Patterns of Ethnic Separatism

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 1981, Pages 165-195

  Horowitz, Donald L ^a  

^a SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION   (United States)

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EID: 84971946705     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500013268     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. For reasons to be stated shortly, movements for separate territorial identity will be referred to as “secessionist,” whether the demand is for independence or only for autonomy from a larger territorial unit. I shall also use secession and separation, as well as secessionist, interchangeably throughout. For an equally inclusive conception of separatism, see Joane Nagel, “The Conditions of Ethnic Separatism: The Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq,” Ethnicity, Vol. 7, No. 3 (September 1980), pp. 279-97. It will also be apparent that the materials for this article are drawn from Asia and Africa, but occasionally other cases are referred to in order to supplement these materials. This is particularly true of the Basque case, which exemplifies a pattern not generally found in Asia and Africa.
2. The relationship of the idea of self-determination to secession is admirably traced by Walker Connor, “Self-Determination: The New Phase,” World Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1967), 30-53. See also Tamotsu Shibutani and Kian M. Kwan, Ethnic Stratification (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 444-45. For some of the philosophical roots of national self-determination, see Anne M. Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 1970).
3. Connor, “Self-Determination: The New Phase,” p. 30. Harold Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 13, puts the point graphically: “The holy grail of self-determination in anti-colonial politics became the poison potion of group conflict, secession, rebellion, and repression in the postcolonial era.”
4. Cf. Connor, “Self-Determination: The New Phase,”p. 46; Walker Connor, “Ethnology and the Peace of South Asia,” World Politics, Vol. 22, No. 1 (October 1969), 70; Issacs, Idols of the Tribe, pp. 175-78.
5. Anthony H. Birch, “Minority Nationalist Movements and Theories of Political Integration,” World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 3 (April 1978), 325-44.
6. “No one in Baluchistan wants to break away [from Pakistan]. All the Baluchis want is not to lose their identity,” commented a Baluch spokesman. “Who in his right mind would want to join Afghanistan? We’d be worse off there than we are in Pakistan.” Washington Post, February 8, 1976, p. A17. This is also the theme of Khalid B. Sayeed, “Pathan Regionalism,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Autumn 1964), 478-506.
7. Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), August 17, 1979, p. 28.
8. Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), September 14, 1979, p. 30.
9. See Keith Kyle, “The Southern Problem in the Sudan,” The WorldToday, Vol. 22, No. 12 (December 1966), pp. 512-20. An article in a journal published by the Southern Sudan Association in Britain during the Sudanese civil war illustrates the point: “What, then, are we fighting for? We are fighting for freedom; freedom to unite with the North; freedom to federate with the North; freedom to reject the North; freedom for the people of the South Sudan to determine their own future without interference from the Arabs or any other people.” Jacob J. Akol, “What We Are, and Are Not, Fighting For,” The Grass Curtain (London), Vol. 2, No. 2 (October 1971), 26.
10. Africa: The Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), p. 88.
11. There are some variations from country to country in the pattern of group stereotypes, though not in pervasiveness or in the general tendency to dichotomize. For example, most advanced groups are regarded as progressive and backward groups as traditional, but in the Philippines the “traditional” label is applied to the Ilocano, who score high on virtually all objective and subjective indices of group advancement. Rodolfo A. Bulatao, Ethnic Attitudes in Five Philippine Cities (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Social Research Laboratory, 1973), p. 58. It would take us far afield here to examine the origin, content, and correlates of such stereotypes. For a recent study, see Marilynn B. Brewer and Donald T. Campbell, Ethnocentrism and Intergroup Attitudes: East African Evidence (New York: Halsted Press, 1976).
12. One complexity of which I shall not take adequate account concerns differences of opinion within given ethnic groups on the advisability of secession. Sometimes secessionist sentiment is virtually unanimous, but very often there are debates on whether to secede. See, e.g., B. J. Dudley, “Western Nigeria and the Nigerian Crisis,” in S. K. Panter-Brick, ed., Nigerian Politics and Military Rule: Prelude to the Civil War (London: Athlone Press, 1970), pp. 106-08, identifying at least five Yoruba opinion strains ca. 1966-67. More often than not, I shall ignore such differences, dealing instead with central tendencies or merely with the outcomes of such debates.
