The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c7.s1.16

c7.s1.16

Even if we take the individual peoples like Franks, Goths, Saxons, Danes, Swedes and others and confine our attention to small territories we find the same checquered career, the same multiplicity and polystatal heterogeneity as on the Indian sub-continent. England, because of her insular position, as Frederick List explains it in his *Das Nationale System der politischen Ökonomie*, has managed to enjoy the longest period of continuity as a "nation-state". And yet the little land of Angles, Saxons and Jutes (excluding Wales and Scotland) had to pass through the *mâtsya-nyâya* of a heptarchy and the aliendom of Scandinavian and Norman aggressions. Chronologically the next nation-state to evolve in Europe is France. And yet here, even so late as on the eve of the Revolution, notwithstanding the previous centralizing efforts of *le grand monarque* there were about three hundred and sixty distinct bodies of law,³ in force sometimes throughout a whole district, sometimes in a much smaller area. Besides, the peace of Westphalia (1648) and the congress of Vienna (1815)⁴ are standing commentaries on the absence of nationality-states conceived as linguistic or cultural units. It is only by the Bolshevik dismemberment of Russia (1917–1918) according to the doctrine of self-determination that nationalism has been ensured in Eastern Europe. But in Central Europe, although the Congress of Versailles (1919) sat with the object of achieving it, the creation of half a dozen German “irredentas” in foreign states has but added to the list of the world’s erstwhile Alsace-Lorraines.