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Towards A Theory of Ethnic Separatism

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Towards A Theory of Ethnic Separatism

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Towards a theory of ethnic separatism


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Anthony D. Smith
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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.

Ethnic and territorial movements


Of course, not all the current movements aim for total separation. Some are
content with 'home rule' in their region and with control over their schools
and courts, as in Flanders and Catalonia. They use, however, the same
rhetoric and justifications as separatist movements, though they aim only at a
limited autonomy, and hence it is not helpful to draw too rigid a distinction

Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 2 Number 1 January 1979


©R.KJ. 1979 0141-9870/79/0201-0021 Sl.50/1
22 Anthony D. Smith
between these forms of ethnic nationalism. Besides a given movement may
go through various phases. It may start as an autonomist movement, but
move subsequently into a more separatist stance. Alternatively, its separatism
may be cut short by external force majeure. Its leadership will then often
opt for more limited goals.4
Perhaps a more important distinction is that between 'ethnic' and
'territorial' movements for autonomy and separation. In the latter, geography
itself played the major role in inducing populations to regard themselves as
distinct and separate. Given the state of social communications at various
periods, it is not difficult to see how, with the growth of local networks,
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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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may help to illuminate the wider problem of nationalism.


Perhaps the most popular recent theory of ethnic resurgence is that of
regional underdevelopment. Briefly, this holds that ethnic secession will result
where central elites neglect or mismanage the economy of more backward
areas. The immediate objection to this is that some overdeveloped areas like
the Basque or Catalan countries exhibit strong separatist trends. Hence the
theory tends to turn into one of differential development between neighbour-
ing regions or between centre and periphery. Where members of one region
are better or worse placed in terras of wealth and income and employment
than their neighbours, this will bring social discontent and hence ethnic
secession.10 .
Stated in this simple form, the theory is clearly inadequate. Of course,
economic differences may, and often do, exacerbate existing ethnic
distinctions; but they cannot generate that distinction, or sense of it, in the
first place, nor can they explain why that sense may be translated into ethnic
separatism in some cases, and not in others. A stable condition, whether of
wealth or poverty, does not generally produce social discontent.11 Moreover,
a depressed region within an ethnic group may well give rise to social distress
and resentment, as in the south of Italy or north-east of England, but it does
not breed ethnic consciousness or ethnic separatism. Any sense of apartness
that they may possess is devoid of ethnic content.
More recently, the idea of enforced underdevelopment, at first evolved to
account for the stagnation of Latin American countries, has been applied to
ethnic separatism in the western heartlands. Thus Michael Hechter's recent
study of the Celtic fringe of Britain employs the model of 'internal colonial-
ism' to explain the rise of Irish, Scottish and Welsh separatism today. 12 The
western states annexed 'internal' colonies as well as territories overseas; as
British capitalism expanded, it began to exploit in systematic fashion the
material and cultural resources of its Celtic hinterlands, reducing the develop-
ment of those regions to that of dependencies, and allocating the members
of minorities to 'specific roles in the social structure on the basis of objective
cultural distinctions'.13 This cultural division of labour was retained into
the present century, while industrialisation accelerated contact and
emphasized the dependence of the outlying areas. After a temporary decline
from 1910 onwards, nationalism has re-emerged in the mid-1960s in the
24 Anthony D. Smith
Celtic periphery 'largely as a reaction to this failure of regional development'.14
The thesis that ethnic separatism is a necessary consequence of capitalist
industrialisation cannot, however, be applied in many areas. Most of the
classic nineteenth-century separatisms emerged in Eastern Europe before
there was much capitalist penetration of these essentially agrarian areas,
where the commodity market was weak, and large-scale production and a
sizeable proletariat barely visible. It would also be far-fetched to claim that
capitalist industrialism has penetrated far into the Kurdish, Naga or Eritrean
hinterlands, despite greater involvement of these areas in the world exchange
economy, and even harder to maintain that their fairly long-standing ethnic
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claims were triggered by capitalist development. On the other hand,


