The Still Enlightened Late-Comers: A Comparison between the Proto-Modernist Nationalisms of Guiseppe Mazzini and Ziya Gokalp

Abstract

In contrast with the distorted and romanticized images reproduced by far-right narratives, we argue in this study that the constructive ideals of nation held by Italy's Giuseppe Mazzini and Turkey's Ziya Gokalp, from two later examples of European nationalism, could fit into what might be called a proto-modernism within nationalism theories. It is proposed that both Mazzini and Gokalp went through ideological transformations that made them firm opponents of German Romanticism and ardent believers of the Enlightenment, as shown in their non-exclusionary approaches to nationalism. They both rejected essentialist (religious, ethnic, racial, etc.) rationales for the backwardness of their respective countries and maintained the necessity of constructing nations that would initially provide civic equality among citizens and then aim at normative equality among nations at the civilizational level. In that sense, our analysis finds four fundamental similarities between Mazzini and Gifikalp with regard to their national ideals: loyalty to the principles of the Enlightenment, national self-determination, civic-legal equality among citizens, and normative equality among all nations.