“Nationalism, Patriotism, Ancient and Modern”
On Saturday 10th May 2014 an interdisciplinary conference entitled “Nationalism,
Patriotism, Ancient and Modern” was held at the University of Warwick. This was a
one-day interdisciplinary conference that aimed to bring together scholars from a
range of academic disciplines in the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences to
examine the phenomena of nationalism and patriotism from a variety of cultural,
historical and theoretical perspectives.
The resulting one-day conference was a truly international event. Delegates
travelled to Warwick from across the UK and from overseas (including Australia,
Greece, Holland, Spain and Switzerland). The programme consisted of sixteen
papers, which were delivered by a mix of already well-established scholars and
current doctoral candidates. The speakers came from a wide range of academic
disciplines including History, Classics, English Literature, Politics, International
Relations, Theology and Archaeology. This wide range of academic interests resulted
in stimulating debate throughout the day and illustrated the wide potential for
future collaboration between disciplines in the field of Nationalism Studies.
The panels were themed chronologically. Before lunch, delegates explored the
relationship between nationalism, patriotism and ancient civilisations, considering
the Elamites, late Bronze Age Troy, Greece and Rome. After the lunch break, the
themes of the conference were explored within the context of later pre-modern
cultures. These pre-modern cultures included mediaeval Britain and Spain,
nineteenth century Paraguay, the development of nationalism through
intellectualism in France and the development of Phoenician identity in pre-modern
England. The penultimate session of the day brought the days themes up to the
present day and considered the ways in which intellectuals and politicians have
become deliberate agents of national identity, organisation and expression.
This programme was bookended by two keynote addresses. Dr Edward Bispham
(CUF lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in Ancient History at the University of Oxford)
opened the day’s proceedings with a paper entitled ‘Pro patria mori…:State, nation
and fatherland in Roman Culture’. Ed provided the delegates with a highly detailed
analysis of the concepts developed by the Romans to explain their notions of
collective identity and communal organisation. In so doing, he highlighted the
parallels that exist between them and the equivalent notions we have today. Closing
the day was Prof. Caspar Hirschi (Professor of History at Universität St Gallen,
Switzerland) who delivered an address entitled ‘From Ancient Patriotism to Modern
Nationalism? Arguments for a change of perspective’. In this paper, Caspar
challenged previous theoretical approaches undertaken in Nationalism Studies by
arguing that such theory has failed to take into consideration local differences, such
as specific historical developments that are exclusive to particular cultures. As an
alternative approach, Caspar advocated considering the questions of nationalism
and patriotism within the historical contexts of a specific cultures in order to truly
highlight the subtle evolution that nationalism and patriotism have undergone.
The defining conclusion that was reached after hearing all of the day’s papers was
that the study of nationalism and patriotism should not be viewed as a movement
that grew out of nothing during the nineteenth century, but instead as a movement
that has conceptually and contextually evolved and developed over the course of
human history. The success of the day was commented upon by all the delegates,
and after a well deserved glass of wine and beers at the end of the day the event
dispersed, having successfully laid the foundations for much more interdisciplinary
considerations of nationalism and patriotism in the future.
Alexander Peck
HRC Doctoral Fellow 2013-2014, Classics and Ancient History.