Quixotic? Not Quite: The Context, Agenda and Legacy of Macronational Movements

Macronationalisms are rarely studied in mutual comparison, although their mutual interaction is a matter of historical record. Greater Netherlandism and Danish Scandinavianism were inspired to some extent by reservations vis-à-vis pan-Germanism, as was pan-Latinism; Turanism began as a Hungarian response to pan-Slavism.

Macronationalist movements extend the ethnolinguistic concept of the nation towards the level of the language family, even though these may be mutually unintelligible. Typically, therefore, macronationalisms are conceived by philological scholarship.

Within Europe, pan-national ideals were never realised except briefly under totalitarian regimes (e.g. the SS-project for a Greater German Reich during the years 1939−1945). In the wider world, European colonialism forced pan-movements into being which were far from inconsequential: in India, Indonesia and Africa. Eurasianism and Turanism/pan-Turkism are ideological forces to be reckoned with, and there are lingering vestiges of Scandinavianism, Greater Netherlandism and Yugoslavism. While on the whole macronationalist movements failed in the actual realisations of their stated agenda, their historical importance lies less in the power they could mobilise than in the influence they could exercise. They were important amplifiers for the mononational movements of their participating member-nations (Slavic, Celtic, Flemish, Scandinavian), allowing some minor nations (Bretons, Slovenians, Estonians) to assert their identity powerfully despite their small size