Nationalism and Separatism

Sun-Ki Chai

Th e historical era following World War II is often referred to as the era of decolo-

nization, the time when the former European powers, as well as America and

Japan, gave up their overseas empires and dozens of new sovereign countries

came into being. However, it could just as easily be called the era of nationalist

separatism, as the sheer number of ethnic and pan-ethnic movements seeking

independence from the political status quo multiplied greatly.

Relevance

Th e relevance of these movements is clear, since they fundamentally altered the

shape of the world’s geopolitical map. Th ey brought into being dozens of new

countries and changed the boundaries of dozens of existing ones. Th ey also al-

tered the world balance of power by creating an “unaligned bloc” of independent

countries who were not willing to stand under the shadow of the United States or

its great Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union. Finally, they set the stage for the

most recent period of post–Cold War history, in which ethnicity-based national-

ism plays a major, or even dominant, role in international confl ict.

Origins

While there were many causes for the origins of these various types of national-

ism, they can be attributed to two major causes: Th e fi rst related to the events

leading up to and following the dismantling of the colonization system, which

raised numerous questions about what the basis ought to be for the resulting

newly independent countries. Th e other major cause was the rise of cultural sen-

timents (particularly in Western countries), that placed a great deal of impor-

tance on cultural identity. Th is in turn strengthened the impetus for nationalist

movements even in well-established, modern countries.

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Dimensions

Th e separatisms and regionalisms that occurred were so varied that it is diffi cult to make generalizations regarding their eff ects on diff erent groups. However, admittedly with some simplifi cation, it is possible to divide them into three dif-ferent major categories: the anticolonial, the postcolonial, and the modern in-dustrialized versions. Even in each category, there are numerous dimensions of variation that cannot be completely covered in a single chapter. Moreover, be-cause of the huge number of movements that arose and changed shape during this period, we will have to focus on discussing large cases and major trends rather than encompass the entire picture.

Anticolonial Separatism and RegionalismWhile process called “decolonization” is conveniently dated as beginning imme-diately after the surrender of the Axis forces in 1945, the dismantling of colonies itself started earlier and has been a long and drawn-out one. Even if we exclude Spain and Portugal’s loss of their Latin American colonies in the 19th century, there had been some earlier attrition in the Western colonial project, most notably with the nominal independence of Arab, post-Ottoman, League of Nations Mandates oc-curring in the 1930s and during the War itself. Mandates were territories that were given special status under the Article 22 of the League’s covenant, which promised most Mandates eventual independence. And while the single-largest ex-colony, India and Pakistan, gained independence in 1947, most African colonies did not do so until the 1960s or later. Even today, Western powers retain vestiges of their over-seas possessions in the Pacifi c and Caribbean, so the process is not complete.

Because of the protracted dying throes of colonialism, much of the separatist nationalism of the postwar era was originally directed against those colonial powers that remained in place, or were aimed at shaping the political confi gura-tion and boundaries of postindependence states.

In British India, the focus by 1945 was on the latter. Th e devastation of the British economy in the aftermath of World War II led to a quickly moving consen-sus within Britain that the maintenance of its huge colonial possessions in South Asia, encompassing many times the population of the British Isles themselves, was unsustainable and an impediment to postwar reconstruction. Th e defeat of Winston Churchill by Clement Atlee’s Labour Party in the election of 1945 re-moved the main impediment to this divestment of what was increasingly seen as an onerous responsibility by the British public.

In this atmosphere, Indian domestic politics turned into a jockeying for infl u-ence over the disposition of independent India. Most notable here was the con-fl ict between the Congress Party, led by Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Muslim League, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, over Jinnah’s “two-nation” theory through which he sought to promulgate the idea of a separate independent Muslim state, Paki-

stan. Th e origins of the Congress-Muslim League confl ict were long-seated and

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complex, but what is important to note is that, despite the religion-based nature

of their confl ict, both parties were led primarily not by religious extremists but by

men of quite pragmatic, and if we may say so, secular, outlooks. Nonetheless, by the

last preindependence elections of 1946, there was little room for compromise, as

Congress was committed to governing alone and the Muslim League was equally

committed to the idea that Muslims would be oppressed in an undivided India.