capitalism clearly has penetrated into the remotest corners of most Western
states upsetting traditional structures and routines. These states are plural;
that is, they involved the conquest of one or more ethnic groups by a
dominant one whose capital became the centre of the ensuing nation-state.15
Hence, if differential development, or worse dependency, follows these
ethnic lines, and there is growing governmental intervention and assimilation,
the chances for ethnic separatism are immeasurably enhanced. But capitalist
development and exploitation has not always followed cultural lines, unless
guided by bureaucrats anxious to safeguard the dominance of their central
ethnic community. Besides, even where the model appears to fit, it fails to
explain why separatist tendencies are much stronger in, say, Scotland than in'
Wales, among the Basques than among Catalans, among the Quebecois than in
Flanders. Nor can it handle the case of overdevelopment, or grasp the-
dynamics of cultural change among these ethnic minorities.16

Language and separatism


Hence the model of differential development leaves a great deal unexplained,
while the 'internal colonialism' thesis is of limited applicability and fails to
give adequate attention to some of the political, cultural and social factors
which foster ethnic separatism.
An attempt to grasp some of these factors occurs in an interesting recent
article by Ernest Gellner. He claims that literacy and numeracy are the keys
to citizenship in a modern industrial civilisation, and hence that language,
the medium of instruction, tends to determine the scale of modern nations.
Nationalism for Gellner is 'basically a movement which conceives the object
of human loyalty to be a fairly large anonymous unit defined by shared
language and culture', and it is this same language which delimits the mobility
of the intelligentsia or clerks.17
However, not all modern nations are determined by language boundaries.
Some states have cultural differences, distinctions of colour or religion, for
example, that will not be blurred by the rapid mobility which follows in the
train of modernisation. Traditional societies could tolerate 'deep, permanent
human and moral chasms' between its members, such as millets, castes or
estates; but modern societies with their egalitarian ideas and greater mobility
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 25
cannot. If the human chasms and their accompanying cultural markers such
as colour or religion cannot be blurred, if they are virtually irrevocable, then
'It is at these boundaries that new nationalisms are born', and you get a 'basis
for inedentism, a nationalist movement on behalf of either a unit which does
not exist yet, or at least on behalf of a radical redrawing of existing
boundaries'.18 Or put another way:
If the frontier (of the chasm) is not marked by anything insuperable,
mobility in both directions results, and the erstwhile deep difference
is obscured. If, on the other hand, the old frontier is marked by
irremovable markers, then two new nationalisms are born (italics in
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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.

History and ethnicity


For this reason it may be best to start with the specific cultural mechanisms
and bases of ethnic separatism, before going on to consider the broader
social forces at work and their political consequences. What I want to argue
is that political separatisms constitute an offshoot of the wider 'ethnic
revival' of the last two centuries, and that at the heart of this revival is a new
historical vision, or if you like, a new movement of 'historicism'. By that I
simply mean a tendency to interpret both individual and social phenomena
in terms of sequences of events which unfold a purpose and identity in time. 24
'Historicism', in other words, is not to be equated with a species of dis-
interested historical enquiry. On the contrary: it aims to establish through
detailed research the origins and laws of growth of a particular entity. From
the cultural standpoint, nationalism must be viewed as a particular version of
evolutionary historicism, one which applies the historicist schema of
primordial origins, laws of growth and sequences of events to a certain kind
of community. And one of the main cultural preconditions of the rise of
nationalism is the appearance of an historicist outlook.
We can illustrate this sequence in broad terms by glancing at the origins of
nationalism in western and central Europe in the late eighteenth century.
Everywhere we find political nationalisms preceded by, and indebted to, the
growth of an historicist vision. The eighteenth century saw the production of
major historical works by Voltaire, Rollin, Villaret, Hume, Gibbon, Rapin
and Stewart, which inspired painters, poets and social philosophers who
wished to impart a moral lesson.2 s The search for primitive origins, the
revival of neglected tongues and the cult of the heroic drew upon these
histories, and their store of exempla, for material and inspiration. It is hardly
surprising that the patriotic musings of a Rousseau or Burke, or the cultural
populism of a Moser or Herder, found a receptive audience, whose ear had
been attuned by the new historical vision of ethnic origins and growth and its
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 27
26
didactic content. Similarly, the growth of Welsh and Breton nationalism
was preceded by an historical and literary revival. In 1751 and 1771 two
societies for the study and propagation of old Welsh literature were founded
in London, and they led to the revival of the Eisteddfod in 1789 and the
first Druid ceremonies, the Gorsedd, in 1792, nearly one hundred years
before the rise of a Welsh political nationalism, both within the Liberal
Party and outside it. 27 Breton separatism, too, owed its inspiration to the
earlier historical and literary work of nostalgic scholars and aristocrats like
Le Gonidec and de la Villemarque in the early nineteenth century, again
nearly a century before the foundation of the Parti National Breton in
1918. 28
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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

