Click on Wales - Why Corbyn’s troubles could boost Welsh nationalism

19.1.16

Click on Wales � Blog Archive � Why Corbyn’s troubles could boost Welsh nationalism: Even though his seminal 1983 book Imagined Communities does not deal specifically with Wales, he does contrast the lack of an independence movement in Scotland with other parts of the British Empire.

One of the main reasons he suggests is that the middle-class in Scotland had access to power at the heart of the British Empire in London, while for the natives of other countries such as the United States, India and Australia, the “the looping upward path” was closed. (Anderson, 1991, pp. 90-3)

The alternative, when power at the centre of the Empire is not on offer, is to win independence in order to govern yourselves at home.

At this point we fast-forward to Philip Roeder’s pioneering study on nationalism, Where Nation States Come From, published in 2008.

According to his thesis – although, again, the book makes little mention of Wales specifically – our country since 1999 has been what he would call a ‘segment state’.

That is, a state with its own institutions which exists within another nation-state.

Roader turns our understanding of nationalism on its head. Rather than an ethnic people demanding the creation of political institutions that identify with their ethic culture, he suggests that it is institutions that promote nationalism in order to expand their own influence.