Th e communal slaughter that followed the partition into independent India

and Pakistan in 1947 was one of the great human tragedies of the 20th century.

Whether or not the human cost of maintaining an undivided India in an atmo-

sphere of incessant religious strife would have been greater or lesser than the

cost of partition is a question that is very diffi cult to answer, though this has not

stopped many from trying. Moreover, the debate over the “two-nation” versus

unifi ed vision of the subcontinent continues to be a boulder in the way of improv-

ing relations between the two countries, manifested in the way that each side

frames the status of Kashmir (a situation that is discussed in the next section).

Th e decolonization process in Northeast Asia, though smaller in scale than

that of South Asia, was equally seen as inevitable as World War II reached its con-

clusion. Th e defeat of Japan meant that the maintenance of its colonies in Korea,

Taiwan, and Manchuria was out of the question. Furthermore, due to the much

more constricted room for indigenous party politics that the Japanese colonial

powers had allowed, there was greater uncertainty over the outcome of contesta-

tion among local politicians regarding the post-Japanese political system.

Th e main question in the case of Taiwan, and to a lesser extent, Manchuria,

was whether possession would revert to whichever Chinese government would

be able to take power in the aftermath of the Japanese withdrawal. Taiwan was a

peripheral domain that had only been offi cially incorporated into Chinese terri-

tory in the 19th century, while Manchuria, the ancestral home of the deposed

Ching Dynasty, had therefore long maintained a separate identity from the ethnic

Chinese (Han) core, despite Manchuria and China being politically unifi ed for

centuries. However, in neither case, at the time, was there a movement for Tai-

wanese or Manchurian separatism strong enough to seriously challenge the no-

tion held by both the Communists and Nationalists that both territories were

“naturally” a part of China. Korea, on the other hand, was a historically unifi ed

state with a strong sense of common identity, hence division of the peninsula as a

viable ideology was never seriously raised. Th is in turn made the partition into

North and South that occurred upon Japanese withdrawal much more traumatic

for Koreans than the division between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland that oc-

curred a few years later.

In Southeast Asia, the situation in the Philippines was the closest to that of

South and Northeast Asia, with independence promised by an American govern-

ment that was retreating into immediate postwar isolationism prior to the chill

of the Cold War. Th e Dutch and British East Indies were a diff erent situation, as

various events conspired against immediate independence.

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Th e Indonesian nationalist movement for independence from the Dutch was

perhaps the strongest and most sustained in the colonized world next to that of

India, yet it was internally divided and faced a colonial power that was far less

willing to give up power than were the British. Th e active collaboration of many

Indonesian nationalist leaders, including Sukarno and Hatta, with the Japanese

was an additional factor that reduced international pressure for Dutch with-

drawal in the postwar era. Hence, although the Japanese passed power over to

Indonesian nationalists as their own authority slipped away, the Dutch immedi-

ately sought to reassert their control over their erstwhile possessions. It was only

after four years of protracted warfare that the Dutch were forced to withdraw,

and independence was achieved.

In the British East Indies, the colonial power had promised independence by

1949, yet another eight years were required before that actually occurred. Th is

was not due to the lack of any nationalist political activity within the country, but

due in part to two factors. Th e fi rst was the resistance among some ethnic Malay

leaders to the idea that postwar Malaysia would be a multiethnic, secular state,

with similar treatment given to Malays and to minorities of China and Indian an-

cestry, who had been brought in as immigrants through earlier British policies.

Th is confl ict was exacerbated by the extended revolt by the Chinese-led Malayan

Communist Party (MCP), which threatened the ability of any postindependence

government. It is important to note, however, that the MCP was not a separatist

organization. After all, it would have been diffi cult to separate the Chinese popu-

lation from the rest, since they were distributed throughout the Straits Settle-

ments. Moreover, the fl ag-bearer of Malay ethnic nationalism, the United Malays

National Organization, soon formed an alliance with Chinese and Indian politi-

cal parties, illustrating the complexities of the political situation as Malaysia

gained independence in 1957.

In French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos), the Vietnamese Com-

munist nationalist faction (Viet Minh) never allied itself with the Japanese occu-

pation. However, it benefi ted from the undermining of established French authority

to assert its control over much of urban Vietnam soon after the end of the war.

