Historical Legacies for Anti-Immigrant Attitudes, Warfare and Nationalism

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Panel Abstract: This panel brings together several papers that look at the role of historical factors like warfare, missionary activity and colonial legacies of military and indirect rule on current levels of anti-immigrant policies and violence, as well as nationalism and development of military. The papers use different types of methods ranging from cross-national datasets, to sub-national qualitative and quantitative data within India and China. By exploring historical legacies of populism, nationalism and anti-immigrant policies, the panel contributes to the conference theme of populism.

Wimmer looks at how past geo-political competition and warfare shapes national identities and contemporary anti-immigration sentiments in Europe. Countries that have experienced more violent conflict or lost territory and sovereignty developed ethnic (rather than civic) forms of nationalism and thus show higher levels of anti-immigration sentiment today. Mattingly uses subnational data within China to trace the emergence of nationalism not to war, but to missionary activity. The paper argues that missionary activity at the end of the 19th century threatened the political power of traditional elites in China, who responded by spreading nationalist ideologies as a way to mobilize violent attacks against missionaries. Eck & Ruffa analyze the effects of military training of army officers from former British colonies in the UK, led to diffusion of norms and values from the British military to the newly independent states. This paper uses new archival data from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to understand how colonial legacies and the transferral of norms and values had long-term impacts on the development of the military. Finally, Mukherjee uses sub-national data from India to analyze how British colonial policies of indirect rule and indirect revenue collection created extractive land tenure institutions and natural resource exploitation of indigenous tribes by ethnic outsiders, which persisted through path dependence. Such Sons of the Soil nativist grievances against immigrants were mobilized by Maoists to foment rebellion.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• How Past Geopolitical Threat Heightens Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Today - Andreas Wimmer, Columbia University

• Imperialism's Original Sin: The Missionary Roots of Nationalism in China - Daniel Mattingly, Yale University

• Socialization after Empire: The Colonial Legacy of British Military Training - Kristine Eck, Uppsala University; Chiara Ruffa, Uppsala University

• Colonial Legacies of Anti-immigrant ‘Sons of the Soil’ Conflict in India - Shivaji Mukherjee, University of Toronto

Chair

• Steven I. Wilkinson Yale University

Discussants

• Steven I. Wilkinson Yale University

• Volha Charnysh Massachusetts Institute of Technology