Concepts of Nationalism

What do we mean by "a nation," and what do we mean by nationalism? On the simplest level, we use "nation" as a synonym for a sovereign state. When we speak of the nations of the world, we mean its states; they are entities that are members of the United Nations, or that could be if they applied for admission and were admitted. Britain and Brazil are nations; Wales and the Kurds are not. People in the United States are perhaps more prone to use "nation" in this sense than others, because "state" has such as strong popular connotation of the states of the Union.

But on closer examination our usage is more complex and ambiguous than it may seem initially. In a historical context we may speak of "the Frankish nation," or "the Cherokee nation," although neither was ever precisely a nation in the modern sense. Italy and Germany were both identifiable as nations, with distinct national languages, cultures, and traditions, long before they were unified as states in 1870. The ancient Greeks had a distinct "national" sense of themselves as Hellenes, yet their political loyalties were given wholly to individual city-states such as Athens and Sparta.

"Nationalism," likewise, suffers from a certain ambiguity. In the modern formal sense of the word, nationalism is understood to be a rather recent concept.

Nationalism, as we know it, is a modern development.

It has had its origin and rise in Europe,

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