Taking a high-level view, it might appear that Europe’s nation-states are falling to pieces. The latest acts are the devolution referenda in Lombardy and Veneto (roughly speaking, the large and rich areas of Northern Italy) and, before that, Catalonia’s independence referendum. Among those who voted (an important caveat), all three voted for less national power and more local power.
The thing to understand about all of this is that Europe’s nation-states are not really nations in the commonly accepted sense. Oh, sure, they have national borders, an official language, a set of stamps, and so on, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Many of them are, in fact, colonial creations cobbled together over the centuries — some newer, some older, some voluntarily, some by conquest. As, and when, the ability to exist outside a strong nation-state arises, we shouldn’t perhaps be all that surprised that some wish to take the opportunity. To a great extent, that’s my reading of what is going on.
As a Briton, I’m well aware that the United Kingdom can easily be viewed as the English empire (the British Empire being that already-dismantled thing which spanned the globe). Certainly, the Irish thought so when they left around 1920. The Scots are arguing over the same move today, and there has long been a weaker Welsh undercurrent. It’s worth remembering that while Wales has been part of “England” since the 13th century, Scotland only formally joined up in 1707. Yes, that’s before the American Revolution, but memories are long over here.
Much the same is true of Spain. It has been a single country since 1500 or so. But even then, it was a patchwork of kingdoms, united by who was king or queen, but with different laws and parliaments in the constituent parts. Aragon was distinct from Catalonia, even though they were closely allied all those centuries.
Italy is much newer; it became a union only in 1871. There wasn’t really a thing called the “Italian nation” before that, other than a rather romantic ideal of what could be. Even today, the varied dialects of Italian are not entirely mutually comprehensible – what we call Italian is in fact the Florentine version of the language, and few residents of that city would understand a Sicilian, possibly even a Neapolitan, in full flow.
In one sense, this doesn’t really matter – the world’s general view is that national borders are national borders, and that’s the way they’re going to stay. Except, of course, that it’s not true at the extremes. Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, the Baltics — these show that in just the last few decades. And there isn’t really any great reason why those distinct regions and nationalities swallowed up in the past have to remain where history put them.
Partly, this has to do with the European Union. I have my own hatreds about that body, but it is also true that by being the overarching economic regulator, and being partially responsible for human rights, much of the necessity of being part of a large and powerful nation-state has faded away. Lombardy, Flanders, and Scotland would have their little difficulties if independent, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome. The question is whether the people want to do so – and it is they, the citizenry, who really should be the people doing that determining.
Secession has something of a bad name in the United States, of course, but that’s no reason to look at the European experience in the same manner. Many to most of the European nations are patchworks of languages, even ethnicities, cobbled together over the centuries we’ve all been fighting each other. Now that the wars over land, and thus the necessity of military power, have ended, there’s no particular logical (as opposed to emotional) reason why those who have ended up together must stay together.
There is a paradox in the political structure of this modern world. As more and more moves up to the supranational level (the EU, UN, Council of Europe, large free trade areas, and so on), then there is less and less need of various units in a nation-state. The varied regions can, if they wish to, quite happily emerge again as independent entities. Note that I’m not saying they should, nor that I approve nor disapprove, of their doing so. I only point to the fact that this is now possible in a manner which it wasn’t even 50 years ago.
It might even be possible to mourn certain states if they do split. But not all that much – Belgium has been around since 1830, and it’s not even certain that anyone other than the flagmakers would notice if it were to completely split into Wallonnia, Flanders, and Brussels.
My point is that, to some extent, the reason for the centralized nation-state has faded away. So, why shouldn’t those states do so too, allowing the re-reemergence of the smaller polities which make them up? If that’s what people want to do, then why should anyone be stopping them?
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute.
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