The Weakness of European Nation-States
Hans A. Schmitt
The European nation-state is a subject worn by much writing and discussion, by generations of historians, politologists, and sociologists. Its lure persists, and scholarly preoccupation with its vagaries has not abated. The reasons for this are many, but none strikes this observer as more plausible than the persistent failure of this institution to keep the promises which various revolutionary protagonists made on its behalf in the decade following 1789.
At the time of its emergence the national state promised to supersede a dynastic polity which existed to expand. "Aggrandizement is the most worthy and most gratifying occupation for a sovereign," Louis XIV advised his son. Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia agreed in 1738 when he wrote: "Le principe permanent des princes est de s'agrandir" adding, after he had been king for more than a decade, that this end could be gained by a rich succession or by conquest. A king proved his worthiness by expanding the territory and the power of his realm. This attitude led to an unending chain of conflicts in the course of which dynasts sought to prove their fitness by wresting other patrimonies from the grip of less fortunate peers. In such a Hobbesian jungle, every king's reign became a perpetual test of strength. Every defeat demanded immediate preparations for revenge; every victory moved within the dynastic horizon new worlds to conquer. The system knew no peace, only truce interrupting war. Dynasticism did not recognize historic, natural, or ethnic boundaries.
