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Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People - Rafapal

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48 THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE<br />

In reality, an analysis <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> development <strong>of</strong> Western societies, which Kohn<br />

classified as civil, voluntarist, inclusive nations—<strong>the</strong> United States, Britain,<br />

France, <strong>the</strong> Ne<strong>the</strong>rlands—reveals tensions and struggles among diverse<br />

tendencies. Throughout <strong>the</strong> nineteenth century, Protestant Anglo-Saxon<br />

identity formed <strong>the</strong> principal focus <strong>of</strong> American nationalism, so that Native<br />

Americans, Asian and Eastern European immigrants, and black African slaves<br />

<strong>of</strong>ten experienced hostility and strong identity anxieties. In <strong>the</strong> 1940s, when<br />

Kohn was writing his pioneering book, black citizens had not yet been "imagined"<br />

as an immanent part <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> great democratic nation. 36<br />

Although <strong>the</strong> British have always been proud <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>ir mixed origins<br />

(Norman, Scandinavian, and so on), at <strong>the</strong> height <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> liberal British Empire<br />

political thinkers and leaders saw <strong>the</strong> inborn English character as <strong>the</strong> source<br />

<strong>of</strong> its greatness, and <strong>the</strong>ir attitude toward <strong>the</strong> inhabitants <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> colonies was<br />

always contemptuous. Many Britons took pride in <strong>the</strong>ir Anglo-Saxon heritage,<br />

and viewed <strong>the</strong> Welsh and <strong>the</strong> Irish "<strong>of</strong> pure Celtic origin" as <strong>the</strong>ir inferiors,<br />

races alien to <strong>the</strong> "chosen Christian people." In <strong>the</strong> course <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> nineteenth<br />

century, during which national identity crystallized throughout <strong>the</strong> West,<br />

<strong>the</strong>re were always Frenchmen who described <strong>the</strong>mselves as direct descendants<br />

<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Gallic tribes, bolstering <strong>the</strong>ir hostility toward <strong>the</strong> Germans within <strong>the</strong><br />

framework <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> eternal struggle against <strong>the</strong> Frankish tribes invading from<br />

<strong>the</strong> east.<br />

At <strong>the</strong> same time, we find in Central and Eastern Europe not a few thinkers,<br />

currents and movements that sought to devise an open, inclusive identity politics,<br />

bounded not by ethnobiological or ethnoreligious but by cultural and political<br />

boundaries. In Germany, <strong>the</strong> central object <strong>of</strong> Kohn's dichotomic model, <strong>the</strong>re<br />

was not only <strong>the</strong> ethnocentric national tradition whose outstanding ideologists<br />

were Heinrich von Treitschke and Werner Sombart; <strong>the</strong>re were also<br />

cosmopolitan writers such as Friedrich von Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von<br />

Goe<strong>the</strong>, national liberals such as <strong>The</strong>odor Mommsen and Max Weber, as well<br />

as <strong>the</strong> great social-democratic mass movement that viewed Germanity as a<br />

hospitable culture and saw all who lived within its territory as its inherent<br />

parts. Similarly, in Tsarist Russia it was not only <strong>the</strong> various socialist movements<br />

that took <strong>the</strong> inclusive political position that anyone who saw oneself<br />

as a Russian must be regarded as such, but also liberal currents and broad<br />

intellectual strata that regarded Jews, Ukrainians and Belorussians as integral<br />

parts <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> great nation.<br />

36 On nationalism in <strong>the</strong> US, see <strong>the</strong> interesting article by Susan-Mary Grant, "Making<br />

History: Myth and <strong>the</strong> Construction <strong>of</strong> American Nationhood," in Myths and Nationhood,<br />

G. Hoskin and G. Schöpflin (eds.), New York: Routledge, 1997, 88-106.

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