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Nationalism and the ‘Jewish International’: Religious Internationalism in Europe and the Middle East c.1840–c.1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2008

Abigail Green
Abigail Green
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
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Extract

Jewish cosmopolitanism has long assumed a central place in the ideology of anti-Semitism. Well before the publication of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the idea of international Jewish solidarity served as an argument against Jewish emancipation. In Britain, Sir Robert Inglis famously opposed granting the Jews political rights because “[t]he Jews of London have more sympathy with the Jews resident in Berlin or Vienna than with the Christians among whom they reside.” Likewise, in 1840, the ultramontane Univers saw international lobbying on behalf of Jews accused of ritual murder in Damascus as proof that “the Hebrew nationality is not dead … What religious connection is there between the Talmudists of Alsace, Cologne or the East, and the Messrs. Rothschild and Crémieux?” That L'Univers saw this cosmopolitan fellow-feeling as an expression of Jewish national identity is irrelevant. The point is rather that for anti-Semites Jewish ‘nationalism’ was an inherently international force.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 535 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

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References

1 Cited after Israel Finestein, “Anglo-Jewish Opinion during the Struggle for Emancipation,” in, Israel Finestein, ed., Jewish Society in Victorian England. Collected Essays (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993), 8.

2 Cited after Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: ‘Ritual Murder,’ Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 199.

3 Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, ed., Culture Wars. Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1983).

5 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), ch. 9.

6 This argument is well made in Helmut Walser Smith and Chris Clark, “The Fate of Nathan,” in, Helmut Walser Smith, ed., Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914 (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2001), 3–29.

7 This is the theme of Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

8 On Britain, see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 30–33. On Germany, see Kevin Cramer, The Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

9 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986). See pp. 56–57 on the Jewish resistance movements to Seleucid and Roman rule, a “classical instance in ethnicism in the ancient world”; 64–65 on the missionary and restorative elements characteristic of sacral mythomoters, which Smith regards as characteristic of “all peoples in antiquity” but “most readily apparent” in the Jewish case; 95–96 on the problem of Jewish (and Armenian) continuity between the ancient and the modern worlds; 116–19 on the experience of the Jews as “the third, classical diaspora”; and 204–5 on the place of Israel in modern Zionism.

10 See, for instance, Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 106–7; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 47–48, 68, 76; and Paul R. Brass, “Elite Competition and Nation-Formation,” in, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds., Nationalism, Oxford Readers (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 85–88.

11 This is particularly marked in Michael Graetz, The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France. From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Jane Marie Todd, trans., Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); and Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity. The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France, Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). An exception is Eli Bar-Chen's, Weder Asiaten noch Orientalen. Internationale Jüdische Organisationen und die Europäisierung “Rückständiger” Juden, Ex Oriente Lux (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2005).

12 Shmuel Almog, Nationalism & Antisemitism in Modern Europe, 1815–1945 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1990), 2.

13 Ibid., 51.

14 See, for instance, Walter Laquer, A History of Zionism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1972), ch. 1; David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), ch. 2; and also, to some extent, Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, Harvard Middle Eastern Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), ch. 3.

15 See, for instance, Jacob Katz, “The Forerunners of Zionism,” in, Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira, eds., Essential Papers on Zionism (London: Cassell, 1996), 33–45; Laquer, History of Zionism, ch. 2; Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1995), ch. 2; and Vital, Origins of Zionism, esp. 10–15.

16 Shimoni, Zionist Ideology, 4–5, and see more generally the discussion in ch. 1.

17 Vital, Origins of Zionism, 10–15.

18 Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 2–5; and Jonathan Frankel, “Crisis as a Factor in Modern Jewish Politics, 1840 and 1881–2,” in, Jehuda Reinharz, ed., Living with Antisemitism. Modern Jewish Responses (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 1987), 42–58.

19 On the AIU, see André Chouraqui, Cent Ans d'Histoire. L' Alliance Israélite Universelle et la Renaissance Juive Contemporaine (1860–1960) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965); Graetz, Jews in Nineteenth-Century France; Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity.

20 Frankel, The Damascus Affair.

21 On the Mortara Affair, see David I. Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (London: Picador, 1997).

22 Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity, 1, asserts the modernity of this term, but it is hard to find an appropriate substitute for pre-modern phenomena.

