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A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity , a national identity , has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language , history , ethnicity , culture , territory or society . Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism ) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism ).

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109-460: Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state . As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining its sovereignty ( self-governance ) over its perceived homeland to create a nation-state . It holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference ( self-determination ), that

218-494: A Hegelian "end of history". Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had reverted only to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. Postnationalism is the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to supranational and global entities. Several factors contribute to

327-490: A "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism . The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism . Beginning in the late 18th century, particularly with the French Revolution and the spread of the principle of popular sovereignty or self determination , the idea that "the people" should rule is developed by political theorists. Three main theories have been used to explain

436-638: A cause of both World Wars. The terminological use of "nations", "sovereignty" and associated concepts were significantly refined with the writing by Hugo Grotius of De jure belli ac pacis in the early 17th century. Living in the times of the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Netherlands and the Thirty Years' War between Catholic and Protestant European nations, Grotius was deeply concerned with matters of conflicts between nations in

545-478: A defined territory and organized under an independent government; a sovereign political state.... The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for: Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations ), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet. Depending on the meaning of "nation" used,

654-1051: A distinctly modern phenomenon. Throughout history, people have had an attachment to their kin group and traditions , territorial authorities and their homeland, but nationalism – the belief that state and nation should align as a nation state – did not become a prominent ideology until the end of the 18th century. The English word nation from Middle English c. 1300, nacioun "a race of people, large group of people with common ancestry and language," from Old French nacion "birth ( naissance ), rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio (nātĭō), supine of verb nascar « to birth » ( supine  : natum) ) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born," from natus , past participle of nasci "be born" ( Old Latin gnasci ), from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. In Latin, natio represents

763-445: A fully modern political nationalism rooted in the model of biblical nationalism . In a 2013 article "Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states", Diana Muir Appelbaum expands Gorski's argument to apply to a series of new, Protestant, sixteenth-century nation states. A similar, albeit broader, argument was made by Anthony D. Smith in his books, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity and Myths and Memories of

872-471: A historic territory and some measure of solidarity, at least among their elites". The boundaries of an ethnie can be quite recognisable even when not all of its characteristics appear at the same time. It is, in other words, not a question of a smallest common denominator. Smith states that even when nations are the product of modernity, it is possible to find ethnic elements that survive in modern nations. Ethnic groups are different from nations. Nations are

981-529: A historical constant. The nationalization process accelerated in the 19th century, in parallel to the origin of Spanish nationalism , the social, political and ideological movement that tried to shape a Spanish national identity based on the Castilian model, in conflict with the other historical nations of the State. Politicians of the time were aware that despite the aggressive policies pursued up to that time,

1090-469: A major role in stimulating nationalism and the demands for national unity. English historian J. P. T. Bury argues: Between 1830 and 1870 nationalism had thus made great strides. It inspired great literature, quickened scholarship, and nurtured heroes. It had shown its power both to unify and to divide. It had led to great achievements of political construction and consolidation in Germany and Italy; but it

1199-496: A nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity , and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity , based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture , ethnicity , geographic location , language , politics (or the government ), religion , traditions and belief in a shared singular history , and to promote national unity or solidarity . There are various definitions of

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1308-448: A national identity is also a political action with political consequences, like the need to redraw the geopolitical map or alter the composition of political regimes and states". There are three notable perspectives on how nations developed. Primordialism (perennialism), which reflects popular conceptions of nationalism but has largely fallen out of favour among academics, proposes that there have always been nations and that nationalism

1417-489: A new mythology and symbolism, to legitimate and ground human thought and action". He discusses the simultaneous concept of 'historicism' to describe an emerging belief in the birth, growth, and decay of specific peoples and cultures, which became "increasingly attractive as a framework for inquiry into the past and present and [...] an explanatory principle in elucidating the meaning of events, past and present". The Prussian scholar Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) originated

1526-591: A nominally Christian Europe. Nationalism in France gained early expressions in France's revolutionary government. In 1793, that government declared a mass conscription ( levée en masse ) with a call to service: Henceforth, until the enemies have been driven from the territory of the Republic, all the French are in permanent requisition for army service. The young men shall go to battle; the married men shall forge arms in

1635-455: A population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential 'nation'". A nation, meanwhile, is "a named population sharing a historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture , a common economy and common legal rights and duties for its members". Ethnies are, in turn, defined as "named units of population with common ancestry myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some link with

