5 - TIDES AND THE FAILURE OF NATIONALIST MOBILIZATION

Summary

I detest these absolute systems, which represent all the events of history as depending upon great first causes linked by the chain of fatality, and which, as it were, suppress men from the history of the human race.… [Chance] plays a great part in all that happens on the world's stage; although I firmly believe that chance does nothing which has not been prepared beforehand.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections

In a study of the impact of the event on nationalism, it would be all too easy to fall into the seductive trap of focusing exclusively on successful nationalisms or on nationalisms which produced significant action. Yet, no serious analysis of nationalism can ignore an explanation of the ways in which nationalism fails as a mobilizational and political force. For Ernest Gellner it was the dog that failed to bark (that is, the failure of nationalist movements to emerge in some contexts) that provided what he considered the vital clue to understanding nationalism. Most potential nationalisms, Gellner argued, “must either fail, or, more commonly, will refrain from even trying to find political expression.” They “fail to bark” primarily because industrialization assimilates them to dominant cultures, so that the group category never takes on significant meaning within the political realm. As Gellner wrote, “most cultures are led to the dustheap of history by industrial civilization without offering any resistance” [emphasis added].

Gellner's understanding of the failure of nationalism was boldly developmentalist.