13. Jeffrey G. Williamson, “Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 13, No. 4, Pt. 2 (July 1965), 14, 17.
14. See Charles Anderson, Fred R. von der Mehden, and Crawford Young, Issues of Political Development (2d ed.; Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 75. When the Uganda government refused to accede to demands for a separate district, the Rwenzururu movement in Western Uganda became secessionist very quickly, for reasons that are probably related to span of control. “The Ruwenzori mountain areas are extremely inaccessible; effective administration had never become established in the higher altitudes and, in a sense, anybody could set up an independent government there without facing the consequences for some time.” Martin R. Doornbos, “Protest Movements in Western Uganda: Some Parallels and Contrasts,” unpublished paper, 1966, p. 12. But the emergence of the movement in the first place had little to do with these geographic conditions. Distance, of course, is a condition that can cut both ways. While great distance may make secession easier - or at least make its suppression more difficult - distance may also reduce the intrusiveness of central government penetration of peripheral areas.
15. See, e.g., Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 187; Fred R. von der Mehden, Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), p. 193; Bulatao, Ethnic Attitudes in Five Philippine Cities, pp. 57-62; Hugh Gray, “The Demand for a Separate Telen-gana State in India,” Asian Survey, Vol. 11, No. 5 (May 1971), 463-74, esp. 464.
16. In wealthier states, however, even this subsidy may not be enough to bring per capita spending in poor regions up to levels proportionate to their share of the state’s population. In such a case, a demand for per capita proportionate spending is likely to be received most unsympa-thetically by the center. See, e.g., Charles M. Benjamin, “The Kurdish Non-State Nation,” unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, February 19-22, 1975, p. 6.
17. See, e.g., von der Mehden, Religion and Nationalism in Southeast Asia, p. 171; Rasheeduddin Khan, “Political Participation and Political Change in Andhra Pradesh (India)” (Hyderabad: Osmania University Department of Political Science, mimeographed paper, June 1969), p. 33. In some cases, even elites that were ahead of ethnically-differentiated competitors saw separatism as a way of reducing the competition. The agitation for a separate Pakistan in the 1930s and ’40s was disproportionately led by Muslims in what was then called the United Provinces. As a whole, Indian Muslims were backward, and they feared domination by educationally more advanced Hindus. But, in the United Provinces, Muslims were ahead of Hindus in government employment, the professions, and the modern private sector. Still, U. P. Muslim elites feared their minority position in an undivided India, and they demanded a separate state to protect their position. Paul R. Brass, “Muslim Separatism in United Provinces: Social Context and Political Strategy Before Partition,” Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), Vol. 5, Nos. 3, 4, and 5 (January 1970), 167-86.
18. Lorenzo Kent Kimball, The Changing Pattern of Political Power in Iraq, 1958 to 1971 (New York: Robert Speller & Sons, 1972), pp. 141-42; Abdul H. Raoof, “Kurdish Ethnic Nationalism and Political Development in Republican Iraq,” unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Denver, November 11-13, 1971, p. 10. So conscious are the Kurds of their backwardness that these demands sometimes make provision for exceptions when no qualified Kurds can be found for particular positions.
19. Mohamed Omer Beshir, The Southern Sudan: Background to Conflict (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1968), p. 72; Richard Gray, “The Southern Sudan,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1971), p. 117.
20. Joseph Oduho and William Deng, The Problem of the Southern Sudan (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 14. For reports of similar sentiments, see Kyle, “The Southern Problem in the Sudan,” p. 513; I. William Zartman, Government and Politics in Northern Africa (New York: Præger, 1963), p. 140; Roberto. Collins and Robert L. Tignor, Egypt and the Sudan (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967), pp. 147-64.
21. Robert Pledge, “France at War in Africa,” Africa Report, June 1970, pp. 16-19; John A. Ballard, “Four Equatorial States,” in Gwendolen M. Carter, ed., National Unity and Regionalism in Eight African States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), pp. 272-74; William H. Lewis, “Francophone Africa,” Current History, Vol. 60, No. 335 (March 1971), 143; René Lemarchand, “Sisyphus in Chad: The MRA as a Development Partnership,” unpublished paper, n.d., ca. 1974, p. 4; Africa Report, November 1969, pp. 10-12.
22. Neville Maxwell, India and the Nagas (London: Minority Rights Group Report No. 17, n.d.), p. 9.
23. Hugh Gray, “The Demand for a Separate Telengana State,” Asian Survey, Vol. 11, No. 5 (May 1971), 463-74.
24. See Williamson, “Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development.”
25. C. P. Cook, “India: The Crisis in Assam,” The World Today, Vol. 24, No. 10 (October 1968), p. 446; Collins and Tignor, Egypt and the Sudan, p. 159; Donald Eugene Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 230; Zartman, Government and Politics in Northern Africa, p. 140; George E. Kirk, Contemporary Arab Politics (New York: Præger, 1961), p. 145.