Bureaucracy and discontent


So far I have concentrated exclusively on cultural factors in the ethnic revival.
There are also more general social and political conditions which contribute
to ethnic consciousness and kindle the fires of historicism. Of these, two are
particularly germane to our problem, namely, the rise of scientific bureaucracies
and secular education.
A central feature of modern social change is the expansion of centralised
and scientific bureaucracies. Of course, large-scale bureaucracy is not novel,
nor is its impact on ethnic communities. One has only to recall the disastrous
encounter of the Roman bureaucratic machine with Jewish ethnic aspirations
in the first century A.D. 33 Yet, before the nineteenth century, instances of
such encounters were fairly rare. Bureaucracies tended to be cumbersome,
they generally failed to penetrate remote areas, and they had only a faint
commitment to the norms of efficiency, impartiality and impersonality,
ideals which characterise, admittedly to a very varying degree, modern
'legal-rational' bureaucracies. Moreover, the training required by modern
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 29
bureaucracies is quite different from that which was deemed useful among
the literati of China or the officials at the Ottoman or Byzantine courts.34
Since the eighteenth century, at least in Western Europe, bureaucracies
have become, not only more complex, more centralised and more inter-
ventionist, but also more 'scientific', in the sense of incorporating into theii
practise and organisation the latest techniques and methods of scientific
technology. This is an important difference, since it requires a new type of
personnel to man the bureaucratic machine, and greatly increases the scope
and efficacy of its operations.35
The new kinds of bureaucracy, whether in the field of government, the
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economy or the professions, increasingly demanded a more secular, utilitarian


outlook and more experimental and methodical techniques. They aimed to be
efficient, not merely effective. In consequence, they greatly accelerated the
demand for a new 'rationalist' type of education, which began to make head-
way in the eighteenth century in the teeth of clerical opposition. This new
secular, and critical, education in turn undermined the close traditional bond
between State and Church, and encouraged the formation of a lay stratum of
intelligentsia — a term which covers well-educated professionals as well as
intellectuals proper.36 Since the new bureaucracies, often situated in the
capitals, tended to command many of the avenues to wealth and power,
ambitious and qualified professionals clamoured for admission. Hence the
rise of scientific bureaucracy and critical education spurred a whole wave of
elite mobility and paved the way for a potentially dissident stratum, and one
more dangerous than any predecessor on account of their education and
ability to organise into factions and movements.
That dissidence was soon realised. It was perhaps inevitable that supply
should outstrip demand, that in this as in other spheres, clerkly and
professional openings should fall behind educational production. Already in
eighteenth-century France, the universities were beginning to turn out more
graduates than could be taken up by the bureaucracies and professions. Add
to this the many restrictions placed on access to top posts by dynastic,
imperial and, later, colonial rulers. It was bad enough for graduates of the
majority ethnic group congregated around the centre; how much worse was
it likely to be for ambitious professionals hailing from peripheral and
minority ethnic communities!
At any rate, we find the intelligentsia becoming increasingly critical and
restive, as more and more of their members fail to find worthy employment
to match their educational attainments. The point of their complaint was
as much psychological as economic, cultural as well as political. It was not
simply the failure to find employment, or even governmental posts, that
bred discontent; it was a failure to obtain a status and dignity comensurate
with their educational achievements, and to have instead to settle for low-
status and often unprofessional employment ill-matched to their professional
diplomas. Hence the well-documented discontent among colonial intelli-
gentsias suffering from blocked mobility, a discontent matched in the older
European empires.3 7
30 Anthony D. Smith
There remains, however, a question of direction. Why did this generalised
discontent produce such an intense interest in history and lead towards the
ethnic revival? One obvious answer is that ethnic categorisation was a tool of
imperial or colonial regimes aiming to divide and rule, and that ethnic self-
consciousness by subject peoples was simply a function of discrimination by
the authorities. Another answer, and equally pertinent, is that in the fast-
growing cities to which the ambitious educated men flocked, the resulting
competition for jobs and housing inflamed age-old antagonisms and high-
lighted previously unremarked or unimportant cultural differences.38 Yet
another is that the bureaucratic requirement for homogeneity and uniformity
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in terms of a dominant culture, necessarily places minority groups at a


