Towards A Theory of Ethnic Separatism
Towards A Theory of Ethnic Separatism
To cite this article: Anthony D. Smith (1979): Towards a theory of ethnic separatism, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2:1, 21-37
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Towards a theory of ethnic separatism
Anthony D. Smith
University of Reading
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One of the most volatile and dangerous global issues today is the growth of
political separatism. In Africa it has become a major factor in the East—West
power struggle, where it threatens the integrity of fragile new states.1 In Asia
it has provided intractable problems for the many military regimes, and even
in democracies like India it can evoke a military response.2 Even more
surprising, in the view of several commentators, is the renaissance of ethnic
nationalisms in the West, in the old established and democratic states of
Western Europe. After a lapse of a generation, there has been a resurgence of
political separatism among the Basques and Bretons, the Scots and Corsicans,
the Tyrolese and the Jurassiens; while less violent minority language move-
ments can be found in Occitania, Frisia, Gelderland, Wales, Catalonia and
Flanders.3
The effects of this efflorescence are both external and internal. At the
international level, these movements often provide the seedbed of larger
conflicts, which drag in the superpowers and afford them political bases.
They are also catalysts of political boundary changes. Internally, separatism
provides an important outlet for the expression of ethnic identity and social
regeneration. Politically, too, it affords a new set of avenues to power and
privilege for members of strata hitherto excluded from a share in both; and I
shall argue here that in this circumstance we encounter one of the chief
sources of separatism's continuing appeal.
distant islands such as Iceland and the West Indies should 'grow away' from
the imperial or mother-country.5 Similarly with overseas colonies. In many
of these cases, it was the sense of distance and of remote government that
spurred a sense of apartness. The classic instance is that of the thirteen
colonies, whose ethnic fusion and nationalistic phase began after the War of
Independence, but whose leading strata had even before felt themselves
different and standing apart from their counterparts in the British Isles.6
Similarly with the Creoles of Argentina and Colombia, who shared the culture
of their rulers yet increasingly identified with a different ecological setting, a
different landscape and set of local institutions, in opposition to the frame-
work imposed by the Spanish viceroys. In these cases, the act of physical
separation itself provided a political culture, a set of political myths, able to
form a cultural basis for the future task of nation-building.7
'Ethnic' movements, on the other hand, presuppose a definite historic
community based upon shared memories and culture, in whose name the
separation of the unit is claimed. It is in virtue of a specific cultural difference,
and cultural discrimination, that ethnic separatism emerges. The aim of
ethnic autonomists and separatists is the recovery of a cultural identity
allegedly lost to the community and corrupted by alien influences. The
watchwords of ethnic separatism are identity, authenticity and diversity.
For the ethnic movement, separatism is not merely a means, but also an
ideal in itself; it seeks through separation the restoration of a degraded
community to its rightful status and dignity, yet also sees in the status of
separate political existence the goal of that restoration and the social embodi-
ment of that dignity. Culturally based separatisms hold to the belief in the
distinctive, even unique, character of an ethnic community which entails
the right and duty of the community to run its own affairs according to
internal, historical laws, without outside interference. • Hence political
separatisms on behalf of ethnic groups presuppose an 'ethnic revival', a
growth of ethnic self-consciousness and solidarity prior to any political
action.
Differential development
In what follows I shall concentrate exclusively on the ethnic separatisms.
