Peripheral Nation-Building Strategies in 1867:: Canada, Austria-Hungary, Japan

This presentation addresses questions regarding the socio-historical context, political theories, and legal doctrines behind the peripheral nation-building strategies related to the Ausgleich in Central Europe, the British North America Act of Canada, and the transition from the Tokugawa period to the Meiji regime—events that all occurred in the same constitutional moment of the year 1867.The primary focus of the presentation is to compare the patterns of these parallel vernacular nation-building strategies that served as common denominators for Austria-Hungary, Canada, and Japan, despite the differing geographical contexts. As we can see, the Ausgleich did not fully substantiate a multicultural political philosophy, nor did it significantly restrict Austrian or Hungarian self-determination. In scholarly literature, there is therefore widespread disagreement about whether this political-legal compromise served as an expedient means to dismantle nationalism in the Central-Eastern European region.As to the birth of Canada, the presentation explores whether the federalist idea was fully implemented in 1867, which was now often regarded as a paradigmatic example of a successful federal arrangement. The emerging nation-state of Japan was different primarily due to geographical reasons in comparison to Canada and Central-Eastern Europe. The peripheral nature of Japan in terms of accessibility by colonizing powers allowed its political community to act as a regional power due to its natural resources.Both the geographical location of the political community and whether it has been colonized are significant factors. Canada's constitutional history began with its liberation from the British colonial system, while both Austria-Hungary and Japan were modernized primarily through double means, internal and external—by eliminating decentralized networks of power and by exporting Western models, primarily influenced by German culture, to rationalize their state structures. In Japan, this constitutional export culminated in the 1889 Meiji Constitution, which was overwhelmingly transplanted from Prussia.In all three regions, the idea of nations' rights as group rights depends on a demonstrable link between specific peoples, their traditional territories, and their land-based ethnic cultures. However, while most group rights in the three countries are justified in relation to territory, only Canada could maintain a territorially determined bilingualism. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave birth to numerous independent linguistic communities, while Japan managed to preserve its linguistic unity, which simultaneously distanced it from its large neighbor, China. Given that the Dual Monarchy collapsed after half a century—an event that contributed directly and indirectly to both the First and Second World Wars—the Eastern-Central European approach to constitutionally addressing the multi-ethnic challenge is often categorized as a fiasco. In contrast, since the British North America Act came into force, aside from the devastating effects of colonization on First Nations populations, the Canadian model has become one of the most attractive examples of how constitutional design can accommodate competing nation-building agendas within a single state. Japan’s transition from the Edo period to the Meiji transition may fall somewhere between these two extremes. Extra-legal social systems, such as tradition and religion, along with the adoption of Western nation-building models, like codified law, played a more central role in Japan compared to Austria-Hungary and a different role compared to Canada, influencing both internal politics and foreign policy-making.

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