THE SUICIDE OF EUROPE (Teaching Guide 6)

Russian Tanks in February 2022

On 24 February 2022 Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, following a war that started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. However, what it was supposed to be a piece of cake ended up being a dreadful war that three years later is still going on. Russia has lost a lot of soldiers, tanks, planes and a lot of money due to the sanctions that the EEUU, the EU and most of the Western countries applied to the Neo Tsarist Russia. With the access to the US Presidency of Donald Trump things have however changed drastically as the 47th POTUS sides now with Putin instead of President Zelenski who was mistreated, vilified and humiliated in his visit to the White House on February 28th, 2025. On top of that all US aid to Ukraine was suspended on March 4. 

 Will Europe be able to sustain the war effort in Ukraine after the withdrawal of the US aid? The EU has enough money to do it and the Armies of France, Germany and the UK, and of the biggest countries of the EU are in numbers and technology –at least on paper- more powerful that the US, Russian or Chinese Armies taken isolated. Nevertheless the only problem is: would the Europeans leaders dare? Or will they keep accepting the submission to the US, as they have been doing since 1945? Something hard to swallow when, for the first time the US since 1914 the US are not in the same side of Europeans and defend isolationism under the Trump’s regime. 

  Where does the European psychological submission to Washington come from? Let’s go back in time a it all goes back to World War I when started what we could call THE SUICIDE OF EUROPE. 

Weren’t we done with war?

 Ukrainian war is especially shocking because for 80 years Europeans we have been convinced that we were done with war. Something understandable looking at dreadful images of the Great War of 1914-1918 and of World War 2, the two tragic holocausts of the first half of the 20th century that destroyed Europe. So no wonder we panic at the idea of getting involved again in a war. Certainly, as the Ukraine situation is bringing us back to some of the darkest moments of our history, it is therefore time to reopen our history books and try to understand how was it possible that in thirty years, from 1914 to 1945, the mighty European Nation-States collapsed and disappeared from the World Front Stage?

 World War I was by no means apocalyptic. May be to this day the worst war in Human history, mainly because it was the first “total war”, meaning that every nation-state involved dedicated all resources, material and human, to exterminate the adversary. In July 1914 most of all Europeans were more than happy to go to a war towards a more than hatred enemy, thinking that they had such a powerful army that it was going to be a very short war in the name of nationalist revenge, sustained by a deeply rooted xenophobic narrative nationally promoted that led in France, for instance, to the assassination of the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès (1859-31 July 1914) simply because he was a pacifist.     

 This s why the great Belgian singer Jacques Brel (1929-1978) asked himself in his beautiful and moving song “Why they killed Jaurès” (Pour quoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?), released in 1977, in what was his last album, simply called “BREL”, before dying from cancer a few months later.   Let’s read the lyrics to understand. 

Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

 Ils étaient usés à quinze ans

Ils finissaient en débutant

Les douze mois s'appelaient décembre

Quelle vie ont eu nos grand-parents

Entre l'absinthe et les grand-messes

Ils étaient vieux avant que d'être

Quinze heures par jour le corps en laisse

Laissent au visage un teint de cendres

Oui notre Monsieur, oui notre bon Maître

… Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

… On ne peut pas dire qu'ils furent esclaves

De là à dire qu'ils ont vécu

Lorsque l'on part aussi vaincu

C'est dur de sortir de l'enclave

Et pourtant l'espoir fleurissait

Dans les rêves qui montaient aux yeux

Des quelques ceux qui refusaient

De ramper jusqu'à la vieillesse

… Oui notre bon Maître, oui notre Monsieur

Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

… Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

… Si par malheur ils survivaient

C'était pour partir à la guerre

C'était pour finir à la guerre

Aux ordres de quelques sabreurs

Qui exigeaient du bout des lèvres

Qu'ils aillent ouvrir au champ d'horreur

Leurs vingt ans qui n'avaient pu naître

Et ils mouraient à pleine peur

Tout miséreux oui notre bon Maître

Couverts de prêles oui notre Monsieur

… Demandez-vous belle jeunesse

Le temps de l'ombre d'un souvenir

Le temps du souffle d'un soupir

Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?

