National identity is not only imposed from ‘above’. All over the world, people cheer for their national football team, celebrate national holidays, or proudly buy ‘home-grown’ produce.
Nationalism is always concerned with borders. Those borders can be literal, since a modern state is defined as the highest authority within a certain territory. The size of that territory must therefore be fixed. Or they are figurative borders, between compatriots and foreigners. What makes a group of people a ‘nation’? Is it a shared status, origin, history, language, culture, or even ethnicity?
For most of history, the vast majority of people needed no papers to cross borders. However, the industrial age helped to increase state power and triggered large waves of migration. A new image of the nation, as an ethnically pure community, reinforced distrust of foreigners. Borders increasingly came to be seen as strict divisions: a (sometimes literal) wall between countries.
The border is never quite set in stone, however. Borders need constant reinforcement. They are marked on maps or with boundary posts in the landscape. Politicians and the media hammer home their importance, for instance in debates about immigration. Customs officers, fences or cameras determine who crosses the border ‘legally’ or ‘illegally’.
Border technologies
The modern nation state is considered ‘sovereign’ – the highest authority within its own borders. This greatly increases the emphasis put on borders. In the 19th and 20th centuries, states used new technologies to classify their subjects and keep ‘foreigners’ out. It was only after the First World War that the passport as we know it today became standardised. Many states now use passports with biometric data. Cameras and body scanners are making border control increasingly intimate and personal.
Claiming territory
During the 19th century, more and more European politicians and intellectuals argued that the state and the nation should be one. As many compatriots as possible were to be united in one territory. Contradictory territorial claims were, legitimised by means of maps, among other media. The ‘true’ nation was defined using subjective criteria, such as language, culture or the pseudo-biological concept of ‘race’. In the late 19th century, European states also drew borders for the territories they had colonised in Africa and Asia, without respect for local states, governments or identities.
The national landscape
Many nationalist ideas tether the national idea to a physical landscape. In the 19th century, the natural landscape was seen as a counterpart to the corrupt modern world. Artists retreated to the mountains to immortalise their homeland on canvas. New tourist organisations, such as the Swedish Tourist Association (STF) in 1885, were set up to help the population ‘get to know their own country’. This ‘country’ was often tied to a specific image of the nation. For example, the nomadic Sámi peoples of northern Scandinavia were portrayed as exotic and primitive.
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