Contemporary World Nationalism

Based on the copious research results already achieved at home and abroad as well as the theoretical viewpoints and academic materials of the fields concerned, the present dissertation dedicates itself to the diverse changes of the world nationalism, tides in and tides out, which arose since the end of World War II, especially after around the end of the Cold War at the turn of the two centuries. It tries to sum up and analyze the nationalism both meticulously and dialectically, to form a new perspective and framework for thinking about it in deeper and further studies, so as to disclose its changing innate traits and developing patterns under the economic globalization and come to some more scientific conclusions.Dialectical materialism and historical materialism of Marxism have been adopted to make the study of the world nationalism in this thesis. Stick to Marxist viewpoints and combine the persistence of Marxist national theory with the development of it. Define correctly nationalism by considering both history and the changed world, on which nationalism can only be talked about. Nationalism is both a world issue and a historical one that involves many disciplines. Researching means and methods in diverse subjects have been adopted in writing the present thesis. Study nationalism by combining the domestic national problems with the contradictions and conflicts between nation-states while combining general analyses and case study.This thesis is composed of the three parts of INTRODUCTION, MAIN TEXT AND CONCLUSION related to each other. There are six chapters in the main text.INTRODUCTION is meant to point out that the new upsurge of world nationalism makes it an essential and urgent study and of great importance in both theory and practice. It also reviews the long-run researches and discussions of it made in the academic and theoretical fields at home and abroad as well as the gains and losses, providing a necessary theoretical preparation and analysis basis for building a writing framework for the present thesis.CHAPTER I is a general description of nationalism. It mainly deals with the concepts of nation and nationalism, the categories and historical stages of nationalism, offering a logical starting point for the study. And it recurs completely and concisely a skeleton of its historical development through looking into the past in order that we can unearth the intrinsic relations among different types of nationalism in its long history. Though nationalism has been changing greatly all the time with the development of history, the contemporary nationalism can find its own images in history. Considering the status quo of the happenings and development of the world nationalism at the end of the last century, thepresent thesis tries to break through the traditional theoretical patterns in defining nationalism, discard the dogmatism of analyzing nation with class analysis and create its own definition: nationalism refers to the concepts, theoretical trends of thought and practical activities based on national community for the purposes of safeguarding and increasing its political, economic,cultural rights and interests in the duration of historical development in the human society so that it can realize the existence, independence and development of its own nation.CHAPTER II is about the upsurge of the current world nationalism. It summarizes and generalizes the main forms of expression and the important basic traits since around the end of the Cold War. Some of the forms are nationalist phenomena newly-appeared around the end of the Cold War such as the suddenly-appeared massive national separatist movements, others are only repetitions and consolidations of such original nationalist problems as religious nationalism, racism and fascism. Nationalism has got a full and complete play on the new world historical stage.CHAPTER III explores the different root-causes of the contemporary world nationalism. It mainly analyzes some important backgrounds and factors, historical and actual, theoretical and practical, internal...