Jacques Brel (1929-1978) 

ENGLISH TRANSLATION of “JAURÈS” 

They were worn up at fifteen years old

They were finishing while beginning

The twelve months were named December

What kind of life did our grandparents have?

Between the absinth and the high masses

They were old before being

Fifteen hours a day, the body on a leash

Leaves to the face an ash like complexion

Yes our Sir, yes our kind Master

Why did they kill Jaurès?

Why did they kill Jaurès?

One cannot say they were slaves

But to say that hey have lived

When you start defeated like that

It’s hard to come ou of the enclave

And though hope was flourishing

In the dreams which were going up to the eyes

Of the few who were refusing

To crawl until the old age

Yes our kind Master, yes our Sir 

Why did they kill Jaurès?

Why did they kill Jaurès?

If by misfortune they survived

It was to go to war

It was to end at war

Under the orders of some swordsman

Who was demanding half-heartedly 

That they go open in the field of horror

Their twenties which didn’t have the chance to be born

And they died in full fear

All miserable, yes our kind Master

Covered with field horsetails, yes our Sir

Ask yourself pretty youth

The time of the shadow of a memory

The time of the blow of a sigh

Why did they kill Jaurès?

Why did they kill Jaurès?

Jean Jaurès (1859-1914)

Jaurès was absolutely right, but he could not prevent the disasters that militarism brought to Europe. War lasted 4 and half long years, left 16 million dead and 20 million wounded, many of the crippled for life. 

Corpses of French soldiers abandoned in a trench

For understanding the horror of World War I, besides the Brel’s song, let me give you some recommendations. From the victors side: the Movies “A Very Long Engagement” (Un long dimanche de fiançailles)  of Jean Pierre Jeunet, released in 2004 and  “Merry Christmas” (Joyeux Noël) of Christian Carion Released in 2005, and based on true events. More recently the spectacular movie 1917, a Sam Mendes film released in 2019. 

And finally, as I guess you are developing a taste for reading, I would recommend you to read Pierre Lemaitre’s Novel “The Great Swindle” (Au revoir là haut) that enabled the author to receive in 2013 the most prestigious French Litterary price, the “Prix Goncourt.”

From the German perspective I will recommend you the great pacifist novel of Erich von Remarque (1898-1970) All Quiet in the Western Front (1929). You can read it or see one of its movie versions: 1930, 1979 y 2022.  Impressive!!!!

The suicide of the Great War was not only an unending massacre that left Europe in ruins, but also had dreadful consequences as it led to the abrupt end of Liberalism and the return of authoritarian regimes, dreadful dictatorships that started with Bolshevik Russia, and continued with Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, that led the world to war again with the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and World War 2.

The "Brandenburg Tor" in May 1945

By the way, as it is impossible to understand the Russian Revolution, the Dictatorships of Mussolini and Hitler or if you do not grasp the social consequences of the expansion of big capitalism and the rising of “the Social question”, a large part of the text of Teaching Guide 6 (pages 127-139) is dedicated to this crucial aspect, including the “democratic solution” to the problem unexpectedly invented by US President F.D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

New Deal would lead to the Welfare State Model, consolidated in the UK in 1942 by William Beveridge.  

William Beveridge: the Founder of Social Security 

Something especially important considering the actual resurgence of inequalities worldwide, as a result of the Neoliberal policies started by the Western States in the 1980’s decade. Consider that this huge effort to help the poorer classes of our opulent societies has been one of the main causes why we have not had a war in Europe for 80 years. Now we have a war risk because Trump is governing on the name of the oligarchs. 

Should Europe leave Putin and Trump control the world? 

When we are entering Teaching Guide 6 ("The Suicide of Europe") we are facing an unending War in Ukraine. Thre years have already passed since on Thursday 24 of February 2022 Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion. It was supposed to be a very short war. A Blitzkrieg. A Walkover. And now we realize that Putin has brought back war to Europe. A complete strange notion for all those born after 1945. 