23 See Albert M. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England. A History of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community, 1492–1951 (London: Methuen, 1951), 81.

24 Sh Ar. YD 251:3. For discussion of this principle, see “Charity,” in C-Dh, vol. 5 of Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1973), 339.

25 The initial appeal of the Jews of Damascus to the Jews of Istanbul in 1840 was essentially an example of this phenomenon. See the discussion in Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 79–84.

26 On the Jewish press in general, see Derek J. Penslar, “Introduction,” Jewish History XIV, 1 (2000): 3–8, and the rest of this special issue, “The Press and the Jewish Public Sphere,” edited by Penslar.

27 On this phenomenon in the Anglophone world, see A. Mendelsohn, “Tongue Ties: The Emergence of an Anglophone Jewish Diaspora in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” American Jewish History 93, 2 (June 2007): 177–209.

28 On the diplomatic response to the Russian legislation of the 1840s, see Jacob Jacobson, “Eine Aktion für die russischen Grenzjuden in den Jahren 1843/44,” in, Ismar Elbogen, Josef Meisl, and Mark Wischnitzer, eds., Festschrift zu Simon Dubnows siebzigstem Geburtstag (2. Tischri 5691) (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1930), 237–50. On events in Morocco, see Mohammed Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 1859–1948. Contribution à l'Histoire des Relations Inter-Communautaires en Terre d'Islam, Université Mohammed V. Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines-Rabat. Theses et Memoires (Casablanca: Najah el Jadida, 1994), 123–58. On the Romanian Jews, see Carl Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie (1866–1919). De l'Exclusion à l'Emancipation (Aix en Provence: Editions de l'Université de Provence, 1978); and Beate Welter, Die Judenpolitik der rumänischen Regierung 1866–1888, Menschen und Strukturen. Historisch-Sozialwissenschaftliche Studien (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, New York, and Paris: Peter Lang, 1989). On political anti-Semitism in the German lands, see Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (London: Halban, 1988).

29 On Bleichröder's intervention on behalf of Romanian Jewry, see Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron. Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1977), ch. 14. On the Rothschilds' intervention on behalf of the Jews scheduled to be expelled from the border of the Russian Pale in the 1840s, see Jacobson, “Aktion für die russischen Grenzjuden.” Both Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Crémieux went on semi-diplomatic missions to negotiate with foreign governments on behalf of oppressed Jewry. Montefiore's highest profile foreign interventions were in 1840 (the Damascus Affair), 1846 (Russia), 1858 (the Mortara Affair), 1863 (Morocco), and 1867 (Romania). Crémieux's were in 1840 (the Damascus Affair), and 1865 (Romania).

30 For instance, the Essaouira Relief Fund raised only £2,500 within a relatively short period. Louis Loewe, ed., Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Comprising Their Life and Work as Recorded in Their Diaries from 1812 to 1883, vol. 1 (London: Griffith Farran Okeden & Welsh, 1890), 320. On the Holy Land Relief Fund, see “Appeal Fund on Behalf of the Suffering Jews in the Holy Land. Report Released by Chief Rabbi N. Adler and Moses Montefiore,” file AK 76, pp 16–18, 24, Central Zionist Archives, 5615. On the Persian Famine Relief Fund of 1871–1872, and Montefiore's involvement with the Jews of Persia, see Amnon Netzer, “Montefiore Ve'Yehudei Pers. Parshiot Nevcharot,” Pe'amim 20 (1984): 55–68.

31 See Abigail Green, “Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore: Religion, Nationhood and International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 110, 3 (June 2005): 631–58.

32 See Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews. The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925, The Modern Jewish Experience (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990); and Michael M. Laskier, The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco: 1862–1962, SUNY Series in Modern Jewish History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).

33 See Laskier, Alliance Israélite, 61–62.

34 http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Lithuania/Magid72.htm.

35 Jean H. Quataert, Staging Philanthropy. Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).

36 See for instance, “Jerusalem—Varieties,” The Jewish Chronicle and the Hebrew Observer 452 (14 Aug. 1863): 2; and “Rabbi Sneersohn and President Grant,” The Jewish Chronicle and the Hebrew Observer 9 (NS) (28 May 1869): 13.

