On the early stages of Arendt's federalism, and racism
In 1945, Hannah Arendt published “Imperialism, Nationalism, Chauvinism” in The Review of Politics (here). Followed by her 1950 “The Imperialist Character,” also in The Review of Politics. Some of the material was used verbatim in her first significant work (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism. (Hereafter Origins.) In fact, in what follows my interest is in some passages that occur in both works; in particular, the material that ended up in the long part two on Imperialism of Origins.
Arendt’s interest in federalism is not wholly unknown to dedicated scholars or readers of, say, On Revolution (1963). (See, for example, David Myer Temin (2022), and especially, Douglas Klusmeyer (2010) "Hannah Arendt’s case for federalism." Publius: The Journal of Federalism 40.1: 31-58.) Her interest in federalism is, in fact, not infrequently noted in discussions of her awareness of the problems that Zionism would generate. This interest can be ascertained without a very close reading of the essays collected in The Jewish Writings. (See, for example, Gil Rubin (2015) From Federalism to Binationalism: Hannah Arendt’s Shifting Zionism. Contemporary European History. 24(3):393-414.)
In particular, as Rubin notes, Arendt was attracted to the idea of a Commonwealth of Nations. This phrase seems to have originated in the writings of Jan Smuts, although the idea goes back to Hobson at least. And variants circulated throughout the 1930s as I first learned from The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and The United States by Or Rosenboim. I don’t say this to remove the taint associated with Smuts. Arendt was quite familiar with Hobson’s writings and often cites it approvingly, and as I have noted Hobson himself clearly believed in a climatological theory of race and racial hierarchy.
As should be well-known by now Origins expresses non-trivial racial and cultural animus against Africans and indigenous peoples. (This is especially difficult to miss in the later 1955 German edition.) And this also shaped her response to American civil rights movement. So, it is somewhat remarkable that this racial animus is absent in the 1945 and 1950 essays. In fact, these essays are marked by clear hostility toward racial or cultural supremacist thinking. (Some other time, perhaps, I document this.)
Here I suggest that her support of federalism is anticipated in her earliest writings on imperialism. (I assume this is known to scholars, but I have been unable to find it in literature thus far.) In it she introduces the idea that after 1789, imperialism changed its character dramatically. For, with it the practice developed for a people (committed to political equality and democracy) to aim to rule another people. On Arendt’s view this inevitably fails (and like Hobson and Lenin) she thinks this generates even more virulent nationalism in the ruled/subjugated.
On Arendt’s view this realization by the British (which they and Arendt associate with the failures of French imperialism) generates all kinds of political innovations in British imperialism that Arendt associates with secret rule by decree or by spies. These innovations clearly anticipate totalitarianism. She develops the idea in her (1950) “The Imperialist Character,” which is all about showing how rational administration and a façade of respectability go hand in hand with violent rule.*
On Arendt’s (1945) interpretation, French imperialism tried to combine ius and imperium by exporting its civilization and domestic administrative apparatus to the colonies (p. 443). This flounders on structural inconsistencies. The French want gun fodder from their African empire and don’t really want to give full racial (and religious) equality. On her interpretation, the British (no less racist) keep their distance from subject peoples and leave them their culture (and their practices of self-government).
But Arendt notes that the British were also unable to integrate the Irish into their imperial structure. She then remarks the following:
The national structure of the United Kingdom had made impossible quick assimilation and incorporation of the conquered people; the British Commonwealth never was a "Commonwealth of Nations" but the heir of the United Kingdom and the political body of one nation dispersed throughout the world; it was not, as can be seen by the Irish example, an imperial structure in whose framework many and different peoples could live together and be contented." This inner contradiction between the body politic of the nation and conquest as a political device has been obvious since the grandiose failure. (445-446); emphasis in original.) [This passage is also in Origins.]
On Arendt’s (rather Machiavellian) view, relatively fast assimilation and incorporation of conquered peoples is the only way for imperialism to work in which a people or its parliament is sovereign. In her 1950 paper (p. 314 & 320), she repeatedly notes — with somewhat uncharacteristic optimism — that a democratic people would not tolerate the means (massacres, genocide), which would otherwise be required to keep one’s hold on conquered territories (see p. 448 in the 1945 paper).
The British by contrast had (imperfect) democracy at home, but not throughout the empire. Even its settler colonies the “one nation dispersed throughout the world” lacked a proper imperial structure. Once the dominions had genuine self-governing institutions compatible with democracy, their tariff policies became heterogeneous (as Hobson also notes).
So Arendt quite plausibly thinks that the alternative is a form of federalism, a Commonwealth of Nations. Now, since 1926 this has been British policy since the “Balfour Declaration” at the 1926 Imperial Conference of British Empire leaders in London. I quote a key passage from the Declaration:
There is, however, one most important element in it which, from a strictly constitutional point of view, has now, as regards all vital matters, reached its full development—we refer to the group of self-governing communities composed of Great Britain and the Dominions. Their position and mutual relation may be readily defined. They are autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. (p. 2) [emphasis in original]
Balfour and imperial leaders are clearly excluding parts of the British empire that are subordinate in some way or another and not self-governing. And there is no indication that they thought “full development” was possible for them (in their lifetimes). In the Balfour declaration, there are various mechanism by which Westminster and the Dominion parliaments secure uniformity of legislation (and mutual recognition).
If I understand Arendt correctly, in 1945 already she advocates a British Commonwealth of Nations for all nations in the British Empire (and, in fact, for all democratic empires). It’s unclear if she believes this would require an imperial parliament (as Adam Smith suggested) or if it would require a looser confederal structure. If the latter, she clearly anticipates De Gaulle’s vision for a Europe of nations.
Now, given the racism present in Origins one may well doubt she would have wished to extend a Commonwealth of Nations to all nations, but only to developed nations like the Irish. But I don’t think that’s the natural reading of the 1945 essay. In immediate context, the idea of a commonwealth of nations as a means to democratic empire is introduced as a solution to the French’s imperial failures. The very (long) paragraph that includes the discussion of the British Irish failures and the Commonwealth of Nations, starts as follows:
Conquest as well as empire-building, has fallen into disrepute during the last century for very good reasons. The new concept of the nation, born out of the French Revolution, was based upon the sovereignty of the people and its active consent to the government (le plebiscite de tous les jours) and it indefinite number of equally sovereign national organizations. This meant in practical politics that wherever the nation appeared as conqueror, it aroused national consciousness as well as desire for sovereignty among the conquered peoples, thereby defeating all genuine attempts at empire-building. (pp. 444-445) [Emphases added.]
So, she is clearly not just limiting herself to settler-colonialism. In fact, by her framing it in terms of the French revolution and her explicit appeal to Renan “(le plebiscite de tous les jours)” she is clearly implying that the French should have known better. (She could have added their failures in Haiti.) And that their own principles ought to have led them, too, to imperial federalism: “indefinite number of equally sovereign national organizations.”
Interestingly enough, in Origins this material was re-written as a separate paragraph as follows:
Wherever the nation-state appeared as conqueror, it aroused national consciousness and desire for sovereignty among the conquered people, thereby defeating all genuine attempts at empire building. Thus the French incorporated Algeria as a province of the mother country, but could not bring themselves to impose their own laws upon an Arab people. They continued rather to respect Islamic law and granted their Arab citizens "personal status," producing the nonsensical hybrid of a nominally French territory, legally as much a part of France as the Département de la Seine, whose inhabitants are not French citizens.
And, so in Origins Arendt sticks to her critical analysis of the French imperial inconsistencies but stops implying they could have done better with federalism.
*I thank my student Magali Cho Lin Wing for the wording in this sentence.