The nation becomes a faith

1. Introduction

There is a simple, powerful idea at the heart of the modern world: that a people should govern itself. In the nineteenth century that idea redrew the map of Europe — dissolving old empires, welding scattered states into Italy and Germany — and it lit a fuse that would help ignite a century of wars. Nationalism can wear two faces at once: the liberator's and the persecutor's. This entry presents both, as its thinkers and its critics have framed them.

3. Historical Background

Nationalism as a mass force was stimulated by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic Wars, which spread the idea that political authority derives from the nation — the people — rather than a monarch [2]. In the Romantic period that followed (roughly 1815–1900), nationalism became bound up with language, folklore, ethnicity, and history, championed by poets, composers, and scholars [2]. The revolutions of 1848 revealed its power as crowds rose across Europe in the name of national self-determination [2]. Liberals and nationalists in the Italian and German states demanded unification; through war and diplomacy Italy was unified in 1861 and Germany in 1871, the latter forged by Otto von Bismarck on a conservative and authoritarian basis [2]. As nationalism took root among subject peoples, it threatened to tear apart multi-ethnic empires such as the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian [1].

4. Timeline

1. 1789

   The French Revolution locates sovereignty in the nation, seeding modern nationalism [2].

2. c. 1806–1815

   The Napoleonic Wars spread nationalist sentiment across Europe [2].

3. 1848

   Revolutions sweep Europe under banners of national self-determination [2].

4. 1861

   The Kingdom of Italy proclaimed, largely unifying the peninsula [2].

5. 1871

   The German Empire founded after Bismarck's wars of unification [2].

6. 1908

   Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia, inflaming Serbian nationalism [5].

7. 1912–1913

   The Balkan Wars pit competing nationalisms against one another [5].

8. 1914

   Gavrilo Princip, linked to the nationalist group Young Bosnia, assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand, helping trigger the First World War [5].

9. c. 1919

   The principle of national self-determination shapes the post-war peace settlements (attributed to standard accounts).

10. c. 1945–1975

    Nationalism drives decolonisation across Asia and Africa (attributed to standard accounts).

5. Key Details

• Origins: A modern phenomenon rooted in the French and American revolutions and, on the influential modernist reading, in the spread of print, literacy, and industrial society [1][3][4].
• Main Thinkers: Herder tied nationhood to language and culture; Mazzini made it a democratic creed; the modernist theorists Gellner, Anderson, and Hobsbawm later analysed how nations were made rather than found [3][4].
• Core Principles: That humanity is divided into nations; that each nation deserves self-determination; and, in Gellner's formulation, that "the political and the national unit should be congruent" [1][3]. Benedict Anderson argued a nation is "an imagined community" — imagined because most members will never meet, yet feel a deep horizontal comradeship, a sense fostered by "print-capitalism," the spread of newspapers and novels [3][4].
• Spread: From Western Europe it spread through the 19th-century continent, then worldwide, becoming a central force in decolonisation [1][2].
• Criticism: Modernist scholars stress that national identities are constructed, not primordial [3][4]. Critics also point to nationalism's exclusionary side — xenophobia, the construction of "ethnically exclusive conceptions of nation," and the persecution or expulsion of minorities [5].

6. Significance

Nationalism became one of the defining political forces of the modern age, reorganising Europe into nation-states and later supplying the language of independence to colonised peoples across the globe [1][2]. It gave millions a sense of shared belonging and a claim to self-rule, while also proving able to justify exclusion and violence against those cast as outsiders [2][5]. Understanding it is central to understanding both the liberation movements and the catastrophes of the past two centuries.

7. Impact

8. Legacy & Modern Relevance

Nationalism's legacy is genuinely double-edged, and scholarship insists on presenting both faces. On one side stand movements for self-determination and independence, from 19th-century unifications to 20th-century decolonisation [1][2]. On the other stand xenophobia, ethnic cleansing, and the nationalist rivalries that historians count among the causes of the First World War, when competing claims in the Balkans and beyond helped turn contested identities into mass warfare [5]. The modernist theorists — Gellner, Anderson, and Hobsbawm — reframed nations as products of modernity rather than timeless facts, an interpretation that is influential but itself debated by ethnosymbolist scholars [3][4]. Nationalism remains among the most potent and contested forces in contemporary politics.

9. Interesting Facts

• 01

  Benedict Anderson's phrase "imagined community" has become one of the most cited terms in the study of nationalism, yet he meant "imagined" as constructed, not false [3][4].

• 02

  The concept of national self-determination came into prominent use only in the 1860s before spreading rapidly thereafter [1].

• 03

  Bismarck unified Germany in 1871 "on a conservative and authoritarian basis," defeating the liberal nationalists who had first raised the banner of unity [2].

• 04

  Gavrilo Princip's group, Young Bosnia, was inspired in part by the earlier romantic-nationalist tradition associated with Mazzini [5].

10. Related Topics

• Marxism (Ideas & Movements × Industrial Revolution) — a rival mass ideology whose thinkers argued that class, not nation, was history's true dividing line.
• Decolonisation (Ideas & Movements × Cold War Era) — independence movements that turned nationalist self-determination against the European empires that had spread it.
• The First World War (Conflict & Wars × World Wars Era) — the conflict in which competing nationalisms helped turn a regional assassination into global war.

11. Sources & Further Reading

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Nationalism." https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/nationalism/
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Nationalism: European nationalism." https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism/European-nationalism
3. Wikipedia, "Imagined community" (summarising Anderson, Gellner, and the modernist school). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_community
4. Wikipedia, "Modernization theory (nationalism)" (on Anderson, Gellner, and Hobsbawm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernization_theory_(nationalism)
5. 1914-1918-Online, International Encyclopedia of the First World War, "Nationalism." https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/nationalism/