Accompanying these political and economic forces making for a greater prevalence of jin goism in the last generation of European his tory, there were p•?chologi, causes operating which were not less effective in promoting na tional aggressiveness and mutual hatred, suspi cion and contempt. Anthropological fallacies, growing out of Gobineau 's grotesque 'Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races) (1854) and Max Mfiller's hasty generalizations in his 'Lectures on the Science of (1861) led to an inflation of racial egotism, the inten sification of racial misconceptions and the fatal if fruitless search for the original °Aryan* bearer of civilization among the nations of Europe. That writers more patriotic than sci entific could find certain and irrefutable evi dence for the original habitat of the primordial °Aryan* in France, Germany, Italy and Russia is sufficient evidence not only of the hopeless scientific confusion, but also of the disastrous patriotic ardor that invited the search. Pseudo Darwinian sociology represented war as the supreme principle making for social progress, as the struggle for existence had advanced bio logical evolution. This distortion of half truth by Gumplowicz and his school was eagerly seized upon by the military and ultra patriotic writers, such as Moltke, Bernhardi and Von der Goltz in Germany, Deroulide and Barres in France, Lord Roberts, Wyatt, Cramb and Maude in England, and Lea, Maxim, Mahan and Gardner in America, to give a semi-scientific cloak for their class and clique interests and ambitions. Super-patriotic his tory, literature and philosophy magnified the past glory and the future heritage of each na tion and proportionately disnaraged the past and future of their rivals. The emotional im pulse from led to a greatly in creased interest in the study of national his tory. This was augmented by the patriotic en thusiasm accompanying the growth of national ism following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era. Every country began the compilation of gigantic collections of the sources of national history, of which the 'Mon umenta Germanise Historica,* the "Documents inedits* and the °Rolls Series* were only the most notable among many similar enterprises. National narrative histories breathing forth a fiery and defiant patriotic ardor were produced by Giesebrecht, Droysen, Treitschke and Sybel; Michaud, Raynouard, Mignet, Lamartine, Guizot, Thiers, Michelet and Martin; and Free man, Stubbs, Froude, Carlyle, Macaulay and Napier. Literature became even more chau vinistic. Houston Stuart Chamberlain, build ing on the risky foundations of the anthropo logical fallacies of Gobineau, Posche and Penka, was able to discover that almost with out exception every important figure in history since the beginning of the Christian era had been a German. Even Saint Paul, Dante, Giotto, Michael Angelo and Raphael were in cluded by this undaunted exponent of °Kulturb under the caption of °We Teutons!* Nisard detected the very essence of Reason, herself, in the spirit of French literature. Maurice Barth found that French culture was a precious and indigenous product of Celtic blood, to which neither Roman nor Teuton had contributed in the slightest degree, and he advocated its pres ervation by making it the centre of a near Japanese cult of ancestor-worship. Leon Daudet found that nations other than the French exhibited undoubted stigmata of mental and moral decline or deficiency. Rudyard Kip ling, the poet of °Saxondom* and British impe rialism, indulged in frenzied hijunctions to his countrymen urging a greater assumption of the °white man's burden* throughout the non European world. Carducci made the heroes of Italian unification the theme of the greatest of modern Italian poetry, while d'Annunzio wrought himself up into a neoplatonic ecstasy over the necessity of reclaiming Italia Irre denta. Patriotic state education taught un questioning loyalty to state or dynasty as the first principle of moral conduct, carefully ob scured any questionable occurrences or policies in the national past and frowned on criticism and progressive reform proposals. Slowly, hut surely and wilfully, Europe was preparing for the cataclysm of August 1914. As Professor Sumner long before predicted, the vast arma ments that had been prepared with the avowed purpose of defense alone invited the transfor mation of nationalistic and military philosophy from the advocacy of a purely °defensive war* into an exposition of the virtues and necessity of a °preventive war.* That this process of the cumulative growth of national egotism and aggressive militarism was undoubtedly most marked in Germany has not obscured the fact that she was separated from the other Euro pean national states in this respect by a dif ference in degree rather than in kind, and that she was able to bow the necks of her citizens under the burden of the military octopus pri marily because of the welcome evidence that her neighbors gave to the German military class that they were not unwilling to submit the "rectitude* of their cause to the °test of arms.* Nationalistic and ultra-patriotic intoxication rather than unique Teutonic perversity °applied the match to the European powder-house° in 1914, and if Germany was the only nation which had lost rational and moral self-control, none of her opponents could present an unchallenged record of total abstinence.
While the rise of modern nationalism has been most conspicuous in Europe, this should not obscure the fact that similar forces have produced analogous developments elsewhere, most notably in America and Japan. To an astonishing degree the growth of national unity and of national sentiment in both of these more recent cases of the rise of nationalism has been the product of the same general circumstances and conditions which promoted the develop ment of nationalism in Europe, though in most respects these influences did not have a wholly indigenous origin and expansion, as in Europe, but were introduced from abroad.