Before attempting to offer an account of their emergence, it will be useful to
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 23
look at some recent explanations. These theories, like that advanced here, are
based on broader approaches to the whole question of nationalism, and we
need to remember that ethnic separatisms constitute merely one subcategory
of nationalisms, others being irredentisms, anticolonial liberation struggles,
protectionisms and renewal movements. Nevertheless, historically, ethnic
separatisms have formed a vitally important subtype. Indeed, some of the
classic nineteenth-century movements belonged here, including the Czech,
Serb, Greek, Rumanian and Irish.8 In many ways, the present spate of'neo-
nationalisms' both in the West and in the developing countries constitute a
revival of this classic form of secession nationalism, with some changes of
emphasis and social background.9 Hence theories of this important subtype
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original).19
What Gellner appears to be suggesting is that, in normal circumstances,
language provides the basis of nations and of nationalism, but sometimes
another cultural marker, such as religion or colour, cuts across language
areas and helps to foment separatist movements. Again, this is another way
of recognising the plural nature of most modern societies, and the ease with
which mobility kindles tensions in their cultural mosaics. One may dispute
Gellner's definition of nationalism as consisting essentially in loyalty to a
linguistic unit, but there is no denying the effects of occupational mobility
on ethnic relations in modern societies.30
A certain vagueness, however, continues to surround the notions of moral
chasms and cultural markers. It is not at all clear that the conjunction of an
inequality between groups with distinct cultural traits should inevitably lead
to ethnic consciousness, let alone separatism, as a result of modernisation.
It may do so, and in other cases it may not. Inequality coupled with religious
differences in the Balkans did foment ethnic separatism, once modernisation
had begun, among Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians, in opposition to their
Ottoman overlords.21 Religion is still an active force in Ulster, among the
Moros in the Philippines and in Eritrea. But it need not prove an irremovable
marker or barrier. Neither German irredentism, nor Swiss separatism, in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were vitally impaired by internal
religious differences.22 Similarly, colour allied to an age-old inequality may
be ignited by modernisation into a renewed ethnic consciousness, though not
necessarily separatism, as has happened with the Blacks in the United States.23
But it need not prove an insuperable barrier. It has not done so in Brazil or
Guyana, despite some tensions. Whether these 'markers' become crucial
barriers or not, largely depends upon past relationships and present political
actions. It is these that serve to define the relevant ethnic categories in the
first place, and the 'markers' are then annexed and employed to 'clarify'
and strengthen the definition.
There is the further difficulty that today most movements for autonomy
or separation, particularly in the West, define their units linguistically and
designate themselves as language movements. In some cases, indeed, such as
Occitania or Gelderland, language appears to be the movement's sole raison
d'etre. Yet for Gellner language is not one of the separatist markers, it is an
26 Anthony D. Smith
integrator and the main determinant of the larger scale of modern units.
Separatism, however, must by definition go against the alleged historic trend
towards integration and increased scale; the Welsh or Breton movements
would appear to be throwbacks to an earlier epoch, yet they seek to revive
a small-scale language as the medium and limit of clerkly mobility. Again,
the linguistic 'marker' seems to be functioning in a rather different way from
that suggested by Gellner's account.
To invoke 'cultural markers' as some sort of dew ex machina after the
event, does not really help us to explain and understand why some ethnic
elites should espouse diversity and autonomy rather than seek to revolutionise
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their society from within. Culture need not act simply as a barrier or
boundary marker; it can also become a focus for solidarity and a motor for
action. We have also to enquire why cultural differences should provide such
barriers today, and how they function to guide and explain changing situations
to their participants.
The growth of an historical vision and the literary renaissance has, in the
vast majority of cases, preceded the ethnic revival and its political expressions.
This is hardly surprising in so far as ethnic groups are often regarded as
communities of common and distinctive origins, history and culture. But, for
an ethnic category to become transformed into an ethnic community, it must
acquire historical self-consciousness and a sense of peculiar identity. The
search for a literary language and the manipulation of myths and traditions
embedded in communal religion, serve essentially this historical purpose.
Religion and language become the hunting-ground for the historicist, his
essential props in the ethnic drama which he constructs to chart the way for
his compatriots. They have, of course, other uses: psychological, territorial,
even demographic. Yet all these other uses are predicated upon an historical
and evolutionary framework which gives meaning and coherence to what
would otherwise constitute unrelated pieces of information or 'markers'.
