What exactly is nationalism?

It feels like we’ve always had countries. But in fact, nations are only a little more than 200 years old. Many kinds of governments, kingdoms, and empires existed over thousands of years before the first nation was formed. Nations are actually quite young!

We often think our nation is an important part of who we are—I am “American,” “Indian,” “Italian,” “Chinese,” and so on. But what does that really mean? How are you part of your nation? Indeed, what is a nation? Simply put, a nation is a group of people speaking a common language and sharing a common culture and a common history.

Nations and nationalism are linked together. What is nationalism? Well, it is a term to describe the common bonds that hold people together within a nation, creating a new type of community. Tied to this is the idea that individuals’ loyalty should be focused on the nation and that each nation should be able to determine its own future—an idea known as self-determination. So, nationalism is also the idea that a nation should have that right to govern itself and the right to self-determination. Finally, sometimes, nationalism is expressed in the belief that one’s own nation is better than other nations. In those instances, it can lead to competition and discrimination.

Nationalism bonds people together in a way that is not based on family ties, or even on having a personal connection with other members of your nation. In some ways, nations are imagined communities. So much of the making of a nation is about creating unity and loyalty in our minds. It is not enough to just have a common government. To create and build the community of a nation, we also must have shared cultural symbols like flags and national anthems, and a shared idea of our national history.

Origins

As noted earlier, nationalism is not very old. Before the very end of the eighteenth century, nationalism didn’t even exist! When people told you where they were from, they said the name of a village or town. How did we go from identifying ourselves by our town to identifying ourselves by our nation? Well, to understand that we need to look at some of the revolutions around the turn of the nineteenth century, especially in Europe, and what people were fighting for, and against.

The French Revolutionary era had great importance in the development and spread of nationalism. After French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in 1799, he extended the central government of France into all the countries he conquered across Europe. Traditional local powers were pushed aside. The French people soon gained a sense of unity through their opposition to France’s many enemies. They were able to define themselves both as what they were, and what they were not. They were French—not English, German, Italian, or anything else.

France’s military victories gave the French people a shared sense of history and a stronger sense of their own “Frenchness.” As a result, nationalism was at first strongest in France. But here’s the funny thing about nationalism: As Napoleon expanded and his armies took over many other European countries, those other countries all began to develop a belief in the importance of national self-determination. Uniting against the French rulers created a sense of common destiny—a sense of nationalism.

There were other reasons nationalism took hold. One was the growth in literacy, and another was the growth of larger cities. As the reading public expanded, and as larger numbers of people lived closer together, many ideas and beliefs were more widely shared, which helped bind people together.

Other reasons…

Some historians have argued that nationalism became important because older loyalties became less important— which Some historians have argued that nationalism became important because older loyalties became less important. That brings us to religion. For hundreds of years after the split of the Christian church into Catholic and Protestant wings, wars were fought over religion and people defined themselves in terms of their Catholicism or Protestantism. The Enlightenment weakened the hold of religion over many parts of the population by pointing out the abuses of the church and focusing on reason. People soon lost trust in religious authorities.

In addition, Europe’s kings and queens began to lose popular support. Between Enlightenment ideas and the French Revolution, there were enough critiques of monarchies to shift the people’s loyalties away from their traditional rulers.

Across the Atlantic in the Americas, nationalism got going even earlier than in Europe. As Napoleon was taking over much of Continental Europe, Touissant L’Ouverture helped establish the second independent republic in the Americas in Haiti in 1804. After several hundred years of European colonization in the Americas, people had changed. There were fewer differences between European colonizers and the local populations. Many people had closer ties to the colonized lands than to the European powers who controlled them. Local loyalty to the land where they lived would encourage national movements. These movements would become revolutions for national liberation and decolonization both during the nineteenth and through the mid-twentieth century.

Obstacles

In the eighteenth century, France already had a central government and system of local administration that helped bring the center and outlying areas together. This state structure helped to build ideas of “the Nation.” But that wasn’t the case in many other countries. Sure, the people of Germany and Italy each shared a common language. But neither place had a central government structure. They were both split up into a whole bunch of little states without any notion of German or Italian citizenship. These little states each had their own noble rulers, with no supreme ruler above them all. It wouldn’t be until 1871 that these two regions would each become unified into nations with a single national government. In Germany, nationhood was achieved through the military force of the Prussians. In Italy, it was won through the political leadership of the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, located in the northwest part of present-day Italy.

Conclusions and future differences

The rise and spread of nationalism gave people a new sense of identity and unity. It also led to increased competition among nation-states. After Napoleon was defeated, several other European nations joined together to attempt to return to the old ways. As a result, royal dynasties returned to their thrones. However, over the following century several revolutions across Europe would remove these royals from power. New constitutional governments led by citizens of these nation-states would take their place. By the end of the nineteenth century, these nation-states were locked in a competition for colonies in Africa, Eastern Asia, and Southeast Asia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, nationalism played a major role in the extremely bloody competition between nations we now call World War I.