Abstract
What do a nation’s flag, national anthem and national days tell us about it? Gabriella Elgenius argues persuasively that, far from being inconsequential, they figure in its national narrative, a continuously reworked unifying story about its past, present and anticipated future; and they play parts in an endless process of nation-building. More contestably, she also claims that ‘when the information about symbolic measures, such as the adoption of flags, anthems, and national days, is systematized distinct symbolic regimes emerge, in turn, forming pre-modern, modern and post-modern narratives’ (p. 1). The three symbolic regimes are the pre-modern (pre-1789), the modern or republican, and the post-modern or post-imperial (post-1914). Calling the third ‘post-imperial’ makes sense given the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires after the First World War, but ‘post-modern’ does not. In support of her claim she presents ‘information’ about all the countries of Europe (and some others), a prodigious undertaking, and she offers extended analysis of Britain, where she now lives and works, France, and her native Norway. What, for the most part, she does not do is seek out empirical evidence on what flags, anthems and celebrations mean to ordinary citizens.
The three symbolic regimes are sometimes more hindrance than help. While the cross flags of Denmark, England and Scotland, for example, date from the age of the Crusades and are indeed pre-modern, the flag of the Dutch republic, the first ‘modern’ tricolour, predates the French revolution by two centuries. Similarly, it is nonsensical to categorize Remembrance Sunday in Britain as ‘post-imperial’ just because it dates from 1919, given that those remembered have all died in military service to the crown. More seriously, it is unclear quite what constitutes a ‘regime’, particularly as 12 countries in Europe are categorized as hybrids. Elgenius would have done better to treat her symbolic regimes and narratives as starting points for discussion rather than categories into which all cases must fit. Interestingly, she strays from her own scheme in suggesting a fourth ‘post-historical’ regime to accommodate Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo whose ‘flags of the future’ are free of historical references in order not to exacerbate ethnic divisions.
Errors about Britain lower confidence that Elgenius is right about less familiar countries. The most egregious is the claim that ‘God Save the King was first performed in the presence of the king at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1745 by actors wanting to show their loyalty to Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) the claimant to the English throne ’ (p. 143). This gets it the wrong way round. Versions of the song had been around for decades, some sung by supporters of the Stuarts. In the London theatre in 1745, God Save the King was sung in fervent support of Protestant King George II as the young Catholic pretender was marching south to claim the throne, and it became very popular thereafter. Another is the claim (on p. 34) that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are part of the United Kingdom. They are not; Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man are each crown dependencies. More generally, the author’s uses of England/English and Britain/British are often contestable and sometimes, as in her statement that Norwegian secession from Sweden in 1905 had the support of England, plain wrong.
Elgenius makes good use of Durkheim but seems unaware of other major writings of relevance to her, including the literature on civil religion, Lane (1981) on the rites of rulers and Groom (2006) on the union jack. Though this book has its deficiencies, the comparative discussion of successful and unsuccessful national days does offer British readers particular food for thought. Elgenius puts the question, ‘Is Britain a failed nation?’ (p 181), and answers indirectly. Britain is failing insofar as it no longer has a unifying narrative, and without one there is no possibility of instituting the successful British national day sought by the last Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.