Cosmopolitanism and the NationState
Cosmopolitanism
• An ideology and/or movement for universal
community
• Need not be fully conceived - enough that it
maintains a spirit of deepening and extension that
is universal
• This encompasses both cultural and political
cosmopolitanism
• A personal cultural ideal as well as a political
project
Contested Definitions
• Chris Brown, IR theorist: cosmopolitanism is the
'refusal to regard existing political structures as the
source of ultimate value.' (Political definition)
• Our definition is wider, in that it considers as
cosmopolitan:
– a) open-ended trans-national and supranational projects;
– b) those who seek a universalist, trans-ethnic
community within the boundaries of a particular state;
– c) actors who would accord existing political structures
some value, albeit less than their transcendent project.
Cosmopolitanism and
Nationalism
• Cosmopolitanism seeks to transcend ties of space
(soil) and time (blood/history)
• Nationalism also seeks to transcend ties of clan
and village - but stops at the national boundary
• So cosmopolitanism and nationalism work well
together at first, but then come to oppose each
other
• Nationalism seeks security in space (land) and
time (history/ancestry)
The Origins of Cosmopolitanism
• Cosmopolitanism:
‘The World is my
City’
• Stoics and Cynics, c.
300 BC - figures like
Zeno of Cintium and
Cicero in Rome
• Link to Empire of
Alexander; Roman
Empire
Ancient Cosmopolitanism
• During periods of imperial
expansion, universalism
becomes more attractive
• Desire to have rational,
universalistic, single law
• Accompanied by universal
commonwealth (Cicero)
• Emphasis on human
reason - what unites us
together across differences
of particular culture
Religious Cosmopolitanism
• Also the idea of God's
kingdom on earth as prior
to local cultures and
polities
• St. Peter's 'Jew nor Greek'
passage
• Papacy struggled to assert
this-worldly universal
authority against princes
and kings of Europe
• Dark Ages and Medieval
periods a high point of
universalistic claims (300
- 1300 AD)
Cosmopolitan Revival
• Renaissance revival of Stoic ideals & Holy Roman
Empire pretensions, 1400s-1600s
• In Europe, by 17th c., modern cosmopolitan
political theory
• World federalist ideas: Emeric Cruce, French
monk, early 1600s. Called for a permanent
assembly of princes (inc Sultan of Turkey) or their
delegates to arbitrate international disputes; Sully's
'Grand Design' envisions more permanent
federation
• Penn's 'European Plan' and those of other 17th c
Quakers
• Most plans harked back to universality of
Christendom or the Roman Empire
Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism
• Mid-18th c. ideas of Paine, Voltaire, Kant
• Viewed religious enthusiasm as backward
• View patriotic attachments as a barrier to universal
reason
• Paine: 'my country is the world ' and 'my religion
is to do good'
• Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795): unlike Paine or
Rousseau, favoured a world government: a
constitution and executive body for the family of
nations
The Cosmopolitan Cultural Ideal,
c. 1750
• An elitist ideal:
–
–
–
–
–
Competence
Experience
Aristocracy of taste
Access to exotic luxuries
Not available to native plebeians or parvenus
• Grand Tour, Parisian fashions, Salons, 'Republic
of Letters'
• Already there is a cultural centre (Paris), so
cosmopolitanism is inflected and not truly neutral
(same claim today with American universalism)
French Revolution
• Ideas of the Revolution backed by
many liberal cosmopolitans like Paine,
Cloots
• Declaration of the Rights of Man is
universal
• But counter-revolutionary forces
generate nationalism which turns on
cosmopolitanism, 1792-4
• Foreigners expelled, Cloots, a Prussian
francophile and atheist, is executed
• Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism: can
they be reconciled in a democratic age?
19th Century: the Age of Dualism
• Most writers waxed eloquently about both
cosmopolitanism and nationalism
• Logical contradictions were glossed over
• Mazzini: Young Italy, Young Europe
• Kant: World Government, but importance of the
state for freedom
• Novalis (1807): 'Germanity is cosmopolitanism
mixed with the most powerful [national]
individuality'
• Meinecke (1907): 'The best German national
feeling also includes the cosmopolitan ideal of a
humanity beyond nationality'
Dualism in the United States
• Religious figures felt that immigration would
bring the peoples of the world together in America
in fulfilment of God's plan prior to the Second
Coming
• Secular writers looked to the Enlightenment
cosmopolitan idea and America's fulfilment of it
• But while most saw the US as a universal nation,
they also felt it to be a more Anglo-Saxon and
Protestant nation than England
Emerson and 'DoubleConsciousness' in American
Identity, c. 1846
'The asylum of all nations...the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles
and Cossacks, and all the European tribes, of the Africans and
Polynesians, will construct a new race...as vigorous as the new Europe
which came out of the smelting pot of the Dark Ages'
'It cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have
ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the
human family...The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the
Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all other races
have quailed and done obeisance'
Socialist Dualism
• Dualism pervaded even the Socialist International.
