4 Immigration Empathy’s Flickering Flames? The Coming: Before Global Immigration “Our ancestors . never had to deal with all of humanity as a factor in their daily lives,” write Burke and Ornstein (1995), “because for most of history they only knew a small number of individuals going about their particular activities in a very small world” (p. 280). Burke and Ornstein also remind us that our primeval ancestors had no need to consider the entire planet because it was “too big to have any meaningful impact” (p. 280). Today, however, individuals in remote areas of the savannah are influ- enced by events in mega-cities around the globe. “Meanings, messages, and people” are circulating worldwide at unprecedented levels. Human beings are leaving indigenous places and spaces, searching for economic security, fleeing persecution, and being dispersed by ethnic conflict and war. Alkman Granitsas (2006) reports that “there are almost 200 million international immigrants, more than double the 84 million of 30 years ago” (p. 2). This great encounter with diversity contributed to the attack on September 11, 2001; the assassination of Theo van Gogh; the killing of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massood; and terrorism in general. Four hundred years ago, the human species had not spread as rapidly, and conflict between what Freidman (1999) refers to as “lexus and olive tree worlds” was held in abeyance primarily because a multiethnic, multiracial society had not become a reality. But what happened? 83 84 Empathy in the Global World To understand the interplay among immigrant loyalties, traditions, and empathy, let us examine, however briefly, the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and other events that contributed to the present situation. I argue that the Treaty of Westphalia was a foundational event that sheds light on the ongo- ing frictions occurring between immigrants and nonimmigrants today. This perspective suggests that the transition from one historical moment to another should be understood as a continuum rather than as one marked event in time. The perspective suggests, furthermore, that even though the Westphalia system is not the only reason, it nevertheless sowed seeds for cross-border fragmentation in the 21st century, as we shall see. The Treaty of Westphalia The Treaty of Westphalia or the Congress of Westphalia is, as Jennifer Jackson Preece (1997) notes, “conventionally taken as the dividing line between the medieval and modern periods in the conduct of international affairs” (p. 75). Scholars maintain that the treaty was responsible for the cre- ation of nation-states and that it provided a transition from the old world to the new. If we look especially at Europe prior to 1648, we find a world of sovereigns who are in turmoil and constant strife and embroiled in a Thirty Years War with the Holy Roman Empire. Prior to 1648, the Holy Roman Emperor reigned supreme, bounded by the Catholic Church. Westphalia marked the end of the Holy Roman Empire and the rise of such countries as France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, the latter more briefly than the former. Although some of the politics involved in the establishment of nation- states was evident in England, Spain, France, and Sweden earlier, the cre- ation of sovereign states diminished the influence and reach of the Catholic Church. Prior to 1648, all roads literally led to Rome, and the papacy held sway over many peoples, who, at that time, did not distinguish in theory and practice between church and state. The tightly knit Catholic Church grounded identity in a structure that both favored and manipulated kings, potentates, and empires, thus ensuring that a great deal of empathy would be attached to the Church and those who were a part of it. The Church, in conjunction with Saint Augustine, who firmly believed that people were divided into those who were favored and those who were not, “defined the attitude that would direct Western society through the centuries of confusion that lay ahead” (Burke & Ornstein, 1995, p. 96). As we know, a vexing issue in the 17th century was a competing doc- trine between Catholicism and Protestantism. Prior to the 1517 epoch- making Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church’s ideology functioned as a tool for manipulating and controlling the secular rulers of Western Europe Chapter 4 Immigration: Empathy’s Flickering Flames? 