Regionalism and Nationalism

Abstract

we experience a sense of satisfaction with the political community of which we are part. The ancient Egyptian and Roman, the citizen of the Catholic mediaeval world, probably felt much the same way. Yet what they accepted as permanent has changed, what they thought of as the highest good is now re garded as faulty. It does not seem extravagant to conclude that there are always elements of decay at work within the political tree at the same time that rivals are struggling against it for mois ture in the ground and for light from the sky. Some of our con temporaries, scanning the horizon, see signs of disaster to the state as it is now constituted mainly in the threat of a general war or in the development of revolutionary class warfare. But the ele ments of gradual decentralization and devolution that are con tained within every state are likely ultimately to prove more potent because, as some might put it, they are more insidious. One of the internal elements, the development of which may af fect the nation both directly through political action and in directly through political or social philosophy, is regionalism. Before the national state came into being, there was every where some kind of regionalism based on ethnic or cultural con siderations. In Europe the tribal organization, though in many ways weak, was dominant. It might be West Saxon, Lombardic or Visigothic; it might be mobile or fixed. Sometimes it was strong in the face of enemies, always it was weak in the face of internal dissensions. As this loose tribal state grew more powerful, the local elements crystallized in the form of provinces. Some of these provinces had their day and disappeared. Others have persisted as ethnic, cultural, or economic entities down to the present time. Northumberland has gone, but Provence is a reality. Kent has lost its distinctiveness, but Tuscany still means a great deal. In present-day France the elements of regionalism are one of the leavening influences in national literature and popular thought. As towns arose and as an urban middle class came into exist