Rethinking Race and Reimagining Nations

Even as people moved from place to place, their identities became more rigidly defined. Race became a key for determining inclusion or exclusion from a nation and in fixing a cultural identity. Racial hierarchies and biological determinism was used to justify imperialism as well as exclusion of certain people from the mainstream of society. Racial interpretations of global affairs arose differently as one traveled from west to east and produced a host of different nationalist responses. Most, however, agreed on racial purity and appealed to the powerful urge of people to simply belong.

Nation and Race in North America And Europe

America greeted the new century with pride in its technological prowess and fear of the loss of natural resources. Wide-open frontiers had vanished along with the bison. Confessing that markets could not protect the land, Teddy Roosevelt moved to create the National Forest Service to manage public lands and provide future generations a chance to build character by "roughing" it.

Concerns about racial division also characterized the early twentieth century. "Jim Crow" laws and Exclusion Acts protected whites from blacks and Asians. Nonwhite immigrants, including those from U.S. territories, raised concerns among whites and led to tighter immigration restrictions. Europeans struggled with the same concerns, particularly as anti-colonialism spread through Africa and elsewhere. Whites worried that mixing with nonwhites weakened the nation’s blood stock and deprived the country of its virility. Racial purity, in short, was seen as the solution to national problems.

Race-Mixing and the Problem of Nationhood in Latin America

In Latin America, races were arranged in a hierarchy that placed Iberian whites at the top, followed by creoles, indigenous peoples, and Africans. The hierarchy did not stick, however, particularly as immigrants complicated the picture. Some asserted that mixed racial compositions would only lead to degeneration. Westernization was the only solution. Leaders sought to build legacies to the past that combined European and indigenous Aztec roots. In contrast to those condemning multiracial nations, some thinkers in Latin America asserted that multiracial integration is what gave their nations vitality and strength.

Sun Yat-Sen and the Making of A Chinese Nation

Chinese thinkers also asserted that a strictly pro-Western view was too narrow. Claiming Han Chinese superiority, they reinvented the past to save it from modernization and westernization. Selective borrowing and adaptation thus became common among nationalist thinkers. In seeking to build a strong Han Chinese nation, Sun Yat-sen attacked the Manchu court of China while calling for democratization, land reform, and a modern economy. Banned from China, Sun found support among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese living and studying abroad. As the Qing weakened, his message grew stronger and, in 1911, most Chinese sided with his revolutionary supporters. The new republic aimed originally to combine the "five races" of China. Modeling his views on concepts learned in the West, however, Sun eventually sought to replace a multiracial empire with a single-race nation.

Nationalism and Invented Traditions in India

British rule in India engendered among Indians a concept of "India" that had not existed before. Anti-colonialism, therefore, began to employ nationalistic language and was headed by Western-trained intellectuals. Newspapers contributed to the spread of new identities. Organizing the Indian National Congress in 1885, Indian nationalists argued with the British government for better representation.

Nationalism in India was based on culture and sought to find a non-Western modernism that fit India’s specific conditions. To define what was meant by the term "Indian," intellectuals created a national culture and legacy from the myriad of artistic, historical, linguistic, and cultural possibilities before them. Within this redefinition, Hindu cultural icons dominated while Muslim traditions were largely neglected.

Radical agitators of the Swadeshi Movement sought violent means to oust the British and greatly broadened the nationalists’ base of popular support. Successes signaled that the British had lost control. Other ethnic and religious groups also organized, using the same approach employed by Hindu nationalists, except that they placed themselves at the core of "Indian" civilization. Most sought political advancement of their own groups. By the late nineteenth century, anti-colonial movements in India had adopted some variety of nationalism.

The Pan Movements

Although also fixated on race, the pan movements sought a different ordering of society. They wanted borders realigned so races across the globe could be united. The pan-Islam movement of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani begged Islamic nations to put differences aside and unite under one banner. Few followed the call. Most Muslims saw little commonality with Afghani’s vision and felt more secure in building their own nation-states.

Pan-Germanism, partly a reaction to pan-Slavism and Jewish immigration from Russia, sought to unite all Germanic peoples and strengthen them against Catholic influence, division (between Germany and Austria), and the Jews. Like the others, pan-Slavs also engaged in radical activities designed to weaken national boundaries that kept Slavs apart. Indeed, it was one such agitator that assassinated the heir to the Habsburg throne and ushered in the Great War. The First World War did destroy the multinational empires that pan- nationalists so detested, but did not create the pan-vision they sought.