Peoples without states fell back on language and ethnicity as national identity

Evidence

The lexicographic revolution in Europe, however, created, and gradually spread, the conviction that languages (in Europe at least) were, so to speak, the personal property of quite specific groups – their daily speakers and readers – and moreover that these groups, imagined as communities, were entitled to their autonomous place in a fraternity of equals. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 345 (#complicates, via linked claim)

This stay in France turned out in the end to be very profitable. It confirmed for me what I already sensed: that I was not French, that I had never been French. Language, culture—these are not enough to make you belong to a people. Something more is needed: a common life, common experiences and memories, common aims. All this I lacked in France. My stay in France showed me that I belonged to an Algerian community, showed me that l was a stranger in France. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 572 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

At the same time, slowly increasing literacy (by 1869 one third of the adult population), the spread of print-Magyar, and the growth of a small, but energetic, liberal intelligentsia all stimulated a popular Hungarian nationalism conceived very differently from that of the nobility. This popular nationalism, symbolized for later generations by the figure of Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894), had its hour of glory in the Revolution of 1848. The revolutionary regime not only got rid of the imperial governors appointed by Vienna, but abolished the supposedly Ur-Magyar feudal Diet of Noble Counties, and proclaimed reforms to put an end to serfdom and noblemen’s tax-exempt status, as well as to curb drastically the entailment of estates. In addition, it was decided that all Hungarian-speakers should be Hungarian (as only the privileged had been before) and every Hungarian should speak Magyar (as only some Magyars had hitherto been accustomed to do). As Ignotus drily comments, ‘The “nation” was, by the standard of that time (which viewed the rise of the twin stars of Liberalism and Nationalism with boundless optimism), justified in feeling itself extremely generous when it “admitted” the Magyar peasant with no discrimination save for that relating to property; and the non-Magyar Christians on condition they became Magyar; and eventually, with some reluctance and a delay of twenty years, the Jews.’ Kossuth’s own position, in his fruitless negotiations with leaders of the various non-Magyar minorities, was that these peoples should have exactly the same civil rights as the Magyars, but that since they lacked ‘historical personalities’ they could not form nations on their own. Today, this position may seem a trifle arrogant. It will appear in a better light if we recall that the brilliant, young, radical-nationalist poet Sándor Petófi (1823–1849), a leading spirit of 1848, on one occasion referred to the minorities as ‘ulcers on the body of the motherland.’ — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 386 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: German race-thinking arose as a substitute for missing political nationhood; Supranationalist class identity among English workers retreated before nationalism; Language and culture cannot confer national belonging without shared experience — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 572 (+12 more)

Related

• Popular nationalism reproduced exclusion by demanding linguistic uniformity (similarity 0.87)
• Languages came to be seen as the property of specific national communities (similarity 0.83)
• Language policy framed as zero-sum triggered counter-nationalism. (similarity 0.82)
• Early American nationalisms did not depend on language difference (similarity 0.79)
• Nationalist revival frames the vernacular’s decline as a shameful gap to be redeemed (similarity 0.79)
• A language of state becomes a double-edged loyalty when it gains national valence (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Languages came to be seen as the property of specific national communities #complicates (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 345
• Language and culture cannot confer national belonging without shared experience #qualifies (0.82) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 572
• Popular nationalism reproduced exclusion by demanding linguistic uniformity #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 386
• Medieval identity formed through ethnogenesis rather than national statehood #corroborates (0.78) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 86
• Supranationalist class identity among English workers retreated before nationalism #corroborates (0.72)