Perhaps this was what Hegel was driving at when he argued, so tendentious-
ly, that those ethnic groups which had once possessed a state of their own,
would be able to re-emerge as nation-states in the future; and even more
notoriously what Engels had in mind when he advanced the notion of
'historic' nations like the great nations of Western Europe, which would
swallow up the many 'ruins of peoples', those 'ethnographic monuments
without political significance', which he found in Eastern Europe.29 Both
realised the importance of a sense of history, and preferably separate state-
hood, to the revival of ethnicity today. They certainly overestimated the
need to have had a state of one's own in the past, and underestimated the
historical inventiveness of the intelligentsia in search of a nation. But they
stumbled, nevertheless, on a vital precondition of the ethnic revival, and
hence of nationalism. The rediscovery and repossession of one's communal
history has now become a necessary and standard component of 'nation-
building', and may today even accompany the initial desire for autonomy,
as in earlier ages it invariably preceded it, particularly in areas of great ethnic
heterogeneity and artificial boundaries like the 'state-nations' of Africa.30
The effect of historicism everywhere is to thrust forward those latent
ethnic ties which it tends to elevate, where before men had only been con-
scious of dynastic, religious or family ties. History now replaces religion as
the major explanatory mode for the intellectuals, and they in turn encourage
28 Anthony D. Smith
the professionals and allied strata to reinterpret their situations in terms of
the new historical vision and its ethnic categories. Moreover, even those
modes of historicism like Marxism which were theoretically indifferent to
ethnicity, have tended to make their peace with the dominant ethnic forms
of historicism. This is not simply a function of the greater abundance of
ethnic history over general, or of the special needs of vested interests, though
both play a part. It is also because the specific history of communities
touches emotional and moral aspects of the group, which more general world
dramas avoid or belittle. Moreover, ethnic history knows no barrier, no great
divide, between phases of the community's history, between a feudal or
agrarian epdch, and a bourgeois, industrial one; it treats that history as an
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organic growth, a seamless web uniting all classes. Hence the greater cohesive
and emotive appeal of ethnic historicism over other forms of the historical
vision.31
There is a further aspect of the ethnic revival today. The post-War era has
witnessed a renewed romanticism, and in the 1960s another flight from
reason into subjective experience. Yet there is a difference between neo-
romanticism and its forbear. Today's irrationalism is married paradoxically
to a considerable emphasis upon social engineering for Utopia. Neo-Marxist
and neo-nationalists revolts against party and industrial machines are coupled
with technical experimentation in the means employed to reach visionary
goals. The great experiment of 'nation-building' requires exactly this com-
bination of technical skill and direct, authentic commitment to a personal
vision of collective existence, one that is forged out of immediate experience
rather than imposed from outside. Hence the glorification of 'mass sentiment'
as the genuine popular expression, and hence also the attempts to harness it
by today's communist ethnic nationalisms in a great collective experiment.
It is hardly surprising if ethnic historicism flourishes in such an environment.32
but it does not of itself determine the intensity or shape of that action. As
we saw, a distinction had to be drawn between outright separatisms and more
limited movements for cultural or territorial autonomy. In the latter case,
elites feel they do not need to resort to secession to satisfy their status and
cultural aspirations. In some cases, they may not even seek internal self-rule
and the accompanying segregation from the wider society. They may be
satisfied with a greater communal voice in the destiny of the overall nation-
state in which their ethnic community is incorporated, as the Blacks and
Puerto Ricans appear to be doing in the United States today. Such 'com-
munalist' solutions tend to appeal to ethnic groups which lack a strong
regional base.
All three routes, the communalist, the autonomist and the separatist, do,
however, presuppose a considerable politicisation of the ethnic community,
which in itself constitutes an essential prerequisite for nationhood. We need
therefore to enquire further into those factors which tend to accentuate the
political consciousness of an ethnic community and to make it turn to
political action for a solution to identity problems.
Of these factors, the most important would appear to be: the cycle of
economic and social expansion and contraction, the associated political
cycle, the changing social composition of the intelligentsia and the specific
governmental policies of the dominant ethnic elites. Since these factors tend
to form a constellation, it will be necessary to consider them together.
