Nation-Building projects in Norway during the 19th century

von: Henriette Maye

1. Introduction: What is Nation-Building?  1

2. Nation-Building projects in Norway in the 19th century  2

2.1 The 1814-Project  3
2.2 The Modernizing-Project of the Intellectuals  4
2.3 National Romanticism 5
2.4 The Venstre’s national democratic project  6
2.5 Conclusion 7

Literature  0

1. Introduction: What is Nation-Building?

In the following assignment I want to explain a couple of Nation-Building projects which could be observed in Norway during the 19th century. Therefore I refer to Øystein Sørensens book Jakten På Det Norske later. First of all, the term Nation-Building “came into vogue among historically oriented political scientists in the 1950s and 1960s. […] Nation-building theory was primarily used to describe the process of national integration and consolidation that led up to the establishment of the modern nation state.” (Kolstø 2000) It can be considered as “an architectural metaphor which […] implies the existence of consciously acting agents such as architects, engineers, carpenters, and the like.” (Kolstø 2000) Today it is usual, also in the case of Norway, to see the development of a nation as an active building process – not the nation being coincidentally built by it.

I found a definition of Nation-Building, which was taken from the University of Albany (New York): “Government policies intended to stimulate patriotism, to make a country function more effectively as a unit, and to ward off threats of secession and civil war. … They [nation-building policies] range from the promotion of simple symbols of national identity (…) to the establishment of national educational curricula, compulsory military service, and the construction of nationwide transportation and communication systems.” (Karl)

However, it is not easy to find an exact definition, also because of the fact that there seem to exist two major meanings in political science, which the concept of Nation-Building was interconnected to: On the one hand the normative use involving conscious strategies initiated by state leaders, as a political goal; the empirical use, on the other hand, concerned the real course of events, the description or analysis of unplanned societal changes, be it in the past or in the present.1

The traditional, pre-modern state consisted of two spheres; we could say two isolated communities with constrictive cultures at the bottom of society and a distant state structure at the top. These spheres were, through Nation-Building, brought into closer contact with each other and “[t]he subjects of the monarch were gradually and imperceptibly turned into citizens of the nation-state.” (Kolstø 2000) 2

In the following cases I will use the idea of Nation-Building to describe the process of the formation of modern political systems in the 19th century. The most important main features for this are, at first, a consistent rationalization of the economics, as well as a social mobilization. Furthermore, the development of a national identity has to take place which is not always so simple, depending on the difference between a more heterogenic and a more homogeneous society. Moreover, the sovereignty of the country has to be visible and inviolable for the own population as well as for other countries. And of course the democratization of the society including human and basic rights, freedom of mind, religion and culture etc. is quite important inside the process of Nation-Building.3

2. Nation-Building projects in Norway in the 19th century

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1 J. Hippler: ”Gewaltkonflikte, Konfliktprävention und Nationenbildung – Hintergründe eines politischen Konzepts”, i: J. Hippler (red.): Nation-building – ein sinnvolles Instrument der Konfliktbearbeitung?, Bonn 2003 (http://www.jochen-hippler.de/Aufsatze/Nation-Building_Einleitung/nation-building_einleitung.html)

2 P. Kolstø: Political construction sites. Nation-building in Russia and the post-Soviet States, Boulder, Colorado 2000

3 M. Karl: ”Zur Entstehung der Nation”, evakreisky.at/2003-2004/staat-krieg/referat01_c.pdf