070065 SE Seminar - Border and Nation after Empire (2022S)

Border and Nation after Empire
This seminar will challenge the “natural” coincidence of border and nation, as it was propagated at the moment, when colonial or multi-ethnic empires were transformed into nation-sates. The post-imperial moments stretch from the early 19th century in Latin America, the post WWI years in East and South East Europe and the post WWII years in most parts of Asia and Africa.
As an integral part of human organisation, borders and boundaries can manifest quite differently, depending on the political and socio-economic circumstances, especially if you see them as a multi-faceted phenomenon of inclusion – exclusion, openness – closedness, permeability – impermeability, that structures human behaviour at any time and in all respects of belonging. Today, the most dominant conception of border is the linear demarcation between state-territories. This, however, is a rather young phenomenon, closely connected to the modern state-building processes of North-Western Europe. The resulting idea of a correspondence between statehood, nation and territory was gradually enforced as a guiding international principle, challenging other conceptions of territorial and political organisation in Europe and beyond (like kinship based or nomadic societies, merchant or urban networks, multi-cultural empires or federations, local or regional autonomies for specific ethnic, cultural or religious groups etc.) – most importantly through colonial expansion as well as decolonisation. However, rather than being completely replaced, competing visions of nation, state and world-order persisted, were reformulated and continue to be discussed, opening up alternative political possibilities until far into the 20th century, and today.
The concept of nation is much younger than borders and boundaries. This seminar will start investigating nation and nationalism at a moment, when it became a leading principle of state integration in the 19th century, either in form of a political nation of citizens or in combination with ethnic and linguistic homogeneity as markers for inclusion into and exclusion from a nation.
The narrative of a linear and natural path from an imperial world order to the order of nation-states has been increasingly criticised as too simplistic, disregarding the great variety of discourses, visions and conceptions of nation, statehood, autonomy, sovereignty and independence articulated during the 19th and 20th century. The nation-states we see today were not the sole and inevitable options to succeed empires. It is therefore an ongoing field of inquiry to take into account political possibilities and alternatives comprising aspects of territorial demarcation, processes of nation-building, as well as notions of (transnational) solidarities and senses of belonging. The seminar is open to all European empires and their colonies, as well as to different manifestations of core nationalism, national liberation, internationalism or transnationalism in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
After the course, students will be able to name and combine a variety of approaches towards the interrelation of state, nation, nationalism and border (political, economic, cultural and social history, nationalism studies, border studies, history of ideas) in order to situate, discuss and frame their own (global-)historical research questions and final papers.