80 years later we realize that what initially looked like a conflict between two states, appears now more like a wider conflict between the West and the East. Why? Because Putin does not want Ukraine to go West for joining the EU and even NATO. And because for him Ukraine is a part of Russia. First because Kiev was the first Russian Capital. It was the head of the “Kievan Rus”, the first East Slavic State. 

The Kievan Rus in the 11th century

 And second because Ukraine was one of the founding members od the USSR on December 30, 1922, and signed its dissolution in December 1991. 

 It is true that we Westerners did make a huge a mistake not realizing that Putin in Ruyssia has done a great job. After reaching power in 2000 after the disastrous government of Yeltsine that left the USSR in the hand of a few avid oligarchs, his priority was is to give back the Russians their pride, after one decade of humiliation. And it is for sure that Russia now is one of the leading powers in the World, while we Europeans are not. 

 But let’s point out that Putin also committed a huge mistake wanting to get back to the USSR times, under Stalin, when Russia was almighty. And also because, considering that we Europeans we are mostly concerned about how to keep our comfortable lives, he was sure that through Russian gas and oil production, he could buy us. This is why he was so confident about Ukraine invasion. He thought that we would not give a damn about Ukranians as our priority is to live well.  

 Putin’s third big mistake was about Ukranians themselves as he considered they would consider him a saviour. In fact in 2014 they had accepted with no problem the annexation of Crimea, and this is why he thought that they would accept that the majority of Ukranians would love to be bach at the mighty Russian motherland. He did not realize that since the Orange Revolution (November 2004 to January 2005) the majority of Ukranians do not feel Russians, they consider themselves Europeans. And this explains the almost unanimous reaction of the European States against Putin’s aggression. 

 And this is why most of them are willing to defend their country to the last soldier. The national narrative that Putin thought was inexistent and it is clearly jeopardizing a war that the new Tsar believed was not going to last long because he was convinced that most of Ukrainian population would welcome Russian soldiers as their saviours from a corrupt and “nazi” regime. The problem is that he was misinformed. It is only natural that after 25 years in power Putin only hear what he wants to hear. 

 Unfortunately for him he has in front the Ukrainian President Volodímir Zelenski a Jew, that studied law, speaks fluent Russian and is a great communicator as he has worked like a comedian from 1997 to 2018, before entering politics and becoming Ukraine’s Prime Minister on the 20 of Mai 2019. Putin did not consider Zelenski as a problem, until the latter, instead of fleeing became the head of the fierce Ukranian resistance, and has become a National hero for more than 90% of Ukrainians. The result of Putin’s invasion is that Ukraine would never be Russian again.

Putin’s fate in Ukraine was most uncertain, at least until Donald Trump saved him...

It’s about democracy and freedom

Let’s remember that Donald Trump has the dubious privilege of being the first POTUS in office despite having been condemned by a Jury of his peers for 24 felonies. So why should he care about defending a democracy that he tried to subvert on January 6, 2021 encouraging an attack on the US Congress. 

 In fact the War is about a model of society and civilization. Between liberal democracies and democratic dictatorships called “democraturs”, like the one that exists in Russia, where Vladimir Putin has been in power since 2000 and since then he has developed an illiberal democracy where power has no limits, information is controlled by the state and dissidents are poisoned, like Alexander Litvinenko, or put in jail like Alexei Navalny, the three young women integrating the Pussy Riot punk-rock group, Vladimir Kara-Murza or Maria Ponomarenko. For denouncing the war. Or the Special operation as Putin named it. 

Aleksandr Litvinenko, a dissident writter in his death bed (2006)

The Pussy Riot, a punk-rock  Group imprisoned in 2021

Alexei Navalny, arrested in 2018

                                

Vladimir Kara-Mourza. After being poisoned twice,

 he is in since 2022 in prison for 20 years

The Journalist Mariya Ponomarenko. 

Six years of imprisonment for protesting against Ukrainian War

Should Europe leave Trump and Putin have their way? Should we accept the humiliation of submission to keep our relatively comfortable lives? Should we renounce to the Rule of Law and accept dictatorship and tyranny of oligarchies?

