The Everyday Nationalism of Workers

The Everyday Nationalism of Workers upends common notions about how European nationalism is lived and experienced by ordinary people-and the bottom-up impact these everyday expressions of nationalism exert on institutionalized nationalism writ large. Drawing on sources from the major urban and working-class centers of Belgium, Maarten Van Ginderachter uncovers the everyday nationalism of the rank and file of the socialist Belgian Workers Party between 1880 and World War I, a period in which Europe experienced the concurrent rise of nationalism and socialism as mass movements.

Analyzing sources from-not just about-ordinary workers, Van Ginderachter reveals the limits of nation-building from above and the potential of agency from below. With a rich and diverse base of sources (including workers' "propaganda pence" ads that reveal a Twitter-like transcript of proletarian consciousness), the book shows all the complexity of socialist workers' ambivalent engagement with nationhood, patriotism, ethnicity and language. By comparing the Belgian case with the rise of nationalism across Europe, Van Ginderachter sheds new light on how multilingual societies fared in the age of mass politics and ethnic nationalism.

Autorentext

Maarten Van Ginderachter is Associate Professor of History at Antwerp University. He is the co-editor of National Indifference and the History of Nationalism in Modern Europe (2019) and Nationhood from Below: Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century (2012).

Inhalt

Contents and AbstractsIntroduction: Workers into Belgians, Flemings and Walloons chapter abstractThe role of the masses in the rise of modern nationhood remains one of the great unresolved issues in nationalism research. This book aims to fill this gap. Drawing on often underexploited source materials from the major urban and working-class centers of Belgium, the book uncovers the everyday nationalism of the rank-and-file of the socialist Belgian Workers Party during the fin de siècle. 1A Socialist Pillar of a Hyperliberal State chapter abstract This chapter sets the stage with a condensed history of Belgium's nation building project. It contends that the country, despite its industrial precociousness, lively civil society, and liberal democracy, did not mass-produce Belgians. Belgium was founded in 1830 as a unitary but non-centralizing state that took a hyper-liberal position in matters of nation building. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, local administrations and private organizations began to fill the void and started a nationalist campaign specifically targeted at workers. The increased nationalist propaganda coincided with the onset of 'consociationalism' or 'pillarization,' i.e. the compartmentalization of society into distinct ideological or confessional communities. In Belgium three pillars gradually took shape: a catholic, a socialist and a smaller liberal community. Nationalism, ethnicity and language did not drive the pillarization process. Its engine was ideological dissension between conservatives and progressives, and confessional conflict between catholics and anti-clericals. 2Voting the Nation chapter abstract Suffrage rights and political participation were crucial nation-builders all over Europe. In Belgium the vote was democratized during the fin de siècle. In 1893 plural manhood suffrage replaced the elitist, tax-based census vote, but there was no official agenda ingraining the vote as a patriotic duty. Nevertheless, fighting for their political and social rights within the Belgian arena and shouldering local government responsibility, gave socialists a taste for oppositional patriotism. They did not experience this civic identification uniformly, however. Due to the diverging electoral outcomes of the plural voting system in the urbanized and industrial parts of the country as opposed to the rural and small-town regions, socialists increasingly interpreted ideological divergences within an ethnic framework of Flemings vs. Walloons. The introduction of proportional representation in 1899, though meant to assuage such tensions, in fact aggravated them within the BWP. 3Nationalist Celebrations and Mass Entertainment chapter abstract The most conspicuous occasion to bring the nation to the public were the Independence Day festivities. But, here again, the government was anything but energetic. Outside of the capital it left all initiative to local authorities and private organizations. In the closing years of the nineteenth century these celebrations and the entertainment sector in general were swept up in a wave of nationalist mass consumption. The BWP urged workers to keep their distance to avoid 'contamination' with bourgeois chauvinism, but to the despair of the party, its supporters often joined in. Mere exposure to nationalist entertainment did not simply turn workers into Belgians as they were confronted with competing discourses of class solidarity, ethnicity, religion, internationalism, localism, etc. The actual outcome was dependent on the strength of nationalism in other realms of their public lives. 4An Anti-Militaristic State in Militaristic Times chapter abstract This chapter examines why the Belgian army did not realize its full potential as a nation-builder before the Great War. First and foremost was the obsolete recruitment system. Belgium was the last country in Europe to abolish the military draw and to introduce personal military conscription in 1909. Despite a pro-military propaganda campaign emanating from the reinvigorated Belgian nationalist movement in the latter years of the nineteenth century, public opinion remained firmly opposed to army service and did not view it as a civic duty. The radical antimilitarism of the BWP's youth organizations did not resonate among the rank-and-file either. In this sense socialist workers were part of the Belgian mainstream. 5The Royal and Colonial Paradox chapter abstract As the cornerstone of bourgeois nationalism, the king was the ultimate icon of the nation. This chapter relates the lengths the royal entourage went to to popularize the king and to propagate Leopold II's exploits in the Congo. The court's propaganda was unable to change the deep-seated enmity towards the person of Leopold II, but it was successful in convincing people that the monarchy was a natural part of public life. Leopold's successor Albert I reconciled socialism to the monarchy, by projecting an image of political neutrality and basic human decency. Leopold II's Congo was caught up in a similar paradox as his personal image. While pro-colonial initiatives did not turn socialist workers into eager imperialists, Leopold's social imperialism 'normalized' the idea of European dominance over the inferior black race. 6Schooling the Nation chapter abstract This chapter deals with public elementary education. Teachers and pedagogues often complained in private about the gap between the (successful) theory and the (ineffective) practice of nationalist education. Many pupils left school with blatantly mistaken notions about Belgium and its history. Yet proletarian children reassembled these faulty building blocks into an idiosyncratic working-class form of nationalism that stressed the national 'Other', male combativity and the blood of belonging. A close-reading of working-class sources shows the potentially subversive, disruptive or violent character of bourgeois nationalist discourses when they were appropriated by ordinary people. In the end, the effect of schooling depends on a complex of supporting and competitive social influences inside and outside the classroom, both in the short and the long run. Patriotic educational practices could only be successful over time if they were able to attach themselves to the rhythms of daily life. 7Encounters with the Belgian Flag and the National Anthem chapter abstract This chapter explores grassroots encounters with t…