Near the close of Chapter Six Benedict Anderson draws a critical distinction between official nationalisms and the more spontaneous linguistic-nationalisms of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. Let the following quotation from his summary on pages 109-111 provide a context for you to reflect on the very troubling portrait of nationalism and identity displayed in "Breaker Morant."
...[F]rom about hte middle of the nineteenth century there developed what Seton-Watson terms "official nationalisms" inside Europe. These nationalisms were historically "impossible" until after the appearance of popular linguistic-nationalisms, for, at bottom, they were responses by powerful groups--primarily, but not exclusively, dynastic and aristocratic--threatened with exclusion from, or marginalization in, popular imagined communities. A sort of tectonic upheaval was beginning, which, after 1918 and 1945, tipped these groups towards drainages in Estoril and Monte Carlo. Such official nationalisms were conservative, not to say reactionary, policies, adapted from the model of the largely spontaneous popular nationalisms that preceded them....In the name of imperialism, very similar policies were pursued by the same sorts of groups in the vast Asian and African territories subjected in the course of the nineteenth century. Finally, refracted into non-European cultures and histories, they were picked up and imitated by indigenous ruling groups in those few zones (among them Japan and Siam) which escaped direct subjection....In almost every case, official nationalism concealed a discrepancy between nation and dynastic realm....The reason for all this was not simply racism; it was also the fact that at the core of the empires [think Britain] nations [think Australia] too were emerging...And these nations were also instinctively resistant to "foreign" rule. Thus, imperialist ideology in the post-1850 era thus typically had the character of a conjuring trick.
Taking your lead from this quotation explain the diverse nationalist and dynastic tensions at work in the court martial of Morant, Handcock, and Witton, who it might seem to us now were the witting victims of this "conjuring trick."
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Leading up to the events of Breaker Morant in 1901, Australia was on an accelerated path toward nationalism. With the gold rush of 1851 causing a major depression in the 1880s, Australians were encouraged to form a federal government to pull the colonies together for a more efficient unification. Simultaneously, the first generation of Australian born residents were coming to power in society. This common bond sparked the drive toward a popular nation created of the imagined (imagined because really they were part of 6 distinct colonies) community of native born Australians. While they planned to form a federal government, distinctive of an official nation, this plan was motivated by the rising popular nation. This push away from colonization created conflict for the British as they saw themselves becoming increasingly marginalized.
ReplyDeleteBecause Britain saw the model of nationalism imported to their own country from America, they realized it was a transferable idea which could be used to keep control over Australia and other colonies. Unfortunately, the British born Australians were growing old and handing over power to the next generation who had less native allegiance to the Queen. To maintain power over the colonies, the British needed to create an official nationalism which would both play off of the imagined community already formed by the Australians and allow the British to control the country.
Breaker Morant lays out the model for the official nationalism through the court martial process. Key to official nationalism is for the marginalized upper class, Britain, to maintain control while still eluting a feeling of camaraderie with those they are in power over. The judges of the court martial are all British soldiers as designated by their hats, but the defendants are Australian nationals. It becomes apparent that the judges will find the defendants guilty no matter the evidence in their favor. Despite these circumstances, the defendants all fight valiantly in defense of the British when the Boers attack the fort during the trial. To this end, the movie displays the success of the official nation in its ability to control the middle class while still maintaining a sense of unity. Underlying the lack of justice in this court is the want of the commanding Major of the war to end the strife with a peace declaration, so he uses the defendants to achieve that goal. One could assume the British want to also bring the official nationalism to South Africa in general and gain power over the Boers in particular. By sacrificing the Australian soldiers, natives of a country already in their palm, the British are able to show their willingness to work with Boers and form the same sense of community found between the Australian people and the British. In this way, Britain can move from colony to colony setting up official nations in attempt to regain power as the popular nationalist movements drive them toward marginalization.
In his book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson discusses the deep power of nationalism in creating the illusion of unified communities between people who have never even met each other. Anderson reveals how imperialist powers, striving to achieve expansive empires and gain control over foreign lands, attempted to kindle this spirit of nationalist and patriotic fervor towards their empires by including these lands in their empires and thus creating official nationalisms. In this manner, these empires hoped to suppress the distinct identities of the emerging nations in order to maintain the loyalty and obedience of the people that they desired to overcome. This manipulation of nationalism, referred to as a “conjuring trick” by Anderson, is clearly seen as a motive of the British in the movie “Breaker Morant”. This movie is a portrayal of the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. During this war, the British enlisted Australians, who were already a part of the British Empire, to help bring the Boers, who were trying to assert their own independence as the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, into the British Empire. However, the alliance between the British and the Australians turned tumultuous as the Australians came to their own sense of independence and a feeling of nationalism which was directed not towards Britain and the Queen but to their Australian homeland. In fact, given that it was only almost exactly one year before the Australians Morant and Handcock were executed that the Australians first created their constitution, it can be concluded that Australian nationalism was very rampant at the beginning of the twentieth century.
ReplyDeleteIn their attempts to form a coherent empire through official nationalism, the British realized the immense difficulty of preserving an “imagined community” in light of distinctly emerging nationalisms in the lands they were trying to conquer. Furthermore, as the British stretched their control over the world, they also stretched their resources thin to the point that, in order to bring southern Africa into their “imagined community” they had to use the other members of this so-called unity—the Australians—as scapegoats. Thus, throughout the movie “Breaker Morant”, even though a trial is taking place against the Australians, the British plan all along is to find these Australians guilty. Through this court decision, the British hope that the Boers will begin to feel a sense of unity with the British and therefore succumb to British control. However, even though the British put on this front of equality among all members of the empire, as is necessary for nationalism involved in empire building, this is not the desire of the British. The irony of the movie can be seen in that, while the British are trying to persuade the Boers that they are in unity with one another and therefore should join together under a combined nationalism, they are betraying other members of their empire. Thus, if the Boers looked past the immediate demonstration of unity that the British are trying to put forward and saw the implications of these actions, they would discover the true motive behind British imperialism. The true motive behind their imperialism was not to create a unified empire of equals, but rather to increase the land and human resources which were at their own disposal to use in whatever way benefited themselves the most. The sense of nationalism was only a means, or a “conjuring trick”, which the British used to gain control. Perhaps the willingness of the British to exploit the “inferior” members of their “imagined community” is best explained by Matthew 10:36, the passage which Morant requests as his epitaph as he walks to his death: “Well, Peter…this is what comes of ‘empire building.’”