A great opportunity for Europe  

 The only positive part on this disaster is that Trump is pushing Europe not only to rearmament but to become again a player in the international field. Something Europeans so far has not psychologically prepared for. But after 80 years of retreat let’s hope that European Governments will react sending excellent weapons to Ukraine, spending more money in our armies and adopting economic sanctions against Putin’s regime and his bunch of oligarchs, disregard the fact that they affect severely our economies. How so? Because, simply put, Putin has helped us to realize that our whole liberal democratic way of life is in danger. Let’s remember again the old proverb: “Si vis pacem para bellum.”

THE 19TH CENTURY AND THE APOGEE OF EUROPEAN NATION-STATES

The Vienna Congress (1815)

                                                                           

 The 19th century is the European century. And the reason for this state of things is that the nation-State model reaches its peak between the Fall of Napoleon and World War I. Thanks to this the European Nation-States control the world in 1900. The Nation-State model did not prevail easily. From 1814 to 1848 the history of Europe is characterized by the fight between the Absolutists sovereigns reunited in the Congress of Vienna (1815) and signatories of the Holy Alliance that is implemented through the Metternich's policy of counterrevolutionary military intervention, and the supporters of the Laissez-faire (liberal) regime, that try to consolidate the principles of the French Revolution: a Constitution, a Representative parliamentary regime, a set of Fundamental rights and a deeply orientated market economy with an absolute rejection of any Government intervention. 

                                                          Klemmens von Metternich (1773-1859)

 Thanks to Metternich's system European sovereigns agreed on a common policy to fight successive Liberal revolutions. First  the ones  that tried to be imposed by military uprisings, like the one started by Riego in Spain in 1820, or the Decembrist Revolt in Russia (1825).

 The Decembrists in Saint Peterburg (1825)

 The last one was leaded by military officers that got acquainted with the French revolutionary principles during the wars against Napoleon, masterfully described by Leon Tolstoi in War and Peace, published in the Journal The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 21867, before being published as a novel in 1869.                                         

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

                           

 Unfortunately for the Absolutists the Metternich's system ends when the UK walks away from the Holy Alliance because Her Majesty's Government accepts the fact that the British ruling classes do not want to back the repression of the rebellion in Spanish America (1809-1824). Not because they sympathize with the liberal Spanish rebels, but since they saw a great potential for British Colonial interests in Central and South America. For not exactly the same reasons the Western European States fight the absolutism of the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of independence (1821-1832), a more Romantic movement in which notorious European intellectuals participated, like Lord Byron (1788-1824) who died in Missolonghi fighting for the land where the Western culture was born. 

The Metternich System collapses also in France with the 1830 revolution that brings as a corollary the Belgian Revolution against the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The result is the creation of the Belgian State. 

The 1830s´ French Revolution by Eugène Delacroix

 

These movements would also have an extremely important repercussion in England, as they led to the crucial electoral reform of Lord Grey in 1832 that transformed the nature of the English Parliamentary system in the sense of rendering it more representative. A movement that opened up the way to the democratization of the British Political System, though this process would not be completed entirely until British women were granted the right of vote in 1928. 

Emmeline Pankhurst, British Suffragette leader, arrested. 

  The whole order established in the Congress of Vienna crumbles definitely in the rest of Europe with the wave of 1848 revolutions. This crucial movement would end up changing the political history of Continental Europe, starting with the Unification movements that happened in Italy and Germany. It also enables the creation of the French Second Republic, which is the first "social" regime in European history. 

1848 Revolution in Berlin

By the way, 1848 is significantly also the year in which Marx and Engels publish their "Communist Manifesto". And I want to mention this because Socialists’ ideas would become the main enemy of the European bourgeois liberal regimes. 

Marx and Engels publishing the Communist Manifesto

 in London (21 February 1848)

 The first permanent consequence of 1848 Revolution is the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, through the movement called the Risorgimento (“Resurgence”) headed, among others, by the Comte of Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi. 