26. Quoted in Walter Schwarz, Nigeria (New York: Præger, 1968), p. 249. For an explanation, cast in terms of welfare economics, of “why even individuals who will probably lose in terms of tangible rewards through increased political autonomy may nevertheless be willing to invest in its attainment,” see Douglas G. Hartle and Richard M. Bird, “The Demand for Local Political Autonomy: An Individualistic Theory,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 15, No. 4 (December 1971), 443-56.
27. Richard D. Lambert, “Factors in Bengali Regionalism in Pakistan,” Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 28, No. 4 (April 1959), p. 54. Hugh Tinker, India and Pakistan: A Political Analysis (rev. ed.; New York: Praeger, 1968), p. 167, reports that none of Pakistan’s share of the ICS was Bengali.
28. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), p. 482.
29. The Biafrans suggested that influential foreigners (presumably the British) discouraged the idea of a Northern secession. Nigerian Crisis 1966 (Enugu: Eastern Regional Government, n.d.), pp. 41-42, 49. Ruth First, Power in Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 320, attributes the suppression of secessionist sentiment to a group of Northern civil servants, British and American diplomats, and Middle Belters in the army “who saw in Northern secession the danger that they would be a perpetual and unbearable minority in the North.”
30. This is not invariably so. Before independence, the Ceylon Tamils, for example, sought additional parliamentary representation to compensate for their numerical weakness. See W. Howard Wriggins, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 91.
31. Gerald L. Caplin, The Elites of Barotseland, 1878-1969 (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1970), Chaps. 6-8; Caplin, “Barotseland: The Secessionist Challenge to Zambia,” Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (October 1968), 343-60; Margaret Rouse Bates, UN1P in Post Independence Zambia (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1971).
32. This fits economic expectations quite well. See Williamson, “Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development,” pp. 5-6.
33. Caplin, The Elites of Barotseland, pp. 175-76.
34. Wriggins, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation, p. 234.
35. James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958), pp. 332-34.
36. Caplin, The Elites ofBarotseland, p. 194.
37. Wriggins, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation, p. 146.
38. Brian Crozier, The Rebels: A Study of Post-War Insurrections (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), p. 89.
39. Thomas Turner, “Congo-Kinshasa,” in Victor A. Olorunsola, ed., The Politics of Cultural Sub-Nationalism in Africa (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 217-24.
40. Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 327-28.
41. K. Whiteman, “Enugu: The Psychology of Secession, 20 July 1966 to 30 May 1967,” in Panter-Brick, ed., Nigerian Politics and Military Rule: Prelude to the Civil War, p. 117; Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, pp. 467-68; Victor A. Olorunsola, “Nigeria,” in Olorunsola, ed., The Politics of Cultural Sub-Nationalism in Africa, pp. 35-36.
42. Robert N. Kearney, “Language and the Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka,” Asian Survey, Vol. 18, No. 5 (May 1978), 521-34. See also Urmila Phadnis, “Keeping the Tamils Internal,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 25 March 1972, 21-22; W. A. Wiswa Warnapala, “Sri Lanka in 1972: Tension and Change,” Asian Survey, Vol. 13, No. 2 (February 1973), 217-30.
43. Kearney, “Language and the Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka,” p. 531; Walter Schwarz, The Tamils of Sri Lanka (London: Minority Rights Group Report No. 25, 1975), pp. 12-13.
44. Report on the Survey of Consumer Finances, Pt. 1 (Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1974), p. 32.
45. See Donald L. Horowitz, Coup Theories and Officers’ Motives: Sri Lanka in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), Tables 2-1, 2-2.
46. William T. Salisbury, “Some Aspects of the Regional Issue in Contemporary Spanish Affairs,” unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, February 26, 1976, p. 6, drawing on data developed by Juan Linz.
47. For these resentments, see Kenneth Medhurst, The Basques (London: Minority Rights Group Report No. 9, 1972), p. 5; William A. Douglas and Milton da Silva, “Basque Nationalism,” in Oriol Pi-Sunyer, ed., The Limits of Integration i (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Department of Anthropology, Research Report no. 9, 1971), p. 149.
