THE RISE OF EUROPE'S
The formation of the European
Community and the end of the Cold War
had one common and quite
unintended result: Both gave
encouragement to the nationalist urges
of numerous regions zuithin
Europe's established nation-states.
What these stirrings zuill finally
produce in places such as
the fanner Yugoslavia, Scotland, or
Lombardy is impossible to predict.
But three of our contributors--
Alastair Reid, William McPJierson, and
David Gies-look at three...
t their outset at least, the 1992
Summer Olympics in Barcelona
appeared to be organized by
people who had nationalism, not sports, foremost inmind. Consider the curious fact that the three official languages of the games were English, French, and Catalan. Why Catalan and not Spanish? Because Olym- pic Committee rules allow for the use of Eng- lish, French, and the language of the country hosting the games. More to the point, the or- ganizers had no doubt that Catalan was the language of their...
RISE OF EUROPE'S LITTLE NATIONS
n idea very much afoot in Europe this solution, while it worked in certain parts
today-oiie that arouses political of Europe for a time, today proves to be a trou-
passions everywhere from Ab- bling inheritance. Not only is it ill-suited to
, khazia to Scotland-is tlie notion nation-states (to those that liave existed for of cultural and territorial autonomy. The idea centuries as well as to those that liave emerged is, in fact, a compromise between tlie old...
38 WQ WINTER 1994
he years have been kind to the
memory of Winston Churchill.
Half a century has passed since his
rousing rule of Britain during World War 11, and while he still has his critics, and against them his defenders, the controversies that attended his career are muted or stilled now. Since the war, the empire he cherished has dissolved into a host of sovereign nations, and John Bull himself has had to swallow hard and learn to be a good European. Seen against such changes, Churchill's B...
0nce the Americans had backed into independence by demanding their rights as Englishmen, what next? No one supposed they were immune to the universal passions distin- guished by Kant: for possession, for power, and for honor. To fend off anarchy and sus- tain a workable society they would have to govern and ration those passions, in the process evolving cultural norms that even those who did not benefit immediately or equally would abide by.
Many foreigners and a fair number of ultrafederalists...
Misleading to call it a move- ment, and still worse to think of it as a program, but we now have seen enough minor liter- ary eruptions to suspect that it is a cultural symptom that bears some reflection: this burst of novel-writing from people who liave lived the conceptual life, the life of method and ar- gument, who often carry leather cases, or who give public lectures and contribute essays to learned journals. In tlie past five years, some of the world's leading literary critics liave turned...
During the early
18th centu y, the
heyday of Anglo-
American piracy, two
women, Anne Bonny
and May Read,
joined the crew of
Calico Jack Rackam,
a notorious
Caribbean pirate.
As historian
Marcus Rediker
relates, their choice
was not unique.
It placed them
in the company of
others of their
gender~sailors,
soldiers, adventurers-
who "seized liberty"
from society
by disguising
themselves as men.
Mary Read
102 WQ AUTUMN 1993
Sailed the Seen
In late 1720 Jamaica's most...
phone from his cell! thanks to an arrangement with the author- ities). The moderator uses her microphone to conduct a chamber symphony of woe, before an audience which has long since learned to listen for the familiar notes and which is prepared, when called upon, to work its own
tell the bastards anything." He was on the right track. We seem determined that the whole na- tion should have the privacy of a military bar- racks. Supreme Court decisions turn precari- ously on invocation of a constitutional...