Hans Kohn and the Dialectics of Colonialism: Insights on Nationalism and Colonialism from Within

Abstract

Hans Kohn's contribution to the establishment of research on nationalism as a distinct scholarly discipline is widely recognized as crucial. Yet one realm of his intellectual scholarship has largely gone unnoticed—that of his early twentieth century critique of colonialism. As we shall see, this was an ambivalent and multi-contextual critique, and therefore one well worth returning to today. Kohn's profound interest in nationalism and colonialism was motivated by specific life circumstances preceding his academic career.1 “Having been born in Prague in the old Austrian Monarchy, the classical battleground of nationalities and civilizations, I quickly became interested in the problems of nationalism”, he wrote.2 This “battleground” was not only literal, in Prague's streets, where Czechs and Germans fought bitterly for domination, but ideological as well. Kohn experienced this personally as his Zionist identity clashed with traditional Jewish loyalty to the Kaiser and his trans-national empire. Indeed, the young Kohn...