An Essay On Sovereignists

Placing too much emphasis on sovereignty can lead to bad results in peacetime and increase the risks of war

"Sovereign #graffiti" by joshdamon is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Trigger warning: the end of the essay contains a discussion of Hamas’s recent atrocities

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“Soberanista” is a useful word in Spanish. Catalan has its own version, with “sobiranista.” We can loosely translate them both into English as “sovereignist.” Sadly, it is rarely used in English outside Quebec. The word should be more widely deployed to refer to people who are deeply concerned about sovereignty, whether they support Catalan independence, Brexit or Donald Trump’s nativist agenda, as well as for those who have strong opinions on who should live where in the Middle East.

The word has deep roots. The Romans used the Latin word “superānus” to mean “above.” This evolved into “superanus” to mean “chief” or “ruler” in Vulgar Latin; and “souverain” in Old French to refer to a monarch. The word “sovereign” was adopted into English around the 14th Century, with various spellings at first.

The idea of popular sovereignty came late to humanity. John Locke laid the foundations in the late 17th Century by philosophising about the origins of sovereigns’ right to rule. The key breakthrough came in 1762 when Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher and author from the Republic of Geneva, published a book called The Social Contract.

Rousseau argued that the only legitimate basis for society is one which establishes the people as being sovereign - a revolutionary idea at the time. Perhaps surprisingly, the concept of popular sovereignty became the cornerstone of the emergent ideology of nationalism as well as underpinning the institutions of liberal democracy, which were also emerging at the same time. Nationalism and liberal democracy often clash in the modern world, despite this common conceptual framework. Nationalists (who are jealous and obsessive about sovereignty) and institutionalists (who are concerned about minority participation in liberal democracy and are keen to pool their sovereignty with their neighbours) tend to use the word in different ways.

The timing of Rousseau’s book is interesting. Catalan nationalists will often try to argue that the abolition of the region’s feudal institutions after the Siege of Barcelona in 1714 constituted a loss of sovereignty. Sadly for them, the idea of popular sovereignty hadn’t even been invented at the time. In fact, many 18th Century Catalans supported the claims of Archduke Charles of Austria to be their sovereign in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). He lost the war, which was won by a rival claimant, Philip V of Spain.

In earlier years, Catalonia briefly gained its de-facto independence from Spain during the Reapers’ War (1640-1659) with the support of France. However, Locke was just a child in Somerset when the Catalan Republic was declared in 1641; and Rousseau’s birth was a long way in the future. The Republic lasted less than a week. Its leaders accepted the sovereignty of Louis XIII of France and later his son Louis XIV, who ruled the Principality of Barcelona as Counts of Barcelona until 1652, when Spanish troops recaptured Barcelona.

The Reapers’ War dragged on for several years afterwards in the Pyrenees, with the mountain range ending up as the effective border between Spain and France. As a result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), what became French Catalonia was split from what became Spanish Catalonia. Sadly for Catalan sovereignists, this happened before the concept of popular sovereignty had been invented. Catalan separatists often dream of reuniting the two Catalonias - a rather improbable project.

Of course, nationalists rarely let facts get in the way of a good story, as we have seen before. One of the founders of Catalan nationalism, Enric Prat de la Riba, explicitly says as much in his foundational text for the independence movement from 1906. He argues that he and his peers had gradually introduced “the new doctrines” of nationalism into older historical material in the late 19th Century. Revisionism about the causes of the Siege of Barcelona fit perfectly into that project.

The clear-sighted critic of nationalism George Orwell recognised a similar tendency in nationalists of all stripes in 1945:

“Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should […] and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which, it is felt, ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied.”

The enemies of sovereignty

We can see the importance of popular sovereignty when it goes missing. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin accompanied his denial of the sovereignty of Ukraine with a brutal invasion of the neighbouring country. Hamas has long denied the sovereignty of Israel, laying the ground for its recent shocking acts of terror and war crimes.

In peacetime, though, what is sovereignty for? Why do some people get so over-excited about such an abstract concept? French President Emmanuel Macron spoke for many in June 2021 when he said that the UK’s insistence on the importance of its sovereignty had created “thousands of hours” of work for European leaders who were struggling to help the country implement Brexit. “No other European country has made the others spend so much time on its sovereignty.”