Of the American examples of the rise and growth of nationalism that of the United States has, of course, been the most significant. As Professor Cheyney has so convincingly pointed out, the settlement of the United States was quite as much connected with the economic impulses arising from the Commercial Revolu tion in Europe as it was with the religious re volt from Catholicism and the Established Church of England. Even more consequential were these new commercial forces in promoting unity among the colonists. A century of
mutual ignoring of British commercial restric tions had given the 13 colonies a strong com mon motive for unified action in opposing the proposed enforcement of these long dormant Mercantilistic restrictions — a motive which Professor Schlesinger has recently shown to have been far more powerful than any theo retical or legal abstractions involved in the colonial movement of resistance to British im perial power. In addition to these economic foundations of the shaping of American na tional sentiment there was a fundamental socio logical process in operation which has been aptly termed by Professor Becker °the begin nings of the American people.° A widely dif ferent geographical, social, political and eco nomic environment acting upon a population originally psychologically variant from the great mass of Englishmen, tended inevitably to create in the colonies a people who became, generation after generation, more and more divergent from their kinsmen across the At lantic. Not only were these environmental in fluences working to produce an essential dis similarity between Englishmen and Americans, but through the fundamental uniformity of the American social environment there was being created a homogeneous and united American people and the beginnings of a national self consciousness. The American Revolution, initiated by the enterprising and recalcitrant merchants and debtor landlords and carried to success by their courage and audacity and by the not disinterested aid of the French, fur nished a unifying force of very great potency for a temporary period, hut the reaction in the period of the Confederation for the time being threatened a lapse into anarchy and dismem berment. Thanks, however, to their desire for financial stability and security, the vigorous capitalistic class, led by that great constructive statesman of early nationalism, Alexander Hamilton, turned the tide of political opinion and practice from separatism and provincialism to nationalism and unity. Their work was car ried on by the strongly nationalistic decisions of the great judicial figure in the growth of American nationalism, John Marshall. whom not even Jefferson's enmity could remove. Indeed, the Jeffersonian Republicans, when they came into power in 1800, ceased their neg ativism and accepted most of the nationalistic program which they had criticized with such vigor and acrimony when carried into operation by Hamilton and Adams. Jefferson could pur chase Louisiana, Madison could be won for war with Great Britain, and Monroe could formu late a nationalistic foreign policy. Nationalism in America thus took its origin from the reac tions of the Commercial Revolution on the western world; as in Europe, it was completed by the Industrial Revolution. The new facto ries in the north created an industrial interde pendence between the various sections of the country and attracted an immigrant population with no sectional sentiments. The new canals and railroads led to the initiation of that great nationalistic enterprise of the 19th century in America— the conquest of the West, studied with such fruitfulness by Professor Turner and his disciples. While the territorial addi tions of the middle of the century were tem porarily a cause of sectional dispute and fric tion, they ultimately became a matter of na tional pride and common interest .Though negro-slavery and the accompanying states rights movement threatened to disrupt the em bryonic nation, the success of the North in the Civil War demonstrated by the verdict of phys ical force that Webster, rather than Calhoun or Hayne, was right in his interpretation of the nature of the federal union. A permanent po litical sanction for nationalism was provided by the Fourteenth Amendment. Events and tendencies since the Civil War have been even more conducive to the development of national unity than those of the preceding half-century. An Industrial Revolution, like that which af fected New England in the first half of the 19th century, has come to the South and the sharp sectional division of economic characteristics and interests has now been greatly lessened. The further development of railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, and other means of rapid transportation and almost instantaneous com munication of intelligence have made this ex tensive country a national economic and psy chological unity to a degree unknown in 1789 even in the meagre territory along the Atlantic seaboard with which the United States started its political existence. The intersectional in vestment of capital has produced a real finan cial unity. A national literature has been pro vided by such writers as Irving, Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow, Lowell, Whitman, Tho reau, Emerson, Hawthorne,. Poe, Clemens, Howells and Riley. A collection of the sources of national history was planned and partially executed by Peter Force, and a national his torical epic, eulogizing the American past, was created by the writings of Bancroft, Palfrey, Fiske, Hoist and Burgess. A °glorious) for eign war at the close of the century gave a great stimulus to the completion of national development, and elaborate national expositions and public projects, such as the Panama Canal, rurnish a successive series of impulses to unity. Many pessimistic publicists believed that the great influx of foreigners in the last 50 years threatened national disruption as seriously as the sectional divisions of the middle of the last century, but the experience of the United States in the Great War has definitely dis proved their forebodings and demonstrated that whatever the general results of immigration, they have not brought national disintegration. The participation of the United States in the late "War of the Nations" produced a welling up of exuberant national sentiment and intole rant patriotism which caused even the older allied and enemy European nations to gasp with astonishment. But while national devel opment in the United States has been the most notable exemplification of this process in the western hemisphere, it has not been the only one. Canada, in spite of a titular connection with Great Britain, has developed a very marked spirit of national self-consciousness, while a century of independent political exist ence has created a strong feeling of national pride and unity in the various states of Central and South America. Nationalism, then, seems as well established in America as in Europe.