1744-687: A result of Napoleon's resistance failure in Spain. They served to determine new leadership and, in colonies like Caracas, abolished the slave trade as well as the Indian tribute. The division exploded between Spaniards who were born in Spain (called "peninsulares") versus those of Spanish descent born in New Spain (called "criollos" in Spanish or " creoles " in English). The two groups wrestled for power, with

1853-457: A series of highly successful short wars against Denmark, Austria and France which thrilled the pan-German nationalists in the smaller German states. They fought in his wars and eagerly joined the new German Empire, which Bismarck ran as a force for balance and peace in Europe after 1871. In the 19th century, German nationalism was promoted by Hegelian-oriented academic historians who saw Prussia as

1962-432: A term coined by Benedict Anderson . A nation is an imagined community in the sense that the material conditions exist for imagining extended and shared connections and that it is objectively impersonal, even if each individual in the nation experiences themselves as subjectively part of an embodied unity with others. For the most part, members of a nation remain strangers to each other and will likely never meet. Nationalism

2071-511: Is a Nation? ", argues that a nation is "a daily referendum", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget as on what they remember. Carl Darling Buck argued in a 1916 study, "Nationality is essentially subjective, an active sentiment of unity, within a fairly extensive group, a sentiment based upon real but diverse factors, political, geographical, physical, and social, any or all of which may be present in this or that case, but no one of which must be present in all cases." In

2180-410: Is a former student of the philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner , but he did not share his view of nationalism in the long run. He created an approach of nationalism he called ethnosymbolism . The Warwick Debate of October 24, 1995, held at Warwick University , exemplified the positions of Smith and Gellner, and clarified the definitions they used. Smith argues that nationalism draws on

2289-610: Is a natural phenomenon. Ethnosymbolism explains nationalism as a dynamic, evolving phenomenon and stresses the importance of symbols, myths and traditions in the development of nations and nationalism. Modernization theory , which has superseded primordialism as the dominant explanation of nationalism, adopts a constructivist approach and proposes that nationalism emerged due to processes of modernization , such as industrialization , urbanization, and mass education, which made national consciousness possible. Proponents of modernization theory describe nations as " imagined communities ",

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2398-458: Is a newer word; in the English language, dating to around 1798. The term gained wider prominence in the 19th century. The term increasingly became negative in its connotations after 1914. Glenda Sluga notes that "The twentieth century, a time of profound disillusionment with nationalism, was also the great age of globalism ." Academics define nationalism as a political principle that holds that

2507-416: Is and whether there are viable or developing alternatives. The theory of the clash of civilizations lies in direct contrast to cosmopolitan theories about an ever more-connected world that no longer requires nation states. According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington , people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post– Cold War world. The theory

2616-714: Is called the Byzantine Empire was the Roman Empire transformed into a nation-state in the Middle Ages . Azar Gat also argues China , Korea and Japan were nations by the time of the European Middle Ages . In contrast, Geary rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names. He criticizes historians for failing to recognize

2725-462: Is central to Italian nationalism but it was based in the liberal middle classes and ultimately proved a bit weak. The new government treated the newly annexed South as a kind of underdeveloped province due to its "backward" and poverty-stricken society, its poor grasp of standard Italian (as Italo-Dalmatian dialects of Neapolitan and Sicilian were prevalent in the common use) and its local traditions. The liberals had always been strong opponents of

2834-501: Is consequently seen an " invented tradition " in which shared sentiment provides a form of collective identity and binds individuals together in political solidarity. A nation's foundational "story" may be built around a combination of ethnic attributes, values and principles, and may be closely connected to narratives of belonging. Scholars in the 19th and early 20th century offered constructivist criticisms of primordial theories about nations. A prominent lecture by Ernest Renan, " What

2943-535: Is often cited by scholars as a prominent example of ancient Jewish nationalism. Adrian Hastings argued that Jews are the "true proto-nation", that through the model of ancient Israel found in the Hebrew Bible , provided the world with the original concept of nationhood which later influenced Christian nations. Anthony D. Smith wrote that the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to

3052-422: Is often motivated by economic or geo-political factors. Extreme revanchist ideologues often represent a hawkish stance, suggesting that their desired objectives can be achieved through the positive outcome of another war. It is linked with irredentism, the conception that a part of the cultural and ethnic nation remains "unredeemed" outside the borders of its appropriate nation state. Revanchist politics often rely on