85 and, by extension, their subjects (Burke & Ornstein, 1995, p. 97). This tool helped to ensure that empathy’s blessings would accrue to those who could read and write, most notably the clergy. Thus, there was a symbiotic rela- tionship between church and state—between the clergy who could read and write and the kings and princes who relied on the former to assist them with executive matters. As Burke and Ornstein (1995) argue, “It was easy for the church, primarily through its monastic communities and bishops, to control an illiterate world” (p. 98). The Westphalian system undermined the Catholic Church, “weakened papal authority,” and “solidified national sovereignty” (Farr, 2005, p. 1). A huge consequence of the Westphalian system is that it altered the power dimensions of human relationships invested in Catholicism and encouraged cooperation between aristocrats and monarchs, fostering “mutual coopera- tion” (Farr, 2005, p. 2). Although financial incentives clearly played a role in generating synergy between the latter two wealthy groups, this transfer of loyalty away from the Catholic Church facilitated a human empathetic mis- sion because after Westphalia, people were free to be French, English, Austro-Hungarian, and the like. Furthermore, the transference subverted some of the loyalty that had been imposed by the Pope, especially in the domains of language and nation-states. But most significant is the patriotic-producing aspect of this newly formed system, especially its coupling of empathy and passion. Particularly revealing is how words, slogans, flags, and other symbols that became a part of nation-states were used to galvanize publics around national symbols. The symbols, in turn, held many cultures together and broke others apart. As I noted in the introductory chapter, in the 1990s, when Yugoslavia disinte- grated over ethnicity and culture, Milosevic appealed to ancestry, myths, and memory to sustain Serbians during their conflict with other cultural groups. Later, in the 20th and 21st centuries, the universal human propensity to turn symbols into intense modes of loyalty would jeopardize one’s fellow-feeling, one to another. As recently as October 23, 2007, Ambassador James Bissett (2007) claimed that the origins of the global framework for dealing with eth- nic turmoil in Kosovo date “back to the peace of Westphalia in 1648 which ended the horrors of the religious wars that devastated Germany and other parts of Europe for more almost half a century.” Westphalia: Revolutions, Politics, and Immigration The changes that occurred as a result of Westphalia should concern us for two other significant reasons. First, it paved the way for both the American and the French Revolutions that aligned the rights of the state with the rights 86 Empathy in the Global World of man. Locke’s 1689 Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his essay “On Liberty,” with their compelling support of human toleration, set in motion cataclysmic revolutionary human events and gave to the world con- cepts of natural rights as opposed to the rights of princes. Locke sensibly maintained that since God was the creator and maker of us all, no human being had a right to govern the will of another based on ancestry. Of course, Locke left open a door for governing based on collective political rights. However, by decoupling state rights from human rights, Locke ushered in a notion of the “consent of the governed” that animated Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the band of revolutionary men who fomented a suc- cessful rebellion in North America in 1776 against the tyrannical rule of Great Britain—a rule based on natural rights and not rights peculiar to kings, queens, and potentates. As I will note later in this chapter, the same rights that inhered in the French Revolution of 1789, with its rallying cry of “liberty,” “equality,” and “fraternity,” would haunt France in the 21st century when Muslim youths rioted in the suburbs of Paris in 2005. The Treaty of Westphalia concerns us for another reason: how more mature nation-states, once organized and formed into more stable “imag- ined communities,” dealt with the presence of the other in their midst, that is, with immigrants. Following divisions into nation-states, the issue of what to do with and how to manage minorities and immigrants came to the fore- ground, that is, how to welcome strangers. After World War I, nation-states had to grapple with nationalities that emerged out of the “defeated Ottoman, Habsburg and Hohenzolelrn Empires in the East-Central Europe after 1919” (Preece, 1997, p. 81). The political impact of these population changes was significant. Political leaders charged with rearranging geopolitical borders populated by complex and various humans soon discovered that the job of homogenously recon- structing the post-1919 boundaries of East-Central Europe was “virtually impossible” for many reasons. A major reason is the fact that the former rul- ing elites—Hungarians and Germans—remained in their original places sow- ing seeds of resentment and hostility over their loss of power and influence. This paralyzing attitudinal frame of mind, in turn, bred ethnic tensions among people in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and other places depen- dent on newly constructed nationalistic discourses. Again, the Treaty of Westphalia is implicated because in 1919, issues of what constituted nation- hood reemerged and tampered with empathy’s powers. Questions also arose, such as should a nation-state be defined on the basis of language, ethnicity, culture, or all of these factors, and how could the task of empathizing with others along such lines be maintained.