The Necessity and the Nuisance of Sovereign States

Last year, and for most of the rest of this century, there will be events and media coverage of the events that commemorate the sequence of events that stem from the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation: when Martin Luther issued his formal challenge to the pope and the [pretty monolithic] Roman Catholic Church in western Europe. Various rulers of petty states across Germany [who were all notionally subject to the pope and the monarch - usually the Habsburg ruler of Austria - who held the title of Holy Roman Emperor] found it convenient to slough off various components of that subjection: so Germany split between protestant-ruled and catholic-ruled states, and descended into a prolonged, vicious series of wars and persecutions.

In the first years after Luther's declaration, Henry VIII of England was a staunch and highly literate defender of the papacy, for which he was awarded the papal title Defender of the Faith [Fidei Defensor: abbreviated to Fid Def] which is still used by the Queen and features even on the new pound coin. Then Henry wanted to get his divorce from Katherine of Aragon: which the pope denied him, because the papacy was controlled by the Holy Roman Emperor [Charles V] who was Katherine's nephew. So Henry persuaded/bullied Parliament into declaring that there was no power higher than Henry: in civil matters, England was an empire on its own, and in church matters Henry was answerable only to God as the head on earth of the English church. Half a century later Henry's niece, Mary Queen of Scots, was evicted and fled to England [and to eventual execution] which left Mary's infant son as a King who was controlled by a Lutheran-Presbyterian church that declared their own complete separation from Rome and the associated Empire. Thus the entire island of Britain was separated from the ambiguous dual control of pope and emperor; and when England and Scotland were left with the grown-up James as their joint monarch after Elizabeth I's death the combination was able to act as one sovereign entity.

Kings of France and Spain, and princes who had been invited to rule the Netherlands, moved in the same direction as the British monarchy to establish mutual recognition of their states, exchanging Ambassadors when they were not at war with each other. This pattern of statehood was extended over almost all of Europe by the time of the French revolution, which disrupted everything and led to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 which settled the boundaries of the 'powers' until everything was thrown into chaos by the First World War. Then, under the tutelage of the USA, the 'principle of nationality' was established as the basis for some states' right to exist: while other states - not least, the new USSR - included many dozens of 'nationalities'. France occupied Dutch-speaking areas around Dunkirk, German territory in the east [Strassburg/Strasbourg etc], Italian-speaking border zones in the south east, Basque country in the south-west and the Celtic Duchy of Brittany the west: only modern media have pulled together a 'nation' that speaks more-or-less the same French. Kings of Spain made heroic efforts to unite the whole Iberian peninsula; but the Portuguese could not be coerced for ever, the Spanish Basques have only recently abandoned a vicious campaign for independence; and now what seems to be a minority of Catalans back a regional government that is threatening to declare independence: against which the Spanish government will take whatever steps they think fit to stop any such declaration having effect.

The number of fissiparous local and regional claims for independence or autonomy across the European Union is great - at least thirty - so there is a consensus within the EU to try to suppress and ignore all of them. The Catalans cannot expect to leap from Spain to separate membership of the EU: they would jump into a limbo far worse than a post-Brexit Britain can expect to suffer in the highly improbable event of 'no deal' being reached.

There is much wrong with the concept and the conduct of the sovereign state [I intend to expatiate on the disaster of Zimbabwe tomorrow], but we are lumbered with it and have to make the best of it.