37 On the changing relationship between Jews in Palestine and the Diaspora see, for instance, Derek J. Penslar, “Subject/Object: The Relationship between European and Palestinian Jewry in the Nineteenth Century,” in, Menachem Mor, ed., Eretz Israel, Israel, and the Jewish Diaspora: Mutual Relations. Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium of the Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization Held on Sunday-Monday, October 9–10, 1988, Studies in Jewish Civilization (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), 65–79. Note also the intensive debates over the merits of productivization and traditional philanthropy. See, for instance, Cecil Bloom, “Samuel Montagu's and Sir Moses Montefiore's Visits to Palestine in 1875,” Journal of Israeli History. Studies in Zionism and Statehood 17, 3 (Autumn 1996): 263–82.

38 On this episode, see above all Israel Bartal, “Tokhniot ha'Hityashvut me'Yemei Masao shel Montefiore le'Eretz-Israel (1839),” Shalem 2 (1976): 231–96. More generally, on Montefiore, see the official biography by Lucien Wolf, Sir Moses Montefiore. A Centennial Biography, with Extracts from Letters and Journals (London: John Murray, 1884); the essays collected in Sonia L. Lipman and Vivian D. Lipman, eds., The Century of Moses Montefiore (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, Oxford University Press, 1985); and Israel Bartal, ed., The Age of Moses Montefiore (Jerusalem: Kav Uketav. Institute for Research on Sephardi and Oriental Jewish Heritage, 1987); and Abigail Green, “Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore.” See Moshe Samet, Moshe Montefiore, Metsiut Ve'Agadah (Jerusalem: Carmel, 1989) for a revisionist—not to say iconoclastic—approach.

39 For details of Philippson's initiative, see Derek J. Penslar, Shylock's Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 105–7.

40 “Appeal Fund on Behalf of the Suffering Jews in the Holy Land.”

41 On the Rothschild hospital, see A. Schischa, “The Saga of 1855: A Study in Depth,” in, Sonia L. Lipman and Vivian D. Lipman, eds., The Century of Moses Montefiore (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, 1985), 279–85.

42 For a discussion of this, see Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 323–25. Note also the impetus given to the nationalist student circle of Abraham Benisch and Moritz Steinschneider, on which see Salo W. Baron, “Abraham Benisch's Project for Jewish Colonization in Palestine,” in, Salo W. Baron and Alexander Marx, eds., Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1935), 72–85.

43 “Leitartikel,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums VI, 37 (10 Sept. 1842): 545–47.

44 “A German Presentation to Sir Moses Montefiore,” The Voice of Jacob II, 28 (23 Sept. 1842): 23.

45 “Die Geschichte unserer Nation,” “Papa, 26 Sept. (Privatmitth). Zeitungsnachrichten/Oesterreich,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums IV, 43 (24 Oct. 1840): 614. Hirsch Lehren wrote to Adolphe Crémieux on 11 April 1840, expressing “the unanimous gratitude of our entire insulted nation for the fact that you have selected to undertake the defense…” (cited after Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 239). Sir Moses Montefiore announced his intention to proced to Damascus, saying: “I feel, I deeply feel, the immense importance to our nation of the steps I may take…” (“Meeting of the Board of Deputies Held June 25 1840/[Jewish Calendar] 5600, at the Alliance Office,” Minute books of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1838–08/1840, Acc/3121/A/005/3, pp. 186–90, London Metropolitan Archives).

46 See, for instance, Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism, 1600–1918, vol. I (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1919), ch. 22.

