Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change: The Evolution of Nationalisms 303077998X, 9783030779986

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Introduction
Themes of the Book
Outline of the Book
References
2 Descent with Modification
Introduction
What Does Evolution by Natural Selection Mean?
Population Thinking, Adaptation and Fitness
Are Something like Genes Needed for There to Be Social Evolution?
References
3 Darwinian Social Evolution
Introduction
Earlier Models of Social Evolution
Replicators and Interactors: David L Hull
Cultural Variants: Boyd and Richerson
Attractive Ideas: Dan Sperber
Practicing Roles: W. G. Runciman
Puncturing Institutions: Hendrik Spruyt
Generalized Darwinism: Hodgson and Knudsen
Conclusion: Assembling the Toolkit
References
4 Theories of Social Change
The Sources of Social Power
Social Evolution or History?
The Evolutionary Mann and Zhao
References
5 Theories of Nationalism
Introduction
Andreas Wimmer: Nations as Forms of Exclusion
Siniša Malešević: Does National Identity Exist?
John Hutchinson’s Culture Wars
Atsuko Ichijo’s Multiple Paths to Nationalism
The Darwinian Synthesis
References
6 The Origins of Nationalism in England/Britain
Introduction
Medieval England
The Reformation
From Protestants, to Imperials, to Nation: England into Britain
References
7 Fukoku Kyōhei: Nationalism in Japan
Introduction
Japan: A Brief History
Tokugawa Japan—Why No Nationalism
Nationalism and Modernization in Japan
References
8 The Comparative Case: England, Japan and Darwinian Social Evolution
Introduction
Theoretical Conclusions: The Cases in Comparative Perspective
War and the Formation of Nationalisms
Variation and the generation of ideas and institutions
Lineages
Nationalism, Social Evolution and Social Change
References
9 Conclusion
References
References
Index

Citation preview

Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change The Evolution of Nationalisms William Kerr

Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change

William Kerr

Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change The Evolution of Nationalisms

William Kerr College of Business, Law and Social Sciences University of Derby Derby, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-77998-6 ISBN 978-3-030-77999-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Nini

Acknowledgements

When I started out working on this book my thoughts were ‘ah this will be easy. Building on a thesis and other learning I’ve done afterwards. A cake walk!’ One hard slog later and I am severely disabused of that notion. Perhaps starting a book when Covid-19 broke out, whilst also beginning a new job, wasn’t the cleverest idea I’ve ever had. Having got through the thing, though, there are some people that I would like to thank. First of all, I want to thank Jonathan Hearn and Stephen Kemp who were my Ph.D. supervisors. Both of them were very supportive and provided invaluable advice as I worked through my Ph.D., and their thoughts have gone into the shaping and thinking around much of the approach and theory in this book. They were also very patient with missed deadlines. James Kennedy and Geoffrey Hodgson, as the viva examiners, also provided much in the way of valuable comments and feedback, as well as finding holes that needed to be patched up. That thinking is something I’ve brought forward into this, and a lot of the changes in emphasis and thought here are the result of those conversations.

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Acknowledgements

I’m grateful to Lloyd Langham at Palgrave Macmillan, who put me in touch with Sharla Plant and thus initiated the whole book project and submission. Without that I probably wouldn’t have been doing this. Similarly, Sharla Plant and Abarna Antonyraj at Palgrave have been very patient, supportive and helpful throughout the process. The anonymous reviewers of this manuscript also provided comments which helped to restructure and improve the original idea I had for the manuscript. I don’t know who you are, but thank you for not ticking the ‘reject’ box on the form! Thanks as well to John Breuilly, who also reviewed a draft of the manuscript and provided some incisive feedback that helped me improve and tighten the arguments further. Lastly, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank my partner Nini. She’s been a wonderful source of support and advice through the process, and always gave me that little extra push (and joy) needed to keep going.

Contents

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Introduction

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2

Descent with Modification

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3

Darwinian Social Evolution

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4 Theories of Social Change

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5 Theories of Nationalism

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6 The Origins of Nationalism in England/Britain

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Fukoku Ky¯ohei: Nationalism in Japan

8 The Comparative Case: England, Japan and Darwinian Social Evolution

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Conclusion

References

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Index

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1 Introduction

Ever since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 there has been an interest in applying the concept of natural selection towards the social world. Indeed, even prior to Darwin writing his work,1 several theorists were working their way towards similar ideas. David Hume came close in passages of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Dennett, 1995), and Adam Ferguson wrote about the development of civil society in what would now be considered social evolutionary terms, referring to how social conflicts and unintended consequences can lead societies to develop along divergent paths (MacRae, 1959). Herbert Spencer’s famous phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was coined some ten years before On the Origin of Species was published (Dickens, 2000: 19) and Spencer himself published an essay (Spencer, 1852) that came close to Darwin’s understanding of natural selection a few years before Darwin and Wallace jointly published their paper. The influence is not unidirectional either. Darwin’s work was famously inspired by Thomas Malthus’ Essay on Population, with its notion of increasing scarcity as a result of population growth and competition that would result. Likewise, Stephen Gould (1991) has pointed to a similarity between Darwin’s notion of natural selection and Adam Smith’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_1

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economic work.2 This is something that has continued into today, with a lot of modern theoretical understandings of biological evolution drawing on game theory (Maynard Smith, 1982). After the publication of On the Origin of Species there was a flurry of interest, with several sociologists looking to use Darwin’s insights to understand society. Among these was Auguste Comte, who developed an evolutionary vision of society. He argued that the developing mental capacities of humans meant that societies evolved and passed through a set of progressive stages, each one representing a superior form of development on the previous. Comte’s idea was a unilineal system, as all societies had to pass through these stages in this order (Noble, 2000: 44–45), and his understanding of the development of societies is more Lamarckian3 in character than it is Darwinian (Noble, 2000: 41). Others who applied Darwinian insights to the social and cultural world include Thorstein Veblen (1898, 2007), who used the notions of variation and selection and applied them to institutional change, and laid out mechanisms by which variation could be produced within institutional settings. This interest in applying evolutionary ideas to sociology continued even after the subject became somewhat taboo following the First World War (Hodgson, 2004), with Donald T. Campbell writing on how general principles could be taken from Darwin’s work that would be applicable beyond the biological domain (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 18–19). For a variety of reasons, social evolutionary ideas fell out of fashion in sociology. Hodgson (2004) traces this to the aftermath of World War I, with the violence and imperialism behind the conflict being criticized for being based on biological notions on the struggle for existence. Richard Hofstadter (1944) also laid the charge of social Darwinism against many of ideas of laissez-faire, imperialism, racism and eugenics, linking this to the Nazis and tracing its origin back to the ideas of Herbert Spencer (Leonard, 2009). Bannister (1979) has argued that Hofstadter’s characterization was largely mythological: there were few, if any, self-identified social Darwinists and Hofstadter was largely doing a post-fact grouping together of ideas and people.4 Herbert Spencer would have certainly been surprised to see himself considered as the originator of social Darwinism, as his own work followed a Lamarckian bent and most of it originated before Darwin published. Indeed, the conflation between

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Spencer’s work and Darwin’s was something that frequently annoyed Spencer (Becquemont, 2011: 14). Further controversy was to emerge with the introduction of human sociobiology (Wilson, 1975) and later evolutionary psychology (Barkow et al., 1992). Edward Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis sought to understand the social nature of animals, and in the final chapter of the book he applied these methods to humans. There was an immediate fall out from this, with critics accusing Wilson, and sociobiologists, of being biological determinists, and the sociobiologists accusing the critics of making political, rather than scientific, criticisms. Evolutionary psychology worked as an update on sociobiology, seeming to go beyond some of the earlier criticisms, and argued that the cognitive architecture of the brain had evolved in a specific environment to deal with specific tasks to that environment and had not changed since. Consequently, many of the behavioural patterns of people can be explained by the fact that psychological modules in the brain are adapted to deal with specific problems of a specific environment that causes problems when applied to modern environments. A similar controversy persists around this, with much of the same lines as in the sociobiological controversy (c.f. Buller, 2006; Dusek, 1999; Kitcher, 1985; Segerstråle, 2000). Both sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are interested in using evolutionary logic and ideas to understand and explain human behaviour. In contrast, this book is not so much interested in understanding human behaviour as it is in using Darwinian concepts to understand social, cultural and institutional change. In recent(ish) years there has been a revitalization of interest along precisely these lines. These attempts generally do not concern themselves with questions of biology and human behaviour but are much more interested in attempting to show how Darwinian concepts can be abstracted from biology and used in application to social world settings. Essentially, using the concepts to argue that the principles behind natural selection can apply to all forms of evolutionary processes, be it biological, cultural or social. Many of these are far removed from the older versions of social evolution, which tended to suffer from imagining hierarchies of

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society types (e.g. hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial etc.) that had to be passed through in a set of determined stages (Bhambra, 2011). One of the interesting facets, however, is that many of these theorists have developed their ideas independently,5 with little in the way of discussion of other contemporary theorists who have developed models. Similarly, whilst there is a lot in the way of theory and discussions around how Darwinism could apply to understanding cultural and social change and crafting theoretical understandings, there’s also not much in the way of practical applications of the theories to specific cases. This is something that this book seeks to do.

Themes of the Book This book’s main interest is in attempting to understand nationalism and its origin via the application of what I will call Darwinian social evolution, and through this making a wider argument about the usefulness of Darwinian concepts towards understanding social change in general. The medium by which this will be done is through a theoretical and a historical and comparative argument. Theoretically, I will be engaging with some of the more recent attempts to connect Darwinian concepts and approaches to sociological areas to create something akin to a toolkit of approaches; then I will make use of this to understand the generation of nationalism with reference to two cases, with a final comparison between the two. The last few decades have seen an increase in theorists looking at the question of social evolution, and in particular how it could be reconceptualized in order to incorporate the core insights of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, moving it away from the social evolutionary ideas of old. W. G. Runciman (2009) has taken the notion of adaptive selection and used it to understand how cultural ideas and behaviours spread, along with how social roles and practices change and adapt over time within societies and institutions. Richerson and Boyd (2006) have developed models and ways of understanding how and why certain ideas, behaviours and habits, or what they call cultural variants, spread successfully in particular environments. And Hodgson and

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Knudsen (2010) have made arguments for the need for a ‘generalized Darwinism’, as a framework for understanding cultural and institutional change and adaptation. In each of these cases, the main concepts being used are not those of stages or sequences, but rather the mechanisms of biological evolution: namely variation, inheritance and selection (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006, 2010). These are understood as operating, not according to a general, global process that affects everywhere (Mann, 1986: Ch. 2) but rather as being in response to local, environmental effects. By placing these ideas in this kind of context, social evolution is also able to move away from the problem of unilinearity, that is seeing societies as having a set sequence, and instead move towards a multilinear understanding, which sees societies and social orders as having different branching options from any one point. This, arguably, provides a better framework for understanding how one order gives way to another competing order (Spruyt, 1994: 5). There are two reasons for the interest in understanding nationalism and the origins of nation states from a Darwinian social evolutionary perspective. First, it provides a means for seeing whether a Darwinian approach can offer a better, or novel, perspective in looking at the reasons for why nations originated and spread. Second, it provides an angle for examining whether Darwinism has anything to contribute towards understanding social change more widely. There are many theories that seek to explain nationalism, but generally, they fall into three larger groupings. There are modernists, who generally hold that the nation is a novel formation that largely comes into being with the onset of modernity (c.f. Gellner, 2006; Anderson, 2006; Breuilly, 1993); ethno-symbolists, who hold that nations are mostly modern, but that there are antecedents and it arises out of prior ethnic formations (c.f. Smith, 1986; Hutchinson2005; Ichijo, 2013); and primordialists/perennialists who hold that the nation is a group formation that persists through time (c.f. Grosby, 1999). These perspectives have largely fought one another to a stalemate (Hearn, 2006), though each has adapted and responded to the others critique. There are no social evolutionary accounts of nationalisms origin, though Gellner (1964, 1988) has something along those lines, but there

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have been attempts to explain the attraction and power of national identity through sociobiological accounts. Pierre van den Berghe (1987, 1995) made one of the earlier attempts, using the theory of kin-selection, that organisms are more willing to be altruistic and sacrificial towards those who are more related to them, to develop a general theory of nepotism as an explainer for human grouping. This then expands outwards into ethnic communities, with nation states being a larger form of kin relation (hence why a lot of emphasis is placed on nations being homogenous and of one family). More recently, Azar Gat (with Yakobson, 2013) has put forward an argument on nations being extended kin-culture communities, grounding this with a sociobiological understanding of human behaviour. This book does not follow the latter lines of enquiry; it is largely ambivalent on biological influences on human behaviour. The simple reason behind this is that, for the task this book has set, this is largely unnecessary and would be a distracting debate from the aim of the work. I aim to show how the Darwinian concepts can be used to understand social and cultural change at a macro-level, so it is not concerned with the origins of human behaviours and biology. There will be suggestions about tendencies that people have, and why they might exist where relevant, but that’s about the extent of it. So, instead, I will make use of the Darwinian concepts of selection, inheritance and variation and use this as a means to understand nationalism, its origins and spread and how it came to dominate the global political system. In doing so, the aim is to attempt to go beyond the existing debates in the field of nationalism theory, and instead show how the competing positions of modernism and ethno-symbolism can be reconciled via the Darwinian framework. This naturally necessitates a discussion and consideration of social and cultural change more widely, and the question of whether Darwinian social evolution can work as a theory of social change. The question of why societies change is a fundamental one in sociology, and whilst many theories of various stripes and scopes exist to explain it (e.g. Skockpol, 1979; Mann, 1986; Wallerstein, 2011), which draw mainly on either Marx or Weber as the two dominant influences, there is no consensus on a defining theory to explain change. Through consideration of the question of nationalism, and discussions of theories of social change, I aim

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to demonstrate the value of Darwinian social evolution to understanding social, cultural and institutional change. With the themes now established, I will briefly outline the structure of the book.

Outline of the Book To proceed with the argument in as clear of fashion as possible, the book is split into three parts which each deal with a specific aspect of the argument. Part one focuses on developing the core of the theory, namely the version of social evolution based on Darwinian concepts that I am calling Darwinian social evolution. The second part will take a look at theories of nationalism and social change, in order to make a comparison at a theoretical level between existing theories and Darwinian social evolution. The final part will then be a comparative analysis of two case studies in order to demonstrate a practical application of Darwinian social evolution. It is hoped that, together, the last two parts will give a strong impression of the usefulness of Darwinism to sociology at both a theoretical and practical level. Part one is divided into two chapters. Chapter 2, ‘Descent with Modification’, describes Darwin’s understanding of evolution by natural selection at the biological level. It goes over how Darwin came to the idea, and what the main concepts mean. It also engages with some of the recent philosophical and conceptual work on the notions of fitness, selection, and adaptation. It doesn’t stray into the minutiae of biological evolution and how it works, so there are no lengthy discussions of genes for instance, as the point is to emphasise the way in which the concepts can be understood at a transferable level. This is the set-up for Chapter 3, which will take these concepts and show how they can be applied in the sociological world. Chapter 3, ‘Darwinian Social Evolution’, establishes the version of social evolution that is going to be used throughout the book. It begins by taking a brief review of older forms of social evolution and discusses some of the problems with these approaches, namely their stadial and

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progressivist tendencies. The argument is that Darwinian social evolution can go beyond these perspectives and so avoid some of the moral and historical objections to older versions of social evolution. With this done, I proceed to discuss different theorists of more Darwinian versions of social evolution. In order, I look at the work of David Hull (1988), Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (2006), Dan Sperber (1996), W. G. Runciman (2009), Hendrick Spruyt (1994) and finally Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (2010). With their different versions outlined, the final section assembles them into a toolkit that I call Darwinian social evolution. Part two deals with more theoretical matters. Chapter 4, ‘Theories of Social Change’, takes a look at theories of social change to see how Darwinian social evolution stacks up theoretically. The chapter looks closely at Michael Mann’s (1986) theory which he has developed over a number of years (Mann, 1993, 2012, 2013) and also at Dingxin Zhao’s (2015) theory of social change, which builds on Mann’s in a few important respects. Darwinian social evolution is used both to critique the theories of social change presented, but also take on board ideas from the respective theories. Chapter 5, ‘Theories of Nationalism’, looks at four theories of nationalism that split broadly into modernist and ethno-symbolic camps: Andreas Wimmer and Siniša Maleševi´c on the modernist side; and John Hutchinson and Atsuko Ichijo on the ethno-symbolic side. Detailing each of the perspectives, I compare them against Darwinian social evolution and note how the theories fit into the Darwinian framework. The ultimate aim here is to demonstrate how the modernist and ethno-symbolic perspectives can be reconciled, via Darwinian social evolution. With the various theoretical bases established the book moves onto the more practical applications of Darwinian social evolution. It does this through a comparative analysis of two case studies. Chapter 6, ‘The Origins of Nationalism in England/Britain’, examines the development of nationalism in England and later Britain. It looks at different competing explanations for when nationalism emerged in the country, and then makes an argument for why it took the shape that it did through the Darwinian social evolutionary perspective.

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Chapter 7, ‘Fukoku Ky¯ohei: Nationalism in Japan’, follows a similar pattern to the above and examines how nationalism came about in Japan using Darwinian social evolution, looking at internal factors and developments and also at the external impositions that came with the arrival of the Western powers. Chapter 8, ‘The Comparative Case: England, Japan and Darwinian Social Evolution’, draws together information from the two cases to provide a general discussion on what nationalism is, how it comes about and why it took the form that it did. The discussion is framed within the Darwinian social evolutionary perspective and is used to provide the analytic discussion of the cases and to draw out the salient points. Together, this will demonstrate the worth that a Darwinian understanding can provide for examining social change, generally, and nationalism specifically. Finally, the conclusion provides a summary of the argument of the book and reflects on areas where further developments could be made in the discussion of Darwinian social evolution and its use in sociology.

Notes 1. And we should also acknowledge Alfred Russell Wallace who came up with the same concept independently. 2. Gould doesn’t directly say that Darwin was influenced by Smith. There is evidence that Darwin had read Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, but no known evidence that he had read The Wealth of Nations (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 6, fn. 7). However it would be odd if an educated Victorian like Darwin was completely unaware of Smith’s theory, or the prevailing political-economic attitudes. For a stronger, if slightly polemical, argument that Darwin was well aware of these arguments, and made use of them, see Weikart (2009). 3. Lamarckism refers to the thought of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who developed what was for a time (even after Darwin’s theory was published) the leading theory of evolution. It’s typically taken to mean the notion that organisms inherit acquired characteristics—that characteristics a parent develops or acquires in their lifetime will be passed onto their children (so the son of a metalworker will have strong muscles because his father had strong muscles

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developed by working the metal.) It’s not strictly accurate to call this Lamarckism, as Lamarck’s theory was more complex than this and inheritance of acquired characteristics was only one part of it (and not the major part of it), but the label has stuck so it serves as a short-hand (Gould, 1980). 4. A possible exception to this is Japan where in the early Meiji period, Spencer was one of the most widely read English writers. His ideas were taken to be Darwinian and many used them to argue that Japan needed to keep the traditional social order, to enable Japan to surpass the West, and also allowed the consequences of modernization to be written off as ‘laws of nature’ (Unoura, 1999). 5. This is perhaps not too surprising as most of them come from different academic disciplines.

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities (2nd ed.). Verso. Bannister, R. C. (1979). Social Darwinism: Science and myth in Anglo-American social thought. Temple University Press. Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press. Becquemont, D. (2011). Social Darwinism: From reality to myth and from myth to reality. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 42, 12–19. Bhambra, G. K. (2011). Talking among themselves? Weberian and Marxian historical sociologies as dialogues without ‘others’. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (3), 667–681. Breuilly, J. (1993). Nationalism and the state. Manchester University Press. Buller, D. J. (2006). Adapting minds: Evolutionary psychology and the persistent quest for human nature. The MIT Press. Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea. Penguin. Dickens, P. (2000). Social Darwinism: Linking evolutionary thought to social theory. Open University Press. Dusek, V. (1999). Sociobiology sanitized: The evolutionary psychology and genic selectionism debates. Science and Culture, 8(2), 129–169. Retrieved from http://tomweston.net/dusek.htm

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Gat, A., with Yakobson, A. (2013). Nations: The long history and deep roots of political ethnicity and nationalism. Cambridge University Press. Gellner, E. (1964). Thought and change. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Gellner, E. (1988). Plough, sword and book: The structure of human history. Paladin. Gellner, E. (2006). Nations and nationalism (2nd ed.). Blackwell. Gould, S. J. (1980). Return of the hopeful monster. In S. J. Gould (Ed.), The panda’s thumb: More reflections in natural history. Penguin. Gould, S. J. (1991). Of bamboos, cicadas, and the economy of Adam Smith. In S. J. Gould (Ed.), Ever since Darwin: Reflections in natural history (pp. 97– 102). Penguin. Grosby, S. (1999). The chosen people of ancient Israel and the occident: Why does nationality exist and survive? Nations and Nationalism, 5 (3), 357–380. Hearn, J. (2006). Review of When is the nation? Nations and Nationalism, 12(3), 532–534. Hodgson, G. M. (2004). Social Darwinism in anglophone academic journals: A contribution to the history of the term. Journal of Historical Sociology, 17 (4), 428–463. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2006). Why we need a generalized Darwinism, and why generalized Darwinism is not enough. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 61, 1–19. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2010). Darwin’s conjecture: The search for general principles of social and economic evolution. University of Chicago Press. Hull, D. L. (1988). Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. The University of Chicago Press. Hutchinson, J. (2005). Nations as zones of conflict. Sage. Ichijo, A. (2013). Nationalism and multiple modernities: Europe and beyond . Palgrave Macmillan. Kitcher, P. (1985). Vaulting ambition: Sociobiology and the quest for human nature. The MIT Press. Leonard, T. C. (2009). Origins of the myth of social Darwinism: The ambiguous legacy of Richard Hofstadter’s social Darwinism in American thought. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 71, 37–51. MacRae, D. G. (1959). Darwinism and the concept of social evolution. The British Journal of Sociology, 10 (2), 105–113. Mann, M. (1986). The sources of social power, volume I: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge University Press.

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Mann, M. (1993). The sources of social power, volume II: The rise of classes and nation-states, 1760–1914. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2012). The sources of social power, volume III: Global empires and revolutions, 1890–1945. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2013). The sources of social power, volume IV: Globalizations, 1945– 2011. Cambridge University Press. Maynard Smith, J. (1982). Evolution and the theory of games. Cambridge University Press. Noble, T. (2000). Social theory and social change. Palgrave. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press. Runciman, W. G. (2009). The theory of cultural and social selection. Cambridge University Press. Segerstråle, U. (2000). Defenders of the truth: The battle for science in the sociobiology debate and beyond . Oxford University Press. Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France. Cambridge University Press. Smith, A. D. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. Blackwell. Spencer, H. (1852). A theory of population, deduced from the general laws of animal fertility. The Westminster Review, 1(3), 468–501. Retrieved from http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/spencer2.html Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell. Spruyt, H. (1994). The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton University Press. Unoura, H. (1999). Samurai Darwinism: Hiroyuki Katô and the reception of Darwin’s theory in modern Japan from the 1880s to the 1900s. History and Anthropology, 11(2–3), 235–255. Van den Berghe, P. L. (1987). The ethnic phenomenon. Praeger. Van den Berghe, P. L. (1995). Does race matter? Nations and Nationalism, 1(3), 357–368. Veblen, T. (1898). Why is economics not an evolutionary science? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12(4), 373–397. Veblen, T. (2007). The theory of the leisure class. Oxford World’s Classics. Wallerstein, I. (2011). The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. University of California Press.

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Weikart, R. (2009). Was Darwin or Spencer the father of laissez-faire social Darwinism? Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 71, 20–28. Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: A new synthesis. Harvard University Press. Zhao, D. (2015). The Confucian-legalist state: A new theory of Chinese history. Oxford University Press.

2 Descent with Modification

Introduction Before we start discussing the variations of social evolution, and in particular the more recent variations that go into informing the model developed in this book, it is important to have an understanding of what evolution by natural selection means in biology. This is the purpose of this chapter: to set out what the key concepts are, that will then be transferred into the social domain, and how they operate in the biological world. This chapter gives a brief overview of Darwin’s notion of natural selection, covering the more recent developments in biological thinking on evolution, and will discuss many of the key concepts such as adaptation, selection, population thinking and fitness. This will take a philosophical approach, as much as a biological one, for the key reason that understanding the debates around these concepts and how they work will also demonstrate how these can be taken and applied towards the social domain. As mentioned in the introduction, there has been a long history of attempts to apply evolutionary thinking towards sociological areas, however, these haven’t always been Darwinian applications. This chapter © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_2

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looks to ground the concepts in the Darwinian terrain, before developing them out to the questions of social, cultural and institutional change. Before diving into this, though, it’s worth briefly covering one point of importance: the need to distinguish between ‘evolution’, ‘progress’ and what evolutionary thinking in sociology has typically consisted of. Evolution, in sociology, has traditionally been used to connote a descriptive theory that explains how societies pass through various stages from simpler to more complex societies, whereas progress is normally seen as being a term that implies a value judgement (i.e. more developed societies are better than less developed ones) (Noble, 2000: 40). Evolution, as the term is used here, parallels its use in biology, namely, it connotes a system that changes based on “the core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and replication” and that these principles can apply to any open-ended system (Hodgson, 2005: 899). Contrarily, Darwinism does not imply that selection processes or outcomes indicate anything relating to progress or morality (Runciman, 1995). As Hodgson and Knudsen (2010: 36) succinctly put it ‘Outcomes of a selection process are necessarily neither moral nor just. And there is no requirement that the outcomes of a selection process are necessarily optimal or improvements on their predecessors’. This chapter will then cover two main aspects. Firstly there will be an explanation of how selection works in biology. This will concentrate on general aspects, or philosophical questions as it were, rather than getting into the nitty-gritty detail about, e.g. genes, DNA and so on. The purpose of this section, as described, is to focus on those elements that are transferable into sociological discussion and so the reflection on the concepts will be done with that aim in mind. However, looking at the biological level, rather than skipping it, helps make apparent what are the similarities and differences between biological evolution and Darwinian social evolution. The second part of the discussion will centre on a brief look at one of the more famous attempts to draw a connection between biological evolution and social/cultural evolution with Dawkins’ (1989) concept of memes. The arguments for this, as well as its limitations, will be discussed to lay the groundwork for the following chapter, where the selection model for Darwinian social evolution will be set out.

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What Does Evolution by Natural Selection Mean? Charles Darwin had the idea for what he called natural selection after two events came together in his head: the first was seeing the variety of species of bird across different, but geographically similar, islands on the Galapagos islands (Lewens, 2007: 23); the second was after reading Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population and suddenly having the idea for how the divergent of species of bird could be explained (Lewens, 2007: 26). Evolution was not an original idea with Darwin, several versions of it had existed beforehand (indeed his Grandfather, Erasmus Darwin was a proponent), but what Darwin did provide was a mechanism for how adaptation could happen, thus enabling it to supersede the religious image (Lewens, 2007: 39–40). The mechanism Darwin hit on was that of natural selection. Darwin called it natural selection to contrast it with the artificial selection that breeders did with domesticated animals. Indeed, Darwin begins the Origin of Species by detailing the various ways in which breeders have, consciously and unconsciously, selected for behaviours and traits in domestic animals (Darwin, 2008: Ch. 1). From there, he goes on to detail the variations and individual differences that exist in nature (Darwin, 2008: Ch. 2) and then onto the ‘struggle for existence’. For Darwin, the struggle for existence is what makes selection possible: there are a finite amount of resources, and organisms must compete for them. Those that are better at competing for the resources will be able to acquire them, survive and pass on progeny; whereas those that are not able to will die out (Darwin, 2008: Ch. 3). These are the Malthusian principles that he draws upon and it is also what explains divergences in species—those species that are successful in the struggle will have variations that are beneficial to their survival, and those variations will be preserved and passed on through their descendants (Lewens, 2007: 41–43). It is important to note here that Darwin does not necessarily see this as direct competition in a mortal combat kind of sense, but rather that it could include multiple forms and indirect struggles as well. As Darwin (2008: 51) put it, ‘Two canine animals in a time of dearth, may be truly

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said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant at the edge of the desert is said to struggle for life against drought’. This, then, is what Darwin means by natural selection: that over time there is a competition for resources, which is the struggle for existence. Those organisms that are more adapted to their particular environmental conditions will be able to acquire resources more successfully than their competitors. Those that can acquire resources more easily, because they have a trait that helps them do so, will be more capable of reproducing. Those traits that are successful are preserved and passed on and subsequently replicated, whilst those organisms with less successful traits die out. And that is the process of natural selection (Darwin, 2008: 98). The environment, effectively, through the struggle for existence selects for traits in the same way that a breeder would do, only without needing a guiding or directing hand to do it. One important thing to note here, as well, is that Darwin does not have a conception of genes, or genetics, and formulates his understanding without it (Hearn, 2014: 178). This is important, as one of the issues that will be discussed in this chapter is the question of whether or not a social evolutionary model needs an analogue for the ‘gene’ for it to work. The idea has developed from there, with some more complexities and conceptual discussions being added, one of the most important of these being the discovery of Gregor Mendel’s work on genes and their addition to the Darwinian framework to create the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. This is also where a lot of the conceptual difficulties come in, which will be discussed further in this chapter. However, before we go further, it’s worth taking a moment to address one of the questions that surround Darwin’s idea of natural selection: namely whether or not we can speak of adaptations and changes as being ‘progressive’. As mentioned in the introduction, one of sociologies wariness regarding Darwin and evolution is the belief that, when applied to the social world, it connotes a question of ‘more evolved’ and ‘lesser evolved’ beings: staples of scientific racism and imperialism. Darwin cannot, sadly, be absolved of all of this; he was a product of Victorian civilization and that seeps into his discussions (c.f. Lewens, 2007: Ch. 8). Mathus’ essay that Darwin drew inspiration from is also suspect. But does this mean that the idea of natural selection itself is corrupted by these notions?

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The answer is no. Whilst it can lend itself to it, there is no need for selection or evolution to connote higher and lesser forms or any notion of progress. Darwin himself was wary of this and in his writings expressed reservations about depicting adaptations as progressive, though he was a bit more ambivalent about notions of universal progress (Lewens, 2007: 249–251). As Stephen Gould (1991: 36) points out Darwin made a note to himself to make sure that he never used ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ when describing different species ‘for if the amoeba is as well adapted to its environment as we are to ours, who is to say that we are the higher creatures?’ This was also in evidence around his reluctance to use the word ‘evolution’, instead preferring ‘descent with modification’. The term evolution came from the Latin evolverer meaning ‘to roll’, with the imagery being that of a scroll that is unfolded to reveal what has already been written (Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010: 30; Gould, 1991: 35–36). The progressive, or teleological, implication in that is clear and hence why Darwin wanted to steer clear of it. With this brief preliminary set out, we can now take a closer look at some of the key concepts that surround the notion of natural selection and the discussions on what these concepts mean, looking at three of the most important for this study: population thinking, adaptation and fitness.

Population Thinking, Adaptation and Fitness For Ernest Mayr (1975) one of Darwin’s key achievements was the introduction of population thinking to evolution and in particular its contrast with typological thinking. Mayr (1975) argues that typological thinking, which he traces to Plato, sees entities as having ‘perfect’ forms that denote essential properties of a particular type. Population thinking, in contrast, sees entities as sharing traits by which they can be grouped together as a population, but there is a recognition that this is a statistical phenomenon only; the entities are all unique. ‘For the typologist the type (eidos) is real and variation an illusion, while for the populationist the type (average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real’ (Mayr, 1975: 327).

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Mayr is perhaps being a bit too harsh on typological thinking (Lewens, 2007: 85) as a typologist is not necessarily committed to defending the idea that all types are the same and could agree that the particular type is just an abstraction. But what Mayr is pointing to is what is important in Darwin’s way of thinking that differs from typology: ‘by offering a different way of thinking about the relationship between forms that actually exist, the forms that are likely to exist given specific local circumstances, and the forms that can possibly exist given general laws of nature’ (Mayr, 1975: 89). Darwin’s shift to population thinking emphasized the contingent facts, in the environment and the constitution of a particular entity, to explain why particular forms are in evidence at a particular time as opposed to others (Mayr, 1975: 90). In population thinking, the differences in kinds of organisms are the product of variations within populations; this leads to variations among populations that extend through time, constantly changing and producing new variations, but all descending from a single point. This is the conception of the tree of life, the notion that, abstractly, the various pathways and contingent factors that lead to divergence and different species, can be roughly represented on a map showing their descent (Godfrey-Smith, 2009: 14). These two aspects of Darwinian thinking are tied to a third concept that completes the image: natural selection, and the sub-concepts of adaptation and fitness. Adaptation and fitness are central to natural selection. They help to answer the question of why one change happened rather than another. In simplest terms, it is because the change that happened and persisted was selected for as a result of being better adapted to its environment than the alternatives. The selection process is cumulative, so entities become better adapted over time to a particular environment, with subsequent changes and adaptations building on the ones that went before (Dawkins, 1988: 49). The previous changes need not be related to the function of the finished element either; certain changes can serve one function at one time before being used for another function at a later time. For example, feathers likely arose as a thermo-regulatory system (similar to body hair), but later became adapted for the function of flight (Gould & Lewontin,

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1979). This points to two crucial elements that are necessary for a selection process to occur: continuity, that adaptations can be carried down generations; and quasi-independence, that though traits are linked to a wider organism, and changes affect the organism, the traits can also be subject to selection pressures in themselves (Lewontin, 1978; Brandon, 1999). Of course, for a selection process to work, there have to be different possibilities to select among, which is to say that there have to be variations with differences in fitness, such that some will replicate differentially (Sober, 2000: 9). In biology variability and adaptation usually occurs due to changes in gene frequencies; genes are the objects where heritable information is stored and passed on. However, an exclusive focus on genes is wrong. Genes express themselves through the phenotype, the physical characteristics of the organisms, which is how they interact with the environment (Calow, 1983: 40). Change is not exclusively the preserve of genes either as changes can also occur due to the environment (i.e. a better diet might make you taller than someone else, despite no change in gene frequency) (Sober, 2000: 2). What, though, is meant by fitness? Traditionally fitness is defined by an organism’s ability to leave progeny: so if organism A leaves more offspring than organism B, A is said to be fitter than B. The estimation of an organism’s fitness is thus not directly connected to an analysis of how well fitted it is to a particular environment (Lewens, 2007: 45–46), but is implicitly assumed by the ability to leave more children. That is, it seems logical that the more adapted an organism is the higher its chances of survival and success are and therefore the more offspring it will leave.1 This understanding of fitness, however, is not unanimously accepted. Krimbas (2004), argues that there is a danger of reifying fitness, treating it as an actual real characteristic of an entity, which runs the risk of bringing teleology back in. He argues that fitness should be seen as a tool, one that’s meaning is dependent on the specific trait being looked at in relation to that trait’s history in an environment. In short, fitness should to some extent be seen as a relative concept. Peter Godfrey-Smith (2009) points to a similar problem when he notes that definitions of fitness tend to be idealizations that assume a synchronicity and non-generational overlap with entities. He points to

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the possibility that there could be two entities, A and B, that are identical and reproduce in exactly the same manner (by splitting themselves), but because A cycles through the process faster they will leave more offspring than B. A, under this definition, would be more ‘fit’, but it does not actually have any advantages over B. Idealizing the situation, assuming that the two are the same across time, means that there is the possibility of misconstruing one entity as better adapted than the other if counting offspring is the only test of fitness (Godfrey-Smith, 2009: 21–24). Though fitness is still useful as a concept, it does need to be understood within wider contexts than just the production of offspring, in order to distinguish between cases of selection and cases of drift. Drift, broadly speaking, is the process of luck in the selection process (Godfrey-Smith, 2009: 27; Sober, 2000). To borrow an example from Godfrey-Smith (2009: 27), if an entity is offed by a lightning strike, as opposed to competition over a resource, then this is a case of drift. It’s possible the entity in question might be more prone to lightning strikes than others, but this needs to be a subject of investigation. In other words, it’s crucial to distinguish ‘between reproductive differences due to advantages bestowed by phenotypic characteristics, and reproductive differences due merely to accident’ (Godfrey-Smith, 2009: 27). The key point of this discussion is that no single element is responsible for a particular trait being selected, but rather the interaction between the local environment and the entity, consisting of a phenotype and a genotype. This is crucial when it comes to understanding what the concept of adaptation means. As John Maynard Smith (1966: 15) states: No animal or plant can live in a vacuum. A living organism is constantly exchanging substances with the environment … Without these exchanges, life is impossible … life therefore is an active equilibrium between the living organism and its surroundings, an equilibrium which can be maintained only if the environment suits the particular animal or plant, which is then said to be ‘adapted’ to that environment. If an animal is placed in an environment which differs too greatly from that to which it is adapted, the equilibrium breaks down; a fish out of water will die.

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This passage is outlining the importance of remembering that when talking of things being ‘adapted’ it should always be in reference to an environment. Natural selection, in this sense, is a local phenomenon— organisms are adapted to their immediate environments. There has to be something they are adapting to. A consequence of this is that there are no adaptations that are, so to speak, universally ‘good’. It is always context-dependent. Gills, for example, are great adaptations if you live in water most of the time, but they’d be useless in a desert. This might sound relatively simple, however, there are some problems with the conceptualization of adaptation, or at least the problem of adaptationism which is a strong form of the natural selection hypothesis. Sober (2000: 124) defines it as the belief that “[m]ost phenotypic traits in most populations can be explained by a model in which selection is described and nonselective processes are ignored”. It is, in essence, the belief that any trait an organism has must stem from adaptive advantage and that selection is the only cause that matters for being able to explain the origin of a trait. This can lead to the telling of ‘just-so’ stories, plausible-sounding explanations for how a trait arose but that are either wrong or untestable (Gould & Lewontin, 1979). By contrast, Gould and Lewontin (1979: 581–584) point to spandrels, an architectural feature that exists as a by-product of a design. They can often look very beautiful and splendid, to the point where it seems like the design was made specifically to include them, but they are just a by-product and not the intent of the architecture. They argue that this can apply in evolution: certain traits that appear to be adaptations might simply be there because they arose as a by-product of other traits being selected. The problem then is how can we tell if something exists because it is an adaptation and as a result of selection, or if it is just there as a result of drift, or a spandrel that came along with another trait that was selected? Part of this is a problem to do with how an adaptation can be recognized. George C. Williams (1966) took an intuitive approach, arguing that adaptations could, in some respects, be recognized by looking at them. Analogically we can look at human design in engineering, and then look at characteristics of organisms in their environment and see a ‘fit’ in terms of design that can be called an adaptation. However,

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this approach runs the risk of falling into the problem of adaptationism (Gould & Lewontin, 1979; Sober, 2000: 124), in assuming that anything that looks like an adaptation is one. This is not a mistake that Williams makes (1966: 90) as he stresses the need for caution, and to only call something an adaptation when other factors, physical and chemical, would not serve as an explanation on their own. However, the danger is there and this is particularly so for social evolution where getting stuck in circular reasoning (x does y, therefore it must have arisen because of a need to do y by x)2 is all too easy. An alternative way of looking at it would be from the perspective of the fitness of a phenotypic trait in a population; so the focus is less on what the variant is designed to do but whether or not it increases the fitness of the organism vis a vis other variants (Reeve & Sherman, 1993: 94). This is helpful as a definition as it stresses that adaptation is a relative concept and is contingent on the environment and available alternatives (Reeve & Sherman, 1993: 94–95). Natural selection is not a perfection-producing phenomenon. It selects the best available variants for an environment, not the best possible that can be conceived (Sober, 2000: 39). Or, to use an analogy, ‘[N]atural selection is a little like a game of poker: The best hand (phenotype) wins (reproduces) regardless of whether it is a pair of twos or four aces’ (Reeve & Sherman, 1993: 95). However, this approach is not foolproof. Though there is some merit to looking at the number of types of a trait in a population and concluding that it is the fittest, this does not tell us much about the adaptation itself (Krimbas, 2004; Godfrey-Smith, 2009). Similarly, though they are related, there is no necessary link between fitness and adaptation; indeed, as Sober (2000: 78–79) points out, it’s possible for a disadvantageous trait to spread through a population if it is attached to a ‘fitter’ organism. Fitness is an average measure for the whole organism, not a measure for particular traits (Sober, 2000: 83). This gets even more complicated when it comes to the social world because there are different replication processes than just producing more offspring: there can also be diffusion of ideas as opposed to direct replication of an entity (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 91). For this reason, how fitness should

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be measured in Darwinian social evolution becomes a complex question (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 91). What I propose here is to take the view that both the fitness and the intuitionist approach be treated as context-dependent tools (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 91; Krimbas, 2004). I believe it can be reasonably said that a trait can be considered an adaptation for a particular task if there is some evidence that it evolved in specific ways that made it more effective performing the task in its environment and the change occurred due to the increased fitness that results (West-Eberhard, 1992: 8). It is possible to start from the assumption that a particularly useful adaptation is a result of a selection process, however history and contingencies place constraints on what it can do in terms of optimization, so it would be wrong to assume that it is the only explanation (ibid.: 132–133). For this reason, I am on the same page as Neander (1995a, 1995b) and Nanay (2005, 2010) as against Sober (1984, 1995) in seeing selection and adaptation as linked together. Cumulative selection, in environments where there are limited resources, means that certain adaptations are going to be shaped by selection processes. If an entity with a particular trait is selected over other entities with other traits then it can reasonably be said that the trait is more adapted to the particular environment, because it has been able to make more use of the limited resources (Nanay, 2005, 2010). But changes to the trait do not just happen as a result of a mutation in the replicator, as Sober (1995) would argue, but rather the selection at the level of the interactor feeds back information into the replicator that can alter the trait (Nanay, 2005). Natural selection, as a process, makes it more likely that certain variants are going to be brought into existence over others by their involvement in the process of adaptation. A particular adaptation is successful, which leads to further intermediate changes that make a future variant more likely than it would have been without selection (Godfrey-Smith, 2009: 43). However, selection is not the be-all, end-all of the process and the reason for a trait spreading is not always down to an advantage that it might have. Luck, or drift, can play a role (Godfrey-Smith, 2009; Clatterbuck et al., 2013), and what looks like an adaptation might just be a spandrel, or else an exaptation (an adaptation that originally had one use, but is now co-opted to something else) (Gould & Vrba, 1982).

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For this reason, it is useful to adopt a terminological distinction from Sober (1984: 97–100), between ‘selection for’ and ‘selection of ’, where “Selection of ” pertains to the effects of a selection process, whereas “selection for” describes its causes. To say that there is selection for a given property means that having that property causes success in surviving and reproducing. But to say that a given sort of object was selected is merely to say that the result of the selection process was to increase the representation of that kind of object. (ibid.: 100)

To illustrate this point he refers to a child’s toy, where there are differentsized balls, with each size having its own colour. The toy is split into four separate parts each with different-sized holes that get smaller as they descend the levels. By shaking the toy the balls will be sorted onto different levels, the correct level for that size of ball. This demonstrates Sober’s point: each level will have balls that are the same size and the same colour, however, it is only the size that is being selected for. The colour of the balls is sorted alongside the size, however, the colour has not causally affected where the balls end up. Hence there is only a selection of colours. A final caution here is on the well-known point about the ‘theoryladeness’ of observation, which is to say the way we look at the world is in part determined by the background theories we have which govern how we interpret the world and our backgrounds as human beings. So in this context, the danger is that what looks like an adaptation might be influenced by what we think of as adaptations or designed elements. As an example, there is the controversy over the burgess shale and the Cambrian explosion, where a diverse set of fossils were discovered that appeared to indicate an enormous explosion of different body types at the start of the Cambrian that had seemingly not been there before. This was largely based on the intuitive observation that the creatures looked a lot different from one another, looked different from creatures that were in the fossil record before, and looked different to creatures existing now. However, later examinations showed that much of the strangeness of the creatures came from looking at them wrong (seeing antennae as legs for example) and that, when looked at closer, they were shown to

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be classifiable under standard types and were less diverse than originally thought (Sterelny, 2001: Ch. 10; Fortey, 1998). The point, of course, is that we need to be careful when studying the record, to minimize the extent to which our background theoretical processes are influencing interpretations and observations. In particular, this is true with adaptation. Whilst there are useful reasons to start from the assumption that something is an adaptation it does need to be handled with care, or else we may start seeing adaptations everywhere.