Th is control was only temporary, and eff orts to negotiate with the French broke

down over the French desire to retain its position in southern Vietnam (Cochin-

china) while ceding authority to much of the North. A war of independence fol-

lowed, reaching its conclusion in the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, as

well as the Geneva Agreement that left the country free from French rule, but di-

vided between the Viet Minh government in the North and the regime in the South

led by the charismatic leader Ngo Dinh Diem. Th is division, however, did not re-

fl ect separatist sentiments in each region, but rather the outcome of external forces

on two competing regimes, both purporting to represent the entire Vietnamese

nation. Cambodia and Laos obtained independence at about the same time, but

remained internally divided as the inheritor regimes to whom the French handed

over power to were opposed on multiple fronts by domestic opposition forces.

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Th e toll exacted on French military and political resources by the Indochina war created an opportunity for independence movements in a major group of its colonies in a very diff erent part of the world, North Africa. Th ese colonies in-cluded Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. After banning the Tunisian nationalist Neo-Destourian Party and imprisoning their leader, Habib Bourguiba, in 1952, the colonial government two years later freed Bourguiba, unbanned the party, and granted autonomy, eff ectively setting Tunisia on a clear path to independence. Likewise, they allowed the nationalist sultan Muhammad V to return to power in Morocco in 1956, setting off a similar pattern of events. In both cases the French government made major concessions to nationalist movements, choosing to avoid once again expending itself fi ghting against sustained insurgency. Th e situation was quite diff erent in Algeria, which had a much larger European-descended pop-ulation and which France had long considered an integral part of its territory. Th e brutal Algerian War of Independence lasted from 1954 until 1962, during which French and world popular opinion turned increasingly against the violent tactics used by both sides against civilian populations. Even independence and the ascendancy of the Front de Libération Nationale to power did not bring about peace, as a massive exodus of Europeans and reprisals against alleged collabora-tors followed soon after.

In contrast to events in the various regions of Asia and Northern Africa, inde-pendence in sub-Saharan Africa came relatively late. Th e fi rst country to gain in-dependence, Ghana, did not achieve this until 1957, while the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique had to wait until 1976 to gain their independence. Th ere are perhaps a number of reasons for this, including the fact that, with a few exceptions (e.g., Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party), nationalist parties in the region were of relatively recent vintage and had not consolidated demands for in-dependence during World War II in the way that parties in other parts of the world had. Furthermore, many of the newer parties were organized around eth-nic lines, which made it more diffi cult for them to claim legitimacy for a takeover from imperial rule. Th is latter fact, which would come back to haunt postinde-pendence Africa, was itself due in part to the largely arbitrary boundaries that the colonial powers had drawn around their possessions. Finally, another reason can be found in the presence of colonial powers, such as Belgium and Portugal, who had deliberately prevented the rise of an educated indigenous class that could take over the reigns of government. Hence decolonization here was a protracted process, despite the fact that both the British and French governments had by the mid-1950s publicly committed themselves to expediting decolonization in sub-Saharan Africa.

Th e history of separatism and regionalism during the dying days of Western colonialism is a complex one, since in many cases political parties were simulta-neously fi ghting to gain independence for their nations while jockeying for infl u-ence over the postindependence dispensation. Overarching these struggles were a few larger ideological forces that drove much of the process forward. Not the least of these was the very idea of nationalism itself, which was by now quite fa-

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miliar to the educated indigenous elites. Nationalism as an organizing principle that empowered the rhetoric of anticolonial leaders and allowed them to place their aspirations in a framework that legitimized them according to universal norms familiar to the publics of the Western powers. Nor was nationalist ideol-ogy simply a pragmatic tool for gaining external support; it was a powerful force for unifying large and often disparate groups of people under a single banner (though this would serve as a double-edged sword in the postcolonial era). Hence it was an appropriate ideology for anticolonial struggles in a way that more paro-chial ideas on the one hand, and sweeping class analysis, on the other, were not.

Anticolonial Separatism and RegionalismTh e “birth of the new states” after decolonization presented a variety of conun-drums for intellectuals and policymakers, but perhaps the greatest concern to both, after economic development, was that of how these often artifi cially cre-ated artifacts of colonial policies would resist political fragmentation without the coercive hand of the Western powers holding them together. Th is concern was multiplied (at least in the West) by the advent of the Cold War, and the fact that each of these new states was seen as a potential ally, enemy, or even battleground in the battle for world supremacy. In relation to this, there was a widespread be-lief that political chaos would leave these new states “ripe for Communism.”