The British adoption of an official nationalism truly had the semblance of a conjuring trick – the bullet catch, perhaps. The cry was “Step right up, see how I, the Great Anglo, catch a bullet!”, as the British claimed equality and unity as a nation. But the gun was never loaded – the flash and bang were that of a blank – and the constituents of the British Empire lacked the basic interactions and conditions required for the imagination of a true community. No common imagined regional history existed: each of the British colonies had upon their land peoples (or the remnants of peoples) who had a history tied to the region, who had been there before the arrival of the colonists; although the quote denies racism, the only historical tie to the British that the colonists found was that of race – descent from the English, Scottish, Welsh, etc. But this idea denied the strong ties formed by identification with one’s lands of residence and/or birth – that regional familiarity Abrams emphasized and Chatwin’s subjects venerated – and the imagination of a land already experienced proved stronger than the imagination of a world far removed. The interchangeability of the British subjects was thwarted by this – living conditions were so far removed from each other that identification proved difficult – as well as by the segregation of units in the Boer Wars and other areas of the imperial military. Here, too, the commonality of an educational, social, political, and military pilgrimage was relatively non-existent. Like the Spanish Creoles, the Australians in Breaker Morant are depicted as marginalized by British commanders, being held the most responsible for any incident and the least protected; this is especially clear in that the three main characters were put through a veritable marathon of a farcical trial, while the British national nearly equally responsible for the crimes committed was implied to have gotten away scot-free in a comparatively painless process. The conjurer waves his hands to distract the audience – “The sun never sets on the British Empire”, “God save the Queen”, and other rituals or suggestions of unity are thrown about, dispensed like rations to all. This was not the Roman Army (there, units are carefully made up of men from all territories, so the sole link may be Roman allegiance), and indeed, the British animosity and segregation of Australians helped foster Australian nationalism, as did the administrative barriers set up by the British in Australia proper, as well as elsewhere. Yet the magician seems to pull the bullet out from between his teeth – it is most telling to observe his response. When asked about any matter which could exculpate the Australians under trial, the British would ask for hard evidence, questioning their trustworthiness. When an uproar arose, the standard British response was one of denial, such the restriction of access to the court-martial transcripts or their subsequent “disappearance”.
ReplyDeleteWhile the British attempted to create a quasi-nationalist unity throughout their possessions, their practical separation from their colonies and the rampant favoritism throughout, combined with their willingness to sacrifice those not born in Britain (see the Gallipoli campaign, for instance) forced the colonies to examine what qualities excluded them from truly being part of Britain, and identifying based on those very traits, giving rise to the nationalism the British had sought to redirect and avoid.
And yes, my Friday night was spent doing homework. There is no escape. No fugue.
Michael Collins
ReplyDeleteThe trial of Morant, Handcock, and Witton was an excellent illustration of the extraordinary sacrifices that people will make in order to defend what they perceive to be their "nation." On one side were the "English" prosecutors who saw nothing wrong with killing innocents in order to defend the sacred reputation of the British Empire. On the other were the "Australians" who, even though given many opportunities to escape, decided to stay in jail and sacrifice themselves to protect the honor of Australia. The trial proved that England had failed to spread its "nation" throughout its "empire."
The Australians, even though enlisted in the British army, saw themselves as fundamentally Australian. In fact, the very last words that Handcock wrote to his wife were "Australia forever." It is surprising that only a century after Europeans arrived in Australia someone like Handcock could believe that "Australia" had existed forever and would live on eternally after his death. Anderson would say that Australia developed an identity separate from England because Australians' pilgrimage to the top of England's bureaucratic structure was blocked. With few exceptions, the highest post that an ambitious Australian could hope for would be located in Australia. In essence, there was a "glass ceiling" blocking the upward progress of all Australians. This ceiling became the border of the new nation.
England believed that when they conquered new territories and populated them with British people that these people would be just as loyal to the crown as those who lived in Manchester and London. However, once a generation had passed and places like Australia become entirely populated with "creoles," the ties between the motherland and the colony were severely weakened. The Empire never officially discriminated against creoles but in practice creoles were not given the same rights as those who were born in what was beginning to be called "England." The trial of Morant, Witton, and Handcock was an example of outright discrimination against those born in the English "empire" in favor of those who were born in the English "nation." If the British officers truly saw the Australians as fellow Englishmen, they would not have chosen a group of specifically Australian scapegoats. The difference between Australians, Indians, and Englishmen wouldn't have been significant for the British officers just like the difference between Floridians, Hoosiers, and Californians isn't significant for me. Morant, Witton, and Handcock were chosen specifically because they were seen as outsiders.
Officially, the English Empire did not distinguish between people from different parts of its empire. If that part of the world flew the British flag, the people who lived there (or at least the Europeans who lived there) were officially known as English. However, amongst the people, the only way someone could be recognized as English was if he or she were born in the part of Great Britton known today as England. Anderson says this discrepancy was not unique to the English Empire. All over the world, "official nationalisms" were at odds with "popular nationalisms." Dying dynasties and aristocracies were trying to salvage their last scraps of power by joining in on the new craze for nationhood and placing themselves at the head of these new nations. However, these dynasties misunderstood the imagined communities that were beginning to form all over the world. English leadership believed that if they established English-style government and education in their colonies they could simply expand the definition of "England. "
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ReplyDeleteHowever, there is more to nationalism than schools and parliaments. For a popular "nation" to exist, there must be the illusion that all the people in that community are equals and that they are all deeply connected to the success of the nation as a whole. The English made no effort to pervade such an illusion in their colonies because they still operated under "dynastic" rules. They still believed that if they conquered a country, its people would fall under their command without strife because they did not care who ruled them. England did not treat its colonists as equals and its colonists did not share in the riches gained by the English Empire. Witton, Hancock and Morant did not care whether the English won the Boer war or not because they would not share in England's success if it conquered South Africa. They entered the war for personal reasons, not nationalistic ones.
