“Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead”. must count as one of the most dimwitted policy statements of recent times. I believe that it is an axiom in the study of revolutionary movements that they are always in fact turbocharged, not dampened, by attempts at compromise by the ruling regime.
Geoff W
1 month ago
The analogy between the UK/Ireland and the Habsburg Empire strikes me as rather silly. It’s flawed because everyone in the UK/Ireland speaks English (spare me the sneering comments about the migrants), whereas – as the author emphasises – by no means everyone in the Austro-Hungarian Empire spoke German or Hungarian.
A more accurate comparison would be between the British EMPIRE and the Habsburg Empire. And both fell apart; the only difference was that the Habsburgs went first.
The Hapsburg family were largely in favour of devolution, devolution in a way that was effectively independence under a common monarchy, but were unable to move fast enough to bring it about before WW1. Indeed Charles I would have happily become King of Hungary and let Austria go if necessary after the war.
The British Empire didn’t fall apart. There had been a plan to confer independence to the colonies since the late 18th century through a gradual transfer of governance to the local population to create a stable independent country. Unfortunately WW1 and then the demands by the USA post WW2, who didn’t want the UK impinging on their hedgemoney, forced the pace leaving many ex colonies less than prepared for independence vulnerable to internal (often tribal or ethnic) rivalries leading to the instability we still see across Africa and India. The idea of “The Commonwealth” was not only a trade group but also an attempt to create a common identity.
Simms’ comparison between the UK and Austria Hungary was influenced, I suspect, by (as he says) Arthur Griffith’s famous pamphlet “The Resurrection of Hungary”. People forget that it was published in 1905 by the founder of Sinn Fein and envisaged a similar arrangement between Ireland and Britain. It was never on of course.
Katharine Eyre
1 month ago
Not sure what to say about the comparison with the UK, but I think the Habsburg Empire and its demise could offer up some interesting insights in terms of “(Potentially) Failed Experiments In Living Together And Their Consequences” as mapped onto the current situation in the Middle East and the migration crisis in Europe.
You’d have to be very courageous to do that bit of writing.
The alternative conclusion would be that any political entity that welds together separate nations will eventually collapse with more or less conflict so it’s better to accept a peaceful transition to independence.
It is time to disband the UK and, for similar reasons, the EU.
There is a wonderful lack of logic in a Tory Party which (alright, in part) wanted to be out of Europe, but refuses to let Scotland be independent. If the Scottish Conservative Party had campaigned for independence they would be the leading party in Scotland now!
And then we have a Scottish National Party which wants to be independent of England but surrender that independence to Brussels! Nuts
The trouble with the UK devolution model is that the socialists in Wales and Scotland won’t run out of other people’s money since they’ll just get more of it from England. It’s no accident that the most lunatic adoption of Left-wing policies in the UK are in the devolved areas.
There’s moral hazard if you don’t make them responsible for their own budgets, but having done so, they’d be practically independent aside from foreign policy.
And given London the biggest net economic contributor, yet run by a Labour Mayor, and even when wasn’t Bojo stuck with similar policies you happy with a continuance of this train of thought?
And on this basis you ok Scotland and Wales keep their Oil/Gas and Water respectively? Perhaps on the former you are as you can see the benefit of Green power in England?
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Just as a coda, more recent break-ups can be traced to pre-1918 K.u.K. political arrangements – Yugoslavia broke up into Slovenia (pre-1918 Austria), Croatia (Hungarian), Bosnia Herzegovina (joint Austro-Hungarian military administration), Serbia and Montenegro. Czechoslovakia into Czech Republic (Austrian) and Slovakia (Hungarian).
Galicia first went to Poland, and post-WW II ended up in Ukraine. The legacy of the Austro-Hungarian “compromise” to let the Poles lord it over the Galicians/Ukrainians (in return for denying Polish demands for co-equality with Germans and Hungarians) is the kernel for the Ukrainians despising the Poles, and Western Ukraine being the hotbed of social nationalism (their term) dominating the country.
The Austro-Hungarian governments promoted the various identities, they did not seek to erase them, and they then exploited the differences to bolster their minority rule, like the British did in India.
