This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G. Phd, Mphil, Dclinpsychol) at the University of Edinburgh
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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. PROPERTIED COMMUNITIES The agrarian emergence and industrial transformation of nationalism in the US and Norway - a property rights perspective Eirik Magnus Fuglestad PhD in Sociology, School of Social and Political Science. University of Edinburgh 2016 1 Acknowledgements I have many people to thank for support and help during the work on this dissertation. The largest intellectual debt and the first thanks I owe to my supervisors: Professor Jonathan Hearn and Dr James Kennedy. I would not have been able to write this dissertation without the inspired comments and wise guidance from these two great scholars. I would like to thank also my viva examiners: Professor Sinisa Malesevic and Professor Frank Cogliano for inspiring comments and thought-provoking discussion on my thesis. A big thanks goes to my peers and friends at the University of Edinburgh, especially my friends and colleagues in ENNIN (Edinburgh´s Ethnicity, Nationalism and National identity Network). I have had countless inspired conversations with the many wonderful people involved here, and not the least have they (as well as all other friends) provided me with wonderful moments of leisure and good fun. This has been a great source of renewed energy to keep on working of my research. In this regard I would like to thank Shruti Chaudhry for walks and chats and drinks and movie nights, Ceren Sengul for Jagermaister shots, Heddwyn Loyd Fletcher for being my beer buddy, Marie Eve Hamel for being my PhD buddy, and flat- mate Dani Cetra for hangouts in the flat. I would also like to thank the band The Chilli Dogs for providing music many a Thursday night at the Cannons Gait pub. A special thanks goes to my friends Erin Hughes and Jamie Mitchel who in addition to being great friends during all these years also proofread and commented on the final draft of this thesis (Erin), and who helped me format the dissertation (Jamie). The librarians at Bjerkreim Folkebibliotek (The public library in Bjerkreim, Norway) deserve a special thanks as well, they have been extremely helpful and understanding in ordering books and sources that I have used during my research. Thanks also to my family and to my always encouraging girlfriend Alin Ake Kob for support during all the years of work and writing. Alin also read and commented on an early draft of this dissertation, I owe her a great thanks for that. The people that I have mentioned here have been of great help and inspiration during the writing of this dissertation, but it should not be necessary to point out that I myself am solely responsible for any shortcomings or faults in the text that follows. 1 Abstract All western states today define themselves as nation-states, and all of these states have a political and economic structure in which an individual’s right to own private property is an underlying and pervasive feature. Drawing on examples from the historical trajectories of the US and Norway between ca 1760 and 1880, this dissertation explores the development of nation-states and the role of private property rights in this development. I demonstrate the fundamental role both of the idea of private property for the ideology of nationalism, and of the significance of a particular kind of property regime (widespread landowning) for the emergence and development of nationalism as historical phenomena. The evidence on which this dissertation relies has been extracted from historical documents consisting primarily of political pamphlets and speeches. The documents are chosen from what we can call “the national movement” e.g. dominant public debaters, policymakers and agitators. To compliment and contextualize my documentary analysis I have drawn on a range of secondary literature on social, historical and economic developments. The analysis has sought to unravel nationalism as an emerging historical phenomena in each of the cases investigated by focusing on authorial meaning in specific historical contexts. The core concept of nationalism has been arrived at by continuously comparing the developments in the US and Norway. The main points that this dissertation make are that it was the emergence of more widespread smallholding of land that was one of the most decisive preconditions for the emergence of nationalism in the US and Norway. Furthermore, this dissertation suggest that widespread ownership of land resulted in the emergence of a form of nationalism in which ownership of landed property was crucial because it became tied up with the idea of national popular sovereignty. Put in a simplified way: sovereignty was popular because property was popular (widespread). This connection was made mainly on the one hand from the real historical tie between ownership of land, juridical sovereignty and political powers, and on the other hand from the more conceptual similarity between property rights or ownership and sovereignty. I have identified two forms of nationalism based on the way that property was understood in the national ideology. The first form of the nation describes the agrarian phase of nationalism where it was real landed property that was seen to be crucial for the creation of national sovereignty. The second form of the nation describes a form of industrial nationalism. With the coming of industrial property and the expansion of wage labour, landed property lost its significance, and instead the right to the fruits of one’s labour was understood as the most important part of the property right. I have called this a shift from land to labour, or a transvaluation of property. This property rights perspective on nationalism in the US and Norway contributes to a new understanding of nationalism not only in these places but perhaps also in the western world in general. The development in the US and Norway can be seen in the wider context of the decline of feudalism and absolutism and the emergence of democratic, industrial societies in the western world. The landed, agrarian form of nationalism might in effect be a ‘missing link’ between pre- or proto-national forms of society (feudal, religious, absolutist, mercantilist, etc.), and the fully modern industrial form identified for example by Ernest Gellner. It is the connection between property (from land to labour) and sovereignty that unites them. 2 3 Contents Contents ................................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................ 6 The emergence of nationalism and private landed property ................................................ 7 The nation-state, property, and bourgeoisie democracy: the answer to paradoxes ............ 12 Outline of the argument ..................................................................................................... 17 The chapters ....................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: A property rights perspective in the study of nationalism .................................... 24 The western origins of nationalism .................................................................................... 24 Property and sovereignty in agrarian society ..................................................................... 32 Summing up ....................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter 3: Method and methodology ..................................................................................... 50 History and comparison as mode of explanation ............................................................... 50 Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 55 The process of selection of sources.................................................................................... 59 Two notes on history and comparison ............................................................................... 63 Chapter 4: The inception of nationalism and its entry into the world: the dialectics of property, people and sovereignty in revolutionary America .................................................. 66 Outline of the argument ..................................................................................................... 66 “Destined to let freedom grow” ......................................................................................... 67 The sociological origins of the spirit of nationalism .........................................................