EU Citizenship Needs a Stronger Social Dimension and Soft Duties 183 Historically, the contents of citizenship/nationality appeared much earlier than the container. State formation was a slow process. For ordinary people, it essentially meant becoming subject to novel duties: paying taxes and serving in the army. Mass conscription was a key element of nation-­ building. It contributed to turning states into fully-fledged political communities, sharing an identity and a sense of ‘destiny’, with high symbolic charges as it implied the possibility of personal sacrifice. Territorial borders came to be perceived as ‘inviolable’ national boundaries to be defended usque ad effusionem sanguinis. Bounding promoted bonding, which in turn generalised and strengthened the affectual and normative loyalty vis-à-vis state authorities and their binding decisions. The link between taxation and nation-building was less strong. Up to World War I indirect taxes remained by far the most important source of state revenue. Personal income taxes were legally introduced between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century but only acquired quantitative relevance in the second half of that century. The words for taxation used in Northern and Southern Europe testify that its impact on social solidarity and political legitimation varied greatly: think of the Scandinavian ska/skatt (which also means common treasury) vis-à-vis the neo-Latin terms impôt, imposta, impuesta (which evoke a subtraction). The introduction of social entitlements as subjective rights greatly enhanced the material salience of citizenship. But it also imposed new duties. In ‘Bismarckian’ systems based on compulsory insurance, there was a programmatic link between contributions and benefits from the very beginning. In tax-funded, universalistic systems the link remained weaker. But in the UK, for example, the sense of civic duty and reciprocity was so strong that when the means-tested pension was introduced in 1908, elderly ladies in the countryside brought flowers and food to the post officers who once a week paid them a ‘free’ allowance.5 During the Trente Glorieuses, the link between the duties and rights of citizenship (especially social rights) started to weaken. This phenomenon was noted as early as in 1950 by T.H. Marshall himself, who observed that in the UK citizenship was increasingly invoked for the defence of rights, ignoring ‘the corresponding duties … [which] do not require a man to sacrifice his individual liberty or to submit without question to the demands made by government. But they do require that his acts should be inspired by a 5 Harris, J. (1993), Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain 1870–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press.