The most surprising aspect of the trial is that even though Morant was given several chances to escape, he turned them all down. He did this to uphold the honor of Australia even when Australia had completely abandoned him. Australia wanted to prove that it was not a backwards country of lawless vigilantes. If Australia had protested the execution of Morant and Handcock, England and the rest of the world would have believed that Australia was not willing to follow the rule of law. If Handcock and Morant had escaped, England would have portrayed Australians as frontiersmen without honor. In any case, Australia sacrificed Morant and Handcock to preserve its reputation. Amazingly, Morant understood this and willingly sacrificed himself. He had such an intense love of his "country" that he was willing to give up a promising life with a new wife in order to uphold something as arbitrary as the reputation of a "nation" that didn't technically exist yet. In the end, this is the most powerful statement of Breaker Morant. The idea of the nation was relatively new in Morant's time and yet people were already beginning to believe that devotion to the nation was more important than devotion to family. This level of devotion is both impressive and terrifying. For example, WWI and WWII were fought between people who shared Morant's devotion to their nations. Breaker Morant illustrates just how powerful Anderson's imagined communities can be.
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ReplyDeleteThroughout history, “official nationalism” has created the death and suffering of groups of people for seemingly pointless reasons. For example, during the Red Scare in the United States, the nation was brought together with an American spirit blended with anti-communist feelings. Unfortunately, this construct by people and government of the United States led to the death of innocent victims as evidenced by the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, two assumed to be communists. The fairness of their trial was debatable as it was highly publicized and followed by the media. From the start of the trial, everyone in the courtroom knew that they would be found guilty no matter what evidence was placed in front of the judge. This is the problem of the “official nationalism” in more recent society. In order to achieve an image, the ruling class will sacrifice anything or anyone in their way.
ReplyDeleteThe story of Breaker Morant only furthers the argument, showing the three men victimized by the “conjuring trick” of “official nationalism”. At work in the movie is the urge of Lord Kitchener to bring the Boer War to an end with the peace conference. In his mind, the only hope of this happening is to show that he can discipline his own soldiers if they misbehave. Kitchener needs to prove to the Boers that Morant was guilty of the war atrocities, no matter the circumstances he faced. By showing that it was the Australians who killed the Boer prisoners, the British people can get “off the hook” and portray themselves as the good people. This would bring a peaceful stoppage to the war that already suffered too many casualties. In the process of proving the Australians to be the evil party of the situation, the British are breaking their ties with the Australians and their former linguistic-nationalism. Linguistically speaking, the British and the Australians share the same language in English and still hold many of the same customs. One would think that this blood linkage would transfer over to the “official nationalism” but it unfortunately does not. Instead, the British used “official nationalism” to make the higher end officials of society look like the good guys. Morant, Handcock, and Witton just had to take the blame for what the higher official ordered them to do. In the grand scheme of things, it was probably better to find a scapegoat for the situation rather than the fighting to continue. Although a couple innocent Australian soldiers were sacrificed, the image of the British Empire was retained and the amount of casualties in the Boer War came to a halt.
In sports, a common term that arises is that a player has to “take one for the team.” If the coach made the wrong decision or the player gets injured to make a great play, it was the better decision in principle for the overall group. This is the kind of analogy that relates to the official nationalism of Breaker Morant. The British Empire sacrificed the middle class of the Australian soldiers in order to keep the unity of the entire people. Some may say that this is an immoral action and should be condemned. In some sense this is true; however, it is the harsh reality of our world.
The trial and conviction of Breaker Morant and two other Australian soldiers fighting the Boers is an accurate representation of workings of “official nationalism.” The Australians who fought in the war were essentially British individuals who moved to Australia and spoke English. While they while the territory was still claimed by Britain during the Boer War, the Australians started to see themselves as a separate nation. Throughout the war, the Australians and the British both fought, but the Australians were typically the ones to be sacrificed in battles, and in Morant’s case, to prove a point. The British needed to show the Boers that they were actively prosecuting the people who mercilessly slaughtered them so that the war could be ended. This was capable of being accomplished due to official nationalism.
ReplyDeleteThough the British and Australians were inherently similar, when it came down to stopping the war, the British had no trouble blaming the Australians for almost all of the negative events that occurred. The judges made it quite apparent during the Breaker Morant trial that he, Handcock, and Witton were going to be found guilty no matter what the contrary evidence. One of the witnesses spent most of his time on the stand trying to prove that the Australians were of bad character, impossible to work with, and essentially nothing but troublemakers. It is ironic given that Breaker Morant and many of the other Australian soldiers were from Britain, but that is how “official nationalism” works. Britain had to prove that they were completely separate from Australia and was their own, albeit imagined, nation.
It seems that in the early chapter of Imagined Communities the imagined communities were positive groupings bring people together; however, with “official nationalism” it appears that the imagined communities are turning in to imagined exclusions where entities like Australia who are essentially British are negatively detached from that empire by the British. This seems to be opposite of how the South American countries and the United States formed. They kicked out the mother country to form their own nation. In the movie Breaker Morant the mother country seems to have disowned the area it once claimed to further its own motive. They had to show that the Australians were wrong, not the British, so that the ruling British class could maintain its power and control. In this sense, nationalism went further than coming from the imagined community it was essentially just a “conjuring trick” used to convince people that Britain was indeed a better if not the best empire.
This “conjuring trick” has been used in many instances to convince a people of their nation’s dominance even when it is necessarily false. Many governments, including our own, exploit their citizens via the media and propaganda to create “official nationalism.” In America, the media created a sense of “official nationalism” by convincing that American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Because of this fact, American’s were lead to believe that war was necessary to preserve their nation. However, the physical evidence for this was scant and was greatly stretched by the government to further their own motive.
The interaction between the “Australians” and the “British” during the court martial in the film, ‘Breaker Morant’, while interesting to observe, was rather bizarre. Consider this; the ancestors of the “British” and “Australians” that spent the entire movie going back and forth with ethnic jabs and animosity could well have been great friends back in England and it is not too much of a stretch to think that the two combating parties may have been closely related. The image of this bickering group of ethnically similar, possibly blood-related men, who were supposed to be ‘playing on the same team,’ that being the British Empire, in a remote place far away from either’s home like South Africa is strange to say the least, and borders on being comical. The preposterous nature of this exchange strongly speaks to the absurdity that is often displayed in official nationalism.
