only theoretically. Therefore, the state remains only rational control over the movements of ethnic identity and the culture that generates it. In this regard, the British authorities in the case of the Scottish referendum have demonstrated an enviable experience in managing the process. The first round of the game with Scottish nationalism, they successfully won. Let's see how in the future they will be able to consolidate their success in blocking nationalism in the case of Scottish ethnic identity. The next step is to hold the exam with the authorities of Spain.
The Scottish referendum has and will have an impact on other regions set up to gain national independence in the EU member states, such as Catalonia in Spain and Flanders in Belgium. Crisis points are noted in the Italian Tyrol and Romanian Transylvania. In the Polish Silesia, work is underway to design a different ethnic identity from the Polish Silesian. However, against this background, the British case is unique because the question was raised about the restoration of the historically existing statehood and the breakup of the state union of the two peoples, beneficial to the British nation, in the post-imperial period after the UK turned into a national state.
After a phase of intense rivalry with France, Great Britain became the center of a complex international system that existed from the end of the Napoleonic wars before World War II. The British Empire formed not only the international system of relations, but also influenced the internal political order of such emerging large countries that emerged on the basis of the British colonies such as the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. The British Empire was formed not only by force, but also by free trade, relying on the achievements of its own industrial revolution. Britain for two centuries was at the forefront of scientific and technological progress. Colonial and commercial expansion relied on the seafaring fleet, which, in turn, used the achievements of the industrial revolution, having gone from sail, through the steam engine to the steam turbine. From the very beginning of the construction of the British Empire side by side with the British fought, worked, migrated together in the colony of the Scots. The Scots "carried the burden" and benefited from the existence of the British Empire along with the British. The British Empire ceased to exist, but the dividends it received still benefit all British citizens.
However, until the point of growth of the British Empire, Scotland and England were historical enemies. Their struggle was rooted back centuries to the era of rivalry between the Celts and Germans. In the historical past, the British and Scots did not trust each other. Moreover, each of the parties had good reason for this. Interethnic rivalry was intertwined with a complex struggle and attempts at "reconciliation" through a union through conquest or through dynastic intrigue. Since the sixteenth century, tensions in relations have added religious differences within the framework of various Protestant systems and contradictions with Catholics. For both peoples, for a long time, coexistence on one island was associated with the problem of national security. At the same time, Scotland constantly gave the British reason to fear a foreign invasion of the island through its territory. Neighboring France has repeatedly tried to use Scotland as a convenient base for an attack on England, protected from the continent by the sea. The Scots, in turn, feared that English dominance would lead to the exploitation of Scotland and, possibly, to assimilation, that is, to the disappearance of the Scottish language and culture. Regarding the language, their fears were fully justified.
The union of 1707 of the year was the result of a decree by the parliaments of the two countries. The Union relied on the experience of the dynastic union, which, after 1707, was supplemented and consolidated by the creation of a single legislative body of the united country. England at the conclusion of the parliamentary union was guided by its old island geopolitics. Scotland, in turn, proceeded from financial problems that it was unable to solve on its own. In addition, Scotland, through a union at the expense of British overseas colonization, solved the problem of its own excess population. This gave a huge plus to a poor country.
As a result of the union of England and Scotland, Great Britain was created on the main British island. Moreover, since the 18th century, the British and the Scots acted as one people in the historical arena. Scotland and England began to project outward one national theme, but with their own flavor of historical peoples. National differences in cultural terms were overcome and by the end of the twentieth century, it seemed to have been overcome forever. The number of speakers of Celtic Scottish was reduced to a minimum, while the Scots themselves in the cities and mostly in the countryside switched from Scottish English to literary English. However, cultural and linguistic unification, as recent events have shown, has not eliminated Scottish nationalism.
The formation of a single British nation at a starting point in time was slightly ahead of the Enlightenment with the French Revolution, which proclaimed a nation-state the cornerstone of a new “free” world. The nation state has become the main political challenge to the traditional order with its international monarchist dynasties and the fragmentation of peoples between feudal possessions in Europe. Enlightenment put forward the idea of a nation united by a common economy, language, culture and history. Capitalism cemented this phenomenon. The nation has received the inalienable right to self-determination, primarily in relation to the traditional order. Democratic and republican forms of government were defined as an ideal for a nation-state. After the French Revolution, some countries in Europe, such as Germany and Italy, were forcibly united into nation states. Others, on the contrary, are dismembered. As a result of the First World War, the Habsburg empire collapsed, and nation states were created on its ruins in the wake of decentralization. It is believed that the second wave of the formation of national states in Europe followed in the 1992 year after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The idea of the right of the nation to national self-determination and the practice of the national state was used in the uprising against European imperialism and colonialism in the Western Hemisphere to create independent republics in North and South America. The second wave of the anti-colonial movement, raised after the Second World War, led to the self-determination of the new national states in the colonial territories, which were partially created on an ethnic basis or even invented without any correspondence to individual nations, effectively dividing many of the existing ethnic groups with borders. In the majority of cases, Republican democracy was again used as a form. The fundamental principles of the national state as an international standard were proclaimed first in the charter of the League of Nations, and then the United Nations.