3161-431: Is seen as positive or negative depending on its ideology and outcomes. Nationalism has been a feature of movements for freedom and justice, has been associated with cultural revivals, and encourages pride in national achievements. It has also been used to legitimize racial, ethnic, and religious divisions, suppress or attack minorities, undermine human rights and democratic traditions, and start wars, being frequently cited as

3270-409: Is usually inextricably involved in revanchism and irredentism, justifying them in the eyes of their proponents. The Dreyfus Affair in France 1894–1906 made the battle against treason and disloyalty a central theme for conservative Catholic French nationalists. Dreyfus, a Jew, was an outsider, that is in the views of intense nationalists, not a true Frenchman, not one to be trusted, not one to be given

3379-623: The American Declaration of Independence or with the French Revolution , though there is ongoing debate about its existence in varying forms during the Middle Ages and even antiquity. Tom Garvin wrote that "something strangely like modern nationalism is documented for many peoples in medieval times and in classical times as well," citing the ancient Jews , the classical Greeks and the Gaulish and British Celts as examples. The Great Jewish Revolt against Roman rule (66–73 CE)

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3488-637: The Count-Duke of Olivares and the absolutism of Philip V , the assimilation of the Crown of Aragon by the Castilian Crown through the Decrees of Nova planta was the first step in the creation of the Spanish nation-state. As in other contemporary European states, political union was the first step in the creation of the Spanish nation-state, in this case not on a uniform ethnic basis, but through

3597-422: The French Revolution (1789) is seen as an important starting point, not only for its impact on French nationalism but even more for its impact on Germans and Italians and on European intellectuals. The template of nationalism, as a method for mobilizing public opinion around a new state based on popular sovereignty, went back further than 1789: philosophers such as Rousseau and Voltaire , whose ideas influenced

3706-786: The Internet . However attachment to citizenship and national identities often remains important. Jan Zielonka of the University of Oxford states that "the future structure and exercise of political power will resemble the medieval model more than the Westphalian one" with the latter being about "concentration of power, sovereignty and clear-cut identity" and neo-medievalism meaning "overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty, multiple identities and governing institutions, and fuzzy borders". Anthony D. Smith Anthony David Stephen Smith (23 September 1939 – 19 July 2016)

3815-476: The dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the dictatorship of Franco ), a new brand of Spanish nationalism with a marked military flavour and an authoritarian stance (as well as promoting policies favouring the Spanish language against the other languages in the country) as a means of modernizing the country was developed by Spanish conservatives, fusing regenerationist principles with traditional Spanish nationalism. The authoritarian national ideal resumed during

3924-494: The ethnic groups that form the background of modern nations as "ethnie". When speaking of nation-states Smith notes, "We may term a state a ‘nation-state’ only if and when a single ethnic and cultural population inhabits the boundaries of a state, and the boundaries of that state are coextensive with the boundaries of that ethnic and cultural population". Smith defines nationalism as "an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of

4033-549: The pope and the very well organized Catholic Church . The liberal government under the Sicilian Francesco Crispi sought to enlarge his political base by emulating Otto von Bismarck and firing up Italian nationalism with an aggressive foreign policy. It partially crashed and his cause was set back. Of his nationalistic foreign policy, historian R. J. B. Bosworth says: [Crispi] pursued policies whose openly aggressive character would not be equaled until

4142-523: The 1830s. Writing shortly after World War I , the popular British author H. G. Wells traced the origin of European nationalism to the aftermath of the Reformation , when it filled the moral void left by the decline of Christian faith: [A]s the idea of Christianity as a world brotherhood of men sank into discredit because of its fatal entanglement with priestcraft and the Papacy on the one hand and with

4251-418: The 1980s. Often ignored as in the case of other State nationalisms, its alleged "non-existence" has been a commonplace espoused by prominent figures in the public sphere as well as the mass-media in the country. Nation A nation is generally more overtly political than an ethnic group . Benedict Anderson defines a nation as "an imagined political community […] imagined because the members of even

4360-507: The 19th-century European Nationalism. Some scholars argue that variants of nationalism emerged prior to the 18th century. American philosopher and historian Hans Kohn wrote in 1944 that nationalism emerged in the 17th century. In Britons, Forging the Nation 1707–1837 , Linda Colley explores how the role of nationalism emerged in about 1700 and developed in Britain reaching full form in

4469-515: The Francoist dictatorship, in the form of National-Catholicism , which was in turn complemented by the myth of Hispanidad . A distinct manifestation of Spanish nationalism in modern Spanish politics is the interchange of attacks with competing regional nationalisms. Initially present after the end of Francoism in a rather diffuse and reactive form, the Spanish nationalist discourse has been often self-branded as " constitutional patriotism " since