ReplyDeleteAs Benedict Anderson explains in his book, the origins of nationalism and the concept of the “independent state” are rather tricky things to put one’s finger on. Having grown up in an era where the world is nicely partitioned into various autonomous and separate states, the members of this class and I would very probably have a hard time picturing what the world was like before the arrival of the nation-state. Right before the rise of nation-states, it was probably divided into various kingdoms and duchies and such whose boundaries were ever flexible and whose leaders were in and out of power quicker than the commoners could keep track of. Even before the age of dynasties, it was probable that the lines along which were drawn concepts like “Self” and “Other” were those that separated the various tribes of the world like the Gauls, Ostrogoths, Latins, etc. This tribal arrangement was, out of the three, probably the best way to represent a group of people, as many tribes were mostly homogenous in their ethnicity, language, and culture. However, the mobility of tribes and periodical mixing with members of other tribes meant that even the definitions of the members of one tribe would probably not be entirely representative.
As tribes gave way to dynasties and dynasties began to fade into official nations, it is really not hard to see why people would latch on to the new idea of the nation state. Here was a seemingly concrete depiction of what was ‘self’ and ‘Other’. It enhances one’s identity by accentuating things like national colors and flags, and it allows people to feel like they are a part of an entity completely more significant than themselves, no matter how accurate or inaccurate that national representation of its people is. The Swiss can say “We are Swiss, our colors are Red and White, and our flag is red with a white cross on it,” with enormous pride because in this nationalistic world, they have the red white and blue French to the west and the yellow red and black Germans to the north who, although much larger than Switzerland, do not do things quite as well as the Swiss do. National pride like this does not even take into account that in western Switzerland, French is spoken, and a man from that area has more in common with the ‘Other’ Frenchman than with the fellow ‘Self’ Swiss man from eastern Switzerland where German is spoken. This imagined quality of national communities leads to animosity, as it did in Breaker Morant, as the English and Australians butted heads because of their stereotypes of one another. Australians were considered to being lazy while the English were seen as two-faced and inconsistent in their orders. The opposite of the Switzerland example has happened, as neither side realized that that the Australians were not much more than displaced Englishmen, showing how, in the minds of these men, nationalistic ideas had become how they defined who was self and who was Other.
Sarah Forde
ReplyDeleteIn Benedict Anderson’s insightful book, Imagined Communities, he acknowledges and details the existence of two types of “nationalisms:” official nationalism and local nationalism. Official nationalism, or the nationalism induced by the law, is usually (but not always) rejected by the vast majority of the people. For example, in the British colonies in America, once a generation of “natural-born Americans” was established in the colonies, those citizens began to detest the restrictive, unfair (in their eyes) rule of the British. The British continued to take away the freedom of and overtax the colonists until they reached a breaking point and rose against their “King” in order to gain a nationalism of their own. Although these two points, the removal of freedom and the over taxation, are the two that are commonly discussed in history textbooks as the reasons for the secession of the colonies from mother England, there is a third, equally important reason. The colonists had established an identity of their own, a “local nationalism,” and rejected the idea of having an additional, mandatory “official nationalism” forced on them by their ties to England.
Similarly, in Bruce Beresford’s film Breaker Morant, the Second Boer War serves as a backdrop to illustrate some of the conflicts which arrive when different cultures clash under the direction of a crude, clumsy puppeteer. As the war between the British and the South Africans rages on, the Australians fighting on the side of the British become increasingly disconcerted and displeased with their role as the pawns of the British empire, seeking to establish their “local nationalism” as the Australian “official nationalism,” thus replacing the British “official nationalism” in Australia. The British, hoping to end the long war quickly and efficiently, selects the Australian Army officers Breaker Morant, Peter Handcock, and George Witton as their scapegoats and the enemies of the Boers. The event that they based their accusations on was an attack by the three on the Boers and a German missionary, leading to the assassination of the Boers and the missionary. Though this was an attack which was authorized by spoken, rather than written, orders, the British questioned the legitimacy of the attack on the grounds that Morant was only aspiring to fulfill his desire for revenge against the Boers for mutilating his friend and comerade, Captain Hunt. The British did not really care about Morant’s motives or relative innocence, because they hoped that, if the Boers and the British shared these Australian Army officers as a common enemy, the peace agreement would be easier to reach and more favorable to the British.
Though the trial was rigged from the beginning, the defense attorney, Major Thomas, delivered a series of compelling arguments for the innocence of the accused, despite almost all of the odds being against him. In the end, though he was not able to acquit all three officers, he saved George Witton from execution on the grounds that he only shot a Boer who was shooting at him, thus only attacked in self-defense. In the end, though Morant and Handcock were still executed, their story lived on in Witton’s book, Scapegoats of the Empire.
Despite the fact that Morant and Handcock were wrongfully accused, their story stood as a testament to the fact that, against the odds, innocence can be gained (as it was by Witton), as well as the message left in Witton’s book, which proved so inciting that it was censored by the British during both world wars. Though some of the characters, such as Major Thomas, returned to their lives as they had lived them before the Morant trial, it had left an impact on the British, South African, and Australian nations for years to come, inspiring all who knew of the story that there is hope in the struggle against forced, external official nationalism.
Imperialism in the nineteenth century is a curious thing in that major powers, like Britian, sought to bond disparate groups of people from all over the globe. Entirely separate and distinct communities -- both geographically and culturally -- were brought together by the invisible ties of nationalism. Things like commonality of language were once thought to be a catalyst in this process, but the film "Breaker Morant" shows us that it may be much more complicated to form these imagined communities than expected.
ReplyDeleteIn the film, Britain is fighting the Boer community in South Africa. The Boers want independence and to declare their own South African Republic and Orange Free State, and the British want to pull them into the ever-expanding British empire. They enlist the help of their Australian "compatriots" and fall into a tangled court marshall of three Australian soldiers.
Though the Australians and British seem to be on the same team, fighting for the same "official nationalism," the British have no problem sacrificing a few of "their own" men, Morant and Hancock, for the sake of imperialist conquest. The men are put on trial for killing members of enemy troops -- usually a commendable act, but in this case, Britain has decided that they are more likely to win the Boers over with sympathy than brute force. They condemn the soldiers that fought for them and even succeed in winning Australia's support on the decision. Clearly, these invisible ties of nationalism are much stronger than they appear. They are long enough to reach over oceans and continents, resilient enough to withstand two-casualities-worth of strain, and powerful enough to blind several warring parties to the wonders of justice and common logic.