disadvantage.
All these grounds obtained, but all are predicated on the fact that secular
thought was undermining the legitimacy of the old social order, just as
bureaucracy was eroding its efficacy. The eruption of ancient conflicts in
the urban centres, ethnic discrimination by the authorities, the cultural
disadvantages of minorities, are all aspects of this crisis of legitimacy and
action. The ruler, for example, is no longer accepted as king by divine right;
to sanction his rule, he is increasingly forced to appeal to historical and ethnic
precedent. It was the kings of France and aristocrats like Boullainvilliers who
blazed the trail of medievalism and ethnic origins, with their cult of St. Louis
and their theories of Frankish conquest, to bolster their shaky authority.39 In"
doing so, they inevitably began to include some and exclude others in the
definition of true Frenchmen. The bureaucrats, too, require an alternative
sanction and rationale, as they increasingly operate for the State itself rather
than the ruler; and they too look to a national historic tradition centred on
the dominant ethnic community in a plural state. Thus the bureaucracy
under the Tsars attempted to impose a Russian tradition on the minority
ethnic groups in the name of national standardisation.40 Finally, the
intelligentsia of the minorities themselves seek out a new historical rationale
for their own situation and aspirations. Their rationalist outlook made it
difficult for them to accept the age-old religious and traditional interpretations
of their community's lot, and at the same time they were experiencing the
humiliations of rejection by the rulers of the dominant group into which they
wanted to assimilate. They were therefore forced back onto their own com-
munities, but had to fashion a new rationale for its, and their own, situation,
one that was preferably dynamic and progressive, in tune with their own
aspirations for their careers. In the new arena provided by an ethnic com-
munity with its own history and identity, they hoped to find the status and
power, which had eluded them in the state of the dominant community. To
create a new status system and power centre, the intelligentsia had to put
their communities on a new footing. The Islamic community must become
an Arab nation, the Hindu an Indian nation, the community of Judaism a
nation of Jews, and it must be endowed with a political personality, after the
manner of the western states.41 To escape a dual isolation and rootlessness,
moreover, the intelligentsia had to reidentify with other strata in their
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 31
excluded ethnic category, and the easiest route was through the repossession
of a common and distinctive history. In 'their' history they could find ideals
and values which would inspire creative action and group solidarity, and
without the identity it evoked neither was possible. It was to history, there-
fore, that the intelligentsia turned for self-understanding and anchorage in a
disturbing world.

Ethnic politics and separatism


So far I have concentrated on the social and cultural background of the
ethnic revival. Such a revival carries with it the potential for political action,
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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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In a democratic society, continuous governmental neglect or bureaucratic