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4578-644: The French Revolution, had themselves been influenced or encouraged by the example of earlier constitutionalist liberation movements, notably the Corsican Republic (1755–1768) and American Revolution (1775–1783). Due to the Industrial Revolution , there was an emergence of an integrated, nation-encompassing economy and a national public sphere , where British people began to mobilize on a state-wide scale, rather than just in

4687-461: The German nationalist historians, was Treitschke who had an enormous influence on elite students at Heidelberg and Berlin universities. Treitschke vehemently attacked parliamentarianism, socialism, pacifism, the English, the French, the Jews, and the internationalists. The core of his message was the need for a strong, unified state—a unified Germany under Prussian supervision. "It is the highest duty of

4796-608: The Great , in particular, drew on biblical language in his law code and that during his reign selected books of the Bible were translated into Old English to inspire Englishmen to fight to turn back the Norse invaders. Hastings argues for a strong renewal of English nationalism (following a hiatus after the Norman conquest ) beginning with the translation of the complete bible into English by

4905-525: The Hohenzollern kings of Prussia. His large-scale History of Prussian Politics (14 vol 1855–1886) was foundational for nationalistic students and scholars. Von Sybel founded and edited the leading academic history journal, Historische Zeitschrift and as the director of the Prussian state archives published massive compilations that were devoured by scholars of nationalism. The most influential of

5014-517: The Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation ... perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world." Susan Reynolds has argued that many European medieval kingdoms were nations in the modern sense, except that political participation in nationalism was available only to a limited prosperous and literate class, while Hastings claims England's Anglo-Saxon kings mobilized mass nationalism in their struggle to repel Norse invasions. He argues that Alfred

5123-476: The Nation . In her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity , Liah Greenfeld argued that nationalism was invented in England by 1600. According to Greenfeld, England was “the first nation in the world". For Smith, creating a 'world of nations' has had profound consequences for the global state system, as a nation comprises both a cultural and political identity. Therefore, he argues, "any attempt to forge

5232-638: The North. In the 21st century, the Communists have become marginal but political tensions remained high as shown by Umberto Bossi 's Padanism in the 1980s (whose party Lega Nord has come to partially embrace a moderate version of Italian nationalism over the years) and other separatist movements spread across the country. After the War of the Spanish Succession , rooted in the political position of

5341-481: The State to increase its power," he stated. Although he was a descendant of a Czech family, he considered himself not Slavic but German: "I am 1000 times more the patriot than a professor." German nationalism, expressed through the ideology of Nazism , may also be understood as trans-national in nature. This aspect was primarily advocated by Adolf Hitler , who later became the leader of the Nazi Party . This party

5450-619: The Wycliffe circle in the 1380s , positing that the frequency and consistency in usage of the word nation from the early fourteenth century onward strongly suggest English nationalism and the English nation have been continuous since that time. However, John Breuilly criticizes Hastings's assumption that continued usage of a term such as 'English' means continuity in its meaning. Patrick J. Geary agrees, arguing names were adapted to different circumstances by different powers and could convince people of continuity, even if radical discontinuity

5559-520: The armies of Ethiopian Emperor Menelik routed Italian forces at Adowa [...] in what has been defined as an unparalleled disaster for a modern army. Crispi, whose private life and personal finances [...] were objects of perennial scandal, went into dishonorable retirement. Italy joined the Allies in the First World War after getting promises of territory, but its war effort was not honored after

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5668-428: The authority of princes on the other, and the age of faith passed into our present age of doubt and disbelief, men shifted the reference of their lives from the kingdom of God and the brotherhood of mankind to these apparently more living realities, France and England, Holy Russia, Spain, Prussia.... **** In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the general population of Europe was religious and only vaguely patriotic; by

5777-434: The benefit of the doubt. True loyalty to the nation, from the conservative viewpoint, was threatened by liberal and republican principles of liberty and equality that were leading the country to disaster. Before 1815, the sense of Russian nationalism was weak—what sense there was focused on loyalty and obedience to the tsar . The Russian motto " Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality " was coined by Count Sergey Uvarov and it

5886-570: The borders of Germany as a nation. Italian nationalism emerged in the 19th century and was the driving force for Italian unification or the Risorgimento (meaning the "Resurgence" or "Revival"). It was the political and intellectual movement that consolidated the different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. The memory of the Risorgimento

