Biographical Essay

 Prior to the momentous events of 1861, Jefferson Davis had a distinguished career as a United States soldier, congressman, senator, and cabinet officer. Davis, however, is most vividly remembered and ostensibly vilified for the four years he spent as President of the Southern Confederacy. Born on the Kentucky frontier in 1808 to backwoods planters ambitious to take full advantage of all the raw land had to offer; Davis received a rudimentary education while his father, constantly striving to improve his family’s condition, was clearing land, planting crops and acquiring slaves.[1] The 400 acre farm in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, where Davis spent his formative years was more comparable in nature to Sutpen’s Hundred than Arlington House. Although Davis later credited his years at West Point with fortifying his character, he spent more of his tenure there imbibing than drilling and his disciplinary record was more akin to that of Edgar Allen Poe than Robert E. Lee.[2]
 Upon the declaration of War with Mexico in the Spring of 1846, Davis resigned from Congress and led a Mississippi regiment to Mexico with high aspirations of attaining glory on the battlefield and thereby increasing his eminence at home. After displaying valiant leadership in the U.S. victory at Vera Cruz, Davis received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Mississippi and was appointed to the U.S. Senate. Although his career in the Senate was characterized by staunch defenses of the South’s peculiar institution and eloquent advocacy of Southern unity, he claimed that his convictions arose from, “patriotism, and a high resolve to preserve if possible, our constitutional union.”[3] In 1853, just seven years prior to secession, Davis became Secretary of war in the Pierce administration. Ironically, while heading the War Department, Davis facilitated technological innovations in the Army’s weaponry that would eventually hasten the annihilation of the Confederate Army. [4] When Congress convened in the fall of 1860 the dissolution of the union was well nigh inevitable. Yet Jefferson Davis took a moderate stance saying that though “no human power can save the union,” he was willing “to make any sacrifice to avert the impending struggle.”[5]
 Jefferson Davis served as President of the Confederate States of America for the entire duration of the ill-fated republic. Although his power to wage war effectively was hampered by the subversive actions of state’s rights advocates and his diplomatic emissaries to Europe were unsuccessful, Davis poured himself into his job as Commander in Chief of the Confederacy, constantly riding among the troops and proclaiming that “With the Confederacy he would live or die.” [6]. The heart of the Confederacy beat a final time when Davis was captured by Union Cavalry on May 10, 1865, almost a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
 Similar in political temperament to Jefferson Davis was North Carolina Governor John W. Ellis. Ellis was born in 1820 and served as a state representative and Superior Court Judge prior to being elected Governor in 1858. Although Ellis led North Carolina into the arms of the Confederacy, much like Davis, he did not advocate secession until after the election of Abraham Lincoln. He would have likely shared Davis’s sentiment in 1858 that secession was not a viable option unless a man became president who chose “not to administer the Government according to the Constitution, but to pervert it to our destruction.” [7] In fact, the main issue of Ellis’s re-election campaign in 1860 was not a contingency plan in preparation for Lincoln’s election but a discussion over the prudent way to tax slave property. Shortly after he helped prepare North Carolina for the impending crisis, Ellis suffered an untimely death in 1861. [8]
 Ferdinand II ascended the Bourbon throne of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in 1830. Shortly after his succession, Ferdinand announced grandiose plans to reform bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, alleviate misery among the peasants, and stimulate economic growth in the Kingdom. The path towards enlightened despotism, however, turned out to be a dead end. In reality Ferdinand II sought only to pacify his subjects and maintain the status quo. At the height of political unrest in Sicily and on the mainland in January 1848, Ferdinand was forced to acquiesce and granted his subjects a Constitution. In an effort to tame the Sicilians, Ferdinand bombarded many Sicilian cities in May of 1849 and in the process earned the nickname “King Bomba.” After regaining control of Sicily and quelling the liberal threat, Ferdinand resorted to tactics of intimidation and espionage to perpetuate his rule. [9] Victor Emmanuel II was officially crowned the King of unified Italy in February 1861 although Rome was not annexed until 1870. It is fair to say that Victor Emmanuel was the beneficiary of circumstances beyond his control and that much of his power came as a result of the skillful diplomacy of Cavour. In death, however, Victor Emmanuel II was venerated by being laid to rest in the Pantheon and his is the enduring legacy of the Risorgimento.[10]
 The thread of continuity that runs between the stories of Davis, Ellis, Ferdinand II, and Victor Emmanuel II is that they all fought to preserve their way of life. Davis and Ellis finally supported secession because they feared that the Republican administration would threaten the backbone of Southern society. Without slaves, life in the South would be fundamentally different and would require great sacrifice. When Ferdinand’s power and way of life were threatened, he proposed liberal changes and then bombarded his people to maintain the status quo. Victor Emmanuel and Cavour also were able to preserve their power by diplomatically alienating their enemies and conforming to the liberal tide that was sweeping Italy. In America, The South seceded not to preserve Constitutional principles, but to preserve the hierarchical society and their way of life.

