| This is an inquiry into the genesis, power and prospects of nationalism, intended to test the recurrent hypothesis that modernity is its age. There is widespread consensus in the studies of nationalism that their subject matter is a modern European ideology, but less agreement about its global power. Some have maintained that nationalism is globally hegemonic, and that modernity is its age. Others counter that nationalism is superficial and transient, and both sides have produced arguments proving their points. The result is a theoretical quandary I will discuss.;In contrast to the age of nationalism hypothesis, I see modernity as a contested time wherein nationalism vies for power against three main antagonists: liberalism, socialism and clericalism. While antagonistic, the four ideologies increasingly entwine, each moreover riddled with internal tensions and conflicts. Modernity is thus not an unequivocal age of nationalism, yet its fabric has become profoundly nationalistic. So, while nationalism has not become the modern world's exclusive logos, it remains an inextricable element of its poly-logical Geist, entwined with other ideologies.;I have examined the works of some two dozen authors, testing the plausibility and empirical grounding of their arguments. I have concluded that there are deep flaws in them, including an admixture of ethnocentrism and/or loco-centrism, manifest in the separation of nations and nationalisms into civic, liberal or largely non-ethnic ones (ours/allies), and ethnic, illiberal and savage others (theirs/foes). This makes most theories of nationalism nationalistic to a degree, and thus questionable. Loco-centrism is manifest in global generalizations drawn from regional empirical research, postulating rather than ascertaining the key cut-off points in history. The result is a prevailing orthodoxy that nationalism emerged in early modern West Europe, and has subsequently spread elsewhere, becoming lethal and sylvan in the process. My work is an attempt to reveal and overcome this academic nationalism, and that is why I have conceived it as global and broadly inclusive, involving all polities extant since 1750 with no sovereignty hiatus of more than 25 years. |