Are Something like Genes Needed for There to Be Social Evolution? It is sometimes believed that social evolution cannot follow Darwinian principles, or it is even impossible because and society have no analogue with genes—which is to say, entities that carry and pass on heritable information. But is this belief correct? The short answer to this is no. Even without something like genes the postulates of natural selection would still apply.3 Darwin, after all, developed his theory without having any idea that genes existed (Hearn, 2014: 178), demonstrating that the concepts can still be usefully applied without their being an exact one-to-one analogy. A longer answer, looking at the concept of memes, can reveal some interesting reasons why social and biological evolution are different in some ways and why having too close an analogy to biological evolution can constrain understanding. Memes were a concept invented by Richard Dawkins (1989: ch. 11) as a way of understanding processes of cultural evolution, though nowadays they are more famous as a series of internet humour posts, which are easily changeable by users and can be used in different scenarios (e.g. the Grumpy Cat).4 Dawkins’ original purpose was to provide an analogue to genes for cultural evolution: memes were ‘the new replicator’ that serve as the genes of human culture (Dawkins, 1989: 192).5 As the famous passage describing them says [M]emes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene

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pool by leaping from body to body… so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. (Dawkins, 1989: 192)

The concept of replicators will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. For now, it is sufficient to know that, for Dawkins, replicators are discrete entities that are capable of making copies of themselves (Dawkins, 1989: 15), and further that genes and gene-like entities are the only replicators that exist. These replicators, in the genetic sense, can then build ‘survival machines’ or ‘vehicles’ that house them and ensure the replicators ability to replicate themselves (Dawkins, 1989: 19; 254). For Dawkins, this distinction helps to keep in mind the differences between genes and organisms. Genes are the replicators and are therefore the locus of selection; natural selection affects only them because only they can carry information from one generation to the next. Organisms are merely how genes interact with the world and are, consequently, not selected for or acted upon by selection. This is effectively the same as how memes operate in Dawkins’ conception. Memes have the same characteristics of any replicator: they have longevity (can stay together and not break up to allow for a longer copying time), fecundity (can replicate quickly) and copying-fidelity (they make reasonably accurate copies of themselves) (Dawkins, 1989: 194, 17–18). Unlike genes, however, memes are not competing for a defined space on a chromosome of DNA, but are rather competing for ‘memory space’6 in the human brain (Dawkins, 1989: 195–196). Successful memes are those that are best able to continue to occupy space in the brain and pass on to other brains, effectively replicating themselves. But note that memes are, like genes, ‘selfish’ in the sense that they only care, for want of a better word, about propagating themselves and not providing a greater benefit to the ‘vehicle’ that they are part of (Blackmore, 2001). Thus, whilst it might be better for someone to remember the details of how to perform certain mathematical equations, it is ‘better’ for a particular meme in their brain if they instead remember the names of all one-hundred and fifty-one of the original Pokémon. In this way the

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meme can continue to occupy the brain space, allowing itself the opportunity of replicating, even though this knowledge is arguably not as useful to the person outside of certain specific contexts. Memes are a powerful concept. Certainly, once learnt, it becomes very hard to not think in terms of it and see memes everywhere. However, that is where its danger as an analogy lies. As Godfrey-Smith (2009: 144) has argued, part of the problem with memes is that it leads to a form of ‘agential’ thinking, where memes become part of a ‘paranoid’ framework where there is ‘a hidden collection of agents pursuing agendas that cross-cut or oppose our interests’. This way of thinking can be very misleading, pushing towards talk of beneficiaries of the selection process, or fitness, being interpreted literally, rather than being seen as a metaphor to aid understanding of population changes. Lewens (2012) also notes that meme theory seems to presume that people are passive recipients, existing only as a bundle of memes, rather than active agents picking among ideas and in control of their own actions, in a similar way to how Dawkins metaphor of ‘lumbering robots’ or ‘vehicles’ creates the sense that organisms are passive and being manipulated by their genes (Brown, 1999: 40–43). As we will see, this is part of the reason why Hull (1994) prefers the term ‘interactors’ to ‘vehicles’, as it gives more agency to the organism. Meme theory is potentially also misleading in providing a warped account of how cultural processes work. Susan Blackmore (2001) has argued that memetics trumps other theories of cultural evolution because it does not see culture as an adaptation: rather it is always about what is beneficial to the memes. This immediately raises the spectre of GodfreySmith’s (2009) agential way of thinking, but it also obscures the processes of power behind social and cultural evolution. Dickens (2000: 57) points to the example of an advertising jingle. He notes that jingles are catchy so they will hang around in the brain, but that this is not to the memes benefit but to the advertiser’s benefit, who are hoping that the jingle will stick around and thus remind the person to buy the product. Looking at it from a memetic point of view thus obscures the agency of the people behind them and the purposes that a particular artefact, tool, idea etc. might be serving; and the power asymmetries that allow certain ideas to spread instead of others.

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The preceding passages identify a problem with wanting too close an analogy between biological and social evolution; it simplifies things too much and also means that some important differences are lost between the two. There isn’t a need for an exact analogue for genes in social and cultural evolution and insisting on one can often obscure processes of social and cultural evolution more than it illuminates. As Edmond (2005) points out the gene-meme analogy has failed to provide useful analysis or interesting takes on phenomenon and hasn’t greatly furthered understanding. At least part of this is because, as in the example of the advertising jingle, it misses the force that agency can provide in explaining why a certain meme is built in a certain way or the reason for its existence. It’s also worth noting that there are multiple-levels of selection (Nowak with Highfield, 2011), which have different forms and levels of replication and interaction (Brandon, 1999), an idea that will be explored further in the next chapter. The meme idea also places too much importance on cultural elements, e.g. ideas, whilst overlooking how social elements, e.g. institutions, can propagate themselves, irrespective of having to be directly mediated through cultural elements (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006; Hull, 1994; Hearn, 2014: 178–180). For this reason, the meme idea is largely unhelpful, serving to confuse issues rather than bring them clarity. Certain ideas are useful to take forward from the meme idea, however. One is that Dawkins (1989: 193, 198–199) recognizes that there doesn’t have to be a biological advantage to a cultural item; it has a potential and selective pressure that sees it survive all on its own. So a seemingly biologically strange behaviour, for example abstinence, can replicate without there having to be a biological advantage, as culture operates faster than biological evolution and so can override genetic interests (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 14–15). Though, as Lewens (2012) notes, this insight is not unique to meme theory, and other areas of the social sciences are interested in these divergences. A second point worth keeping in mind is that cultural or social entities can propagate even though they don’t provide a useful benefit to a group. This may not be, as Dawkins (1989: 198) says because it is advantageous to itself (the piece of culture), but it is a concept that is worth bearing in mind. Culture and social institutions come from people, but they persist beyond them and have power over

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them and their effects can consequently continue long after the function they evolved for originally is no longer relevant. With this summary of the key concepts and difficulties in biological evolution done, and some of the limits of the analogy between biological and social evolution explored, we can now turn to look at how Darwinian ideas can be understood in a sociological context, and begin piecing together a theoretical model for practical uses.

Notes 1. This assumption can, of course, go awry which is why we need to pay attention to exogenous factors that might intercede (e.g. natural disasters, asteroids striking etc.), which is of particular relevance in the sociological domain where networks of power and influence can intercede. 2. To spell out in more depth: x does y; so there must have been a need for y; we know this because otherwise, x wouldn’t do y. 3. This isn’t to say that analogues for genes in the social world can’t be proffered. As will be shown in the next chapter, both Hodgson and Knudsen (2010) and Runciman (2009) argue for habits and practices respectively as analogues for genes. 4. Whether this mutation of the concept represents a vindication or a refutation of the meme idea I leave for the reader to decide. 5. The question of whether memes are real entities or just a metaphor, is an open one: Dawkins is somewhat ambivalent about it, whereas others such as Blackmore (2000, 2001) and Dennett (1991, 1995) and McNamara (2011) have argued for them being real. Hull (1988) and Runciman (2009) take the view that it is primarily a metaphor. 6. Dawkins is drawing an analogy between computers and human brains.

References Blackmore, S. (2000). The meme machine. Oxford University Press. Blackmore, S. (2001). Evolution and memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device. Retrieved from http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/ cas01.html

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Brandon, R. N. (1999). The units of selection revisited: The modules of selection. Biology and Philosophy, 14, 167–180. Brown, A. (1999). The Darwin wars: How stupid genes became selfish gods. Simon & Schuster. Calow, P. (1983). Evolutionary principles. Blackie & Son. Clatterbuck, H., Sober, E., & Lewontin, R. (2013). Selection never dominates drift (nor vice versa). Biological Philosophy, 28, 577–592. Darwin, C. (2008). On the origin of species. Oxford World’s Classics. Dawkins, R. (1988). The blind watchmaker. Penguin. Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained . Penguin. Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin’s dangerous idea. Penguin. Dickens, P. (2000). Social Darwinism: Linking evolutionary thought to social theory. Open University Press. Edmond, B. (2005). The revealed poverty of the gene-meme analogy—Why memetics per se has failed to produce substantive results. Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission, 9. Retrieved from http:// cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html Fortey, R. (1998). Shock lobsters. London Review of Books, 20 (19) [Online]. Retrieved from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n19/richard-fortey/shock-lobsters Godfrey-Smith, P. (2009). Darwinian populations and natural selection. Oxford University Press. Gould, S. J. (1991). Darwin’s dilemma: The odyssey of evolution. In S. J. Gould (Ed.), Ever since Darwin: Reflections in natural history. Penguin. Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 205, 581–598. Gould, S. J., & Vrba, E. S. (1982/1998). Exaptation—A missing term in the science of form. In D. L. Hull & M. Ruse (Eds.), The philosophy of biology. Oxford University Press. Hearn, J. (2014). On the social evolution of power to/over. Journal of Political Power, 7 (2), 175–191. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2006). The nature and units of social selection. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 16, 477–489. Hodgson, G. M. (2005). Generalizing Darwinism to social evolution: Some early attempts. Journal of Economic Issues, 39 (4), 899–914. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2010). Darwin’s conjecture: The search for general principles of social and economic evolution. University of Chicago Press.

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Hull, D. L. (1988). Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. The University of Chicago Press. Hull, D. L. (1994). Taking vehicles seriously. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17 , 627–628. Krimbas, C. B. (2004). On fitness. Biology and Philosophy, 19, 185–203. Lewens, T. (2007). Darwin. Routledge. Lewens, T. (2012). The Darwinian view of culture. Biological Philosophy, 27 , 745–753. Lewontin, R. C. (1978). Adaptation. Scientific American, 239 (3), 212–231. Maynard Smith, J. (1966). The theory of evolution (2nd ed.). Penguin. Mayr, E. (1975/2006). Typological versus population thinking. In E. Sober (Ed.), Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology (3rd ed., pp. 325–328). The MIT Press. McNamara, A. (2011). Can we measure memes? Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, 3, 1–7. Nanay, B. (2005). Can cumulative selection explain adaptation? Philosophy of Science, 72(5), 1099–1112. Nanay, B. (2010). Natural selection and the limitations of environmental resources. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 41, 418–419. Neander, K. (1995a). Pruning the tree of life. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46 (1), 59–80. Neander, K. (1995b). Explaining complex adaptations: A reply to Sober’s ‘reply to Neander’. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46 (1), 583– 587. Noble, T. (2000). Social theory and social change. Palgrave. Nowak, M. A., with Highfield, R. (2011). Supercooperators: Altruism, evolution, and why we need each other to succeed. Simon and Schuster. Reeve, H. K., & Sherman, P. W. (1993/2004). An operational, non-historical definition of adaptation. In M. Ridley (Ed.), Evolution (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press. Runciman, W. G. (1995, March–April). The ‘triumph’ of capitalism as a topic in the theory of social selection, New Left Review, 210, 33–47. Runciman, W. G. (2009). The theory of cultural and social selection. Cambridge University Press. Sober, E. (1984). The nature of selection: Evolutionary theory in philosophical focus. University of Chicago Press.

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Sober, E. (1995). Natural selection and distributive explanation: A reply to Neander. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46 (3), 384–397. Sober, E. (2000). Philosophy of biology (2nd ed.). West View Press. Sterelny, K. (2001). Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the fittest. Icon Books. West-Eberhard, M. J. (1992). Adaptation: Current usages. In D. L. Hull & M. Ruse (Eds.), The philosophy of biology. Oxford University Press. Williams, G. C. (1966/2004). Adaptation and natural selection. In M. Ridley (Ed.), Evolution (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

3 Darwinian Social Evolution

Introduction Having set out how evolution works in the biological domain we are now going to move into considering how it works in the social domain. As indicated, many of the concepts discussed in the previous chapter can be abstracted from their initial biological/evolutionary origins and can be used to understand how change occurs in society, through culture and institutions. Having talked about Darwinian social evolution in the introduction, this chapter will now focus on explicating what this means. As mentioned in the introduction, the use of evolutionary ideas, or at least a version of them, has existed in sociology for a whilst. However, most of these did not take particularly Darwinian bents and tended to revolve around more ‘stadial’ configurations (Bhambra, 2011), where societies would be placed as being on a series of hierarchical stages that they progress through. The Darwinian evolutionary theory I will be making a case for differs from these earlier perspectives in that it does not take a stadial approach, and it dispenses with the notion that some societies are more ‘progressive’ than others according to a certain scale or criteria of civilization. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_3

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Rather, the emphasis is shifted onto understanding how and why particular social, institutional and cultural configurations come about through an examination of the selective pressures that existed in the environment. So, a more Darwinian approach. First I will look at some of the earlier social evolutionary theories, as a means of distinguishing between Darwinian social evolution and the older forms. In particular, it will look at one famous ‘evolutionary’ theory, that of Karl Marx’s theory of social change. The discussion will then move onto examining some of the more recent attempts to use Darwinian thinking towards understanding social and cultural change. The theorists that will be looked at are David Hull (1988), Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (2006), Dan Sperber (1996), W. G. Runciman (2009), Hendrick Spruyt (1994a) and Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (2010). With each of these models reviewed, the final section will then draw together the key points to provide the framework for Darwinian social evolution.

Earlier Models of Social Evolution As mentioned in the introduction, even before Darwin came along evolutionary theories were being used in social theory contexts. This may reflect why these theories were not necessarily Darwinian, as they took on the characteristics of evolution as the unrolling or progression between different stages. Earlier versions of social evolution, growing out of the Scottish Enlightenment, understood evolution in a particular way: as comprising a series of stages, each one more progressive per some absolute criteria, than the last. There were a set of prescriptions, or features, that a country would have to have to qualify for a particular stage (Bhambra, 2011). But later theories would often follow the same trend. Auguste Comte, writing after Darwin, also denominated societies based on key characteristics and having an evolutionary model. He developed an understanding of societies’ development, focusing on the developing mental capacities of humans, that saw them pass through three stages: the Theological Stage (governed by supernatural and religious

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thought and politically ruled by priests and warriors); the Metaphysical Stage (governed by abstract philosophical principles and politically ruled by a centralized state and lawyers and theologians); and finally arriving at the Positive Stage (governed by factual, scientific knowledge and politically the state withers away and power is in the hands of engineers and scientists). This was a unilineal system, as all societies had to pass through these stages in this order (Noble, 2000: 44–45), with the final one being the ‘best’. Another later model was developed by Sahlins and Service (1960) whereby advancement through societies was measured by their ability to consume and use energy more efficiently, their complexity and freedom from environmental control. Sahlins and Service synthesized two of the then-dominant strands in cultural evolution in anthropology, that of Leslie White, who argued that there could be a notion of progress from one society to another and that of Julian Steward, who was more multilinear, rejecting the notion of progress and concentrating purely on the adaptiveness of particular societies to particular environments. Sahlins and Service took these two approaches and put them under the headings of ‘general evolution’, representing overall progress, and ‘specific evolution’, representing the particular adaptations to environments among a particular group or lineage (Sahlins & Service, 1960: 16). Though more sophisticated, these ideas were still maintaining the notion that there was a particular upward direction of progress, and those specific adaptations could be treated separately from this overall gradation. As Ernest Gellner pointed out such a theory of evolution is problematic because placing successive stages and societies in a sequence is not an explanation of that sequence. It is, rather, the mechanisms behind it that explain it (Gellner, 1964: 15–21). He also noted that there are moral objections to such theories, namely, it posits that the ‘victor’ society for a particular stage is ipso facto the superior version (Gellner, 1964: 21–26). Nevertheless, Gellner did have a semi-evolutionary theory of his own, dubbed ‘neo-episodic’ or ‘philosophical history’ (Gellner, 1964, 1988). It was more sophisticated and didn’t fall into the issue of seeing one stage as morally superior to another, but did posit stages that societies would follow through on, going from hunter-gatherer formations, to agrarian

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societies and finishing up with industrial, modern, societies (Gellner, 1988). To help illustrate why not having a stadial vision of history and evolution helps understand social change, we are now going to look, in a little more detail, at Karl Marx’s theory of social change, which can be considered an evolutionary theory, on the older model that has been set out above.1 Marx’s dialectical materialism, or historical materialism, was built on Hegel’s theory of history. Hegel viewed the world as progressing towards an ideal, a self-awakening; that the ‘world spirit’ would essentially reach a point of self-knowledge where it properly understood itself. History was, essentially, the process of the spirit coming to self-knowledge. Marx, in some sense, turned Hegel on his head and swapped the idealism for materialism as the force that drove the theory. External conditions, distribution of wealth and labour in society, shaped the conditions of humans; their character depended on the character of society and its relation to nature. People produced themselves through their labour to escape from their hostile environments and be able to develop. By doing this, however, they craft more problems in terms of the dynamics of society. Societies are then fuelled by the conflicts between different classes, which, for Marx, will eventually culminate in the arrival of the communist society—where class conflict is eliminated and people live in peace (Cohen, 1978: 22–25). In this sense it is an evolutionary model in the classical sense of the term in sociology: it depicts a series of linear stages and the dynamics of the theory are put towards explaining how societies have passed through those stages. History, in Marx’s vision, advances through the development of productive relations, which occur in each mode of production (e.g. feudalism, capitalism). People enter into productive relations with one another, and it is through this where classes and social relationships stem from (Perry, 2002: 35–37). From these class relations, there is class conflict and this is what drives change in Marx’s theory: the contest between classes produces new modes of production, which creates a new social configuration and new class relations (Marx, 1977: 425–426). Marx’s theory does align somewhat with the older views on evolutionary theory—societies pass through a determined set of stages, in a

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particular order, and it is possible to treat these as progressive changes (the succeeding stage is better than the last one). As well as this, it also shares the endogenous character of the older characterizations, which is to say that changes in the society come from the internal dynamics within that society (Wright, Levine and Sober (1992: 56–57). This is one of the crucial elements that mark it out as different from Darwinian social evolution: Marx’s theory can be, to a degree, seen as a typological theory, whereas Darwinian social evolution takes population thinking to be its essence (Mayr, 1975). This is to say that the latter is concerned, not only with internal variation and adaptation within the society but also the selection process that operates between populations of entities, in this case, other societies and modes of production (to use Marx’s term here). The most important problem is the teleology in the theory. The question of what teleology is can be a difficult one. Having its roots in millenarian thinking, associated with the Christian tradition, teleology is usually either interpreted as the notion that there is an endpoint to a process or a predetermined end or that there are goals and purposes in processes (Mayr, 1992: 123). Mayr distinguishes between three kinds of teleological thinking: (1) teleomatic processes, where the process has an endpoint but the changes occur automatically, without goals, and are subject to natural laws (Mayr, 1992: 125); (2) teleonomic processes, where the process works as a program, so it has an end state and goals but this is placed in it from the beginning (Mayr, 1992: 127); and (3) adapted features, which is natural selection, where traits, through the process of selection, are adapted to fit, or solve, particular environments such that it can look like a goal-directed, or endpoint, process (Mayr, 1992: 131). Mayr’s (1992) view is that it is incorrect to categorize the third, Darwinism, as being teleological as natural selection does not need the notion of an end point, nor does it imply that there is goal-orientated behaviour or a sense of progress and purpose. Natural selection is an optimization process, but it has no end goal and the various dead-ends that have resulted from it put paid to the notion that it is progressive in the sense usually talked about in older forms of evolutionary theory (Mayr, 1992: 132).

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This brings us back to Marx. The theory suggests that there is a predetermined end (Runciman, 2009: 17). His theory was, in evolutionary terms, an ‘optimizing’ one in that it saw the relations of production as being the optimal ones given the ‘environment’, or mode of production that the society was in. However, due to these two views, the theory seems to argue that the possibility of change in a stage is sufficient for the change to occur. This turns it into a theory where there is an inevitable passing through the different stages that Marx sets out (Wright et al., 1992: 51–53). A Darwinian view, however, can duck the problem of teleology. As pointed to by Mayr (1992)Darwin’s theory allows for there to be change and seeming purpose in nature without there being any end goal to which it is being worked. Similarly, because it looks at population thinking (Mayr, 1975), it’s not confined by the idea that evolution and changes only occur within a society: selection also occurs between populations of entities, or in this case between societies. As Boyd and Richerson (1992) argue cultural evolution is capable of generating different variants, and consequently different unique historical trajectories, despite it being the result of a universal process (Boyd & Richerson, 1992: 287–288). This happens through two processes. As above, evolution proceeds on the basis of inheritance, variation and selection. Different variations occur in response to different environments, with the ‘better’ variants being selected as they fit that environment. Societies then inherit that variation from their past. In the social world there is the added element that people can make choices about what to inherit and what not to inherit—so a rule or tradition can be evaluated by people and, if it is no longer beneficial, can be dropped or swapped for another one thanks to human agency (Boyd & Richerson, 1992: 289–290). This might not seem to be different from Marx so far; Marx can be rewritten to be saying something similar in so far as social relations will alter with regard to the changes in the forces of production. But it is at this point that the difference enters: Marx recognises only one stage for each set of forces of production. Darwinism however can recognize multiple stages for any given forces of production. This is because there is not just one local optimum that a society can reach, but rather

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many different local optima’s (as well as sub-optimal maximums, or false optima’s). Think of it as a topographical field: there are different hills and peaks, some taller, some shorter, some wider and thinner. A society can go up one, but not the others. However, once a society has started up a hill it is difficult, if not impossible, for it to get to another hill. For this reason, despite being in a nominally similar environment with similar populations you can still get different societies with different historical trajectories (Boyd & Richerson, 1992: 294–298). Environmental changes, or endogenous changes, can then cause a society to move from one peak to another, but such occurrences would be uncommon (Boyd & Richerson, 1992: 299–300). This then demonstrates the usefulness of having an evolutionary theory that does not have defined stages or does not presuppose a teleology, and the advantage of population thinking. It is more flexible and is capable of explaining more than the alternate theory and is not stuck having to try and explain everything with relation to a universal model. A universal theory need not be a unilineal or a deterministic one—multiple causes can occur and so multiple trajectories can be taken. All that social evolutionary theory presupposes is that, given differing environmental backgrounds, the ‘better’, but not necessarily the ‘best possible’, variant will be selected. With this discussion on a key difference between older models of social evolution and the Darwinian approach concluded, we can turn to look at some of the more recent understandings in more detail. The following sections will look at different theories of how Darwinism can be applied. The useful aspects of each will be taken and put together to form, if not a theory, then a toolkit of useful elements that can be used to explain social change.

Replicators and Interactors: David L Hull David Hull’s concern was with understanding how concepts are transmitted through the scientific community and how a certain set of concepts come to be selected over others (Hull, 1988: chapters 12 & 13; 2001, 42–43). Drawing on Darwin’s insights, he draws an analogy

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between genes and concepts and genomes and theory to make the point that single concepts are not expressed in isolation in the same way that genes are not expressed in isolation (Hull, 2001: 39). This is a useful and interesting point, and his work itself posits an intriguing way of looking at the development of science. As was stated above, David Hull (1988; 2001) draws on some of the distinctions made by Dawkins. Recall that Dawkins made a separation between ‘replicators’, for his genes, and ‘vehicles’, organisms. Hull takes this distinction but, in a subtle and powerful move, he changes the name ‘vehicle’ to ‘interactor’ and gives the interactors the driving role in evolution (Brown, 1999: 204–205), believing that vehicles carried a misleadingly passive connotation that interactor avoids (Hull, 2001: 48). Hull (1988: 408) defines replicators as ‘An entity that passes on its structure largely intact in successive replications’ and interactors as ‘An entity that interacts as a cohesive whole with its environment in such a way that this interaction causes replication to be differential’ [emphasis in original]. Selection is defined as ‘a process in which the differential extinction and proliferation of interactors cause the differential perpetuation of the relevant replicators’ and lineages are defined as ‘an entity that persists indefinitely through time either in the same or an altered state as a result of replication’ (Hull, 1988: 409). Hull sees selection as a process, with entities defined by the function that they perform in that process (Hull, 1988: 402). The entities are thus understood more fluidly and are not tied to a particular level of selection. So a gene could be a replicator, but at other times it could function as an interactor, and the same could be said of organisms, species and so on (Hull, 1988: 412– 418). Note though that the only rule for something to be classed as an interactor is it must perform the function of an interactor, that is it has to cause replication to be differential. But the causal mechanism behind a particular interactor can vary (Hull, 2001: 47). Finally, Hull has a third concept of a lineage, which he defines as ‘an entity that persists indefinitely through time either in the same or an altered state a result of replication’ (Hull, 1988: 409). Lineages are capable of changing indefinitely through time, so they can’t be either

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replicators or interactors (Hull, 1988: 411), but they must involve replication, as otherwise they could not be understood distinctly from an entity that just happened to be long-lived (Hull, 1988: 410). Hull’s distinction between replicators and interactors is very helpful for a sociological context and, indeed, his distinction has already been put to use by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (2006, 2010). In sociology, the boundaries and definitions of entities can be unclear, with them often playing multiple roles depending on the context. It is therefore helpful to have flexible terms that can be applied and that can operate on many levels; this way, for example, a firm can be characterized as an interactor and replicator, just as much as an individual agent can. Likewise, his definition of selection being as a process, where the units are defined by the function they perform in that process, helps to lend clarity and analytic understanding for distinguishing between entities, making them easier to spot. The concept of a lineage is useful for distinguishing why certain institutions or structures can change over time, whilst also still being considered to be derived from, and part of, an earlier formation. There are, of course, potential definitional problems that are necessary to be careful with, i.e. when is something an interactor and when is it just a replicator? How are lineages to be distinguished between simply longlived institutions? As with the concept of adaptation, this should not, however, lead to an impediment to using the terms and the framework.

Cultural Variants: Boyd and Richerson Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson developed a mathematical model to understand cultural evolution and specifically how cultural variants are transmitted between people and groups (Boyd & Richerson, 1985). For them, culture is crucial for understanding human behaviour; people acquire beliefs and values from those around them, so their attitudes and actions cannot be understood or explained without taking this into account (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 3). They see this in population thinking terms, with organisms carrying inherited information through time (or down a lineage to use Hull’s term). This is also

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important with regard to understanding culture. Culture is defined as “information capable of affecting individual’s behavior that they acquire from other members of their species, through teaching, imitation and other forms of ” (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 5 [italics in original]). In this theory information is any kind of mental state that is acquired or modified by social learning and which affects behaviour, so ideas, knowledge, beliefs, skills, attitudes etc. (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 5). Culture is a part of human psychology, but selection acts on it directly. Consequently, culture can promote beliefs that would otherwise go against parts of human psychology. For instance, altruistic beliefs over self-interested beliefs (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 14–15). Culture is important as an explanatory variable because variation in the social environment is not enough on its own to explain behavioural variation among people, and would also struggle to explain differences in variation within cultures (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 30–31). As an example of this, they point to the Soviet Union where even though there was concerted suppression of local cultures at an institutional level, the cultures themselves did not die out and resurged once the Soviet Union fell, arguing that underground and within family networks kept the cultures alive and enabled their resurgence.2 This does not mean that culture is immutable but merely demonstrates that if there is a lack of will to adopt a new culture then it is hard for the old culture to be replaced (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 31–34). Cultural transmission occurs through social learning. Whilst social learning can be loosely called imitation, it is also more complicated than that as ideas can get from one person to another via a complex array of processes (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 63–64). Here they want to distinguish between ‘imitation’ and ‘true imitation’. The reason is simple: if imitation is all that matters then there is a puzzle—namely that cultural learning is quite common in nature but cumulative cultural learning of the type humans have is rare (Boyd & Richerson, 1996: 52–53). This is the difference between imitation and true imitation. With imitation a creature can learn by doing, that is it is taught how to use a tool and can then use it. In true imitation, a creature can learn how to do something just by observing another creature doing it. This has significant advantages to building a cumulative culture—it means that resources and time

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do not have to be spent individually teaching each member, but rather the behaviours can spread quickly and be maintained over generations (Boyd & Richerson, 1996: 54–55). The maintenance of cultural evolution requires only two factors: transmission—information going from one brain to another—and persistence—the information staying in the brain so that it can be passed along to another generation (Boyd & Richerson, 1996: 56–57). This leads to their definition of social learning: “the acquisition of behavior by observation or teaching from conspecifics” (Boyd & Richerson, 1989: 20). Importantly the spread of social learning, culture and behaviour is not random, but rather the product of what they call ‘biased transmission’. Biased transmission occurs when people preferentially adopt a particular cultural variant over another cultural variant, sometimes for conscious reasons and sometimes not. In general, the cultural variant would usually be beneficial, in terms of helping people to survive or advance, but the visibility of it matters (i.e. one that is beneficial, but not visibly so, would not spread as well as one that is less beneficial, but more visible), as do quirks of human psychology that might prefer one over the other (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 68–71). People are discerning in how they choose, so when selecting among behaviours to adopt they will pick the one that is most frequent in the group (reasoning that it must be the best in the environment), whereas if no behaviour is clearly favoured they would be better relying on individual learning—that is learning by doing over simple observation—as this would increase chances of discovering a better way of behaving in the environment (Boyd & Richerson, 1989: 30–32). This model of cultural transmission is useful—it provides an understanding of how behaviours and ideas can be passed among people within a group and how they can be transmitted across generations. It also provides an outlet for understanding how variations in culture can come about, despite similarities in the environment, and how certain traditions can stay for a while and change over time. This is not to say that there are no problems with Boyd and Richerson’s approach, particularly in light of this thesis’ topic on social change. Tim Lewens (2012) points out two difficulties: the first is that they equate culture with information and don’t provide a definition of information that would distinctively

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mark it out (Lewens, 2012: 746). Similarly, he notes that a behaviour can be individually learned and transmitted as an individually learned behaviour without there needing to be a ‘culture’ through which social learning happens (Lewens, 2012: 748). Another issue is that, whilst Boyd and Richerson don’t deny the role of society or institutions, they are perhaps too strongly focusing on culture and ignoring how social organizations and institutions can effect change, or transmit information, without there being a mediating culture or process of learning (Hearn, 2014: 179). The latter point on organizations and institutions can, however, be solved; and in a later subsection, we will look at the social evolutionary theories of W G Runciman and Hodgson and Knudsen, who include an understanding of how social evolution can operate at an independent level from cultural evolution.

Attractive Ideas: Dan Sperber Boyd and Richerson’s ideas can be usefully supplemented by anthropologist Dan Sperber’s (1996) work on culture. Sperber argues that culture spreads epidemiologically, similarly to a virus (Sperber, 1996: 25). He divides culture into two forms of representation: mental and public. Mental representations are such things as beliefs, intentions, preferences etc. Public representations are language, texts, signals etc. (Sperber, 1996: 24). The important point for him is that representations get ‘transformed’ as they are transmitted and become public representations (Sperber, 1996: 25), which then become cultural representations when they get distributed widely in a group, such that most members have a mental version of it (Sperber, 1996: 33). But, as we acquire representations, to hold them in mind we must reinterpret them ourselves, which is necessary to understand and interact with other people (Sperber, 1996: 34; 40). For Sperber, representations are only replicated very rarely as in most cases they are transformed (i.e. the representation changes very slightly) when they are transmitted (Sperber, 1996: 58). Some representations,

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however, maintain stability and those are usually the cultural representations that are easily remembered, due to the way that human psychology works (Sperber, 1996: 74–75). In part what lies behind this is human cognitive structuring—we innately have the disposition to develop concepts according to a schema. Concepts that fit better with the schema are easily internalized and remembered (Sperber, 1996: 69). This is largely to do with structural matters; as an example, he points out that we might want to remember the formulation of Gödel’s theorem, but find it difficult to do so, but we might easily remember a representation of the story ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ even though we want to forget it (Sperber, 1996: 66). This gives a better answer to the question of why certain ideas might hang around in the brain over others than does the meme solution—it points to cognitive design in the human brain rather than the meme itself and its desire to replicate. Of particular use is Sperber’s argument that humans have a capacity for meta-representation, which is essential for expanding knowledge and processing half-understood knowledge, both essential qualities. However, it can also lead to people being susceptible to ‘mysteries’—that is something half-understood for which no complete representation can be achieved (Sperber, 1996: 72). Sperber gives religion as an example of this, whereby it explains certain elements of the world and natural order, but also has an element to it (the supernatural) that cannot be adequately explained. When this occurs mechanisms of biased transmission, to use Boyd and Richerson’s term, can be quite powerful. In particular, Sperber points to the argument from authority, or for elders, being particularly strong (Sperber, 1996: 72). He also notes that the success of a mystery in many ways depends on its evocative character, which makes it more memorable, for example in the way that it seems to go against intuition or common sense knowledge (Sperber, 1996: 73–74). Sperber’s ideas help give strength to arguments about how cultural ideas can spread in a population and have affective power over people and change their behaviours. This is important when considering theories of social change, as new ideas would have to spread in a population. Sperber also helps to support and expand on ideas found in Boyd and Richerson, even though the research programmes are not related. Similarly, however, Sperber perhaps concentrates too much on culture and neglects social

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elements as well. In the next sections, we will look at two theories that do have a stronger focus on social evolution as well as cultural evolution.

Practicing Roles: W. G. Runciman Walter Garrison Runciman, unlike the theorists discussed above, does not fold society and culture into one another. Rather he argues that selection operates on three distinct levels (biological, cultural and social) and the mechanisms that generate variation and selection in each one are different (Runciman, 2009: 3). Consequently, social selection cannot be reduced to cultural selection and both cannot be reduced to biological selection. This is not to say that there is no connection between them, but culture, for Runciman, is based much more on the individual behaviour of people whereas social aspects are based more on rules. Cultural behaviour, or acquired behaviour, changes to social, or imposed, behaviour when a change in environment necessitates a system that relies less on personal characteristics and more on rules and order (Runciman, 2009: 40). Here I’ll largely be passing over Runciman’s theory of cultural evolution. It’s similar to Richerson and Boyd’s (2006) and Hull’s (1988), in that he defines it as largely the transmission of information via imitation or social learning that affects the behaviour of individuals (Runciman, 2009: 95–96). There are some nuanced differences between them, in particular Runciman’s use of the ‘meme’ concept, but the generalities are close enough that we do not need to go into an in-depth discussion on it. This section will instead focus on Runciman’s view on social evolution and its distinction from cultural evolution. For Runciman the study of society and societal change concerns institutions: ‘sociologists…look both for and at human institutions, and … these can be broadly defined as interrelated sets of rule-governed practices’ (Runciman, 1986: 151). Practices are defined as ‘units of reciprocal behaviour informed by mutual recognition of shared intentions and beliefs’, and practices make up roles, which are positions that people take within a community or society (Runciman, 1998: Chapter 1, para. 5). Roles are governed by a set of

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mutually shared expectations and beliefs that conform to an acknowledged institutional rule or rules (Runciman, 1986: 153). Broadly, this means that whoever occupies the role does not matter, as the person in the role has to act as something and will conform to that role regardless of their personal characteristics (a king is a king, a priest a priest, a CEO a CEO, etc. regardless of who occupies it). This marks an important distinction between Runciman’s conception of cultural and social selection. However, it is practices and not roles that are the unit of social selection. Essentially roles are like parts in a play that can be occupied by different people, but those roles are associated with certain practices that are performed that marks one role out from another. So, different people can occupy the role of a king, but that role, through its practices, will still mean that the occupants will perform in a certain way. Roles, therefore, are made up of practices. This is where Runciman sees power entering the field. Power, whether economic, political or ideological, is driven by a desire to influence the behaviour of other people, normally through changes in institutions (Runciman, 1986: 154). As practices are the units of reciprocal interaction, within the institutional roles, it is through these that people’s behaviour is influenced. Practices can mutate, or be recombined, through a society’s history and it is this process that brings about institutional change and thus change in societies (Runciman, 1986: 155–156). In talking about the selection of practices, however, it is not so easy to say that those that get selected are simply those that are best adapted to the social and institutional environment. Practices are always mediated through roles and the systacs (Runciman’s general term for stratified relations such as classes, castes, etc. (Wickham, 1991)) and so determining which practices are the best adapted needs to be considered in relation to the power dynamics in society, as mediated through the various groups that comprise society (Runciman, 1986: 158). This maintains the principle that selection is relative, in terms of what is ‘better’, and needs to be assessed according to the local, rather than global, environment (Runciman, 2009: 32). This also means that the theory is neutral between whether a change is intentional or unintentional; what people intended to do by their actions, and whether they succeeded or failed,

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does not matter so much to the analysis as looking at what the consequences were (Runciman, 2009: 140–141). Causes of variation cannot by themselves explain the consequences of it; there is always a certain amount of mutating, variation, change and selection that occurs as a result of social interactions (Runciman, 2009: 5–6). A potential criticism of Runciman might be that his theory seems to deny individuals agency, at least so far as roles are concerned. Whilst it is analytically useful to abstract from the individuals who are in the roles so that the roles themselves can be examined, it does also lose something. A king is a king; but who the king is, their own biases, personality, interests etc. can have an impact on how the role is played and consequently what occurs. This is not to revive the ‘Great Men’ of history thesis, and structural constraints do exist and matter, but there has to be allowance for not everyone playing the role the same way. This might be a matter of saying that they practised it differently, in Runciman’s terms, but then this also raises the point that what exactly a practice is can also be unclear. Despite this, his theory is useful, both for the division between cultural and social selection and the understanding of institutions that it provides, but also because he locates power as being of importance to understanding how societies change and evolve through time. This adds a complexity to the notion of the ‘environment’ for social selection as there is a need not just to look at the environmental considerations of the time, such as the economic system, but also a need to look at the dynamics of power within that system.

Puncturing Institutions: Hendrik Spruyt Differing from previous theorists in this section, Hendrik Spruyt draws specifically on Stephen Jay Gould’s understanding of Darwinism, namely the notion of punctuated equilibrium (Spruyt, 1994a: 23–24). The idea, developed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Gould (1972), was that macromutations could not be seen as merely micromutations scaled up over a long time; change, when it happened, could occur rapidly, as a key change would be selected for in the environment and thus spread quickly through a population (Gould, 1980a: 157–159). Note that they are using

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the geological sense of rapid, so effectively they are talking in terms of tens of thousands of years, not a few generations (Sterelny, 2001: 75). Between periods of rapid change there would be ‘stasis’, whereupon stresses would accumulate that would eventually reach breaking, or boiling, point and there would be a rapid change in a species as it went through large leaps (Gould, 1980b: 153). In saying this Gould and Eldredge were not claiming that no change occurred between the leaps, rather that such change simply did not accumulate down the generations. The change would, as it were, wobble around a mean and no strongly diverge from it in any particular direction. It was only at the point of a punctuation event that the change would accumulate and extensive speciation would occur, though this was a process that could take generations, not just a single leap (Sterelny, 2001: 75–76). Spruyt takes this idea and applies it to institutional change. He defines institutions differently to the others, calling them ‘contractual agreements between rational individuals…[which] need not take the form of a formal contract…individuals, whether they behave in an optimising or satisficing way, pursue the formation of institutional structures that they believe will best meet their interests’ (Spruyt, 1994b: 530-531). Drawing on Gould he argues for two premises: first that history and social change should be seen as being multilinear, that is of being part of a range of possibilities, rather than unilineal, with one stage succeeding another (Spruyt, 1994a: 5); and secondly by understanding institutional change as an infrequent phenomenon that occurs mainly where there is a serious exogenous shock (Spruyt, 1994a: 7). Conceiving things this way brings a better understanding of how change occurs, as we can look to the numerous competing forms of institutions in existence and look for why one triumphed over the other; and secondly, it would explain why certain social formations remain static but seem to have a rapid change. The need is to demonstrate why one set of institutional arrangements were better than the other in a particular environment after a change brought in a new set of variants (Spruyt, 1994a: 24). Punctuated equilibrium is a hotly debated topic in biology (for a review see Sterelny, 2001: Chapter 8), but it is a useful concept to have for social evolution. In particular, it can account for how revolutionary

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change can come about. Whilst Runciman (2009: 176–178) and Richerson and Boyd (2006: 50–54) are likely correct to point out that sudden rapid change is not as common as it appears, and mostly occurs through small accumulated stages, the concept of there being a tipping point at which something will rapidly spread is useful. Although much variety might be generated in an environment, much of it may not go anywhere until a final piece is put in place that causes the change. Of use as well is Spruyt’s focus on intentionality and individual agent’s actions. Whilst, in aggregate, it may be useful to eschew these kinds of questions when looking at the mass social change it is a reminder that regardless of whether a consequential change is intended or unintended, at some point it has to be brought back towards what an agent, or group of agents, were wanting to do or planning to do. This need not mean that their actions were the most efficient response to changes in the environment, but it does stress why changes are perhaps not so common. Even if an economic structure is overhauled, for example, actors would not redesign institutions unless it is absolutely necessary due to the path dependent effects (Spruyt, 1994a: 24–25).

Generalized Darwinism: Hodgson and Knudsen Last, but not least, is the work of Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (2006, 2010).3 There are two aspects to this, the first on their notion of institutional selection and then, covering some of the ground discussed earlier, their notion of generalized Darwinism. Like Runciman, they distinguish between cultural and social evolution. Drawing on the concept of emergence, Hodgson (2000) argues that there are separate levels of analysis that need to be looked at on their own terms, rather than being reduced to lower levels. For this reason, institutional selection cannot be reduced to cultural selection, just as both cannot be reduced down to biology. However, as Hodgson (2000: 75) notes emergence does not mean that the lower level elements can just be ignored; the point of emergence, after all, is that the new layer arises out of the constituent elements and whilst it cannot be reduced to those constituent elements there is still a need to take note of them. This ties

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in with Runciman’s (2009) point regarding it being possible for a culture to build into social evolution. Hodgson and Knudsen (2006: 5) hold that there are three main Darwinian principles: variation, inheritance and selection. In general, any Darwinian population will involve these three principles and this holds for institutional selection as for any other form. They argue that these three principles operate in any circumstance where there is a struggle for existence; that is members of a population are mortal and degradable and are thus competing for resources to keep them going in an environment of scarcity (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006: 4). For example, organisms compete for resources in terms of energy (i.e. food), but firms may be competing for resources in terms of money. As there is only a limited supply of money that firms can attract, they compete with other firms to attract people’s cash to continue existing. For this reason, a Darwinian vision of social evolution requires institutions. Hodgson (2009: 170) defines institutions as ‘systems of rules’, which means that they can pass on useful information to the next generation, such that a lineage continues to perpetuate itself (inheritance) (Hodgson, 2009: 169). This can happen through institutions, where the rules that work will be maintained and so anyone new who comes to the firm will be able to carry on following the same rules that were successful in the past. This way solutions to problems can continue to endure and replicate (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006: 5). Within the framework given by Hull (1994), they argue that firms can be seen as interactors, as they interact with the immediate environment, and habits and routines that are embedded within the firms can be seen as the replicators, as these maintain the rules that the institutional structures are built on (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2004). There is possibly a problem of over-abstraction here, that (as with Runciman on practices) it’s a little vague as to what counts as a routine or habit within a firm that would be the replicating entity. It is possibly still suffering from the desire to have an analogue with the gene, which is not strictly necessary (Hearn, 2014: 180). Nonetheless, whatever the intent behind working out what the replicators are, the concept of being able to treat defined institutional structures as interactors is useful as a means to understanding how they engage with the environment and with a changing environment through time.