48. Douglas and da Silva, “Basque Nationalism,” pp. 149-50.
49. For a discussion of some of these reasons, see Dudley, “Western Nigeria and the Nigerian Crisis,” p. 109.
50. Nelson Kasfir, “Cultural Sub-Nationalism in Uganda,” in Olorunsola, The Politics of Cultural Sub-Nationalism in Africa, pp. 123-28.
51. On the Baganda, see Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, pp. 149-56.
52. See Pedro González Blasco, “Modern Nationalism in Old Nations as a Consequence of Earlier State-Building: The Case of Basque-Spain,” in Wendell Bell and Walter Freeman, eds., Ethnicity and Nation-Building (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1974), p. 347.
53. González Blasco, “Modem Nationalism in Old Nations as a Consquence of Earlier State-Building: The Case of Basque-Spain,” in Bell and Freeman, Ethnicity and Nation-Building, p. 366.
54. “Catalan and Basque Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1971), 15-51, esp. 50. The reference to Spanish industry appears on 38.
55. See Donald L. Horowitz, “Cultural Movements and Ethnic Change,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 433 (September 1977), 6-18.
56. John Franklin Campbell, “Background to the Eritrean Conflict,” Africa Report, May 1971, pp. 19-20. Campbell’s estimate is three to four times the Ethiopian average. Asmara, the Eritrean capital, had a literacy rate of 50 percent in the early 1970s, higher than any other area of Ethiopia, including Addis Ababa, which had a 43 percent rate. Provisional Military Government of Ethiopia, Central Statistical Office, Population and Housing Characteristics of Asmara (Addis Ababa: Central Statistical Office, Statistical Bulletin no. 12, December 1974), p. 5.
57. Ethiopiawi (pseud.), “The Eritrean-Ethiopian Conflict,” in Astri Suhrke and Lela Garner Noble, eds., Ethnic Conflict in International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1977), p. 131.
58. There are many indirect indications of this. Asmara, by far the largest city of the region, is 85 percent Christian. Literacy in those districts of Asmara with the heaviest Muslim concentration (Akria and Geza Berhano) was below the average for the city, and housing in those districts was also of less than average quality. Provisional Military Government, Central Statistical Office, Population and Housing Characteristics of Asmara, pp. 68-69, 76-78.
59. Christopher Clapham, Haile Selassie’s Government (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 75-76, 83.
60. Turner, “Congo-Kinshasa,” in Olorunsola, p. 224.
61. Jules G00E9;rard-Libois, Katanga Secession, Rebecca Young, trans. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), pp. 12-13, 27-28; René Lemarchand, Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), pp. 235-36, 241; Crawford Young, “The Politics of Separatism: Katanga, 1960-63,” in Gwendolen M. Carter, ed., Politics in Africa: 7 Cases (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), pp. 172-74; René Lemarchand, “Congo (Leopoldville),” in James S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg, Jr., eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), p. 581.
62. In the 1960 Katanga provincial elections, Conakat did well. It also did better than Balubakat, the party of the Katanga Baluba in the North of the province, in the national elections, but the Balubakat leader, Jason Sendwe, was nonetheless named by the central government to be High Commissioner for Katanga. This appointment triggered the Katanga secession. Turner, “Congo-Kinshasa,” in Olorunsola, The Politics of Cultural Sub-Nationalism in Africa, p. 227. I leave aside the role of Katanga’s European settlers in supporting the secession. For the settlers’ role, see Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession. Lemarchand’s judgment, which seems well-supported by the evidence, is that the settlers’ secessionist “dispositions could not have led to the secession of the province unless they were shared and abetted by a substantial segment of the African population.” Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo, p. 233.
63. In Katanga, this meant, concretely, the exclusion of Kasai Baluba from political and administrative positions and the expulsion of many from the province. Lemarchand, Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo, p. 239; Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, p. 28.
64. Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, pp. 3-5.
65. See Philip J. Foster, “Ethnicity and the Schools in Ghana,” Comparative Education Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (October 1962), pp. 127-35.
66. Brian Weinstein, Gabon: Nation-Building on the Ogooué (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1966). pp. 220-25. The Batéké case, however, may fall within a caveat stated earlier regarding Pakistani Baluch and Pathan reluctance to do anything that might link them with Afghanistan. There is a similar reluctance among Batéké to do anything that might result in their annexation by neighboring Congo (Brazzaville).
67. All else being equal, there will also be more subgroup amalgamation among advanced groups than among backward groups. See Donald L. Horowitz, “Ethnic Identity,” in Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, editors, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 111-40. On these grounds, too, late seceders will be more cohesive, their fighting forces less likely to fight with each other than with the forces of the rump state.