1. William J. Cooper, Jr., Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)12-13
2. Cooper, 33-40
3. Cooper, 192
4. Cooper, 254-255
5. Cooper, 322-323
6. Cooper, 508
7. Cooper, 302

8. Donald C. Butts, The North Carolina Historical Review. Volume 58, January 1981. “The ‘Irrepressible Conflict’: Slave Taxation and North Carolina’s Gubernatorial Election of 1860” 44-66; James Z. Rabun, The American Historical Review, April 1966, “Review: The Papers of John Willis Ellis” 1066-1067; Richard E. Yates, The Journal of Southern History. Feb. 1966, “Review: The Papers of John Willis Ellis.” 102-103

9. Raymond Cummings. “Ferdinand II 1810-1859.” Ohio University. 27 March 1999. 17 October 2006. http://www.ohiou.edu/`Chastain/dh/ferd.htm.

10. Giudo Verucci, the Journal of Modern History. June 1974, “Review: Victor Emanuel, Cavour, and the Risorgimento.”


Notes on sources:

Although the biography of Davis was a stout 658 pages it was an enjoyable read. I searched for Gov. John Ellis on J-STOR but all I could find were book reviews. I then searched America: History and Life and found the article on the N.C. gubernatorial election and made copies of the bound copy in the library. I searched J-STOR for articles featuring Ferdinand II and Victor Emanuel II. All I could find was a book review for Victor Emanuel so I had to resort to googling Ferdinand II. I found an interesting article on him in an Ohio University online encyclopedia. I also consulted wikipedia to see if there were any links to pertinent information but my search was futile.

Footnotes
1.Melena, Elpis. Garibaldi’s Memoirs. Sarasota: International Institute of Garibaldian Studies, 1981.
2.ibid.
3.ibid.
4.ibid.
5.Ruffin, Edmund. The Diary of Edmund Ruffin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.
6.ibid.
7.Smart, Mary Ann. “Liberty On (and Off) the Barricades: Verdi’s Risorgimento Fantasies.” Oxford: Berg, 2001.

