Bertram Pickard on Nationalism

As a result of the First World War the empires that had dominated the heart of Europe for the last three hundred years – Imperial Russia, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Imperial Germany (formally Prussia), The Ottoman Empire – collapsed.  This led to a reconfiguration of Europe as a land of nation states. No amount of sticking plaster would re-create those empires, they were gone in a fest of little wars which rumbled on to about 1923. Some of the emerging nation states fought their way into existence and then fought each other over their boundaries, others faltered and were snuffed out, such as the briefly lived Ukrainian Republic. 

It fell to the League of Nations to legitimise the new status quo, finding ways to encourage the new pack of nations to co-exist. This they did with some success during the 1920s, resolving a number of disputes, such as the one between Sweden and Finland (a newly emerged state) over some of the Swedish speaking island in the Baltic which had formerly been part of Imperial Russia, as had Finland itself.  

Bertram, in his role as reporter of the proceedings of the League of Nations and of the other international organisations in Geneva, attempted to describe and analyse the issues for his readers. In his article on The Characteristics of Nationalism Today, that appeared in the Friend of 22^nd July 1932, he identified several different types of nationalism.

1. The isolationist form of nationalism of the British and Americans, of which in 1932

   . . . in England it assumes the characteristically shop-keeping attitude of a “Buy British” campaign.

2. The cultural form of nationalism of the French, expressing itself in pride in

   A great cultural tradition

3. The nationalism of minorities and conquered peoples where it

   … is to be found amongst countries where the desire for escape from foreign yoke has become an obsession

   and often expresses itself through fixation on grievances.

4. And Fascism:

   ... and lastly, there is the newest and perhaps the most significant of all the forms of nationalism, namely Fascism, which having emerged a decade ago in in Italy, has now spread under various guises, to fit different history and circumstances, to Germany, Japan, Hungary, Finland and elsewhere

These four forms of nationalism were slowly but remorselessly pulling against the ethos of the League of Nations: that of maintaining peace through collaboration. 

American exceptionalism had led to the USA withdrawing from anything to do with the League. 

British isolationism led to Britain focussing its efforts on preserving its Empire: a massive task given that it was at its maximum extent, comprising one fifth of the world's surface and one quarter of its population. A task too great for a war drained country that itself had been split open by Irish independence and the creation of the Irish Free State. Britain was a broken and impoverished county. 

A even more exhausted France was struggling to re-absorb Alsace and Lorraine with its considerable German speaking population – hence the stress on French as a culture – as well as holding onto it also considerable and expanded empire. Lebanon, Syria, Cameroon and Togoland had been mandated to France by the League in addition to its already extensive empire.

The newly created nation states of Europe each had grievances to settle with their former colonial masters, and with each other, especially over where boundaries should be. They had been created out of chunks of Russia, Austro-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire.

But the form of nationalism that worried Bertram the most was Fascism. It was both militaristic and expansionist. It rested on assumptions of racial superiority and the right to dominate. It was the survival of the fittest applied to politics and international affairs.

Bertram then sketched out three current solutions to the increasing grip of nationalism in an article called The Challenge of Nationalism the following week in the Friend of the 29th July of 1932:

 

1. That of what he terms the “cosmopolitanism” of thinkers such as H G Wells, who invites us to join him in

   an “open conspiracy” against obstructive local sovereignty and patriotism

2. That proposed by Professor Zimmern, who sees that:

   “we have an internationalism of things,” but lack “a generation of men and women accustomed to live, in the fullest sense of the word, in the larger world thus opened out to us.

   Or, as Zimmern suggests:

   “. . . Internationalism,” he says “is not an ideal; it is an adjustment to the real. It is not a new religion or a new patriotism, but a new reflex and a new habituation.”

3. Carl Barth's notion of unity in attachment to Christ: that when Christianity becomes the universal religion we will all achieve unity under the umbrella of “Divine Love”.

Ninety years on we are still struggling with upsurges in nationalism, even some of the more belligerent type. The world may have shrunk due to developments in transport and technology, but people do not seem ready to live in the larger space proposed by Zimmern, even though it a much more of a fact. Almost all mayor cities in the world lie within 24 hour travelling of each other; we communicate almost instantly across the word, due to the internet and telecommunications. A personal phone in your pocket can connect with one in someone else's pocket on the other side of the world: time has shrunk into being now. When Bertram wrote these two articles it took more than 40 days to travel to New Zealand from Britain. Now it can be done in little over a day, and real time meetings can be held via Zoom with participants in London and Wellington talking as if they were in the same room. It seems that it is cultures that divide, not time and space.