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This then is their argument for the generalized Darwinian framework. In the first place, it is because most accounts of change and organization of systems ‘require Darwinian principles to complete their explanations’ (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006: 2 [emphasis in original]). As an example of this Hodgson (2009: 171) looks at the concepts of agency and power and argues that, without a proper understanding of Darwinism, these concepts cannot be properly understood. To understand why someone decided to do x at time y, we need to understand what caused the person to make the decision at that time, and to have the options that they did. Similarly, when looking at power there is a need to understand the circumstances that meant that someone had the power to do something, or over someone else, at a certain time. These are not uncaused elements that come out of nothing: they are caused by something in the chain of history and Hodgson (and Knudsen) argue that generalized Darwinism is the best way to understand the chain of causes. But, as noted before, generalized Darwinism is not enough on its own; it needs to be supplemented by auxiliary hypotheses, explanations and assumptions in order to be able to explain specific events. Darwinism is a meta-theoretical framework into which other theories can be slotted but is not a complete theory on its own (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006: 17). A Darwinian understanding can provide the basis for a better understanding of social change, and earlier cases of it, through reinterpretation and further explanation. But it always needs to work with that earlier information and supplement itself with other theories of explanation, such as methodological individualism or functionalism.

Conclusion: Assembling the Toolkit The purpose of the previous discussion is not to argue for one of these theories being the superior understanding of Darwinism, but rather to acknowledge that they all have merits. The task is in taking these merits and bringing them together into a toolkit, that can be applied towards the concerns of this book: namely understanding social change and the development of nationalism. Another reason for looking at these theories, and staying clear of definite models, was to avoid the issues that

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occur in earlier models of social evolution: namely fitting things into progressive stages and teleology. Taking from each of these, it is argued that there is a divide between cultural and social evolution (Runciman, 2009), that whilst both are important they are not necessarily reducible to one another and should not be treated as if what happens with one goes for the other. In this light the notions of Sperber (1996)and Boyd and Richerson (2006) offer the best insight into understanding cultural change, based on people’s capacity for selective imitation, that is being able to discern between good and bad things to imitate, where some cultural variants will be more likely to be chosen than others because of the way that human cognitive capacity is structured. In the realm of social evolution, there is much agreement, in general, between the models of Runciman (2009) and Hodgson and Knudsen (2006, 2010), who both see institutions as providing the means by which information is inherited. Though there are terminological differences (roles and practices, against habits and routines) these are not so dramatic that the understanding gleaned from both cannot be welded together to properly understand social change from a Darwinian perspective. Spruyt (1994a) again is a reminder to be on the lookout for institutional variety and competition in environments, alongside Runciman (2009) about the need to identify power structures and alongside Hodgson and Knudsen (2004) on the subject of intentionality and agency. Spruyt also points to how change can also be rapid, rather than gradual, and can come in large leaps, or shocks. Lastly, behind it all, is Hull’s (1988) useful distinction between interactors and replicators and lineages, with his notion that all three are equally important and play their role in advancing evolution. The distinction is not strict, however, and something that is an interactor can also be a replicator depending on the function is playing. This first part of the book has now set out the main theoretical concepts that will be used, assembled into what I am calling Darwinian social evolution. This is the theoretical outline that will be used in addressing the case studies of England/Britain and Japan. Before we get there, though, it is useful to have a discussion of theories of nationalism and social change, and in particular look at what they can add

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to Darwinian social evolution and what Darwinian social evolution can add to them. Part two, then, will look at a major theory of social change, and then four theories of nationalism, two modernists and two ethno-symbolists.

Notes 1. One note of caution on this is that MarxMarx frequently changed his mind on a lot of things, so there isn’t necessarily a definitive sense on which he viewed things. In his ‘Letter to the Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky’ (1968) for instance, he suggests that his scheme on the transition from feudalism to capitalism and then to socialism is not meant to be universal and only means for it to apply to Western Europe, as other places would require an analysis of their own history. 2. This ties in with John Hutchinson’s (2004, 2005) argument regarding culture wars and myths being kept ‘in reserve’ to be revived to provide new ideas when situations change (see Chapter 5). 3. Note that, although they’re being treated together, not all the work cited is co-authored—some of them are single-author or in collaboration with others. Given the similarity of their work, however, it is assumed that in general, their single-author work does not contradict what is in the coauthored work and so they are treated together.

References Bhambra, G. K. (2011). Talking among themselves? Weberian and Marxian historical sociologies as dialogues without ‘others’. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (3), 667–681. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. The University of Chicago Press. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1989). Social learning as an adaptation. In R. Boyd & P. J. Richerson (Eds.), (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford University Press.

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Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1992). How microevolutionary processes give rise to history. In R. Boyd & P. J. Richerson (Eds.), (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford University Press. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1996). Why culture is common but cultural evolution is rare. In R. Boyd & P. J. Richerson (Eds.), (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford University Press. Brown, A. (1999). The Darwin wars: How stupid genes became selfish gods. Simon & Schuster. Cohen, G. A. (1978). Karl Marx’s theory of history: A defence. Clarendon Press. Eldredge, N., & Gould, S. J. (1972). Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism. In T. J. M. Schopf (Ed.). Models in paleobiology. Freeman Cooper. Gellner, E. (1964). Thought and change. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Gellner, E. (1988). Plough, sword and book: The structure of human history. Paladin. Gould, S. J. (1980a). Return of the hopeful monster. In S. J. Gould (Ed.), The panda’s thumb: More reflections in natural history. Penguin. Gould, S. J. (1980b). The episodic nature of evolutionary change. In S. J. Gould (Ed.), The panda’s thumb: More reflections in natural history. Penguin. Hearn, J. (2014). On the social evolution of power to/over. Journal of Political Power, 7 (2), 175–191. Hodgson, G. M. (2000). The concept of emergence in social science: Its history and importance. Emergence, 2(4), 65–77. Hodgson, G. M. (2009). Agency, institutions, and Darwinism in evolutionary economic geography. Economic Geography, 85 (2), 167–173. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2004). The firm as interactor: Firms as vehicles for habits and routines. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14, 281– 307. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2006). Why we need a generalized Darwinism, and why generalized Darwinism is not enough. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 61, 1–19. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2010). Darwin’s conjecture: The search for general principles of social and economic evolution. University of Chicago Press. Hull, D. L. (1988). Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. The University of Chicago Press.

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Hull, D. L. (1994). Taking vehicles seriously. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17 , 627–628. Hull, D. L. (2001). Science and selection: Essays on biological evolution and the philosophy of science. Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson, J. (2004). Myth against myth: The nation as ethnic overlay. Nations and Nationalism, 10 (1/2), 109–123. Hutchinson, J. (2005). Nations as zones of conflict. Sage. Lewens, T. (2012). The Darwinian view of culture. Biological Philosophy, 27 , 745–753. Marx, K. (1968 [1877]). Letter to the editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky. Trans. Donna Torr. [Online] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ 1877/11/russia.htm. Marx, K. (1977). Preface to a critique of political economy. In D. McLellan (Ed.), Karl Max: Selected writings (2nd ed.) Oxford University Press. Mayr, E. (1975). Typological versus population thinking. In E. Sober (Ed.), (2006). Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology (3rd ed.) (pp. 325–328). The MIT Press. Mayr, E. (1992). The idea of teleology. Journal of the History of Ideas, 53(1), 117–135. Noble, T. (2000). Social theory and social change. Palgrave. Perry, M. (2002). Marxism and history. Palgrave MacMillian. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press. Runciman, W. G. (1986). On the tendency of human societies to form varieties. Proceedings of the British Academy. http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/proc/ files/72p149.pdf. Runciman, W. G. (1998) The social animal . HarperCollins. Runciman, W. G. (2009). The theory of cultural and social selection. Cambridge University Press. Sahlins, M. D., & Service, E. R. (1960). Evolution and culture. The University of Michigan Press. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell Publishing. Spruyt, H. (1994a). The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton University Press. Spruyt, H. (1994b). Institutional selection in international relations: State anarchy as order. International Organization, 48(4), 527–557.

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Sterelny, K. (2001). Dawkins vs. Survival of the fittest. Icon Books. Wickham, C. (1991). Systatic structures: Social theory for historians. Past and Present, 132, 188–203. Wright, E. O., Levine, A., & Sober, E. (1992). Reconstructing Marxism: Essays on explanation and the theory of history. Verso.

4 Theories of Social Change

The question of why societies change, why they change in the way they do, or even why they don’t change when perhaps they should have done, is one of the most important topics within social theory. The particular concern of sociology has tended to focus on the change that occurred around the eighteenth century, with the change away from broadly agrarian societies to what are now called industrial or modern societies. Indeed, Ernest Gellner called this ‘the transition’ (1964: 146), such is the importance it is seen as having. For this reason, most of the major sociological theorists were concerned with understanding change, with a lot of theories growing out of attempting to understand the change that swept through and out of Europe. Marx’s theory on class conflict and Weber’s theory on rationalization and bureaucracy are perhaps the two most famous and the two that still largely influence debates to this day, though both have modifications. So where does Darwinism fit into this? Darwinism is a theory of change. In biology, as discussed, it seeks to explain why organisms change, through adaptation to and interaction with their environment. In sociology, the principles are applied in the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_4

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same way. Institutions, societies, cultures and so on can be thought of in the same way as organisms, things that adapt and change in response to the environment. In the previous chapter, I demonstrated how this worked, and how the Darwinian concepts of adaptation, inheritance and selection (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010) apply in the sociological world. The purpose of this chapter is to address another question: why should Darwinian theory be preferred over other theories of social change? What does it add, if anything, that isn’t gleaned from another theory? To address these questions this chapter will compare Darwinian social evolution against one of the preeminent theories of social change: Michael Mann’s theory on the sources of social power. Mann’s is a worthwhile theory to engage with. Since the 1980s he has been working on a project of outlining his theory and making a case for it, using it to explain social change from the start of human history up to the present (Mann, 1986, 1993, 2012, 2013), from a largely Weberian framework. It’s a comprehensive and detailed study across many time periods. But another reason for engaging specifically with Mann, from the Darwinian perspective, is that he has written an extensive critique of social evolutionary theory (Mann, 2016), providing another point at which Darwinian social evolution can be engaged. I have written on this elsewhere (Kerr, 2019) and will expand on those arguments here. In this chapter, I will begin by outlining Mann’s theory. His theory has, recently, been engaged with by Dingxin Zhao (2015), who has provided another spin on Mann’s notion of the sources of social power, and those subtle but important changes will also be discussed. Following that, I will set out some critiques of Mann’s theory and then point to how Darwinian social evolution can address those critiques, indicating why Darwinism is a worthwhile theory of social change. Combined with the next chapter, on nationalism, this will also provide background and set-up for the case studies, looking at social change and nationalism in Britain and Japan.

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The Sources of Social Power Mann’s theory begins with a discussion of human nature, which sets up how the four sources of power interact. For Mann humans are: Restless, purposive, and rational, striving to increase their enjoyment of the good things of life and capable of choosing and pursuing appropriate means for doing so. Or... enough of them do this to provide the dynamism that is characteristic of human life and gives it a history lacking for other species. These human characteristics... are the original source of power (Mann, 1986: 4)

Here Mann is primarily using the notion of instrumental rationality, that people are motivated by the desire to achieve a goal, alongside a broad understanding of structural and cultural conditions and human motivations (Kiser, 2006: 66), with an additional focus on unintended consequences, mistakes and imperfect information and the influence these can have. His view of society follows from this. For Mann society is, essentially, an unhelpful concept. The notion of society implies something that is rigid, unitary or that is a totality. Instead, societies are ‘constituted of multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power’ (Mann, 1986: 1). Mann is essentially rejecting the notion that ‘society’ can be easily associated with another concept, for example, a ‘nationstate’. He has the same issue with ideas of culture being unitary, or national, alongside transnational economic relations, that use capitalism as a master concept. For Mann, these are all separate things that interrelate with one another, though they rarely coincide (Mann, 1986: 2). This points towards how Mann then comes to understand ‘societies’ and ‘civilizations’. Societies are ‘limited and exclusive in their social and territorial coverage’ and ‘members of a society interact with one another but not, to anything like the same extent, with outsiders’ (Mann, 1986: 39). Neither are societies solely the sum of the different powers of individuals and their powers, rather they are ‘federations of organizations’ (Mann, 1986: 52 [emphasis in original]).

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Earlier societies are, however, more fluid than later ones. That is, the social bonds that held people together were generally looser and so people could move about more freely than they would in later societies, joining different groups (Mann, 1986: 39). However, later on, with the arrival of stratification and the state, or essentially the arrival of civilization (Mann, 1986: 73–74), what Mann terms the ‘social cage’ closes. This social cage comes about with a jump in ‘human collective power over nature’, focussed around states that emerged next to major rivers (e.g. the Nile), that made intensive agriculture possible, but it also fixes social and territorial boundaries (Mann, 1986: 38). Once it closes there is not the same free movement of people from one society to another as their identities start to fix and they start to settle within defined territories. This is the beginnings of Mann’s theory. From the first, human motivation, he derives what becomes the four sources of social power, as they all arise to fulfil a human need or to accomplish a goal. The second describes how ‘societies’ form out of the interaction and overlap of the social relations from those four main powers. According to Mann, there are four sources of social power: Ideological, Economic, Military and Political and together they form what he terms the IEMP model (Mann, 1986: 2). The key innovation that Mann made was in splitting political power into two parts: political and military, giving military power a distinct formulation as a form of power apart from the others and as a force in social change (Mann, 1986: 21). The four sources of social power are: 1. Ideological: Ideological power takes three forms: (1) meaning, a set of concepts and categories used to understand the world (e.g. religion); (2) norms, a shared understanding of how people should behave normally to create social cohesion (e.g. etiquette) and (3) aesthetic/ritualistic practices that are not reducible to rational science (e.g. fox hunting). Ideological organization then comes in two forms: (1) transcendent, where the ideology transcends existing institutions and generates a different ‘sacred’ form of authority distinct from secular authority and (2) immanent morale, ideology that intensifies existing beliefs, confidence, and power of an existing group (Mann, 1986: 22–24).

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Mann clarifies that ideology does not necessarily mean ‘false’, indeed he makes the case that though ideologies by their nature necessarily ‘surpass experience’, ideologies with a grain of truth to them will be more successful as they will spread better (Mann, 1986: 23). I would dispute this point a little: it’s not the case that ideologies have to have a grain of truth to them, but rather that people believe that there is some truth to it. Oftentimes this occurs by appeal to common sense, or between connecting two things that are unrelated but sound as though they could be. Obviously, power is involved in this as well, as the ability to frame discussions in particular ways can have a strong effect on whether people believe there is truth to a claim being made (Lukes, 2005). 2. Economic: Economic power revolves around the need to satisfy subsistence needs through the extraction, transformation, liberation and so on of objects from nature. A group that forms around these tasks is for Mann, in a purely economic sense divorced from political implications, a class. A class can then come to monopolize control over production, distribution, exchange and consumption and so become the dominant class in social stratification and have general collective and distributive powers in society (Mann, 1986: 24). Organizationally this refers to the circuits of praxis, that is the intensive practical everyday labour, that leads to the extensive circuits of exchange—in these two forms economic organization controls intensive and extensive power and groups defined in relation to this are class groups (Mann, 1986: 25). 3. Military: This source of power is the intensive and extensive aspects of the necessity for physical defence and the usefulness of aggression. The organization of it centres on the concentrate-coercion type that, in its intensive form, allows for the coercion of a population to following laws, working, etc. whilst in the extensive form it allows for the extraction of tribute from nearby areas through the threat of reprisals. Mann defines military power as ‘the social organization of concentrated lethal violence’ , with military power being ‘focused, physical, furious, lethal violence’ (Mann, 2006: 351 [emphasis in original]). This is a modification of the original definition and was done to remove confusion on the separation between political and

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military power, on which more below, with the new definition focussing much more on the actual violence, rather than the purpose it serves, and how that can have important consequences. 4. Political: Political power derives from the usefulness of territorialized, centralized administrative systems—basically it is state power. Unlike the other powers political power is not diffuse over a territory, it is concentrated in one central area from which its power is exercised outwards. Organizationally political power is dual: it has an inward and an outward face. Inwardly it is concerned with internal politics, depending on new techniques and the emergent possibilities from social life to facilitate greater cooperation or exploitation. Outwardly is geopolitics, where the concern is with the relation to other states and diplomacy. This has impacts on the internal structure of the state but is not reducible to that internal structure. Geopolitical organizations then take on two types: (1) hegemonic empires (presumably when politics combines with military power) and (2) multistate civilizations (likewise, presumably, with ideology and economics) (Mann, 1986: 26–27). There are, in essence, two parts to Mann’s sources of power: that each one is a network and these networks overlap and interact (Mann, 1986: 2). The networks are ‘containers’ through which action happens (Schroeder, 2006: 5), though this shouldn’t be taken to mean that they are rigid. The networks are capable of expanding and contracting depending on differing conditions (Mann, 1986: 30). Each form of power then has a differing ‘means of organization’ (Mann, 1986: 30), which is the crucial element for Mann as, after all, the power cannot act or have force if the logistics and institutions are not there for it to work through and be applied for. So there is, in essence, a technological or material limit to what power can do and what it can command (Mann, 1986: 9–10). With this, there are two types of power: extensive and intensive. Extensive refers to the ability to organize large numbers of people over large territories; intensive power to the ability to organize and command a high degree of mobilization and commitment from the participants, whether in a large or small area (Mann, 1986: 7).

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Adapting a metaphor from Max Weber, Mann writes that the four sources of power are ‘track laying vehicles’, laying different gauges of track along a path down which society will trundle. The moments when a new track is ‘laid’ are the moments when the issue of primacy can be best addressed; that is when it can be examined why a particular power laid down that particular bit of track that took societies in a particular direction (Mann, 1986: 28). With the track laying metaphor, Mann is not implying a kind of teleology, of the society being led to a predetermined destination. Rather it is something more akin to path dependence (Mahoney, 2000): that once a certain pathway is laid, it closes off other options. We can also see this as being similar to Boyd and Richerson’s (1992: 294–298) notion of the topographical field. Societies go up a hill and once up there it is difficult to move to another one. Mann’s division of the sources of power has not gone without criticism, however, as it breaks with the original Weberian model of diving power into three components: economic, political and ideological, with military power being folded under political power (Runciman, 1987; Poggi, 2006). The argument against Mann’s split is that he is confusing ‘the different forms of power (that is, the different kinds of inducements and sanctions which people can bring to bear on one another) with the different means of doing so (that is, the different institutions through which those inducements and sanctions are applied)’ (Runciman, 1987). By splitting them, Mann is essentially removing a vital component at the heart of political power and so rendering that concept toothless (Poggi, 2006: 137–136). Taking a Weberian approach, Poggi argues that large and complex, modern states, only hold together because of coercion or the potential for it; this is the only means by which laws and political decisions get enforced and how disputes get settled between parties (Poggi, 2006: 136–137). Whilst Mann, in separating military power, is talking about the driving force that militaries have had Poggi argues that this loses the essence of Weber’s point, that coercion, or its threat, is necessary for states to function, making it a political matter (Poggi, 2006: 140). Poggi concedes that there are a few empirical circumstances where military power can and should be treated as different from political power, but that these are cases of the exception proving the norm (2006: 135–136).

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However, it is worth noting that although Mann is treating political and military power as separate organizations of power, this does not mean they are separate. The point behind Mann looking at powers as interacting networks, after all, is to show how the various powers can connect and reinforce one another, as well as break apart and go against one another. For Mann, military power is distinct from political power because political power is usually ruled by rules, that is the shame and consequence of breaking a law and being in jail, rather than the generalized terror that comes from the use of violent, military force. Military power also does not equate to ‘army’ or ‘state army’ but can also mean paramilitary groups that use violence and force to advance their aims. Keeping with this he points to the fact that military forces tend to have their own distinct forms of internal organization, combining hierarchical authority and comradeship among the soldiers (Mann, 2006: 352–354). Military and political power often combine, but they are normally in their separate castes, with distinct groupings (Mann, 2006: 355). The fact that they are separate networks does not mean that they don’t group together and interact with one another; frequently military and politics go together but also frequently they can diverge, or the military can join another political network (as was the case, for example, in the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973). These are the two key points to take away about how Mann understands power: that the four sources are distinct, but overlapping and interacting, networks; and that each network of power has a distinct form of organization. The ability of the network to act as a power is based on its ability to logically and technologically achieve its aims. So what does Dingxin Zhao (2015) add to this in his discussion of Mann? The key element that Zhao adds is the emphasis on competition within the sources of power, which is to say that each one has a slightly different way of operating, as they are seen as sites where social actors compete for power (Hearn, 2019: 86). As Zhao (2015: 29) states, ‘My theory of historical change can be summarized in one sentence: the dialectic of competition and institutionalization is the major engine of historical change’ (emphasis in original). This view is founded on two premises: (1) that humans, both collectively and individually, are

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competitive and strive for dominance and (2) that this competition takes place in economic, ideological, political and military realms, or some combination of those four (Zhao, 2015: 29). The influence from Mann can be seen here in the division into four powers, though as noted the emphasis is slightly different in that Zhao is placing greater emphasis on competition within these realms of power. The forms of power are ideal types; as Zhao points out persons and organizations are ‘functionally multifarious’, meaning that they do not rely exclusively upon or reify, one source of power (Zhao, 2015: 32). This makes sense, as virtually all the powers are needed in one shape or form in any organization. The military, for example, most obviously relies on military power; but without economic power, it has no resources to recruit, buy/develop weaponry, and without ideological power, it has no way of gelling recruits together. For Zhao, the key difference between him and Mann lies in ‘our differing senses of the engine of historical change’. According to Zhao Mann defines the four power according to their function, with historical changes then resulting from ‘interstitial development’ and ‘unintended consequences’ (Zhao, 2015: 33). Zhao, as stated, sees the four powers as sites of competition, with the subsequent institutionalization produced by competition, that then reinforces institutionalization in a dialectical feedback. Zhao (2015: 33), thus, ‘gives more attention to the patterned behaviour of social actors’. Zhao also differs in that, whereas Mann holds that no one power is more important than the other, Zhao believes that political power has the ascendancy, or primacy, over the other powers (Hall, 2019: 92–93). This is something that Mann largely concedes. As Mann (2019: 70) says ‘Dingxin [sic] is dissatisfied with my model not yielding stronger causal explanations—and in sense so am I’. However, whilst Mann acknowledges the ambition he is not wholly convinced that Zhao has succeeded in finding a general theory of human development. His two issues are large that Zhao’s goal of calculating measures of success, for economic power and military power, is not as straightforward as he makes out; furthermore, Mann has issues with the notion of cumulative development, which is Zhao’s idea that through competition and institutionalization more technological growth and knowledge is achieved (Mann, 2019: 70–73).1 Whilst there is some truth to this,

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Mann does not think that it is as straightforward as Zhao claims, with Mann pointing out that though military development produces greater capacity to kill, it does not necessarily produce wider societal development (Mann, 2019: 72–73), and that his view of economic power is largely benign, seeing it as trade and transaction between free and willing parties, which is a largely neoliberal take that also ignores how states are required to provide legal set-up and enforcement to enable markets to exist (Mann, 2019: 73). There’s a sense in which Zhao is repeating a similar error that Robert Brenner (1977) identified in the works of Paul Sweezy and Immanuel Wallerstein, of assuming that Smithian competition and economic action is the ‘norm’ that is unleashed by capitalism, rather than particular behaviours that institutionalized and generated from capitalist structures and development. The other point on which Mann is doubtful is how the dialectic between institutionalization and competition works, believing that institutionalization would not feedback into competition. It was for this reason that he developed his concept of ‘interstitial emergence’ (Mann, 2019: 69). But what is the concept of interstitial emergence? Mann uses interstitial emerge to describe how a new society can emerge from the cracks of the old one (Mann, 1986: 15–16). Essentially, through the pursuit of their goals, humans create different organizations that are manifestations of different sources of social power. As they build up, one of the powers begins to lead and, for example, create a despotic society. But, as already discussed, the innovations of this society bleed out, going to other parts of the society and other societies. This eventually leads to another organization of different networks of power, which builds up and then emerges out and supplants the old society, as the old society becomes ‘less adaptable to change circumstances’. And then the cycle begins again. This is the process behind the dialectic between state and civil society, and also behind the dialectic between empires of domination and multi-actor civilizations (Mann, 1986: 537). This is part of what leads to Mann’s neo-episodic view of history, that essentially social change happens in ‘spurts’ through several fundamental structural transformations (Mann, 1986: 3). The concept of interstitial emergence, as well as Mann and Zhao’s emphasis on how different combinations of powers produce different

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kinds of societies, calls back to some aspects of Darwinism discussed in the previous chapters. Interstitial has a similarity with punctuated equilibrium, and the suggestion of different power combinations forming differnet societies would fit in with a Darwinian perspective. However, both Zhao and Mann disavow that what they are doing is in anyway evolutionary, and both of them proffer critiques of evolutionary reasoning. But, in some ways, both can be considered to be more evolutionary, in Darwinian terms, than they might realize.

Social Evolution or History? Both Mann and Zhao are clear that what they are doing is not social evolutionary. Mann initially argues that there were general evolutionary trends, which is to say that human societies went through some form of evolution, which is loosely defined as a growth in ‘power capacity and complexity’ (Mann, 1986: 35). Human evolution differs from other species as humans, despite spreading across the whole globe, have retained their unity. There has not been a speciation event as evolved activities from one local population have diffused to others. Consequently, the story of human evolution is a story of cultural evolution (Mann, 1986: 35). On this point, I am happy to agree. The difference arrives, however, in how Mann conceptualizes social evolution. He writes (Mann, 1986: 36), All the rival theories of the rise of stratification and the state presuppose an essentially natural process of general social development…Their central orthodoxy continues to be a story of stages: from relatively egalitarian stateless societies; to rank societies with political authority; and eventually to stratified, civilized societies with states…

As Mann sees it this story is true, but only up to a point. Up to the Neolithic Revolution, inclusive, there was what he terms ‘general social evolution’, that is a cumulative process that was heading through stages and this was happening across much of the world. After this point, however, the influence of evolution diminishes and eventually

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disappears and is replaced by a cyclical process instead, where there is movement around rank societies and state and stratification structures, but without permanent movement towards the latter (Mann, 1986: 39). Subsequently, there is a ‘history of power. It will always be a history of particular places, for that has been the nature of the development of power’ (Mann, 1986: 40). Though in his 2016 article he disavows some of this, putting it down as a ‘superficial view’ (Mann, 2016: 204), he holds that there must be a large difference between biological and social evolution, that the two must work via different processes (Mann, 2016: 204–205). As he puts it, ‘the Darwinian model posits species adapting to their environment. But for most of their history human societies have not merely adapted to their environment, they have also changed it […] the causal factors producing a given social evolution must be explained. For Darwin they were random’ (Mann, 2016: 205). He distinguishes between three sets of social evolutionary theory: a minimalist theory, a multilinear theory and a general theory of evolution. His basic view is that the minimalist theory, which says that people respond to pressures and adapt, is likely true but trivial and places too much force on external pressures and does not grant enough to the endogenous potential of people (Mann, 2016: 205). It also suffers from the risk of being tautological. The second, multilinear view, says that different groups have different trajectories, but this places too much emphasis on the boundedness of groups and limits the ability to create a general evolutionary theory (Mann, 2016: 206). The general theory is then problematic as there can be no sort of general theory that takes in and applies to everything; to demonstrate this social evolutionists would have to show how one part flows into the next. Mann, therefore, prefers to leave aside social evolution and focus on history, as he argues ‘social evolutionism is not an adequate theory of long-run social change—but nor is any other theory. Sociology is not that simple’ (Mann, 2016: 234). On Zhao’s side, he acknowledges that his theory shares some resemblances with social-cultural evolutionary theory. However, he points out that there are ‘two crucial differences between them’ (Zhao, 2015: 30). These are that the evolutionary accounts he discusses, what he calls

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neo-functionalist accounts, do not see competition as the key factor in historical change, but rather a variety of factors such as innovation, diffusion, accidental social mutation, etc. The second reason is that these accounts do not distinguish between four forms of power, as Zhao and Mann do (Zhao, 2015: 30). Zhao also states that he has ‘little sympathy for theories that establish a mechanical link between genetics and cultural behaviour’ and posits that biological evolution follows Darwinian premises, but social and cultural changes follow Lamarckian mechanisms (Zhao, 2015: 16). However, in both of these cases, there are issues. In both cases, they are speaking to older forms of evolutionary theory that have progression as being a crucial component. Though Mann disavows the notion that evolution needs to represent progress (Mann, 1986: 35), it is snuck back in with the idea that evolution should represent growth of some kind, with the example he picks being increasing complexity (Mann, 2016: 206–207). Zhao, similarly, takes evolution to mean there is a lack of driving mechanism, the lack of competition, and that social and cultural evolution will follow the Lamarckian method, of inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, this distinction is not so easy. Whilst the attraction of Lamarckism is usually because it includes the possibility of volition, humans direct their activity rather than being shaped by random forces, Lamarckism requires Darwinism to work (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 75), as the principle of selection would still be in effect to decide which adaptations, or acquired characteristics, stayed and which were eliminated. This also returns to the point Mann makes about Darwinism being random, which is to say that this is not the case. Though there are instances of luck, through cases of drift, and it is the case that adaptations can be ‘random’ in the sense of mutations producing something, selection itself is not random but causal. ‘Natural selection reliably magnifies the representation in a population of partially-adapted forms, and thereby increases the probability of even better-adapted forms being produced in the population by mutation’ (Lewens, 2007: 61). There are causal reasons why particular adaptations are selected, which then sets entities down a particular path. There is no reason why this would not

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apply in a social setting: if someone invents a tool, technique, etc. others can build on this and develop it further, even if the initial development might be an accident. A point to consider, as well, is that evolutionary ideas would not need to rest on just one source of power, or would discount the idea of there being four sources, as Zhao seems to imply. Rather, the idea that there are multiple powers, and the combination of these produces different forms of society, is one that is perfectly compatible with the Darwinian precepts. After all, the reason why certain powers might combine to produce certain types of societies over others might well be down to environmental factors that mean certain combinations are more adaptable, and thus more likely to get selected than others. An example we can look at concerning this is when Mann talks about the different ways in which ruling powers have dealt with institutionalizing class conflict, declaring ‘evolutionary tales are wrong. There is no best way of institutionalizing class conflict in industrial society’ (Mann, 1987: 340). But here, Darwinism would argue that there would be no one best way of institutionalizing class conflict, as every environment, that is the composition of class groups, alongside economic, political, cultural background, etc., would be different and would, consequently, require a different ‘best’ solution. Indeed the locus of the project is not in identifying the superiority of a successor form to a previous form, but in explaining and demonstrating why it was better suited to the environment (Spruyt, 1994: 24). Variation is the watchword of evolution, not uniformity. Mann further points to the fall of Rome and then the fact that the writings of Sun Tzu are still used by military generals as examples against evolution, arguing that this indicates a cyclical process rather than an evolutionary one (Mann, 2016: 221). But this is not necessarily the case. Evolution need not have progress, or any kind of move towards something, as all it says is that generally what is most adapted to a particular environment will be selected for and will reproduce itself. In this case, the fact that the writings of Sun Tzu are still used does not refute evolution but rather demonstrates an evolutionary logic because the writings are adaptable: they’re not just used in the context of the military but have broadened out to be used as manuals in business, politics and other areas.

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Generals of today can still find applicable insights from them, so they are still used, or else, they are considered a ‘classic’ that military people have to read and so reproduce itself that way. The same could be said of almost any idea, or philosophy, that survives. But what insights generals of today get out of it are likely to be different from those of 5 B.C.E. China, and of course not all the insights that are found to be useful will stay the same. There is an interaction between the individual and the ideas, but it is not in itself anti-evolutionary. As Hutchinson (2005) has pointed out, many ideas, myths, symbols, etc. are revived, or returned to, as people seek inspiration and sometimes these can help. If they can, they get selected. If not they die out and some other idea, either old or new, is adopted. Similarly, Zhao (2015) develops his argument by a comparative look at Europe and China, arguing that different combinations of powers led to different outcomes and can explain the divergence between Europe and China. Though China started ahead of Europe, the institutionalization of military and ideological power, in the Confucian-Legalist state, with economic power side-lined, created a stable but stagnant empire that failed to develop industrial features. Meanwhile, the combination of military and economic power in Europe prevented any one state from gaining an advantage and consequently led to competition and development, both of military technologies and economic innovations that produced the industrial revolution.2 Here again, though, we are seeing something of evolutionary reasoning. The environmental conditions, the geopolitical ones, were different, leading to different pressures being exerted that led to different selective pressures. In short, it would appear that both Mann and Zhao’s theories are compatible with a Darwinian perspective. Whilst Mann is correct in stating that sociology is not so simple to be subject to a general theory of social change, what Darwinism represents is ‘some general parameters within which particular processes take place’ (Hearn, 2014: 183). Darwinism is a meta-theory (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006) that can provide the background framework into which other theories can fit, and which can provide explanatory mechanisms. In that sense, it perhaps provides the means of crafting the theory of explanation that Zhao is striving for, and that Mann believes cannot be found.

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With this in mind, we can now examine more fully how both of these theories of social change can complement the Darwinian theory, by addressing some of the general criticisms that can be levelled at both Mann and Zhao.

The Evolutionary Mann and Zhao The first point of critique that can be made concerns the focus on Europe, in Mann’s case, but also to some degree in Zhao. Mann, for his part, is open about his account being Eurocentric (Mann, 2016: 229; 2019: 69), whilst Zhao (2015) also locates the divergence between Europe and China as being embedded in internal features of both places: namely the stability of China preventing industrial development, whilst the more fractured power-base of Europe enabled a rise in economic power and industrial development (Goldstone, 2019). Neither of these positions is unproblematic, however, as Mann’s focus leads away from looking at international contexts and impacts from outside Europe on Europe (a point which Mann has conceded (2006)), which forms a locus of a critique from a post-colonial perspective (Bhambra, 2011); and in Zhao’s case, this leads to the theory being, ‘too deterministic, and does not allow sufficient weight to contingencies in history’ (Goldstone, 2019: 103). Methodologically Mann focuses on Europe near exclusively, in the first two volumes in any case, because Europe does not ‘have enough autonomous, analogical cases’ (Mann, 1986: 503). The issue, though, is that without a comparative element it is hard to work out what led to the ‘European miracle’. Goldstone (2006: 272–276) argues China was, in many respects, keeping pace with Europe until very late in the day, in most of the areas that matter and Europe did not fully pull away until around the nineteenth century, and this difference cannot be explained by simply noting the fact that China had more extensive power than intensive and Europe, or specifically Britain, had the reverse.3 Zhao argues that Europe and China were set on divergent paths as long ago as fourth− century BCE, with the different geopolitical arrangements being bedded in. Essentially, there could have only developed a

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market-style economy and industrialization in the conditions of Europe, whereas China’s central state could not have enabled it (Goldstone, 2019: 102). However, as Goldstone puts it, this ignores the fact that it was possible Europe could have ended up being unified4 just as easily as China could have been split (Goldstone, 2019: 103). The power of the Confucians was not necessarily total and could have been sent down a different path. For example, in the 1400s under the reign of Emperor Zhu Di (1402–1424) China began explorations of the sea, with the Dragon Fleet of Zheng He making it to the horn of Africa in his explorations. This was made possible by a diminishment of the Confucian power, in favour of the eunuchs, the administrators who ran the imperial court. Indeed the Confucians, despite supposed opposition to the market, even found passages that supported notions of trade, showing flexibility in the philosophy. When the Emperor died, however, there was a retrenchment of power among the Confucians and a greater focus on balancing the books, leading to the end of the expeditions (Levathes, 1994). However, it’s not too hard to imagine a world where the expeditions continued and brought China into direct sea contact with Europe, and possibly been able to derive tribute and obeisance. Another unresolved question is the question of primacy among the four powers. Whilst Mann disavows that there is a possibility for this, Zhao locates political power as being the most important. This, however, is not unproblematic as there are cases, as Hall (2019: 93) points out, where other forms of power can have primacy, such as ideological power. Indeed, for both Mann and Zhao, ideological power is seen as something of the lesser, or weaker, power among the four (Bryant, 2006; Mann, 2019). So how might the Darwinian perspective address these critiques? First, it would be worth pointing to a potential area of crossfertilization that has already been flagged up: namely, that there is more than a passing resemblance between Mann’s concept of interstitial emergence and punctuated equilibrium. Mann’s concept is that new societies emerge out of old ones when pressures from within build up to a level that allows one of the powers to take the lead from a combination of

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the others. Thematically this is quite close to what punctuated equilibrium asserts, particularly with ideas of relative stasis followed by some rapid change emerging out of the previously static formation.5 Punctuated equilibrium, to give a fuller explanation, is the idea that evolution does not proceed by a gradual, ongoing, development but rather proceeds by rapid bursts followed by periods of relative stasis (Gould, 2007: 242– 243). The rapid changes occur for a variety of reasons. Typically what is happening is that there is a ‘wobbling’ around a mean, some small differences here and there but nothing wholly different (Sterelny, 2001: 76). There is a build-up of potential but without any directional change. Subsequently, there is a point where the change rapidly occurs, either due to an endogenous change that makes an element more competitive or due to an exogenous shock, such as a meteorite strike or a volcanic eruption, that brings about a rapid change in the environment making an adaptation highly successful (Spruyt, 1994: 24). These, then, are areas of cross-fertilization between Mann’s theory and the social evolutionary viewpoint. Zhao’s theory, as well, is perhaps more Darwinian than he realizes. Indeed, this is a point that Hall (2019: 92) has picked up on where he notes ‘He [Zhao] sees interactions—rather plausibly—in Darwinian terms, as a continual struggle without end’. This can also be seen in how he understands different configurations of power, and environmental conditions, as interacting and so producing different institutional structures. For instance, Zhao (2015: 12) argues that the many social actors within Europe, states, the church, the aristocracy, held state power in check and thus allowed for the generation of the dynamism that would lead to industrial capitalism. China, by contrast, had an ascendancy of political power in the state, that was only checked by the aristocracy that eventually lost power as the state expanded through warfare. The state power was then combined with ideological power in Confucianism as a form of social control, which was necessary as the size of the territory meant the state could not penetrate or oversee it all (Zhao, 2015: 13). What can be seen here is how the environment is interacting with the different powers, which might be conceived in Hull’s (1988) terms as ‘interactors’, and so shaping different outcomes through the selective process. At individual levels, different choices become pertinent based on

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the configurations of power, allied with the geopolitical set-up and the geography of the region. In thinking about what a Darwinian perspective can bring, we can look at some of the points that have been made regarding the role of ideological power. Bryant (2006) and Hobson (2006) have levelled roughly similar critiques of Mann: that he has failed to appreciate the way that ideology can subjectively motivate people, give them beliefs and goals, and that this can function for explaining why a belief might spread. Mann was focussing too much on the instrumental rationality of people to carry things through and his use of goals was highly abstract, which mostly avoided the pitfalls of ad hoc reasoning but left things vague at a more micro level. Obviously, there are some reasons for this, namely that data from the distant past is harder to collect about people’s motivations, whereas in the present day it is easier to gather diaries and other documents that can reconstruct it, as Mann has done for Fascists (2004) and The Dark Side of Democracy (2005) (Kiser, 2006: 66–67). These problems, obviously, still stand for social evolution but it can provide a reconstructed explanation for it that fits with what is known as well as the contours of the theory. As an example, we can look at Runciman’s (2004) explanation for the spread of Christianity. The key factors were that the Christians were willing to help those who were not their ‘in-group’, that is they were open to offering help to all peoples regardless of whether they were Christian or not, an unusual position to have at that time (Runciman, 2004: 6–7). This led to them helping the sick, regardless of whether or not they were Christian and, even if in some cases they were unsuccessful, in enough cases the person would get better, which would help facilitate the notion that their God was helping (Runciman, 2004: 12–13). By word-of-mouth this then allowed knowledge of the deeds to spread to others and became attractive to them in part due to their mysterious quality. As Sperber (1996: 71–72) explains, humans have an ability for metarepresentation, that is being able to fill in the blanks behind a cultural idea, or belief or information that they come across, which makes them susceptible to mysterious notions, such as those found in religion. The evocative character of the mystery makes it memorable and also engages the brain to fill in the blanks (Sperber, 1996: 73–74). This process of

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engaging with it, of transforming and interpreting the representation when it is received and making it memorable (Sperber, 1996: 34) is what then helps it propagate (Sperber, 1996: 25), alongside any environmental advantages the idea might confer. Allied to this was the fact that Christians were a community of ‘strong reciprocators’ (Runciman, 2004: 10). Strong reciprocity is a concept that combines the notions of altruistic rewarding with altruistic punishment. Basically, this means that people are willing to pay to reward others for following good norms, or behaving altruistically, with a willingness to pay a cost to punish people who deviate from norms or behave selfishly (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003: 785). These punishments, imposed by the co-operators who feel cheated, are often harsh, sometimes disproportionate to the deviation committed (Fehr & Gachter, 2002: 137–138). Perhaps counterintuitively this behaviour can have an effect of stabilizing a group, particularly in situations where the environment presents no real better alternatives. If the rewards for joining a group and behaving ‘well’, that is according to the group norms, are good then people will want to join and also behave in a ‘benevolent’ manner, with those who do not being punished. This creates a stable group, with expanding members who stick to doctrine and present a good face to others. If the environment does not provide better alternatives it would also stop people from leaving the group to join others (Runciman, 2004: 10–11). An important factor here is the way this contrasted with the alternative variations, namely those of the pagan religions that were available. Whilst Christianity’s inducement to help others, regardless of whether they were Christian or not, would have led to a squandering of resources on those who were not Christian, it also made them appear as a more attractive alternative to pagan religions. Indeed the Christians occasional treatment of pagans could help the spread of the religion, as it would build a social connection and, as the story was related, might induce subsequent generations to seek out and convert to Christianity (Runciman, 2004: 13). In a social and cultural environment where helping others regardless of whether they were part of your group was unusual, it meant Christianity could acquire converts at times of disease and sickness, particularly with outbreaks of plague in the period between Aurelius and

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Diocletian (Runciman, 2004: 12). Obviously, the high-profile conversion of Constantine to the cause also helped; being an authority figure his acknowledgement of it would have added weight to the belief behind it (Sperber, 1996: 72) and would have also seen people sign-up, particularly perhaps at an elite level, if only for self-interested reasons. This gives a demonstration of how Darwinian social evolution can engage with the idea of ideological power and give it more weight, providing a way for understanding why actors make the choices that they did, given the constraints and circumstances that exist(ed) around them. Darwinism, in contrast, benefits from Mann’s notion of powers, networks the materialist manner in which ideas must propagate themselves and so help to expand the story to a macro level. As ever, Darwinism exists as a meta-theoretical element into which other theories can be incorporated to give them more force and explanatory power (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010). We can now have a look at the question of primacy. As seen, both Mann and Zhao have different takes on this. Mann does not think that any one of the powers can be considered to have primacy, as there will always be variance in circumstances, whereas Zhao is fairly settled on the idea of political power being the most important (Mann, 2019: 70). This leads to Zhao’s critique of Mann in not being able to provide ‘explanations of how history unfolded from one episode to another’ (Zhao, 2015: 34) and the view of Mann’s model not having enough theoretical heft (Mann, 2019: 70). From the Darwinian perspective, the key for understanding the question of primary is in adding a condition: the environment. Internal factors to each power are relevant of course, but their success or otherwise, in promoting their network and becoming the primary power, can only be done with a relevant understanding of the factors surrounding them and how this shapes what they can become and how they influence the environment around them. As has been pointed out before, the logic of this is within Mann’s theory, with the idea that we need to focus on the particular local histories. This can be seen in the state example where he notes how ideological power managed to rise on the back of achievements brought about by the other powers in relation to Christianity (Mann, 1986: 363–364). However there he is talking about the relations

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of the network of powers to one another. Adding to that focus the conditions of the environment that allowed the powers to advance themselves successfully would be beneficial to the understanding and explaining the social change that is brought about. It is by drawing on this Darwinian perspective, and drawing out the implicit logic in both Mann and Zhao’s theories, that greater understanding is provided in explaining how social change happens. In succeeding chapters, I will give a demonstration through case studies on how Darwinian theory works to explain social change. Before that, though, we will review four theories of nationalism, two from each of the major traditions of modernism and ethno-symbolism, and examine what the Darwinian perspective can add to these.