We may start with the observation that economic and social expansion
in the West during the nineteenth century, closely tied in with the fortunes of
colonial empire, allowed a considerable assimilation of elites from minority
and peripheral groups. In the West, such expansion was accompanied by
relatively non-discriminatory policies towards minority elites, except to some
extent in the colonies. Even there, the formation of a native professional
elite was at first encouraged, and continued to be in French territories.42 In
Russia, on the other hand, despite physical and economic expansion, govern-
mental policies of the dominant ethnic group were based on religious and
linguistic criteria of discrimination; while in the Habsburg and Ottoman
empires, there was a gradual process of contraction which was reflected in
growing ethnic discrimination against minority nationalities or ethnic
communities.
32 Anthony D. Smith
Western expansion and liberal assimilation was undoubtedly linked to the
play of market forces and policies of laissez-faire, which left it to the laws of
supply and demand to determine the volume and levels of skills required,
irrespective of religion, colour, language or other cultural features. However,
this period of expansion soon ceded place to an era of protection and incipient
State regulation of the economy. With the growth of State intervention,
bureaucratic requirements came increasingly to determine national needs for
talent and skills. In Western Europe, the changeover to mixed economies
coincided with a gradual contraction in the political and economic power of
the major nation-states.43
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Since the War, this trend has greatly accelerated. The dissolution of over-
seas empires, and the consequent loss of prestige, has been accompanied by a
massive shift in strategic power away from Europe to two relative newcomers,
the United States and the Soviet Union; and this has bequeathed a legacy of
self-criticism and a sense of irreversible decline. Even more vital, this geo-
political shift has meant a new closure of society in the older European states.
As the ex-imperial medium-sized state finds itself increasingly hemmed in by
competition, and bereft of its former outlets, the talented and ambitious
elites from peripheral and minority ethnic communities, like Corsica or
Scotland, can no longer be accommodated, nor their aspirations fulfilled.
At a moment of crisis in the legitimacy of the old order of the nation-state,
the familiar syndrome of overproduction of qualified graduates and shrinkage*
of suitable posts in the professions and bureaucracy, recurs on the home
front.
Moreover, the crisis affects an intelligentsia whose chief focus is no longer
just the liberal professions, as before, but much more the vocational and
technical sectors. This shift in the social composition of Western intelligentsias
is important, since it lends any incipient moves towards communalism or
autonomy a hard-headed, practical edge lacking in the airy visions of poets
and scholars.44 Perhaps it also contributes to the limitation of ethnic
demands, a wariness of the separatist extreme and a preference for the
advantages of regional autonomy. At any rate, the changing social basis of the
intelligentsia has undoubtedly helped to fashion more socially-oriented ethnic
movements with a more welfare and collectivistapproach.andagreater emphasis
upon economic problems and on the ideal of self-sufficiency.45
It is in this overall context that we must locate the governmental policies
of the dominant ethnic group. In the West today, overt discrimination is rare.
It is, in general, more a question of central government mismanaging or
neglecting, in the eyes of the intelligentsias, the affairs of their ethnic com-
munities, and of the broader failure of party platforms to bear much relevance
to the needs of different strata in the ethnic regions, as these are felt by their
populations.
It is, of course, at this point that any theory of ethnic separatism must
come close to the familiar nationalist attacks on centralisation and grey
uniformity, and cease to be purely analytical. Since Herder, nationalism has
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 33
fought regimentation in the name of cultural diversity, and today's
autonomists and separatists are no exception. Here, however, we are dealing
with a more circumscribed complaint, namely, the feeling that democracy
as practised for over a century in the West has become irrelevant to the needs
of the new technical intelligentsias and their ethnic communities. Given the
ethnic revival in what are plural states, the inability of party platforms till
recently to turn aside from their habitual class policies and interests to the
problems of ethnic divisions and disprivflege, reacts on democracy itself. In
the West today, the ethnic revival's political claims represent a crucial test for
the capacity of democracies to ensure civil integration as well as freedom of
collective expression.