In Benedict Anderson’s work Imagined Communities, he describes both the complex factors that lead to nationalism and the features that define nationalism. Anderson’s main argument about nationalism (evidenced by the title) is that the communal feelings created by nationalism are imagined. People within a nation with no actual bond to each other will feel a connection with all members who are part of this connected community.
ReplyDeleteAnderson’s description of nationalism and its effect becomes especially salient when regarding the movie Breaker Morant. Anderson discusses the tension that develops between nations and empires when he writes, “official nationalism concealed a discrepancy between nation and dynastic realm....it was also the fact that at the core of the empires [think Britain] nations [think Australia] too were emerging... these nations were also instinctively resistant to "foreign" rule” (Anderson 110-111). The issue is that as these nations which make up an empire begin to think of themselves as an independent entity, they are less likely to feel the imagined bond with the members of the core of the empire.
This tension between emerging nations and their ruling empire is exemplified through the international interactions in Breaker Morant. In this movie, the British Empire is at war with the Boers in South Africa as the Boers attempt to gain independence from the British Empire. The British Empire uses Australian troops for their army, which is ironic since Australians’ ambitions at this time mirror that of the Boers more closely than that of the British. At the time of this movie, nearly all Australians were native-born and felt no bond to the British Empire like their parents and grandparents had. Australia had wishes of independence from the British Empire much like the Boers, but instead they had to fight the Boers in order to maintain the British Empire.
This tension between the Australians and the British is evident throughout all of Breaker Morant. Even though Australians are being tried for the crime, they are not represented in the military tribunal or in the prosecution. Their only representation is by their lawyer who is handpicked by the British Empire to be as inept as possible, demonstrated by his extremely limited experience in criminal cases. The whole trial is simply a charade in order to serve the purposes of the British Empire. They are using the case (assuming a guilty verdict is reached) in order to appease the Boers, so that peace talks may be initiated. As the case progresses, the viewer learns that the military tribunal is not worried about what is right for the Boers or the Australians, but instead they solely care that a guilty verdict is reached (which may help to end this undesired war).
In this interaction between the Australians and the British, it becomes apparent to the viewer that neither side feels the imagined bond that Benedict Anderson initially describes regarding members within a nation. Therefore, Anderson’s description about how national rule and dynastic rule are distinctly different is exemplified in Breaker Morant. If the imagined bond was in fact felt between nations and the core of the empire, the interactions in Breaker Morant would be entirely different. The Australians were not treated as fellow members within this empire but instead as non-important subjects. As the film closes to an end, the viewer is left unsettled as he or she realizes that the individuals and the facts are not what matter in this court trial, but rather individuals are used to serve the desires of the empire, an empire that these subjects no longer feel any solidarity with.
The constant nationalist tensions that occurred throughout “Breaker Morant” are all described in great detail by Benedict Anderson in “Imagined Communities.” The movie exemplifies these tensions because not only does it show what his happening between the people of a nation and of her colony, but those people in another land all together. The “official nationalism” of everyone in the movie (except the Boers obviously) was British. However, the more “linguistic nationalism” of Morant and Handcock especially, but Witton too, was Australian. The movie became so complex with these nationalisms though because while Morant and Handcock seemed to have more allegiance to their Australian identity, they fought and did everything they could for the British identity. Alone, this is nothing special; however, the British involved in the case and the army who should have been trying to bring the Australians in as part of the “Empire” decided to separate their identities. By the end, those who were primarily British and should have been working to keep the “Empire” united were those most strongly keeping it separate, and those who had all the reason in the world to try and separate themselves were fighting in the name of the “Empire.” Witton exampled this when he was talking to Morant and Handcock one night and said that his dad told him he should go fight for the “glory of the Empire” (or something along those lines), and Morant and Handcock both responded that the Empire didn’t exist, and if it did, it wasn’t an equal one. In this case they were exactly right, as the “Empire” saw the Australians as completely disposable, helpful as military personnel, but when it came to keeping on good terms, the British completely sacrificed members of their own Empire in order to stay on good terms with the Germans. This is exactly what Anderson is referring to when he says “The reason for all of this was not simply racism; it was also the fact that at the core of the empire, nations too were emerging” (110). As soon as two nationalistic identities begin to arise within one Empire, the identities will begin to both resent each other, and the “ruling” one will almost certainly use the colony as means to an end. This is why although Morant and Handcock both resented the British rule, they still fought for the British, whereas the British resented and thought themselves above the Australians, so they had no problem sacrificing them, furthering separating the Empire. What is curious about all of this, though, is that it occurred in South Africa, where neither of these identities really belonged. The British were trying to further their Empire, which they had no business doing in the first place, by fighting off the Dutch, who also didn’t belong there. For a movie filmed in Africa, it was striking enough that there was not one African shown, much less their identity asserted. It is most interesting to me that while the Australians were disposable to the British, the Africans they were colonizing were so disposable they did not even earn an appearance in a movie that is supposed to historically represent the events. The imperial nationalism mindset that took over is very clearly based on “official nationalism;” it is completely based on an idea that takes over people and land as opposed to the “linguistic-nationalisms” that more naturally and rightfully appear across a land.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the tensions arising from the complex nationalistic tensions in the film are almost hard to follow because of their contradictions. Furthermore, after further investigation into what was truly happening in the film, the identities that come into play seem absolutely absurd that people would believe it is okay to impose such ideas on others to a point where they are completely neglected in a discussion on their own identity.
Throughout Breaker Morant, we witness a continuous attempt on the part of the British to maintain a strong official nationalism within South Africa. Regardless of how imagined such a concept is—as Benedict Andersen illustrates—the British are desperate to maintain such a symbiotic relationship. We recognize this frantic attempt throughout the court martial of the three Australian soldiers. From the outset of the trial, it is quite clear that the court will find the defendants guilty. Major Thomas presents both a compelling and convincing argument in defense of the three soldiers, certainly proving innocence beyond a reasonable doubt (whether they were in fact innocent or not). Thus, we must consider the motivation behind this predetermined verdict.