As a liberal, Macron knows well that in an inter-connected world, it is better to build bridges than to build walls. If current trends continue, the French economy is likely to overtake the British economy in terms of total size of gross domestic product (GDP)*. It would be a great achievement for the Macron if this happens before the next French presidential elections in 2027. France is catching up on the UK because its leaders are worried about economic growth and are prepared to pool the country’s sovereignty with its neighbours as part of the European project.

Sadly, over-emphasising sovereignty in peacetime if often a code word for bigotry and nativism. Sovereignists are quick to draw a line between people who are sovereign (those with deep family roots in the land) and those who either are not or who they feel should be deprived of this status (immigrants, migrants, their descendants, ethnic minorities and people who live in neighbouring regions). These divisive attitudes that can harm the economy if they come to hog the spotlight. It is no coincidence that the Catalan sovereignists would have crashed the territory’s economy if they had been successful in 2017, just as Brexit put the UK on a lower growth trajectory.

We can go further and say that internet anti-globalists (a broad category that includes sovereignists) get the basics wrong: immigration, intermarriage and trade improve societies by making them more diverse while keeping investors happy. It is better for societies if the majority of the population have an outward-looking attitude based on creating value for others rather than engaging in navel-gazing debates about sovereignty… unless, of course, a neighbouring dictator wants to invade your country.

Formal concept

It is worth mentioning that sovereignty is formally defined by constitutions. This is a bitter pill for Catalan sovereignists, who like to develop conspiracy theories about the allegedly fascistic nature of Spanish democracy since 1978. Back here in the real world, Spain is one of just 24 full democracies in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. It is also worth reminding Catalan nationalists to read Articles 1, 2 and 92 of the Spanish Constitution, which define sovereignty in Spain as belonging to the Spanish people as a whole. These three clauses are the real hurdles to the independence movement, which seeks to remove the sovereignty of non-Catalan Spaniards over Catalonia.

Any Catalan sovereignists who have come this far are probably shouting about the 1930s. In fact, Article 1 of the 1931 Constitution of the Spanish Republic said that the state emanates from the Spanish people (a way of describing popular sovereignty without using the exact words). The principle of national sovereignty had first been established in Spain’s 1812 Constitution, although it was overthrown and replaced many times in the 166 years up to 1978, sometimes with popular sovereignty included and sometimes without it.

The Catalan declaration of independence in 1934 barely lasted a day, which is admittedly more impressive than 56 seconds in 2017, but not as long as three days of independence in 1873 or another three days in 1931. Eventually, the winner of the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939), warlord and military dictator Francisco Franco, paid lip service to a nationalist interpretation of popular sovereignty while doing away with democracy in the whole of Spain for four decades and not just in Catalonia. Democracy and a democratic interpretation of sovereignty returned after his death.

Looking further back, the deep history of Catalonia reveals strong ties with the rest of Spain for centuries up to the Reapers’ War. What is now Catalonia was part of Roman Spain, with one province being named after Tarragona, a beautiful city in the south of what is now Catalonia. Barcelona was said to have been founded by the Romans in 343, not long before the Empire fell in 476.

As the Roman Empire fell apart, what is now Catalonia was conquered by Visigoths (Romanised Germanic warriors) in the early 5th Century. Barcelona was the capital of the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania for several years. Much of the territory was then conquered by Muslims around 720. Carolingian Emperor Charlemagne (a Frank - another Romanised Germanic group) established the Spanish March as a buffer zone between the Pyrenees and the Ebro River in 795.

Barcelona was conquered by the Franks in 801 and a man who seems to have had Visigothic roots was appointed as the first Count of Barcelona. The County of Barcelona acted a frontier region for the Carolingian Empire and its successors for many years afterwards. The territory gradually gained its de-facto independence from its French overlords between 988 and 1258, with the first texts in Catalan being recorded in feudal documents in the 11th Century.