The attraction of the Austro-Hungarian approach is that national identity is not tied to territory – Jews could have their identity without that being tied to any particular geography, and ethnic minorities could cultivate their identity wherever they lived. It is this “imperial” approach, as contrasted with a “nation-state” approach, that the EU initially cultivated, before the EU allowed the Baltic States to violate a fundamental tenet of the EU acquis and discriminate against their ethnic Russian population.
Incidentally, language differences are overblown – in most of the world (including Austro-Hungary pre-1918 and India today), people grow up speaking one language in the family, a different one in the community, and a different one again in education.
In a way, the events of 1989-1991 saw the end of WW II. Since then, we are seeing the slow-motion unwinding of WW I. It’s not over yet.
Michael can speak for himself, but I’ll take advantage of the offer.
Italy was initially with Germany and Austro-Hungary, but then saw its chance to grab South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, Dalmatia etc., and attacked Austro-Hungary. It went badly, badly wrong, with a disastrous loss at Caporetto, where a young Württemberg captain call Erwin Rommel made his name. On the other side, a certain Benito Mussolini was injured in the fighting, and later made much of his veteran status.
But the most interesting convolutions were in the East. Germany had started the war on the basis of the Schlieffen Plan, which called for a quick campaign in the West to take France out of the war, so that Germany could concentrate on the enemy it saw as existential, Russia.
Of course, it turned out differently. The Western Front bogged down, while in the East, with the victory at Tannenberg and the Russian Revolution, Russia crumbled.
Germany at first offered Lenin a fairly lenient treaty, but Lenin turned it down in the hope that the war would unite Russians under Soviet leadership. He counted on securing a military success against Germany, which would enable the Soviets to treat with the Germans from a position of strength.
Again it turned out differently – the Russian soldiers were in no mood to continue fighting, and the Germans got fed up dealing with the Soviets. So the Germans presented Lenin with the harsh, take-it-or-leave it Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which also (for the first time in history) created an independent Ukraine. The Germans’ cunning plan was that breaking Ukraine out of Russia would give Germany access to Ukrainian wheat and raw materials, desperately needed by the blockaded Germans.
Again it turned out differently, and the German defeat effectively annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia once again took charge of Ukraine.
Though Germany and Soviet Russia were by no means natural friends, the fact that both of them were pariahs post-WW I threw them together. Banned from having a strong military or mechanised forces, the Germans trained their panzer tactics in Russia together with Russian officers. When Stalin had most of his generals shot because he thought they were too close to Germany, his suspicions were not wholly unfounded, though it severely weakened the Red Army initially.
I’m curious why you were downvoted on this – you are right of course, but at the same time, as you no doubt wanted to emphasise, the prospect of establishing a national presence in Palestine was not yet realistic. So the notion of a “homeland” was a treasured if idealistic one, while daily life focused on the here and now.
In both Germany and Austro-Hungary (and possibly elsewhere, I couldn’t say), the great intra-Jewish-community issue at the time was how to deal with the many Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms in Ukraine (then of course still Czarist Russia). The Jewish communities in Germany and urban Austro-Hungary were mostly urbane, highly educated, and assimilated, whereas the refugees were poor, fundamentalist, close-minded, dressed “funny”, and wanted to keep to themselves.
While Jewish enfranchisement had progressed, both Germany and Austro-Hungary still discriminated against Jews, of course. German and Austro-Hungarian urbanised Jews feared that the influx of refugee Jews from Ukraine would jeopardise their further integration.
A highly schematic presentation of the situation, but a live issue at the time.
Blame the Poles? W Ukraine consists largely of former Hungarian and Polish territory, with a slice of Bulgaria thrown in. And the man’s grab led to four years of civil war,, with frightful atrocities visited in the Poles. This was no righting of National misallication.
Quite. The atrocities were committed by the acolytes of Stepan Bandera, now one of the heroes of the Ukraine.
You have hit the nail on the head.
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
It seems to me the lesson is more that a rule which is based on a minority fomenting and exploiting differences in the population in order to facilitate their rule is ultimately doomed to fail.
That was true of Austro-Hungary, the British in India, and the British in Ireland.
The problem is not devolution.
