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Modernity and National Identity in Early Nineteenth Century Spain Scott Eastman,
University of California, Irvine This essay will explore the theoretical and historical underpinnings of national identity in early nineteenth century Spain. Analysis of national identification, based on 'modern' conceptions of citizenship and representative government, has often been implicitly or explicitly based upon a Eurocentric paradigm with Britain or France as a model. The concept of 'modernity' itself is generally correlated with modernization, the forces of progress moving societies toward secularism, modern natural science, developed capitalism, modern state bureaucratic institutions, parliamentary government, democratic ideals and industrialization. Yet such theoretical orientations do not always account for the complexities and contradictions of modern cultures that share the principles of scientific rationalism as well as religious faith. Studies of nationalism and national identity have often argued for a divorce between religious and national identification. These works posit an evolution from traditional religious belief to the modern identification with the nation-state. They share an approach to nationalism that relegates religion to a pre-modern worldview and finds in the nation a successor to the sacred and the divine. This historical tendency can also be traced to Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, who have viewed more traditional elements within society, such as peasants, as 'pre-political' actors on the modern world stage. Discourses of Spanish nationalism, articulated during the tumultuous period of Napoleon's occupation of Spain, incorporated such modern elements as constitutional government and national sovereignty with traditional tenets of a confessional state. How did Spaniards come to enshrine such seemingly contradictory notions in the context of revolutionary legislation that ostensibly remade the fabric of society and the institutions of government? What is the legacy of early Spanish nationalist thought? Considered in terms of debates over post-colonial scholarship, I maintain that within Europe modernity remained an amalgamation of traditional practice and 'modern' ideological constructs that belie oppositional categorization between the West and the colonial 'Other.' Competing discourses of national identity in Spain suggest that it is possible to reconceptualize our understanding of European national identities forged during the crucial years in which liberalism took hold of the remnants of the Ancien Régime state.
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