Teutonist Ethnology and Scottish Nationalist Inhibition, 1780–1880

Abstract

The emerging human sciences of ethnography, physical and social anthropology, archaeology, folklore and philology played a central part in the formation of nineteenth-century European nationalist movements. These areas ? which might be grouped for conven ience under the loose umbrella term of ethnology ? provided many of the cultural leaders, and yielded some of the most influential ideas, in the rise of ethnic nationalisms. The significance of ethnology is acknowledged even by those who criticise idealist interpretations of nationalist phenomena. Miroslav Hroch, who has pioneered a Marxist interpretation of the national revivals which occurred in the smaller nations of Europe, assigns a central role to intelligentsias in the initial stirrings of nationalism. Hroch disaggregates the process of nationalist development in minority nations into a series of phases: the promotion of an awareness of the embryonic nation through the scholarly and literary activities of an intellectual elite preceded the emergence of a national movement with political grievances and demands.1