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and community, but also of course by its size and regional concentration.
Finally, outright discrimination will, under conditions of mobility and
contraction, pour historicist ethnic claims into the mould of separatism, the
moment military and political conditions allow. And here, of course, the
international struggle and great-power support becomes decisive.
Notes
1. In Eritrea and Shaba province in Zaire, for example.
2. As with the Nagas. Other Asian ethnic separatisms include the Achinese in
Indonesia, and Moros in the Philippines and the Kurds in Iraq.
3. A comprehensive survey of European ethnic problems can be found in the
excellent essay by J. Krejci: 'Ethnic problems in Europe', in S. Giner and M. S. Archer
(eds): Contemporary Europe: Social Structures and Cultural Patterns, Routledge &
Kegan Paul, London, 1978.
4. Typically, the majority political opinion in an ethnic community tends to be
autonomist, while vociferous minority wings, right-wing or Marxist, embrace separatism,
as with Flemish and Basque movements.
5. cf. the thesis of K. W. Deutsch: Nationalism and social communications, M.I.T.
Press, New York, 1966.
6. cf. S. M. Lipset: The first new nation. New York, Basic Books, 1963.
7. R. A. Humphreys & J. Lynch (eds): The origins of the Latin American revolutions,
1808-26, A. Knopf, New York. 1965; and A. P. Whitaker: Nationalism in Latin
America, past and present, University of Florida Press, Gainsville, Fla., 1962.
8. For the East European cases, cf. the essays in P. Sugar & I. Lederer (eds): Nation-
alism in Eastern Europe, University of Washington, Seattle, 1969.
9. For some of the differences, cf. E. Hobsbawm: 'Some reflections on "The Break-
up of Britain"', New Left Review 105, 1977, 3 - 2 3 .
10. According to K. Deutsch: op. c i t . , p. 191, 'Everywhere on this ladder of economic
inequality, nationalists found richer neighbours to resent and envy; poorer neighbours to
despise and fear; but few, if any, equals to respect'.
11. cf. the reply by Gellner to Kedourie in the article cited below: i t is mobility
which disrupts the acceptance of an inequality, and mobility in conjunction with even
relative poverty does breed discontent, where much greater poverty in stable conditions
does not' (italics in original), p. 14.
12. M. Hechter: Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Develop-
ment, 1536-1966, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1975.
13. ibid., p. 39.
14. ibid., p. 265. Hechter stresses the minorities' perception of Party failure to com-
mit sufficient resources for regional development.
15. On the growth of England & France, cf. J. Strayer: 'The historical experience of
36 Anthony D. Smith
nation-building in Europe', in K. W. Deutsch & W. Foltz (eds): Nation-Building,
Atherton, New York, 1963.
16. cf. the criticism of Hechter by T. Nairn: 'Scotland and Wales: Notes on Nationalist
Prehistory' in Planet 34, 1976, 1-11; also his book, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis
and Neo-Nationalism, esp. pp. 334-352.
17. E. Gellner: 'Scale and nation', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3, 1973, 1-17.
18. ibid., p. 13.
19. ibid., p. 14.
20. For some criticisms, cf. A. D. Smith: Theories of Nationalism, Duckworth,
London, 1971, ch. 6.
21. G. Arnakis: 'The role of religion in the development of Balkan nationalism', in
B. & C. Jelavich (eds): The Balkans in Transition, University of California Press,
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Berkeley, 1963.
22. A. Siegfried: Switzerland, Cape, London, 1952.
23. For Black separatism, cf. T. Draper: The rediscovery of Black nationalism. Seeker
& Warburg, London, 1970, ch. 7-8.
24. For some illustrations of this 'historicism' in late eighteenth-century western
Europe, cf. R. Rosenblum: Transformations in late eighteenth-century art, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, 1967.