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882)

The Italian unity would only be completed in 1870 when Italian troops occupied the Papal States and Rome became the Capital of Italy. The popes would not have again an independent State until 1929, and thanks to Mussolini who agrees on creating the Vatican City state. 

Mussolini signing the Lateran Accords (11 January 1929)

 For understanding what the liberal revolution meant to the Italian Nation you should read the indispensable novel The Leopard (1958), of Giuseppe Tomaso di Lampedusa (1896-1957), published posthumously. In the book this Italian noble tells the story of a Sicilian Aristocrat, the Prince of Salina, who is fully conscious of the changes that the Risorgimento revolution is bringing, and  realizes that old nobility has to adapt to the new times, accepting the change "so that everything could remain the same". 

  Giovanni Tomaso di Lampedusa (1896-1957

Let me point out that this novel created a neologism, el gattopardismo, which we might define as any political action consisting of presenting as revolutionary an idea that, in reality, does not seek to change economic or social foundations but rather to maintain the status quo. If you want to understand this key concept better, I encourage you to read the book, or, at the very least, watch Luchino Visconti movie (1963) with the same title, starring Burt Lancaster, in one of his most memorable performances. It is a beautiful film that effectively conveys the novel's themes of decline and impermanence.  Do not miss it. 

  A scene from The Leopard by Luchino Visconti (1963)                                                          

 The other essential process of national unification happens in Germany. The German unification promoted by Bismarck, is the result of the Prussian overwhelming victories over Austria (1866), and especially over Napoleon III (1870-1871).

Otto von Bismarck (1867-1890)

 It is interesting that the defeat of the French Second Empire gave way to the creation of the German Second Reich (remember that the First Reich lasted from 962 to 1806), with the proclamation of William I of Prussia as Kaiser in Versailles. 

Proclamation of the Second Reich in Versailles (January 18, 1871)

This was a huge humiliation for the French, and certainly a cause of French anger towards Germans and explains why French were willing to start World War I that would end with the disaster of the Peace of Versailles in 1919. A “Diktat” that will lead to Hitler and World War Two. 

The new German Empire (the Second Reich) was not a totally unified state (as France, for instance was). In fact it was called the North German Confederation and was headed by Prussia. On top of that it was not a Parliamentary Regime as the Government was designated by the Kaiser and not by the Reichstag. The full German unification and the instauration of the Parliamentary Regime would not occur until the foundation of the Weimar Republic in 1919.                                         

The North German Confederation

        As far as the Liberal revolutions cycle is concerned Imperial Russia would be the last bastion of autocracy. The Czars would be the last European absolutists monarchs, and remained so until the 1905 Revolution, that was provoked by the humiliating defeat of Tsarist Russia by Imperial Japan, the new Eastern Power developed as a result of the Meiji Revolution (1868).

  17 October 1905. Painting by Ilya Repin

                     

 Thanks to the 1905 movement Russia did have a sort of Liberal regime from 1906 to 1917.  But it would not reach its definitive consolidation because of the Soviet Revolution of October 1917 that not only abolished the monarchy, but physically exterminated the royal family that was murdered on the night of the 16-17 July 1918 in Yekaterinburg by order of Lenin. 

                                                        The Imperial Russian family                                                                    

  The 19th century however was the peak of European history, as European Nation-states ended up controlling most of the World, through an exorbitant colonial expansion. If you want to understand how Europe became the leading continent in the World you should not miss Orlando Figes book The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture (2020).  

The Europeans is a richly enthralling, panoramic cultural history of nineteenth-century Europe, told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable people: a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a great connoisseur, Pauline's husband Louis. Their passionate, ambitious lives were bound up with an astonishing array of writers, composers and painters all trying to make their way through the exciting, prosperous and genuinely pan-European culture that came about as a result of huge economic and technological change. This culture - through trains, telegraphs and printing - allowed artists of all kinds to exchange ideas and make a living, shuttling back and forth across the whole continent from the British Isles to Imperial Russia, as they exploited a new cosmopolitan age. (Extracted from AMAZON web page). 