Notes 1. Note that Zhao does not mean anything teleological by this—the development is not cumulating to any predetermined point. Simply that people have, as a result of technological or knowledge development, an increasing capacity to generate, articulate and organize ideas and values. 2. Here, I’ll leave aside the question of whether this is a correct reading of what happened or not for the sake of focusing on the theoretical argument. 3. Mann disputes some of Goldstone’s argument (Mann, 2006: 370–384). The basic thrust of Mann’s rebuttal is that although China enjoyed similar living standards to Europe until around the mid-eighteenth century at that point China stagnated and Britain took off, due to an accumulation resulting from a combination of the four sources of social power. 4. Goldstone points to Justinian’s attempted unification of Western and Eastern Europe, which was halted by his need to fight the Persians. We could also mention that had Mehmet II not died on the eve of his invasion, it’s possible he could have led the Ottoman forces through southern Italy and brought the whole of Europe into the Ottoman fold. 5. Of course ‘static’ is used in relative terms. Small changes are always occurring but just not in any given direction. When the punctuation occurs it is as a result of an adaptation being much better than the others in an environment that then leads to a directional change.

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References Bhambra, G. K. (2011). Talking among themselves? Weberian and Marxian historical sociologies as dialogues without ‘others’. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (3), 667–681. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1992). How microevolutionary processes give rise to history. In R. Boyd & P. J. Richerson (Eds.), (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford University Press. Brenner, R. (1977). The origins of capitalist development: A critique of neoSmithian Marxism. New Left Review, 104, 25–92. Bryant, J. (2006). Grand, yet grounded: Ontology, theory, and method in Michael Mann’s historical sociology. In J. A. Hall & R. ,Schroeder (Eds.), An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press. Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425, 785–791. Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137–140. Gellner, E. (1964). Thought and change. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Goldstone, J. A. (2006). A historical, not comparative, method: Breakthroughs and limitations in the theory and methodology of Michael Mann’s analysis of power. In J. A. Hall & R. Schroeder (Eds.), An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press. Goldstone, J. A. (2019). A truly ancient “great divergence” - a new history of the Chinese state. Chinese Sociological Review, 51(1), 98–105. Gould, S. J. (2007). The Darwinian gentleman at Marx’s funeral: Resolving evolution’s oddest coupling. In P. McGarr & S. Rose (Eds.), The richness of life: The essential Stephen Jay Gould . Vintage Books. Hall, J. A. (2019). The Chinese pattern of the past, in comparative perspective. Chinese Sociological Review, 51(1), 92–97. Hearn, J. (2019). The idea of competition in Dingxin Zhao’s the Confucianlegalist state. Chinese Sociological Review, 51(1), 84–91. Hobson, J. M. (2006). Mann, the state and war. In J. A. Hall & R. Schroeder (Eds.), An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press.

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Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2006). Why we need a generalized Darwinism, and why generalized Darwinism is not enough. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 61, 1–19. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2010). Darwin’s conjecture: The search for general principles of social and economic evolution. University of Chicago Press. Hull, D. L. (1988). Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. The University of Chicago Press. Hutchinson, J. (2005). Nations as zones of conflict. Sage. Kerr, W. (2019). The descent of nations: Social evolutionary theory, modernism and ethno-symbolism. Nations and Nationalism, 25 (1), 104–123. Kiser, E. (2006). Mann’s microfoundations: Addressing neo-Weberian dilemmas. In J. A. Hall & R. Schroeder (Eds.), An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press. Levathes, L. (1994). When China ruled the seas: The treasure fleet of the dragon throne, 1405–33. Oxford University Press. Lewens, T. (2007). Darwin. Routledge. Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A radical view (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Mahoney, J. (2000). Path dependence in historical sociology. Theory and Society, 29 (4), 507–548. Mann, M. (1986). The sources of social power, volume I: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1987). Letter to the editor on “the old question”. London Review of Books, 9 (6). https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n04/w.g.-runciman/theold-question. Mann, M. (1993). The sources of social power, volume II: The rise of classes and nation-states, 1760–1914. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2006). The sources of social power revisited: A response to criticism. In J. A. Hall and R. Schroeder (Eds.), An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2012). The sources of social power, volume III: Global empires and revolutions, 1890–1945. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2013). The sources of social power, volume IV: Globalizations, 1945– 2011. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (2016). Have human societies evolved? Evidence from history and pre-history. Theory and Society, 45, 203–237. Mann, M. (2019). Sources of social power and Ding Xinzhao’s reading of Chinese history. Chinese Sociological Review, 51(1), 65–75.

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Poggi, G. (2006). Political power un-manned: A defence of the holy trinity from Mann’s military attack. In J. A. Hall and R. Schroeder (eds.). An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press. Runciman, W. G. (1987). The old question: Review of The sources of social power volume I . London Review of Books, 9 (4). https://www.lrb.co.uk/thepaper/v09/n04/w.g.-runciman/the-old-question. Runciman, W. G. (2004). The diffusion of Christianity in the third century AD as a case-study in the theory of cultural selection. European Journal of Sociology, 45 (1), 3–21. Schroeder, R. (2006). Introduction: The IEMP model and its critics. In J. A. Hall & R. Schroeder (Eds.), An anatomy of power: The social theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell Publishing. Spruyt, H. (1994). The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton University Press. Sterelny, K. (2001). Dawkins vs. Survival of the fittest. Icon Books. Zhao, D. (2015). The Confucian-legalist state: A new theory of Chinese history. Oxford University Press.

5 Theories of Nationalism

Introduction This chapter will look at four different theories of nationalism. The main divide in nationalism studies is between two camps: the modernists and the ethno-symbolists. Within these, there are, of course, divergent views, emphases and understandings, but broadly speaking they can be said to adhere to some general points. Generally, modernists believe that the nation is a modern product, not extending back further than around the eighteenth century, though there may be proto-national formations that exist before then. The move towards the nation-state and the origin of nationalism is largely the product of political, technological and economic factors: the arrival of mass printing, the industrial revolution and increasing centralisation and state strength creates nationalism as a way of binding populations together within defined territorial areas. Links to the past are weak, not essential, if not wholly invented. Some exponents of this view are, Gellner (2006), Anderson (2006), Breuilly (1993), Hobsbawm (1990), Maleševi´c (2006), Sand (2010) and Wimmer (2004). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_5

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Generally, ethno-symbolists believe that whilst most nations are modern products, and modern nations do take specific forms, there are nevertheless types of nations and nationalisms that exist before modernity and that all nations are built on these antecedent forms in some ways. The focus is generally more on culture and identity, with the notion that myths, memories and ethnic identities create a sense of a people, that then forms the building blocks for nation-states. Nations also cannot just invent the past or traditions, they are instead always drawing on something. The emphasis also suggests that whilst the masses might not have national identities, the elites do often develop them and this is then communicated down. The form of the nation can be affected by the antecedent beliefs, determining whether it becomes an ethnic or civic based nation. Some exponents of this view are Anthony Smith (1992), John Hutchinson (2005) and Atsuko Ichijo (2013). As I said, these are the broad outlines, and there are variations and disagreements between and within the camps. The purpose of this chapter is to engage with some of the more recent takes on both of these perspectives and then show what a Darwinian approach can offer. An earlier paper of mine (Kerr, 2019a) gives the broad outlines of this approach. There I argued that ethno-symbolism and modernism were not as opposed as the debates make out, but rather can be synthesized via the Darwinian approach to provide a more complete understanding of the origins of nations and nationalism. There I looked at two of the main exponents of each view, Gellner for modernism and Smith for ethno-symbolism, showing how the two approaches can complement one another at a theoretical level. This chapter will extend the broad outlines of that argument, further stressing the usefulness of the Darwinian perspective by showing how it can apply with some of the more recent variants of each of the theories. In doing this, I will look at Maleševi´c (2006) and Wimmer (2004) as representatives for the modernist perspective; and Hutchinson (2005, 2017) and Ichijo (2013, 2020) as the representatives for the ethnosymbolic perspective. Finally, whilst engaging with each theory from a Darwinian point of view, I will provide an overview of how they can complement one another via the Darwinian social evolutionary frame.

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This chapter, then, provides the theoretical groundwork on nationalism, that will form the basis for the engagement with the two case studies on the development of nationalism in Britain and Japan.

Andreas Wimmer: Nations as Forms of Exclusion The broad outline of Wimmer’s (2004) arguments is to show how exclusion exists within the very concept of the nation itself, that ultimately nations result from processes of social closure that cannot prevent themselves from being exclusionary, as they always need to have some form of membership distinction. This can, then, lead to racism and xenophobia as being characteristics of the nation, in both civic and ethnic cases. Alongside this he also argues against methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002), the idea that the nation is the block on which the nation-state and nationalism are built (Chernilo, 2006; Wimmer & Schiller, 2002: 302). Methodological nationalism is problematic for a few reasons. The main one of relevance for this discussion, however, is that it leads down the path of emphasising ‘internalist’ developments, that is in seeing nations as developing endogenously out of their societies, and so being equivalent with society (Chernilo, 2006: 8). This has the consequence of focusing on the nation itself as the natural unit of study, as the natural unit of society, and therefore ignoring how transnational influences, e.g. migration, have been important elements of nation-state development and in both pre-modern and modern worlds (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002: 302). As a result, the nation-state form is ‘naturalized’ with the consequence that nationalism’s doctrinal precepts (e.g. one nation for one people, discourses of inclusion and exclusion) are treated as normal, and expected, aspects of modernity, rather than being problematized (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002: 304–305). This, needless to say, has consequences for how policy is enacted, e.g. in the areas of migration, refugees, welfare states and developmental policy (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002).

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Wimmer’s project, then, is to show ‘that nationalist and ethnic politics are not just a by-product of modern state formation or of industrialisation; rather, modernity itself rests on the basis of ethnic and nationalist principles’ (2004: 1, emphasis in original). What this means, in essence, is that modern institutions of the state, such as welfare states and democracy itself, whilst seemingly inclusive are tied to forms of exclusion that occur along ethnic and national lines. Consequently, conflicts between ethnic groups as well as racism and xenophobia are integral to the modern system of nation-states (Wimmer, 2004: 5). For this reason, methodological nationalism, and its assumption within the social sciences, has impacted the ability to understand nations and the modern state, often seeing them as two separate entities with no impact on one another, or as in the traditional view of nationalism being a feeling that would, eventually, wither away under the unrealizing powers of modernity (Wimmer, 2004: 5–6). For Wimmer, the two important concepts towards understanding nation-states and modernity are cultural compromise and social closure (2004: 8). We’ll look at each one of these in turn. Culture is defined as ‘an open and unstable process of negotiation of meaning’ (Wimmer, 2004: 26). From this, it follows that culture must be internalized by the individual, or else they would not be able to negotiate with it and that this provides the world-view, limitations and boundaries of the social group who may be involved in the negotiating process (Wimmer, 2004: 26). Taking the term ‘habitus’ from Pierre Bourdieu, Wimmer uses this to describe a ‘competence of assessing pros and cons in given situations in light of one’s own interests’ (Wimmer, 2004: 27). This is what enables negotiation within a culture. Different worldviews, beliefs, etc. are generated based on people’s different social positions: culture is then formed out of the negotiations between different people’s world views, eventually forming the cultural compromise, which is the collective representation of the moral values that will run society that all agents can agree upon, based on their own views and long-term interests (Wimmer, 2004: 28–29). This draws on Habermas’ notion of the communicative arena, where people can articulate arguments and so, through discussion, arrive at a compromise that suits all members of the group. This, however, is not a closed process, which is to say that

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cultures are not homogenous: rather all cultural orders have a heterogeneity of traditions, views, etc. that members of the group can draw upon to make their arguments, and thus negotiated compromises can be revisited and renegotiated (Wimmer, 2004: 30–31). For Wimmer, the nation is just such a compromise; one where the elites get to extend the domain of their power within a territory, and the included citizens get to appeal to the idea of national solidarity and equality to make claims for democratic participation, welfare state access and so on (2004: 32). But, as this illustrates, there’s another aspect to this negotiation—namely the definition of who gets included in the compromise and who is excluded. Social closure is the process by which this inclusion and exclusion occur. ‘Social closure means excluding those who are not felt to belong, drawing a dividing line between the familiar and the foreign. Social closure can lead to the formation of classes, subcultures, gender-defined groups, or ethnic groups and nations’ (Wimmer, 2004: 33). These boundaries between the ‘us’ and ‘them’ can then be marked by a variety of cultural practices, such as dress, language, rituals, taste, use of jargon and so on (Wimmer, 2004: 33). In short, social closure is ‘the realization of these principles’ of cultural compromise ‘through the institutions of boundary maintenance’ (Wimmer, 2004: 8). The nation-state is a product of this dual act of cultural compromise and social closure. Wimmer (2004: 52) defines nationalism as ‘the main cultural compromise of modern society, and the formation of nationstates as a process of social closure resulting from, and interacting with, the consolidation and general acceptance of this compromise’. Nations are ‘imagined communities’, following Anderson’s (2006) terminology, which form communities of equals, where polity, society and economy work in the interests of the nation. Territorial boundaries, then, provide the demarcation of where a particular nation’s authority ends, distinguishing between the domestic and the foreign (Wimmer, 2004: 53–54). As a result of this, nationality and citizenship are linked together, first through a legal closure, where citizens are defined not by being territorially present but instead by their nationality (thus a person remains a citizen even if they cross the boundary, just as someone does not become a citizen by moving into a territory). This also came with a political closure: that state power is only for those who are part of the nation,

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defined as the citizens. Those who are not part of the nation may not have access to that power, or its benefits (Wimmer, 2004: 58–59). A recent illustration of this principle can be seen in the United Kingdom’s instituting of an NHS surcharge on migrants who come to the UK. Migrants are required to pay an amount, £400 on a standard visa, for each year of the visa (Gov.uk, n.d.). For someone on a five-year visa, this would total £2000, not including the amount that would need to be covered by dependants. The headline advertises this as ‘Pay for UK healthcare as part of your immigration application’ (Gov.uk, n.d.). What this ignores, of course, is that migrants would, and do, already pay for their healthcare, via taxes just the same as every other taxpayer in the UK. The advertising, however, illustrates Wimmer’s principle around social closure: the welfare state is for the British nationals and citizens and migrants are interlopers who need to pay upfront to have access to it. Which illustrates Wimmer’s point (2004: chapter 7) that racism and xenophobia are important components of the modern nation-state. As he argues ‘the legitimate “owners of the state” are opposed to those excluded from the national “we”, to immigrants and other groups disturbing the amalgamation of the citizenry, the sovereign and the nation into one single “people”’ (Wimmer, 2004: 200). Xenophobia and racism become bundled together as a political struggle with modernity. As he notes, this is not saying that racism did not exist before modernity, but rather that xenophobic discourses have only gained their political power and legitimacy in modern times, precisely because the demarcations of the state now rest on defining an ‘us’, who can have access to collective goods and the power of the state, and a ‘them’ who are excluded from it (Wimmer, 2004: 212). Migration can, therefore, disrupt the original cultural compromise that was founded and lead to perceptions of goods going to be taken away from the majority group. When a crisis occurs, then, it is easy for this to be turned against those who are disrupting the compromise (Wimmer, 2004: 213–214). Racism and xenophobia are ‘an integral part of the institutional order of the nation-state’ (Wimmer, 2004: 217). This idea, of closing boundaries and in particular of perceptions of danger and threat being used to build a sense of national communities is one that we will revisit. Now, though, we will turn to look at Siniša

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Maleševi´c and the question of whether things like national identities can even be considered real.

Sinisˇ a Malesˇ evi´c: Does National Identity Exist? Identity, according to Maleševi´c, is the new popular buzzword in the social sciences and, unquestionably, this does seem to be the case, with a plethora of studies and arguments making use of the concept (Maleševi´c, 2006: 2–3). As we will see, both Hutchinson and Ichijo make use of this to some extent. What, however, is the problem with this? For Maleševi´c, the issue is that ‘the concept of identity is conceptually and operationally deeply porous’ (2006: 3), with the subsequent problem being that this does not allow for a firm, analytic investigation of what identity is and how it operates. Identity, for Maleševi´c, is an ideological instrument, one that, via identarian discourses, ‘soothe, naturalise and normalise the ideological currents of our everyday social reality’ (2006: 4). Whilst people have ‘folk’ conceptions of identity, which he does not deny are meaningful to the people who have them, this does not mean that social scientists should use the concept, or at least not without caution. Doing so runs the risk of obscuring more than enlightening, if such concepts are just taken for granted (Maleševi´c, 2006: 20). Instead, Maleševi´c (2006) argues that the focus should be on ‘ideology’ as a concept, though one that is reformulated in light of the issues that the Marxist and structural-functionalist versions have (2006: 59–63) and in light of the merits of the post-structural critique of ideology and metanarratives more generally (2006: 63–69). The version of ideology that he puts together is more reflexive and takes a broadly neo-Weberian approach, centring agents over structures. This helps to shift attention away from the ‘function’ of ideology and instead towards its content: what is the ideology pushing and how is this getting used by agents (2006: 72)? This moves away from the post-structural critique, in which all ideologies or language games are equal, towards examining ‘how asymmetrical relations of power are produced and shaped in particular contexts’ allowing for a focus on looking at how structural factors, or

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relations of power, allow certain ideologies promulgated by social agents to take hold and become hegemonic or spread in a population (2006: 70). In doing this, Maleševi´c distinguishes between two forms of ideology: normative, or official, ideology and operative ideology (2006: 72). Normative ideology is, effectively, the main principles, values and beliefs that guide a particular ideological outlook, providing its understanding of history and the relations between people and groups. Operative ideology, in contrast, is what fills out social life and is how people experience and are structured by ideology in their daily routines (2006: 78). What Maleševi´c points towards is how the normative ideology, on which a political system appeals, and its actual operative ideology, how it works in practice, can be quite divergent. Thus it is that, in looking at examples of Islamic Iran, Communist Yugoslavia and liberal-democratic Britain, he notes that the normative ideologies of these places differ, in terms of the universal appeals that are made and the principles they are supposedly built on, but the operative ideology is quite similar; namely nationalism (2006: 96–106). What this shows, for Maleševi´c, is that nationalism is the dominant operative ideology of modernity precisely because nationalism can best provide an effective narrative arc for individuals and groups, in which they can place themselves (2006: 91, 93). Something to point out here is that whilst Maleševi´c believes that propositions should be grounded in individual, or small group accounts, he is not making a rational choice, or methodological individualist argument, which holds that all beliefs, acts, etc. must be grounded in the rational acts of individuals, or micro founded (Elster, 1986: 22–23). The reason for this is that rational choice accounts are too easy to be subject to ex post facto rationalisations and circular reasoning about people’s actions or behaviour (Maleševi´c, 2004: 102). Rather, what Maleševi´c is getting away from is the perils of ‘groupism’ (Brubaker, 2004a), whereby thoughts, beliefs, actions, etc. are attributed to a group which either cannot have agency (e.g. ‘Britain does x’) or is not grounded in a plausible mechanism for how this action would be taken, or transmitted or become accepted by individuals who comprise a group (Maleševi´c, 2006: 75–76).

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Nationalism’s potency as an organizing principle, and the reason for its strength, lies in the fact that it is a malleable doctrine, one that can fit a diverse range of different normative ideologies whilst still maintaining its operative core. Normative ideologies tend to be transient and ephemeral, whereas operative ideologies, precisely because of their interaction with daily routine, tend to be more stable and grounded in everyday lives (Maleševi´c, 2006: 84). Coupled with its ability to reconcile public organization with private emotion, this is the reason why it was the more successful of the various ideologies that emerge with modernity: nationalism, essentially, was more able to reconcile the expanding state power and centralization that emerges alongside the growing civil society (Maleševi´c, 2006: 90). Nations, and more broadly ethnicity, are not, therefore, timeless elements of identities that exist from pre-modern worlds, nor are they primarily cultural in origin. Rather, they are forms of political action (Maleševi´c, 2006: 152). Drawing on examples of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Maleševi´c argues that through powers of state centralization and categorization, ethnic and national identities become institutionalized. Whilst the normative ideology is communism, and so looks to classes and the overthrowing of capitalism as the ultimate aim, the operative ideology is firmly nationalist, with people being assigned an ‘ethnicity’ based on their region (Maleševi´c, 2006: 161–162). In the Soviet Union this could be inflexible, with little room for changing a ‘nationality’ or ‘ethnicity’ once assigned on an internal passport (Hosking, 1992: 256); though it is perhaps worth noting that the modern system of nation-states can be very inflexible on this point— as Brubaker (2004b) has argued, all nations, even those that proclaim themselves as ‘civic’, contain ethnic components in their definitions of nationality and who can claim it. Thus, far from being a case of the collapse of Yugoslavia leading to a reawakening of long-held ethnic conflict, it is rather the fostering of ethnic identities and the cultural realm through the state that led to the conflict (Maleševi´c, 2006: 162). Indeed, it is only because of modernity that such things as ethnic cleansings and genocide become possible, as the increased powers of the bureaucratic state allow for greater centralization of resources and categorization of people; and the emerging civil

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society and claims for their being a ‘people’ with a nation, lead to extreme forms of exclusion that can result in the forcible removal and even elimination of those who do not fit the ‘in-group’ as part of the process of nation-building (Maleševi´c, 2006: chapter 9). What is characteristic of the modern state is the manner in how its centralization of bureaucracy and resources affects the motivations of elite actors in the state. Ethnic collectivities, in this Weberian reading, are ‘quasi-groups’, that have a shared belief in common descent, that become socially meaningful groups through political action, whereby the activation of this social action is usually in the form of social closure (Maleševi´c, 2006: 167). At this stage, we can start to see the contours of where this theory will join up with Wimmer’s (2004), but more on that presently. This, however, should not be taken as saying that elites manipulate the masses, with the masses being largely passive recipients. Indeed, whilst the modern state provides elites with a lot of power for direction, the individuals themselves would gain something out of the arrangement, whether this is purely instrumental (as in Wimmer’s (2004) conception, where social closure leads to inclusions and exclusions in access to resources), or based on other values, habits or reasoning’s (Maleševi´c, 2004: 123–124). Intellectuals also take part in the process, and Maleševi´c (2006: 187–189) combines Gramsci’s notions of ‘traditional’ intellectuals, those who are formally trained and disseminate high culture to society, and ‘organic’ intellectuals, those who speak from and for a particular class consciousness, with Bauman’s notions of ‘legislators’, those who claim a monopoly on knowledge in a certain field and from it craft universal values and ‘interpreters’, those who narrate and interpret events to the public, or a section of the public. National identity, then, is not something that actually exists, either before modernity or after it (Maleševi´c, 2011: 274–275). The notion of a national identity obscures the processes behind how people take action, either individually or collectively, as national identities cannot do things in themselves; only individuals or collective groups taking action can (Maleševi´c, 2011: 281). There is a need to decouple the micro-solidarities of people, from the macro-solidarities they exist in, as only through doing this can the process be understood. Thus at a micro-level, people are

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not likely to be motivated by notions of national identity, but rather motivations much closer to home (either self-preservation or protection of family and friends); whereas at the macro-level it is the operative ideology of nationalism that provides the cognitive frame through which people understand and interact with the surrounding world (Maleševi´c, 2011: 284–286). Claiming that people are motivated by a ‘national identity’ or ‘ethnic identity’ obscures the important political, ideological and structural processes at work. This concludes the mini section looking at the two representatives of modernism, and the contours of how Wimmer and Maleševi´c’s theories might align may already be becoming apparent. From here, though, we move on to looking at the ethno-symbolist theorists, beginning with John Hutchinson’s examination of culture wars, and ‘real’ wars, and the influence this has on the development of nations and nationalisms.

John Hutchinson’s Culture Wars I have written previously about John Hutchinson’s work, (in Kerr, 2019b), and this section is an expansion and development of the argument presented there. Broadly, Hutchison’s argument is that nations, and their predecessors, do not have coherent identities stretching through time but are rather the site of contestation about their identity through culture wars (2005: 4–5). Culture wars result from different clusters of symbols forming through the nation’s development and process of ‘mythic overlaying’ (Hutchinson, 2004: 117), which is the process by which new myths are created in trying circumstances with the old myths being held as back-up ready to be reused should the new myths fail. Different groups competing with one another over the direction of the nation can then draw on these repositories of symbols and make use of them, or interpret them differently, to push their vision of the nation (Hutchinson, 2005: 77–78). In contrast to some of the modernist writers, Hutchinson uses something of a more flexible concept of the nation. Whilst he does hold that nationalism as an ideological movement only emerges with modernity, he does follow Susan Reynolds in thinking that different conceptions

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of the nation, in various forms, existed before modernity (Hutchinson, 2018: 8). As with Anthony Smith, Hutchinson believes that there are ethnies, which is to say communities of people who share a sense of common descent, myths and beliefs but are not themselves nations, and that ethnies predate nations and provide the foundations from which nations can be formed and the reservoir from which myths, memories and symbols can be drawn (Hutchinson, 2005: 13–16). The outcome of this is that nations are multi-layered, that is they have multiple overlapping myths, with new ones sitting on old ones. The old myths are not destroyed, however, but are repurposed or held in the background until a time when they may become relevant again, or can be reworked to suit new circumstances (Hutchinson, 2004, 2005: 25–26). An example of this is Joan of Arc; as Hutchinson notes her image, or symbol, has been used by various French political factions, each emphasizing a different part of the symbol to support their views. Thus the Front National uses her image as someone repelling foreign invaders, as part of their anti-immigration policies, whereas the Communist party previously used her as an example of a working-class warrior who was betrayed by the ruling classes (Hutchinson, 2005: 103–104). In summation, Hutchinson is attempting to combine two views that are normally seen as being antithetical with one another: ethno-symbolism and postmodernism (Hutchinson, 2005: 5). As Hutchinson makes clear in his response to Umut Özkirimli’s critique (2008), he accepts that, as the post-modernists argue, there is a degree of construction and flexibility available for elites to pick symbols and interpret them, but this is not infinitely malleable; they will pick and choose among existing symbols, myths, etc. that mix with sentiments of people and within the territory, which subsequently places constraints on exactly what they can do (Hutchinson, 2008: 25). In this, Hutchinson accords with Maleševi´c’s (2004, 2006) neo-Weberian view on the need to look at the power that elites have, whilst also being aware that people are not just passive dupes of said elites. Culture wars then interact with ‘actual’ warfare. According to Hutchinson (2018: 7) warfare is important for understanding nations for four distinct reasons: (1) it is central to nation-state formation, with understandings of the nation being crystalized in war; (2) it contributed

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to the formation of nations, as distinct from nation-states, with many of the founding myths and memories being formed through the process of war; (3) the current world order of nation-states was a product of the total wars of the twentieth century and subsequent collapse of European empires1 ; and (4) contemporary military revolutions, within the contemporary world order, transform collective identity formation. There are four mechanisms by which wars are important to nation formation, these being the creation of we-they stereotypes; providing the raw material from which myths can be drawn; the generation of social rituals that populations follow and the outcomes of war can also initiate public policies that embed national practices and symbols in everyday life (Hutchinson, 2017: 50). In effect, Hutchinson argues that ‘warfare often acts as a mythomoteur (or constituting myth) in the historical consciousness of many populations, becoming an organizing framework for explaining events and evaluating their place in the world’ (2017: 52, emphasis in original), with Hutchinson taking the concept of a mythomoteur from Armstrong (1982). So the act of warfare, the preparation for it and the aftermath all provide the space from which various myths are generated, which can then be selected and made use of. They also, in cases of defeat or other trials, provide a range of myths that can be drawn on or revisited if something new is needed to overcome a crisis (Hutchinson, 2005: 98). It is at such times of crisis that ‘moral innovators’ can come forward, to provide new directions for the nation, drawing on earlier myths, memories and symbols (Hutchinson, 2004: 117). At this stage, we might note that there is something of a resemblance between the moral innovators that Hutchinson notes and the intellectuals, and their combinations, that Maleševi´c (2006: 187– 189) formulated. Certainly, it’s not outside the bounds of plausibility that moral innovators would be intellectuals, though the looseness of Hutchinson’s term should also be noted in that it need not necessarily be intellectuals. This connection will be looked at more in reference to Atsuko Ichijo’s work below. We-they formation is also important for nationalism and comes about through warfare and times of threat.2 He takes the argument from Anthony Smith that ‘interstate wars may both extend a sense of territorial homeland and intensify a sense of national difference’ (Hutchinson,

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2017: 57 [emphasis in original]). Soldiers are drawn from different regions of a territory and brought together in an army to defend the territory entire, which can over time create a sense of identification that is broader than just their home village. War also produces propaganda that characterizes the opponents, as well as the people themselves, creating we-they stereotypes to highlight the differences, which can form a sense of national consciousness (Hutchinson, 2017: 57). The increasing centralization of state power, and the greater integration of the civic and state spheres, leads further to the generation of national consciousness (Hutchinson, 2017: 57–58). This does not just occur in the time of the total wars of the twentieth century, however. For as Hutchinson details (2017: 58–59) the various wars in Europe, focusing on first the English, then British and the French, produced a variety of stereotypes and images from propaganda which were disseminated through the press that helped to create an image of the self and the other, and bled into the creation of a sense of difference and thus into the creation of national consciousness. Needless to say, of course, these images and symbols then form part of the repertoire of symbols, imagery, memories and myths that moral innovators can then draw upon to provide their direction and view of the nation (Hutchinson, 2004, 2005). For Hutchinson, then, nations are contested entities born of a continual struggle between competing visions of the nation that manifest in culture wars. These culture wars make use of symbols, myths, etc. that are generated through warfare, both the war itself, and the preparation, aftermath and sense of threat that can be generated by it. Points of similarity with the modernists, as well as differences, can perhaps already be noted; one that is worth noting is that Hutchinson believes that warfare can generate a sense of national identity, through people fighting to defend the territory (Hutchinson, 2017: 57), whereas Maleševi´c (2011), as we saw, is dubious about this notion. Some of the stronger similarities and differences we will return to in the final part of this section, showing how they can all be brought together with the Darwinian viewpoint. Before we get there, though, we have one last perspective to look at. The three theorists under discussion here have, mostly, been concerned with looking at nationalism in the context of Europe. With the last theorist, we move to consider nationalism outside of Europe and, in

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particular, moving from a potential issue of seeing the rest of the world as mere passive receptors of European ideas.

Atsuko Ichijo’s Multiple Paths to Nationalism Before beginning to outline Ichijo’s take on nationalism, which follows and develops ethno-symbolism as Hutchinson has done, it will be worth taking a little bit of time to set out a point of relevance regarding Eurocentrism. One of the aims of Ichijo’s work is to question the ‘implicit Eurocentricity in social theory in general’ (Ichijo, 2013: 2), which has then carried over into the study of nationalism (Ichijo, 2013: 3). Eurocentrism is a somewhat nebulous term (McLennan, 2000, 2003), though not as difficult to reconstruct or understand as McLennan makes out. Broadly speaking, we can characterize Eurocentrism as the outlook that sees the arrival of the features associated with modernity, capitalism, industrialism, etc. as being endogenous products of Europe. The interconnections and legacy of colonialism and enslavement in that history, e.g. in the necessity of techniques, materials and wealth, forcibly acquired from outside Europe, are largely ignored or not included.3 Consequently, modernity is seen as something that diffuses out of the European centre, with the rest of the world acting as largely passive recipients (Bhambra, 2007b, 2016). As Ichijo (2020: 264–265) notes this is largely the dominant view on nationalism within sociology, with the focus still on nationalism being European in origin, before diffusing to the rest of the world. As Bhambra (2016: 963) also notes, the point on diffusion is problematic as it elides the fact that force and colonization were used to impose these ideas on other places in the world. In making her case, Ichijo (2013, 2020) draws on the theory of multiple modernities, originated by Shmuel Eistenstadt (2000). Eisenstadt (2000: 1) argued that most modernization theories, particularly the classic theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, assumed that the cultural programme of modernity originated in Europe and the institutional set-up that came from this would expand and prevail over the world. As he notes, however, this assumption has failed to bear fruit, with

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many places going against the homogenizing belief. Multiple modernities then ‘presumes that the best way to understand the contemporary world—indeed to explain the history of modernity—is to see it as a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programmes’ (Eisenstadt, 2000: 2). Adding to this he notes that this means that modernity and Westernization are not the only ways by which peoples and countries can understand and engage with modernity, though the Western patterns do ‘enjoy historical precedence and continue to be a basic reference point for others’ (Eisenstadt, 2000: 2–3). It is on this point that Bhambra (2007b: Ch. 3; 2016: 962–963) brings in a critique of Eisenstadt and multiple modernity theory in noting that it still gives precedence and priority to the West, which shapes the models on which the non-West can follow, and also accords only the cultural domain for the non-West to interact with and engage with modernity. The non-West is still, then, reactive to a degree to the diffusion of ideas and can only respond to them in cultural terms, not in other ways. Whilst this is an important critique that shows some of the limits of the multiple modernity theory as originally conceived, it is not an issue that Ichijo manages to avoid. She follows Chatterjee (1993) in being critical of the notion that Western nations provided the modules through which the non-West could conceive itself, as this removes the agency and subjectivity of the non-Western peoples to imagine themselves and their communities (Ichijo, 2020: 265). Ichijo (2013, 2020) in contrast is establishing a more agency centred version of the theory, one that allows for the non-West to be subjects and active imaginers and not just passive recipients and reactive to what diffuses out of the West. So what is the argument that Ichijo is making on nationalism? Some of the broad brushstrokes have already been adumbrated, so now we will move into looking at them in a little more detail on how she makes use of the multiple modernities idea to investigate nationalism away from Eurocentric assumptions. Ichijo starts from the position that modernization theories are Eurocentric, but also universalizing: they claim to apply to all places of the world and also follow the stages scheme, on that older sociological notion of evolution (Ichijo, 2013: 8–10). Ichijo extends this to nationalism,

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noting that nationalism and the nation-state are primarily conceived in modernist terms, it being the dominant position within nationalism studies (Ichijo, 2013: chapter 1). However, as a result of this ‘[t]hose theories which understand nationalism as a product of modernity appear to share the teleological tendency which multiple modernities theorists find problematic in conventional theories of modernisation’ (Ichijo, 2013: 25). Theories of nationalism in the modernist vein, then, generally fall into the trap of universalizing the European model and so deny the agency of the non-European/Western societies and their cultural specificities. As Ichijo admits the theory of multiple modernities can be a bit shaky in places and lacking in theoretical grounding, particularly around its definition of modernity (2013: 28). However, what is built out of looking into multiple modernities theorists on the topic is that modernity should be characterized by the significance it accords to agency and, particularly, the shift to more autonomous and reflexive kinds of agency (Ichijo, 2013: 38). What this means, ultimately, is that people have agency in being able to reflect on, interpret and understand their surroundings, culture and what they engage with. This is not just a matter of engaging with external elements, however; aspects of their own society, culture and so on are to be engaged with, often producing conflicting and clashing visions. Modernities, in effect, have to be plural, not singular, because agency means that individuals, groups and societies are always able to reinterpret and engage with the cultural and institutional materials they are provided with (Ichijo, 2013: 29–30). We can, at this point, notice resemblances to earlier theories, in all three of Hutchinson (2005), Maleševi´c (2006) and Wimmer (2004). In Hutchinson (2005) we find a similar emphasis on the way in which material is to be reinterpreted and clashes; and in Maleševi´c (2006) we have similar points on the agency of people, both elites and the masses, in what is accepted and not; which also accords into points with Wimmer (2004) who also emphasizes negotiation within the social closure, which presupposes that this is something open to being renegotiated and will not be the same for all groups and peoples. A further parallel with Wimmer (2004) emerges when Ichijo (2013: 31) notes that, as Eisenstadt (2000) argues, modernity places an emphasis

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on boundary drawing as ‘this can no longer be considered to be the “given”. It is something autonomous and reflexive human agents have to construct or reconstruct’. This matches with what Wimmer (2004) is arguing about processes of social closure and how this defines the limits of who gets to participate in conversations and negotiation, and whom these negotiations affect (although in Wimmer’s characterization the boundaries are less fluid than Eisenstadt would seem to be suggesting). Ichijo then turns from this to look at what multiple modernities means for nationalism specifically. She notes that multiple modernities theory doesn’t say anything specific about nationalism itself, in part out of wariness of falling into the methodological nationalism trap (discussed above) (2013: 30). However, she is able to construct a multiple modernity take on nationalism and the nation-state. Essentially, nationalism is a form of collective self-identity which is formed out of a continual contestation. What this means is that, unlike in the normal modernist accounts, the more pre-modern elements are not banished or completely eliminated, but rather exist within this continual clash and interpretation of viewpoints. All of this occurs within the reach of modernity as a result of pre-modern legitimation systems being taken over and replaced by the new legitimation system of the nation-state (Ichijo, 2013: 31– 32). However, whilst the theory accepts the hegemonic position of the nation-state within modernity, it does not accept it as hegemonic in total. Basically, Ichijo (2013: 32–33) holds that as nationalism is a form of collective identity formation, among others, that is continually being contested, it is possible, and indeed likely, that it is an identity formation that will eventually collapse because of the continual competition and generation of other forms of collective understandings of identity. Nationalisms rise to prominence, or the hegemonic position, is because of the way it provides for the generation of political legitimacy within modernity and its enhanced emphasis on agency (Ichijo, 2013: 39). But whilst nations are communities of autonomous and reflexive individuals, they do also contain ‘primordial’ elements which have cultural and historical products that people engage with (Ichijo, 2013: 39). Thus it is that nationalism is not a universalizing system, but rather is a system that is continually reinterpreted by different cultures, societies and individuals (Ichijo, 2013: 39). From this Ichijo (2013: 40)

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reformulates nationalism as ‘a quintessentially modern form of human self-reflexivity with the nation at the centre of societal self-understanding. It is an agency-focused approach which privileges culture over structures and institutions’. There are two points to make on this, though, one that applies to multiple modernities and one that can be spun more generally. The first is from Maleševi´c’s (2014) review of Ichijo’s book, where he notes that the strong emphasis on cultural aspects and idealism might point to the diversity of interpretations of nationalism, but it does not explain the fact that, structurally and institutionally, nations everywhere are more or less the same. The second, and more general point, is there is still a potential issue around Eurocentrism, in that the theory presupposes that modernity brings a new kind of reflexive agency to the fore; but ultimately this still rests on the notion that modernity must first be diffused before this agency takes effect, denying it to pre-modern civilizations, as well as assuming that there is a temporal and spatial rupture between pre-modern and modern societies (Bhambra, 2007a, 2007b, 2016). The second point, as I say, is an issue that all of the more modern theories fall into, though Hutchinson perhaps less so (though as have noted, his focus on Europe and war does mean that some of the other stereotypes and we-they formations that result from empire and colonialism go missing in some of the accounts). The first though, does raise an interesting point: why do nation-states appear everywhere more or less the same? Maleševi´c (2006) would put this down to the operative ideology of nationalism, but then why does everyone have to have that operative ideology? That is a question that will be addressed more fully in the case studies, but particularly the one of Japan. For now, though, we turn to the final section wherein I will make the case that Darwinian social evolution can blend these approaches together, underlining the wider argument that there is a continuity between ethno-symbolic and modernist arguments on the nation.

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The Darwinian Synthesis I will begin by picking up on some of the threads that have been seeded throughout the previous discussions, on the similarities between these theories. Broadly, they will be treated as blocks of two (modernists and ethno-symbolists) for sake of neatness and ease, though I hope the preceding discussion has illustrated how the theories are nuanced within their grouping. The key difference between the modernists and the ethno-symbolists effectively lies in the emphasis they give to culture over structural or institutional matters; and the emphasis that is given to features, or continuities of the past, as opposed to the newness or discontinuities of the modern. Now, as has been illustrated above, this doesn’t work exactly as all four of the theories under discussion have developed from the original positions of ethno-symbolists and modernists in part based on the various critiques that have been made of each of these positions. Thus the ethno-symbolists Ichijo (2013) and Hutchinson (2017) both accept that nation-states, as currently understood, are mostly modern; just as Wimmer (2004) and Maleševi´c (2006) accept that modern nations do not build out of nothing but that prior cultures and ethnic groups can provide materials from which elites will draw, for it to be legitimated or accepted by the masses. Gone, then, from the modernist account is the presumption that the past doesn’t matter (Gellner, 1996); just as much as the ethno-symbolist account has ditched the notion that nations and nation forms predate modernity. The argument of my earlier paper (Kerr, 2019a) bringing together the work of Smith and Gellner was that Darwinian social evolution showed how the two complemented one another; what Smith pointed to was how ethnies, and the influence of Christianity, created the conditions for the emerging of a secular religion, in the form of nationalism, that would dominate the European states (Smith, 2015). When industrial society emerged, then, there were already a series of strong states (Gellner, 1998), which then meant that when industrial society emerged, it drew on a range of existing cultural forms (Gellner, 2006). So, effectively, nationalism was not, as Gellner had it, necessary for industrial society, but was rather the most adaptable form for it, given the variants that had been

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generated already and the way the environment had been conditioned by it (Kerr, 2019a: 116–120).4 This argument I believe still applies in the context of these revised and updated theories of ethno-symbolism and modernism. In a prior paper on Hutchinson (Kerr, 2019b), one of the more important aspects that were noted was the way he characterizes nations and nationalism as an ongoing process of a culture war, which sees continual clashes and the generation of new ideas without a definitive end, is precisely an evolutionary process in the Darwinian sense (Sober, 2000). What Hutchinson is describing, with the culture wars and the moral innovators making use of old myths and new ideas that are overlaying one another, is how cultural variants are created in the social evolutionary process (Kerr, 2019b). Evolutionary processes, in the Darwinian sense, are, as discussed, far away from the stages of development theories of evolution that others have identified (Bhambra, 2011; Ichijo, 2013), but rather characterize evolution as an ongoing and never-ending process (Sober, 2000). This is also the track that Ichijo (2013: 32–33) takes when she notes that nationalism was a form of collective identity that is constantly subject to contestation and revision. Similarly, we can see this with Wimmer (2004) and Maleševi´c (2006) who are both pointing to ways in which negotiations happen, between elites and the masses, to accord legitimacy. In his argument, Wimmer (2004: 30–31) specifically notes how all national cultures have heterogeneous cultural traditions, which are drawn upon in creating the cultural compromise that will form the nation-state, as part of the social closure. Wimmer (2008) has also commented critically on Hutchinson’s (2005) argument. That debate is a good place to look at how the Darwinian approach brings the two sides of the argument together. In his discussion, Wimmer makes a variety of points but we’ll concentrate on the two most relevant for this argument. The first is that Hutchinson assumes a ‘uniformity’ to nationalism that ‘leads to a systematic lack of attention to variation’ (2008: 10); and the second is that Hutchinson treats nations, myths, symbols, etc. as being things with a force and agency of their own, so not looking to how actors join together—essentially leaving politics out of the argument (2008: 12–13). Hutchinson

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(2008) responds to these points, noting that he does not view all nations as having the same ethnic foundations, so there is no uniformity (2008: 20) and that, whilst there are terminological slippages in talking about myths, actors are nevertheless drawing on myths that persist and may be said to have ‘causal agency’ and become reinforced and reappear because ‘they appear to explain crises as manifestations of older challenges’ (2008: 21). He also notes that Wimmer’s work, in giving primacy to politics, fails to give weight to the history and ethnicity in relation to which political actors, as nationalists, act (2008: 21–22). Both of these points are valid to some degree and show how ethnosymbolism and modernism need one another in order to be complete. It also points to how Darwinian social evolution can bring them together, just as I argued with Smith and Gellner (Kerr, 2019a), and resolve the question that Maleševi´c (2014) posed of Ichijo (2013), that whilst culturally nationalism may vary, but the structures of the nation-state are largely the same. Recall, that for Richerson and Boyd (2006) culture represents a form of information transmission, and that this can be subject to forms of biased transmission where the spread of certain cultural ideas, symbols, etc. are not ‘random’ but rather the result of agents preferentially adopting one variant over another. Sperber (1996) also points to how public representations, which again are symbols, myths, etc. get transformed in transmissions. This then links in with the elements of social selection (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010; Runciman, 2009), where there is a need to pay attention to how structures constrain what is selected and what can be passed on. In this way, we can see how Hutchinson and Wimmer’s accounts start to coalesce. Nations, as Wimmer (2004) has it, are negotiated forms of social closure. This is important because the closure defines the limits of who is included and excluded and the limits of the terrain; but also the myths, symbols, etc. that can be selected. Territories, as Hutchinson (2005) notes, all have various overlapping myths, symbols and so on that comes from the histories of the region. These are transmitted and transformed, but which variants are selected by political actors and which ones are not, has to do with the forms of social closure and negotiation. However, political actors are not entirely free to negotiate and select

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as they wish, because those very histories create the environment that then places constraints on exactly how the social closure and negotiation can be done. The Darwinian approach, then, helps to understand why certain cultural variants and understandings of the nation, and its systems, are selected over others (Kerr, 2019a, 2019b). As an example, Ichijo (2020) has made a persuasive argument that the origins of Japanese nationalism go back further than its ‘opening’ by the West in the nineteenth century. Instead, she notes that the Kokukagu School had begun to research ancient Japanese myths and teaching in opposition to the Confucian ‘other’ of China, and the dominant learning in the Tokugawa state, in the seventeenth century. So the ideas that would be labelled, incorrectly for Ichijo (2020: 271) as ‘nativist’ have their origins from before the West makes its attempt at opening Japan in 1853,5 conventionally seen as the beginning of Japan’s nationalist movement (Ichijo, 2020: 269). This ties in with Ichijo’s (2013) other arguments regarding multiple modernities and the ability of agents to create self-reflexive communities. However, of course, the fact that there was a movement to recover ancient traditions and learning to identify a core of Japan separate from China does not mean it was a nationalist movement. Exactly where it would have gone, or could have gone, we can’t know for the reason that the West did force the opening in 1853. But this highlights the importance of the changing environment. Whatever the Kokukagu’s intentions, the ideas were used as a source of cultural creation for the Japanese nation. Once the West came the selective environment changed: Japan needed to be a nation-state, and prove its status as a nation-state, to avoid being colonized. To do that there had to be a sense of their being a ‘Japan’ that had existed, as part of the cultural components, with the structures of the nation-state. The operative ideology (Maleševi´c, 2006) enforces itself, as without it a territory would not be considered an actor on the world stage, and therefore off-limits to colonization. Biased transmission (Richerson & Boyd, 2006) is at work, as the ideas that are selected by agents are those that are seen to be successful elsewhere but also fit with the contours of the imposed state system (Spruyt, 1994). But, of course, the actors within the territory are not passive recipients: they are agents who make choices about how they interpret the

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structures they adopt, and which variants of them, as in the case of Japan (Ichijo, 2013: chapter 5). But the environment, in its history, also imposes constraints on what materials, cultural variants and so on can be selected from and, as Hutchinson (2005) points to, the negotiation on this is constantly in flux, subject to revisions and can be upended in moments of crisis and change, particularly, but not necessarily, in response to war (Hutchinson, 2017). Nationalism, and the nation-state, is a European state and culture formation that imposed itself on the rest of the world through empire, either directly in the form of colonialism, or indirectly through noncolonies or semi-colonies having to engage their resistance through those structurally and ideational conditions. But agents have a certain freedom to interpret those structural and ideational conditions, particularly in the cultural realm. The non-European world were not passive recipients of diffusion; even when it is imposed they engage, interpret and respond. This is what Darwinism shows: that there are always multiple variants that are generated, but that these exist in selective environments that place constraints on what is a viable selection and what is not. The global order of nation-states is one such environment, meaning that what is most adaptive are those myths, symbols and so on that will fit best with the nation-state governing structure. Ethno-symbolism and modernism, then, both tell half the story: political actors and modern state structures provide new freedoms to govern, whilst placing their own constraints, but cultural formations and history place their own constraints on what are adaptive choices and actions, whilst also providing material for the continued generation of new variants and understandings for interpreting the nation. This marks the end of the discussion on social change and nationalism. Hopefully, by this point, the worth of the Darwinian approach in the realm of theory has been demonstrated. What the next part of the book will show, is how this can be applied in practice. The next two chapters, then, will be a look at two case studies for social change and nationalism, by examining how nationalism arose in both England, then Britain and Japan.

