Imperialism didn’t die with the end of the ‘Great War’
Nationalists — upstarts all — started the First World War. Before the First World War, the world was mostly ruled by five monarchies, mostly in a comfortable arrangement that saw fighting at their peripheries but rarely at their capitals.
The Russian czars ruled from sea to sea to sea to sea, from the Baltic states on the Atlantic, to Pacific territories in the east, from Indigenous lands in the Arctic, to Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea to the south. Some 200 ethnic peoples paid obeisance to Mother Russia.
The British monarchy’s empire, on which the sun never set, encompassed an even larger territory, stretching south into Africa, east to India and China, west to the Americas. The Austro-Hungarian Empire — the inheritors of the Hapsburgs’ Holy Roman Empire — and the German Empire, mere decades old, between them had dominion over much of Western and Central Europe. The Ottoman Empire, though greatly diminished since its peak in the 17th century, when it reached deep into Europe, in the early 20th century nevertheless retained much of the Balkans in Europe along with most of the Middle East.
These five monarchies imperiously ruled over many hundreds of nations within their empires, putting down rebellions as needed and sometimes exchanging nations among themselves to settle debts or resolve disputes. Most ruled for many centuries, often in the assurance that they had a God-given legitimacy. During these centuries of relative stability, there were no world wars. As a senior AustroHungarian diplomat rationalized in 1914, the empire was “a European necessity” that secured peace by requiring national minorities to subordinate their aspirations to the greater good of political stability.
But the national minorities didn’t all see it that way. Many subject nations, some divided by the empires, harboured resentments, complained of high taxes and wanted to unite their religious and ethnic brethren in self-government. The unruly Greeks, who broke away from the Ottomans almost a century earlier, were role models for many of them. The spark that ignited the first of the world wars — the assassination by a Slavic Serbian nationalist of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary during his visit to Sarajevo — did not immediately start war. Negotiations between AustriaHungary and Serbs appeared for a while to avert hostilities.
But the Austro-Hungarian emperor, along with his ally, the German emperor, correctly reasoned that if they didn’t come down hard on the Serbians, the entire edifice of empire could crumble as other subject nations became emboldened and rebelled. The emperors’ decision to crush the nationalists then triggered the chain of events that brought other empires into the fray, all with the same understanding: Their empires hung in the balance.
The First World War was as much a war by the empires against their subject nations as a war among the empires. It was a war between the imperialists and the nationalists, as became clear as nation after nation saw their chance for independence and bargained their allegiances once widespread war broke out.
The nature of this war was fully understood by the time the Americans entered the fight in 1917, with President Woodrow Wilson soon after declaring that the principle of self-determination of national minorities would guide the peace: “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self determination’ is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.”
The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 put that principle into effect, creating numerous countries in the civilized world’s first great stab at establishing nation states based on the ethnicity of their populace. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman monarchies all succumbed to the nationalists, never to return.
But imperialism would not be so easily defeated. The British, as victors in the First World War, hung onto their empire. The Russians soon recreated their imperial empire under the guise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And the Germans attempted a restoration of empire, too, under Hitler’s Third Reich. These efforts ultimately failed — Germany’s at the end of the Second World War, Russia’s at the end of the Cold War.
But imperialism persists. Russia has gained Crimea and dependencies in Central Asia and many believe it has further territorial ambitions. Germany has recreated its empire under the name of the European Union, attempting through economic means what it failed to achieve through military action. Its decision this week to join France in creating a European Union army that would inevitably fall under German control is an admission that economics will not suffice to keep the EU Empire intact.
Although imperialism persists, because the term has acquired a bad odour it goes by its more benign sister, “globalism.” The rebellion by nationalists against new German Empire now seen throughout the EU — Brexit in the U.K., the Five-Star Movement and the League in Italy, the Freedom Party in Austria and Hungary’s Fidesz among others — is merely Act III in the century-long war between the nationalists and the imperialists.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR WAS AS MUCH A WAR BY THE EMPIRES AGAINST THEIR SUBJECT NATIONS AS A WAR AMONG THE EMPIRES.