47 See, for instance, Montefiore's description of the Jewish community in Malta in 1827: “They said there were about twelve families in decent circumstances, and altogether about 100 Jews belonging to Malta: that M. Abcasis, from Barbary, & J. Sananes from Gibraltar, interfered very much in the nation, and caused quarrels and trouble.” “Monday 13th [Aug.], [1827], Malta. Montefiore, Moses, Journal 1827–1828,” Heirloom, fair copy, Arthur Sebag-Montefiore Archive, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Likewise, in a private letter to his nephew Louis Cohen in 1840, Montefiore stated, “the Jews are suffering in every part of the East, for on this false charge some of the most respectable of Alexandria assured me they would be obliged to leave Egypt, unless we could succeed in removing the stigma from the Nation.” “Sir Moses Montefiore, August 14th 1840/5600, Alexandria, to Louis Cohen,” Hartley Library, Southampton MS259 A880 Folder 1 (1793–1841). For a discussion of this idea, see Miriam Bodian, “‘Men of the Nation’: The Shaping of Converso Identity in Early Modern Europe,” Past & Present 143 (1994): 48–76.

48 Sir Moses Montefiore, Alexandria, 25 Aug. 1840, to the Committee of Correspondence. Recorded in Minutes of meeting of the Board of Deputies held 26 Aug. 1840/5600.

49 Cited after Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 225.

50 Isidore Cahen, “Mélanges. Le Droit de Légitime Défense,” Archives Israélites de France, Mar. 1859, 149.

51 See, for instance, Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831–1859). Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th-Century Europe (Brussels and Rome: Belgisch Historisch Instituut te Rome Bibliothek, 2001).

52 On Catholic internationalism, see the essays collected in both Emiel Lambert, ed., The Black International. 1870–1878. The Holy See and Militant Catholicism in Europe, KADOC Studies (Brussels and Rome: Belgisch Historisch Instituut te Rome, 2002); and Vincent Viaene, ed., The Papacy and the New World Order. Vatican Diplomacy, Catholic Opinion and International Politics in the Time of Leo XIII, 1878–1903, KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005).

53 More generally, for a thought-provoking discussion of the place of Catholic internationalism in world history, see Vincent Viaene, “International History, Religious History, Catholic History: Perspectives for Cross-Fertilization (1830–1914),” European History Quarterly 38 (2008).

54 This is one of the central arguments made by Vincent Viaene in Belgium and the Holy See.

55 Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 78.

56 Cited after Frankel, ibid., 118.

57 The pope refused to allow reports of the Damascus Affair to appear in the press of the Papal States. On the attitude of the Papacy, see ibid., 228–30.

58 “Sir Moses Montefiore, 21st July 1840, Marseilles to Louis Cohen, My Dear Friend,” Hartley Library, Southampton MS259 A880 Folder 1 (1793–1841), “Friday July 24th, 1840. Civita Vecchia,” transcript of Sir Moses Montefiore's diary 1840, MS. Var 21 IIa Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.

59 L'Univers, 23, 24, 25 Oct. 1858. Cited after Nathalie Isser, Antisemitism during the French Second Empire, American University Studies Series IX, History (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 34.

60 L'Univers, 15–16 Oct. 1858. Cited after Isser, Antisemitism during the French Second Empire, 39.

61 Civiltà Cattolica, 30 Oct. 1859, as reprinted in full in, “The Little Neophyte—Edgardo Mortara,” The Jewish Chronicle and the Hebrew Observer XVI, 250 (30 Sept. 1859).

62 On Protestant anti-slavery see, for instance, David Turley, The Culture of English Antislavery, 1780–1860 (London and New York: Routledge, 1991). On the international missionary connection, see Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), ch. 5.

63 This is the argument made by Porter in Religion versus Empire?

64 See, for instance, Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag. Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester: Apollos, 1990), 85–91.

65 See Bar-Chen, Weder Asiaten noch Orientalen. On the relevance of the mission civilisatrice in a Jewish context, see Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity.

66 For instance, on European anti-clericalism, see Wolfram Kaiser, “‘Clericalism—That is Our Enemy!’: European Anticlericalism and the Culture Wars,” in, Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, eds., Culture Wars. Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 47–76.

67 On the background to Pieritz's mission, see Frankel, The Damascus Affair, 82–83.

68 See Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews, 21.

69 On conversionism, see William Thomas Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, 1809 to 1908 (London: n.p., 1908); and Mervin Scult, “The Conversion of the Jews and the Origins of Jewish Emancipation in England,” Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1968.

70 “Evangelical Alliance and the Mortara Case,” The Jewish Chronicle and Hebrew Observer XV (12 Nov. 1858): 4.