Elpis Melena’s compilation of Garibaldi’s Memoirs provides a very detailed look at the life of Garibaldi, and offers insight into the philosophy that backed his efforts in the Risorgimento. The first volume of the book consists of Garibaldi’s autobiography until 1848. Garibaldi gives a first-hand account of his youth and his time spent in the Americas as a merchant marine captain. Here we see many indications of his deep-seated pride for his homeland. He deeply resented the oppression that the Austrians inflicted upon the Italians, and he foresaw a day when Italy would, “ris[e] triumphantly on the corpses of these birds of prey who are gnawing on her (1)!” The book then provides an account of his return to Europe during the revolutions of 1848. He failed to defend Rome against foreign rule, but “this iron soul, whom fate could indeed bend but not break, decided instead of laying down his arms before the proud victor, to take to the mountains…(2).” He served as an inspiration to the Italian people, and “to anyone who wished to follow him, he confessed frankly that he could promise nothing but hunger, thirst, danger, and combat (3).”
Interestingly, Melena does not devote as much time to the description of Garibaldi’s successes in the Risorgimento. The reader receives a detailed synopsis of Garibaldi’s early career, and a very brief nod to, “how he added victory upon victory and heroic deed upon heroic deed in the Italian war of liberation (4).” After examining the life and philosophy of Garibaldi, and comparing it to other figures in both Italy and the American South, it is evident that the enthusiasm and fervor that these figures held for the freedom of their nations contributed to their ability to win the support of the general population.
In exploring the information surrounding Edmund Ruffin and reading short biographical sketches, I found some parallels between him and Garibaldi. As a secessionist, soldier, and scientist, Ruffin seems to have the same fervor for the secession of the American South that Garibaldi had for the Risorgimento. He felt so strongly in favor of secession, that upon Robert E. Lee’s surrender to the Union in 1865, Ruffin committed suicide. Just before his death he wrote in his diary, “And now with my latest writing and utterance, and with what will be near my latest breath, I here repeat…my unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule…and the perfidious malignant and vile Yankee race(5).” He would have rather been dead than live in a Union that included the Northern states, and this same stubborn enthusiasm can be found in Garibaldi’s claims that, “Rome became dear to [him] above all else, and [he] honored it with the total fire of [his] soul…(6)”
 I was able to find many sources about Ruffin in our library, including his writings on agricultural science. For example, the James B. Duke Library has in its possession Ruffin’s Essay on Calcareous Manures. I also learned from Wikipedia, that Ruffin is known for firing the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter as well as the last shot (his suicide).
 Unfortunately, I could not find any information on Wiley L. Harris, but I did find some information about Mississippi politician and lawyer, Wiley Pope Harris. Our library did not actually own any full text sources on Harris, so I was able to gather very little information on him. According to the online Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Harris served as a Mississippi representative at Congress from 1853-55. He left Congress to practice law in Mississippi, and later became a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. According to my searches on WorldCat, one of the most prevalent resources regarding Harris is his “Address to the graduating class in the Department of Law, University of Mississippi, June 23rd, 1869.” Although I did not have access to the text of his speech, I would suppose that Harris laments the South’s failure to amend the crimes that the North committed against the United States Constitution.
 There is still much debate surrounding the role that Verdi’s operas played in the Italian Risorgimento. The Italian born composer’s overwhelming popularity would have definitely assisted in swaying the political views of the Italian people. Verdi is known to have been sympathetic to Mazzini’s cause, but some argue that his political affiliations were “opportunistic(7).” Perhaps he adhered to the ideas of the Risorgimento in order to popularize his music. Nonetheless, his work appealed to the masses, an achievement that invites admiration as well as criticism. He came to be known as the “Risorgimento Composer,” because the slogan “Viva VERDI,” is thought to be an acronym supporting the reign of Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia. Both Garibaldi and Verdi helped to contribute to the success of the Risorgimento in that they were able to influence the opinion and inspire action within the Italian people.

Edited by author 10-18-2006 01:43 AM
Biographical Study of William L. Yancey, Albert G. Brown, Daniele Manin, & Charles Albert