25. cf. P. Walch: 'Charles Rollin and early Neo-Classicism', Art Bulletin XLIX,
1967, 123-4; and D. Irwin: English Neo-classical Art, Faber & Faber, London, 1966.
26. On Moser and Herder, cf. F. M. Barnard: Herder's social and political thought,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965.
27. P. Mayo: The Roots of Identity, Allen Lane, London, 1974, pp. 71-2.
28. ibid., pp. 32-8.
29. F. Engels: Po und Rhein, Werke XIII, p. 267; cf. H. B. Davis: Nationalism and
Socialism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1967.
30. cf. the researches of Cheikh Anta Diop, and other examples cited in J. F. A. Ajayi:
'The place of African history and culture in the process of nation-building in Africa south
of the Sahara', Journal of Negro Education 30, 1960, 206-13.
31. cf. R. Debray: 'Marxism and the National Question', New Left Review 105,
1977, 29-41.
32. For a fuller discussion, cf. A. D. Smith: Nationalism in the Twentieth Century,
Martin Robertson & Co., Oxford, 1979 forthcoming. On the irrationalist atmosphere of
the late 1960s, cf. N. McInnes: The Western Marxists, Alcove Press, London, 1972,
chh. 5-7.
33. Recounted in H. Maccoby: Revolution in Judea, Ocean Books, London, 1974.
34. For such bureaucracies, cf. S. N. Eisenstadt: The Political System of Empires,
Free Press, New York, 1963.
35. On the growth of efficient bureaucracies in the nineteenth century, cf. M. S.
Anderson: The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914, Longman, London, 1972, pp. 7 7 -
82,113-4.
36. cf. A. Gella (ed.): The Intelligentsia and the Intellectuals, Sage Publications,
London & Beverley Hills, 1976.
37. E.g. T. Hodgkin: Nationalism in Colonial Africa, Muller, London, 1956 and B. T.
McCulley: English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism, Smith, Gloucester,
Mass., 1966. Also R. A. Kann: The Habsburg Empire, Thames & Hudson, London, 1957.
38. An argument advanced by B. Akzin: State and Nation, Hutchinson, London,
1964, ch. 5.
39. cf. J. Barzun: The French Race, Columbia University, New York, 1932.
40. E. Alworth (ed.): Central Asia; a century of Russian rule, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1967.
41. A dramatic illustration is provided by the transformation of the Islamic Ottoman
empire into a secular Turkish state, cf. E. Z. Karal: Turkey: from oriental empire to
modern national state', in G. S. Metraux & F. Crouzet (eds): The New Asia, Mentor,
New York & Toronto, 1965.
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 37
42. cf. M. Crowder: West Africa under colonial rule, Hutchinson & Co., London,
1968.
43. On this shift, cf. G. Barraclough: An Introduction to Contemporary History,
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967.
44. Scotland provides a good example. Practical economic concerns have taken the
place of earlier literary romanticism, cf. H. J. Hanham: Scottish Nationalism, Faber,
London, 1969.
45. For the Quebecois social revolution, cf. E. M. Corbett: Quebec confronts Canada,
Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, 1967.
46. T. Warburton: 'Nationalism and Language in Switzerland and Canada', in A. D.
Smith (ed.): Nationalist Movements, Macmillan, London, 1976.
47. W. Petersen: 'On the Subnations of Western Europe', in N. Glazer & D. P.
Moynihan (eds): Ethnicity, theory and experience, Harvard University Press, Camb.,
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Mass., 1975.
48. Cited in P. Mayo: op. cit., p. 45.
49. P. Savigear: 'Corsica and the French Connection', New Society, 10 February 1977,
pp. 2 7 3 - 4 .
50. For some patterns of interethnic relations, cf. M. J. Esman: 'Communal conflicts
in south-cast Asia', in N. Glazer & D. P. Moynihan: op. cit., pp. 3 9 1 - 4 1 9 .
51. On these fears, cf. B. Neuberger: The African Concept of Balkanisation', Journal
of Modern African Studies XIII, 1976, 5 2 3 - 2 9 .