In 1137, the County became subsumed in the Crown of Aragon when the Count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, was betrothed to Petronilla of Aragon, who was just a toddler at the time. James I the Conqueror (1208 to 1276), a Count of Barcelona and King of Aragon, would later expand the Crown of Aragon to include territories in what is now the south of France, as well as the Balearic Islands and Valencia. The Crown of Aragon later joined a dynastic union with the Crown of Castile in 1479. The part of Catalonia that sits south of the Pyrenees has mostly been part of Spain for the next 544 years, apart from the brief interruptions mentioned above. Felipe VI, the current king of Spain, is also the current Count of Barcelona, among his other titles.

It must be hard for Catalan nationalists to hear that the population of the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia has only ever been formally sovereign in the territory due to its participation in Spanish democracy, whether that is during times when there have been liberal constitutions between 1812 and 1939 or since 1978.

The failure of Catalan sovereignists to make a solid historical case makes life hard for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who is trying to negotiate a deal linking an amnesty for separatist coup leaders with support for his proposal to form a new coalition government, which will need the support of nationalists and populists. He claims to respect the Spain’s democratic Constitution. While I wouldn’t want to bet any serious sum of money against his chances of cutting a deal, trying to maintain the sovereignty of the Spanish people in the whole of Spain is always going to be a challenge when negotiating with people who twist history to claim that 16% of the country’s population are really sovereign over 6.3% of its land.

A few words on Israel

We can see similar issues with Israel/Palestine. Many of the internet’s loudest voices are sovereignists and nativists, who regularly discuss the Middle East as if Israel usurped the rights of an eternal Palestinian nation. The historical reality is much more complex. The Ottoman Empire was a multi-layered affair, with many different ethnic groups and minorities living side by side. When it fell apart between 1908 and 1922, nationalism - the idea that there are discrete nations and that each one needs a state - was an idea on everyone’s lips.

Sadly, the attempt to create straight lines on maps with separate nation-states during this period and the following decades had tragic results, including many incidents of ethnic cleansing and genocide. For example, there were some 200,000 Jewish residents of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th Century. The Turkish government, which replaced the Empire in the heart of its territory, expelled Jews from various regions in the 1930s. Large numbers emigrated to Palestine before the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. Up to 1948, the Jewish population enthusiastically bought land in Palestine.

Unfortunately, the dominant strain of Palestinian nationalism, as espoused by community leader and Nazi collaborator Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, rejected Israeli sovereignty over a small slither of land in the Middle East. As a result, Arab leaders picked a genocidal fight with their Jewish neighbours after the United Nations (UN) recognised Israeli sovereignty in 1948.

The attempt to destroy the new new sovereign state failed, with tragic consequences for many ordinary Palestinians up to the present day. Many Palestinians fled the land where their families had lived for generations after losing the war, with many ending up in Gaza. It should be fairly obvious to most neutral observers that trying to establish a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, as the UN had suggested, would have given better results than trying to destroy it.

In the first half of the 20th Century, several new sovereign states had planted roots in lands previously occupied by the Ottoman Empire. Why is it that the only new country in the region that some people claim is illegitimate is the world’s only Jewish-majority state? Can it be a coincidence? Why do Israel’s fiercest critics often seem to have an antisemitism problem?

Also, why do some people who claim to be leftists (in reality, they have transferred their loyalty to Palestinian nationalism, to borrow Orwell’s words**) find it quite so hard to condemn the rape and murder of innocent people at a music festival? Or babies being beheaded? Do they realise how much their excuse-making sickens those of us who oppose rape, murder and war crimes whatever the circumstances? Orwell had already noticed that nationalists not only refuse to condemn atrocities, they also have “a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them,” in the most famous phrase from his insightful essay about nationalism.***

Despite the oppression found on a daily basis in Gaza and the West Bank, and also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent democractic backsliding in the name of Israeli nationalism, the country remains the only democracy in its neighbourhood. Around one in five of its citizens are Arab Muslims. The population also includes many Jews who fled repression in the old Ottoman lands and further afield, as well as their descendants. There are clear tensions in Israel between the democratic concept of sovereignty, which includes minorities, and the nationalist twist of the idea, as represented by Netanyahu, which tends to exclude Arabs as full citizens.