Georgivs Novicianvs
1 month ago
Methinks the author compares apples and oranges. The thing that sets the UK apart from the rest of the Europe is a high degree of the autonomy of the local communities reflected in the common law arrangements. Once the communities could address a lot of their issues locally and go about their own business, they were less dependent on and, therefore, more tolerant to whatever the central government in London was up to. The Hapsburg monarchy was a top down empire built through conquest and marriages. The subjects had less individual freedom and, come the modern age, were more prone towards venting their frustrations through nationalism and tribal hatreds.
England and Scotland remained separate nations as each wanted to keep their own historic liberties.
j watson
1 month ago
Article prompted the thought, well if devolution fractures a State what happened to the USA?
Obviously quite a lot of differences from the Hapsburg empire. But pre Civil War most Americans referred to ‘a’ United States rather than ‘the’ United States. Point being it remains remarkable historical difference that the US didn’t fracture despite considerable devolution. Common language, a unique Constitution and the expansion into land where the occupants were largely destroyed are of course factors, but nonetheless the strongest Country in the last 150 years has been a federal arrangement with alot of devolution. Originally loyalty was much more to a State than the Federal entity. In many regards why it’s never been matched is those developing free market economies have remained smaller and fractured, and those who haven’t been Autocracies so the people’s wishes not a factor.
Because, surely, it was a federalism which came from the citizens in the states; they wanted to be united as Americans, but to retain some powers locally so that there was a sense of local control. Their loyalty was to “America”, they from early days felt themselves to be Americans, the federal system kept government relatively close to home.
The Civil War was about the conflict (which continues) as to what powers are national, to be enforced on all, and what can be decided locally. For a large country it’s as good a system as one could imagine. Indeed there must be a case for breaking the bigger states, such as California, into smaller ones so that they do not become too remote from their citizens.
Of course people will have felt different, but as a generality they felt citizens of their State first and part of the Federal republic second. Reading the Federalist papers and the debates that went on in 1780s-90s that comes across, albeit some others perhaps more prescient such as Hamilton.
The scale of the US has given it immense advantages alongside a Constitution that has stood the test of time, thus far. Had it fractured during 1860s the story of the 20th C distinctly different. And to understand that one just needs to only look at the Maps of Central and the northern part of S America – multiple weak Countries with major problems after being under one Empire. US is the uniquely different experiment and thank goodness for it. Let’s hope nobody messes it up.
Yes, I would not disagree with that in the C16 and C17th centuries but there was a growing disenchantment about England l/Great Britain founded in the religious and political roots of the early settlement, and by the mid 18th century a real sense of Americanism as the true identity of the colonialists
Calvin Coolidge when President 1922-28 were well-known as describing the USA as ‘These United States’ in the plural. Since Coolidge though this (accurate) way of desbribing the US has fallen out of use.
Richard Craven
1 month ago
“The historian Solomon w**k”
More tea vicar?
Francis Turner
1 month ago
great line from one of the modern von Hapsburgs, who joked when someone mentioned that there was an Austria-Hungary international football match on TV… ” Ah…. but whom are we playing”?!!!
John Tyler
1 month ago
To me, the problem with “devolution” is that it is top down: we, parliament, deign to give you, the nations, certain powers. Power should evolve from the bottom up. There is something innately wrong when local and regional governments have to fight for powers to deal with domestic matters. Parliament, and the UK government, should stop trying to have a say in everything and accept that in local areas people will have different aspirations, different processes and different outcomes. Similarly, regional bodies and governments should back away from issues that can be solved more locally, with the same differences in hopes, processes and standards.
If I had my way MPs would only work part time and their earnings would reflect their strong motivation to further the public good, sacrificing themselves for others; they could earn better wages during the other half of the week. At least half the civi service could probably go and find jobs in the real world. Central government’s prime duty is to protect the country from foreign threats. That task includes elements that are military, diplomatic and economic. It does not include the vast array of duties imposed by governments on regional and local governments in areas of social care and development or the huge subsidies paid out to centrally-organised local initiatives and so-called charities.
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
The Habsburgs came to their dynastic end by starting the First World War. Domestic considerations were not to blame. But Simms is correct to say that devolution within the UK has been a disaster.
Alan Sked
Tony Price
1 month ago
Every empire in the history of mankind has failed and dissolved into its constituent parts in some way, and that will always be the way. It’s so sad that Russia and China today can’t see that.
