‘Charismatic Nations’ by Joep Leerssen review

In August 1914 a German volunteer, travelling along the Rhine towards the front, wept as his troop train passed the 12-metre-high statue of ‘Germania’, a monument to victory in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. From every carriage, as he recalled afterwards, had arisen a spontaneous burst of song, inspired by German resistance to Napoleon’s conquests a century before. Only after the historical significance of the place, the monument, and the song have been explained to us do we discover that the volunteer – writing a decade later and with an axe to grind – was Adolf Hitler.

With this vignette Joep Leerssen plunges us into a compendious examination of European nationalism during the last two centuries. Central to the author’s project is his definition of nationalism as a ‘cultural phenomenon’. The nation, he argues, is not a given; it is a product of culture. In its historical manifestation it is deeply embedded not just in the high politics of states but in works of art and the daily popular entertainments of millions, until it reaches into the visceral emotions of individuals (however confected, even hackneyed, and certainly politically motivated, may have been Hitler’s later recollections of that moment on the Rhine).

Nationalism, in Leerssen’s view, is far more than an ideology – indeed, he persuasively demonstrates how often and how easily it has been bent to serve just about every ideology under the sun. This is what makes the nation charismatic, according to the book’s title, adapting Max Weber’s definition from the early 20th century. It is the elusive, shape-shifting manipulability of this ‘charismatic’ force that Leerssen is determined to capture.

Building upon his own highly regarded National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (2006) as well as on the massive compilation of data which he edited in 2022, Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe, Leerssen has returned with an offering both more comprehensive than his initial survey of the subject (still very recommendable), and more manageable than the 1,500-page Encyclopedia. The result brings together a lifetime’s expertise with a synthesis of the most formidable array of data on the subject ever assembled.

Though its subtitle declares it to be a history, the book eschews linear narrative. Its central section, ‘Romancing the Nation’, explores the parallel quests for legitimating national origins that during the ‘long’ 19th century took place all over Europe under (loosely) the aegis of the Romantic movement. The chapters that make up this section deal respectively with the vogue for legendary bards from the distant past, the search for old manuscripts dusted off and given new life, the collection and publication of oral ‘folk’ poems and tales, efforts to standardise vernacular languages, the writing of history and historical fiction, and the embodiment of those quests across a wide range of arts and music.

There is a wealth of detail here – sometimes enough to overwhelm the reader. Between 1830 and 1900, we are told, ‘Some seventy-five free-standing statues [of figures from French history] were erected in Paris alone ... (including twenty-two historical queens in the Luxembourg Gardens, and three to Joan of Arc)’, as well as ‘300 smaller ones (or busts)’. Familiar names from what might be termed Europe’s dominant cultures jostle for attention with those of poets, essayists, artists, composers who spoke and wrote in Slovenian, Hungarian, Latvian, Estonian, Finnish, as well as in either of two official forms of the author’s native Dutch.

The book’s three final chapters, together with a ‘Summing Up’, deal with a long 20th century that begins after the First World War and continues until today. Here, Leerssen explores a single cultural form distinctive to the period: cinema. He concludes that ‘Romantic nationalism’, even though grounded in the century before, has shown itself remarkably adaptable as well as durable. The author likens its trajectory to that of a leaping dolphin: ‘Now you see it – and then you don’t.’ And whether or not you agree with Leerssen’s diagnosis of how we got here, it’s hard to disagree with his assertion that ‘nationalism has survived the twentieth century to become, once again, the most powerful ideology worldwide’.

Perhaps the most enduring lesson from this book is the paradoxical one that during the last 200 years nationalism has been a multinational, transnational, or, as the author puts it, a ‘pan-European’ phenomenon. During the 19th century national histories and historical novels with nationalistic themes were prolifically produced and wildly popular in every corner of Europe – but only realised in a particular national context and in the respective national language. Every nation developed a version of its own ‘national costume’, each different, but all derived in the same way from local prototypes and used for the same kind of public display. Leerssen calls this ‘universal exceptionalism’: ‘National authenticity was celebrated as being “different from the rest” for each nation separately, but this was asserted by all nations in highly similar ways.’

Finally, one is left wondering to what extent this deeply embedded ‘cultural nationalism’ is peculiar to Europe. Some of Leerssen’s examples come from the continent’s periphery or beyond; when he moves into the 20th century he gives prominence to Indian cinema, which he links to Gandhi’s campaign for independence a century ago as well to the more recent rise of ‘Hindu nationalism’. A historical exploration of nationalism might go further than this book does in asking whether ‘Romantic nationalism’ could only have arisen in Europe – and if so why? Is the strongly ethnic form that nationalism has taken in our continent (‘ethnocratic’ nationalism, as the author terms it) distinctively European? Why does it seem to have been largely, if not entirely, absent from the Americas – until very recently in the US? Are Europeans therefore uniquely responsible for exporting this form of nationalism, with its often baleful consequences, around the world?

• Charismatic Nations: A Cultural History of Nationalism in Europe from 1800 to the Present
  Joep Leerssen
  Cambridge University Press, 444pp, £40
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Roderick Beaton is the author of Europe: A New History (Allen Lane, 2026).