A brotherhood of nations: Imagining the nation-based order during the Springtime of Nations (1848)
In this short video extract, the author discusses the key arguments from their new Review of International Studies article - A brotherhood of nations: Imagining the nation-based order during the Springtime of Nations (1848) | Review of International Studies
Want to know more? You can read the full article at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210524000561
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Abstract
Much like nations, the nation-based order and the domestic and international hierarchies it produces are imagined. Benedict Anderson and scholars in Historical International Relations have frequently approached nationalism and nations as a horizontal division of the world. By contrast, this article explores the imagined hierarchies within and between nations during the 1848 Springtime of Nations. Through an examination of fraternal images found in a variety of textual and visual sources, I investigate how the European national imaginary of 1848 translated into the nation-based order and its corresponding domestic and international hierarchies. The collapse of the 1848 Revolutions brought about a crisis in the national imaginary. The revolutionary fraternity was co-opted in a distorted form by dynastic regimes and opposed by socialists advocating for the international brotherhood of workers. The Springtime of Nations, with its successes and failures, was a pivotal chapter in creating, shaping, legitimising, and challenging the nascent nation-based order.
Image: On the barricades on the Rue Soufflot, Paris, 25 June 1848 (1848-49), by Horace Vernet | Wikimedia Commons