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Notes 1. Though as the case study with Japan will show (Chapter 7) I think this one can be pushed back further. 2. Well, it does in Hutchinson’s argument; however, this one can be generalized away from warfare and conditions of threat. As Colley (1992) has noted a lot of stereotypes emerge in Britain with its contacts with the East and in particular through colonization of India; and through exploration, Europeans were already beginning to engage in we-they stereotyping in their encounters with Africans and Native Americans (Hall, 1992: 306–308). 3. Though worth noting that Karl Marx did include slavery in his account of the wealth of Europe, writing of its role in Capital (Marx, 1887). 4. I am less persuaded by Smith’s concept of ethnies now than I was in that article; following Brubaker (2004a) and Maleševi´c (2006) I think it implies a concreteness or coherency of identity that isn’t really there, though there are prior existing sentiments, forms, etc. within the territories that go on to be nations, that are important in terms of the constraints they place and the materials that can be drawn on. 5. Though worth noting that Japan did have interactions with, and access to information from, the West via the Dutch traders who were allowed to operate from a man-made island built in Nagasaki bay.

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Bhambra, G. K. (2016). Postcolonial reflections on sociology. Sociology, 50 (5), 960–966. Breuilly, J. (1993). Nationalism and the state. Manchester University Press. Brubaker, R. (2004a). Ethnicity without groups. In R. Brubaker (Ed.), Ethnicity without groups. Harvard University Press. Brubaker, R. (2004b). “Civic” and “ethnic” nationalism. In R. Brubaker (Ed.), Ethnicity without groups. Harvard University Press. Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton University Press. Chernilo, D. (2006). Social theory’s methodological nationalism: Myth and reality. European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (1), 5–22. Colley, L. (1992). Britishness and otherness: An argument. Journal of British Studies, 31(4), 309–329. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2000). Multiple modernities. Daedalus, 129 (1), 1–29. Elster, J. (1986). An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge University Press. Gellner, E. (1996). Do nations have navels? Nations and Nationalism, 2(3), 366–370. Gellner, E. (1998). Language and solitude: Wittegenstein. Cambridge University Press. Gellner, E. (2006). Nations and nationalism (2nd ed.). Blackwell. Gov.uk. (n.d.). Pay for UK healthcare as part of your immigration application. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/healthcare-immigration-applic ation/how-much-pay Hall, S. (1992). The west and the rest: Discourse and power. In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds.), Formations of modernity. Polity Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality (2nd ed.). Canto. Hodgson, G. M., & Knudsen, T. (2010). Darwin’s conjecture: The search for general principles of social and economic evolution. University of Chicago Press. Hosking, G. (1992). A history of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (final edition). Fontana Press. Hutchinson, J. (2004). Myth against myth: The nation as ethnic overlay. Nations and Nationalism, 10 (1/2), 109–123. Hutchinson, J. (2005). Nations as zones of conflict. Sage. Hutchinson, J. (2008). In defence of transhistorical ethno-symbolism: A reply to my critics. Nations and Nationalism, 14 (1), 18–26. Hutchinson, J. (2017). Nationalism and war. Oxford University Press.

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Hutchinson, J. (2018). Bringing the study of warfare into theories of nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 24 (1), 6–21. Ichijo, A. (2013). Nationalism and multiple modernities: Europe and beyond . Palgrave Macmillan. Ichijo, A. (2020). Kokugaku and an alternative account of the emergence of nationalism of Japan. Nations and Nationalism, 26 (1), 263–282. Kerr, W. (2019a). The descent of nations: Social evolutionary theory, modernism and ethno-symbolism. Nations and Nationalism, 25 (1), 104– 123. Kerr, W. (2019b). Nations as zones of conflict, Nations as zones of selection: A Darwinian social evolutionary engagement with John Hutchinson’s ‘culture wars’. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 19 (2), 170–186. Maleševi´c, S. (2004). The sociology of ethnicity. Sage. Maleševi´c, S. (2006). Identity as ideology: Understanding ethnicity and nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Maleševi´c, S. (2011). The chimera of national identity. Nations and Nationalism, 17 (2), 272–290. Maleševi´c, S. (2014). Review of nationalism and multiple modernities. Nations and Nationalism, 20 (2), 376–393. Marx, K. (1887). Chapter-thirty one: Genesis of the industrial capitalist. In K. Marx (Ed.), Capital. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1867-c1/ch31.htm McLennan, G. (2000). Sociology’s eurocentrism and the “rise of the West” revisited. European Journal of Social Theory, 3(3), 275–291. McLennan, G. (2003). Sociology, eurocentrism and postcolonial theory. European Journal of Social Theory, 6 (1), 69–86. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press. Runciman, W. G. (2009). The theory of cultural and social selection. Cambridge University Press. Sand, S. (2010). The invention of the Jewish people. Verso. Smith, A. D. (1992). Chosen peoples: Why ethnic groups survive. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15 (3), 436–456. Smith, A. D. (2015). Biblical beliefs in the shaping of the modern nation. Nations and Nationalism, 21(3), 403–422. Sober, E. (2000). Philosophy of biology (2nd ed.). West View Press. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell. Spruyt, H. (1994a). The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton University Press.

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Wimmer, A. (2004). Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict: Shadows of modernity. Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A. (2008). How to modernise ethno-symbolism. Nations and Nationalism, 14 (1), 9–14. Wimmer, A., & Schiller, N. G. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334.

6 The Origins of Nationalism in England/Britain

Introduction This chapter opens the section looking at the case studies using the Darwinian method, and then subsequently the comparative study of them. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how Darwinian social evolution can help to understand social change in historical and comparative studies, not simply in a theoretical manner. In this chapter I will be looking at the development of nationalism in England/Britain, tracing the lineage of the state as an interactor (Hull, 1988, 2001) and looking at arguments that have been made for nationalism existing at different points in England and Britain’s history. Whilst I would not argue that nationalism emerges at times earlier than the ‘modern’ period, there are important continuities that develop in earlier times that made it a possible adaptation to environmental changes. There can, of course, be a certain teleological fatalism that infects studies like this. Because we know that England comes into being, it can be easy to find ‘nationalist’ projects in earlier periods. To that end, in looking at the medieval period, the Reformation period and the time of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_6

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the industrial revolution and the British Empire, I will stress the disruptions to this narrative in, for example, pointing out how the lands the Plantagenet’s ruled extended far beyond the bounds of what is considered England today. So why England as a case? There are a few reasons. England is a nation where there have been lots of claims for it being a ‘nation’ at various time periods (Breuilly, 2005), with others also arguing that it is the ‘first’ nation in the modern sense (cf. Greenfeld, 1992; Hastings, 1997). I’m going to largely avoid this debate. I’m not concerned with whether England is the first nation or not, but rather looking at it as an example of one of the first modern nations and one of the routes of arriving at nation formation. France is illustrative of another route, as is Japan. One is not necessarily more correct, more civil or ethnic or more first or more important than the other: they are different and this difference is largely due to their respective environmental conditions. For the reasons specified above this case study of England is going to focus on the process of nationalism’s development, through the ages, noting the elements of continuity, but also the environmental changes, socially and culturally, that saw the cultural concepts mutate and develop. The sequence will begin by first looking at medieval England, and discussing some of the important continuities that emerge at this point; then move onto Reformation England, with the emphasis on Protestantism as a unifying ideology; before finally arguing for nationalism emergence as a result of conflict and the British Empire’s formation.

Medieval England There was no English nation, or nation-state, in the Middle Ages; however, there are a few important continuities that develop in this period that provide a basis for its possibility later. Venerable Bede’s work provided a lot of the groundwork for mythologies that would be recaptured and used both more or less immediately by Alfred the Great and the later on (Hastings, 1997: 36–39); the failure of the Plantagenet’s to hold onto their lands in France, the Angevin Empire to use La Patourel’s term (1965), would concentrate focus back into the English territory

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and, as Hutchinson (2017) points to, the series of wars fought with France, as well as the need to justify spending on wars (Griffiths, 2010: 237–238), would produce much in the way of propaganda material that would separate the people within England from other members of Christendom. One of the important points that will be drawn out of this examination is how the state comes to form and work as both a replicator and an interactor (Hull, 1988). To begin with Bede and Alfred then. Bede wrote An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, around about the year 730, the purpose of which was largely theological: he was concerned to place some kind of ideological uniformity across the various ethnic groups, and Christian groups, that populated the isle (Kumar, 2003: 46–47), and was more concerned with the conversion of newly arriving Germanic tribes to Christianity. However, it was from this that a fair amount of the material and myths that would be used by Alfred were to be drawn. Bede’s importance, in this case, is that he ‘gave the idea of Englishness its particular power; Bede demonstrated that the Church not only created but named this new communal identity and made the gens Anglorum a people with a covenant, like Israel’ (Foot, 1996: 38). This draws some of the links that would be built between religious identity and ethnic/national identity. This would be something that would be drawn out more when Henry VIII broke with Rome: reformers would return to the Anglo-Saxon period to suggest that what was occurring was merely a revival of ‘older’ and ‘purer’ religious practices from before the Norman Conquest (Horsman, 1976: 387). In this sense we can see a connection with the Darwinian framework and Hutchinson’s (2004) notion of the overlapping mythologies; the change in the environment, founding the Church of England, necessitates a revival, or reinvention, of older beliefs that are now more adaptive to a new structure. Intellectuals are thus interacting with the changes in the environment to craft new ideological notions, as Maleševi´c (2006: 187–189) puts it.

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Bede’s work had a particular and important influence on Alfred the Great, who was to have the work translated into the vernacular (Hastings, 1997: 39). King Alfred, effectively, used much of what Bede had written as a means to promote himself as a ruler of the ‘English’ people. Having captured London in around 886 he promoted himself as the King of all English people who were not under Danish rule.1 The normative ideological reason behind this was to promote a shared identity that could cover Mercia and Wessex and enable them to be brought together more peacefully. Again, Hutchinson’s (2017: 50) argument about wars and opposition being used to create others, for which identities can form against is likely important in this context. The purpose behind Alfred’s rhetoric was to advance the idea that all his Germanic subjects were one people, the Englishkind, specifically in opposition to Danish rule; providing them with a sense of a common people, heritage, faith and shared history in opposition to an ‘other’ (Foot, 1996: 26–28). He appealed to shared memory and crafted a programme of educational revival and reform to promote the idea of shared history that ‘sought to persuade them [the people] that he was restoring the English, whereas, albeit following a model provided by Bede, he was inventing them’ (Foot, 1996: 33). As Hastings (1997: 40–42) points out, a key element in this was Alfred’s use of the vernacular, which he codified: he had the Bible translated into the vernacular language and distributed them. He also codified vernacular laws, helping to create a sense of political unity. London became a hub and, importantly, was on the borders between Wessex and Mercia and so did not belong to any one kingdom, helping to emphasize the fact that they now had a shared ‘identity’. The Churches and shires similarly provided foundations for horizontal connections and community feeling. As Foot elsewhere notes Alfred is, to some extent, an example of Gellner’s definition of nationalism in seeking to align the political and the national unit, in particular by defining it against other groups (Hastings, 1997: 33–34). This relates to a point that several theorists have made (c.f. Hobsbawm, 1990: 91; Hutchinson, 2017; Smith, 1981) about the way that a set of enemies, or another group that can be defined

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against, can provide a feeling for solidarity and give impetus to national claims. However, this is not to say that there was an English nation at this point. Despite myths of common origin and the pushing of vernacular language, it is doubtful that this represented a mass identity that was separate from religious feeling. Bede, after all, was more concerned with converting Germanic pagans to Christianity over anything else. Consequently, he spent little time dwelling on the fact that the people he dubbed ‘the English’ were made of a variety of separate peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc.) with their own distinctive traditions. More to the point there was, as yet, no England in the recognizable sense of today— only a territory in the south of Britain that was not yet expanded to the borders that we would recognize today (Kumar, 2003: 41–42). Though Alfred was using the language of opposition against the Danes in the Northern parts of the country, the fact that a Danish dynasty, Cnut and his successors from 1016 to 1042, were able to rule without too much trouble would suggest that there was as yet no sustained sense of difference and nationalist sentiment (Kumar, 2003: 44). Alfred’s policies were likely less targeted at the common folk than they were at his own entourage and peers (Foot, 1996: 33) as a means of grounding his legitimacy over the places he united and conquered than he was in forging a new ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ identity (Kumar, 2003: 44). This becomes more complicated after the Norman Conquest. When William the Conqueror conquered England he still held his lands in Normandy, so the territory of ‘England’ now extended into mainland France as well. Then when Geoffrey Plantagenet married Matilda, daughter of Henry I, he became King of England and Duke of Normandy and united these lands with his holdings in Anjou (La Patourel, 1965: 291). Subsequently, Geoffrey’s son Henry II would come to inherit all the titles and would take on a set of lands that stretched down the West of France to become what is informally known as the Angevin Empire (La Patourel, 1965; Turner, 1995). As La Patourel (1965, 1984) argues, it is in many ways important to not set the focus on England as the central territory, but instead see England as just one of the provinces for the Plantagenet’s.

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So whilst the Normans and subsequent would not be able to reform England to how they wished, instead having to adapt to England’s environment and centralize the state further, this did not mean that they were now creating an ‘England’. Indeed, William gave as much time and attention to his continental holdings as he did to England (La Patrouel, 1965: 293). Rather, it was more the case that whilst England and Normandy had more authoritative rule imposed, the other lands were given more relaxed control and were allowed to keep much of their own customs (Turner, 1995: 82). An interesting, Darwinian social evolution, question to ask at this point is why this Empire didn’t last and form a wider identity basis? There are a few factors in the social and cultural environment that tell against it. Henry II was always in a difficult position in terms of bringing a dynasty together out of the disparate lands (Turner, 1995: 72). Henry II certainly did not have the ambition to drive the lands together as one unit, and the only empire he recognized was that of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires (Turner, 1995: 82). Culturally, it was also the custom of both the Normans and the Anjou to divide estates between sons—so whilst Henry would want to give the most prominent lands of Normandy and England to Young Henry, his eldest son, he made provisions for his other sons, Geoffrey, Richard I and John. He perhaps hoped that his sons could cooperate, but this would require the younger ones to have fealty to their eldest brother. Medieval custom being what it was, though, this meant that holders of lands had to do homage to their King. This meant that whilst Young Henry would be King of England, he would also be Duke of Normandy and would have had to pay homage to the King of France. Richard would object to paying homage to Young Henry on these grounds; as he was Duke of Aquitaine he also paid homage to the King of France and was thus, so he claimed, Young Henry’s equal (Turner, 1995: 85–86). So the cultural environment placed pressures on princes towards consolidating their resources and power. The system of paying homage, where a king in one place could nonetheless be required to pay homage in another, enabled agents to work to their own interests, adapting to the environmental strictures. This also meant that there wasn’t a way for a unified state, and ideology, to operate as an interactor (Hull, 1988).

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Instead, the conditions leant towards each land, and its ruler, operating towards what would be best in the context of the local environment. Socially and institutionally there was a further reason: the lack of a central seat of power (Turner, 1995: 79). The Anglo-Norman realms provided the main financial centres, but the geographical centre was Anjou, with the other lands providing important strategic locations, as well as supplies and funding for the armies (Turner, 1995: 79). Consequently, there was no central institutional location from which to build out or that could act as an interactor across the whole territory. Instead, there were separate interactors that were replicating themselves but in different environmental conditions. The Aquitaine bishops and barons became ‘local figures working for their own interest’ (Walker, 1982, quoted in Turner, 1995: 92). Being too far away from the areas of direct rule, Richard I, and subsequently John, could not impose authority on them. The Capetian rule in France then provided alternate sources to attract the attention of the barons (Turner, 1995: 92). Philip Augustus of France was, therefore, able to use the same medieval rules to encourage John’s continental holdings to appeal to him; when John refused to submit to Philip he then had the pretext for the campaigns that saw the conquest of the Angevin territories by 1204 (Turner, 1995: 90). The Capetians were also successful in putting forward propaganda of the King as ‘Defender of the Realm’, and thus a further boost to Capetians justifications of claiming the lands that were held by the English Kings (Spiegel, 1977). The Plantagenets, in contrast ‘could devise no ideology that their diverse subjects could share to knit them together in dynastic loyalty’ (Turner, 1995: 96), for the environmental reasons outlined above. There were too many institutional and cultural factors going against it that made a more cohesive empire maladaptive for that particular time. Ultimately, the barons started to grow apart and, in particular, the English and Norman barons were growing apart. Few of the barons in England cared much to respond to Richard I and John’s summons to fight for, and then recover, the lands over the channel (Turner, 1995: 95). The effect, ultimately, was to turn towards the inward territory. With the loss of Normandy and Anjou in 1259, the elites were forced to think of themselves, and locate themselves, as being part of the English Kingdom

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(Griffiths, 2010: 253), though the Duchy of Gascony would be maintained, and several wars fought to reclaim and take territory in France by subsequent monarchs in Edward I, II and III (Prestwich, 2005: Ch. 11). England became the locus and centre of attention, and the need to justify the wars and their financing (Griffiths, 2010: 238) developed the collective institution of power, which was a single parliament rather than several regional ones (Anderson, 1974: 113–115). This helped to expand the royal court and brought greater awareness among the people towards the King and the central government, breaking some of the ties of localism (Keeney, 1947: 535). War with France then furthered the sense of being a people apart, a comparison of races (Griffiths, 2010: 253), with the attendant propaganda and appeal to a difference of feeling as Hutchinson (2017) points to. This is something that would be put to good use by Edward I in 1295, who gained money for his cause by first pretending that the King of France was intending to invade and wipe out England and then, later in 1305, pulling the same trick with William Wallace in Scotland. In both cases, language was seen as an important marker of identity (Hastings, 1997: 45–46), and as a means for pulling free men into participation in combat, which the development of the longbow also aided with (Keeney, 1947: 537–539).2 So what continuities can be drawn from this period? The first to note is the most obvious; that there did exist a state. It was not a nation-state but this does not matter so much as it was present. It is also the case that, whilst there was not horizontal national consciousness, so no modern sense of nationalism, there was perhaps a sense of shared belonging. In medieval times, the assumptions were not that, as modern nationalism would have, people were equal. Instead, the assumption, deriving from Aristotle, was that people were unequal and had different rights depending on their place in the local hierarchy. ‘Kingdoms in mediaeval Europe (not just England) were perceived by their inhabitants not merely as territories that happened to belong to kings, but as territories that also belong to their peoples…not as equal individuals but as communities of common descent and culture’ (Reynolds, 2007: 184). Consequently, there was a state and there was a burgeoning sense of identity, or perhaps more accurately there were normative and operative ideologies (Maleševi´c, 2006) that attached people to it, alongside a

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somewhat communal feeling promoted by institutions created by that state. As has been pointed out above, the state here is working as an interactor (Hull, 2001: 22). It is not a nation-state, because the environment that it is interacting with does not confer that advantage, rather it is operating with a regnal normative ideology, linking the state to the king rather than to a nation (Breuilly, 2005: 26–28). But the state as an interactor is also a replicator. Interactors, recall, engage with the environment in such a way as to achieve differential reproduction. This reproduction, or passing on, can occur in either vertical (parent to offspring) or horizontal (one person to another) forms of transmission (Hull, 2001: 34–35). Why is this important? Because it is also the case that interactors and replicators, the two can be joined, can pass on through institution to institution transmission. Institutions are a means of passing on rules, of what works and what is effective in an environment (Hodgson, 2009. In this case, it is an example of a lineage (Hull, 2001: 35) and the passing of a set of roles and practices (Runciman, 2009: 143–144) through the institution of the state. The state already had some good rules in place for being able to rule the people peacefully, so it made sense for the Normans to not disrupt them. They were, after all, a small population in a much larger one. Whilst it is the case that French and Latin became the written languages, the vernacular was allowed to continue without imposition from above. The environmental conditions, such as they were, had a selection for the continuance of the current state structure, which brought with it a selection of (Sober, 2000: 83) the vernacular language, which would develop into English, which also led to the continuing idea of ‘English’ and ‘English people’. Likewise, as the environment changes, with the focus going into the England territory the interaction with it changes. Thus there is the start of building institutions, such as parliament, where the interaction brings the royal court closer to the common people. Again, it is not a nation-state, but the adaptive changes in response to war and the loss of territory are putting in place conditions that make it a possibility. Essentially, the state has moved from being an informal empire, with lots of territories joined up across France and England, to that of a territorial state where the focus is on England. The territorial state has

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the conception of sovereignty focusing on the King rather than the people, but it is a precursor to the arrival of the nation-state (Breuilly, 1993: 75–76; Spruyt, 1994). The state is the interactor, it adjusts itself depending on the environmental changes around it as the social and cultural selection procedures take effect. One such environmental change, that would give a boost to the concept of nationalism in England, was the Reformation.

The Reformation Liah Greenfeld (1992) has given the strongest argument for the notion that nationalism came into being in sixteenth-century England, arguing that ‘in early sixteenth-century England – the word “nation” in its conciliar meaning of “an elite” was applied to the population of the country and made synonymous with the word “people”’ (Greenfeld, 1992: 6). This new sense of the word, she argues, elevated the people to that of an elite—making them a part of ‘the nation’ or the elite. It was an emergent form, not bound to a particular country or community and would only later develop its more exclusivist sense (Greenfeld, 1992: 6–7). The route to the transformation of the word came about in this manner: by the 1500s the word for ‘country’ became equated with the word for ‘nation’ and both signified ‘the people’. This was only possible due to an already existing concept of sovereignty—the 1533 Act of Appeals had defined ‘Empire’ to mean a temporally and spiritually sovereign unit, one that controlled its own territories and could have no outside, that is to say, Papal, interference or control. The English empire was thus a sovereign territory, in control of its own affairs (Greenfeld, 1992: 32–35). When Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome, it opened the door to the Reformation and Protestantism. This sanctioned the development of a separate identity and a sense of pride: through the Old Testament there was a (re)discovery of the concept of the chosen people and the links to Ancient Israel; the vernacular translation of the Bible enabled all who were literate to read it and led to an increase in literacy; in the

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vernacular translation the Bible also used the word ‘nation’ to refer to a particular ethnic group, further spreading the idea of separate ethnic groups and territories (Greenfeld, 1992: 51–54). Politically there were important changes as well. Henry VIII recalled parliament to confirm his break with Rome, which also increased his own powers and authority. However, in his attempt to assert himself, a lot of money was wasted launching attacks on France. France and Spain had built up their armies so England was now weaker than them comparatively. This forced Henry to use up a lot of the treasury’s store and he had to further fund his campaign by selling off Church estates, transferring assets and power to the gentry (Anderson, 1974: 122–125). Subsequently, with Elizabeth I, religious and national elements were put together, to promote the idea of the English as a uniquely religious nation. Repeated success against the odds, particularly with the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588,3 was seen as evidence of God’s favour. She also had a peaceful relationship with Parliament, helping dissociate the monarch from the nation and leading to a developing national culture (Greenfeld, 1992: 63–66). The military, at this point, was still weak with no real general army and reliance on militia groups (Anderson, 1974: 128–130). But, the lack of strength of the army led to the pumping of funds into the navy. Begun by Henry VII, just before 1500, by the time of Elizabeth in 1588 she could boast of having the largest navy in Europe. This was an important developmental moment, in Darwinian terms. The ships functioned both as merchant ships for trade, but could also be converted into ships ready for war. Consequently, the ability of England to wage war, and the ability of it to trade and generate income, had both been increased—factors that would be important to the empire (Anderson, 1974: 133–135). Again, there is the state functioning as an interactor. The environment does not make it feasible for England to raise the necessary armies to wage continental war, so the building of ships becomes an alternative. The building of the ships subsequently means that England can explore and also take advantage of the growing Atlantic slave trade, coming to dominate it, which would pump capital and resources back into the country to finance the industrial revolution (Williams, 1994).

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Greenfeld (1992: 74–77) sees the important moment as being the English Revolution and the resulting civil war. She argues that it split along national lines, becoming a contest between those who saw the monarch as integral to the nation and those who did not. When Cromwell triumphed, the monarchy was cast from the national picture. Nationalism was now fundamental, with parliament taking precedence even after the restoration and religion playing more of a secondary role. However, it is important to bear in mind that things need not have turned out this way. Not just as a matter of drift, whereby King Charles I could have won the civil war,4 but for the alternatives that existed to Cromwell’s rule such as was exposed with the Putney Debates. The Putney Debates saw the levellers, a political movement of free men, argue for a greater degree of popular sovereignty. In effect, what they argued for was the ‘full participation in government of freemen even the propertyless ones - as a matter of justice’ (Gleissner, 1980: 77). Interestingly, part of the argument the levellers used was that the current power distribution represented a state of slavery that stretched back to the time of the Norman Conquest. As Kumar (2003: 48–50) points out, there was not much protest against the Norman Conquest at the time; so what is occurring here is another example of Hutchinson’s culture wars (2005), where there is a reaching into the past to revive certain marginalized mythologies and ideas in aide of crafting new ideologies. However, in this case, the ideology being pushed was not adaptive. Conservatives pushed back against the levellers (Gleissner, 1980), and ultimately the New Model Army did not see the need to meet the levellers’ demands, when they could simply have theirs met by putting pressure on Parliament (Morrill, 2010: 371). In this environment, military power, uniting with the political power of the elites, held more worth than ideological power (Mann, 1986). Returning to Greenfeld, then, was there an English nationalism in the sixteenth century? Kumar (2003: ch 5)5 is particularly scathing in his assessment. He argues, convincingly, that much of what she recounts in terms of vernacular printings of the Bible was already in evidence in mainland Europe, Italy and Germany, before they occurred in England and that literacy rates in these areas were higher. Similarly, contrary to Greenfeld’s argument, the sense of patriotism that centred on the crown

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was an idea borrowed from France (as was, indeed, the idea of a chosen nation). He also points out that her argument regarding Cromwell and the civil war being nationalist in character is not correct. Religion played a heavy role, particularly with the concept of millenarianism, specifically the idea that the prophecies in the Book of Revelations were beginning to play out, having a strong grip on the mindsets of the actors (Kumar, 2003: 126). Cromwell himself, contrary to Greenfeld, identified with his religion first and England second and was primarily religiously motivated (Kumar, 2003: 129). Indeed, Cromwell’s commitment and lack of flexibility in pushing England towards the Promised Land by imposing greater religiosity is likely the reason for the republic’s collapse following his death and the recall of Charles II to the monarchy, under limiting conditions (Morrill, 2010: 375–377). The role of Protestantism in her argument, Kumar (2003: 104) points out, is circular: it requires a sense of nationalism to already exist before Protestantism comes along, otherwise Protestantism could not have expanded it. Protestantism was mostly used to promote the monarch and propaganda within the kingdom. It was used to increase the sense of regnal identity. Later on, particularly in 1640, Protestantism was used in opposition to the crown but this was a proto-nationalism, having the structure of nationalist movements but none of the content (Breuilly, 2005: 28–30). If it existed, nationalism was only at an elite level (Breuilly, 2005: 31). However, as with the medieval period, there are still some continuities that can be drawn from this. Whilst Protestantism was used to promote the idea of the monarch, it did also enable a further marker of difference between England and other territories. Similarly, the troubles of 1620 led to a promotion of political culture; people became more informed about national events and local elites were brought into the national political system. Those who could vote were beginning to make decisions with reference both to local and to national concerns and contexts (Sharpe, 1987: 118–119). Kumar (2003: 101–102) makes an important point concerning patriotism. The monarch and the state were identified as being one and people could have a sense of devotion to the monarch, certainly something that Elizabeth promoted, but this was not a national sense.

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National belonging, such as it was, was a class identity that was restricted to those who were closest around the Queen and later King. There was no popular conception of sovereignty. But, again, this needs to be looked at in the context of environmental changes. The monarch’s power is weakening; selling off of offices is, as Anderson (1974) noted weakening the monarch’s power in relation to the gentry and nobles. And, as Breuilly (2005: 31) acknowledges, there was a sense of nationhood at the elite level. It is again, not modern nationalism, but the ideology is now in existence and circulating and can, subsequently, be selected for when the environment shifts. This is a case of the interactor responding to the environment. The monarchical increase of power goes along with the religious change— the two are linked together as Henry VIII changed religion in part as a means of increasing his power and locking out the authority of Rome from having a say on his decisions. This generates a more monarchical sense of identity and devotion, one that is not as split between Rome and England. There is, consequently, a narrowing of the more global sense of obligation. There is, furthermore, a new sense of enemies. The battle with Spain, and the propaganda that surrounded it, would have helped to frame an ‘us and them’ sense; one that would feed into the capacity to see things in terms of in-groups and out-groups (Runciman, 2009: 68– 69; Hutchinson, 2017). Although likely along religious lines, the split nonetheless creates a sense of an other and a unifying identity among an oppositional group (Hastings, 1997: 57–58). Other factors that built up at this time, that would be useful for the later development of modern nationalism, where the continuance of common law across the region, the unification of language (after Cornish had died out), the fact that, geographically, England had no land borders with comparable powers (Wales was absorbed under Henry VII and Scotland largely ceased to be a major threat after 1603, though they did play a destabilizing role in the English Civil War). In addition the conflict with Spain, again, promoted both Protestantism and the emotional pull of the religion in connection with a distinct identity; after the Armada of 1588 being English was seen as being Protestant (Sharpe, 1987: 114– 117). London also expanded as a hub—news filtered out from there

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and provided a sense of expanded horizons and national consciousness (Sharpe, 1987: 117–118). Thus, whilst at this point, there is no nation-state or nationalism, more conditions have been selected for that make it a possible future adaptation, though still not necessarily an inevitable one.

From Protestants, to Imperials, to Nation: England into Britain There is, however, one other reason why Protestantism, and latterly antiCatholicism, was important: it was something that provided a unifying ground for the island formerly known as, and soon to be known again as, Britain (Kumar, 2003: 135), though these were not without their own structural and institutional differences. One of the causes of the English Civil War was Charles I’s attempt to impose religious uniformity across the three kingdoms, which stirred up a rebellious backlash from Scotland and Ireland that subsequently led to his going to the English parliament for funds, which resulted in the Civil War (Kumar, 2003: 131). What this does show is that, even before Britain was formalized, the interconnections between the countries were apparent. The dream of a union, and the founding of Britain, was an earnest one from when King James VI became King of Scotland and England, styling himself as the King of Britain. He strove hard, but in vain, to bring the people closer together as both the English and the Scottish contrived to see this as an imperial plot by the other (Kumar, 2003: 132–133). Even so, the idea of uniting the two Kingdoms under the banner of Britain was an old one, which had some level of popularity among the intellectual stratum of both England and Scotland and so the name Great Britain was in common currency at the time James used it. Charles II encouraged it further by introducing the female figure of Britannia on coins used throughout the realm in 1665 (Kumar, 2003: 133–134). So it was that when the two parliaments did unite in 1707 there was a degree of familiarity, perhaps even popularity, with the ambition and the name that would be used (Kumar, 2003: 134). There were advantages to both sides as well, of course: Scotland gained access to the English empire and

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the possibilities that afforded, particularly the slave trade and colonies which was to have a strong role in Scotland’s development (Devine, 2011), and England got a stable northern border. As Ichijo (2013: 60) argues, the Scots saw this as making the best of the case that they could, and the British framework offered a means of doing more than sticking with a Scottish framing. The Welsh were fairly easily assimilated along these lines: having long been a colony of England, whilst they retained their own language and institutional structure (Davies, 1996, 1997), they were otherwise assimilated into the main political currents and institutions of England. Indeed the fact that the Tudor kings and queens were nominally Welsh helped a great deal with this as it was seen as the fulfilment of the prophecy that one day the line of Arthur, king of the Britons, would sit rightfully on the throne again. Protestantism, for the Welsh, was seen as the restoration of the true British religion after a hiatus of some years (Kumar, 2003: 138– 139). Thus we see again the reactivation of marginalized myths, which are now capable of adapting and reproducing in a new environment (Hutchinson, 2005). Ireland was, for obvious reasons, the tricky case: being a Catholic country with an imposed rule by a country that was indulging in antiCatholic hysteria was always going to be a little problematic for greater cultural integration. Ireland was also seen as being something of a laboratory for policies that England/Britain wished to trial, not to mention the racism that was directed against the ‘inferior’ Irish (Robinson, 1983: 39). Consequently, whilst there were Irish members of Britain and the British Empire their relationship was always more ambiguous and tenuous (Colley, 1992: 327). The process of transiting to the British state also didn’t disrupt previous identity formations instead becoming a new identity that sat comfortably alongside the old ones (Colley, 1992: 315). People had multiple, overlapping identities, neither one of which required the others to be eliminated (Hutchinson, 2004). In this sense, it was a case of the normative ideology changing, from ‘England’, ‘Scotland’, etc. to ‘Britain’, but the operative ideology, the structures, staying mostly the same (Maleševi´c, 2006).

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However, the arrival of the new variant, despite being plucked from older myths and concepts, still needs to integrate and be selected for in its particular environment for it to have staying power and replicate. How it did this is part of the question that is being addressed here. Before this discussion begins, a reminder about one of the elements of the social evolutionary theory as it is being understood here. One of the components is that people have certain sets of evolved tendencies.6 Two tendencies of relevance here are: (1) a disposition towards conformity; and (2) a disposition to categorize people into in-groups and out-groups (Others) (Runciman, 2009: 66–69). The reasons for this are, evolutionarily speaking, possibly quite varied but, in general, we might say it’s because it is largely advantageous to get along with other people. That is, it is advantageous to be able to quickly and easily identify people who are likely to cooperate and reciprocate with you, as well as ways of identifying people to be wary of. Naturally, these processes are not exact (conformity can be bad if everyone adopts the same bad idea; likewise just because someone is part of your ‘in-group’ does not necessarily make them more likely to be nicer or more reciprocating people), but they are general rules that have, somewhere along the evolutionary path, worked. But note that what is the in-group and what is the out-group is changeable, depending on context, environment and other factors. As has been said these are general rules, heuristics, not absolute rules with absolute definitions about who is and who is not a member of a particular group. Genes would not, and cannot, inscribe a rule to the effect of ‘co-operate with your own race’, for such a thing doesn’t exist and it would, in any case, be a terrible rule open to cheating. What is more likely is that the rule would be something akin to ‘co-operate with those behaviourally similar to yourself ’, as this would work better at identifying likely fellow reciprocators (Queller, 1985). But that rule is flexible and expandable. The relevance here is how this helps to explain how the new identity of Britishness managed to get off the ground. One relevant characteristic is shared Protestantism. Whilst there were divisions, in sects and culture, it still provided a shared feature that could provide the foundation for an identity:

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It [Protestantism] gave the majority of men and women a sense of their place in history and as sense of worth. It allowed them to feel pride in such advantages as they genuinely did enjoy, and helped them endure when hardship and danger threatened. It gave them an identity […] [T]o the questions: Who were the British, and did they even exist? Protestantism could supply a potent and effective answer, perhaps the only satisfactory answer possible. Great Britain might be made up of three separate nations, but under God it could also be one, united nation […] Protestantism was the foundation that made the invention of Great Britain possible. (Colley, 1996: 57–58)

But for the in-group to be defined, there has to also be an out-group. And, for Britain, this wider out-group would come through two linked sources of war and empire. Regarding war, Samuel Bowles (2009) has argued that between-group competition was important for the evolution of within-group altruism. Individuals who were more altruistic towards one another would be more likely to replicate, as their group would be stronger than other competing groups. Thus war would select for groups of individuals that could cooperate over groups of individuals that would behave selfishly. Conflict sharpens the divide between groups and, to a certain extent, helps identify who is within a group and who is not. This is something that ties in with what Wimmer (2004) has argued; namely the need to define the community to which the state has responsibility and who can be involved in it. As Wimmer (2004: 30–31) notes these are negotiated compromises that feed into the creation of the nation and are constant acts of reflection and renegotiation as time goes on. So in these cases, when times of conflict occur, there can be negotiations about the boundaries of the group; particularly as leaders may wish to bring more of the populace into a fighting force. There were also other large-scale factors at work: The Seven Years War (1756–1763) ended Jacobism as a force and as a source of division between the Scottish and the English, helping to solidify the new union; the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) saw the loss of a transatlantic Anglophone connection, consequently producing a much more active English interest in their Celtic neighbours and finally, the wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France (1793–1802 and 1803–1815)

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saw an intensification of both propaganda, sharpening divisions and senses of an in-group, as well as forcing the government into recruiting more people into the military, something it had formerly been reluctant to do (Colley, 1986: 100–101). The wars with France, in particular, were important as they drew on the unifying theme of anti-Catholicism, and memories and myths of previous conflicts with Catholic states (Spain and the Armada in particular) (Kumar, 2003: 161–162). The emphasis on the Catholic element of France, even after it had ceased to be officially Catholic under the republic, was important as a unifying factor for grounding the new ideological framework: it was this that enabled, for example Scotland, which historically had alliances and friendly relations with France, to feel a sense of emotional stake in the outcome and push a closer identification with the idea of Britishness (Colley, 1992: 321). Folk memories of the threats would then persist, keeping alive the feeling of needing cohesion against a potential threat (ibid.: 323). Propaganda, which at this time was better distributed thanks to the arrival of mass printing and better mail and communication networks (Colley, 1986: 100–101), also addressed the differences in terms of political and economic structures: Protestant Britain was superior to Catholic France because it was free, independent, tolerant, liberal and open to trade; France was despotic, dogmatic and poor (Kumar, 2003: 164). As Hutchinson (2017: 57) has argued, propaganda is important in creating we-they stereotypes that work to distinguish one group from another, and its mass spread through print would help send these ideas out further to wider sections of the population. In line with Atsuko Ichijo’s (2013: 51) arguments, we can also suggest that this feeds into moments of selfreflection for the nation; that is in terms of defining what the ‘nations’ ‘values’ will be and how the people define themselves. This particular variant, for the ideology of Britain, thus becomes adaptable to the environmental change. The conditions change; the state has now expanded to encompass more people than just ‘England’, ‘Scotland’, etc. and as an interactor and replicator the state adapts to the change. Intellectuals produce the work reviving the concept of Britain and this is adopted by agents as being a rational ideology to subscribe for the benefits that it brings both to England and also the Celtic contingent. Protestantism provides an added, operative, ideological gloss, but this

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itself can fade in power as new ideological variants emerge that trump it, nationalism being one of them. An important element of this is the impact that militarism and military culture have on a people. Daniele Conversi (2007) argues that militarism can have a homogenizing effect on the nation at least as strong, if not more so, than industrialism did. The nation would adopt various rituals (flags, salutations, even elements of regimentation in education) that were normally associated and used within the military and perform them en masse. There could, therefore, be a cultural homogenization before nationalism, with nationalism being helped by, and helping, reinforce that sense of homogenization. Militarism, and increasing militarism as a result of a need to fight wars and increasingly mechanized wars on a large scale, further increases a sense of internal homogenization pushing the in-group and out-group divide. Militarism had institutional consequences as well: it led to the rationalization of state administration, both for warfighting purposes but also for tax extraction purposes (Mann, 1993: 222). As state power extended further there was a greater link-up between different regional actors and class actors, thus converting certain proto-nationalist sentiments into more nationalist sentiments (Mann, 1993: 224–225). The second factor is the economic factor, specifically the changes created by the industrial revolution: a revolution that incorporated all aspects of the Kingdom, not just England (Kumar, 2000: 590). This factor is already an important one, as it would help to promote a shared sense of in-group identity: that is every group could, at some level, point to an area (e.g. shipyards in Scotland, coal fields in the North), that had contributed and also see the links between them.7 The Revolution was also not a single ‘event’ but rather a process that happened over a long period of time (Mann, 1993: 94). The lack of economic opposition between the old regime and the new rising classes helped to craft a certain sense of shared feeling between the groups (Mann, 1993: 102). There were also the profits and money that Britain was able to invest as a result of its role in the slave trade, and the growing cotton and sugar plantations in the Americas (Inikori, 2004; Williams, 1994).

