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 before the first nation was formed. Nations are actually quite young!

We often think our nation is an important part of who we are. We say we are “American,” “Indian,” “Italian,” “Chinese,” and so on. But what does that really mean? How are we part of our 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 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. These bonds create 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, nationalism is sometimes expressed in the belief that one’s own nation is better than other nations. In those cases, it can lead to discrimination and even war.

Nationalism bonds people together. Yet, it 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. We must have a shared idea of our national history.

Origins

Before the very end of the eighteenth century, nationalism did not 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 that occurred around the turn of the nineteenth century, especially in Europe. We need to look at what people were fighting for, and against.

The period that followed the French Revolution of 1789 had great importance in the creation and spread of nationalism. After French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in 1799, he set out to conquer many of the peoples of Europe. Napoleon swept through the continent and extended the central government of France into all the countries he conquered. Traditional local powers were pushed aside. The French people soon gained a sense of unity against their many enemies. They began to define themselves as French—not English, German, Italian, and so on.

France’s great military victories gave the French people a shared sense of history and a stronger sense of their own community. As a result, nationalism was at first strongest in France. But here’s the funny thing: As Napoleon’s 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 purpose—a sense of nationalism.

There were other reasons nationalism took hold. One was the growth in literacy. 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. This helped bind people together.

Other reasons…

Some historians have argued that nationalism became important because older loyalties became less important. That brings us to religion. For hundreds of years people defined themselves in terms of their faith: Catholic or Protestant. The Enlightenment weakened the hold of religion over many parts of the population. It did so by pointing out the abuses of the church and by focusing on reason. Many people soon lost trust in religious authorities.

In addition, Europe’s kings and queens began to lose popular support. Both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution were attacks on the right of kings and queens to rule. Over time, they affected how people thought, and many people stopped feeling any loyalty to their traditional royal rulers. That included the colonists in the Americas, who began feeling closer ties to the colonized lands than to the European powers who controlled them. This loyalty to their new land helped the growth of national movements and revolutions.

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 unity within their own state. It also led to increased fighting among nation-states. By the end of the nineteenth century, several 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.