 From a Legal perspective, it is important to remember that all the revolutionary movements that happen in Europe in the course of the 19th century in the name of the Liberal state principles, end up bringing essential legal tools like constitutions, sets of fundamental rights and, above all, a national narrative that consolidates the independence of every European State. The result of this rising nationalism is the amazing colonial expansion that will make European Nation-States extremely wealthy and powerful to the point they would control the whole World that was distributed among the colonial European states in international conferences, like the one held in Berlin in 1884 for distributing the African continent among the different European nations. 

 And the same happened in Asia, where Europeans controlled most of two of the oldest and most prestigious civilizations in history: India and China. 

   Asia in 1898

                                                                                        

 The result of it is that Europe ends up controlling a lot of territories worldwide. This is why the 19th century is undoubtedly the European century. The only non-Western world power is Japan, a country that fully accepted the nation-State model in 1868, thanks to the Meiji Revolution backed by emperor Mutsuhito (the 122nd Japanese emperor) that reigned from 1867 to 1912. The result of the Westernization of Japan resulted in Japanese imperialism that enabled the Japanese Military expansion in China and the Pacific area.

A "European" map of the World (around 1900) 

 Nevertheless, the European colonial expansion increases gradually the tensions among the different colonial powers, which rearm themselves very strongly trying to get as many colonies as possible, following the classic Roman principle "Si vis pacem para bellum" (If you want peace prepare for war). This is why the last third of the 19th century is known as the Armed Peace period. The military equilibrium based in alliances would finally be broken in 1914. And European Nation-States would commit suicide in the horrid and absurd World War I.  

Cartoon representing the tensions of the Armed Peace

The most important idea that you must retain from Teaching Guide 5 is how through the adoption of the Nation-State model European states became powerful and wealthy, until nationalists’ excesses drove them to commit suicide in an annihilating war. An important lesson that proud European States will not learn until the end of World War II, when a destroyed Old Continent had totally disappeared from the world scene. To the point that European governments realized that they should unite for surviving. 

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 80 to 118), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 119-121) the crucial dates are the following: 

1815, 1820-1823, 1830, 1832, 1848, 14 March 1861, 1862-1890 (Bismarck), 1868, 1870, 1871, 1904, 1905, 1906. 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Are the principles of the revolutionary liberalism still valid in our Western Democracies? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Think that the Liberal regime establishes severe limits to the government, through the Constitution, the Declaration of Fundamental Rights and the Parliamentary regime. Think of how these limits work. 

2. Look for the Concept of the “Rule of Law” (“Estado de derecho” in Spanish)

3. Do you think that the rule of law is actuallly respected by Western governments (Europeans and Americans)? Provide some concrete examples. 

4. Do you think that circumstances could justify governmental authoritarianism?

5. “Please explain what Churchill meant when he said that “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.”

A MOST POWERFUL INVENTION: THE “NATION STATE”

 

Europe in the middle of the 16th century

After the terrible period of the Wars of religion that torn Europe between mid 16th and mid 17th century, the idea of a Universal Christian Empire was replaced by an international order based on the struggle between different “monarchies”. The “official” sanction of these capital change in Western political organization was the Westphalia Peace of 1648 that reorganized Europe after the Thirty Years War. 

                                        Europe after the signing of the Westphalia Peace (1648)

The decadence of the Universal model was the direct consequence of the strengthening of the “state” as political organization. The consequence was that unity was replaced by diversity. There was not a common pope or a common emperor anymore, but a bunch of kings that were heads of their respective independent kingdoms-states”. As a result of this the world is today divided in 192 Nation States. 

As we have already seen in Teaching guide 2 it all started in the Middle Ages when after the Feudal era kings turned into monarchs, because they could organize better their realms creating administrative bodies that enabled them to collect taxes for paying the maintain a permanent army. The result was that they were far more powerful because they were richer as they could use their power (military, political and legal) to impose a protectionist economic policy aiming at augmenting the wealth of the state by the way of increasing as much as possible the reserves of gold and silver. 