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The Celtic fringe of Britain and working-class groups enjoyed benefits as well: the ruling classes of Scotland and Wales saw the new British identity as an opportunity to be more involved and move up the social ladder, generally gaining greater parity in influence, money, jobs and titles. Similarly for much of the working-class population, there was a belief that new opportunities for work and self-betterment were provided: the English language enabled them to move around geographically and find more work and employment elsewhere (Colley, 1986: 111–112). A British ruling class coming into formation not only helped distribute the idea of Britishness, but it would find a more receptive audience also in those who saw the new identity as a means to advance themselves (Kumar, 2003: 167). It was this interaction that made the industrial revolution, and its economic advances, form something that was British, rather than being specifically identified with England, or Scotland or Wales or Ireland. Advances in communication, as a result of some of the advances of the industrial revolution, also helped spread a new sense of connection and identity. The rise of print-capitalism, within certain territorial bounds, helped create a sense of fixity to language, as well as promote a specific form of language as being the ‘universal’ one. In effect, it created a language field in which people could interact and become aware of one another (Anderson, 2006: 44–45). The economic expansion and industrial revolution assisted with this as the creation of new roads, steam trains and mail coaches allowed information to travel further as well as faster (Colley, 1986: 101–102; Kumar, 2003: 168). It also enabled more people to travel from place to place and interact with one another (Colley, 1986: 102). Increasing literacy led to an increase in more newspapers and periodicals. The new communication network that emerged created a potent means for spreading messages around a diffuse network (Mann, 1993: 104–105). The creation of a shared feeling, of a widening in-group, was a consequence of this. However, it could have turned out differently. As Walker Connor (1972: 328) points out, increasing communication can lead to ethnic conflict as groups realize their differences from one another, exacerbating inter-ethnic differences and conflict. However, the shared language, as well as the Empire and the war-time factor, helped to create a shared sense of being one people.

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The point here is that the environmental structure matters and a background of existing cohesion in one form or another is necessary for mass communication to have the effect of pulling people together, not the generator of that cohesion in the first place (Smith, 1981: 49). The importance of this for spreading cultural ideas cannot be underestimated: people learn new things through imitation of what they see and hear and respond to (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 11–13, 44–45). The wider the communication network the wider the scope is for learning. The third important factor that led to the creation of a British national consciousness was imperialism, specifically the British Empire. The Empire grew out of the slave trade, which initially began when the Portuguese in the fifteenth century sailed down the Atlantic coast of Africa to find access to gold and spices (Walvin, 2019: Ch. 1). As the trade began, the discovery of the Americas and its resources, soon led to an enormous and increasing demand for African slaves to work the land and soon more or less every European power was involved, and it wasn’t long until cities like Bristol, Liverpool, London and, eventually Glasgow when Scotland joined the union grew wealthier for their part in the trade (Walvin, 2019: Ch. 1; Williams, 1994). Theories of race, in some forms, to distinguish between superior European groups and inferior ones had always been part of Christendom, hence the strong distinction between the English and the Irish (Robinson, 1983: Ch. 1, 39). When the Americas were first colonized, initially slaves to work were drawn from the Native American populations, and then indentured servants were taken from Europe, some convicts, some poor people offered ‘free’ passage if they worked for a certain number of years (Williams, 1994: 9). Ultimately, however, the labour required proved to be greater than could be provided by Native Americans and white Europeans, so the triangular trade developed to acquire African slaves, primarily drawn from West Africa (Williams, 1994: Ch. 2). As the trade grew, various ideas sprung up to justify it, that separated the (white) Europeans from the black Africans, with the popular theory of the time being the notion that Africans were the ‘cursed’ descendants of Ham and therefore inferior (Kendi, 2017: 31). As a result, notions of difference were already percolating and being justified. These were further elements and environmental pressures that created space

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for strengthening in-group and out-group identifications and selected for ideological and racial notions of difference between whites (civilized people who could not be enslaved) and everyone else (barbarians who could). The rivalries between the European powers, for control of the trade as well as colonies, with significant conflicts being fought between France and Britain over Caribbean sugar plantations (Williams, 1994: 146–148). This, then, would have helped to create an environment where a selection for a variant more akin to nationalism, looking inward to a territory, would become more adaptable than a more European wide, or civilizational, variant. Empires can often help promote ethnic identities as well, creating further differentiation (Darwin, 2010).8 A significant environmental change that made the variant for British nationalism more adaptive was the loss of the North American colonies as a result of the American Revolution. This would turn a chunk of the empire’s emphasis away from the West towards the East. This both encouraged a feeling of superiority and difference but also, internally, a feeling of similarity. Whatever the ethnic backgrounds of the people of Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland (to an extent) they could recognize a similarity between themselves in contrast to the larger, mainly Asian, empire that they were in possession of (Colley, 1992: 324–325). There is another sense in which the empire was important and it is through Krishan Kumar’s (2000) concept of ‘imperial’ or ‘missionary’ nationalism. Kumar’s basic point is that, whilst there is, at least initially, a tension between empire and nation, they are not necessarily always divided. National identity and nationalism are not necessarily the same thing and the two can be separated. So whilst nationalism and empires are opposed, national identity and empire can link up fairly well with one another (Kumar, 2000: 578–579). The key element of imperial nationalism is ‘the attachment of a dominant or core ethnic group to a state entity that conceives itself as dedicated to some large cause or purpose, religious, cultural, or political’ (Kumar, 2000: 580). This is important, not just because it provides a binding agent for the group concerned but also because it can build on the prior elements that are already in a particular cultural array. There was, already, an existing imperial mythology and tradition in England,

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brought in by the Normans (Hastings, 1997: 44–45), that could be ‘rediscovered’ and used (Hutchinson, 2005: 7) and England went on to form the core ethnic group of Britain (Hastings, 1997: 67). The new structures and institution of the United Kingdom also meant that the Scottish, Welsh and, to a certain extent, Irish also had a greater stake in accepting the British identity and portraying themselves as such: it meant that they could move further up the ladder of society (Colley, 1986). Another aspect that works in this scenario is also the prevalent feeling of a sense of destiny or being a chosen group (Hastings, 1999; Smith, 1992). Religion, and in particular for Britain Protestantism, provides a way of mythologizing a past and mythologizing a sense of threat to a particular group, helping to craft the ‘us vs them’ dynamic (Hastings, 1997: 188–189, 190–191). Religion helped to provide the notion of a group having a chosen and special status as against others; that it had a mission to perform in the world, some task that it was required to do (Hastings, 1997: 196–197; Greenfeld, 1992). Imperial nationalism builds on this: it keeps the sense of specialness and sense of being a chosen group with a mission but changes the nature of the mission. In some ways this was a product of environmental changes: as the British Empire expanded the anti-Catholicism aspect was less needed as a means of integrating disparate people’s and groups into the empire, indeed promoting it could be detrimental (Hastings, 1997: 65). New challenges existed for Britain in the form of the United States, Germany and Japan, none of which were anti-Protestant, alongside a general trend towards secularization. Consequently, the sense of the mission changed: away from spreading Protestantism and fighting Catholics and towards spreading the ‘civilizational’ mission, spreading ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ to those who did not have it—the fabled ‘white man’s burden’ (Kumar, 2000: 590–591). These three factors together—militarism, industrialization, and empire—fostered a sense of national consciousness, building on some of the prior formations and altering them as the environment changed. The general idea of a special destiny and chosen group stayed, but the specifics of what they meant altered. A series of cumulative steps happened over time, as intellectuals, leaders and people, adapted to fit the changing institutional, social and world environment around them. The changes

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were in small steps, building up (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 50–54), but when the time came the pressure of the build-up would lead, eventually, to a rapid (in historical time) change and adoption of new ideologies. This is why it can, on the face of it, appear that nationalism and national identity was always there: the rapidity of the change effaces the previous conceptions.

Notes 1. Danelaw was a region of the North of England that was under Danish rule from about the ninth century up until just after the Norman Conquest. Its influence was still largely felt in the customs of the region. 2. We can note a comparison here with the role the gun would play in Japan, in enabling the expansion of the military for similar reasons. 3. It did not, essentially, matter that the Armada, only one of several attempts, was mostly destroyed by weather before a shot was ever fired in anger. Propaganda did the rest of the work though, again, we can note a similarity here between intervention by the elements being interpreted as divine protection, and the kamikaze wind in the case of Japan, which was similarly interpreted (if it even happened at all). 4. Although as Morrill (2010: 365) points out there were many structural factors that made parliaments victory close to inevitable. 5. Albeit, it’s worth noting that he has mellowed somewhat on the argument in a later piece (Kumar, 2010). 6. Here I’ll be speaking of tendencies rather than nature. For good or ill ‘nature’ tends to have restrictive connotations attached to it, which imply that everyone is always like this across all times. Tendencies on the other hand are somewhat looser; it means more that ‘generally speaking most people, the majority of the time, in situations like this will behave according to these dispositions, other things being equal’, rather than ‘people always do this, have this need, behave this way’, etc. 7. There were also the riches and learning from the colonies that were important in this regard. 8. The argument here is, I admit, somewhat sketchy and a fuller development is needed. Whilst I think Colley is correct in suggesting that contact with other civilizations led to an erasing of difference between groups within Britain, there is a question of what role contact with African civilisations,

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and the slave trade, played in this as well. I don’t at present have a strong answer to this, beyond the sketch given in this paragraph, but it is an area I am doing further research and exploration on.

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities (2nd ed.). Verso. Anderson, P. (1974). Lineages of the absolutist state. New Left Books. Bowles, S. (2009). Did warfare among ancestral hunter-gatherers affect the evolution of human social behaviors’. Science, 324, 1293–1298. Breuilly, J. (1993). Nationalism and the state. Manchester University Press. Breuilly, J. (2005). Dating the nation: How old is an old nation? In A. Ichijo & G. Uzelac (Eds.), When is the nation? Towards an understanding of theories of nationalism. Routledge. Colley, L. (1986). Whose nation? Class and national consciousness in Britain 1750–1830. Past and Present, 113(1), 97–117. Colley, L. (1992). Britishness and otherness: An argument. Journal of British Studies, 31(4), 309–329. Colley, L. (1996). Britons: Forging the nation 1707–1837 . Vintage. Connor, W. (1972). Nation-building or nation-destroying? World Politics, 24 (3), 319–355. Conversi, D. (2007). Homogenisation, nationalism and war: Should we still read Ernest Gellner? Nations and Nationalism, 13(3), 371–394. Darwin, J. (2010). Empire and ethnicity. Nations and Nationalism, 16 (3), 383– 401. Davies, R. R. (1996). The people’s of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400. III. Laws and customs. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 , 1–23. Davies, R. R. (1997). The people’s of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400. IV. Language and historical mythology. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 7 , 1–24. Devine, T. M. (2011). Did slavery make Scotia great? Britain and the World, 4 (1), 40–64. Foot, S. (1996). The making of Angelcynn: English identity before the Norman conquest. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 , 25–49. Gleissner, R. A. (1980) The levellers and natural law: The Putney debates of 1647. Journal of British Studies, 20 (1), 74–89.

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Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five roads to modernity. Harvard University Press. Griffiths, R. A. (2010). The later Middle Ages (1290–1485). In K. O. Morgan (Ed.), The Oxford history of Britain. Oxford University Press. Hastings, A. (1997). The construction of nationhood: Ethnicity, religion and nationalism. Cambridge University Press. Hastings, A. (1999). Special people’s. Nations and Nationalism, 5 (3), 381–396. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality (2nd ed.). Canto. Hodgson, G. M. (2009). Agency, institutions, and Darwinism in evolutionary economic geography. Economic Geography, 85 (2), 167–173. Horsman, R. (1976). Origins of racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850. Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (3), 387–410. Hull, D. L. (1988). Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. The University of Chicago Press. Hull, D. L. (2001). Science and selection: Essays on biological evolution and the philosophy of science. Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson, J. (2004). Myth against myth: The nation as ethnic overlay. Nations and Nationalism, 10 (1/2), 109–123. Hutchinson, J. (2005). Nations as zones of conflict. Sage. Hutchinson, J. (2017). Nationalism and war. Oxford University Press. Ichijo, A. (2013). Nationalism and multiple modernities: Europe and beyond . Palgrave Macmillan. Inikoli, J. E. (2004). Slavery and the development of industrial capitalism in England. In B. L. Solow & S. L. Engerman (Eds.), British capitalism and Caribbean slavery: The legacy of Eric Williams. Cambridge University Press. Keeney, B. (1947). Military service and the development of nationalism in England, 1272–1327. Speculum, 22(4), 534–549. Kendi, I. X. (2017). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America (Kindle). The Bodley Head. Kumar, K. (2000). Nation and empire: English and British national identity in comparative perspective. Theory and Society, 29 (5), 575–608. Kumar, K. (2003). The making of English national identity. Cambridge University Press. Kumar, K. (2010). Nation-states as empires, empires as nation-states: Two principles, one practice? Theory and Society, 39 (2), 119–143. La Patourel, J. (1965). The Plantagenet dominions. History, 50 (170), 289–308. La Patourel, J. (1984). Angevin succession and the Angevin empire. In M. Jones (Ed.), Feudal empires: Norman and Plantagenet. The Hambledon Press.

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Maleševi´c, S. (2006). Identity as ideology: Understanding ethnicity and nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Mann, M. (1986). The sources of social power, volume I: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge University Press. Mann, M. (1993). The sources of social power, volume II: The rise of classes and nation-states, 1760–1914. Cambridge University Press. Morrill, J. (2010). The Stuarts (1603–1688). In K. O. Morgan (Ed.), The Oxford history of Britain. Oxford University Press. Prestwich, M. (2005). Plantagenet England: 1225–1360. Clarendon Press. Queller, D. C. (1985). Kinship, reciprocity and synergism in the evolution of social behaviour. Nature, 318, 366–367. Reynolds, S. (2007). Medievalist reflections on The Making of English National Identity. Nations and Nationalism, 13(2), 182–186. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press. Robinson, C. J. (1983). Black Marxism: The making of the black radical tradition. The University of North Carolina Press. Runciman, W. G. (2009). The theory of cultural and social selection. Cambridge University Press. Sharpe, J. A. (1987). Early modern England: A social history, 1550–1760. Edward Arnold. Smith, A. D. (1981). War and ethnicity: The role of warfare in the formation, self-images and cohesion of ethnic communities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4 (4), 375–397. Smith, A. D. (1992). Chosen peoples: Why ethnic groups survive. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15 (3), 436–456. Sober, E. (2000). Philosophy of biology (2nd ed.). West View Press. Spiegel, G. M. (1977). ‘Defense of the realm’: Evolution of a Capetian propaganda slogan. Journal of Medieval History, 3(2), 115–133. Spruyt, H. (1994). The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton University Press. Turner, R. V. (1995). The problem of survival for the Angevin “empire”: Henry II’s and his sons’ vision versus twelfth-century realities. The American Historical Review, 100 (1), 78–96. Walvin, J. (2019). Freedom: The overthrow of the slave empires (Kindle). Robinson. Williams, E. (1994 [1944]). Capitalism and slavery. The University of North Carolina Press. Wimmer, A. (2004). Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict: Shadows of modernity. Cambridge University Press.

7 Fukoku Kyohei: ¯ Nationalism in Japan

Introduction The conventional story of Japan’s modernization goes like this: On 8 July 1843, after near enough two-hundred years of isolation, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry and his four black ships, so named for the smoke billowing from their chimneys, sailed into Edo bay. (Buruma, 2003: 1)

The people in the city, witnessing the arrival, panicked: commodities were bought in a rush, women and children were evacuated, and samurai farcically raced around the city trying to find weapons and armour. Some ignored the decrees issued to stay indoors and took boats out to get a look at these strange people who had arrived in their coal-powered ships (Tipton, 2002: 24). Perry carried a letter from President Millard Fillmore, demanding that it be handed to the Emperor of Japan, requesting the opening of the country, to allow US ships to dock at ports for refuelling and trade (Buruma, 2003: 1–2). Perry promised to return, and so he did a year © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_7

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later with eight ships instead of four. His demand was met and Perry had opened Japan (Tipton, 2002: 26). Over the coming years the formerly isolated hermit kingdom would rapidly modernize, the sh¯ogun was overthrown and the Emperor was placed at the head of a new, constitutional government, that would eventually descend into fascism and ultra-nationalism that led to World War II and Japan’s eventual defeat. But the conventional story misses a lot of key beats and actualities. As Ikegami (1995: 187) points out, Japan’s modernization has typically been seen as a top-down authoritarian model of development, in contrast to more democratic models. However, this obscures how grassroots organizations and popular pressure were involved in the creation of Japan’s modernization/Westernization, and the constraints that existed on what the Japanese state could do (Ikegami, 1995). In addition, Japan was not exactly the completely isolated hermit kingdom it has been portrayed as. Whilst Perry’s arrival may have frightened the commoners and samurai, who were largely kept in the dark about foreign affairs, it came as no surprise to Japan’s ruling elite, the bakufu. Indeed the sh¯ogun and his advisers knew more about America than the American’s did about Japan, possessing detailed maps of the United States and knowledge of their political institutions (Buruma, 2003: 5). This was certainly more than Perry knew about Japan’s institutions, as he and his men were unaware that the Emperor was a remote figure in Kyoto, and since about 1200 had been nothing more than the symbolic and spiritual leader. Military and political affairs were handled by the sh¯ogun, resident in Edo (now Tokyo). This chapter will examine the development of Japan’s modernization and creation of a nation-state from the perspective of Darwinian social evolutionary theory. The main thrust of this will be that social evolutionary theory can provide a framework of bringing together the various data on Japan’s transition and help to understand why the transition occurred in the manner it did. In light of this, the focus will be on the development of Japanese nationalism, through the Meiji revolution to the early Showa period. This is inextricably tied up with other aspects of Japans’ development (industrialization and imperialism) and part of the use of the social evolutionary perspective will be in showing why they

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are bound up together. Like the previous chapter on the development of nationalism in England, the wider aim of this chapter is to be a test case and proving ground for the theory of social evolution and its ability to understand comparative cases in sociology. The first section comprises a brief history of Japan, giving the necessary background detail for the study; the second will look at Tokugawa Japan and ask why nationalism and industrialisation did not emerge in this period despite many preconditions being in place; and then the final section looks at Meiji Japan, and the continuity between elements of the Tokugawa and the new order, and why the environmental constraints led to adaptations of institutions, such as the prominence of the emperor and the fall of the samurai. Both of the latter sections will be from the perspective of social evolutionary theory. A final note: Japanese names are normally done with the family name first and the given name second (i.e. in Tokugawa Ieyasu, Tokugawa is the family name and Ieyasu is the given name). The chapter will stick to this convention except for the bibliography, which for ease of reference will follow the Western convention.

Japan: A Brief History Japan is comprised of four major islands: Honsh¯u; Shikoku; Ky¯ush¯u; and Hokkaid¯o. Immediately we encounter a problem here; namely that Hokkaid¯o was not officially part of Japan until the late nineteenth century (Lehman, 1982: 117), being colonized in 1870 as part of the Meiji government’s plans (Young, 1998: 96). Previously it had been the Matsume domain, where the Tokugawa bakufu kept a trading outpost but was otherwise recognized as being, culturally and politically, the territory of the Ainu1 (Tipton, 2002: 64). There were other contested islands, notably the Ry¯uky¯u Islands to the south, which were conquered in 1609 by Satsuma but were not officially incorporated into Japan until 1879 when they became the Okinawa prefecture (Lehman, 1982: 117–118). Even then, they were still seen as being separate and different from Japan, albeit with the potential to ‘become’ Japanese (Tipton, 2002: 63–64). Most

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of the action was concentrated on Honsh¯u, a long strip of land where people were rarely more than 100 miles from the sea (Clements, 2010: 1). Looking at a world map might invite an immediate, and superficial, comparison with England; namely that both are islands next to larger continental neighbours. This is true, but it misses an important detail: the coast of England is thirty kilometres from France, whereas Japan is 200 kilometres from the Korean peninsula (Andressen, 2002: 16). This distance meant that Japan’s importing of ideas, cultural practices and technology from the mainland came at a relatively even pace and, more importantly, the elites could be selective of what they took in and adapt them to fit local cultural practices (Andressen, 2002: 16). These importations themselves would often come through already filtered via Korea, not directly from China (Walthall, 2006: 11). Already we can see one important future detail here; namely that Japanese elites had a history and culture of importing outside ideas and adapting them to suit their purposes. An ability to recognize when others have ideas that are perhaps better than the local ones and have no issue with importing them in, as well as altering them so that they would be less disruptive to the locality, is an important trait that would come in handy later when the West arrived (Arnason, 2002a: 88).2 The first state in Japan emerged as the Yamato state in the seventeenth century (Anderson, 1974: 435). The Yamato imported ideas on the state and how to organize it from the Tang in China, creating a Confucian style bureaucracy and mixing it with a Buddhist philosophy of governance. Power became centred on the court at Nara, but was not centralized, with local lords holding most of the power over their regions. Conflicts between the ruler and the aristocratic bureaucracy would eventually see the court move, in 794, to Heian-ky¯o, later Kyoto, where it remained until 1868 (Walthall, 2006: 14–17). A split between a central, but not centralized, authority and autonomy of local lords is a recurrent and important one in Japan’s institutional history pre-Meiji (Berry, 1986; Ravina, 1995). It was also at this time that the term ‘Japan’ first appears in the records. Prince Sh¯otoku, a legendary figure in Japan, albeit one whose reasons for legendariness have changed with national narratives (cf. Ito, 1998), sent a letter to the Emperor Tang in 645 A.D. on behalf of the Japanese Emperor. In it, he referred to ‘Japan’, (Nihon) meaning

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‘the land where the sun rises’ (as opposed to China, ‘the land where the sun sets’). This was intended to be insulting, not a geographical description, and was understood as such. But the ‘Japan’ here referred not to the country, or the people, but rather to the court (Doak, 2007: 37–38). It is here, as well, that we have the origin of the term ‘tenn¯o ’ which is used for the Japanese Emperor. Meaning ‘heavenly monarch’, or ‘one of heaven’ it was first used by Jit¯o, the wife of the deceased ruler Tenmu. She claimed that Tenmu was a descendant of the sun goddess, Amaterasu, thus projecting her husband’s, and now her, rule into mythic creation by claiming the emperor to be a divine being (Walthall, 2006: 15). Yamato rule started to collapse when they allowed their control outside the capital to weaken. Bogged down in internal politics and religious ceremonies, the government became increasingly withdrawn such that the regions were beset with violence and unrest (Walthall, 2006: ch 2). It is at this stage that another major player in Japanese history first properly emerges onto the scene: the samurai (Anderson, 1974: 436). The origins of the samurai, the word deriving from saburahi meaning ‘to serve’ or ‘servant’ (Andressen, 2002: 49), as a distinct warrior class is not well known, with a variety of competing theories as to their origins. A compelling view is that they emerged from a set of professional warriors during the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE), that were never really replaced by the conscript army introduced by the Yamato (Walthall, 2006: 46–48). This tarries with the view that the samurai formed most of their customs and fighting culture through the fights to suppress the Emishi (the ‘barbarians’ in Honsh¯u), and from whom they adopted many practices (the katana, with its distinct curved blade, for one), during the earlier period of Yamato rule. The samurai then grew as a power as the court withdrew from the regional affairs (Clements, 2010: 19–23). As the Yamato system broke down the samurai were brought in to intervene in court affairs on behalf of cliques, which eventually led to a civil war. At the end of it, in 1185, Minamoto Yoritomo was victorious and had himself declared sh¯ogun, or ‘barbarian suppressing general’, an appointment by the emperor that was normally temporary but, in this case, was permanent. Yoritomo, and the succeeding sh¯oguns, now had the right to rule in the emperor’s name (Clements, 2010: 120). The monarchy

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became a diminished figure: it retained prestige and was used to confer legitimacy on Yoritomo, but its sovereignty was compromised (Walthall, 2006: 49–51). The last traces of its autonomy would disappear when, after the collapse of the Kamakura Sh¯ogunate in the thirteenth century in part due to the Mongol attacks, the Ashikaga Sh¯ogunate moved into Kyoto and relegated the imperial court to a purely ceremonial role (Anderson, 1974: 437–438). However, as a result of this, the shogun and the emperor were now entwined with one another. Despite attempts, both by the emperor and then the Ashikaga Sh¯ogunate, to get rid of the other institution and consolidate power in their own hands neither was successful (Arnason, 2002b: 107–109). The sh¯ogun needed the emperor to confer legitimacy on his rule—he only had the power to rule at the behest of the emperor, who conferred the title on him. The emperor, meanwhile, needed the sh¯ogun to use the military to bring order to the country. In effect, although the real power rested with the sh¯ogun who made the decisions, the emperor’s existence, and the source of ideological power, placed constraints and parameters on what the sh¯ogun could do in terms of state formation (Arnason, 2002c: 130–131). The Ashikaga system eventually fell apart when feuding families took ¯ to the field in the Onin War lasting from 1467–1477. This initiated the Sengoku period, or the Warring States period, which lasted from 1467–1568. This was largely fuelled by local lords, the daimyo, acquiring regional power and were well supported by their samurai—who swore allegiance to them rather than the emperor. To protect themselves the daimy¯o would build large castles, which became hubs of commercial activity (Andresson, 2002: 57–60). This was part of the process that would lead to Japan having a comparatively high degree of urbanization during the Tokugawa time (Pratt, 2009: 87–88), as the Tokugawa sh¯ogun mandated that the samurai had to be confined to the castles, keeping them away from the land (Benesch, 2018: 111). The civil war eventually ended with the arrival of Japan’s three unifiers: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga initially drove the Ashikaga Sh¯ogun out of Kyoto in 1571. After Nobunaga was killed his conquest was completed by his friend, Toyotomi, who used muskets and canons, brought in by the Portuguese,

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to achieve this, largely uniting the country under him by 1590. He maintained, as the Ashikaga before him did, the Imperial house as a religious symbol of legitimacy. Toyotomi died in 1597, following a failed invasion of Korea, and was succeeded by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who defeated his rivals to claim the title of sh¯ogun in 1600. After suppressing a failed rebellion from a Shimabara Christian sect, in 1637, he imposed peace on the land and Japan was not to suffer another major military conflict for 200 years (Anderson, 1974: 440–441; Walthall, 2006: 85–88).

Tokugawa Japan—Why No Nationalism Tokugawa Japan is frequently cited as a period wherein Japan was closed off from the outside world: a hermit kingdom. As alluded to above, this is not entirely true. Japan was closed off to a degree, but never completely. The reasons for the closing down was to avoid being subservient in a Sino-centric world, as well as maintain national security against the threat posed by Catholic missionaries, who were successfully bringing Christianity into the country and destabilizing its social structure (Pratt, 2009: 86–87). And, as will be discussed shortly, there were attempts at colonization, particularly of Taiwan, during the early Tokugawa time (Clulow, 2010; Turnbull, 2010). Trade was to continue throughout the period with Korea and with the Dutch, stationed on a man-made island built in Nagasaki bay, who also provided channels of information and knowledge to the Western world (Brown, 2009: 72; Pratt, 2009: 87). The channel of information being open was, according to Lü (1985: 154), one of the key differences is why Japan was able to maintain its relative independence and modernize when the West arrived, as opposed to China which became a semi-colony. The diffusion of Western learning allowed Japan to gain knowledge that enabled it to modernize rapidly, and altered its vision of the country and the world, developing a strain of progressive thought, in philosophy and science, and challenge traditional ideas that did not occur comparably in China until much later (Lü, 1985: 155–156). A first question to address here is what the actual structure of Tokugawa Japan was, and why was that environment not conducive to the

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development of national identity? These are important questions to understand as the Tokugawa conditions were important for shaping the modernization process under Meji Japan. The fall of the Tokugawa is comprehensible, but we do also need to be careful, particularly in a Darwinian conception, to not treat it as inevitable (Tipton, 2002: 1). The sh¯ogun ‘imposed unity on Japan, without centralism’ (Anderson, 1974: 442). This is to do with how the society was structured. The sh¯ogun was the most powerful of the daimy¯o, and the daimy¯o were subservient to him. As part of the system of control, there was the Sankin-k¯otai system, wherein the sh¯ogun monopolized control over foreign affairs and required that the daimy¯o have a system of alternate attendance at his residence. The daimy¯o were required to leave family members at Edo (now Tokyo) effectively as hostages so that the sh¯ogun could maintain control over them. However, the sh¯ogun did not collect revenue from the daimy¯o; the sh¯ogun only collected his revenue from his own lands, much larger than other daimy¯o to be sure, but there was no central taxation or revenue collecting powers (Tipton, 2002: 1–3). So, as Anderson points out, Japan had a unity, with an authority but it was not a centralized system. Indeed the daimy¯o themselves had a certain amount of autonomy. They raised revenue from their lands and were able to implement their own domestic policies. They ‘held formidable political power. The daimy¯o maintained independent standing armies, wrote their own legal codes, set and collected their own taxes, controlled and policed their own borders’ (Ravina, 1995: 1000). ‘Power was concentrated…in the collective body of the daimy¯o’ (Berry, 1986: 240). Indeed, the name given to the regions within Japan reinforced this sense of autonomy. They were referred to as kokka, meaning ‘state’ and not the term han (domain) which would have implied the fealty to a higher lord (Ravina, 1995: 999). Kokka itself is an ambiguous term; literally, it means ‘house of the country’ and is used to mean state, but it does not mean the absolute sovereignty that we might associate with the modern state. The actual term implies something looser and can refer to both the sh¯ogun and a daimy¯o, or an abstract political institution (Ravina, 1995: 1005). The sh¯ogun himself was also not a power completely on his own. As mentioned the position of sh¯ogun was one appointed by the emperor,

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so the sh¯ogun relied on the emperor to give his position legitimacy even though the emperor had no effective choice in the matter. But the emperor’s status as a symbol was such that no sh¯ogun could do away with the institution and the sh¯ogun and his supporters were loath to assert his supremacy over the emperor in public, even if it was admitted in private (Ravina, 1995: 1002). The sh¯ogun’s authority was also created in part by the daimy¯o. By swearing fealty to the sh¯ogun they thus granted the sh¯ogun his power, and they, in turn, had their holdings legitimized by the sh¯ogun’s authority (Ravina, 1995: 1008). The sh¯ogunate ‘existed in ideological interdependence with both the imperial house and rival warlords’ (Ravina, 1995: 1003). It is this dynamic that Arnason (2002b: 110– 111) describes that meant that neither the sh¯ogunate nor the imperial court could get rid of each other; the sh¯ogun needed the emperor for the symbolic and ideological legitimacy that he conveyed, and the emperor needed the sh¯ogun for the political and military power he wielded to maintain order in the land. But sh¯ogun had no monopoly on military force. Their interventions in matters of economics were sporadic and do not indicate a national policy of any form (Berry, 1986: 241). The only arena in which there was a powerful intervention on behalf of the sh¯ogun was in the form of peacekeeping; weapons were banned from all those except the samurai, private alliances were forbidden and the samurai were contained within castles within domains. This had the effect of cutting off the samurai from the land, preventing them from forming any attachments to villagers or the land, or subordinate vassals. The daimy¯o were denied the right of private redress: the sh¯ogun would monopolize the right to go to war as a means of preserving peace. This was largely a result of the chaotic civil war. Peace was a high priority as a means of avoiding returning to such a scenario (Berry, 1986: 242–245). Each domain was permitted only one castle, into which all the samurai were required to live and was the residence of the daimyo and the daimy¯o could not move their forces across borders without the authority of the sh¯ogun (Clements, 2010: 231–232). This was part of the system of control over the daimyo: by not allowing them to move across borders without the sh¯ogun’s consent it meant that they would find it hard to build up private alliances that could challenge the sh¯ogunate rule. Equally placing everyone in a single castle made it

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easier to have a target to attack should any rebellion happen. Or at least in theory. A question to address at this stage is thus: why did nationalism not emerge at this particular point in Japanese history? There are certainly reasons why it could have done. The Sankin-k¯otai policy, where the daimy¯o had to alternate attendance at Edo, could have created a sense of national feeling, as it likely created a sense of shared belonging at least at an elite level. Daimy¯o would interact with one another; they were able to discuss national administration and learn successful strategies from one another and implement them at home. In addition, getting to Edo necessitated the building of large networks of roads, down which the daimy¯o and their entourage would travel. These roads were not, of course, just used by the daimy¯o. Though the movement of people was heavily policed, the movement of ideas, gossip and discussion was harder to control and news would often travel down the roads, linking people together and providing them with a sense of connection to others (Brown, 2009: 76–77). To fund these often expensive transits, a national market originated at Osaka, accepting rice in kind for money, widening awareness. Through such markets, the movement of goods people, ideas and fashions and so on were facilitated (Brown, 2009: 77). Features were thus there for the generation of Benedict Anderson’s (2006) ‘imagined community’, with networks connecting disparate parts of the country and joining people together with the information. There was also the Kokugaku School, which began in the mideighteenth century (Ichijo, 2020, 2013: chapter 5). The Kokugaku sought to go against the Confucian orthodoxy implemented by the Tokugawa, which the scholars associated with it saw as being the reason for the country being mired in decline (Ichijo, 2013: 93). What followed was, particularly under Mootori Norinaga, an exploration of past traditions of Japan, before the influence of Confucianism, to find the ‘true heart’, with the argument that returning to this would return to a time of direct conversance with nature and so removed the influence of China that had corrupted the Japanese (Ichijo, 2013: 94–95). As Ichijo (2013: 96) argues, this is an example of a ‘modern endeavour’, with the scholars using reflexivity to try and arrive at a solution to perceived social ills.

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During the Tokugawa period, Japan also experienced protoindustrialization (Howell, 1992). Proto-industrialization, as the name implies, is used to describe the development ‘of rural regions in which a large part of the population lived entirely or to a considerable extent from industrial mass production for inter-regional and international markets’ (Kriedte et al., 1981: 6, quoted in Howell, 1992: 269). Howell (1992) describes how in certain regions, focussing on the Matsume domain (the Japanese part of Hokkaid¯o before Hokkaid¯o was absorbed) there was a focus on the development of herring-meat fertilizer from the fisheries, with the techniques and dynamics of the industry changing in response to trade with Honsh¯u (Howell, 1992: 271–275). These developments happened largely independently of the West and occurred to varying degrees across many industries and regions within Japan. There were a few attempts at colonizing Taiwan as well (Clulow, 2010; Turnbull, 2010). After Hideyori failed to conquer Korea, as a first step to conquering China, Tokugawa Ieyasu was left to repair the relationship with Korea, whilst also attempting to avoid becoming a tributary to China (Turnbull, 2010: 6). Initially, two expeditions were launched in 1609 and 1616; the 1609 expedition was sanctioned by the Tokugawa and was seen as a way of attempting to normalize relations with Ming China (Turnbull, 2010: 7–8). The second, in 1616, was largely a private affair of a Christian merchant, Murayam T¯oan, who had fallen out of favour with the Tokugawa (Turnbull, 2010: 9). Both expeditions were largely failures in their stated aims. Overall, however, the Tokugawa did not show much interest in colonization on the European model. One aspect was that overseas trade would potentially bring more Christian influence into the country, which the elites were determined to keep out, and there was little interest in overseas trade as the agricultural land largely produced everything Japan wanted (Clulow, 2010: 27). What did interest the Tokugawa was the prospect of ‘embassies’, where foreign emissaries would be paraded in a grand ceremony to pay homage to the sh¯ogun and thus shore up political legitimacy (Clulow, 2010: 29). These were the grounds on which Suetsugu Heiz¯o argued for the colonization of Taiwan, to turn it into a vassal state. In reality, Heiz¯o was motivated by a desire to turn Taiwan into a trading hub, where Japanese silver could

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be traded for Chinese silk, a trade that was threatened by the arrival of the Dutch East India Company on the island (Clulow, 2010: 32). Ultimately, Heiz¯o failed3 as the Ry¯uky¯u Islands provided enough for the embassies and there was no further ambition to colonize. As Clulow (2010: 38–39) argues, this limitation indicates why Japan was so uninterested in overseas expansion. Whereas European merchants, such as Hakluyt, could present the possibility of numerous benefits to sponsors to argue for colonization, expansion and trade, Heiz¯o could only use the argument for an embassy. There was no logic or desire for expansion. However, Heiz¯o’s expedition would form part of the mythic overlaying and cultural narratives that Hutchinson (2004, 2005) refers to, and when Japan needed justifications to expand in the Meiji era, the story of Heiz¯o and the other expeditions would duly be revived and celebrated (Clulow, 2010: 39). The environmental change meant there was greater selective pressure for narratives depicting colonization and expansion as part of Japanese national identity. Indeed, much of the history in the Tokugawa period would become a repository of tropes, identities and histories that could be revived and used in later times to shore up support and identity (Gluck, 1998). Farming structures also underwent some development. Changes in practices towards more intensive farming made large plots inefficient, so individual families worked on smaller plots and sold their surplus to the market. Industries for textiles also emerged and servants were let go and became small-holders. Farmers were able to earn income from sources outside of farming, as the inefficiency of Tokugawa taxation meant they could keep more of their surplus. The economic changes brought with them social changes. Whilst the social hierarchy still stood, there were noticeable differences. Apart from the main hubs of Edo, Kyoto and ¯ Osaka towns struggled and stagnated and the samurai, forbidden from holding jobs unbefitting of their status, also struggled to survive on their stipends (Pratt, 2009: 88–89). Merchants benefitted hugely as well. The heavy urbanization of the population, into castle towns, meant that merchants had markets to sell into. In addition, the alternate attendance system led to many stations and houses being constructed along the roads in order to house people. The nouveau riche (or ch¯onin) brought in

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different cultural elements and gave support to artists (Tipton, 2002: 6– 8). Indeed this was one of the reasons that eventually drove the samurai to their revolutionary action; seeing merchants with more wealth than them, flaunting it with silks and clothes, whilst the samurai, public servants devoted to protecting the country, had to languish, struggle and pawn family heirlooms, was infuriating as it seemed to reverse social status and justice (Smith, 1961: 92–93) even though the samurai appropriated many of the cultural forms and entertainments that the populace indulged in, despite sh¯ogunal edicts forbidding them from doing so (Tipton, 2002: 9). Against the conception of the Tokugawa economy as being feudal and stagnant what emerges, instead, is an economy that is in many ways quite dynamic and led to growth in many regions (albeit there is the caveat that the population did not grow by much, which suggests that the proceeds of growth did not necessarily lead to improved living standards) (Howell, 1992: 269–270). So why did the social change that occurred in the West under similar conditions not occur in Japan?4 One aspect is that whilst the elites might have had a shared sense of a collective identity that marked Japan as being distinct from other countries (particularly China), seeing the Japanese as divine and superior to other races, with the bakufu speaking of a Japanese people as early as 1636, at the local level this was manifestly not the case with people having stronger regional identities and seeing themselves as culturally and ethnically distinct (Wilson, 2002: 4). The villages themselves were not homogenous entities. The changing economic landscape led to different villages specializing in different products and crops. It also stratified them; leading to the creation of some very wealthy landlords and poor tenants. Increasing levels of peasant protest and violence between the 1600s and 1800s suggest that there were difficulties brought on by the increasing inequality and a breakdown of the cooperative spirit. These events were, however, largely localized and so they did not spread out towards being revolutionary movements against the Sh¯ogunate itself (Tipton, 2002: 10–13). The farmers themselves, despite later Meiji appeals to their virtuous qualities, were widely

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disparaged and seen as a morally inferior social class and viewed with suspicion (Vlastos, 1998: 81). Another factor is the political situation. Lacking a central institution, with the daimy¯o being masters of their own region and the sh¯ogun having little control over how they operated within their regions, made reform or the creation of a wider and stronger central state difficult. There were attempts at reform, especially after the Tˇemp¯o crisis (1830–1844) where Japan was hit by several famines and the perceived inefficiency of the Sh¯ogunal response led to popular revolts and insurrections, with news of the problems and difficulties spreading along the highways that had been constructed. The government launched the Tˇemp¯o reforms in 1841 as a means of reforming the bakufu and daimy¯o system to generate more revenue and give the government a greater ability to respond to crises. The reforms, however, failed in part due to the nature of the system, where the different competing interests meant that daimy¯o could resist and undermine them and the sh¯ogun lacked the means to bring them in line (Jansen, 1985: 3–4). The weak central government meant that the inertia in the system, between the sh¯ogun and the daimy¯o, gave the whole thing an equilibrium and a sense of stability (McMaster, 1992: 3). Effectively Japan can be characterized as being in an evolutionary stable state (ESTS), and equilibrium system where no one entity has a decisive advantage over the others (Sober, 2000: 140–141). Between the emperor, the sh¯ogun and the daimy¯o, none was able to gain a decisive advantage over the other, and each needed the other to maintain their level of support. Consequently, the system was stable, but that very stability meant that it did not advance in a new direction. So whilst Japan had certain features building up that might become nationalism, certain technologies that could bring about capitalism and industrialism, it did not have a means of making systematic use of them. This isn’t to say, of course, that had time stretched on from where it was in isolation that the Japanese state would not have changed in one form or another, indeed it’s likely that it probably would have done. As Arnason (2002b: 110–111) points out the Tokugawa system was an effective synthesis of feudal and centralizing elements; Japan’s process of state formation was largely self-contained and effectively had feudal

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structures in the political and military realm, but more bureaucratic and centralized structures at the social and economic level, a fusion distinct from anything developed in Europe (Arnason, 2002c: 119–121). As noted above there were attempts at reform from the Tokugawa, recognizing that aspects of the system were not functioning as well as they should, and there was popular discontent that was steadily rising down the years. The environment was beginning to change and the state was beginning to adapt in response to that. With all that said, the Tokugawa did not manage to reform their system and the popular discontent did not spill over into a revolution or a takeover (depending on how one reads Japan’s entry into World War II, of course). In which case, the stability and inertia were still there and, ultimately, what changes may have happened were not to be given the time to play out and see what they might have become. In consequence, the arrival, in 1853 of Commodore Perry, needs to be seen for what it is: A punctuation event (Gould, 1980).

Nationalism and Modernization in Japan In criticizing Benedict Anderson’s (2006) notion of ‘imagined communities’, Partha Chatterjee (1993: 5) notes that ‘[i]f nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined communities from certain “modular” forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine?’ It’s a strong point, and Chaterjee (1993: 6) is certainly correct in saying that anti-colonial movements and nationalists had more room for imagination than Anderson was perhaps allowing. However, this was still within limits and confines of nationalism and modernization, or more particularly, the Western model of modernization.5 As Maleševi´c (2014: 377) has noted, nationalism tends to take similar institutional forms where it appears, and this is largely down to how the environment is shaped by the imposition of political power from the colonial powers. Whilst there were areas for imagination and difference within that frame, the frame itself could not be rejected as that would otherwise open up a people to being

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considered ‘uncivilized’ and therefore not worthy of participation in the international system. As will be argued, Japan’s experience embodies this: freedom to imagine and agency to construct a national and modernizing system, but within the confines and constraints placed by the environmental framework. Indeed, one case in which this happens is the very question of Japan being ‘feudal’, with Thomas Keirstead (1998) arguing that the notion of there being a medieval Japan was a concept that intellectuals imported; by showing Japan had a ‘medieval’ era they could argue Japan was following the same developmental trajectory of the West. Japan, on the eve of Perry’s arrival, was effectively as Gould (1980) describes an environment before a punctuation event sends it spinning in a new direction: lots of things building up here and there but all of them wriggling around an equilibrium. No one of them on their own is sufficient to drag the institutions in a new direction and so alter and adapt them to the building changes in the environment. As above, this is not to say that change would not have come about, given enough time. But it likely would not have been the change that happened, nor would it have been as rapid as occurred. The value in the punctuated equilibrium model is that it allows for rapid change in response to chance events, but also that the nature of the punctuation might change things in one direction rather than another. As Kevin Doak (2007: 42) states: By no means did Perry’s arrival inject a principle of historical change to a stagnant world, as some historians have claimed. But it did contribute to the dissolution of the old baku-han system and its ascriptive social order which had prevented the development of the nationalist society envisioned by nativists and others.

