Etter liberalismen kommer nasjonalismen: 1880-årene viser vei

After Liberalism Comes Nationalism, as in the 1880s: The article rejects the widespread parallels drawn between the rise of populism in the present day and the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in the interwar years. It seeks instead to find more relevant lessons in the rise of nationalism in the 1880s, when two decades of liberal deregulation and free trade were followed by the “long depression” between 1873 and 1896. Democratization made it possible for an expanded electorate to challenge the dominance of liberal elites. Many groups sought the protection of the nation state from international competition, in tariffs, the regulation of immigration, welfare provision and exclusive access to imperial markets. Conspiracy theories, more particularly modern economic antisemitism, identified the Jews as the “hidden force” behind the instability of globalization, whereas populist movements sought to expel immigrant labour that undercut wages. The most thorough political transformation occurred among the bourgeois elites, which by the end of the century rejected the liberal cosmopolitanism of the 1860s in favour of a neo-mercantilist linkage of military and economic strength, fuelling the colonial and arms races that destabilized international politics.