5995-442: The children of the same birth and also a human group of same origin. By Cicero , natio is used for "people". Black's Law Dictionary defines a nation as follows: nation , n. (14c) 1. A large group of people having a common origin, language, tradition, and usage constitutes a political entity. • When a nation is coincident with a state, the term nation-state is often used.... ... 2. A community of people inhabiting

6104-450: The concepts, myths, symbols and ideology of nationalism is apparent. This applies to the first appearance of the core doctrine and to the antecedent concepts of national character, genius of the nation and national will. Smith posits the challenges posed to traditional religion and society in the Age of Revolution propelled many intellectuals to "discover alternative principles and concepts, and

6213-404: The context of oppositions stemming from religious differences. The word nation was also applied before 1800 in Europe in reference to the inhabitants of a country as well as to collective identities that could include shared history, law, language, political rights, religion and traditions, in a sense more akin to the modern conception. Nationalism as derived from the noun designating 'nations'

6322-540: The criollos leading the call for independence. Spain tried to use its armies to fight back but had no help from European powers. Indeed, Britain and the United States worked against Spain, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine . Spain lost all of its American colonies, except Cuba and Puerto Rico, in a complex series of revolts from 1808 to 1826. In the German states west of Prussia, Napoleon abolished many of

6431-534: The days of the Fascist regime. Crispi increased military expenditure, talked cheerfully of a European conflagration, and alarmed his German or British friends with these suggestions of preventative attacks on his enemies. His policies were ruinous, both for Italy's trade with France, and, more humiliatingly, for colonial ambitions in East Africa. Crispi's lust for territory there was thwarted when on 1 March 1896,

6540-445: The differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study". Similarly, Sami Zubaida notes that many states and empires in history ruled over ethnically diverse populations, and "shared ethnicity between ruler and ruled did not always constitute grounds for favour or mutual support". He goes on to argue ethnicity

6649-516: The diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post– Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights , liberal democracy and capitalist free market economics had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama , in The End of History and the Last Man , argued that the world had reached

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6758-433: The emergence of nationalism: The moral value of nationalism, the relationship between nationalism and patriotism , and the compatibility of nationalism and cosmopolitanism are all subjects of philosophical debate. Nationalism can be combined with diverse political goals and ideologies such as conservatism ( national conservatism and right-wing populism ) or socialism ( left-wing nationalism ). In practice, nationalism

6867-537: The eradication of human beings that they deemed inferior. But their goals were trans-national and intended to spread across as much of the world as they could achieve. Although Nazism glorified German history, it also embraced the supposed virtues and achievements of the Aryan race in other countries, including India. The Nazis' Aryanism longed for now-extinct species of superior bulls once used as livestock by Aryans and other features of Aryan history that never resided within

6976-516: The eve of the 10th century. Hugh Poulton argues the development of Old Church Slavonic literacy in the country had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighboring cultures and stimulated the development of a distinct ethnic identity. A symbiosis was carried out between the numerically weak Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in that broad area from the Danube to

7085-412: The first philosopher to explicitly suggest "that identities based on language should be regarded as the primary source of legitimate political authority or locus of political resistance". Herder also encouraged the creation of a common cultural and language policy amongst the separate German states . Scholars frequently place the beginning of nationalism in the late 18th century or early 19th century with

7194-511: The former two Sicilies remained poor and partially underdeveloped (by industrial country standards). In the 1950s and early 1960s, Italy had an economic boom that pushed its economy to the fifth place in the world. The working class in those decades voted mostly for the Communist Party , and it looked to Moscow rather than Rome for inspiration and was kept out of the national government even as it controlled some industrial cities across

7303-464: The hitherto semi-autonomous British universities to much tighter state control. Concerned at the threat which this posed to individual academic freedom and to the independence of research and publication, Smith founded the Council for Academic Autonomy , and continued as its long-term Secretary. This scored an early success, arising from its petition to Parliament and its lobbying and representation in

7412-410: The hospitals; the children shall turn old linen to lint; the old men shall repair to the public places, to stimulate the courage of the warriors and preach the unity of the Republic and the hatred of kings. This nationalism gained pace after the French Revolution came to a close. Defeat in war, with a loss in territory, was a powerful force in nationalism. In France, revenge and return of Alsace-Lorraine

7521-399: The ideal type of the nation [...] than perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world", adding that this observation "must make us wary of pronouncing too readily against the possibility of the nation, and even a form of religious nationalism , before the onset of modernity". The consensus is that nationalism as a concept was firmly established by the 19th century. In histories of nationalism,