Both China and Russia are empires that have seen ups and downs across centuries – millennia, in China’s case.
I noted with surprise that your cautionary comment did not include the US empire.
The US is no longer developing a geographical empire, the last real manifestation of which was the annexation of Hawaii in 1961, and its cultural empire is declining. Both Russia and China are seeking to expand both geographically and politically. They will do enormous damage before they collapse again.
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Actually “accommodating” plural identities is the problem.
The goal should be welcoming newcomers who willingly, legally enter a country and fostering their desire to embrace their new home.
We need to return to the melting pot where differences complimented each other versus the tossed salad where each ingredient remains distinct and wants to be the star of the dish.
Jonathan Nash
1 month ago
This gives me the opportunity to recommend one of my favourite novels: Miklos Bannfy’s Transylvanian Trilogy. War and Peace without all the farming.
Anna Bramwell
1 month ago
Scotland begged to join England after going bankrupt over the failed colonial adventure of Darien. Before that it was a separate nation.
Chris Whybrow
1 month ago
I can live with the death of Britain. England is my home, deeply, deeply flawed though it may be. Britain is simply the lump of rock upon which it is located.
Michael Clarke
1 month ago
Britain will function better after Irish re-unification and Britain’s withdrawal from N. Ireland.
Nicholas Coulson
1 month ago
The Reichsgraf Eduard von Taaffe was also the eleventh Viscount Taaffe in the peerage of Ireland. Make of that what you will.
John Hughes
1 month ago
The Austrian (Cisleithanian) Chancellor Eduard Taaffe’s description of how Austria-Hungary was run, as a matter of keeping the various groups in a equal state of “well-tempered discontent” across the whole Empire, is useful in its applicablity today to governing fractious countries. If everyone is equally discontented, but no one is relatively worse off than the rest, then the balance can be kept. The Empire would not have collapsed and been divided into several countries if World War I had not happened.
Main Edition
US
FR
“Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead”. must count as one of the most dimwitted policy statements of recent times. I believe that it is an axiom in the study of revolutionary movements that they are always in fact turbocharged, not dampened, by attempts at compromise by the ruling regime.
The analogy between the UK/Ireland and the Habsburg Empire strikes me as rather silly. It’s flawed because everyone in the UK/Ireland speaks English (spare me the sneering comments about the migrants), whereas – as the author emphasises – by no means everyone in the Austro-Hungarian Empire spoke German or Hungarian.
A more accurate comparison would be between the British EMPIRE and the Habsburg Empire. And both fell apart; the only difference was that the Habsburgs went first.
The Hapsburg family were largely in favour of devolution, devolution in a way that was effectively independence under a common monarchy, but were unable to move fast enough to bring it about before WW1. Indeed Charles I would have happily become King of Hungary and let Austria go if necessary after the war.
The British Empire didn’t fall apart. There had been a plan to confer independence to the colonies since the late 18th century through a gradual transfer of governance to the local population to create a stable independent country. Unfortunately WW1 and then the demands by the USA post WW2, who didn’t want the UK impinging on their hedgemoney, forced the pace leaving many ex colonies less than prepared for independence vulnerable to internal (often tribal or ethnic) rivalries leading to the instability we still see across Africa and India. The idea of “The Commonwealth” was not only a trade group but also an attempt to create a common identity.
A Ghanian friend they needed another fifteen years to train professional people bfore independence.
Simms’ comparison between the UK and Austria Hungary was influenced, I suspect, by (as he says) Arthur Griffith’s famous pamphlet “The Resurrection of Hungary”. People forget that it was published in 1905 by the founder of Sinn Fein and envisaged a similar arrangement between Ireland and Britain. It was never on of course.
Not sure what to say about the comparison with the UK, but I think the Habsburg Empire and its demise could offer up some interesting insights in terms of “(Potentially) Failed Experiments In Living Together And Their Consequences” as mapped onto the current situation in the Middle East and the migration crisis in Europe.
You’d have to be very courageous to do that bit of writing.
See my point about the USA. It’s in the title.
The alternative conclusion would be that any political entity that welds together separate nations will eventually collapse with more or less conflict so it’s better to accept a peaceful transition to independence.