 Known for his crossover from Unionism to secession and his fireball personality, many consider William Lowndes Yancey a memorable and key figure of the pre-Civil War era. Ralph B. Draughon’s work, William Lowndes Yancey: from Unionist to secessionist, 1814-1852, the primary source studied, focuses a great deal on Yancey’s childhood. Yancey, born by the Ogeechee River in Warren County, Georgia, was the son of Caroline Bird, an ironmaster’s daughter from Pennsylvania, and Benjamin Cudworth Yancey, a lawyer from the South Carolina upcountry. Although reared by a humble upbringing, one thing that was not ignoble about Yancey was his ardent patriotism. With his grandfathers and uncle being active participants in the Revolutionary War, Yancey felt a natural desire to preserve family tradition and unity throughout America.
 After his father’s death from yellow fever in 1817, however, Yancey’s life took a turn for the worse. A few years after her husband’s death, Bird married the Mount Zion Academy headmaster, Nathan Sidney Smith Beman. Due to his Presbyterian practices and America’s second Great Awakening, Beman moved the family to Troy, New York. It was here where Bird and Beman began to consistently fight, and where Yancey endured spells of discomfort, unhappiness, and adjustment. In addition, an aura of religious evangelicalism abounded the Beman household. At age sixteen, Yancey escaped this environment and attended Williams College. Still, the scars of his parents’ constant spats and Beman’s radically evangelical ways followed Yancey throughout his life.
Yancey withdrew from Williams College in 1833, followed his father’s footsteps, and moved to Greenville, South Carolina to study law. He got admitted to the bar and became editor of Greenville’s Mountaineer, a Unionist newspaper of South Carolina upcountry. In order to compensate for the fact that he grew up and received an education in the North, Yancey fully devoted himself to the Southern cause. After consuming much time with his editorship and South Carolina nullification issues, however, Yancey decided to adopt a slower-paced lifestyle, which constituted of marriage to a Greenville local, Sarah Earle. Earle exposed him to elitist Southern traditions, such as derbies and slaveholding. In the midst of an economic boom in the Alabama black belt, the Yancey’s and their slaves migrated south. Gradually, Yancey began campaigning and writing for other Southern newspapers including Argus, Alabama Planter, and the Southern Crisis. Being quite fond of his new economic status, Yancey grew increasingly wary of any potential threats to his wealth, such as protective tariffs and abolitionists. When abolitionists came to mind, Yancey naturally conjured images of Beman—“a hypocrite who preached against slavery after selling slaves himself…who abused and rejected his wife, denied her access to her own children, and refused to take any part of the blame for domestic difficulties.” The irony in the change of lifestyle and its linkage to Yancey’s changes of political and economic viewpoints will be further explored.
 Later involving himself with issues such as free-soil territory admittance and opposition to the Compromise of 1850, Yancey became partial to the right of secession. His new opinion, in coincidence with John Calhoun, was that Southern unity would coerce the North to heed to the inalienable Southern minority rights. Indeed, Yancey underwent a transitory period as he broke from ardent nationalism support to that of sectionalism. At this stage, he shares several similarities to Albert Gallatin Brown - Mississippi U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and Governor (Democrat) from 1844-1848. Although both shared lineages of South Carolinians and ideals of patriotism, Brown differed at the fact that he was a non-slaveholder. Yet, like Yancey, he advocated secession and defended Southern states’ rights. He even organized a Southern military company, Brown’s Rifles, and served as a Confederate captain throughout the Civil War. Although he was more military active than Yancey, Brown ultimately helped negotiate a peace treaty with the North after their loss at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863.
 Daniele Manin, Italian patriot and statesman during the Risorgimento, felt resentment towards the Austrians. In 1847, he presented a nationalist-toned petition to a crowd of Venetians, later leading to a brief arrest, but also to his presidency of the Venetian republic and the evacuation of the Austrians. However, disputes were bound to rise out of the republic’s birth, namely among the Venetian, Lombardy, and Piedmont regions. These obstacles can be correlated to those of the American North and South, and on this matter, Yancey shares, “If we cannot live in peace in the Union with the Northern States, it is preferable to go out of it—and when we are beyond the reach of their legislation we may, perhaps, be able to live at peace with them out of the Union.” Similar to this standpoint, Manin eventually held a stance against republicanism.
 Charles Albert, King of Sardinia from 1831-1849, rejuvenated Northern Italy while under Austrian rule by establishing an Italian army and a number of political reforms, as well as abolishing internal tariffs. Albert, like Manin, wanted to incorporate other, overlapping regions (Lombardy, Milan, the Piedmont) into his kingdom, but encountered obstacles along the way. In 1831, he signed a military alliance with Austria, but his foreign policies and sentiments gradually turned anti-Austrian. In the years of 1848-1849 he led Italy’s first war of independence against Austria, suffering defeats at the Battles of Custozza and Novara. Immediately afterwards, he was exiled and abdicated the throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel II, whom he felt possessed the greater ability to negotiate and soothe relations with Austria. However, both he and Yancey were proactive in their ways, whether it is breaking from Austrian or Northern rule. In his later years when he began to favor direct action, Yancey resembles Albert when he claimed at a conference, “The issue, then, is before us. Congress has boldly tendered it—submission or secession.” All in all, these four men underwent transitory processes and explored different political viewpoints, eventually established where they stood, and acted fervently upon their views.

1.) Draughon, Ralph B., Jr. William Lowndes Yancey: from Unionist to secessionist, 1814-
1852. Thesis (Ph.D.). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1968.
Microfilm. p. 98.
2.) Ibid, 268
3.) Sansing, David G. “Albert Gallatin Brown, Fourteenth Governor of Mississippi: 1844-1848.” Mississippi History Now, Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Dec. 2003. 15 Oct. 2006. http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/featur...11_albert_brown.htm
4.) Cunsolo, Ronald S. “Daniele Manin (1804-1857).” Ohio University. 24 Oct. 2004. 15 Oct. 2006.
 http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/ip/manin.htm.
5.) Yancey, William. Eufaula Spirit of the South. June 3, 1851.
6.) Yancey, William. Montgomery Advertiser and State Gazette. October 9, 1850.