Because of this, “nation-building” became the mantra of much of the political development studies, with this term referring to the replacement of parochial ties and loyalties with broader ties to larger political entities, particularly the state. Visionary political leaders sought to “activate” their populations from be-coming passive subjects to becoming participants in their country’s program of transformation.

Almost immediately, however, the complexities and contradictions of the n ation-building exercise became clear. Once the process of national identity cre-ation was set in place through education, media campaigns, and urbanization, there was no way to contain it within a single set of entities corresponding to ex-isting state units. Th e ideas and emotions of nationalism could just as easily, and in many cases more easily, be harnessed to attract allegiance to racial, religious, linguistic, and regional identities that were larger than the traditional parochial ones, yet still incongruent with the aim of creating citizens of a unitary state. Often these various types of ethnic identities were at a level below the state, but just as often they cross-cut state boundaries, bringing into motion regional and international confl icts that themselves threatened state integrity.

In South Asia, the partition of India and Pakistan did not bring an end to sep-aratist sentiments, and indeed, it triggered a series of events that threatened the territorial integrity of both countries. Th e most immediate source of such threats was the accession of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority territory, to India, as a result of the acquiescence of its traditional ruling leader, Maharajah Hari Singh. Th is accession fundamentally went against Pakistan’s own self-proclaimed role as defender of South Asia’s Muslim populations, as well as the apparent sentiments

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of the majority population in Kashmir itself. Because of its Muslim majority, the

disposition of Kashmir has often been viewed as a crucial case for the one-nation/

two-nation ideological battle between the two countries, and has led to war be-

tween the countries on three diff erent occasions, the most recent being the 1998

Kargil confl ict.

Pakistan suff ered from an even greater threat to its boundaries in the form of

East Pakistan, the Bengali-speaking portion of the country, separated from the

West by India. Despite containing over half the population of the entire country,

East Pakistanis were marginalized in the halls of power, which were dominated

by Punjabis and Mohajirs (refugees from Urdu/Hindi-speaking areas of North

India). Th is sense of repression came to a head when the Bengali Awami League

under the leadership of Sheik Mujibur Rahman won a National Assembly major-

ity in the 1970 election under the banner of autonomy for the East. Th is led to the

imposition of martial law and a bloody crackdown against Bengali nationalist in-

terests by the Pakistani Army. Th e intervention of India, however, shifted the war

decisively against Pakistan and led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh

by the end of 1971. It is important to note, however, that while Bangladesh to a

great extent was a creation of Bengali nationalist impulses, this was more in the

context of the division of power within the Muslim-majority areas of the subcon-

tinent rather than the expression of pan-Bengali sentiment. Indeed, the merger of

India’s Hindu-majority Bengali-speaking West Bengal into a greater Bangladesh

was never a notion put forward by actors on either side of the border.

Th e late 1970s saw the rise of another independence movement in India, the

movement for an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan, in the Punjab. Th e ori-

gins of Sikh separatism were complex, but historical causes include a combina-

tion of memories of the grand Sikh-Punjabi kingdom of Ranjit Singh in the early

19th century, anger over the division of Punjab between India and Pakistan, and

discontent over the partition of Indian Punjab into multiple states. Proximate

causes included an economic downturn in the 1980s, as well as the emergence of

the radical Sikh separatist militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, whose followers

occupied the seat of the Sikh religion, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Operation

Blue Star, the attack in June 1984 by Indian troops on Bhindranwale’s followers,

succeeded in destroying them but also set off a Sikh radical backlash culminating

in the assassination of Indira Gandhi a few months later. Insurgency continued

on for a few years, but eventually died down due to a combination of policies, in-

cluding a violent crackdown against Khalistani supporters and a simultaneous

eff ort by the Indian government to co-opt moderate nationalists from the Akali

Dal party.

Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) had always held a separate political status as a Crown

colony under British rule and attained independence separately in 1947. Almost

immediately, however, tension grew between the Sinhalese population, predomi-

nantly Buddhist, which held majority power in the new state, and minority Tam-

ils, predominantly Hindu, who had enjoyed disproportionate status under British

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rules. Under the leadership of Sinhalese nationalist leaders, such as Nathan Ban-

daranaike, a series of laws were passed enshrining the Sinhalese language and the

Buddhist religion within the Sri Lankan state. Tamil political parties responded

by asserting a right to autonomy for Tamil-majority areas in the north and east of

the country. Th e most radical of these Tamil parties espoused separatism and the

creation of an independent Tamil state, or Eelam. Th is viewpoint was soon domi-

nated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who launched a string of

increasingly successful military attacks against Sri Lankan armed forces, as well

as Tamil interests who questioned their vision of Tamil nationalism. Th e Indo-Sri

Lankan accords brought Indian troops into the country in 1987, but they were

forced to withdraw after the Sri Lankan government revoked its support. A num-

ber of uneasy ceasefi res have held since the early part of the current century, but

the confl ict remains far from settlement.

In Northeast Asia, the strength of separatist activity in the postcolonial era

has been far weaker than in South Asia for a variety of reasons. Both Japan and

Korea have long viewed themselves as relatively homogenous states with only

tiny minority populations. And while Korea is divided between North and South,

this is, like the former division between North and South Vietnam, not the result

of separatist politics but of a stalemate between two sides that each purport to

represent the entire country. Likewise, as long as the Kuomintang Party retained

Women fi ghters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) march in October 2002. (AFP/Getty Images)

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single-party power in Taiwan, the government there viewed itself as the legitimate

ruler of all China, hence did not express its opposition to the mainland Commu-

nist regime in separatist terms. And while the mainland itself was ethnically quite

plural, the coercive power of the Communist state eff ectively squelched all but

the mildest forms of Tibetan and Uygur nationalism until the end of the 1980s.

Southeast Asia, on the other hand, faced a variety of separatist movements,

most occurring on the peripheries of its large multiethnic peninsula and island

states. Perhaps the worst hit was Indonesia, with its wide expanse of islands

and almost incalculable diversity. Almost from its very outset, it faced a power-

ful and well-armed separatist movement in Aceh, one that had been going on

continuously against the previous Dutch occupiers since the beginning of the

20th century. Active insurgency began with the rise of the Free Aceh Movement

(GAM) in the mid-1970s, and continued without much letup until a movement

toward a peace agreement began in the wake of the devastating tsunami of late

2004. Another insurgency arose from Indonesia’s forcible annexation of East Timor

following the sudden withdrawal of its Portuguese colonial rulers in 1977, an ex-

tended fi ght against the FRETILIN (Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Inde-

pendente) separatist group resulted eventually in the granting of independence

to East Timor in 2002. In West Papua (Irian Jaya), short-lived independent status

was followed by occupation and attempts by the Indonesian government to bind

its predominantly Melanesian population to the state through a much-condemned

so-called Act of Free Choice and a policy of transmigration. Th is has led to a low-

level guerilla war by the forces of the West Papuan Liberation Movement (OPM)

since the mid-1960s.

In the Philippines, the postindependence government faced opposition from

the Muslim populations of Southern Mindanao, which culturally had more in com-

mon with its neighbors to the south in Malaysia and Indonesia than to the pre-

dominately Catholic mainstream Philippine culture. A 1996 agreement between

the government and the largest Moro nationalist group, the Moro Nationalist

Liberation Front (MNLF) failed to halt the confl ict, as other groups continued to

reject that basis for the agreement. In Th ailand, a superfi cially similar situation

exists in the south, which contains a large Malay-speaking Muslim population in

a predominately Buddhist society. Yet large-scale Muslim nationalist insurgency

did not start there until the mid-1990s.

In North Africa, the major ethnic divide has long been seen as the one be-

tween Arab and Berber populations. Nonetheless, despite frequently expressed

grievances by Berber political parties throughout the region against Arabization

policies, this has rarely been expressed in separatist terms or as armed rebel-

lion. Indeed, the longest-running separatist confl ict in North Africa is outside of

the Arab-Berber divide, occurring continuously in the Western Sahara since the

1960s, and since the 1970s under the leadership of the Polisario Front against Mo-

roccan occupation of this former Spanish colony. Another long-running separat-

ist confl ict, that between the primarily Nilotic groups of Southern Sudan and the

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Arab North, has recently been the subject of a much-awaited peace agreement.