ReplyDeleteThe order to return a guilty verdict comes from the top, Lord Kitchener. Being a member of the aristocracy, he very much has a vested interest in the outcome of the trial. Considering that official nationalism is founded in the maintained relationship of power over, yet solidarity with, the middle and lower classes, the continuation of the official nationalism that had been created depended upon amiable relations with the Boers. Kitchener sought that amiability through a peace conference; this conference could only be achieved, however, through the conviction of these soldiers. Additionally, the three soldiers were of Australian, not British descent. Thus, a wrongful conviction appeases the Boers and avoids the possibility of enraging the British commoners.
Here we witness evidence of official nationalism as a gross abuse of the imagined community. Official nationalism utilizes the imagined community as a means to unite the people within that community. However, this unity is manipulated for personal or communal exploitation. In the case of Breaker Morant, the aristocracy exploits this official nationalism to maintain their upper-class status. We witness this manipulation in various cases throughout the world. Official nationalism develops a sense of pride in one’s country, however misguided, and justifies the imperialistic process. Official nationalism’s maturity provides a foundation for concepts such as the “white man’s burden” and the moral necessity of colonial conquest.
Importantly, most fail to recognize that under the umbrella of official nationalism, soldiers can be forced to fight mindlessly for a nation to which they truly have little connection. The Australian soldiers in Breaker Morant fight for Britain, a striking contradiction. They hold no true connection to the British aristocracy for whose agenda they fight, and as Morant stated, “In these days, we don’t get to pick which side we fight for.” Additionally, the imperialistic process official nationalism sets in motion a cycle of many laboring through personal detriment for the benefit of an elite few. We witness this sentiment in Morant’s final day, when he explains that his death is “the price of imperialism.” Thus, official nationalism, an imagined concept based on imagined community, encourages a diverted path of accountability from those that are truly guilty.
From its founding, Australia possessed illusionary national status. The British deported unwanted criminals to the island and neglected the well-being and care of the island. For the British, Australia constituted another colonial possession operating within the empire. However, the dynamics of the situation changed drastically as Australian men enrolled in the military. Australians fought alongside the British but never gained the full respect of a British soldier. This situation precipitated the events of the film Breaker Morant. In the film, the Second Boer War in South Africa unites Australian and British troops fighting for the empire. The war brings together disparate men of the empire to fight under the same banner, but the illusion of unity ends once the Australian men become ensconced in a court martial.
ReplyDeleteThe film purports the extent of the "imagined community" as described by Benedict Anderson that exists in the British empire. "Breaker" Morant, Peter Hancock, and George Witton, all Australians, fight as officers in the British army in South Africa. Alongside native British men, they risk their lives. However, they become isolated defendants for the death of prisoners and a German missionary. Orders descended through the British military bureaucracy to commit the acts, but the Australians still receive the blame. Instead of the "community" embracing the Australians and accepting blame, the British ostracize the officers and court martial them. The British even assign an unqualified lawyer, Major JF Thomas, one day to prepare a case to defend the group. From these pre-court proceedings, the farcical truth of the multinational "community" dissolves. These men, fighting for an empire they believe they belong to, receive the treatment of strangers, someone who has not earned the respect of another in "community." In language, military action, and mindset, the Australians coincide superficially with the British, but the mindset proves illusionary. The British perceive the Australians as other despite the commonality of empire. Simply, the British officers do not wish to acknowledge their own shortcomings because, in the end, they possess men from an entirely separate community to isolate. They are only "united" with the Australians through an "imagined" sense of community.
As the Australians are further subjugated, the film depicts Benedict's idea of "official nationalism." Benedict describes this idea as "a means for combining naturalization with retention of dynastic power… for stretching the short, tight, skin of the nation over the gigantic body of the empire" (83). In the film, the "skin" stretches very tight in the remainder of the court proceedings. Despite the British high command's apparent guilt, the court neglects the orders and consequentially prosecutes the Australians. This act, as hoped by the British, precipitates peace negotiations with the Boers, but it further reasserts British dynastic rule over the Australians. Since Australia originally was populated with criminals, the loyalty to the British lacked, and over time, the effect greatened. With the court's actions, the British military reasserts the "official nationalism" of the empire by reasserting power over the three Australian officers. The farcical court proceedings elaborate the illusion of justice, but the predetermined guilt of the officers violates any fairness. The final result of capital punishment best signifies the ideas behind the entire proceedings. The Australians, men "united" to the British militarily, suffer the deadly actions of the British, those who commanded the "united" army, in order to reaffirm the "official nationalism." In personification of Benedict's ideas, the British attempt to stretch the illusionary "skin" of "community" across the entire empire, but they reveal the apparent divisions that exist "subcutaneously."
While spending his last night in prison before the verdict of his trial, Harry Morant talks to his companions, saying, “You can’t always choose, George, which side you’re going to fight on. And these days it’s very easy to be on the wrong side.” For Morant, conflicts did not stem from a great crusade of good against evil, but rather from the goals of individual nations. Even in the early Twentieth-Century, communities had emerged under the title of “nation” to an extent where they dominated international interactions. Imperialistic conquests were no longer undertaken in the name of the King or in the name of religion, but rather in the name of the Motherland. This distinction is quintessential to the justification of such imperialistic motives, for they no longer had to be justified by a divine set of codes or the wisdom of an inspired ruler; instead, conquests only had to serve the “good” of the nation.
ReplyDeleteBenedict Anderson’s description of nations as imagined communities is very useful in analyzing the motives and actions of Imperial Europe. According to Anderson, the first nations were catalyzed through the unification of people by common language, which led to a discovery of simultaneity. Such a discovery led to a feeling of camaraderie among distant humans, which spread by means of printable language to become a phenomenon that aggregated people over certain areas into distinct nations. This type of community was founded to nourish the imagined bond between people by providing support and equal opportunity. The nation became great and worth defending because it provided a means of opportunity; it embodied a spirit that made experienced life possible not only for current generations but for future ones as well. Thus, when pursuits were made in order to aid the nation, they were noble because they served the people. Righteousness became relative, with morality being justified by those who the motives served. Yet elitist rulers developed means to extend nationalism over citizens while still maintaining power, forming “official nationalism,” and through such they could gain support for their own political agendas by invoking national pride, or in other words “conjuring the trick” of nationalism.
