NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION - AN INTERACT ABLE CONCEPT

The concept of 'national' self-determination has since its inception p ossessed a dual character. On the one hand, the concept has included v isions of liberty, equity and tolerance; on the other it has displayed self-assertion, expansion, oppression and genocidal wars. This essay finds the origins of this duality in the political discourse which evo lved during the Napoleonic Wars. It claims that the weak, stateless pe ople in Central Europe developed an anti-liberal, anti-Western underst anding of 'nation' which hinged on the ethnic/cultural notion of a Vol k. It submits that this notion has greatly informed 20th-century discu ssions about de-colonization and state-building, and that it is now fu elling the genocidal wars in the Balkans and the Caucasus.