Nationalism

You write, "All my life I have been both fascinated and puzzled by nationalism and religion, by the interaction of the two forces sometimes in unison, sometimes antagonistic, and by the manifold ambiguities of all of this." Looking back at your distinguished life and how your thinking has evolved, what is the most important lesson that you think you've learned about nationalism that we might tell students as they relate to this very disorderly world we seem to be moving into?

That's a very difficult question, partly because of the mutant character of nationalism, changing its forms as it has been doing now for an immensely long time. A view grew up in modern times that nationalism essentially began with the French Revolution, or rather after the French Revolution, which is absurd, because to begin with, nationalism was a major force within the French Revolution right from when it began to happen. But also nationalism and religion have gone hand in hand from remote antiquity. You find them basically in the Bible, the chosen people and the promised land. That's religion and nationalism like that. And in classical antiquity, the polis and the patria, the native city and the native land, are the great motivating forces and set the themes of the great thinkers and orators of antiquity. So we're dealing with something very old and we may take protean in form, but it appears to be permanent in human nature. And again, human nature doesn't include all human beings. There are human beings who are indifferent to politics, religion, virtually anything. George Ivan Smith, Maire MacEntee, Conor Cruise O'Brien, and Ralph Bunche. But most of the people who make themselves felt in history are moved in one way or another by these forces, I believe.

In looking at your career we go back to where we began, which is the tension between your national roots and the cosmopolitan, international, broader vision that you acquired through education and through travel and the different positions that you held. What lessons might students draw from your life about managing those kinds of tensions? I noted in a short essay on Orwell that you faulted him for his lack of empathy with the foreigner. My sense of looking at your life is one in which it was always a move to broaden horizons in order to find the compassion that might lead us to talk to the other and resolve some of the conflicts.

Yes, that's quite right. That's quite right. I compare the thing internally with wrestling with an angel: you don't win. You can't ever win. I know these forces will be there long after I'm gone. But you may be the better or the wiser for having tried to win and not giving up on the struggle while you're still there.

Connor Cruise O'Brien, thank you very much for joining us today for this interview and sharing briefly the extraordinary events and ideas that you've given us. And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

Thank you very much indeed.

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