Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity
- 2 European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch
- 3 History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology
- 4 The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis
- 5 Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick
- 6 Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
- 7 Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life
- 8 European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s
- 10 Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism
- 11 The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women
- 12 Darwinism and Social Darwinism
- 13 Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche
- 14 Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities
- 15 Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
- 16 Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity
- 17 Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century
- 18 The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
- 19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy
- 20 Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
- Index
18 - The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2019
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 German Idealism: The Thought of Modernity
- 2 European Romanticism: Ambivalent Responses to the Sense of a New Epoch
- 3 History, Tradition, and Skepticism: The Patterns of Nineteenth-Century Theology
- 4 The Young Hegelians: Philosophy as Critical Praxis
- 5 Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick
- 6 Capital, Class, and Empire: Nineteenth-Century Political Economy and Its Imaginary
- 7 Positivism in European Intellectual, Political, and Religious Life
- 8 European Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 European Socialism from the 1790s to the 1890s
- 10 Conservatism: The Utility of History and the Case against Rationalist Radicalism
- 11 The Woman Question: Liberal and Socialist Critiques of the Status of Women
- 12 Darwinism and Social Darwinism
- 13 Historicism from Ranke to Nietzsche
- 14 Philology, Language, and the Constitution of Meaning and Human Communities
- 15 Decadence and the “Second Modernity”
- 16 Nihilism, Pessimism, and the Conditions of Modernity
- 17 Civilization, Culture, and Race: Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century
- 18 The Varieties of Nationalist Thought
- 19 Ideas of Empire: Civilization, Race, and Global Hierarchy
- 20 Rethinking Revolution: Radicalism at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century
- Index
Summary
Nation-states and nationalism appear to many people today as almost natural phenomena, deep-rooted parts of a human landscape dominated by artifice and change. This apparent naturalness is one of the most remarkable political achievements of the past two centuries. In the early nineteenth century, if asked “Where are you from?,” most of the world’s inhabitants would have named a province, town, or village. Away from home, some Europeans might have answered “France,” “Poland,” “Italy,” or “Germany.” But none of these names carried the political or emotional meanings they acquired in the course of the nineteenth century. The populations of France and Poland were divided by language, local loyalties, and social station; divisions were deepened in France by the 1789 Revolution, in Poland by the country’s forced partitions between Prussia, Austria, and Russia from 1772 to 1795. Italia and Germania were ancient Roman names of provinces that had never been politically united. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of most other Europeans, and of people everywhere: they were not national animals until nationalism – a specific kind of politics driven by a novel ideal – made them so.
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- The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought , pp. 422 - 446Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019