Introduction

Abstract

As the past decade has proved, nationalism is far from a moribund force in international politics. Precipitated in large part by the collapse of the Soviet Empire, old nationalist movements¹ have been revitalized and new ones have proliferated across much of Europe, Asia and Africa. These events have also reignited scholarly interest in nationalism, generating numerous new studies seeking answers to the old questions of what nationalism is, why it remains so pervasive and what its future impact is likely to be. While critically important, however, such overarching topics beg a far more practical and less well understood problem: how do nationalist movements transform them­selves from small social groups to rulers of sovereign, independent nation-states? The primary aim of this book is to shed light on this question by studying how three such movements, the Irish, the Afrikaners and the Zionists, came to power in the first part of the century.