Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History The Donald G. Creighton Lectures 1985 WILLIAM H. MCNEILL Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History WILLIAM H. McNEILL Schools have taught us to expect that people should live in separate national states. But the historical record shows that ethnic homogeneity was a barbarian trait; civilized societies mingled peoples of diverse backgrounds into ethnically plural and hierarchically ordered polities. The exception was northwestern Europe. There, peculiar circumstances permitted the preservation of a fair simul- acrum of national unity while a complex civilization de- veloped. The ideal of national unity was enthusiastically propagated by historians and teachers even in parts of Europe where mingled nationalities prevailed. Overseas, European empires and zones for settlement were always ethnically plural; but in northwestern Europe the tide has turned only since about 1920, and now diverse groups abound in Paris and London as well as in New York and Sydney. Age-old factors promoting the mingling of diverse populations have asserted this power, and continue to do so even when governments in the ex-colonial lands of Africa and Asia are trying hard to create new nations within what are sometimes quite arbitrary boundaries. In demonstrating how unusual and transitory the concept of national ethnic homogeneity has been in world history, William McNeill offers an understanding that may help human minds to adjust to the social reality around them. WILLIAM H. McNEILL is Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor of History, University of Chicago. Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History The Donald G. Creighton Lectures 1985 WILLIAM H. McNEILL UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 1986 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018 ISBN 0-8020-5730-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020-6643-5 (paper) Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data McNeill, W. H. (William Hardy), 1917- Polyethnicity and national unity in world history (The Donald G. Creighton lectures; 1985) Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-5730-6 (bound). - ISBN 978-0-8020-6643-5 (paper) 1. Pluralism (Social sciences) - History. 2. Multiculturalism - Canada - History.* 3. Nationalism - History. 4. Nationalism - Canada - History. I. Title. II. Series. 1c311.M35 1986 323 c86-094479-4 Foreword DNALD CREIGHTON was one of Canada's foremost national historians. I first learned of him through his books, which excited me, like so many Canadians, with the drama of our history. He wrote with a passion and a style that few anywhere could equal. His writings about people, nation, and empire shaped the understanding of a generation of Canadians about their past. Later I was fortunate to become a member of his graduate seminar at the University of Toronto where he instilled the virtues of imagination, research, and controversy in his stu- dents. He was a superb teacher, always interested and always demanding, who helped to train many of the professional historians now at work in Canadian uni- versities. After his death in 1979, a group of family, past students, and friends, inside and outside academe, vi FOREWORD under the direction of the Honourable Pauline McGib- bon, collected monies to establish a special lectureship in his memory. The purpose of the Donald Grant Creighton Lectures is to bring to the University of Toronto a distinguished scholar in the field of history to deliver a series of public lectures on a topic ofg eneral interest which, where appropriate, will be published as a book. The hope is that such a contribution to the life of the university and the profession will stand as a legacy to a man who was throughout his life devoted to the pursuit and the expression of knowl- edge. Donald Creighton loved grand themes. That was one reason why the selection committee asked Professor William McNeill of the University of Chicago to inaug- urate the lecture series. Professor McNeill is a world historian whose work has delved into many aspects of the human experience. Among his many books, for example, are The Rise of the West (1963), Europe's Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800 (1964), Venice, the Hinge of Europe 1081-1797 (1974), Plagues and Peoples (1976), A World History (3rd edition, 1979), and The Pursuit of Power (1982). At various points in his career, he has beeri a Fulbright Research Scholar, chairman of his department at the University of Chicago, a Guggenheim Fellow, George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford, and a president of the American Historial Association. Professor McNeill chose as his theme for these lectures the problem of nationality and community, a problem which Donald Creighton had tackled throughout his career as a Canadian historian. Pro- fessor McNeill treats this issue in a world context: his account begins with the first empires of recorded history and reaches up to the present day. The result FOREWORD vii is an imaginative and persuasive description of the way in which different peoples have struggled with ethnic diversity, or in the Canadian context 'multicul- turalism,' in their efforts to build stable political units. It is unlikely that Donald Creighton would have agreed with the interpretation that Professor McNeill places upon events. But I am also sure that Donald Creighton would have enjoyed the exercise. He was a man who relished a good argument. Paul Rutherford Chairman Department of History University of Toronto Contents LECTURE ONE Empire and Nation to 1750 1 LECTURE TWO The Triumph of Nationalism, 1750-1920 31 LECTURE THREE Reassertion of the Polyethnic Norm since 1920 57