Bibliography att. on rough copy. Sorry my footnotes look out of control. The cutting and pasting doesn't work so well with this at times...

Anderson's Imagined Communities seemed similar to our other readings in nationalisms in Doyle and Gemme, perhaps because Anderson's work here is so comprehensive, that Anderson's conception of a created nationalism remains the standard through today as to the generation of the movements that we have termed nationalisms. Anderson's style in the book did seem a little obtuse at times, having to reach for the dictionary more often than usual. And his lack of translation of some French passages also frustrated me quite a bit. His standard chronological analysis beginning with the Western hemisphere does seem straightforward and plausible. Anderson's observations about the spread of nationalism through education I found quite interesting. Such as his example of the English national education taught to its colonies involving the Commonwealth and the Glorious Revolution.(1) Another of his comments I found interesting was his showing of the ultimate conservatism of many of the nationalist movements. These persons were not encouraging revolutions like Haiti or France, but independence movements, maybe simply to obtain their own control of their newly-created nation, such as occurred in Hungary. (2) Anderson's account of these worldwide movements is interesting and informative, but, as others have said, is too complex to encapsulate firmly in a single movement or set of ideas. Thus his analysis, as all others, falls short of any full analysis.


1. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 118.

2. Ibid., p. 104.

Edited by author 10-11-2006 11:22 AM
Although Anderson's Imagined Communities seemed fairly dense in its material and frustrated me somewhat - reason being that he derived that there was no exact "definition" of nationalism and never really explained how this ideology of nationalism created such a comradeship and motivated people to die for their nations - I found it an interesting read. I feel as though he nicely wraps up his view of the phenomenon of "imagined communities, when he makes reference to Gellner: (1) "Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist." It is interesting to see how he gives ample evidence of what creates these communities, such as cultural roots and the involvement of (2) "unselfconscious coherence" - I thought his contrasting examples (3) of older communities' sacredness versus Pedro Fermín de Vargas's account were extremely relevant. He touches upon the powerful influence of print-capitalism upon these "imagined communities," using examples such as Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses and the Thai government's control of foreign missionaries reaching out to minority tribes. More examples, such as the uniformity of education, maps, museums, newspapers, and imperialism (Several of these examples can be interlaced with those of Gemme's.), even connect the communities. One example that Anderson uses in particular, the effects of imperialism, hit home for me. Having read Jose Martí's "Nuestra América," (there was a reference to this concept in the book), I noticed the phenomenon in which "sub-communities" can be created out of a nation's actual boundaries. Due to his frustration with Spanish rule in Cuba, the works and actions of Martí created a great deal of hostility between himself and Profirio Diaz, thus booting him out of his own country and being sent to New York - where he wrote "Nuestra América." I find it interesting that even though the targeted Latino community members did not know all of the other members in actuality, they shared an intimate fratnerity. This essay motivated them to join together to resist foreign imperialism and celebrate their mestizo heritage.

1. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1991, p. 6.
2. p. 16.
3. p. 13.

Edited by author 10-11-2006 10:23 AM
As far as project ideas go, I'm still juggling between two (and suggestions are more than welcome)...
(1) aspects of tourism in each respective country and how these can be linked to national identity (Southern battlefields, B&B's, and plantations - oftentimes still using blacks for maintenance duties - versus Italian "romantic" tourism (i.e. vineyards, gondalas, glass-blowing excursions to various islands, you get the picture...). Someone passed along Michael O'Brien's "Rethinking the South" to me as a reference, which supposedly has a chapter on this topic and includes both countries. If anyone has read this, let me know what you think! I'm still yet to check it out of the library.
(2) Kind of along the same lines of Victoria, but I found the portrayals/roles of children in respect to each country's nationalism very interesting and a little random, tracing back to Gemme's references for Italy. Perhaps as far as the South goes, I could use more artwork and fictional character examples, such as Huck Finn.

Alright, now Mr. Anderson is in line.

According to Anderson, the idea of the nation emerged at the same time as societies were questioning the hierarchical organization of society “around and under high centres” as the natural condition (p. 36). The “nation” was a viable alternative because despite actual inequalities, the nation is “always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship,” i.e., we are all Americans, even if I am Bill Gates and you are Joe Smoe (p. 7). The notion of “horizontal comradeship” goes a long way in explaining why this new form of organization was and continues to be appealing to millions of people who are willing to die to protect the nation. In a nation, every person has equal status (even if only in theory) as a member of the nation, despite their plot in life. I think he really hit the nail on the head with this point.