It is time to disband the UK and, for similar reasons, the EU.
There is a wonderful lack of logic in a Tory Party which (alright, in part) wanted to be out of Europe, but refuses to let Scotland be independent. If the Scottish Conservative Party had campaigned for independence they would be the leading party in Scotland now!
And then we have a Scottish National Party which wants to be independent of England but surrender that independence to Brussels! Nuts
One looks forwarded therefore to the return of Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria. Or maybe just a Danelaw split to start with.
Also Germany and Italy?
The trouble with the UK devolution model is that the socialists in Wales and Scotland won’t run out of other people’s money since they’ll just get more of it from England. It’s no accident that the most lunatic adoption of Left-wing policies in the UK are in the devolved areas.
There’s moral hazard if you don’t make them responsible for their own budgets, but having done so, they’d be practically independent aside from foreign policy.
And given London the biggest net economic contributor, yet run by a Labour Mayor, and even when wasn’t Bojo stuck with similar policies you happy with a continuance of this train of thought?
And on this basis you ok Scotland and Wales keep their Oil/Gas and Water respectively? Perhaps on the former you are as you can see the benefit of Green power in England?
Just as a coda, more recent break-ups can be traced to pre-1918 K.u.K. political arrangements – Yugoslavia broke up into Slovenia (pre-1918 Austria), Croatia (Hungarian), Bosnia Herzegovina (joint Austro-Hungarian military administration), Serbia and Montenegro. Czechoslovakia into Czech Republic (Austrian) and Slovakia (Hungarian).
Galicia first went to Poland, and post-WW II ended up in Ukraine. The legacy of the Austro-Hungarian “compromise” to let the Poles lord it over the Galicians/Ukrainians (in return for denying Polish demands for co-equality with Germans and Hungarians) is the kernel for the Ukrainians despising the Poles, and Western Ukraine being the hotbed of social nationalism (their term) dominating the country.
The Austro-Hungarian governments promoted the various identities, they did not seek to erase them, and they then exploited the differences to bolster their minority rule, like the British did in India.
The attraction of the Austro-Hungarian approach is that national identity is not tied to territory – Jews could have their identity without that being tied to any particular geography, and ethnic minorities could cultivate their identity wherever they lived. It is this “imperial” approach, as contrasted with a “nation-state” approach, that the EU initially cultivated, before the EU allowed the Baltic States to violate a fundamental tenet of the EU acquis and discriminate against their ethnic Russian population.
Incidentally, language differences are overblown – in most of the world (including Austro-Hungary pre-1918 and India today), people grow up speaking one language in the family, a different one in the community, and a different one again in education.
In a way, the events of 1989-1991 saw the end of WW II. Since then, we are seeing the slow-motion unwinding of WW I. It’s not over yet.
If the results of WW1 are unwinding, it will be interesting to see Germany’s old territories being reclaimed…
Incidentally was there not just one World War…but in two parts with a change of sides in some instances?
Please give details …
Michael can speak for himself, but I’ll take advantage of the offer.
Italy was initially with Germany and Austro-Hungary, but then saw its chance to grab South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria, Dalmatia etc., and attacked Austro-Hungary. It went badly, badly wrong, with a disastrous loss at Caporetto, where a young Württemberg captain call Erwin Rommel made his name. On the other side, a certain Benito Mussolini was injured in the fighting, and later made much of his veteran status.
But the most interesting convolutions were in the East. Germany had started the war on the basis of the Schlieffen Plan, which called for a quick campaign in the West to take France out of the war, so that Germany could concentrate on the enemy it saw as existential, Russia.
Of course, it turned out differently. The Western Front bogged down, while in the East, with the victory at Tannenberg and the Russian Revolution, Russia crumbled.
Germany at first offered Lenin a fairly lenient treaty, but Lenin turned it down in the hope that the war would unite Russians under Soviet leadership. He counted on securing a military success against Germany, which would enable the Soviets to treat with the Germans from a position of strength.
