The Sense of Terminal Ending

It takes very little thought and the simplest of calculations to see that imperial rule has very largely come to an end within relatively recent history.³⁴ Latin America freed itself from Spain at the start of the nineteenth century.

of World War I, albeit at the very moment the French and British empires reached their maximal extension. Decolonization of course changed the political map of the world most fundamentally, though this was followed by a final wave of nation-state creation as the Soviet empire came to an end. One has the sense of a final ending to the era of empires, not least as this form of polity has now come to be seen in almost wholly negative terms.^[1374] Two considerations explain why this is so, both of which, however, have complexities attached to them.

The first is very simple. Europeans often fought very hard to maintain their empires after 1945 in the belief that size would remain necessary for power and prosperity. The French provide a particularly striking example. The officer corps of that country had witnessed the decline of Spain, and was convinced that France would descend into comparable poverty without its empire—and so fought vi­ciously to retain Algeria, with extremist elements being prepared to assassinate the leader of their own state. There was of course much moral opposition to the hor­rors unleashed, but most attention needs to be paid to the “icy clarity” of Raymond Aron's intervention, La tragèdie algerienne (1957). Aron took seriously the notion proposed by those who wished to retain Algeria that it could become part of a single political entity in which everyone would have similar rights. Very simple sums demonstrated that shared levels of education and welfare meant that the standard of French people would have to fall dramatically if those in Algeria were to be raised.

This points to the key consideration. The fears of Europeans, that they would become poor if they lost their imperial possessions, proved to be groundless. Very much to the contrary, the postwar period saw the greatest period of economic growth in European history. Economic histories of the period suggest that growth resulted from trade within the continent of Europe, at the higher end of modern technologies. It was noticeable in this regard that British economic performance was markedly inferior precisely because its continuing links to the Commonwealth tied it into a less competitive world.^[1375] We have already seen that colonial empires had very often not paid; they certainly did not do so when metropolitan troops had to be sent out to deal with nationalist insurgencies. Freed from commitments, competing at the top end of the product cycle with other advanced countries blessed with sufficient wealth to ensure markets, Europe prospered as never be­fore. The spirit of mercantilism was finally laid to rest, with positive sum economics replacing politics designed to beggar-thy-neighbor. Small, nationally homogenous countries such as Denmark and Holland seemed to do especially well.^[1376] The se­cret of late industrial society seemed ever more to depend, as Adam Smith had suggested, upon human capital, the ability to swim inside a larger competitive shell as the result of adaptive skills. Intensity replaced extensive reach. The complexity

within this picture concerns the openness of the world economy. Small countries had done very badly in the interwar period, when protectionism made their desire to specialize irrational given the small size of their own home markets. Hence we will need in a moment to turn to those forces that guarantee the openness of the world political economy as a whole.

But let us turn now to the second general factor that seems to explain the ter­minal decline of imperial rule, that of the rise of nationalism.

The most celebrated theorists of nationalism came from the Habsburg lands, many of them made sensitive to the question of nationalism because they faced exclusion and prejudice as the result of their own Jewish backgrounds. However, one can safely predict that the lack of agreement about the contours of this case will continue, with some arguing that nationalism was bound to kill it and others suggesting that it might have survived but for defeat in war. In these circumstances, there is much to be said for considering an earlier case, that of the key moment of decomposition of the Danish monarchy, that of the loss of Schleswig and Holstein in 1864.³⁸

The Danish state had been bankrupted by participation in the Napoleonic war, and was so weak after 1814 that it could not solve its nationalities problem by force. More importantly, the very character of the population changed as the result of the loss of Norway, creating a situation in which a majority of Danes faced a large mi­nority of Germans.

The situation of the Danes in these circumstances is easy to understand. There was long-standing tension toward the German community, not least as German bureaucrats in the court had sought to push through Enlightenment reforms from above. But what mattered most was the fear that Denmark might cease to exist, not just because of the increase in German power, but quite as much because the influence of Hamburg led to the expansion of the German language in Schleswig. In these circumstances varied approaches were possible, from the full incorpora­tion of Schleswig and Holstein to the incorporation of all or merely the northern parts of Schleswig—both policies designed to homogenize Denmark and to exclude German-speakers, either by allowing the secession of Holstein or by diminishing its place within the monarchy. The German elites in Schleswig and Holstein were equally scared, wary of closer integration with Denmark. It was at this time that the University of Kiel began to gain prominence. A brilliant intellectual cadre—whose core included F. C. Dahlmann, J. C. Droysen, B. G. Niebuhr, and T. Mommsen— then came to see the monarchy as an autocratic and backward peasant state, thereby wishing to align themselves with liberal developments to the south. Here too were several approaches, from demands for special status for Schleswig and Holstein within the monarchy, to calls for secession for Holstein alone, or with Schleswig, ei­ther as a separate realm within the German Confederation or as part of the unified nation-state that had been glorified by Fichte.

Murderous conflict is most likely when two sides stake claims to the same piece of territory.³⁹ Schleswig illustrates his point perfectly, for it had a predominantly German-speaking population with a large Danish-speaking minority that in the north of Schleswig constituted a local majority. By 1842, the German-dominated assembly in Schleswig had taken to passing many motions demanding autonomy. Fearing this turning in an anti-Danish, pro-German direction, P. H. Lorenzen began speaking Danish in the Schleswig assembly, an act that was met with so much antagonism that he had to be removed. This event spurred nationalist rage in the rest of Denmark. Naturally enough, a countermovement developed rapidly among the intellectuals in Kiel's liberal environment. In the heady days of 1848, this led the National Liberals in Copenhagen to turn down attempts at federal schemes, thereby forcing parts of the German community into revolt. The civil war that followed did not alter the map, for France and Russia did not wish to see Germany, which had fought against the Danish monarchy, gain further power. But nationalist Danes were not satisfied by this outcome, and sought in the years from 1852 to 1863 to ho­mogenize Schleswig and to exclude Holstein, formally doing so in 1863. This led to Bismarck's intervention, and to the loss of both duchies.

The Danish case illustrates the desire of multinational empires to turn themselves into nation-states. If Tsarist Russia, to take a key example, could ensure that the Ukraine did not develop nationalist sentiments, then these “little Russians” would so swell the Russian ethnic core as to make a nation-state at least imaginable.^[1377] Of course, there is an irony here: political interference of all sorts, from the banning of dictionaries to forced education in Russian, actually politicized nations within the empire; this is to say that nationalism is as much a product of state behavior as of national awakening per se.^[1378] In theory a different path was possible, that of accom­modation, the granting of linguistic and cultural rights so as to gain loyalty.

It is not the case that multinational entities cannot exist and prosper.^[1379] The granting of rights can allow sufficient voice to create loyalty. It was in this way that Tamil nationalist sentiment in India was turned away from an early secessionist drive.^[1380] But this is possible only when the regime is not imperial, when it is looser, federal, and consociational. None of the great empires was able to decompress in this liberal manner because they felt that unity was required in an age of high geo­political conflict. Less unitary states are now possible because geopolitical competi­tion has softened. But this brings us to the cautions with which we must end.