Forty years later. Eugen Weber’s contribution to an empirical approach of European state-led nation-building

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the gap between the quantitative importance gained by nations and nationalism studies in the literature and the relative lack of empirical research within it, and illustrates this proposition through the question of state-led nation-building in Europe. It then assesses the pros and cons of the original contribution made by historian Eugen Weber in his Peasants into Frenchmen. It concludes by suggesting what use researchers interested in nation-building might make of Weber’s work.

KEYWORDS:

• Nation-building
• nationalism
• Eugen Weber
• historical sociology

Notes on contributor

Christophe Roux is Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, a member of University Côte d’Azur, a researcher at its Research Team on the Transformation of European Societies (ERMES) and an associate researcher at the South European Centre for Political Studies (University of Montpellier and French National Centre for Scientific Research). His main research interests deal with nations and nationalism, regionalism and South European politics. His latest publication is a co-edited book on the Spanish political system (La démocratie espagnole PUR, 2016).

Notes

1. Nationalities Papers, Nations and Nationalism, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, National Identities, Studies in Ethnicity & Nationalism, and Studies on National Movements. Of course, articles dealing with nations and nationalism are also published in general journals.

2. Breuilly also discreetly but nonetheless very accurately underlines a methodological failure when he expresses his scepticism with regards to ‘the validity of any of [the arguments] when they take the form of general assertion accompanied by brief examples. The lack of context and detail for those examples enables one to construct a scissors-and-paste argument of any kind’ (Breuilly, 2005, p. 15).

3. This dilemma had been identified in a similar way by Peres (2001, p. 58).

4. In most of Europe, there is an enduring closure between social science and history. In countries like the United States (Orren & Skowronek, 2004) or France (Déloye, 2007; Buton & Mariot, 2009), this separation has been successfully challenged.

5. Nationalism studies in France arose significantly in the 1990s, although few titles from that production are available in English. See, for a particular view, sociologist D. Schnapper (1998) and for a more illustrative volume the one edited by political scientists Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot (2006). In French, the main references available, coming essentially from political science, are Delannoi and Taguieff (1991, 2001), Hermet (1996), Birnbaum (1997), von Busekist (1998), Delannoi (1999, 2010), Dieckhoff (2000), Roger (2001), Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot (2005), Crettiez (2006), de Senarclens (2010) and Taguieff (2015). One should also observe that some volumes heavily rely on translations of English-speaking contributions (Baertschi & Mulligan, 2002; Dieckhoff, 2004) and that classical volumes on nationalism have been translated from English into French (such as those of Gellner in 1989, Hobsbawm in 1992 or Anderson in 1996). One important lacuna is given by the absence of A. Smith whose thesis, though duly taken into account by theoretical overviews, has been directly addressed only by Darviche (2000).

6. Peres (1993, p. 21) defines national identity as

the certainty, that is shared by individuals and that guides their mutual behaviour, to have to locate a more or less substantial part of their life history in a same portion of time and space that I will call ‘biographical space.’ Collective identity itself, which gathers the set of all possible belongings, could be assimilated to the biographical horizon of people.

7. For an illustration see Apter (1965).

8. Spanish historians Cabo and Molina (2009) have proposed earlier an enlightening similar assessment on the basis of a comprehensive exploration of international historiography. It is probably the best account available on the matter. It is able to grasp different national and sub-disciplinary perspectives within history and across history and social science. Though shown here in a different perspective (from a social science point of view, with partially different references and a narrower focus on nation-building properly) I largely agree with them, as readers will see.

9. As he explains, ‘I have deliberately focused on the areas that served my interests best – the West, Centre, South, and Southwest – and on the 40 or 50 years before 1914’ (Weber, 1976, p. xi).

10. For example – and just to mention one aspect – more recent studies in military history have shown that ‘until 1914 the way military service was organised did not provoke long-distance geographical mobility and did not constitute an uprooting factor’ (Boulanger, 2001, p. 211). But here again, Weber anticipated the problem by stating that ‘because my purpose from the start was to be not exhaustive but suggestive, the documentation reflects that approach’ (Weber, 1976, p. xi).

11. This point can be connected to the broader question of official and informal political practices, which I do not wish to tackle here (see Briquet, 1995).

12. ‘Italy is made, but not the Italians’ is the exact quote of Piedmontese statesman Massimo D’Azeglio, referring to the need for Italians to forge a solid ‘character’ (D’Azeglio, 1868, p. 7).

13. Weber is not totally unaware of this aspect but he does not address it consistently in his book.