Theorising small nations in the Atlantic world: Scottish lessons for Québec?

Abstract

It is no exaggeration to say that distinctions such as ethnic versus civic nationalism, collectivism versus individualism or tradition versus modernity have not helped our understanding of the politics of small nations. They have led to abstract discussions in which the only question that seems to matter is where to place their nationalism on the ethnic-civic axis. This has certainly been a subject much debated in Canada, especially during the 1990s when the country almost conferred upon Quebec the status of a 'distinct' society. There has been much opposition to such recognition, especially from English-Canadian feminist and multicultural social movements because they believed that any recognition of Quebec's distinctiveness would undermine the recognition by the courts of the rights of Quebec women, immigrants, Aboriginals and anglo-Quebeckers. Because of its unique position in North American society, Quebec has been more often than not considered, by both Quebeckers themselves and by English Canadians to be something of an anomaly. As the anomalous 'Other', Quebec is understood as having lived under a 'Grande noirceur' until the 1960s. This twentieth-century 'dark age' was reputedly a period when right-wing nationalists ruled the province and opposed the introduction of political or social modernity. Quebec was almost exclusively portrayed, until recently, as a backward society governed by corrupt politicians, oppressed by the Catholic church and characterised by ethnic nationalism. Most of the contemporary interpretations of Quebec as a backward society rest on Louis Hartz's (1964) theory of 'fragments', but recent debates on identity and politics in Quebec have challenged this approach (Bourque, Duchastel and Beauchemin 1994; Beauchemin 1997; Letourneau 2000; Cardinal 1999). Moreover, some scholars propose that there is a North American history common to Quebec, Canada, and the United States, implying that politics in Quebec have also recognised and reflected plurality and interactions with other societies and nations, processes from which the region was never isolated (Cuccioletta 2001). For others, the understanding of history, identity and politics in Quebec should not be detached from the exchange of ideas characteristic of both the history of England and the United States as conceptualised by John G.A. Pocock in his classic book, The Machiavellian Moment (Smith 1995; Greer 1994). Criticising English liberalism, Pocock has defended the view according to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England should be considered the heir to the civic humanism of the Italian Renaissance. In this perspective, he sees continuity between England and the classical world. Civic humanism was based on the aristotelian definition of man as a political animal as well as the recognition that politics concerned virtue, citizenship and participation. Situated in its particular historical context, each political community is constantly threatened by corruption; the gains of politics are always precarious. In challenging the view of Quebec as a backward society, we suggest that an alternative approach to politics should draw on the republican shift identified in Pocock's work. This will serve as the point of departure for our discussion of the politics of small nations. Thus, the politics and identity of small nations such as Quebec and Scotland are more complex than most commentators suggest. Nationalism, tradition and modernity in Quebec Until recently, most students of Quebec and Canada have built their interpretations on Hartz's theory of ideological 'fragments' (Hartz 1964). According to Hartz, unlike the United States which he claimed is characterised by a Lockian liberal fragment, Canada is composed of two fragments, a Lockian liberal one in English Canada and a feudal one in French Canada. He also identified traces of a Tory fragment in English Canada but thought it was insufficiently important to challenge the predominance of Lockian liberalism. …