Again it turned out differently – the Russian soldiers were in no mood to continue fighting, and the Germans got fed up dealing with the Soviets. So the Germans presented Lenin with the harsh, take-it-or-leave it Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which also (for the first time in history) created an independent Ukraine. The Germans’ cunning plan was that breaking Ukraine out of Russia would give Germany access to Ukrainian wheat and raw materials, desperately needed by the blockaded Germans.
Again it turned out differently, and the German defeat effectively annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia once again took charge of Ukraine.
Though Germany and Soviet Russia were by no means natural friends, the fact that both of them were pariahs post-WW I threw them together. Banned from having a strong military or mechanised forces, the Germans trained their panzer tactics in Russia together with Russian officers. When Stalin had most of his generals shot because he thought they were too close to Germany, his suspicions were not wholly unfounded, though it severely weakened the Red Army initially.
“… Jews could have their identity without that being tied to any particular geography …”
Pardon! Their land is part of their soul.
I’m curious why you were downvoted on this – you are right of course, but at the same time, as you no doubt wanted to emphasise, the prospect of establishing a national presence in Palestine was not yet realistic. So the notion of a “homeland” was a treasured if idealistic one, while daily life focused on the here and now.
In both Germany and Austro-Hungary (and possibly elsewhere, I couldn’t say), the great intra-Jewish-community issue at the time was how to deal with the many Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms in Ukraine (then of course still Czarist Russia). The Jewish communities in Germany and urban Austro-Hungary were mostly urbane, highly educated, and assimilated, whereas the refugees were poor, fundamentalist, close-minded, dressed “funny”, and wanted to keep to themselves.
While Jewish enfranchisement had progressed, both Germany and Austro-Hungary still discriminated against Jews, of course. German and Austro-Hungarian urbanised Jews feared that the influx of refugee Jews from Ukraine would jeopardise their further integration.
A highly schematic presentation of the situation, but a live issue at the time.
Blame the Poles? W Ukraine consists largely of former Hungarian and Polish territory, with a slice of Bulgaria thrown in. And the man’s grab led to four years of civil war,, with frightful atrocities visited in the Poles. This was no righting of National misallication.
Quite. The atrocities were committed by the acolytes of Stepan Bandera, now one of the heroes of the Ukraine.
You have hit the nail on the head.
It seems to me the lesson is more that a rule which is based on a minority fomenting and exploiting differences in the population in order to facilitate their rule is ultimately doomed to fail.
That was true of Austro-Hungary, the British in India, and the British in Ireland.
The problem is not devolution.
Methinks the author compares apples and oranges. The thing that sets the UK apart from the rest of the Europe is a high degree of the autonomy of the local communities reflected in the common law arrangements. Once the communities could address a lot of their issues locally and go about their own business, they were less dependent on and, therefore, more tolerant to whatever the central government in London was up to. The Hapsburg monarchy was a top down empire built through conquest and marriages. The subjects had less individual freedom and, come the modern age, were more prone towards venting their frustrations through nationalism and tribal hatreds.
England and Scotland remained separate nations as each wanted to keep their own historic liberties.
Article prompted the thought, well if devolution fractures a State what happened to the USA?
Obviously quite a lot of differences from the Hapsburg empire. But pre Civil War most Americans referred to ‘a’ United States rather than ‘the’ United States. Point being it remains remarkable historical difference that the US didn’t fracture despite considerable devolution. Common language, a unique Constitution and the expansion into land where the occupants were largely destroyed are of course factors, but nonetheless the strongest Country in the last 150 years has been a federal arrangement with alot of devolution. Originally loyalty was much more to a State than the Federal entity. In many regards why it’s never been matched is those developing free market economies have remained smaller and fractured, and those who haven’t been Autocracies so the people’s wishes not a factor.
Because, surely, it was a federalism which came from the citizens in the states; they wanted to be united as Americans, but to retain some powers locally so that there was a sense of local control. Their loyalty was to “America”, they from early days felt themselves to be Americans, the federal system kept government relatively close to home.
The Civil War was about the conflict (which continues) as to what powers are national, to be enforced on all, and what can be decided locally. For a large country it’s as good a system as one could imagine. Indeed there must be a case for breaking the bigger states, such as California, into smaller ones so that they do not become too remote from their citizens.
Of course people will have felt different, but as a generality they felt citizens of their State first and part of the Federal republic second. Reading the Federalist papers and the debates that went on in 1780s-90s that comes across, albeit some others perhaps more prescient such as Hamilton.