However, the nation state, existing as a pure principle, in practice faces the reality that it cannot be mono-ethnic. In each nation state there are certain ethnic minorities. In addition, cultural differences within one ethnic group make themselves felt. Ethnic identity, connected, in fact, not with blood and soil, but with culture, is changeable in practice, as culture itself is changeable and historical. At its very formation, nation states faced this problem. They solved it differently and often through conflict and blood, as it was, for example, in France during the French Revolution or in the Hapsburg Empire during the 1848 revolution of the year. The situation of peaceful inter-ethnic cohabitation in the previous period was replaced by the opposition of the peoples. The confrontation led to conflicts. The culture of national states in Europe suppressed the culture of national minorities and assimilated them. In some cases, national construction was accompanied by attempts to subordinate minorities, in others, minorities began to demand independence, appealing to the right to create their own ethnic state. To overcome the conflict in Vienna, the principle of cultural autonomy was invented. Often internal conflicts were aggravated by external ones. The right of nations to self-determination required a revision of the borders, which often in the case of a solution to the issue once again divided the existing nations. In addition, the hard part of national self-determination is the need to make decisions and live with them further. Not everyone stood up to this challenge and temptation.
The paradox of Britain is that the British nation began to take shape a little earlier than the start of the era of nation states. The British nation was born as the privileged ethnic core of the British Empire. After the liquidation of the Empire, Great Britain became an ordinary national state. Privileges in fact have been lost. However, this result was fraught with a split of the British nation. Obviously, a possible rejection of the union of Scotland with England would create a second national state on the British Isles.
The idea of a national state after the period of wars 1914-1945 in the world was brought to the point of absurdity. In Europe, in order to avoid conflict between national states, the principle of invariance of the borders of existing states was adopted. The doctrine was imperfect, which became clear already in the situation of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The transformation of the internal administrative borders into the borders of the new national states gave rise to new bloody interethnic conflicts. However, neither the collapse of Yugoslavia nor the collapse of the Soviet Union were recognized in Europe as a dangerous precedent for itself.
The right to national self-determination and the principle of the national state turned out to be fundamentally flawed, since in each new historical period, new conflicts sprang up in a new historical cycle. One of the reasons for the creation of the European Union was the desire to overcome the practice of national self-determination in Europe through the creation of a supranational structure.
Nationalism, as one of the key products of the national state, demonstrates its strength in the pursuit of national self-determination. At the same time, nationalism has a certain inertia to move towards its logical conclusion. Therefore, there is no reason to trust any moderate assurances of any European nationalists - Scottish, Catalan or Walloon, who dress in the clothes of the regionalists. In particular, in the event of the termination of the union of Great Britain and the creation of two national states on one island, no one can guarantee the preservation of good relations between the two peoples, bearing in mind the fact that relations between them have been conflicting in the past. And it was precisely to the conflicts that Scottish nationalism began to appeal when it began to virtually generate the modern historical memory of the Scots. It is enough to pay attention to the individual works of the 1980-1990-game cinema. In the case of Scotland, as we have seen, rational motives have become a means of exhorting separatist aspirations — possible economic and financial problems, difficulties in relations with the European Union, or difficulties with national defense. From an economic point of view, for Scotland and the Scots, possible achievements are doubtful, but the shocks, on the contrary, are real. However, in the case of nationalism, and the Scottish case is again confirmed, the bourgeois theory of human behavior, which asserts the priority of maximizing economic benefits, does not work. People in this situation are guided rather by abstract motives that are derived from culture than the motive of economic gain. The situation in the USSR in 1989-1992 demonstrated this maxim of the rule of irrationalism over rational. The alliance center’s 1991 sanctions against Lithuania were the result of a misunderstanding of the situation at its core. A referendum held in Scotland showed that almost half of the Scots prefer economic uncertainty to the tried-and-true alliance of nations. In addition, the irrational lies in the field of the demand for freedom, when freedom is already a reality of the existing civil society in the UK.
Separatist conflicts in Europe to a greater extent should be viewed as a product of culture, with the condition that the latter, although connected, but not directly with the economy. National identities basically depend on historical memory, which can be controlled by means of culture. Historical memory can be fictitious. The social movement for Scottish independence is based on an emotional desire for a strong, egalitarian and socially responsible policy. In terms of individual consciousness, the Scots believed that Scotland, conditionally speaking, could become a semblance of neighboring Norway. There are no rational arguments against separatism, based on references to tax revenues or the safety of bank accounts. Nationalism replays any economic logic. People are interested in economic well-being, but not to the detriment of everything else, and most importantly, culturally constructed ideals.
“The great forces of the Empire, long being disunited, seek to unite again, and after a long unification they break up again - the same is said in the people” - this is how Luo Guan-Zhong begins his story in Three Kingdoms, one of four classical Chinese novels. Separatist aspirations in Europe and the associated nationalism are not a kind of regularity of the modern stage of history. History has always been a battleground of nations. The national state attempted to squeeze this phenomenon into a rigid framework, restricting the living movement of peoples. This only creates excessive conflict.
Eliminate the phenomenon can not be. It is possible to change the essence of statehood from national to another, but only theoretically. Therefore, the state remains only rational control over the movements of ethnic identity and the culture that generates it. In this regard, the British authorities in the case of the Scottish referendum have demonstrated an enviable experience in managing the process. The first round of the game with Scottish nationalism, they successfully won. Let's see how in the future they will be able to consolidate their success in blocking nationalism in the case of Scottish ethnic identity. The next step is to hold the exam with the authorities of Spain.
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