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A reader of my column in The Conservative asked me a question. I had recalled that the Norwegians seceded from Sweden in 1905 because they were not Swedes, and the Finns from Russia in 1917 because they were not Russians. I commented that these and other nations were asserting their identity without being hostile to other nations. My reader’s question was: ‘Who are “these nations”? 100% of the people living there? 50%+1? 75%?’ This is an intriguing question: What makes a nation? What happens to a national minority? What about the coercive element in nationhood? Indeed, Lord Acton observed that a society should be judged by how it treats its minorities.
The Wrong Track: Extermination and Deportation
Sometimes being in a minority has meant extermination: European settlers in both North and South America killed native populations; Russians killed Circassians; Turks killed Armenians (and Greeks and Kurds); Nazis killed Jews; the Khmer Rouge killed the ‘New People’. Often it has meant deportation: the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in 597 BC; the expulsion of Jews from Spain in the fifteenth century; the expulsion of 1.5 million Orthodox Christians (Greeks) from Turkey and of 500,000 Muslims (Turks) from Greece in 1923; several mass deportations of small nations in the Soviet Union; the expulsion of 800,000 Jews from Arab countries in and after 1948, and the flight of 700,000 Arabs from Israel; the exodus of nearly one million ‘Pieds-Noir’ from Algiers to France in 1962. The expulsion of twelve million German speakers from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other European countries after 1945 should not be forgotten either. Voltaire was not far off the mark when he described world history as ‘a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes’.
Nations by Choice
These horrible crimes cannot be blamed solely on nationalism, however: many of them occurred before the nation-state became a real political goal. Moreover, French historian Ernest Renan and Danish poet N.F.S. Grundtvig articulated a liberal theory of nationality. Renan argued that a nation was a group constituted not necessarily by a common language or a shared history, but by the group’s will to be a nation. In his memorable phrase, he called a nation a daily plebiscite. This implied the right of secession: if a group identified as a nation and wanted to form its own state, it should be able to do so. This is what the Norwegians did in 1905, the Finns in 1917, and several nations in Europe in 1918. Sometimes this was just, for example, in the case of the Baltic states and Poland. But sometimes it was not; for example, when the Czechs imposed their state on their German and Slovakian neighbours, or when the Serbs annexed the old Habsburg domains of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Slovenia.
Border Changes by Plebiscites
Grundtvig, like Renan, held that a nation was defined by its will to be a nation. In the dispute between Denmark and the German Confederation over Schleswig, with its Danish-speaking North and German-speaking South, he proposed plebiscites in the contested regions: people should choose between Denmark and Germany. This was carried out in 1920. Incidentally, this seems to be the only possible peaceful resolution of the war in Ukraine. But if plebiscites in border regions leave minorities in enclaves, their rights must be guaranteed, for example, the Swedish speakers in the Finnish Åland Islands and the German speakers in Italian South Tyrol.
Free Trade, Tax Competition and A Choice between Utopias
So, my answer to my reader’s question would partly be: the right of secession; border changes by plebiscites; guarantees of minority rights. But I would add three considerations that would also reduce the coercive element in nationhood. First, international free trade has enabled small states to enjoy the benefits of the international division of labour, making them more viable. Secondly, tax competition between states (or regions) will restrain the maltreatment of minorities. Thirdly, as Robert Nozick argued, the less invasive the state is, the more it can serve as the framework for different utopias, communities by choice: communists could establish communities without private property; some communities might be permissive, others more traditional. The only provision would be the right of entry and exit. The nation should be a home, neither a prison nor a fortress.