Eritrean separatism from Ethiopia, ultimately successful, was in many ways a by-

product of the joint struggle of Eritrean, Amhara, and Tigrean forces against the

Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the ubiquity of ethnically based political parties within

political boundaries set by Western imperialists had made rampant separatism

seem like an inevitability. Yet while separatist movements have not been unknown,

most of the confl ict between ethnic groups, though often quite violent, has taken

place within a larger acceptance of existing colonially drawn boundaries, as arbi-

trary as those boundaries may seem. Th e most notable exception to this rule was

the attempt by Igbo nationalists to split away from the Nigerian state to form the

independent state of Biafra, leading to the bloody civil war of 1967–1970. Th e ear-

lier attempt by Katanga province, under Moise Tshombe, to secede from Zaire

was defeated over the course of 1960–1963 with the aid of United Nations (UN)

forces. Diff erent as they were, one factor that these two cases had in common

was the relative wealth of the ethnic groups in whose names separatist move-

ments functioned, the expressed desire of the leaders of these groups to withdraw

from what they viewed as the chaos of a multiethnic state where other groups

were poorer, less education, and yet, in the majority.

It can be argued with some justifi cation that the process of decolonization,

given the way that it was carried out, left behind conditions under which separat-

ist activity was inevitable in the new states. Boundaries had been drawn in a way

that refl ected administrative convenience, and did not refl ect the geographical

patterns of ethnic identities. Th e boundaries themselves had often been in fl ux

during the colonial period, and their fi nal location was often the result of last-

minute compromise. Within those boundaries were left new governments that

were internally divided and often lacked personnel with administrative experi-

ence. Th e very newness of postindependence political institutions brought in an-

other element of instability. Hence, many postindependence governments had

diffi culty enforcing their authority and were often subject to frequent challenges

both from within and without. Given these problems, it might seem a miracle

that separatism was not even more common in the postcolonial era.

Yet, in some ways, it could also be argued that the problems faced by post-

colonial governments, at their most extreme, tended to limit separatist violence,

though often by substituting other forms of confl ict. Where governments were

extremely weak and unstable, there was little incentive for opposition groups to

aim for control over a portion of the country’s territory when the entire territory

might be ripe for picking. Furthermore, even if a government agreed to autonomy

or independence for a portion of its territory, its ability to enforce and maintain

this agreement over time would be limited. Th e complexity of ethnic divisions

also tended to mitigate somewhat against separatism. Th e intertwining of resi-

dence patterns among diff erent ethnic groups also made it diffi cult to clearly de-

marcate the homeland of one group from that of another. Furthermore, the sheer

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number of possible ways in which ethnicity could be mobilized sometimes meant

that it was diffi cult for political groups to enunciate a clearly understood demand

for a political homeland, one that would not be challenged by alternative, equally

appealing calls to identity among the same group of people.

Separatism and Regionalism in Modern, Industrialized StatesNeither the preponderance of anticolonial separatist activity nor the continua-

tion of nationalist movements within new states was a great surprise to social

theorists studying ethnicity, confl ict, and development. Nationalism, after all,

was largely seen as a product of the “transitional stages” between tradition and

modernity, as mediated by the stresses and strains caused by the passing of the

old and introduction of the new. Th e extent of violence had perhaps been more

than was generally expected or hoped for, but it nonetheless did not require a

fundamental reworking of the fi ndings of social theory.

However, beginning from approximately the late 1960s and early 1970s, there

took place a resurgence in nationalist separatist activity in the regions of the

world where it was least expected, the industrialized West, often in the very home

countries of the former colonial powers. True, the West was conventionally

viewed as the birthplace of nationalism, and had gone through massive national-

ist ferment beginning from the period of the Napoleonic Wars until World War I.

However, the feeling had been, that with the advent of modernity, the era of na-

tionalism had passed, with World War II and the Cold War being the harbingers

of more sweeping global ideologies, such as capitalism, communism, fascism,

and socialism.