Second International up to 1917 favoured
colonialism and racist assumptions
• Most American socialists assumed that
immigration of 'backward' peoples would retard
the onset of socialist revolution
• In WWI, workers sided with their nations against
their class, to the disappointment of many socialist
intellectuals
The Eclipse of Dualism
• By the first decade of 1900s in USA:
Liberal Progressives
• Ecumenical Movement in Protestantism especially in USA
• WWI pacifists. War affects intellectuals
• Union of Democratic Control: liberal
historians attack nationalistic history
writing
The Rise of Cosmopolitan
Anti-Nationalism
• Surrealism in modern art
supersedes Futurism, 1920s
• Most modernist intellectuals
move left and the Left become
cosmopolitan during inter-war
period
• Marks the beginning of
cosmopolitan anti-nationalism
• Two reasons: reflexivity and
war
Interwar Politics, US
• US: intellectuals and religious elite
struggles against Anglo-Protestant
nationalism
– Immigration restriction
– Klan
– Prohibition
Interwar Cosmopolitan Politics,
Europe
• Growing peace movements advocate European
unity in 1910s
• French pro-European associations have 100,000s
of members in 1920s
• Paneuropa formed in Austria, led by CoudenhoveKalergi, early 1920s. HQ provided by Chancellor
Seipel of Austria
• Draws on older European Idea
• Peace, cosmopolitanism and European Idea linked
Interwar Cosmopolitan Politics,
Europe
• Kalergi has links with French officials like
Aristide Briand
• French foreign minister and pan-European Briand,
mid 1920s
• French premier Herriot: 'United States of Europe',
1925
• Pushed initiatives on both world peace (Geneva
Protocols) and European federalism
• Briand's Memorandum on a United Europe, 1929.
Presented to League of Nations and sent to
European leaders for discussion
Postwar Developments
• US: emphasises 'nation of immigrants' idea and statue
of liberty. Bar on nonwhite immigrants relaxed
• Europe: moves toward European unity spearheaded
by Paneuropean groups with pre-war links
• Leaders often have background in these organisations
(i.e. Spinelli, de Gasperi- EEC commissioner)
• EEC forms from 1950s. Idealism of European
Commission partly driven by cosmopolitan-pacifist
motivations ('avoiding war')
• US cosmopolitanism is cultural, that of Europe is
political
Postwar Internationalism
• World Federalists and Ecumenical
Protestants in US strongly back UN as they
did the League of Nations. Opposed by
many at home
• New UN human rights legislation.
International law begins to come of age
Cosmopolitanism as a Successful
20th c. Movement
• Many nationalist movements have been successful
at taking power. What about cosmopolitan
movements?
• The idea of a permanent assembly of states and of
a European Union were dreams that lay unrealised
for centuries, why the change?
• The dream of a universal nation in the US
remained a fiction for centuries. Why the change
in the 20th c.?
Main Reasons for IntellectualPolitical Success
1. Intellectual evolution of liberal-cosmopolitan
logic during 1900-14 which began to regard
nationalism as reactionary
2. Impact of mass warfare during 1914-45 which
accelerated the antinationalist tendency within
cosmopolitan thought
3. Increased societal reflexivity: expanding and
intensifying networks of conceptual exchange
sharpen contradictions between nationalism and
cosmopolitanism
Recent Period
• Expansion of Higher Education and national
electronic media
• Peace and prosperity of 1945-73
• Major attitude changes in US among 'baby boom'
generation on issues of race, national identity,
1965-73
• Rise of a 'postmaterialist' culturally-liberal cohort
of university-educated cosmopolitans that are proimmigration and pro-Europe
• New 'Cosmopolitan Democracy' advocates in IR
and Theory: Held, Giddens, Beck, Nussbaum
• Beck's 'Cosmopolitan Manifesto', LSE c. 2000
Growing Cosmopolitanism in
Europe?
'Very Proud' of Country, Eurobarometer
(1983)
60%
40%
20%
0%
15-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65+
Growing Cosmopolitanism in
Europe…
'Very Proud' of Country,
1970 and mid-80s
N
y
m
an
G
er
Be
lg
i
um
s
et
h
er
la
nd
ce
Fr
an
Ita
m
bo
xe
Lu
ly
1970
1981-85
ur
g
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Cultural Cosmopolitanism in US
White Opinion of Inter-Racial Marriage
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Approve
Disapprove
1958
1968
1972
1978
1983
Education and Cosmopolitanism
Support For Republikaner Party,
by Age & Education, Bavaria 1989
15%
10%
5%
Low
0%
High
Med
18-29
30-39
40-49
50-59
60+
Education and Cosmopolitanism:
USA
White Approval of Inter-Racial Marriage, by
Education, 1972 and 1976
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
College
1972
1976
Some Col
High
Grade
Cosmopolitanism vs Universalism
• Some (ie David Hollinger) assert that cosmopolitanism
emphasises cultural diversity as opposed to universalist
uniformity
• Cultural richness and hybridity as opposed to sterile
universalism
• Nationalists/ethnics argue that hybridity leads to
universalism, and that both reflect the same culturallyneutral tendency
• Nationalists/ethnics also contend that all cosmopolitan
projects have certain biases at their core and are cultural
imperialisms: (ie Greek, Roman, Russian-Soviet,
French-Napoleonic, Turkish-Ottoman, American'globalisation')
Modernisation can be
Cosmopolitan or Nationalist
Conclusion
• Cosmopolitanism a long history, much longer than
globalisation
• Can be political or cultural
• Cosmopolitan ideas gained ground in the 20th c
• Became anti-nationalist due to ideological
evolution and war
• Political success is linked to both world war and
intensifying/extending intellectual exchanges
• Carried by higher-educated, 'postmaterialist' elites
and middle class