7630-423: The identification of a nation with a nation state, often mobilizing deep-rooted sentiments of ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside the state where members of the ethnic group live, while using heavy-handed nationalism to mobilize support for these aims. Revanchist justifications are often presented as based on ancient or even autochthonous occupation of a territory since "time immemorial", an assertion that

7739-591: The imposition of the political and cultural characteristics of the dominant ethnic group, in this case the Castilians, over those of other ethnic groups, who became national minorities to be assimilated. In fact, since the political unification of 1714, Spanish assimilation policies towards Catalan-speaking territories ( Catalonia , Valencia , the Balearic Islands , part of Aragon ) and other national minorities, as Basques and Galicians , have been

7848-512: The late 20th century, many social scientists argued that there were two types of nations, the civic nation of which French republican society was the principal example and the ethnic nation exemplified by the German peoples. The German tradition was conceptualized as originating with early 19th-century philosophers, like Johann Gottlieb Fichte , and referred to people sharing a common language, religion, culture, history, and ethnic origins , that differentiate them from people of other nations. On

7957-486: The majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor". A significant early use of the term nation , as natio , occurred at Medieval universities to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all at the University of Paris , who were all born within a pays , spoke the same language and expected to be ruled by their own familiar law. In 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson

8066-651: The mouth of the fascist José Pemartín , who admired the German and Italian modeling policies: "There is an intimate and decisive dualism, both in Italian fascism and in German National Socialism. On the one hand, the Hegelian doctrine of the absolutism of the state is felt. The State originates in the Nation, educates and shapes the mentality of the individual; is, in Mussolini's words, the soul of

8175-614: The movement. An upsurge in nationalism in Latin America in the 1810s and 1820s sparked revolutions that cost Spain nearly all of its colonies which were located there. Spain was at war with Britain from 1798 to 1808, and the British Royal Navy cut off its contacts with its colonies, so nationalism flourished and trade with Spain was suspended. The colonies set up temporary governments or juntas which were effectively independent from Spain. These juntas were established as

8284-403: The nation and state should be congruent. According to Lisa Weeden, nationalist ideology presumes that "the people" and the state are congruent. Anthony D. Smith describes how intellectuals played a primary role in generating cultural perceptions of nationalism and providing the ideology of political nationalism: Wherever one turns in Europe, their seminal position in generating and analysing

8393-640: The national one. Thomas Arne composed the patriotic song " Rule, Britannia! " in 1740, and the cartoonist John Arbuthnot invented the character of John Bull as the personification of the English national spirit in 1712. The political convulsions of the late 18th century associated with the American and French revolutions massively augmented the widespread appeal of patriotic nationalism. Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power further established nationalism when he invaded much of Europe. Napoleon used this opportunity to spread revolutionary ideas, resulting in much of

8502-439: The nineteenth it had become wholly patriotic. The political development of nationalism and the push for popular sovereignty culminated with the ethnic/national revolutions of Europe. During the 19th century nationalism became one of the most significant political and social forces in history; it is typically listed among the top causes of World War I . Napoleon's conquests of the German and Italian states around 1800–1806 played

8611-778: The north, to the Aegean Sea to the south, and from the Adriatic Sea to the west, to the Black Sea to the east, who accepted the common ethnonym " Bulgarians ". During the 10th century the Bulgarians established a form of national identity that was far from modern nationalism but helped them to survive as a distinct entity through the centuries. Anthony Kaldellis asserts in Hellenism in Byzantium (2008) that what

8720-616: The old or medieval relics, such as dissolving the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. He imposed rational legal systems and demonstrated how dramatic changes were possible. His organization of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 promoted a feeling of nationalism. Nationalists sought to encompass masculinity in their quest for strength and unity. It was Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck who achieved German unification through

8829-424: The other hand, the civic nation was traced to the French Revolution and ideas deriving from 18th-century French philosophers. It was understood as being centred in a willingness to "live together", this producing a nation that results from an act of affirmation. This is the vision, among others, of Ernest Renan . There is an ongoing debate about the future of nations − about whether this framework will persist as

8938-535: The others, and a Knight has charge of each one of these hostels, and provides for the necessities of the inmates according to their religion", as the Spanish traveller Pedro Tafur noted in 1436. In his article, "The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of the Modernist Theory of Nationalism", Philip S. Gorski argues that the first modern nation-state was the Dutch Republic , created by