71 On Finn, see Mordechai Eliav, “Aliyato ve Nephilato shel Ha'Konsul ha'Briti James Finn,” Cathedra 65 (Sept. 1992): 37–81.

72 For a summary of this, see Israel Freidin, “Bikur Holim Perushim be'Yerushalayim me'Hevra le'Beit Holim,” Cathedra 27 (Mar. 1983): 122–29.

73 On the Bishopric, see A. L. Tibawi, British Interests in Palestine, 1800–1901. A Study of Religious and Educational Enterprise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 44–63. On the Anglican missionary hospital, see Norbert Schwake, Die Entwicklung des Krankenhauswesens der Stadt Jerusalem vom Ende des 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Herzogenrath: Verlag Murken-Altrogge, 1983), 108–92.

74 “Jewish Hospital at Jerusalem,” The Voice of Jacob II, 32 (28 Oct. 1842): n.p.

75 On the indigenous Jewish hospital, see Freidin, “Bikur Holim Perushim”; and Schwake, Entwicklung des Krankenhauswesens, 217–23.

76 “The Holy Land (Establishment of a Jewish Dispensary There),” The Voice of Jacob II, 39 (3 Feb. 1843): 107–8.

77 See James Finn, Stirring Times, or Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856 by the Late James Finn, Edited and Compiled by His Widow, vol. II (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1878), 61–76.

78 Ibid., 73.

79 See Margalit Shilo, Princess or Prisoner? Jewish Women in Jerusalem, 1840–1914 (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 152.

80 See Kenbib, Juifs et Musulmans au Maroc, 108–9.

81 See Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews, 54–55; also “Concerning the Missionary Schools in Constantinople,” Hamagid 10 (4 Mar. 1868): 75, at http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/newspapers/hamagid/html/hamagid-18680304.htm.

82 “Great Fire at Smyrna,” The Voice of Jacob I, 1 (16 Sept. 1841): 6–7.

83 “The Conflagration at Smyrna,” The Voice of Jacob I, 3 (29 Oct. 1841): 21.

84 “The Smyrna Jews,” The Voice of Jacob I, 6 (10 Dec. 1841): 46.

85 Graetz, Jews in Nineteenth-Century France.

86 See, for instance, Mary McCune, “The Whole Wide World without Limits.” International Relief, Gender Politics, and American Jewish Women, 1893–1930 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005); Jonathan Dekel-Chen, “An Unlikely Triangle: Philanthropists, Commissars, and American Statesmanship Meet in Soviet Crimea, 1922–37,” Diplomatic History 27 (July 2003): 353–76; and Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land. Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

87 See, for example, Jeremy Stolow, “Transnationalism and the New Religio-Politics: Reflections on a Jewish Orthodox Case,” Theory, Culture & Society 21, 2 (Apr. 2004): 109–37.

88 For a discussion of the literature on religion and nationhood, and more generally on the role of religion as a sacred foundation of and cultural resource for nationhood, see Smith, Chosen Peoples. On the importance of Christianity as an underpinning for European nationalisms, see Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). On religion as a means of establishing communion through common practice and/or as a badge of membership for a given ethnic community, see Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 68. On nationalism as a political religion, see George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from The Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: H. Fertig, 1975); and more recently, Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: Religion and Politics in Europe from the Enlightenment to the Great War (London: HarperCollins, 2005). More specifically, for an investigation of the relationship between religion and nationalism in Britain, see Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), ch. 1. On France, see Caroline C. Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). On the German experience, see Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics 1870–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

89 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 175.

90 On the significance of war as a crucible of nationhood, see the discussion in Dieter Langewiesche, “‘Nation,’ ‘Nationalismus,’ ‘Nationalstaat’ in der Europäischen Geschichte Seit dem Mittelalter—Versuch einer Bilanz,” in, Dieter Langewiesche and Georg Schmidt, eds., Föderative Nation. Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation Bis Zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000), 22–26. See also the articles by Carl Horst and Georg Schmidt in the same volume. On the role of intra-state competition in popularizing the idea of nationhood see, above all, Oliver Zimmer, A Contested Nation. History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); also of relevance is Abigail Green, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).