interference functions to promote ethnic separatism in much the same way as
the lack of constitutional outlets for voicing grievances in totalitarian and
many developing countries. The failure of the Canton of Berne, for example,
to take into account the special needs and sentiments of the francophone
Catholic inhabitants of the Jura mountains, who felt threatened by an influx
of German-speakers to the northern Jura, led to separatist demands to create
a new canton.46 Post-War concessions by Berne came too late and were too
limited for the majority, who began to support a separatist solution. But in
June 1974 a referendum of the Jura district was held and revealed a majority
in favour of creating a new canton in the northern Jura; and in this case, the
plebiscitarian institution traditional to Swiss political culture has, to some
extent, compensated for earlier cantonal and governmental neglect.47
In other cases, a strong centralist, even Jacobin, tradition of government
has tended to stifle or overrule the claims and problems of minorities. This is
particularly true of France, where a combination of the mathematical
mentality inherited by technocrats from the Jacobin planners and neglect of
the region's economic problems, notably unemployment and emigration to
Paris, have encouraged a resurgence of Breton consciousness and separatism
from the late 1950s. The GauDist line was explicitly Jacobin. Debre's Groupe
1985 issued a report on regional development in 1962, in which it advocated
the division of France into two types of zone, industrial and expanding zones
and 'deserts', adding that the 'conversion of these deserted regions into
national parks should therefore be organised and accelerated'.48 These areas
included most of the west and south-west of France. A similar failure to
appreciate local ethnic sentiment in Corsica has hastened its politicisation in
conditions of political contraction and economic closure.49 Again, it is
doubtful if the majority of the community favour separatism. As in Scotland
and Wales, support for separatism is closely correlated with the ability of
party democracy to override the purely administrative regionalisation favoured
by many central bureaucrats, and recognise the political claims of ethnic
communities in their own right. And that in turn entails the acknowledge-
ment of ethnicity as a rival of class and an alternative basis of political
organisation in plural states.
34 Anthony D. Smith
Conclusion
In the last section I have focussed attention on the ethnic resurgence in the
West, in plural states which are heavily industrialised and whose population
possesses a high level of education. The situation in developing countries
is rather different. Their boundaries tend to be recent and often artificial,
there are often no constitutional outlets for minority grievances, and they
generally lack the resources for catering to the special economic needs of
neglected or deprived ethnic groups. Besides, the rulers of several new states
are not averse to practising outright discrimination against minorities that
appear to be troublesome or a threat to their interests. Thus in Asia, the
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mainly military governments have not really attempted to conciliate the


political demands of ethnic minorities like the Shan, Achinese, Moro or
Kurds, whose ethnic consciousness had already been stirred by the social
and cultural changes wrought by colonialism.50 Similarly, African fears of
balkanisation coupled with the artificiality of boundaries have tended to en-
courage the growth of separatist tendencies among those ethnic communities
which had already become self-conscious during the colonial era and which
now possessed a strong regional base, such as the Ibo or Lunda.5 * In each case,
separatism has become the last resort of a politicised ethnic community,
and its political consciousness is the product of the much lower level of
economic and political development in the emergent 'state-nations' of
Africa. The tendency for that consciousness to assume separatist form
is greater, if the community is large and concentrated; whereas in
Europe, the democratic procedures and higher levels of development invite
an autonomist compromise.
Despite these different conditions, the threefold framework of stages, and
underlying interplay of bureaucracy and ethnicity, holds for the developing
countries as well as the more developed ones. Everywhere we find a pattern
of event-sequences leading towards separatism. First there is the introduction
of scientific and centralised bureaucracy, and the growth of rationalist,
critical education, which undermines the hold of traditional, religious con-
ceptions and institutions. One outcome of this trend is the emergence of a
secular intelligentsia; a second the crisis of legitimacy of the old social order;
and a third the growth of discontent among a thwarted but mobile intelli-
gentsia. The overall crisis of legitimacy and the peculiar isolation of the
intelligentsia induced a return to history and to the ethnic community.
In the second stage, the new historical understanding becomes the basis
for ethnic political claims. The ethnic revival quickly assumes a political
shape in global conditions of economic closure, growing State regulation
and intense political competition between nation-states. In the West, political
decline also fosters social contraction and blocked elite mobility at a time
when the social basis of the intelligentsia is changing towards a more technical
and vocational bias. State regulation and economic closure, coupled with a
sense of the precariousness of boundaries, have an even stronger impact on the
developing countries; and the inability of the new states to distribute resources
Towards a theory of ethnic separatism 35
efficiently and equitably, in the judgment of peripheral ethnic groups, hastens
their politicisation.
Finally, governmental policies in such a situation provide the main deter-
minant of the specific direction of political action on the part of ethnic
communities. On the whole, insensitive and neglectful bureaucratic policies
will tend to evoke a separatist response in an already politicised community;
while an approach which envisages the participation of the community in
shaping its own local destinies will tend to head off the separatist appeal and
support autonomist or communalist options. In turn, the choice of the latter
will be influenced by the history of past relationships between government
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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 .

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