The practice of official nationalism was very frequent in imperialistic states, with Australia and Britain serving as prime examples. While British leaders in Australia gained support from Australian colonialists by proclaiming service to a common motherland, there was nothing common about the goals. The leaders were serving their home in Britain and only Britain; Australians were seen as merely a lesser people that could be used as tools in this task. Thus, when Britain needed to take action in order to keep the Germans out of South Africa and away from the diamond trade, it was an easy choice to place the blame on the “cruder race” of the Australians. Because relationships in nations are imagined, it is quite simple not only to conjure up a division between two peoples of identical heritage, but also to use imagination to widen that gap. Similarly, the motives behind these actions are to aid the nation’s population, so anything that appears to do such can easily be made justifiable and righteous. Morant was merely a pawn in Britain’s selfish mind games, where morals were rooted in malleable constructs of society, and where set ethical and religious codes were either ignored or twisted into concurrence. When he states that it is easy to pick the wrong “side”, he is referencing the lack of definite “sides” at all. By using imagination to aggregate, humanity also uses imagination to discriminate, and through this action racial differences are crafted.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the nation may satisfy the Marxian need of the species-being or the Freudian drive of love, it also creates an extremely accessible means of selfish manipulation, of “conjuring the trick,” where a intelligent British descendant can be made a “lesser” Australian, and where a respectable, proven leader can be made a scapegoat by use of double standards.
Nevin Peeples
ReplyDeleteIn his book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson defines a nation as “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). Anderson sees nations as “imagined” (6) because it is not physically possible for every member of a nation to know each other and be in communion. Therefore, any idea of a community must be artificial. The nation itself is limited and has boundaries, beyond which lie other nations that govern themselves. Andersons wrestles with how “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (7). Anderson questions how this structure makes it possible for millions of people over the history of human civilization to willingly die for “such limited imaginings” (7).
The 1980 Australian feature film Breaker Morant addresses these same questions of nationalism and people willing to die for their country. The film covers the Boer War in South Africa in 1901 where farmers defended their lands against foreign troops who wondered what they were dying for. These foreign troops were specifically Australians enlisted by the British to fight the Boers and aggregate them into the British Empire. Being under British rule, the Australians were forced to fight and fulfill their duties to Britain. Just as the Boers fought the British to defend their nation and independence, the Australians felt the same nationalistic pull to thwart the British who took away all that was unique to them. The movie questions the wars of nationalism at the beginning of the century as both parties fighting against each other in the Boer War, the British and Australians, desired independence from the British regime. While both parties would have collectively fought against the British, given their mere political structure they were forced to fight against each other.
The movie also comments on and provides evidence for the imaginary aspects of communities. While the British provide the illusion that they and the Australians share a common community and depend on each other, the two groups do not share the community that they believe. This situation is highlighted in the trials of the murders of the Boer prisoners that takes up a large part of the movie. While Britain and Australia should be a common unit and support each other, Britain does everything it can to prove the Australians Morant and Handock guilty of the murder of Boer prisoners. While they preach support, their actions are far different. Additionally the British give the impression that they are trying to create a common unity between them and the Boers, while their true motives are to satisfy their imperialistic desires for land and dominance. It is this theme of “imagined communities” that underscores the notion of nationalism being fabricated and unsupported.
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ReplyDeleteBenedict Anderson, the author of Imagined Communities, writes that the nationalistic mindset found in Europe was one that has been fashioned by a minority of landowners and aristocrats. These communities were based on a common language and the education derived from the widespread use of these languages as administrative vernaculars. These communities were formed and cultivated at the hands of the aristocratic minority, who used these communities to keep order or maintain a sense of morale during wartime and even during peacetime. In the case of imperialistic nationalism, however, as the center or main part of the imagined community increases, it comes at the expense of the periphery. One example is the American colonies while under British imperial rule. The American colonists were forced to pay taxes so that the center of the empire may gain wealth and increase. Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant, is another example of this principle of nationalistic imperialism.
ReplyDeleteIt was during the Second Boer War that Australia finally gained independence as a Commonwealth of Britain. It was also during this time that three Australian soldiers serving for the British Army in South Africa during the Second Boer War, were tried under British Court Martial for the murder of Boer prisoners and a German missionary. This trial is the basis of the plot of Breaker Morant. Throughout the trial it becomes clear that there is a very political motive in the court martial of Morant, Handcock, and Witton. The British do not want to involve Germany in the Boer War, and have cause to suspect that Germany would be more than willing to join forces with the Boers against the British. This cause later proves to be founded in fact through the First World War, but nevertheless the British wish to avoid the entry of the Germans into the second Boer War. They believe that avenging the death of the missionary will decrease the chances of Germans entering the war. According to Lord Kitchner, the mastermind behind the trials, the three soldiers are necessary casualties and must be killed in order to keep a ‘greater’ peace. The British will sacrifice a few Australian soldiers far more willingly than if they were fellow countrymen. The Australian government is also willing to sacrifice a few Australian soldiers serving in the British military so that they can keep their fledgling independence. These nations both gained where these soldiers in the fringe of society clearly lost. This entire episode took place all in the name of imperialism and the soldiers fell victim to all that imperialism entails.
The unsavory question that we are eventually faced with is how far are we willing to sacrifice for our imagined communities? This film examines this question and seems to conclude that the price is too high, that the deaths of Morant and Handcock were not warranted and that the ends do not justify the means. However, in this case, would Kitchner have been justified in allowing these men to live, when they obviously disobeyed orders when killing the missionary and when their continued existence would cause a larger war to break out? Where then does one draw the boundary when it comes to war? J.F. Thomas, the lawyer defending the soldier agrees that prosecuting for murder during war is a very complex issue. In the end, it is these issues that one must consider when dealing with the periphery of an imagined community at war.