It was interesting that Anderson, á la Doyle, sees the American case as exceptional in the sense that it served as a model available for copying by other would-be nationalists around the world. I actually think that this bridges the gap between Doyle and Gemme’s arguments about American exceptionalism on the one hand, and Americans’ belief in American exceptionalism on the other. It is not that America provides an example of getting it right; it is that the new conception of nation as carried out in America served as a “visible model.” As Anderson notes, “the ‘nation’ proved an invention on which it was impossible to secure a patent” (p. 67).

Edited by author 10-11-2006 12:43 AM
    Ernest Gellner contends in Nations and Nationalism that the "secret of nationalism" lies in the way that high culture became popular culture with the onset of the industrial age, and then that this culture was sustained by the "polity" that it now infiltrated (18). Arguing that the emergence of industrial society prompted the emergence of nationalism, Gellner discusses how the requirements of industrialism catalyzed a general education of all groups in society. In the pre-industrial agrarian societies, there existed a high class of educated leaders who looked after the intellectual interests of many locally-centered groups. However it became a necessity in the Industrial Age for there to be a sort of baseline education whereby all members of a polity had enough of an education to live a successful industrial life. At the same time and perhaps even as a product of this generalized education, industrial societies saw a shift towards more mobile populations who were no longer bound by local group loyalties. Gellner claims that it was this spreading of education (high culture) and simaltaneous mobilization of people among tiers of society that resulted in a culture of the state, distinct from the culture of previously horizontally stratified groups. Gellner sees nationalism not as the only and the inevitable byproduct of a state culture, but as one of the results that has shown many instances of success and also failed to prove fruitful for some states.
    Though I have not read the Benedict Anderson book, just going on Anna's posting I would say that Gellner and Anderson would disagree on how culture plays into nationalism. Gellner seems to be saying that defining nationalism only on a cultural basis is too broad, but still that nationalism is more than just an ideological invention. Yet it seems that Anderson is contending that nationalism is just the cultural system that Gellner tries to separate it from. Gellner recognizes the role of culture in shaping nationalism, but tries to avoid getting tied up in the origins and "why's" of culture and instead looks to what culture does for nationalism, namely that what was the high culture in pre-industrial societies expanded to be the culture of the industrial age. Needless to say, it will be interesting to compare these two tommorrow in discussion.
   Finally, I though Gellner had an argument that was well presented for the most part, if not a little dense. However I would have liked more concrete examples of his arguments instead of the hypothetical situations that only served to muddle the point for me.

Anderson's book examined the rise of nationalism in the form of, what he termed, imagined communities. He questioned how these "imagined communities" formed, using examples from around the world. One recurring theme throughout the book was the importance of using the vernacular language to create a "print capitalism" in a society. Newspapers were the most obvious example of this, but Anderson also mentioned the role of the fiction novel in creating a sense of shared community among readers. This brings to mind the arguments made by McCardell and Gemme that journal articles and pamphlets, among other kinds of publications, helped to spread nationalist ideas among the masses. Anderson also discusses how symbols affect nationalism in his chapter "Census, Map, Museum". Censuses defined the different "peoples" of a region in a very clear-cut manner, which assigned a particular identity to everyone. Maps outlined the boundaries of a region, both geographic and political. Museums, supplemented with artifacts through archaeological excavations, and often located on or near the site of ancient monuments, served to point people to a shared history and culture, even though that may have been in the distant past. The latter can be seen particularly well in the case of Italy; the monuments of Rome provided silent testimony to the "glory days" of old, and the masterpieces of the Renaissance also served as a rallying point for nationalism.

I agree, John, that it was difficult to relate some of Gellner's ideas to the issue of Confederate nationhood. At the end of chapter six Gellner states that, "nationalisms are simply those tribalisms...which through luck, effort or circumstance succeed in becoming an effective force under modern circumstances...Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no one will dare call it tribalism (87)." Here Gellner makes me wonder if he would see the Confederacy as a "tribalism" that prospered in the South, but could not stand up to the "high culture" of the North, so it never reached the heights of true nationalism.

For the project, I would like to examine the role gender played in the nationalist movements of Italy and the American South. I want to look at the roles played by both genders, but especially focusing on women, as well as how this played into nationalist discourse. I would use the portrayals of women and gender relations in artwork and literature as part of this study.

Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism provides a highly theoretical examination of Old World/ European nationalism. In Gellner’s view, the emergence of nationalism as a phenomenon was inexorably linked to the emergence of industrial society. As industrialism emerged, it was followed by a monolithic, often government affiliated education system, which fostered literacy among the masses and facilitated the dissemination of literature used to perpetuate nationalistic ideology. Nationalism is thus, the imposition of a high unitary culture on the general population, under the guise of a pure folk culture, using the symbolism of the pristine and vigorous peasantry. After the illusionary culture had been established using the education system, literature, and folk art; the government sought to form an entropy of the population by enlisting the education system to produce loyal and worthy followers of the contrived nationalism.
 Although Gellner’s treatment of nationalism was quite interesting, its European view does little to help us understand the path to Confederate nationhood. The most interesting parallel that I could find in his work was his brief assessment of the effects of nationalism on the Islamic world. (1) I do not claim to be an Islamic scholar but, prima facie, there are many commonalities between the cleavages in the Muslim World and in antebellum American. Gellner asserts that the Muslim world, though of common ancestry, was split between and high and a low culture. The two cultures often went by the same name, were never fully distinguished, and both shared a passionate identification with a paramount event in the past that they now portrayed in different manners. The lower group valued the land and traditional folk and social groupings while the high group, “set for the more fastidious, scholarly, individualist and literate urban schoolmen.” (2) If I had not been reading so carefully, I might have mistaken Gellner’s classifications of Islamic society for a characterization of antebellum America. Even in the midst of secession both the Rebels and the Unionists claimed to be continuing the spirit of 1776 and fortifying the Constitution. And the country was clearly split between the agrarian South and the Industrialist North. The Confederacy, akin to many of Gellner’s examples, pursued nationalistic goals as its traditional society was exposed to the onset of industrialism.

1. p. 76-82
2. p. 80

For our exhibit, I would love to work with the culinary worlds of the southeastern United States and Italy. Is the culinary world/food/cuisine/the idea of sharing a meal important in shaping national identity? Was it then, is it now? What is identified as most uniquely southern and italian? How often is food the answer to what might be the region's strongest distiguishing characteristic? If it is the answer, what does that mean? These are all questions that I would love to look into, as well as what foods specifically apply to each, what their history is, why they were important then or are now. This is just a little glimpse I hope at what I might find and be able to incorporate into the group project/exhibit.

I was thinking about what I would like to do for our group project, and I think that I would most like to research the influence that music had over both Italy and the American South during this time. I think that we would be able to incorpoate music fairly easily into a display, and it would definitely add interest.

As much as I appreciate the various apologies made by Anderson in his Preface to the Second Edition, this book certainly proves the difficulty in trying to define and explain something so abstract as the emergence of nationalism. Anderson recognizes that difficulty numerous times, and tries to aid the reader by offering the suggestion to look at and classify the term as an ideology, not a political stance. (1) A nation is "an imagined political community"...distinguished "by the style in which they are imagined". (2) Comments such as these and many others are examples of the helpful suggestion and statement made by Anderson in understanding nationalism, but upon completion of the book, in general, I felt that even though Anderson recognizes the complexity of his task at hand, I felt that this collection of ideas and chapters was somewhat discombobulated, lacking in direction, and sometimes unclearly worded.
I'm not sure if Anderson's most intriguing and poignant question, "What makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history generate such colossal sacrifices?" is even answered. Maybe this is a topic for discussion.
But there are other topics and discussions in the book that I still found to be interesting. I guess I will begin our discussion with a note on the first chapter, where I felt that Anderson made an interesting point (furthering his view of nationalism as a communal ideology) that nationalism is better understood by viewing it as a cultural system, and by referring it to other cultural systems like religion rather than political ideas. These systems preceded nationalism and shaped nationalism.
Anderson shows us that at some point, the importance of religious culture decreased, and other factors that were comforts to those persons in a community decreased along with it, such as the loss of presence of a unifying text-language, the monarchy, and comfort with the ideas of time. Anderson believes that the members of these communities would become desperate for other means of fraternity, and thus made themselves available to new ideologies, forms of community, or ways of looking at and forming their world and would then shape their nationalisms.


1. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1991, p. 5.
2. Ibid, p.6.