Nationalism as a Response to Worker Militancy

Abstract

Nationalism is widely understood as a product of the nineteenth century, the doctrinal seeds for which were planted by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution. It is an extension of tribalism to the nation and is understandable in terms of human evolution. It could be serviceable to first tribes and then nations as a means for acquiring social cohesion and domestic peace by convincingly identifying a foreign menace. But what explains the varying intensity of this strategy? This article claims that strengthening of nationalism’s expression has been substantially due to the threat to elites posed by the rise of powerful worker movements which gained increasing militancy during nineteenth century industrialization. Nationalism served to deflect attention from a system that workers found unjust to foreign forces as the cause of their malaise. In this expression, nationalism served as an ideology enabling the more powerful to assuage worker discontent and continue gaining at the expense of the weaker.