If we consider why and how the current Ukrainian crisis gets so much attention, we may learn something new about how Americans think about international issues. Much like Marcia Davenport’s 1930s, the past decade has seen conversations about two topics in parallel: what perils nationalism could pose to the safety of the world, and how to foster international sympathies and sensibilities. It seems notable that, faced with one of the biggest international relations crises of the past decade, we find ourselves reaching not only for the expertise of diplomacy and the universal language of peace but also for the more quotidian tools of nation: flags, recipes, and local stories about local people. Those yearning for more international engagement will find that the so-called “global citizen” may be a chimera. But perhaps you can make a citizen with a second—or third or fourth—mother country.
Although today’s uptick in foreign-flag purchases may be the biggest that Mr. Schaller has seen, it is not entirely without precedent. In the years of crises clustering around World War II, passionate attachment to a foreign nation became prevalent among internationally minded Americans. The fates of the world’s “small powers,” often referred to as “small nations”—including China (especially the Manchurian region), Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia), Poland, Yugoslavia, and yes, Czechoslovakia—all interested America’s burgeoning cosmopolitans. The attention showered upon these seemingly provincial places did not derive only from the state’s relative position in a broader geopolitical calculation. It came from a fascination—as Davenport experienced in Prague—with the components of a state that give it claim to nationhood: internal complexities, culture, and traditions.
To better understand this “inter-national” brand of internationalism, let us more thoroughly consider the case of Marcia Davenport, who came to understand Czechoslovakia as “one concrete example small enough to be held in the palm of my mental hand, so to speak, and typical enough to serve as a perfect example of everything I mean."