Obliterating heterogeneity through peace

Despite general recognition that not all nationalisms end up in violence and that wars can be waged without nationalist hysteria there is a tendency to assume that nationalism and warfare are deeply linked. Moreover many social analysts believe that the most important research task is to explain the causal relationship between the two. Hence some gauge the impact of warfare on the development of nationalist sentiments while others are concerned with the question “What types of nationalism are most likely to cause war?” (Van Evera 1994: 5). In this chapter I argue that nationalism and warfare have a very complex and unpredictable relationship that can neither be adequately captured, nor properly understood, by focusing on the narrow causal connection between the two. Rather than causing one another or being a key effect of each other's actions, both nationalism and war emerge, develop, and expand as the outcome of many longue durée processes. Hence, in order to explain the relationship between wars and nationalisms it is crucial to analyze the long-term organizational and ideological transformations that have shaped the world in the last two hundred years. In this context I argue that (coercive/bureaucratic and ideologized) periods of peace matter much more for the growth, expansion, and popular reception of nationalism than times of war. Nationalisms often witnessed in war contexts usually have not brought about these wars, nor have they been forged on the battlefields. Instead, both wars and nationalisms are multifaceted processes that emerge, develop, and are sustained by the continuous organizational and ideological scaffoldings created and enhanced in times of prolonged peace. Since the Balkan Peninsula is often perceived as the epitome of a region teeming with nationalism and warfare I use this case to assess the strength of my general argument.