As Australia developed into nationhood, it was natural and expected that there would be tensions between the new Australian nation and its British motherland. Unlike many of the other colonies of the British, Australia’s natives were not at the spearhead of the push for independence. Rather, the group in power in Australia was the same “racially” as the British, and in fact shared many cultural elements with the British.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as Breaker Morant showed, the status of Aussies within the British Empire was a tricky situation. Since Morant, Handcock, and Witton were all part of a combined military unit that contained both British and Australian soldiers, they were unfortunately likely to be victims of the growing pains of Australia’s new status as a sovereign territory within the British Empire (at least based on the dialogue in the movie, Australia was not truly independent at the time). They were officers of the unit, and Morant, an Australian, was commander, but their unit answered to the British army. As a result, the three men were exploited as scapegoats to be blamed for the human rights violations and similar problems created by the British military offensive against the Boers. When the British use the three men as scapegoats, they clearly demonstrate a belief that the Australians are not of their nation and therefore expendable. However, interestingly enough, the Australian government does not work particularly hard to protect its own soldiers from being victims of the court martial system of the British army, which seems to show a lack of willingness on the part of the Australian government to stick its neck out for its citizens. This leads to some interesting questions about what nation a person should identify with, and how loyal he should be to that nation.
National loyalties displayed in this movie were especially interesting. When the men are discussing why they joined the unit, Witton says that he is doing it to fight for the British Empire. This could be indicative of Australia not having developed a full popular consciousness of itself as a nation as of yet, or possibly contradicts Anderson’s work in some way by showing that it is possible to have loyalty to a larger “dynastic unit” of sorts. However, the other two are fighting simply for the paycheck, so the idea of Anderson that capitalism in some ways drives the development of nationalism still seems to hold.
Australia was also in an odd position in the movie. Since Australia was originally started as a penal colony, many of the settlers of Australia were already among the lowest echelons of British society, so they might have seen their continued second-class status compared to British citizens as an almost natural state of the world. Because of it, the Australian government might not have seriously challenged the court martial of its soldiers because it did not want to infuriate what it saw as a mightier power than itself. Although fitting India under the category of “British” would be quite the stretch, since the aborigines were less politically active, fitting Australia under the umbrella of the British Empire, as Witton did, feels less like a bit of sleight of hand and more like a recognition of where the Aussies all came from. The separation of Australia from British rule was therefore in some ways less like a return to a “natural” state of things and more like the severing of a limb.
The nationalist ties in Breaker Morant are twisted and linked in strange ways. There are soldiers from three nations participating: Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa, yet the notion of empire still maintains its hold. Most of the South Africans are Dutch, reflecting the nations colonial past, while Handcock and Witton are Australians fighting for the British Empire even though their own nation had gained its independence.
ReplyDeleteThe juxtaposition of the Australians and the South Africans is an interesting one. The Australians had already gained their independence from the British yet were fighting to help the British keep control of South Africa. Why would a newly independent nation not want to help others achieve the same fate? Why would some people, such as Witton’s family, be so in support of an empire they had only recently separated from? Most likely, some Australians still harbored a soft spot in their hearts for the country they had grown up politically, culturally, and ethnically linked to.
Though particular individuals may have maintained loyalty to the crown, it is apparent from the film that political matters between Australia and Great Britain were not necessarily as cordial, with Australia doing whatever it could to make its own name, to separate itself from the empire. It becomes clear through out Breaker Morant that Morant, Handcock, and Witton are victims of politics on both sides of the equation. The British use the soldiers as a scapegoat for war-time atrocities not only condoned but ordered by senior military command in order to escape public backlash, while the Australian government refuses to intercede on the behalf of their men in order to distance themselves from the British war and to prove to the world that they themselves refuse to condone such behavior as that of the accused. Between these apposing parties however, is three men and a tacit agreement. Though never stated in the film, there is the general sense both political entities were willing to sacrifice the lives of three men in the name of their own respective causes. It is interesting to note that Morant, and Englishman, was sacrificed for Australian nationalism, that Handcock, an Australian, was sacrificed in the name of the British empire, and that Witton, an Australian sympathetic to the crown, was the only of the accused to escape with his life.
The tie I feel to my community— as a Zahm Hall resident, as Notre Dame student, as a Minneapolis native, as a U.S. citizen—is quite strong. So strong, in fact, that I would be willing not only to stand up for my community, but also probably to sacrifice myself for the good of it. This willingness is only justified, however, if the majority of the community feels the same way, and on a large scale, I would say that this is true. The reality is that it is part of human nature to feel the ties to the people around you and the larger community- even if you will never get to know or even interact with more than five percent of it. This effect is called nationalism, or what Benedict Anderson calls the idea of an “imagined community.” Especially in the most recent centuries, nationalism has played a profound role in uniting and motivating communities toward a common goal. A problem arises, however, when the interests of those in power differ from the interests of the rest of the community, and nationalism is used exploit those who buy into it. This function of nationalism as a “conjuring trick,” as Anderson calls it, was especially characteristic of late nineteenth century imperialism. Nations seeking to expand their empire created a false sense of community among the new subjects of their reign and in turn used this to continue to inflate their realm.
ReplyDeleteThe movie Breaker Morant explores the theme of nationalism and the “conjuring trick” in detail. Morant, Handcock, and Witton are Australians soldiers fighting in the Second Boer War, a British imperialist campaign to add South Africa to their expanding empire. The Australians are aligned with the British in this effort because of the ties of nationalism. The great irony of the movie, however, is that while the Australians fight in the name of the Queen, they are only being exploited by her, and it becomes more apparent as the movie goes on. The trial of Morant, Handcock, and Witton is not really about preserving the rules of war; it is clear that Lord Kitchener sees an opportunity to gain political advantage through the trial, and so he is determined to have a guilty verdict.
Of course, the risk of the “conjuring trick” is that the exploited party figures out that they are being exploited and stops feeling that strong sense of nationalism. This is the case with the trial in the movie. The defendants realize that the empire that they had originally felt an allegiance to does not have their best interest in mind. Rather, they begin to feel a much stronger sense of nationalism with their homeland and emerging nation, Australia. In the eyes of the British Empire, the Australians have no more worth that the Boers that they are fighting against. The British realize that they are going to have a harder time maintaining the sense of “imagined community”, and this is when nationalism turns from the large scale British allegiance to the smaller community of Australians.
This realization is shown perfectly by one of the most memorable exchanges in the film, once the trial is over and the three men have received their sentence:
Wittow: Why did they do this to us, Harry? Why?
Morant: They have to apologize for their damned war. They're trying to end it now, so they need scapegoats.