9047-501: The past are frequently fabricated to justify modern political and ethnic positions. Nationalism, according to Smith, does not require that members of a "nation" should all be alike, but only that they should feel an intense bond of solidarity to the nation and other members of their nation. A sense of nationalism can inhabit and be produced from whatever dominant ideology exists in a given locale. Nationalism builds on pre-existing kinship , religious, and belief systems. Smith describes

9156-466: The political community of Spaniards as common destiny over other communities has been argued to trace back to the Cortes of Cádiz . From 1812 on, revisiting the previous history of Spain, Spanish liberalism tended to take for granted the national conscience and the Spanish nation. A by-product of 19th-century Spanish nationalist thinking is the concept of Reconquista , which holds the power of propelling

9265-437: The pre-existing history of the "group", an attempt to fashion this history into a sense of common identity and shared history. That is not to say that this history should be academically valid or cogent, but Smith asserts that many nationalisms are based on historically flawed interpretations of past events and tend to mythologise small, inaccurate parts of their history. Moreover, Smith reasons that nationalistic interpretations of

9374-551: The result of a triple revolution that begins with the development of capitalism and leads to a bureaucratic and cultural centralisation along with a loss of power by the Church. Smith, however, maintains that there are also many cases of ancient nations and so cannot be considered a modernist. He is often regarded as the 'founding father' of ethno-symbolism. Smith's ethno-symbolist approach has been critically examined by several modernist scholars. In 1987 Parliament proposed to subject

9483-464: The smaller units of their province, town or family. The early emergence of a popular patriotic nationalism took place in the mid-18th century and was actively promoted by the British government and by the writers and intellectuals of the time. National symbols , anthems, myths , flags and narratives were assiduously constructed by nationalists and widely adopted. The Union Jack was adopted in 1801 as

9592-448: The smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", while Anthony D Smith defines nations as cultural-political communities that have become conscious of their autonomy , unity and particular interests. The consensus among scholars is that nations are socially constructed , historically contingent, organizationally flexible, and

9701-465: The sole exception. He viewed them as the "true proto-nation" that provided the original model of nationhood through the foundational example of ancient Israel in the Hebrew Bible , despite losing their political sovereignty for nearly two millennia. The Jews, however, maintained a cohesive national identity throughout this period, which ultimately culminated in the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of modern lsrael. Anthony D. Smith wrote that

9810-411: The soul." And will be found again two hundred years later, from the socialist Josep Borrell : "The modern history of Spain is an unfortunate history that meant that we did not consolidate a modern State. Independentists think that the nation makes the State. I think the opposite. The State makes the nation. A strong State, which imposes its language, culture, education." The creation of the tradition of

9919-487: The term " nation state " could be used to distinguish larger states from small city states , or could be used to distinguish multinational states from those with a single ethnic group. The broad consensus amongst scholars of nationalism is that nations are a recent phenomenon. However, some historians argue that their existence can be traced to the medieval period. Adrian Hastings argued that nations and nationalism are predominantly Christian phenomena, with Jews being

10028-463: The term in 1772 in his "Treatise on the Origin of Language" stressing the role of a common language. He attached exceptional importance to the concepts of nationality and of patriotism  – "he that has lost his patriotic spirit has lost himself and the whole world about himself", whilst teaching that "in a certain sense every human perfection is national". Erica Benner identifies Herder as

10137-474: The trend Huntington identifies, including economic globalization , a rise in importance of multinational corporations , the internationalization of financial markets, the transfer of socio-political power from national authorities to supranational entities, such as multinational corporations, the United Nations and the European Union and the advent of new information and culture technologies such as

10246-463: The true carrier of the German spirit, and the power of the state as the ultimate goal of nationalism. The three main historians were Johann Gustav Droysen (1808–1884), Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895) and Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896). Droysen moved from liberalism to an intense nationalism that celebrated Prussian Protestantism, efficiency, progress, and reform, in striking contrast to Austrian Catholicism, impotency and backwardness. He idealized

10355-559: The uniform and monocultural "Spanish nation" did not exist, as indicated in 1835 by Antonio Alcalà Galiano , when in the Cortes del Estatuto Real he defended the effort: "To make the Spanish nation a nation that neither is nor has been until now." Building the nation (as in France , it was the state that created the nation, and not the opposite process) is an ideal that the Spanish elites constantly reiterated, and, one hundred years later than Alcalá Galiano, for example, we can also find it in