Sovereignist narratives about the alleged illegitimacy of the state of Israel and its need to cede sovereignty to Palestinian exiles often gloss over the country’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. It is an inconvenient fact for Palestinian sovereignists in the West that when Israel took a step or two in the direction suggested by some its critics, the result has been constant attacks by Islamists who are also loyal to the tenets of Palestinian nationalism. How, exactly, is Israel meant to deal with a territory that is ruled by warlords who want to expel all Jews from the Middle East? How would other sovereign states react in similar circumstances? Sadly, Israel has no good options in these circumstances.

It is worth mentioning that Hamas’ leaders chose the moment to attack carefully. Israel and Saudi Arabia were drawing close to a peace deal before the incursions. A peace deal would have been bad for Hamas’ leaders, even if it might have generated good results for the long-suffering Palestinian population of Gaza. The leaders of Hamas are clearly betting on Netanyahu’s reaction being too severe, scuppering hopes of peace for a generation - an outcome which would consolidate their position. While Hamas is weaker on the ground in Israel/Palestine, there are nearly 127 Muslims for every practicing Jew in the world, which means that Hamas’ leaders will be confident that they can continue to raise funds for their struggle when images of the retaliation spread through the world.

The lesson for sovereignists who want to establish new nations should be clear, whether they are in Palestine, Catalonia or elsewhere. The democratic version of popular sovereignty is more powerful than the nationalist one. Forget about re-establishing some mythical sovereignty that never existed in history. It is a road to nowhere. Also, drop the idea that your nation already exists in nature, entirely separate from other nearby nations - an approach that we can politely describe as being mathematically improbable.

Instead, your job is to nurture institutions that will form the cornerstone of a new sovereign state, just as Israeli leaders did after 1948 (with mixed results). Your new homeland is highly likely to be ethnically mixed. The more you think about minority rights, the better your chances of success will be. A functional economy is more important than over-emphasising sovereignty, as Macron realises. Think more about creating the conditions for individuals to thrive and much less about group identity. Having said that, it is important to seek a broad consensus before establishing a new sovereign order (or recovering one that had been destroyed), as Spain did in 1978.****

As usual when we confront populist nationalists with a little critical thinking, the comments are closed. As Orwell wrote:

“As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can only relieve by making some sharp retort.”

Life is much too short to spend it reading sharp retorts from angry nationalists, sovereignists and populists. If you disagree with me, please write your own blog post and link back to mine with a well-structured argument about exactly why I am wrong. It is harder than sniping in the comments but more fulfilling. See you next week!

*The populations of France and the UK are roughly the same.

**Orwell’s theory of transferred nationalism is very psychologically astute. He argued that some people reject any nationalism that corresponds to their actual identity. However, they still tend to generalise too much about large blocks of people, an attitude that underlies nationalism. The person who does this will sometimes adopt a foreign nationalism. Doing so “makes it possible for him [or her] to be much more nationalistic – more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest – than he [or she] could ever be on behalf of his [or her] native country, or any unit of which he [or her] had real knowledge.” This insight explains the appeal of Palestinian nationalism for leftists who wouldn’t be seen dead waving their own national flag. It also explains why so many foreigners have been quite so gullible about Catalan nationalism.

***Many Israeli nationalists will no doubt be guilty of exactly the same sin of failing to hear about atrocities as the country’s ground invasion of Gaza inevitably harms the civilian population of the territory, including Palestinian children. Expect conspiracy theories to do the heavy lifting for denialists on both sides, as we saw recently when supporters of Palestinian sovereignty denied that Hamas had murdered babies.

****In 1978, Spain’s new Constitution was passed by referendum with the support of 91.8% of voters on turnout of 67.1%, including a majority of 95.15% on turnout of 67.9% in Catalonia. None of the unofficial/illegal referendums organised by Catalan separatists have ever managed to tick both boxes of a high majority and a decent turnout, as we discussed here. Also, nobody has ever consulted non-Catalan Spaniards on whether or not they will renounce their long-standing sovereignty over the region.

Further Reading

Notes on Nationalism by George Orwell

Noah Smith on a three-state solution

O Jerusalem! by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

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