Japan was, in some ways, lucky that at the time when it was pressured by the West they had lost interest in territorial annexation and were more focussed on economic benefits and trade, directing interests towards creating stable and profitable trade relations (Ikegami, 1995: 220). This provided some breathing room for Japan in terms of development, though it also produced other pressures on the direction that

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development could take, i.e. only in more Western directions (Ikegami, 1995: 220). So why did Japanese nationalism and modernization take the form they did? Why, in particular, did it end up centring on the emperor, rather than the sh¯ogun? In the first place, a simple reason may be that it was precisely because the emperor was a remote and symbolic figure that he took precedence. The human mind is susceptible to mysteries, half-understood or incomplete information, as a result of our capacity for meta-representation; consequently, there is a drift towards such mysteries that are memorable and particularly when they come from authoritative sources (Sperber, 1996: 72–74). Purely at the level of language ‘one of heaven’ (tenn¯o ) has a great deal more mystery and evocation behind it than does ‘barbarian suppressing general’ (sh¯ogun). In the second place, there is the element of culture and politics. Whilst it was not inevitable that the Sh¯ogunate system should fall (Tipton, 2002: 1), even after contact with the West it might have been able to maintain itself, once it did the sh¯ogun’s position was completely compromised. The emperor, on the other hand, was the symbol of Japan’s cultural continuity (Buruma, 2003: 1–2). As the supposed descendant of the sun goddess, he was the divine presence in Japan’s politics and the continuity of his line was an important point. This was something that would be emphasized early on in the Japanese constitution where it was written that the emperor represented an unbroken line of continuity down the ages, from the first son of Amaterasu into the present (Gluck, 1985: 77). This helped to craft a national image; creating the sense of a transcendental figure at the head of the nation also helped create the sense of a transcendental people and nation from the earliest times. Although the Sh¯ogunate was beginning to acquire imperial trappings of their own, and were a dynasty in their own right (Buruma, 2003: 10), the change was too soon and the sh¯ogun was too concrete a figure, as opposed to the more peripheral emperor, to take on the newly transcendental role (Gluck, 1985: 73–74). The emperor’s largely symbolic status gave the imperial institution a great advantage in the changing environment.

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There was another factor in the emperor’s favour: the use, throughout history, of the imperial house as a slate onto which revolutionaries could project their own ideas and ambitions. The dual nature of the government, split between the cultural locus of the imperial lineage and the political and military complex of the Sh¯ogunate (Arnason, 2002b), meant that ‘[i]t was possible to rebel against the government, especially if it was done in the name of loyalty to the emperor, without seeming to be unpatriotic’ (Buruma, 2003: 10). With the emperor a figure removed from daily politics and largely symbolic, competing groups could claim the emperor as a symbol for their aims (Ikegami, 1995: 216). This would have larger effects when the military would later be able to act independently in foreign policy (Mann, 2012: 371), most prominently in starting a conflict to seize Manchuria in 1931, and then war with China in 1937 (Beasley, 1973: 245, 255), and were able to claim they acted in the emperor’s name. When Perry arrived in 1853, and then returned in 1854, he provided the spark that would ignite the various issues within Japan institutionally. The sh¯ogun was not unaware of what was occurring: the news of China’s defeat in the Opium war in 1840 had shocked the establishment. China’s defeat indicated not only the waning power of China but also the strength of the foreigners and Japan’s vulnerability to them. The sh¯ogunate institutions, however, caught the government in a bind. In order to maintain the peace, the sh¯ogun wanted to increase the coastal defences to be able to repel the foreigners. However, due to the split between the government and the daimy¯o, to do so would strengthen the daimy¯o at the local level and potentially tip the balance of power and bring about the dreaded instability. Caught, the sh¯ogun opted to do nothing (Tipton, 2002: 22–23). Consequently, when the West came, the sh¯ogun looked unprepared and weak. This sense of unpreparedness and weakness was not helped by the sh¯ogun soliciting the daimy¯o’s views on what should be done in response to Perry’s ultimatum, as the sh¯ogun ceded authority on the question of foreign affairs that had previously been his sole prerogative, opening up the government to accusations and criticisms in other areas as well (Tipton, 2002: 26). Arguably the most damaging, however, was when the sh¯ogun sent for imperial approval, in 1855, of the Harris treaty that

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would have seen Japan opening up and allowing America and other foreign powers to trade through ports in Japan. The imperial court, rather than doing what was expected and giving approval to the sh¯ogun’s decision, rejected the treaty and demanded that the sh¯ogun repel the foreigners (Tipton, 2002: 26–27). The imperial house now became a symbol for anti-foreigner feeling and also anti-government feeling. The main pushers of this were the Shishi (‘men of spirit’) a group of low-ranking samurai, formed between 1850–1860, who would terrorize politicians and foreigners, conducting assassinations and targeted strikes. Their slogan was sonn¯o j¯oi, or ‘revere the emperor, expel the barbarians’, and between 1862 and 1864 they were responsible for seventy incidents of political assassinations (Tipton, 2002: 29–31). Their desire to expel the barbarians, meaning the West, was largely a result of a lack of understanding of the difference in power. This, again, was something that the status of the imperial house as a symbol allowed it to absorb in the way the sh¯ogun could not. By being a symbol the emperor did not have to make decisions, rather supporters could read what they wanted onto his figure. Thus, in an environment of rapid change, the emperor was a much more amenable figure for supporters of resistance to foreigners than was the sh¯ogun. Politically speaking the sh¯ogun was in an impossible position. The treaties they were forced to sign with the West were hideously one-sided. Westerners gained access to Japan’s markets, for no guarantees in return; there was the ‘most favoured nation clause’, such that any privileges granted to one treaty holder were granted to all the others; and, most irritatingly, there was the extra-judicial clause, Westerners who committed crimes in Japan were to be tried by their own courts and legal system, not Japan’s. The economic impact was almost immediate, creating massive inflationary problems. The sh¯ogun faced demands from the daimy¯o to get rid of the foreigners, and also demands from the foreign powers to clamp down on the terrorism from the domains (Jansen, 1985: 7–8). Both responses were, of course, impossible. The political structure of the Tokugawa regime, with the daimy¯o having significant autonomy, meant the sh¯ogun did not have the means to reign in their excesses or compel them to follow the Sh¯ogunal demands. Likewise the sh¯ogun, of course, did not have the power to expel the foreign powers.

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Attempts were made to reform the governance structure, led mostly by Ch¯osh¯u and Satsuma, two outlying tozama domains, with the idea of giving the daimy¯o a larger say in government. Seeing that the West’s power greatly overmatched Japan’s, there was a shift in policy, away from sonn¯o j¯oi, to pukoku ky¯ohei, translated as ‘enrich the country, strengthen the army’. The ideal was now to learn from the West, taking their technologies and knowledge, in order to match and resist them (Tipton, 2002: 31–33). The bakufu continued to attempt reforms, but they were too late. Satsuma and Ch¯osh¯u had already formed an alliance with the imperial court and, on 3 January 1868, the court announced the restoration of Imperial Rule and demanded that the then sh¯ogun, Yoshinobu, resign his titles and territories. The sh¯ogun fought the Satsuma and Ch¯osh¯u forces, but was defeated and with that Imperial rule was restored and the sh¯ogunal system came to an end in 1869. The new emperor was crowned the Meiji and the sh¯ogun’s former allies rallied to the new imperial centre (Jansen, 1985: 11–13; Walthall, 2006: 132–134).6 With the new government in place, Japan set out to modernize. The Restoration itself had not been an attempt to create a centralized or nationalist state; such decisions were not taken until after the Restoration. The reason for settling on this was due to two factors: a need to have a government with authority over the territory which could renegotiate the unequal treaties, and a need to find a system and principle which could unite the disparate domestic domains (Doak, 2009: 530– 531). The international and the national environment thus shaped the options that were available to the Meiji reformers and so shaped the choices that they could make, in terms of what would be adaptable to the environment (Spruyt, 1994). In this they took a model-based approach, or followed the ‘prestige bias’, that is they learned from the successful models in the hope of replicating that success (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 124–126). In this case what elites in Japan learned from was Western nationalism and industrialization, in the hope that by replicating these features they would be seen as civilized and thus able to command the respect of the Westerners. But, of course, in such scenarios, the party

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doing the imitating cannot know precisely which features were responsible for the success and which were not (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 124–126). Of course, it was not simply the case that Japan imitated the West. The West after all is not a homogenous bloc and nor is modernization. Whenever there is an environmental change it produces a host of new variations that begin to get selected by that change (Spruyt, 1994: 24). Ideologies, ways of conceptualizing society, are dynamic and plural in the field of ideas—Japan was no different (Gluck, 1985: 7). After the Meiji Restoration, a variety of different ideologies came into existence and, although the one centring on the emperor eventually became the dominant one, the others did not necessarily recede (Gluck, 1985: 39–40). This is especially true in the context of modernity. Although the oligarchy in Japan wanted to take their models from the West there remained the question of which model to adopt? And for what area, legal, military, education? Indeed the models that they took often changed down the years and with different ones applied to different areas (Gluck, 1985: 19–20). Part of the reason for this was that the elites themselves did not have a worked-out definition of what they meant by modernity—other than it was some vague clump of ideas from the West (Tipton, 2009: 189–190). But, in these cases, it is worth bearing in mind a difference between the biological concept of natural selection and the social and cultural version; namely the role of intentionality (Spruyt, 1994: 24) and how intentionality happens within a set of constraints. Actors, in these situations, do not select everything and direct everything with a completely free hand; the environment provides them with constraints in what they can choose to do. And, importantly, there are also unintended consequences that can result from their actions. All change is the product of the interaction between variation, change and selection in social interactions (Runciman, 2009: 5–6). It is doubtful, after all, that the samurai class who led the rebellion to overthrow the sh¯ogun expected to find themselves and their influence as a whole massively reduced and with most of them forced to take up a living doing peasant work or as merchants and artisans (Harootunian, 1959, 1960).

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This was all part of the process by which the oligarchs became more selective in what they chose to adopt from the West. Biased transmission, in this case, began to occur as they began to more discriminately select among the features of Westernization that they could usefully apply to Japan, adapting them to fit the circumstances of the political and cultural environment (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 68–71; Tipton, 2002: 55). For this reason, a German constitutional model was eventually settled on; this maintained the emperor as the locus of sovereignty and so with the constitution being his ‘gift’ to the Japanese people. The military institutions then pledged their loyalty to the emperor, and not the government (Tipton, 2002: 56–59). This fit with what the oligarchs were trying to achieve; of downplaying politics which they saw as divisive and opposed to the actual smooth running of government, which would interfere both with the modernizing project and with the creation of a sense of a unified community (Gluck, 1985: 59–60). The emperor was useful to this project; many activists and writers saw him as the locus of cultural continuity, representing Japan’s traditions down through the ages. Consequently, he was seen as the figure who could, symbolically, unify the moral and political realms (Doak, 2007: 84–86). He was the embodiment of the Japanese lineage (Hull, 1988). The West’s arrival did not create nationalism, but it did craft the concept of boundaries and defined Japan as an entity sharing a common threat. This was the point at which scholars began to promote the notion of a common land with a single ruler (Doak, 2007: 40–41). As Hutchinson (2017, 2018) has argued, warfare helps to solidify and create national identities. Although Japan had had conflicts with other states before—China and Korea—since the decision to close off the country, except for a few outlets of trade and the attempt to colonize Taiwan, there had been no serious overseas adventures or wars. Japan, unlike England, was too far away from the mainland to have a continual sense of opposition and threat. Consequently, it was at the internal domain level that identities were built–up, providing competing outlets for loyalties that blocked the generation of a wider national ideology. The West’s arrival, as stated, was a punctuation event that provided the catalyst for the formation of a larger national ideology. The turn to nationalism was a product of a desire to copy a successful model

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both as a means of modernizing and also avoiding the fate of China (T¯oyama, 1985). It was also at this stage that nationalist feelings began to filter down into the local population. Nationalism does not build on nothing and nations do not spring ex nihilio, nationalism takes elements of the past and moulds them to fit the present and help craft a shared sense of identity (Smith, 2013: 8). The ideas of Mootori Norinaga, and the Kokugaku School, had circulated and taken some hold in the social imagination of the samurai and merchants, providing a historicist theory of identity that could be built upon (Doak, 2007: 39–40). The Kokugaku made arguments for Japan being unique, to distinguish it from China in the original formulation (Ichijo, 2020: 277). This fed into an initial idea of distinguishing between ‘Japanese spirit, Western intellect’, creating a separation between what was imported and what was unique and native to Japan, essentially looking into what made the Japanese Japanese (Ichijo, 2013: 100–101). The Japanese ethnologist, Yanagita Kunio, would build on the work of Mootori, to argue that the indigenous culture of Japan could be found in the periphery, that is preserved in the folklore and tales of initially the mountain people and then later the seafaring people (Mitsuru, 1998). He would then build on this to argue that, as the periphery of the world, Japan embodied the indigenous culture of the world, that all foreign cultures had lost (Mitsuru, 1998: 143). As it turned out, though, the dominating influence would move away from the unique origins thesis of the Kokugaku School and towards a ‘mixed-origins’ thesis, that was initially developed by Western anthropology, wherein Japan developed out of waves of migration from China and Korea. This thesis became more attractive to the Japanese elite, as it justified imperial expansion: Japan was just one part of a larger family and so had a moral obligation to educate and enlighten the rest of Asia, saving them from colonization of the West7 (Ichijo, 2013: 104). These different emphases would also be present when Japan began its colonization efforts. The earlier attempts at colonizing Taiwan were rediscovered and the merchants responsible were looked on in a new light and celebrated (Clulow, 2010: 39). When embarking on an expedition to Taiwan in 1874, Japan saw imperialism and modernization as intimately bound together as had been demonstrated by the West. When

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they arrived their efforts were directed towards creating an image of the Taiwanese natives as being much more savage than the Japanese; images depicting the event replicated the style of Western pictures showing encounters between their countries and the ‘savages’. Reports of cannibalism and other outlandish customs were reported back. The firm process behind this was to spread the idea, both in Japan and the world, that Japan was a civilized nation, in contrast to the rest of Asia who were backwards (Eskildsen, 2002).8 This would later be used as a justification for the building of the Japanese Empire, similar justifications that Europe had used with ‘the white man’s burden’. Indeed, when Japan annexed Korea in 1910 the elites held the belief that, through teaching Japanese and Japanese cultural concepts, Koreans could be ‘uplifted’ to become Japanese (Mann, 2012: 118), with similar policies being implemented in Taiwan. In effect, this represented a change to the ‘larger family’ metaphor that Ichijo (2013: 104) noted. This would be furthered when, in 1940, Japan redefined its empire as the ‘Asian Co-Prosperity’ sphere, the idea being that Japan was a leader developing Asia to resist the West, though nobody was fooled by that particular rebranding (Mann, 2012: 389). The nativist movement was important in opening up the Japanese commoners to the idea of a national political discourse. This was to cause tension in the 1870s and 1880s over the question of who should be allowed to participate in the national discourse and to what extent. The nativist networks helped to bring information to the people and make them politically active (Howell, 2000: 89–90). Nativist rhetoric was used to establish imperial institutions but was soon abandoned when it became clear that they were not appropriate for the task of creating a modern nation. Rituals were taken from the West to create the modern monarchical figure of the emperor, but with some supposedly native Japanese traditions appended onto it (Howell, 2000: 91–92). It was during the Meiji period as well that the notion of ‘Bushido’ as a samurai code would come into being (Benesch, 2014). Initially, in the Meiji period, there was no desire to look at the samurai for inspiration: it was too close to the time period for an idealization to occur (Benesch, 2014: 44–45). However, Meiji reforms were not universally

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popular as many of the positive effects did not drift down to the population at large, leading to dissatisfaction with Westernization, compounded by the West’s continually rejection of Japan through refusal to renegotiate treaties. This then moved into a rising nostalgia and a focus on Japan’s own culture, culminating with the rehabilitation of Saig¯o Takamori, who had led the largest of the samurai rebellions against the Meiji (Benesch, 2014: 42–45). The initial discussions of Bushido were, however, based on Western notions, namely the ideas of knightly chivalry and English gentleman’s, in the case of Ozaki Yukio (Benesch, 2014: 45–56), and in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s case was a form of ‘warrior spirit’ that was present in all of the population, not exclusive to the warrior caste, and so tied in with nationalism (Benesch, 2014: 56–61). Ultimately, what would emerge, was the notion of Bushido as representing a unique ‘Japanese spirit’ that enabled Japan to triumph over first the Chinese, in the Sino-Japan War, and then the Russians in the Russo-Japan war. The argument was that Japan and Russia were technologically matched, so what made the difference was the bushido, spirit, of the Japanese soldiers that enabled them to triumph against the Western power (Benesch, 2014: Ch. 3). The Sino-Japan and Russo-Japan war also provide an illustration of Hutchinson’s (2017) argument on how war can generate national mythologies and solidify nationalism. As Mann (2012: 116–117) notes ‘Army service did make many soldiers realize for the first time that they were Japanese, as opposed to Russian, Chinese or Korean […] They internalized banal nationalism’. Thus the Sino-Japan war provided the notion of Japan being the leader among the Asian nations, with the victory over Russia providing the notion that Japan could triumph over the West. Myths, symbols and memories (Hutchinson, 2017) of martial superiority and the success of the Japanese spirit were inculcated and would spread and develop, particularly as Japanese elites in the military took bolder imperialist stances, creating another variety of nationalism and route that could be taken. Another movement that emerged was the Freedom and Popular Rights movement, a local and nationalist movement encompassing some 200,000 members (Doak, 2009: 531). As the name implies it was a grassroots movement that wanted to pressure the government into giving

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greater freedom and rights to the citizenry of Japan and giving them more active involvement in affairs, giving power to the people and culture with a constitution and popular legislation (Doak, 2009: 531– 532). In particular, they agitated for the implementation of popular participation in politics, as had been promised by the emperor. The emperor, here, once again became a symbolic figure—with the activists claiming that the oligarchs were subverting the emperor’s will by not implementing what had been promised (Ikegami, 1995: 210). The movement, an expression of an alternative way of conceiving government in Japan, was largely defeated by the state co-opting their proposals and watering them down: the state set up prefectural assemblies in 1875, and in 1881 it was announced that the emperor would ‘gift’ a constitution to the people, which duly happened in 1889. The movement was also undermined by local politics, where many used it as a platform to secure their power in villages. The changing economy also led to greater state interference at a local level (Howell, 2000: 100–105). The drafting of the constitution excluded the activists and was done among a small group of government officials, but ultimately, the concessions divided and weakened the movement and prevented its further expansion (Ikegami, 1995: 213). What this does show, in combination with the other movements and activities that were occurring, is the process of negotiation and cultural closure, identified by Wimmer (2004: 26), with a variety of movements and groups being involved in pushing for different outcomes and understandings of what that closure, and the nation-state and culture, would look like. What occurred, then, was not a straightforward move from the Tokugawa state structure to the Westernized state structure but rather a springing up of different ideas and variations within the changing environment, in response to the sudden change of circumstances (Gould, 1980). Why was it the case that the selection process eventually filtered away the other options and settled on the tenn¯o-sei (emperor ideology) (Gluck, 1985: 4–5)? The first element is power: the state had the most political and economic power in the field; consequently, it was able to push the emperor and divine and sacred authority. Power is disseminated through institutions, in how cultural ideas spread and take hold and consequently

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change people’s habits and beliefs (Hodgson, 2009). In this case, the oligarchs, who wished to use the emperor as the image of modernity, built on his status as a symbol of culture to have the changes accepted by the populace (Gluck, 1985: 100). In general, the late 1880s and 1890s saw the emperor become the manifestation of the elements associated with national progress as the Meiji elite defined it and the symbol of national unity, not of a political and legal, but of a patriotic and civic kind. (ibid: 78)

This can be seen in two elements: that of education policy and the use of the emperor in public events. Education was seen as the primary means by which a sense of national identity could be developed in the people. Compulsory schooling began in 1872, but in the 1880s the government placed moral education, traditional cultural values and modern nationalism at the heart of the curriculum. Fees were abolished in 1899 and within a decade attendance had risen to close to 100%. The Imperial Rescript on Education was recited by the school children every morning, implanting the idea that they were subjects of the emperor from a distinct cultural background (Tipton, 2002: 59–61). The emperor was initially made to be a presence to the people through a series of tours of the country that he undertook—being a peripheral and symbolic figure they had little knowledge of him. He was to be seen as the personal manifestation of political unity and, throughout the 1870s and 1880s, he made six circuits of the country, appearing in different towns and villages. After that, however, he was hidden away from the public, so as to claim that he was above politics and so keep him out of any political disputes that might arise (Gluck, 1985: 73–78). The use of education policy, and the emperor’s image, marries with what Maleševi´c (2006: 72, 78) points to in distinctions between normative and operative ideologies. Whilst the normative ideology centres on the emperor and the emperor system, operatively through the educational policies and everyday practice it would reinforce the nationalism and nationalist sentiment. The emperor’s image replaced his person; his portrait was placed in schools and houses across the land so that he was seen by many and had a ubiquitous presence. The home ministry controlled the image of the

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emperor and how he would appear to the people (Gluck, 1985: 78–81). Thus the power of the state wielded the cultural image of the emperor, using it to promote their own image of national unity and identity. Thanks to his symbolic status the emperor was adaptable to any cultural and social changes. For instance, in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894–1895, the emperor was depicted as a commanding officer, making sacrifices of his own, conducting reviews, being at military bases and going to Pyongyang to declare victory. He was centrally placed in the press, his image being used to generate a shared sense of national responsibility and feeling. In the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, however, the emperor took on the role of statesman—he conducted negotiations, led conferences and announced victories, wrote poems (or someone did for him) on the sorrow but necessity of war and, in the aftermath, he visited the Ise shrine housing his ancestors (Gluck, 1985: 88–90). The difference in conflict and change in the cultural and social environment (from Japan as a rising nation to one that had arrived), necessitated a change in the role the emperor performed and his image. Secondly, the state was able to absorb many of the other group’s demands. The Popular Rights Movement had elements of their proposals taken on board. These, however, were adapted to suit the state’s needs and its need of having the emperor as the centre of the moral and legal conception of the state. Of course, it cannot be said how far the ideologies actually penetrated the population; for most people, it was one of many social currents, and possibly not the most personally important one (Gluck, 1985: 14). National outpouring tended to increase at times of hot nationalism (Billig, 1995), such as the wars, but it can’t necessarily be said how much of it was there in the absence of such fever. This is why the emperor as a cultural symbol is important. The imperial intuition was the most adaptable to the environment. The emperorship had the necessary characteristics: it was symbolic, held resonance for the population and could claim to have a transcendence reaching back into the past, helping to push nationalist lines and imagery. It did not matter that most of the traditions and images of the emperor were invented, or altered from the past (Vlastos, 1998: 10–11). This is

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to be expected; old myths and ideas change in response to the environment to help them propagate, attaching to other intuitional and social structures (Richerson & Boyd, 2006; Sperber, 1996). The demands for national integration took priority over everything else and all other individual concerns came a distant second. The government instituted various symbols and rituals and abolished status distinctions to create the image of a homogenous nation, who were subjects of the emperor (Howell, 2000: 108–110). The challenge for the Meiji state was that, to create a new national identity, it would need to ‘eradicate the vestiges of the institutions of the status system’ (Howell, 2000: 109). It is, perhaps, instructive to look at the fate of the samurai class to see how environmental change could rapidly alter the selection pressures. Despite the Meiji Restoration being a largely samurai-on-samurai affair (Smith, 1961), with the main populace baffled onlookers who didn’t think it would change much of anything, within a few years the samurai would be finished as a distinct class. The Satsuma rebellion, led by Saig¯o Takamori, was the last spluttering gasp of the samurai as they attempted to maintain their position of influence. The government had decided against Satsuma and Saig¯o’s preferred ‘feudalism plus’ model for the state and had instead gone with the national model. The reason for this was to more effectively replicate the West and their power, and create a unitary territory (Howell, 2000: 96–100). And the reason for this, in turn, was that the samurai as a whole had lost out heavily as a result of the reforms: to create a sense of nationality, and in particular a modern army, the domains were abolished and replaced with prefectures in 1871; the restriction on the right to bear arms was taken away and the samurai lost their stipends, with them being commuted to government bonds; and the hereditary class system was abolished (Tipton, 2002: 41–44). Effectively, as an unintended consequence of their own reformist movement, the samurai were made obsolete: Japan no longer had a use for a specialized warrior class, not when promoting the economy and strengthening the army were seen as being of such vital importance (Sonoda, 1990: 106). The samurai in launching their restoration altered the social and cultural environment; but they, as a class, were unable to adapt to the new environment—socially their role was too rigidly placed within the

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old order that had just been deposed (Runciman, 2009). Consequently, the samurai dissolved, with the government helping many into other jobs as a means of rehabilitating them and preventing further rebellions (Harootunian, 1960). La révolution, comme Saturne, se dévore successivement tous ses enfants 9 —a phrase that proved true both for the samurai and, eventually, for Japan—as increasing national sentiments, and coupling of political and military power, pushed military elites towards larger acts of conflict that eventually resulted in the war with the United States and defeat.

Notes 1. The Ainu are a population living in Hokkaid¯o. They are different from what we think of as the native Japanese and more closely resemble Europeans. It is hypothesized that the Ainu are the original inhabitants of Japan, coming over from Siberia, with the Japanese being later arrivals from Korea. 2. An interesting contrast can be drawn with China, which had a stronger sense of cultural superiority and, consequently, intellectuals like Feng Guifen and Liang Qichao had a harder time converting their fellows to the idea of adopting Western ideas and technologies (Schell & Delury, 2016: chapters 2 and 5). 3. Despite an ambitious effort that involved pretending some Taiwanese villagers were lords of the island and presenting them to the sh¯ogun. 4. Of course, an answer to this question is ‘it might well have done given enough time!’, or it may well have changed (and certainly the issues that were building up under the Tokugawa suggests that something might have come to a breaking point eventually) in an entirely different way and model. We will never know because, as will be argued later, the arrival of the West constrained all of the various options. 5. Nairn (1997: chapter 5) offers Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge as an example of a country that rejected modernization, going back to rural traditions instead. However, it was still a nationalist project so though one part of the frame is rejected, the other is maintained. 6. The new emperor, of course, was no more a ruler than the emperor had been under the sh¯ogun. He was still a largely symbolic, albeit active, presence. This had precedence in Japanese history, where the designated ruler was

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often really just the mouthpiece for his advisers who worked behind the scenes. So it proved in this case. 7. By colonising and oppressing them. This sort of logic turns up an awful lot throughout history. 8. Also see Hall (1992: 306–307) for more on the Western depiction of the indigenous populations in the Americas. 9. “The Revolution, like Saturn, will successively devour all its children”— Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud.

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Pratt, E. E. (2009). Social and economic change in Tokugawa Japan. In W. M. Tsuitsui (Ed.), A companion to Japanese history. Wiley-Blackwell. Ravina, M. (1995). State-building and political economy in early-modern Japan. The Journal of Asian Studies, 54 (4), 997–1022. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago University Press. Runciman, W. G. (2009). The theory of cultural and social selection. Cambridge University Press. Schell, O., & Delury, J. (2016). Wealth and power: China’s long march to the twenty-first century. Abacus. Smith, A. D. (2013). The nation made real: Art and national identity in Western Europe, 1600–1850. Oxford University Press. Smith, T. C. (1961/1976). Japan’s aristocratic revolution. In J. Livingston, J. Moore & F. Oldfather (Eds.), The Japan reader volume 1: Imperial Japan, 1800–1945. Penguin Books. Sober, E. (2000). Philosophy of biology (2nd ed.). West View Press. Sonoda, H. (1990). The decline of the Japanese warrior class, 1840–1880. Japanese Review, 1, 73–111. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell Publishing. Spruyt, H. (1994). The sovereign state and its competitors: An analysis of systems change. Princeton University Press. Tipton, E. K. (2002). Modern Japan: A social and political history. Routledge. Tipton, E. K. (2009). Intellectual life, culture, and the challenge of modernity. In W. M. Tsuitsui (Ed.), A companion to Japanese history. Wiley-Blackwell. T¯oyama, S. (1985). Independence and modernization in the nineteenth century. In N. Michio & M. Urrutia (Eds.), Meiji Ishin: Restoration and revolution. The United Nations University. Turnbull, S. (2010). Onward Christian samurai! The Japanese expeditions to Taiwan in 1609 and 1616. Japanese Studies, 30 (1), 3–21. Vlastos, S. (1998). Agrarianism without tradition: The radical critique of prewar Japanese modernity. In S. Vlastos (Ed.), Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan. University of California Press. Walthall, A. (2006). Japan: A cultural, social and political history. Houghton Mifflin Company. Wilson, S. (2002). Rethinking nation and nationalism in Japan. In S. Wilson (Ed.), Nation and nationalism in Japan. Routledge Curzon.

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Wimmer, A. (2004). Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict: Shadows of modernity. Cambridge University Press. Young, L. (1998). Colonizing Manchuria: The making of an imperial myth. In S. Vlastos (Ed.), Mirror of modernity: Invented traditions of modern Japan. University of California Press.

8 The Comparative Case: England, Japan and Darwinian Social Evolution

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to draw all the pieces together to make the final argument for the use of a Darwinian social evolutionary perspective in understanding social change. In this light, the case studies’ themes will be revisited and drawn out more deeply and analysed in light of the Darwinian framework that has been developed. But before beginning with that it is worth taking a little time to consider why the two case studies were chosen. There are a few reasons why England, and latterly Britain, and Japan were interesting choices for this study. Both were islands, bordered by a stronger and culturally influential mainland neighbour. Both had native traditions that were culturally influenced, and altered, by that neighbour. Both sought overseas colonial empires. Both had a political battle between a monarchical institution and a political institution. And yet, within this, there are differences, both large and more subtle, that led to different paths of development. This will be addressed in more depth further into this chapter but we can point to one example now that shows how a statement like ‘both © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_8

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were islands’ can miss an important environmental difference: namely that Britain was thirty kilometres from the mainland, whereas Japan was some two-hundred kilometres from the Korean peninsula. This difference, though seemingly small, is important as it meant that Japan was capable of isolating itself to a certain extent and ignoring events on the mainland as it saw fit, whereas Britain could not wall itself off either from influences or conflicts. As I have mentioned before, the purpose of this study is not the question of what nationalism is, or when it emerged, but rather the purpose is to address the question of nationalism from the perspective of ‘why’ (Ichijo, 2002: 72). Why nationalism? Why did it become adaptive at the specific times that it did and why did its features make it more successful in those environments than other, competing, ideologies? Did it have any of these qualities at all, or was it just a spandrel (Gould & Lewontin, 1979) that happened to be riding alongside another set of institutions and structures that were being selected? These are questions the social evolutionary perspective can address, and, through this chapter, I will hope to answer at least some of them. This chapter is organized as follows: the first section splits into three thematic parts, which address different aspects of the case studies. These are, (1) the effect of war and generalized threat to the development of nationalism and the nation-state; (2) variation, how different cultural variants (Richerson & Boyd, 2006) are generated and how the environment can place different selection pressures on them and (3) lineages, the important continuities that carry from an earlier state to a new to craft a sense of continuing history and identity. The second section then addresses more directly the question of why nationalism. Both sections address the questions through the Darwinian social evolutionary framework developed throughout this book, with the hope of demonstrating the usefulness of the perspective to questions in sociology.

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Theoretical Conclusions: The Cases in Comparative Perspective War and the Formation of Nationalisms As has been noted throughout war has been bound up with nationalism and the development of the modern state (Hutchinson, 2017: 1). War is not the be-all and end-all of this process, being only one of the components, but war-making and the preparation for war are important for the generation of nationalist ideologies, helping them to spread and creating an environment where nationalism becomes adaptable. This is particularly so of its role in the creation of in-group and out-group, ‘us’ and ‘them’, structures and that operate on a national, rather than regional, level (Runciman, 2009: 68–69; Colley, 1992). It does not especially matter how much people really believe in these particular distinctions, or as Maleševi´c (2011) argues whether people ‘fighting for the nation’ are really doing this as opposed to being motivated by more familial interests: what matters is how one set of ideas, ideologies or frameworks, comes to displace another set and that they can motivate groups towards actions (Runciman, 2009: 93–95). The creation of us-and-them distinctions is something that has operated for a long time in human history and evolution. Samuel Bowles (2009) and Choi and Bowles (2007) argue that, paradoxically perhaps, warfare among early hunter-gatherers, had the effect of creating the possibility for altruism. Groups with members who were more altruistic towards one another would be more cohesive, less likely to cheat and consequently more likely to win between-group conflicts. Altruism between those identified as an in-group has been built through the same process that creates a parochialism and sense of difference with an outgroup that can be easily activated into xenophobia and stereotyping. Both of these processes are common when propaganda is ratcheted up in wartime (Hutchinson, 2017: 26). Of course, the fact that this effect exists in hunter-gatherer times and didn’t produce nationalism is a reminder that war does not, on its own, create nation-states or nationalism as an ideology. Rather, the in-group/out-group effect can be ‘used’, in a loose sense to cover both

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intended and unintended consequences, to either solidify an existing ideological structure or push a burgeoning ideological formation into being. It helps in the process of forming nations, and can even be crucial, but it cannot create them from nothing. War, war-making and warbuilding would have this effect on tribes, kingdoms or any other existing state. This is why it is important to place war and its effect within its environmental context, in the social evolutionary sense. The effect of war on different environmental circumstances is borne out by the two case studies when looked at comparatively. So what were the environmental contexts for Britain and Japan, around the turn towards modernity? In the case of Britain, there were three kingdoms represented on the island: England, Scotland and Wales, each of which had its own sense of being a people, and its own sense of unique cultures, customs and laws (Davies, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997). The distinction was not as large as was sometimes supposed, but it was perceived as being the case and such subjective perceptions and feelings are as important as objective distinctions. Nationalism is, after all, also a feeling (Connor, 1990, 1993). The sense of common descent and a shared sense of being a people need not actually represent reality or fact (Connor, 1993: 382); what matters is that the feeling is there. There were, of course, some cross-border elements of importance: Wales was conquered early on and shared the same king as England (and later the Tudors would sit on the throne and be of Welsh descent); likewise, Scotland and England would later share a king. And there was the all-important factor of Protestantism that gave a thread of commonality. For Japan things were similar but different: there was some sense of being a shared people and a sense of cultural togetherness. This was assisted by the fact that the territorial borders were largely settled and defined and, after the failure of Toyotomi’s attempt to conquer Korea, no wars were being fought, thus there were no other areas of territory that might create a sense of conceptual confusion. The language was relatively homogenous and there was also the shared religious belief system of Shinto, which saw the emperor as being a divine figure and central to the cultural organization of the country. At the elite level, at least,

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there was a shared sense of being a common people, and indeed a divine people, with a collective sense of identity (Wilson, 2002: 4). In both cases what is being seen here is a process. Changes, when they occur, rarely are the result of definitive, absolute, breaks and the separation between, for example, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ societies is often not as absolute as the classics would make out (Bhambra, 2007). Something of the old carries into the new, just as the new builds upon and out of the old. In the case of Britain, there were three kingdoms, but each had certain features that cut across their respective borders. For Japan, there was perhaps a shared sense of collective identity at an elite level, but there was a lot of variance at the local level, where populations had a much stronger connection to their regions than they did any larger structure and indeed regarded themselves as being culturally and ethnically distinct from other Japanese (Wilson, 2002: 4). And it is this divide between the regional identities and the central identity that is important, both for understanding why nationalism was not an adaptive ideological formation earlier, but also for why nationalism would take on the form it did when it emerged. The emperor provided a unifying cultural and symbolic element and the sh¯ogun was the head of the whole country, and so provided some form of unifying state structure. Both, however, did not interfere directly in regional affairs, except for, in the sh¯ogun’s case, purposes of suppressing potential dissent or revolution. The Emperor and the Shogun provided the normative ideology, whereas the region provided the operative ideology (Maleševi´c, 2006). Consequently, the region had a stronger pull and sense of distinction (Arnason, 2002b). That, then, is one environmental difference of some import; whilst the kingdoms forming Britain had a certain sense of homogeneity within themselves, Japan had a variety of identities pulling in different directions. This creates something of an interesting question for a Darwinian approach: given the present information, it would seem normal to predict that, if nationalism was going to emerge, then Scotland, England and Wales would be on a path towards separate nation-state structures; whilst Japan might be on the way to either fragmentation or the generation of a stronger state ideology. However, the three kingdoms would be pushed into becoming part of a larger ideological project, in creating

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Britain, whereas Japan may well have comfortably carried on with the split between the regional and central power, without the issue being forced one way or the other. And this, perhaps, illustrates the influence that conflict, in one form or another, can have on selective pressures. As Smith (1981: 74–78) points out war, and the processes of warmaking (propaganda, funding, mobilization of people and resources, etc.), is often an important way of crystalizing or defining, an ethnic community. The conflict can see intellectuals, elites or the people themselves, take various myths and traditions and put them together, as well as being a generator of stories that can be used for the purpose (Hutchinson, 2018), and these can be used to create a sense of connection between local identities to a wider identity and between the elite and non-elite levels within a given territory. It can also alter institutional structures, leading to a selection process taking place that picks a certain form of state structure as being more viable than another one. The state, in this context, can be seen as an interactor (Hull, 1988) that changes in response to the environment. Particular wars can generate innovations, at once technological, cultural and social that can elicit changes and become embedded (Hutchinson, 2017: 36). Thus printing techniques can be institutionalized and deployed to spread propaganda more widely, making it easier to diffuse a sense of ethnic consciousness (Hutchinson, 2005: 21–23). As Conversi (2007) notes as well, specific practices can be taken from the expanding military and institutionalized by the state to generate a wider sense of feeling and conformity among the people. In this sense, the environmental pressures created by conflict push the state towards widening its resource base, in terms of both finance and people, which makes wider ideological bases to pull people into conformity (Gellner, 2006; Kerr, 2019). The institutionalization of these practices, relating to the display of flags, the identification between the people and the nation or a national representative (the queen/king, emperor, a constitution, etc.), memorialization of myths and memories then allows for the replication of the nation-state ideology (Hutchinson, 2005; Billig, 1995). Wars, or generalized environments of threat, are an obvious scenario where the state needs to rationalize its bureaucracy more and centralize

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more. As Spruyt (1994a) argues, those states that can collect funds necessary to fight wars, as well as organize greater numbers of people to fight and marshal resources more effectively, will have a competitive advantage over states that cannot do this as effectively. It becomes a larger scale version of what Choi and Bowles (2007) and Bowles (2009) have argued: that is states that could prevent conflict within themselves would have a better chance of winning conflicts against states that were not capable of doing this. The nation-state structure, in this sense, is a group-level interactor that facilitates this more effectively than the other available alternatives and subsequently replicates the operative ideologies that compose it down to the regional and individual level. This is the case, as Spruyt (1994a, 1994b) argues with the competition between the sovereign territorial state formation and the alternative city-state formations in Western Europe. The sovereign territorial states ‘triumphed’ as an organizing principle because they were better able to rationalize their economics, channel information flows, and create a centralized system of law. By ruling over all the territory, and being able to impose uniformity of law within the territory, they were able to punish defectors and cut down on free-riding, which meant fewer resources were being spent on in-fighting and could instead be directed outwards (Spruyt, 1994a: 161–166). This was in contrast to city-states, which often had loose boundaries that covered surrounding villages and thus the question of who was under the cities authority was not always clear, and against the Hanseatic city-leagues, as they lacked a central authority and were more corruptible (in the sense that one city could be played off the others, or induced away) as there was no central authority that could punish any defectors (Spruyt, 1994a: 173–178). The greater centralization of the sovereign territorial state also made them better able to fight wars, as the territorial state could marshal and direct resources more effectively (Tilly, 1992). Ultimately, in that environment, a centralized territorial state was more competitive and adaptable to the environment, so the selection pressures selected for the centralized territorial state, with this subsequently diffusing as other social and political agents begin imitating and learning from the successful examples in order to reap the same benefits (Spruyt, 1994a: 187–188). So in this case, using Sober’s (1984) terms, we might say there

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is a selection for a centralized territorial state, but a selection of nationalism; the unifying ideological principle could well have been something else (a monarchical principle for example), but it just so happened that nationalism was the ideology that emerged and diffused as a result of being more attached to the institution of a central territorial state. We can also argue that a more civilizational ideology, like Western Civilization, would not have been competitive in this environment; there were too many states that would not subsume to one another and that were also in conflict and competition with each other (over slave trade routes, colonies, resources, etc.) that would have made it less competitive. Consequently, there were no institutional structures the ideology could attach to and replicate itself through.1 As Perry Anderson (1974: ch. 5) outlines, the impetus for changes in Britain would result from an ambition to conquer the mainland which was seen as being part of the rightful territory of the English empire. However, changes of warfare on the mainland meant that this was not a feasible ambition, and so energies were directed inwards towards the island and went to develop the navy for different forms of expansion in trade, though with the possibility of the ships being converted into warships without too much trouble. Although England escaped monarchical absolutism, its government and state did expand and centralize more, becoming better designed as a means to finance and fight wars (Sharpe, 1987: 99–101). This would then expand further when various threats of war, with the Jacobins, France, the United States, France again, led to a greater expansion and centralization of the powers of the state, whilst also pushing more inclusive ideologies to expand the use of resources that came with the incorporation of Scotland into the newly formed United Kingdom (Colley, 1986). The conflicts with Revolutionary France also saw recruitment for the military increase from the lower classes, which helped to diminish the gaps of feeling between classes (at the ideological level if not the material level) as war became less the preserve of a specific class (Colley, 1996). Technological changes, of course, with the further development of guns helped with this as it had in earlier times when the introduction of the longbow at the end of the thirteenth century enabled more commoners to become part of the military rather than just knights (Keeney, 1947).

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Similar effects would occur in Japan, where the wider distribution of guns for war after the Meiji Restoration would diminish the place of the samurai and the need for a specialized class, thus allowing more commoners to be incorporated into the military structures (McMaster, 1992). Combined with various othering effects that came from the British Empire (Colley, 1992), and then Japan’s colonial endeavours, this would start to make the environment one where the selection pressures would apply to a more encompassing, but still limited, ideological frame—one that would provide a measure of within-group unity to the colonizing group, whilst maintaining an out-group division with the colonized. Contrast this state of affairs with Japan. Whilst Japan was not as closed off as is often supposed, with information flows still carrying through the country (Brown, 2009; Pratt, 2009), it was certainly more closed off than England, and later Britain, was. The information flow was also largely only at an elite level, which may or may not have contributed to the fact that the elites felt closer to each other rather than the general populace. After Tokugawa Ieyasu’s triumph and the defeat of his last internal enemies, Japan had a period of 200 years of peace that would not be interrupted until Commodore Perry arrived. Essentially there were no selection pressures to further centralize the state, or push towards stronger regional identities, as the overwhelming objective of the shogun was to keep peace within the country. The status quo provided that peace, so the status quo continued to be selected for. This was filtered through the institutional rules and laws, such that the local populace were forbidden from carrying or using weapons, that being the sole preserve of the samurai warrior class, and there was strict enforcement on movements between domains, with the samurai not allowed to own land or keep ties to it, living instead in the large castles and urban centres that were built (Berry, 1986: 242–245; Clements, 2010: 231–232). This can also be seen in the use of guns in Tokugawa Japan, which acquired a social meaning beyond ‘weapon’. Instead, the guns were seen as farming tools that could be rented by farmers for use either as scaring animals away from crops or for hunting (Howell, 2009). The ‘gun’ is an interactor that took on different social meanings in response to the changing environment (the ban on weapons) and effectively replicated

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in the new environment by adapting to the new circumstances (or to put it more concretely, the farmers as agents found other uses for it that enabled the gun to survive, by adapting its meaning and use to new and non-threatening means). The Tokugawa state was also not funded by a general tax take: rather the sh¯ogun’s own lands funded himself and each domain funded their own territory; the sh¯ogun had the largest lands but he was a first among equals, not a king or a dominating presence (Tipton, 2002: 1–3). So internally the daimy¯o had a wide degree of autonomy in the running of their domains but had strict enforcement that prevented them from making war or being in conflict with their rivals. Likewise, the Tokugawa state had no interest in conflicts abroad and it was largely too distant to get involved in the conflicts in China and Korea, and too distant to really be a target for outside invasion, particularly not after China began its policy of looking inward rather than exploring out (Levathes, 1994). As a result of this the Japanese state did not have the same pressures to rationalize or centralize the system, having instead something of a cultural unity of structures but no centralized authority (Anderson, 1974: 442), or at least no central authority with absolute power over the regional authorities, as the sh¯ogun had to negotiate with the daimy¯o in order to achieve their goals. The state functions as an interactor and a replicator. Replicators are entities that largely pass on their structure through succeeding replications and interactors are entities that interact with their environment in such a way that it affects the replication pattern, making for changes in the replicator (Hull, 1988: 408–409). In these cases, the states are both interacting with their environment, but the different environments are leading to different selective pressures, thus producing different results. England, and then Britain, through its contests with other states, in the American Revolution and then the conflicts with France (Colley, 1986), operates with a selective pressure towards finding an ideological frame that can incorporate the widening resources of people, whilst maintaining the distinction with the external others; state centralization provides a model that directs energy and resources better as against competing frames (Spruyt, 1994a), and the institutionalization of military models, flags and ceremonies (Conversi, 2007), replicates the

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attached ideological frame. Consequently, the centralized state structures begin to get selected through the environmental pressure; slowly, through cumulative steps (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 50–54), the various elements of localism that prevented a stronger centralized military and centralized state began to get filtered out in favour of the stronger state (Sharpe, 1987), as this proved to be a more competitive form (Zhao, 2015). Japan operated under different environmental pressures and selection pressures, as keeping the internal peace was the highest priority and so political and social agents were not pressured into changing the status quo, which was working well at its task. The structures of the institutional environment also created internal blocks on change, as other agents among the daimy¯o had sufficient countervailing power to resist any moves towards centralization. (Jansen, 1985: 3–4). There were alternate variants being produced, such as proto-industrialism (Howell, 1992), but no selective pressures were operating in their favour as disruption could break the peace that was the primary aim. Of course, had time been allowed to run its course without an exogenous shock it’s possible that the various pressures could have built up to create a different punctuation moment and thus change the selection pressures, and this may well have produced a state structure quite different from the one Japan developed. As it was, the arrival of Perry brought the outside world into Japan and subsequently created the conditions for the spread of nationalism. In this case, the wars against China and then Russia. In each case, this brought soldiers together, now drawn from among the commoners and not a distinct class of warriors, and through the engagement in war circulated the sense of being distinct from the other East Asian nations (Mann, 2012: 116–117; Hutchinson, 2017). As with Britain, which elites in Japan saw as a conscious model to follow, there were selection pressures acting to build within-group solidarities and external group differentiations. It would also produce various symbols and imagery that could be used, first in defeating China and showing Japan to be the superior of the Asian nations, and second in defeating Russian and showing Japan to be the equals of the West, with the latter being used as the basis for Japanese Empire to build themselves as the leaders for developing the East Asian sphere, though as with the ‘Western Civilization’ notion the

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conflicts and colonization of the East Asian countries, as well as the now more common nationalist discourses, would have created selection pressures against this in the model in the form of anticolonial nationalism (Breuilly, 1993: 156). The Emperor would function as an important interactor in this case: by having differing roles in the First Sino-Japanese war and the First Russo-Japanese (Gluck, 1985: 88–90) it created differing imagery and representations of the nation as much as the Emperor, which would then be replicated and spread throughout Japan through the institutional structures like schools, directives, newspaper reports, etc. Using Maleševi´c’s (2006) terms, the normative ideology, the Emperor system, is the interacting entity whilst the operative ideology, the practices of nationalism, are replicating, with the environment of conflict creating selective pressures that make it adaptive.

