From ethnic group toward the modern nation: the Czech case

In: Nations and nationalism: journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, Band 10, Heft 1/2

Abstract

Historians usually try to understand and interpret the reasons for the successful result of national movements. Less attractive seems to be the question, why the early "nationalists" took the decision to persuade the members of their ethnie to accept a new national identity, i.e., why did Phase B start? The author of this article formulated many years ago the hypothesis that this decision had to do with the identity crisis caused by great reforms and changes which put in question the old system of values and legitimacy, and eroded old pre-modern ties in patriarchal or late "feudal" societies. The article tries to check this hypothesis analyzing the turn towards Phase B in the case of Czech intellectuals (in Bohemia) at the end of the eighteenth and first decade of the nineteenth centuries, in the time of radical enlightened reforms and of the wars against the French Revolution. Loosening their old ties and traditional values, these intellectuals tried to find a new identity with their nation-to-be. The author argues that this decision was not a voluntarist mood or "nationalist" plague but that it had serious social motivation. The same can be said about the turn of the incipient Czech national movement towards language and literature. (Original abstract)