The scale of the US has given it immense advantages alongside a Constitution that has stood the test of time, thus far. Had it fractured during 1860s the story of the 20th C distinctly different. And to understand that one just needs to only look at the Maps of Central and the northern part of S America – multiple weak Countries with major problems after being under one Empire. US is the uniquely different experiment and thank goodness for it. Let’s hope nobody messes it up.
Yes, I would not disagree with that in the C16 and C17th centuries but there was a growing disenchantment about England l/Great Britain founded in the religious and political roots of the early settlement, and by the mid 18th century a real sense of Americanism as the true identity of the colonialists
Depression and WWII gave DEMs taste of absolute power. So devolved allegiance to state had to be superceded.
Powers that be in USA working overtime to force balkanization on US. anybody want to guess who wins when this plan is finalized?
Calvin Coolidge when President 1922-28 were well-known as describing the USA as ‘These United States’ in the plural. Since Coolidge though this (accurate) way of desbribing the US has fallen out of use.
“The historian Solomon w**k”
More tea vicar?
great line from one of the modern von Hapsburgs, who joked when someone mentioned that there was an Austria-Hungary international football match on TV… ” Ah…. but whom are we playing”?!!!
To me, the problem with “devolution” is that it is top down: we, parliament, deign to give you, the nations, certain powers. Power should evolve from the bottom up. There is something innately wrong when local and regional governments have to fight for powers to deal with domestic matters. Parliament, and the UK government, should stop trying to have a say in everything and accept that in local areas people will have different aspirations, different processes and different outcomes. Similarly, regional bodies and governments should back away from issues that can be solved more locally, with the same differences in hopes, processes and standards.
If I had my way MPs would only work part time and their earnings would reflect their strong motivation to further the public good, sacrificing themselves for others; they could earn better wages during the other half of the week. At least half the civi service could probably go and find jobs in the real world. Central government’s prime duty is to protect the country from foreign threats. That task includes elements that are military, diplomatic and economic. It does not include the vast array of duties imposed by governments on regional and local governments in areas of social care and development or the huge subsidies paid out to centrally-organised local initiatives and so-called charities.
The Habsburgs came to their dynastic end by starting the First World War. Domestic considerations were not to blame. But Simms is correct to say that devolution within the UK has been a disaster.
Alan Sked
Every empire in the history of mankind has failed and dissolved into its constituent parts in some way, and that will always be the way. It’s so sad that Russia and China today can’t see that.
Both China and Russia are empires that have seen ups and downs across centuries – millennia, in China’s case.
I noted with surprise that your cautionary comment did not include the US empire.
The US is no longer developing a geographical empire, the last real manifestation of which was the annexation of Hawaii in 1961, and its cultural empire is declining. Both Russia and China are seeking to expand both geographically and politically. They will do enormous damage before they collapse again.
Actually “accommodating” plural identities is the problem.
The goal should be welcoming newcomers who willingly, legally enter a country and fostering their desire to embrace their new home.
We need to return to the melting pot where differences complimented each other versus the tossed salad where each ingredient remains distinct and wants to be the star of the dish.
This gives me the opportunity to recommend one of my favourite novels: Miklos Bannfy’s Transylvanian Trilogy. War and Peace without all the farming.
Scotland begged to join England after going bankrupt over the failed colonial adventure of Darien. Before that it was a separate nation.
I can live with the death of Britain. England is my home, deeply, deeply flawed though it may be. Britain is simply the lump of rock upon which it is located.
Britain will function better after Irish re-unification and Britain’s withdrawal from N. Ireland.
The Reichsgraf Eduard von Taaffe was also the eleventh Viscount Taaffe in the peerage of Ireland. Make of that what you will.
The Austrian (Cisleithanian) Chancellor Eduard Taaffe’s description of how Austria-Hungary was run, as a matter of keeping the various groups in a equal state of “well-tempered discontent” across the whole Empire, is useful in its applicablity today to governing fractious countries. If everyone is equally discontented, but no one is relatively worse off than the rest, then the balance can be kept. The Empire would not have collapsed and been divided into several countries if World War I had not happened.