Something that could be reached by establishing a favorable balance of trade. That is: exporting more goods than importing and monopolizing as many trades as possible.  This economic policy was called “mercantilism” and reached his height during the reign of Louis XIV thanks to his outstanding Minister of Finances Jean Baptiste Colbert. 

Jean Baptiste Colbert (1665-1683)

So every monarch started competing with other monarchs in order to accumulate wealth and therefore power.  For this it was rather convenient to reunite as many territories as possible because that meant many more subjects that could pay taxes and join the royal armies. But paying taxes and dying in the war was difficult to swallow and this is why they came up with the idea of creating the myth of how great was to love your land and your king. For this monarchs did their best to develop step by step a “proto-national feeling.” 

In France, for instance, this started with Jeanne d’Arc (1412-1431) who was burned at the stake being 19 years old, after helping her king Charles VII to get rid of the English soldiers that occupied a substantial part of French soil during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). Napoleon considered her the symbol of France and she was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Since then Saint Joan of Arc is one of the patrons of France. A Woman. Which is extraordinary in such a patriarcal society as France was in the first half of the 15th century. 

A statue of Jean d'Arc in Paris

 In Teaching guide 1 we spoke of the “political use of nationalism”, referring to how 19th and 20th century historians considered the “Germanic Nations” as the origin of European nations.  The real entrance in politics of the word “nation” however does not begin, as you already know, in the 5th century but in the 18th century with the Enlightenment, when Absolute monarchies fell in the name of the “Nation”, as the divine origin of the concept of sovereignty vested in the person of the king was transferred to the joint body of the inhabitants of a kingdom: the National Congress or Assembly. 

The French National Assembly

 This idea had appeared a century earlier with the concept of “Social Pact”, referring to a new explanation of why political power had to be obeyed by citizens. In the Middle Ages the pope, the emperor and the kings were sovereigns because God had created the world this way (Theo centrism). But the religious crisis of the 16th and 17th centuries that brought the dreadful wars of religion –because there was not anymore an only “catholic”, that is “universal creed- obliged political thinkers to develop a laic approach to the justification of political Power. 

It was then when Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) horrified by the long English civil war and the execution of Charles I came up with the idea that sovereignty was vested in a political monster called Leviathan, integrated by the ensemble of citizens that gave up forever all their rights to Him in order to get His protection and avoid chaos.  

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

This harsh vision of the Social Pact was tempered by John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as they considered that the Social Pact could not be irreversible and irrevocable. Citizens should accept to obey the Government but only if it works for the “Common wealth”. 

If not they could consider that those in power had broken the social pact and therefore was legitimate to disobey them and bring along a new pact with a new ruler. On top of that, the Social pact included some “special clauses" referring to a bunch of original rights of citizens that could not be given up under any circumstance, as they were considered “fundamental”. This is the origin of the theory of the “Fundamental Rights and Liberties”

The Universal Declaration of Rights of 1789

The result of this mildest vision of the social pact was that it empowered citizens, as they became the “owners” of sovereignty –instead of the kings-, because they were considered the real “protagonists” of the Social pact. A body of people that had in common the fact that they were born in the same territory. This is why they were called its “nationals”, and the ensemble of them a “Nation” with capital “N”. Remember that the celebration of the "Fête de la Fédération" on the 14 of July of 1790, was the origin of French National Day. 

The "Champ de Mars" in Paris on 14 of July 1790 

 The problem in all this is that, as you know, the "state" is not a very "sexy" idea. It is just an organization, a way of setting the government and the administration of a territory. An idea far too abstract for stimulating and motivating people to get attached to it. For paying taxes or dying in a war people needed motivation. They would not do it for an abstract political and administrative body They needed that the state had a soul, and that was the “national” pride. What we call today “nationalism”. The result was the appearance of a new political organization: the Nation-State, that combined the useful organization with a strong motivation. 

But one thing was to reach the idea of replacing the "Monarch" by the “Nation”, and another very different to put it into practice. And it was not going to be an easy transition. In fact it required a revolutionary movement followed by dramatic "national wars" steered by the “nationalistic narrative”. First in North America, since 1776, and secondly in France since 1792. The constitutional consequences of these enlightened revolutionary movements is what we are going to study today.                                    

