The Pietist Schoolman

What’s the best national anthem? I’ve spent much of the last two weeks taking a stab at giving a semi-serious answer to that question. Now I’d like to hear from you!

First, do you agree with my students and me that “La Marseillaise” is clearly the best national anthem, or would you back a rival song for that honor? Second, any big surprises or disappointments in my list?

In case you missed it, here’s my final list (with links to the posts explaining each choice). Read the introductory post for a fairly detailed explanation of my methodology.

1. France
2. USA
3. Germany
4. United Kingdom
5. Brazil
6. Japan
7. China
8. Russia
9. Uruguay
10. Greece
11. Canada
12. Nigeria
13. Turkey
14. South Africa
15. Bangladesh

This was actually tied to an assignment in the Modern Europe course that I teach every fall, so I expect to try this again in the next year or two — likely with several new nominees. What other anthems should be considered? What other criteria should I consider in ranking these songs? Despite my best intentions to make the pool truly global, I did end up with a seeming slant towards anthems from the Global North. Whether by including other African, Asian, or Latin American nominees or by adjusting the criteria (e.g., not rewarding wealthy nations for spending billions of dollars training their athletes), I’d like to remove any such bias next time.

While this was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek exercise, it’s also getting at the role of anthems in helping to construct or reinforce national identity. I quoted from nationalism scholar Benedict Anderson on this in the first post; he suggests that joining in the singing of a song like “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a sporting event or other mass gathering is one of the most concrete expressions of the “imagined community” that we call “the nation,” a rare moment when members of that people-group express themselves with “simultaneity” and “unisonance.” And by that standard, there’s really no such thing as a “best” national anthem, at least not in terms of the supposedly objective excellence (or lousiness) of its words and music. So long as the people of the nation sing it out of anything grander than resentful obligation (and maybe even then), it works.

We’ve reached the end of this series, but tomorrow I’ll add a coda from my class’s first foray into the history of nationalism and talk about a fascinating episode in the history of Italian nationalism. (Italy’s national anthem being one that I’d strongly consider adding to the pool of nominees.)