Nationalism: John Green and My Hypothesis
Nationalism is defined by John Green as a global phenomenom which took place in 19th century; it is a unitary sense of patriotism developed by the organic process of similiar people basing their mutual patriotic interest in the same place. A few points brought up and argued by John Green is very similiar to my own hypothesis, one of which, is how education plays a key role in nationalism. John Green argues that a significant aspect of establishing a successful nation state for the long-term is stability, and nationalism contributes to indirectly enforcing stability in a state. Although nationalism brings people together, John Green further argues that it can also act as a destabilizing force for multi-ethnic landbased empires, such as the Ottomen Empire, which fell apart due to the various ethnicity present and religious intolerence which creates a division or barriar among the people living there. I argued a similar point in my hypothesis by bring up the fact that this is actually a disadvantage or drawback of nationalism. Despite this, Green argues that stability and nationalism can still coexist, and both are in fact, important components to establishing a nation state. By using feudal Japan as an example, he argues that stability is not based on the 'centralization' of the government, but is a product of a unifying sense of nationalism and patriotism which enforces social order. Back to the previous point on education, Green claims that education does not exist for the benefit of the people, but rather, it exists for the benefit of social order, which is why Japan made 4 years of Elementary School compulsory education. Schools educate people, and instil nationalistic values in individuals, which allows the people of a nation state to share a mutual interest. Other examples provided by John Green include how military service is compulsory in most countries; it gives the people of the same nation state the same goal to achieve something that may benefit their country (such as defeating another nation state), which in turn, benefits themselves, because as John Green mentions briefly, the people in the same country are basically considered to a certain extent the 'same people,' because they share the same sense of patriotic pride for their country. If the people of a nation state agree on the fact that they are an independent state and must protect their sovereignty, it creates stability within that specific nation state because they are not fighting against each other, but instead working towards the goal of perhaps defeating another country, or working to protect it from others.
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