 The idea that it was worth dying for your land and people appeared clearly for the first time in North America when colons rebelled against the British Crown and declared their independence on July 4, 1776, starting a Revolutionary War of 7 years (until 1783). 

Signing the US Declaration of Independence on 4th of July 1776

  

Patriotism was at the stake in George Washington’s Camp. British soldiers fought essentially for money, but American soldiers fought to have a country of their own. Of course not all of the Americans were for rebellion. Some wanted to keep on being British subjects: they were called Loyalists. If you want to really feel what was it like I strongly recommend the US TV Serie “Turn". Washington Spies” (2014) and of course the classic and powerful Mel Gibson’s Movie The Patriot (2000). 

      Mel Gibson in The Patriot

 Fighting for your own country and not for your king was at the end a powerful narrative that lead you to accept that it was worth to die by patriotism. That was very clear under another Revolution: the French one. 

Because the French Revolution was such a mess that it would have disappeared if the Revolutionary Constituant Assembly had not had the brilliant idea of declaring the war to the kings of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria on the 20 of April 1792. 

                       

The Battle of Jemappes (6 November 1792)

 The conflict of the newborn United States of America with the UK between 1776 and 1783, and the conflict of Revolutionary France against Absolutist European kings of the Ancien Régime created a new type of State: the Nation-State in which sovereignty was not vested on the Monarch, but on the People, considered as Nation, as a Political Body that governed the state  through its elected representatives (Representative democracy). But the crucial point was that every “Nation” developed its own “nationalism”. A very powerful narrative that consolidated the state to the point that it dissolved any rest of “universalism”. Even the Law ceased to be common to all European kingdoms (Ius commune) and became “national” as a result of “codification”. Every State created its own ordered set of national laws. Including the Law that declared who was “national” of the state and who was to be considered a foreigner. All under its motivating symbols: the banner and the national anthem. 

The first US flag: 13 stripes representing the colonies and 13 stars representing the new states. (Today it has 50 stars but still 13 stripes). The "Star Spangled Banner".   

 And this is the main problem that the European Union has: that its 27 Member states are still heavily rooted "Nation-States", and that usually their nationals do feel closer to their country than to the abstract idea of a United Europe. European narrative is still far less powerful. In contrast with what happens in the United States, where you 50 Member States but only "one nation". Of course their integration process was difficult and had to go through a terrible Civil war, but today they are one of the most powerful countries because despite their diversity they have a common strong narrative.      

            

 In this Teaching Guide 4 we will see the origins of the “Nation State” idea through the American and French Revolution, and how this new concept of state would take Europe to his zenith in the 19th century, when the world lived at the European hour. Something that we will analyze in Teaching Guide, number 5, that describe how our countries reached the apogee of the Nation-States in a period that started with Napoleon and led to the Era of Great colonialism that rendered European states the most wealthy and powerful organizations of the World. Until they committed suicide provoking the holocaust of World War I. 

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 54 to 78), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 74 to 75) the crucial dates are the following: 

a) For the American Revolution: 1607, 1620, 1754-1763, 1773, 17775, 1776, 1777, 1783 and 1787

b) For the French Revolution: the periods of Constituant Assembly (June 1789 to September 1791); the Legislative Assembly (October 1791 to August 1792); the Convention (September 1792 to October 1795) and the Directory (October 1795 to November 1799). 

Crucial dates are : 1789 (17 June, 20 June, 27 June, 14 July), 1790 (July 14),  1792 (April 20; 10 August, 20 and 22 September); 1793 (21 January); 1794 (January until July: Robespierre). 1799, 9 November. 

 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: How important is your country for you? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Are you proud of being “national” from your country? 

2. Do you think your country is an arbitrary invention that does not make sense today?

3. Do you think that separatist nationalist in European states today should be independent Nation-States? Give reasons for and against. 

4. Do you feel more “national” or more European?

5. What moves you more: your local soccer team or your National team?

The "Nation-State", an extremely powerful narrative