Th e upsurge of Nationalist violence in Northern Ireland, the growth of Basque

separatism in Spain, and the movement for Québec independence were only

some of the strong and often violent movements that arose during the 1960s and

1970s. Numerous theories have been put forward for why this occurred, ranging

from those who saw no signifi cant diff erences between the forces causing sepa-

ratist nationalism in the industrialized world and that in developing countries to

those who saw these movements as a manifestation of a postmodern condition

of “identity politics” found predominantly in the West. In a way, however, each of

the major separatist movements in Western countries has its dynamics, and they

resist being placed within a single social change paradigm, whether it be modern

or postmodern.

Th e separatist movement by Catholic radicals in Northern Ireland is perhaps

the best known case of this kind of resurgent nationalist revolt. Th e height of this

movement, usually referred to as “Th e Troubles,” began during the 1960s and con-

tinued up until the mid-1990s, being brought (at least formally) to a close by the

Good Friday Agreement in 1998. It is hard to characterize the original causes of

this confl ict as postmodern, since violent disputes over the partition of Ireland

date to the creation of the Free State in 1920. However, the upsurge in violence

can be traced to a chain of causation, beginning with rise of the Catholic civil

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NATIONALISM AND SEPARATISM 1471

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM: VOLUME 4 (1989–PRESENT)

rights movement and its suppression by the government, which moved to violent

clashes between Protestant and Catholic activists, leading to the direct introduc-

tion of British military forces. Disagreement among republicans over tactics led

to the formation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1970, whose

support base was greatly increased by the “Bloody Sunday” shooting deaths of

13 civilians by British soldiers during a protest march.

Besides the IRA, the best-known violent separatist movement in the industri-

alized West is ETA (Basque Nation and Freedom), active in the Basque region of

Spain and to a lesser extent France. Th e cause of Basque nationalism, like Irish

nationalism, dates prior to the 20th century, but like the rise of the Provisional

IRA, the rise of ETA was linked to social and cultural changes occurring in West-

ern Europe, as well as in the atmosphere of repression under the postwar Fran-

cisco Franco regime in Spain. ETA began as a radical off shoot of the mainstream

nationalist movement, and it gained popularity during the 1960s, as its policy of

targeted violence against fi gures of Franco’s regime was regarded as legitimate by

large segments of the Western European public. Th is support has dropped greatly,

however, in the aftermath of democratization in 1977 and the split of ETA itself

into two factions.

Other major separatist and regionalist movements in the West during the

post–World War II period have been generally nonviolent in nature. Perhaps

the most prominent among these has been the Québec sovereignty movement,

which became an active voice in Canadian politics with the birth of the Parti

Québécois in 1968. Th e separatist message of the Parti Québécois gained the sup-

port of nearly half the province’s electorate during referendums on independence

in 1980 and 1994.

Th ere is no doubt that these “new” separatisms were aff ected in some fashion

by the political upheavals and challenge to the status quo that took place across

Western Europe and North America during the 1960s. However, it is diffi cult to

argue for a simple causal relationship between the two, since the nationalist

movements in question also drew upon longer-running grievances as well as sup-

port groups that were quite diff erent from those who supported the American

antiwar movement or the European radical uprisings of 1968. Perhaps the most

plausible argument that can be made is that the events of the 1960s legitimized

the rights of minorities to self-determination as well as the notion of “direct ac-

tion” against established authorities, and hence contributed to, even if they were

not completely responsible for, the new wave of nationalisms in the West.

Consequences

As can be seen, despite the clear upsurge in separatist activity that occurred dur-

ing the period under our review, it is diffi cult to attribute this upsurge to a simple

set of causes.

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NATIONS AND NATIONALISM: VOLUME 4 (1989–PRESENT)

It is intuitive that any force that destabilizes the existing political status quo

will tend to bring to the surface confl icting demands for recognition, which would

include ethnic identities based upon race, religion, language, and region. Need-

less to say, there were a number of events in the latter half of the 20th century that

tended to lead to such destabilization. It is tempting to group the many factors

that have been discussed under the broader rubrics of “modernization” or “post-

modernization,” but this simply begs the question of identifying the nature of

such larger processes.

What is true without question is that events from the 1950s on set into mo-

tion a period of the most widespread sustained nationalist and separatist politi-

cal activity in world history, one that continues to shape international politics to

the present day.

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