BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

“have a life of their own and can dictate the form of the succeeding nationalist identity.” 7
Clifford Geertz had similarly drawn attention to the problematic clash between new “civic”
nationalisms and “primordial attachments” in African and Asian states, suggesting that leaders
seek to domesticate these cultural “givens” rather than belittle or deny them. 8 These warnings
about conflicting elements within national identity echo the classic work of Hans Kohn, who in
1944 contrasted a Western European civic-territorial national identity with a more virulent
Eastern European nationalism based on an organic conception of common culture and ethnicity.
Civic nationalism, propelled forward by an empowered bourgeoisie in both England and France,
Kohn wrote, extolled individual liberty and universal rights through common laws, rational
doctrines of citizenship and defined boundaries. Ethnonationalism, orchestrated from above by
semi-feudal aristocracies, sought legitimacy in ancient traditions and nebulous conceptions of the
soul of the people or a national mission in conscious opposition to western ideals. Kohn cited
the examples of German Volksgeist and Russian Messianism. 9
Kohn also introduced the theme of an ancient “national idea” in the identification by
Hebrews and Greeks with a “cultural mission” and with societal frameworks more egalitarian
7 “Ethnic Markers, Modern Nationalisms, and the Nightmare of History,” in Peter Krüger,
ed., Ethnicity and Nationalism: Case Studies in Their Intrinsic Tension and Political Dynamics
(Marburger Studien Zur Neueren Geschichte Bd. 3, Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1993), 64.
8 Interpretation of Cultures, 259, 277. See also Smith, Cultural Foundations, 9.
9 Kohn’s sweeping treatise on the history of nationalism in western civilization first
appeared in The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background (New York:
Macmillan, 1944). These key concepts also appear in a more concise form in Hans Kohn,
Nationalism, Its Meaning and History, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1965), 16, 24, 30.
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