Variation and the generation of ideas and institutions Nations are, to use John Hutchinson’s term ‘zones of conflict’ (2005). This, of course, applies beyond nations and is true for any form of social organization.2 To recap, Hutchinson argues that societies are fields where different ideas are competing with one another and different agents, both individuals and groups, have different projects that they are trying to promote, in an arena where there are limited resources so not every project can be pursued. The same is true of Zhao (2015: 33) who sees the four powers (political, economic, ideological and military) as being the sites of competition between different agents. These are Darwinian processes, in the sense that there is a ‘struggle for existence’ between the competing projects for the resources, with environmental pressures applying to select certain projects over the others. It is also the case that this is how new ideas are generated: as old projects are revived and reworked to fit changing environments, old myths restored with new emphasis and new memories dug up and given greater importance in a new environmental field. How and why one particular idea or project

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is chosen is down to the environmental conditions and consequent selection pressures. As a relevant example, we can consider the idea of Britain. As Kumar notes (2003: 132–134) the concept of Britain was an old one. James VI’s original attempt to revive the idea in 1603 was a failure, largely because the institutions of Scotland and England were still distinct, with their own parliaments and political systems, and, crucially, neither of the institutions wanted a political union between them. Consequently, the variant was not adaptive to the environment and the project failed. Later, however, with the Acts of Union of 1707, political and economic expediency had altered the equation. The environmental situation had changed and enabled the revival of the Britain variant and this time adaptive and selection pressures worked in its favour. There is a further point to consider, in terms of the transmission of ideas. Information is shared through brains and people pick up their ideas through imitation and social learning, interacting with others and other information points (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 61–64). The transmission of information comes as a result of elements of power and prestige: people and institutions that are well regarded, have a lot of access to people’s lives, and have greater social, political and economic power are more likely to be able to spread their ideas than are others. And, of course, competition between agents in possession of power (Zhao, 2015) will have some shape in which ideas and structures get selected; if military power triumphs over economic power, for example, that will lead to a different pathway being formed than the other way around. The ideas themselves do not necessarily spread because they are good or bad, or some quality in them, but rather because they are attached to a particular institution (Runciman, 2009: 95–98). This may sound like a statement of the obvious, but there is also another important point contained within it: that the spread of ideas can influence the cultural environment just as much as the cultural environment can influence which particular ideas become popular or not. Certain ideas can spread in a discursive environment and alter the discursive environment because of the power they have within a particular field, but it does not necessarily make the ideas ‘true’.

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This was the effect, and the absence of effect, that imperialism and colonialism had. Empires and nation-states are often pitched as being opposing forces and are usually understood that way (Maleševi´c, 2017a; Kumar, 2010), but they share some similarities. As Maleševi´c (2017b: 147) points out, the practical reality of empires and nation-states meant they were often a lot closer in reality than in their respective ideals: empires often had an ethnic core (Darwin, 2010), privileging one group over another, and nation-states would rarely be as homogenous as they often assert. Japan, for example, is normally considered to be historically very homogenous yet this requires an airbrushing of the significant Korean community that has always been present (Walthall, 2006). Kumar (2010: 124–126) points out that empires and nation-states are also similar in structure: nations often contain different groups within them, and these groups were pulled into the system through conquest, as happened with empires. Britain is an example of this: Wales, Scotland and Ireland were, effectively, co-opted into an English empire. Nation-states can be seen as ‘empires in miniature’ (Kumar, 2010: 119). More than that, though, empires can be nation-states en large in having an ethnic core and a mission. Imperialists can believe that they carry a specific message or mission into the world, in much the same way that nationalists can do (Kumar, 2010: 128–133). ‘Imperialism is then seen not so much as a perversion as a more or less natural extension of power-seeking nationalism’ (Kumar, 2010: 132). Nation-states and empires in a sense represent alternative strategies that can be pursued by elites (Kumar, 2010: 134–135). The transformation from empires to nation-states, or potentially vice versa, is thus not a product of some teleological trajectory, but are rather different but compatible forms of social organization that can change under the right circumstances (Maleševi´c, 2017b: 149–150). Right circumstances here meaning, effectively, different environmental pressures, which brings different selection choices (Spruyt, 1994a). For Britain imperial expansion changed the locus of the cultural environment. No longer was the focus on the differences between Scotland, Wales and England, but rather on differences between the British and the Indians, Malaysians, Chinese, etc. in creating an Other that peoples comprising Britain could contrast themselves against (Colley, 1992).

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As well as this, Smith’s (1981: 77–78) comments about war can apply equally readily to colonialism: it helps to centralize certain administrative outfits, provides more mobilization of people (opportunities abroad, expanding need of the military to maintain strength), dissemination of propaganda, and defining boundaries. All of this contributes to creating the sense of a mission and a defined group as distinct from others (Kumar, 2000). In this context ideas about difference, purpose, and a special destiny can spread, as well as changing the environment for those ideas. Where before big differences would be seen between, for example, Scotland and England, there was now less of a sense of that difference in contrast to the other. The idea of Britishness was more successful at spreading in an environment of a known greater contrast; and the spread helped promote the self-identification of an in-group (Runciman, 2009: 117). The selective pressure for this came from two directions: both from the elites in the Celtic fringe, who saw the acceptance and promotion of British identity as being a means towards greater advancement and self-improvement (Colley, 1986: 112) and, from the direction of the state, a greater sense of shared identity would make it easier to promote such things as rationalized taxation systems and signing up for the army, both of which were essential for the state’s purpose of war-fighting and imperialism (Kumar, 2003: 145; Mann, 1993: 227). By contrast, the environmental pressures were different in Tokugawa Japan and consequently did not lead to the selection for different ideas from the dominant ones, or at least not before the West arrived. Their distance from the mainland, and confining of the Dutch to the manmade island, meant that the state had a strong influence on the kind of ideas that could come in and the impact that they could have as they could be selective in what was taken on and, as fears of the West increased at an elite level, what was taken on was generally speaking the science and knowledge of the world (Brown, 2009: 72; Lü, 1985). This affected the kinds of ideas being generated. As John Hutchinson (2005: 23–25) points out, trade and migration have the effect of bringing groups into contact with others, thus sharing ideas. These ideas are cultural variants (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 63). Different cultural variants compete, but also combine, and are disseminated through imitation and learning,

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if they are seen to be successful (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 73–76). The conflict between different ideas generates debates and re-assessments (Hutchinson, 2005: 4–5), just as it leads to changes and renegotiations of settled social closures (Wimmer, 2004). Ideas of ethnic difference did exist in Japan below the surface and, towards the latter end of the Tokugawa regime, there were investigations into regional cultural groups and ideas by Mootori Norinaga which he presented as being evidence of a nativist culture (Ichijo, 2020) but they did not gain much in the way of popularity. Until, that is, the West arrived and created an Other and altered the discursive environment (Doak, 2007: 39–40). This is a case of biased transmission: a case where a particular idea is preferentially adopted because it seemed to be connected to success in a particular field of endeavour. This is the case with Japan, where the success of the West, as well as the desire to avoid being colonized, led to selective pressure for imitating the West, to achieve a civilizational status though, of course, the Japanese elites were not without agency in selecting what they imitated and how it tied towards their own history and culture (Ichijo, 2013: Ch. 5). In this respect, we can see the explicit learning and selection that occurred as the Japanese engaged in the Iwakura Mission, which travelled around the United States and Europe between 1871–1873. In this, the elites on the expedition learned from the various models that the United States and European states presented and then selected the different components that would be used to draw up the Japanese constitution, political governance structures, military structures, etc. (Nish, 2009: Intro). We again see Ichijo’s (2013, 2020) point about reflective agents: there is not a blind imitation going on, rather there is a consideration of the environmental circumstances and through learning a conscious selection of what would be, or what they think would be, the best combination of models to use. Of course, it’s not in complete control as unintended consequences still result from decision making and still operate under selective pressures. So the decision to focus the constitution, and military allegiance, on the Emperor (Tipton, 2002: 56–59) had the effect of meaning that military power could subvert political power, by using the Emperor as a figure to bypass the political governance structures and seize control.

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The imitative pattern and learning from the West, in the display of ‘civilization’ can be seen in the early colonization of Taiwan and Korea, where the propaganda and messages communicated contained a striking resemblance to those that justified colonialism in the West. As with the West, the Japanese were portrayed as an enlightened and superior people bringing civilization to the ‘savages’ (Eskildsen, 2002; Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 68–71). It proved useful in helping provide a contrast to bind the in-group together. However, a selective change was that Japan would claim they were doing this in the name of defending Asia from the West. Thus, to borrow Maleševi´c’s (2006) distinction, normatively, Japan took on a message of being a liberator, whilst operatively the same colonial pattern the West had performed took hold. But it worked better in an environment where the West already had colonized significant areas and consequently had a stronger ‘outsider’ status than Japan did and Japan could, therefore, make a more plausible claim to being a ‘better’ agent of civilization than the West. The defeat of Russia also helped its image in this regard, and many intellectuals, from China, for example, sought to learn from Japan and studied in Japan (Schell & Delury, 2016: Ch. 5). This is part of the context for looking at communications and literacy. Japan had numerous roads that information travelled along as a result of the policy requiring the daimy¯o to travel to Edo and attend the sh¯ogun every six months, which generated greater degrees of social communication as information passed along the roads, as well as the policy of confining the samurai to castles built-up of the urban areas (Brown, 2009: 76–77; Tipton, 2002: 6–8). In these cases, however, it did not lead to the creation of nationalist ideology, unlike in the case of Britain where the increased levels of printing and communication did play that function (Colley, 1986: 101–102; Kumar, 2003: 168). This helps to illustrate Smith’s point that, on their own, language and communication are not causal factors in the generation of a national identity: [I]ncreased social communication and language are relatively neutral visà-vis the generation of nationalist movements and consciousness […] they may increase ethnic cohesion and the desire for national autonomy in a population; but equally they may divide that population and exacerbate

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conflicts. Social communications tend to amplify pre-existing trends and situations rather than generate them in the first place (1981: 49).

Or, more precisely, the effect of a particular increase in communications and narrative depends on the cultural environment in which it is embedded. In the case of Britain, with the threat of war and colonialism the communication network pushed forward information that selected for a stronger conception of ‘nationality’ as against other forms of ideology, particularly as the state ramped up propaganda in times of war; in the case of Japan the ideology, of stability and maintenance of the Sh¯ogunate system with the rigid separation of classes, did not push for a nationalist like ideology as it would not be an adaptive ideology in an environment where the emphasis is on avoiding conflict and disruption. Though the establishment heard word of, for example, China’s defeat in the Opium War (Buruma, 2003: 11–12), little of this filtered through to the general populace and what did would not prompt the strengthening of a shared identity. The emphasis on maintaining peace in the state being the highest priority meant there were no moves to change things by the establishment (Tipton, 2002: 22–23), and little in the way of environmental pressures to do so. This is what would be expected on a social evolutionary reading of the situation: in a stable environment, there is an equilibrium with variations being produced but none which disrupt or overturn the dominant environmental configuration. When selection operates it does so as a mechanism that promotes certain ideas and strains as they are adaptive to the environment and promote solutions, though not necessarily optimal solutions, to a particular problem (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010: 57–58). Selection is often a principle, in action, which reduces variety in a given environment, even as its effects may produce more variety (Lewontin, 1974: 68–69). The problem in the context of Britain was how to increase people’s effort in wartime, their willingness to pay taxes and support the army and the effort abroad: in general, the answer was to promote a greater degree of homogeneity, especially through the use of anti-Catholic propaganda that would help make more prominent the shared Protestant ideology that could bind the people’s together. Nationalism, however, and the increasing national consciousness was

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the unintended consequence of this, the case of the selection process picking out an efficient solution, for greater cohesiveness, rather than what to the ruling classes may have appeared the more optimal solution, that of keeping the current structures with a more willing population. This, as the powers-that-be feared, brought with it demands for greater participation and democracy (Colley, 1986: 113–114), that were only just staved off through a variety of compromises most particularly in raising property to be the key determinant of involvement—allowing the petite bourgeoisie in but keeping much of the working class out, at least temporarily (Mann, 1993: 125). Similar processes happened in Japan. Despite the reservations of the state about nationalism and national mobilization and their determination to keep it out, the state was unable to prevent the rise of national feeling or contain it; indeed several intellectuals and people in Japan saw ethnic nationalism as an oppositional movement to the state, as a way of keeping it out of their lives and checking its power (Doak, 1996: 101). But, again, it is an unintended consequence of what the Japanese elites were trying to achieve: promoting a sense of group identity that could be contrasted with others, in order to rationalize state centralization. The latter-day Tokugawa attempt failed because it couldn’t reconcile the essential contradictions in its system, between the feudal structures and the centralizing structures (Arnason, 2002a: 110–111). Culturally and institutionally the Japanese state took on the efficient route: the environmental pressure demanded it, not only in that the dominant nations of the world were all sovereign territorial, or national, states (Spruyt, 1994a), so it made sense to learn from and imitate the successful (Richerson & Boyd, 2006: 113–114), but also in that there was a very real threat of being invaded, or being subjugated, in a similar manner as China. To prove that Japan was a ‘civilized’ country and so not one that was available for colonization it rapidly imitated most of the structures and cultural ideas of the West, fitting them as best it could to their own ‘traditions’ in order to preserve the sense of difference. These processes generated a great number of variants in the site of political power for how the country should be governed, through movements like, at the extremes, the Satsuma Rebellion and, more moderately, the People’s Rights Movement. The state interacted with these ideas,

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adapting and adopting some and cracking down on others thus enabling it to maintain its stance as the dominant force, but also taking on changes that made future changes possible and more likely (Howell, 2000). In both cases, what is occurring is in a sense a vertical transmission of social learning and imitation (i.e. from the state to the populace) and also a horizontal transmission (i.e. from the populace to the populace) (Hull, 2001: 34–35). In both cases the state is attempting to promote patriotism, allegiance to the state, but the by-product of it is a promotion of nationalism, as the ideas being taken on board get imitated and transmitted from person to person and come to acquire new elements to them through that transmission, with no central authority being able to keep a definite control on those ideas (Runciman, 2009).

Lineages The last element to speak about is lineages. Lineages form part of Hull’s (1988) conceptual understanding of the evolutionary process, alongside interactors and replicators. For Hull (1988: 409) a lineage is ‘an entity that persists indefinitely through time either in the same or an altered state as a result of replication’ (Hull, 1988: 409). Lineages in the case of both Japan and England, and later Britain, can be seen as the state, as well as cultural elements which were often linked in with it. In the case of England, for example, the state that Alfred the Great created, alongside its cultural notions linked to Christianity and a people of England, were successful in surviving the Norman Conquest and was adapted to fit successive changes and alterations in government through its interaction with the changing environment. Thus the continuity was kept and the state continued to replicate itself through its institutional structures. Myths and ideological frameworks can emerge and keep a continuity and, under the right sort of environmental conditions, selection pressure can bring a revival of an older myth that suits a new purpose (Hutchinson, 2005: 26–31). Hence, the notion of an English people beneath a Norman yoke, whilst largely a fantasy (Kumar, 2003: 49) was nevertheless an idea that could be utilized when England began to set itself apart, as being its own kingdom and nation. Thus the state

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interacted with the environment, to mould and change itself, whilst also replicating its structure and so creating a cultural and political lineage. Protestantism forms another lineage for Britain, whilst the Emperor figures as one for Japan. In both cases, these are not necessarily the dominant elements of the society and focus of the group, especially in the case of the Emperor, but they both provide a cultural element that helps bind the group together, whilst also, crucially, being vague enough to be open towards changes (Sperber, 1996). As Smith (1981: 65) outlines an important feature for nations is that they have specific myths that are striking or well known, making them more likely to survive and endure. To an extent, I think this misunderstands what gives a myth its strength, which is its adaptability to new scenarios that allow it to persist. This can be illustrated with stories: many of those that continue to be told (for example variants of Aesop’s fables or fairy tales3 ) are told precisely because they have a certain timeless quality, with the lessons inscribed in them continuing to be applicable, or we might say adaptable, to new environments and situations. In this case, Protestantism for Britain provided a framework for the three kingdoms that formed Britain, both in terms of the shared religion and also anti-Catholicism. But it was not a dominant aspect—that is it was not wedded to the British political or economic sphere. Thus when the environment shifted, away from a need for anti-Catholicism (Mann, 1993: 124) religion could be relegated to the private sphere (Greenfeld, 1992: 70) but the group binding element could be maintained and the lesson, of there being a special destiny, converted into the imperial strain, with selection operating to weed out much of the religious and millennial message attached to it and converting it into more of a political and cultural message, about freedom and commerce (Kumar, 2003: 164– 165). The lineage persisted but was altered through replication as the selection pressures that acted upon it (Hull, 1988: 409–410). The case of the Emperor was similar in many respects. The institution was a largely cultural symbol that was malleable and responsive to the environmental changes, and so could adapt in response to selection pressures. But there was still a definite connection between its various forms: that of the institution being the symbol of the people, a representation of the divine, and later a symbol of modernity (Gluck, 1985). The

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Emperor’s role as a symbol changed throughout, depending on what the environmental pressures were (in the Tokugawa time the Emperor was a figure of legitimacy for the sh¯ogun’s rule; at the time of revolution he was a symbol of legitimacy for the rebels, of the old way as against the military rule of the sh¯ogun; in the Meiji restoration and beyond he was a symbol of modernity, of importing the Western traditions). The adaptability of the emperor institution is the reason for its survival and the reason for its use: the role serves as an interactor, changing in response to the environment, which is then replicated as a result of the selection pressures being placed on it. In all cases, the core element is in being a figure of legitimacy and also a binding agent for the people: the use of the Emperor helped solidify the in-group identity, whilst it also enabled changes to be brought in without it being seen as a strike against culture or tradition. This status as an image of continuity, and a lineage, can also be seen in the post-war settlement. Whilst the Emperor was required to renounce his divinity, the Emperor was still kept in place precisely because he served as a symbol of continuity and legitimacy. The Emperor leant legitimacy to the American occupation as well as providing a sense of stability. Ironically, it also continued the tradition of the Emperor being a figure manipulated to represent whatever the particular elites in charge at the time thought they needed (Buruma, 2003: 116). Thus the symbol interacted with the environmental conditions, selecting certain variants over others, and preserving the lineage.

Nationalism, Social Evolution and Social Change So: why nationalism? Nationalism did not emerge as part of a teleological logic; it was not destined to be, either by history or as the natural successor to empires (Maleševi´c, 2017b: 147). As Spruyt (1994a) has demonstrated, there were many possible alternative models to the nation-state within Europe: the city-states in the land that would become Italy and the city-leagues in Prussia. Both of these models could have been selected. However, territorial states had advantages that made them more adaptable to the

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particular environmental changes: that is they were better at organizing themselves economically, in setting standards and rules, which made them better at raising finance necessary for fighting wars. Once this structure began to win out, it was imitated by others as a means of protecting themselves, and also through imperial conquest, where the colonizer imposed their structures on the lands they colonized. The nation-state model became the norm that other states had to adjust to in order to be considered part of the world order. This was substantially the case with Meiji Japan, which learned from and imitated the European state structure (Hutchinson, 2017: 21), even as they were selective in what models were adopted (Ichijo, 2013: Ch. 5). This wasn’t inevitable of course, and there were internal debates in latter-end Tokugawa Japan and Meiji Japan about which direction exactly to take, but ultimately the environmental pressure told in favour of imperialism and nationalism. The contention, and the answer to the question of why nationalism, is that nationalism is selected as it provides a wider ideological cohesion for groups, whilst still being limiting in order to generate in-group and out-group identities; but it is also a flexible ideology and can fit with different political, economic and military power structures. Maleševi´c (2017b: 152–153) is therefore correct when he notes that social organizations require ideological legitimacy and this ideological legitimacy will normally be structured in a way that fits with the particular social organization it is legitimating (e.g. divine right of kings works for monarchies; dynamic wealth creators works for capitalism). The ideology develops in fits and starts, adjusting to the different pressures acting on it until one that works comes into being. Nationalism happened to be the ideology that emerged at the time and was able to spread, by providing a means to draw more people into the social settlement that would also enable further state centralization and increasing power, militarily and otherwise. It is not built out of nothing though: there are transitions as occurred with empires, where there were elements that were brought into nation-states (a sense of mission) as well as religious identities (chosen people). ‘Ideological power does not emerge from nothing but is rather articulated and developed gradually along the contours of pre-existing ideas and practices’ (Maleševi´c, 2017b: 9). This is a social evolutionary

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understanding—a form of selection process, with those better adapted to a particular environment being successful. Nationalism’s strength lies in the fact that it does not have any particular programmatic platform associated with it (it can fit equally well with democracy, authoritarianism, capitalism, socialism, etc.), beyond recognizing an in-group whom the state should protect and who can participate in political decision making; and the out-groups that are to be defined against and who cannot participate (Wimmer, 2004). There were alternative variants available of course, class formation for example, or some sort of dual-legitimacy regime where there would be greater powers and political resources for elites but the mass population would be kept out. All failed for one reason or another but in part, because nationalism, being a form of ideology that does not prescribe any one particular political or economic formation, was a cry that could be adapted to many purposes and projects: be it war, the voting franchise, rights for women, etc. It was, so to speak, generalizable to lots of scenarios. Evolution, and the selection process, does not have a definitive endpoint though, and it is always an ongoing process. So what the nation is and what it consists of, what its normative ideology is, what the social settlement is, etc., will continue to change. It’s also not outside the bounds of possibility that nation-states themselves may one day disappear. Perhaps the rise of more supra-national organizations, such as the EU, will lead to this; perhaps the pressures created by climate change will initiate a set of environmental pressures that will select for a new form of state and a new set of ideologies to reinforce it. Many Western nations are currently engaged in a culture war, in the Hutchinson (2005) sense, around how to deal with the legacies of colonialism, and in large part this centres around the renegotiation of the social closure (Wimmer, 2004). We can also point to the fact that the loss of the British Empire, as well as continued Conservative rule and now Brexit, has led to the strong revival of the idea that Scotland and England should be separate nationstates; with of course the revival of the legacies, memories, symbols and myths around Scotland’s oppression in the union and selling out by the old elites. Does this mean that nationalism is something of a by-product, or a spandrel so to speak? In general, I believe this can be argued to be the

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case. This of course does not mean that the emotions and passions that nationalism can generate are false, and nor does it doubt the importance of nationalism in providing ideological legitimacy for the political structures. Spandrels, after all, are by-products of a design structure, but they can still have important effects and uses (Gould & Lewontin, 1979). But these passions are incidental to nationalisms success, as passions can be generated by other things just as well. Indeed, as Maleševi´c (2011) argues, national identity and passions may well not be things that even exist in and of themselves, but are rather by-products of other feelings (towards friends and family), or may simply be an ideological co-option of those feelings. What about the more general considerations of social evolution and social change? This book has aimed to show two things: that there is worth, at a theoretical level, of looking at Darwinian approaches to social change to provide a new perspective and insight; and that this can be used practically to bring new understandings to cases. This has, hopefully, been demonstrated through the theoretical engagements with theories of social change and nationalism, and then with the engagement with the case studies on England/Britain and Japan. Is this a case of re-description in a new language? To an extent yet, but that doesn’t make it unimportant. Often by re-describing things we can see important details, emphases, that were otherwise missed, as well as generating new interpretations that can allow a fresh look at old data. In this analysis, I hope to have shown that there is just such a value in the Darwinian perspective. Each historical narrative, as revealed in the case studies, is unique and certainly through the lens of nationalism no one country develops in quite the same way as others. But what Darwinian social evolution can provide is a general theory for understanding unique trajectories (Boyd & Richerson, 1992). This comparative study has sought to demonstrate this by using the same intellectual tools to make comprehensible two distinct cases that share similarities and outcomes, but not processes.

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Notes 1. Which isn’t to say that it couldn’t have happened, of course. For example, had Napoleon been able to keep and consolidate the territories he conquered and institutionalize them, it’s possible that this could have allowed a wider civilizational ideology to attach to the imperial institutions and replicate. The ‘civilisation’ ideology is also one that continues to persist as has waves of marginalization and activation (most recently when it became deployed to draw a contrast between Western Civilization and Muslim Civilization as a result of the War on Terror). So it is always possible that, at some point, it could become an adaptive ideology; but the current environmental conditions do not provide selective pressures for it. 2. Even totalitarian states are arenas of competing ideas, albeit at elite levels and with the final authority coming from one central figure or ruling institution. Which is often why they’re an organizational mess. 3. Though fairy tales can be an interesting one in this scenario as the original Grimm stories, with their usually bloodier and more depressing endings, are less well-known than the Disney versions, which tend to be happier and more upbeat—but the central lessons often remain the same.

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9 Conclusion

This book has sought to demonstrate the usefulness of Darwinism to sociology, and more specifically its use to understanding nationalism and social change. To that end it engaged in a theoretical development of Darwinian social evolution, and then engaged with theories of social change and theories of nationalism; and then finally it examined practical case studies and performed a comparative analysis that used the theory as a framework for interpretation. Chapters one and two, developed the Darwinian social evolution approach, by first discussing the key concepts behind Darwin’s theory of evolution, selection, adaptation, fitness and considered some of the issues around the definition of these terms, and around identifying whether something is an adaptation or merely a spandrel, or a product of drift. With this settled, chapter two discussed a variety of theories that apply Darwinian insights towards understanding society, institutions and culture and built these together to form the Darwinian social evolutionary approach. It is an approach that does not take a teleological or progressivist bent, that is seeing the emergence of one social form as being an improvement on the previous one; but rather a multilineal approach that understands all societies as being subject to certain © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3_9

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environmental pressures. One is not better than the other, rather it is important to understand why one emerged instead of another possible variant. Part two then looked at theories of social change and theories of nationalism. In looking at the theories of social change of Mann (1986) and Zhao (2015) the importance of conceptions of power, as well as competition, was discussed. Mann’s scheme of four sources of social power, and Zhao’s notion of competition governing them, are both important for being able to analytically split out discussions and understand the balance of the environment. Why one option is more successful than another can have a lot to do with the balance of power between political, military, economic and ideological power, as well as the competition between them. I argued that drawing out the implicit Darwinian logic behind this helps to improve the understanding of social change and the explanatory power that the sources of social power have. In discussing theories of nationalism, I took the two contrasting perspectives of modernism, represented by Wimmer (2004) and Maleševi´c, (2006), and ethno-symbolism, represented by Hutchinson (2005, 2017) and Ichijo (2013), and used Darwinian social evolution to draw out points where the theories speak to one another and synthesize with each other. In particular, what was drawn out was how nationalism can be multiplied understood and developed, in light of pre-existing cultures (Ichijo, 2013), but still retain similar ideological structures (Maleševi´c, 2006); and how negotiations on social closure (Wimmer, 2004) can be informed by cultural wars and actual wars (Hutchinson, 2005, 2017). The theories, in the Darwinian framework, complement each other by showing how adaptive pressures from changing political and cultural environments, affect the shape and direction that nationalism takes, but still confine it within certain boundaries. Part three took this further by applying Darwinian social evolution to a case-study analysis of nationalism in England, later Britain, and Japan, and then presenting a comparative analysis of the two. The cases were chosen as a result of the interesting similarities, they were both islands in opposition to continental powers, and differences, Japan was more isolated and at peace, where England and Britain were in states of tension and war. They also provided a contrast between a country that became

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a nation without the global environment imposing that state on it, and one where the nation-state system already existed and it had to adapt to the changing environment. It was argued that England/Britain, being closer to Europe, was more involved in a trade of ideas but also conflicts. This helped to produce a sense of an in-group and an out-group, which could be coupled with religious identification, to push a sense of nationalism. There was also a greater generation in variety of political institutions brought about by conflicts between the state and the monarchy. Finally, in lineage terms, the state provided a measure of continuity, as did religious identification, which helped provide an ideological structure for the different kingdoms of Scotland, England and Wales to be brought together (with Ireland, being Catholic, not being integrated as much). Of course, there were competing variants that existed, such as the Avengin Empire, and projects that were marginalized, the notion of Britain, which would be reused when conditions changed. The Darwinian emphasis on the changing environment as having a strong impact on selection processes was thus demonstrated through this argument. Comparing and contrasting with Japan helped to illuminate some of the adaptive differences that lead to nationalisms growth. Japan more or less isolated itself after Tokugawa Iyeasu’s triumph in the 1600s, so it had no pressing conflicts and so no pressure for an ideology that would unite everyone. The structural division between the Emperor, as the locus of culture, and the sh¯ogun as the centre of political power, with local daimy¯o controlling regional affairs. There was something of a collective identification at an elite level, but this never really filtered down to the population and there was no environmental pressure to select it for diffusion at the lower levels, with the emphasis on keeping internal peace ensuring the status quo remained dominant. Variants in the political and economic structure were being generated, but whatever environmental pressures might have pushed on them, and selection processes might have operated on them, were halted with the arrival of the West in 1853. The Japanese elites were forced to conform to the nation-state model to stave off the threat of colonization, though they achieved it in their own way and were not merely imitating the West.

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Drawing the cases together highlighted the importance of war, or some form of conflict or tension, for creating environmental pressures that make ideologies that encompass the whole population of a given territory adaptive; the importance of lineages for crafting a sense of continuity between older forms and new ones, a vital part of nationalist claims that the nation and people have always existed; and the generation, through culture wars and other ideological conflicts, of different economic and political ideas and structures, that can be revisited or revised and through which selection pressures can operate to find the one most adapted to the particular environmental condition and change. Nationalism, ultimately, was the ideology that best suited the European powers imperial expansions, separating us from the colonial them, whilst also separating the European powers from each other, as well as bringing together the various strata of society and, particularly with Britain, more or less uniting its various kingdoms. Where might the argument go from here? There are, I think, two broad areas for further engagement on a theoretical and practical side. In terms of the theoretical areas, I think more could be done and consideration given towards post-colonial critiques of social theory (Bhambra, 2011, 2014). The broad outline of these critiques is that the leading theories of social change are too Eurocentric in character, and ignore the importance of colonialism to Europe’s growth, essentially treating Europe’s rise as entirely endogenous with everywhere else merely imitating.1 There have been acknowledgements and some engagements with this critique throughout the book, however, I think a fuller engagement from a Darwinian perspective is warranted; not least, of course, because the older versions of social evolutionary theory’s historical association with the progressive stages approach that the post-colonial perspective criticizes. An indication of where this approach can go is found in the chapter on England, where there is a sketch of an argument relating to competition between the powers over colonies and the slave trade, but a fuller development is warranted. The other theoretical area for consideration is the question of power and what exactly it means in a Darwinian social evolutionary context. The book has largely avoided going into detail on power and what it means to focus on the more macro levels, but it is something that requires

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attention. If power is the ability to shape things to an agent, or agents, interests (e.g. Lukes, 2005), then what does that mean for the concept of the environment, selection and adaptation? Is the most adaptable the same as the most powerful? Or does having the most power mean getting to decide what is selected? Or does it mean being able to shape the environment? Or power can be understood in Clarissa Hayward’s terms as ‘the capacity to act upon, or in ways that effect, the boundaries that constrain and enable social action’ (2000: 31 [emphasis in original]), in which case power fits more with adaptation, that the more powerful the agent the better they are at adapting and the more they can work on shaping the environment to their interests. On the practical side, there is a need for more studies that look at applying Darwinian insights and using this to understand the social, cultural and institutional world. Not just at the more macro-level, as has been done here, but also at the micro-level. There could be worth, for example, in investigations into whether Darwinian ideas can help explain how certain products in markets come to be created, and diffuse. Do environmental considerations play a role? How does a new variant emerging and becoming successful change the field? In this light, we could think about the success of the iPhone and how that model successfully propagated such that other companies shaped themselves into following that model. A question could also be asked about why earlier variants of smartphones did not have the same level of success. How many variations existed when the technology emerged that then all got settled into a particular model type? What was it about that particular model type that won out? Was it just greater marketing ability, or something else? What might this say about other developments? What role did the environment play that made this possible? This could combine well with the question on power and how to define it and understand it within the Darwinian context, as to gain an understanding of the microlevel interactions and understanding of how power operates would be required. This brings the book towards its conclusion. Hopefully, at the least, the book has demonstrated that Darwin’s ideas are something that sociologists, and social scientists in general, would find worth engaging with. Darwinism as a theory may not be a final theory of social change, and it

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is possible that some further theory may come along that better explains nationalism and social change. Or perhaps there will only ever be a plethora of theories that are used in different circumstances. But, until then, I reckon Darwin does a pretty good job of filling the gap.

Notes 1. Though see McLennan (2000, 2003) for a critique of the idea that theories of social change are Eurocentric.

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Index

A

Adaptation 5, 7, 15, 17–27, 37, 39, 43, 61, 62, 73, 78, 82, 115, 129, 145, 209, 213 Anderson, Benedict 152, 157 Anderson, Perry 38, 186, 189

Britain 8, 55, 62, 76, 82, 89, 94, 110, 111, 115, 119, 129, 130, 132–134, 137–139, 179, 180, 182–184, 187, 189, 191, 192, 195, 203, 211, 212

B

C

Bede 116–119 Bhambra, Gurminder K. 4, 35, 36, 76, 101, 102, 105, 107, 183, 212 Blackmore, Susan 28, 29, 31 Boyd, Robert 4, 8, 30, 36, 40, 41, 43–47, 52, 55, 67, 108, 109, 136, 139, 162, 164, 171, 180, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 203 Breuilly, John 5, 87, 116, 123, 124, 127, 128, 190

China 75–78, 82, 109, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153, 155, 160, 164, 165, 172, 188, 189, 195–197 Christianity Protestantism 116, 124, 127–129, 131, 133, 138, 182, 199 Colonialism 101, 105, 110, 192, 193, 195, 196, 202, 212

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 W. Kerr, Darwinian Social Evolution and Social Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77999-3

231

232

Index

D

F

Daimy¯o 148, 150–152, 156, 160, 161, 188, 189, 211 Darwin, Charles 1–4, 7, 9, 15, 17–19, 27, 36, 40, 41, 72, 137, 192, 209, 213, 214 Dawkins, Richard 16, 20, 27–31, 42 Drift 22, 23, 25, 73, 126, 167, 209

Fitness 7, 15, 19–22, 24, 25, 29, 209

E

Emperor 77, 143–148, 150, 156, 159–162, 164, 166, 168–172, 183, 184, 194, 199, 200, 211 Empire 75, 105, 110, 116, 119–121, 123–125, 129, 130, 132, 135, 137, 138, 166, 186, 187, 189, 192, 202, 211 England 182, 187 Empire 116, 120, 123, 124, 130, 136 Medieval 116 Reformation 115, 116, 124 Eurocentrism 101, 105 Evolution biological 2, 5, 7, 16, 27, 30, 31, 73 cultural 16, 27, 29, 30, 37, 40, 43, 45, 46, 48, 71, 73 social 2–9, 15, 16, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 35, 36, 39, 41, 46, 48, 51–53, 55, 62, 71, 72, 79, 81, 105, 106, 108, 115, 120, 145, 179, 180, 182, 200, 201, 203, 209, 210, 212 Evolutionary psychology 3

G

Gellner, Ernest 5, 37, 38, 61, 87, 88, 106, 108, 118, 184 Godfrey-Smith, Peter 20–22, 24, 25, 29 Gould, Stephen Jay 1, 9, 10, 19, 20, 23–25, 50, 51, 78, 157, 158, 168, 203 Greenfeld, Liah 116, 124–126, 138, 199

H

Hodgson, Geoffrey 2, 5, 8, 9, 16, 19, 24, 30, 31, 36, 43, 46, 52–55, 62, 73, 75, 81, 108, 123, 169, 196 Hull, David 8, 29–31, 36, 41–43, 48, 55, 115, 117, 120, 123, 184, 198, 199 Hutchinson, John 5, 8, 56, 75, 88, 93, 97–101, 103, 106–108, 110, 111, 117, 118, 126, 128, 130, 133, 154, 167, 181, 184, 189, 190, 193, 198, 201, 202, 210

I

Ichijo, Atsuko 5, 8, 88, 93, 99, 101–105, 107–109, 130, 152, 165, 166, 180, 194, 201, 210 Ideology 64, 66, 79, 93–95, 105, 109, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130,

Index

133, 164, 168, 169, 181, 183, 184, 186, 190, 195, 196, 201, 202, 204, 211, 212 Imperialism 2, 144, 165, 192, 193, 201 Inheritance 5, 6, 10, 40, 53, 62, 73 Interactor 25, 29, 42, 43, 53, 55, 78, 115, 117, 120, 121, 123–125, 128, 133, 184, 185, 187, 188, 190, 198, 200

J

Japan 62 Empire 166 Meiji 144, 145, 154, 155, 162, 166, 169, 171, 187, 200, 201 Tokugawa 109, 145, 148, 149, 152–155, 157, 161, 172, 187, 188, 194, 197, 200, 201, 211

K

Knudsen, Thorbjørn 2, 5, 8, 9, 16, 19, 24, 25, 30, 31, 36, 46, 52–55, 62, 75, 81, 196 Korea 146, 149, 153, 164, 166, 172, 182, 188, 195 Kumar, Krishan 117, 119, 126, 127, 129, 133–135, 137–139, 191–193, 195, 199

L

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste; Lamarckism 9, 10, 73 Lineage 37, 42, 43, 53, 55, 115, 123, 160, 164, 180, 198–200, 211, 212

233

M

Maleševi´c, Siniša 8, 87, 88, 93–100, 103, 105–109, 111, 117, 122, 130, 157, 169, 181, 183, 190, 192, 200, 201, 210 Mann, Michael 5, 6, 8, 62–74, 76, 77, 81, 82, 126, 134, 135, 160, 166, 167, 189, 193, 197, 199, 210 Marx, Karl 6, 36, 38–40, 61, 101, 111 Marxism 93 Mayr, Ernest 19, 20, 39, 40 Memes 16, 27–29, 31 Military 64, 65, 67–70, 74, 75, 125, 126, 133, 134, 139, 144, 148, 149, 151, 157, 160, 163, 164, 167, 170, 172, 184, 186, 187, 189, 191, 194, 200, 201, 210 Modernity 5, 88–90, 92, 94–97, 101–106, 109, 138, 163, 169, 182, 199, 200 multiple modernities 102–105

N

Nationalism ethno-symbolism 6, 82, 88, 98, 101, 107, 108, 110, 210 identity 6, 93, 96, 97, 100, 104, 117, 119, 137, 154, 169–171, 203 in England 8, 115, 124, 145, 210 in Japan 9, 143, 157, 197, 210 modernism 6, 82, 88, 97, 107, 210

234

Index

P

Plantagenet 116, 119, 121 Population thinking 15, 19, 20, 39–41, 43 Post-colonialism 76, 212 Power 6, 9, 29–31, 37, 47, 49, 50, 54, 55, 62–71, 73–78, 81, 82, 91–93, 95, 96, 98, 117, 120, 121, 125, 126, 128, 134, 136, 137, 146–148, 150, 157, 161, 167, 168, 189, 191, 194, 197, 201, 202, 210, 213 Punctuated equilibrium 50, 51, 71, 77, 78, 158

R

Religion 47, 64, 79, 80, 106, 126–128, 130, 138, 199 Replicator 25, 27, 28, 41–43, 53, 55, 117, 123, 133, 188, 198 Richerson, Peter 4, 8, 30, 36, 40, 41, 43–47, 55, 67, 108, 109, 136, 139, 162–164, 171, 180, 189, 191, 193–195, 197, 203 Runciman, Walter Garrison 4, 8, 16, 31, 36, 40, 46, 48–50, 52, 53, 55, 67, 79–81, 108, 123, 128, 131, 163, 172, 181, 191, 198

Selection 1–4, 6, 7, 15–23, 25, 26, 29, 39, 40, 42, 43, 48–50, 52, 53, 73, 108, 110, 123, 124, 137, 163, 168, 171, 180, 184, 186, 187, 189–194, 196–200, 202, 209, 211–213 Sh¯ogun 144, 147–151, 153, 155, 156, 159–163, 172, 183, 188, 195, 200, 211 Slavery 111, 126 Smith, Anthony D. 88, 98, 99 Sober, Elliott 21–26, 39, 40, 107, 123, 156, 185 Sociobiology 3 Spandrel 23, 25, 180, 202, 209 Spencer, Herbert 1–3, 10 Sperber, Dan 8, 36, 46, 47, 55, 79–81, 159, 171, 199 Spruyt, Hendrick 5, 8, 36, 50–52, 55, 74, 78, 109, 124, 162, 163, 185, 188, 192, 197, 200

T

Taiwan 149, 153, 164–166, 172, 195 Teleology 21, 39–41, 55, 67 Tokugawa 109, 145, 148, 149, 152–154, 156, 157, 168, 172, 188, 193, 194, 200

S

V

Samurai 143, 144, 147, 148, 151, 154, 155, 161, 163, 165, 166, 171, 172, 187, 195 Scotland 122, 128–130, 133–137, 182, 183, 186, 191, 192, 202, 211

Variants, Variation 2, 4–6, 16, 19, 24, 25, 39, 40, 43, 44, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 74, 88, 106–108, 110, 134, 163, 180, 189, 190, 193, 197, 199, 200, 202, 211, 213

Index

W

War 2, 98–100, 105, 107, 110, 122, 123, 125–129, 132, 135, 147, 148, 151, 157, 160, 167, 170, 172, 180–182, 184, 186, 188, 190, 193, 196, 202, 210, 212 cultural 210 Weber, Max 6, 61, 67, 96, 101 Weberian 62

235

Williams, Eric 125, 134, 136, 137 Wimmer, Andreas 8, 87–92, 96, 97, 103, 104, 106–108, 132, 168, 194, 202, 210

Z

Zhao, Dingxin 8, 62, 68–73, 75–78, 81, 82, 189–191, 210