10464-643: The war and this fact discredited liberalism paving the way for Benito Mussolini and a political doctrine of his own creation, Fascism . Mussolini's 20-year dictatorship involved a highly aggressive nationalism that led to a series of wars with the creation of the Italian Empire , an alliance with Hitler's Germany, and humiliation and hardship in the Second World War. After 1945, the Catholics returned to government and tensions eased somewhat, but

10573-452: The weaponized notion of Spain being a nation shaped against Islam . The strong interface of nationalism with colonialism is another feature of 19th-century nation building in Spain, with the defence of slavery and colonialism in Cuba being often able to reconcile tensions between mainland elites of Catalonia and Madrid throughout the period. During the first half of 20th century (notably during

10682-557: Was a British historical sociologist who, at the time of his death, was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics . He is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies . Smith took his first degree in classics and philosophy at Oxford University and his master's degree and doctorate in sociology at the London School of Economics. He

10791-488: Was a powerful motivating force for a quarter century after their defeat by Germany in 1871. After 1895, French nationalists focused on Dreyfus and internal subversion, and the Alsace issue petered out. The French reaction was a famous case of Revanchism ("revenge") which demands the return of lost territory that "belongs" to the national homeland. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and it

10900-518: Was a vast undertaking to transplant Aryans throughout Poland , much of Eastern Europe and the Baltic nations , and all of Western Russia and Ukraine . Lebensraum was thus a vast project for advancing the Aryan race far outside of any particular nation or national borders. The Nazi's goals were racist focused on advancing the Aryan race as they perceived it, eugenics modification of the human race, and

11009-583: Was adopted by Emperor Nicholas I as the official ideology of the Russian Empire . Three components of Uvarov's triad were: By the 1860s, as a result of educational indoctrination, and due to conservative resistance to ideas and ideologies which were transmitted from Western Europe , a pan-Slavic movement had emerged and it produced both a sense of Russian nationalism and a nationalistic mission to support and protect pan-Slavism. This Slavophile movement became popular in 19th-century Russia. Pan-Slavism

11118-521: Was devoted to what they identified as an Aryan race , residing in various European countries, but sometime mixed with alien elements such as Jews. Meanwhile, the Nazis rejected many of the well-established citizens within those same countries, such as the Romani (Gypsies) and of course Jews, whom they did not identify as Aryan. A key Nazi doctrine was "Living Space" (for Aryans only) or " Lebensraum ," which

11227-565: Was elected twice as a procurator for the French natio . The University of Prague adopted the division of students into nationes : from its opening in 1349 the studium generale which consisted of Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish nations . In a similar way, the nationes were segregated by the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem , who maintained at Rhodes the hostels from which they took their name "where foreigners eat and have their places of meeting, each nation apart from

11336-710: Was fueled by, and it was also the fuel for Russia's numerous wars against the Ottoman Empire which were waged in order to achieve the alleged goal of liberating Orthodox nationalities, such as Bulgarians , Romanians , Serbs and Greeks , from Ottoman rule . Slavophiles opposed the Western European influences which had been transmitted to Russia and they were also determined to protect Russian culture and traditions. Aleksey Khomyakov , Ivan Kireyevsky , and Konstantin Aksakov are credited with co-founding

11445-517: Was more clear than ever a threat to the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, which were essentially multi-national. European culture had been enriched by the new vernacular contributions of little-known or forgotten peoples, but at the same time such unity as it had was imperiled by fragmentation. Moreover, the antagonisms fostered by nationalism had made not only for wars, insurrections, and local hatreds—they had accentuated or created new spiritual divisions in

11554-554: Was never the primary basis of identification for the members of these multinational empires. Paul Lawrence criticises Hastings's reading of Bede, observing that those writing so-called 'national' histories may have "been working with a rather different notion of 'the nation' to those writing history in the modern period". Lawrence goes on to argue that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves, pointing out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what

11663-574: Was originally formulated in a 1992 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute , which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?", in response to Francis Fukuyama 's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man . Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order . Huntington began his thinking by surveying

11772-532: Was the first president of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism . Smith's best-known contributions to the field are the distinction between 'civic' and 'ethnic' types of nations and nationalism , and the idea that all nations have dominant 'ethnic cores'. While Smith agrees with other authors that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, he insists that nations have premodern origins. He

11881-522: Was the lived reality. Florin Curta cites Medieval Bulgarian nation as another possible example. Danubian Bulgaria was founded in 680-681 as a continuation of Great Bulgaria . After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav on

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