Nationalism

Abstract

Over the last two centuries, nationalism has been the political creed which has been most widespread and persistent, and inspired the most devotion or fanaticism. Men and women have been prepared to die for their nation, and to kill for it. Nationalism is thus, not surprisingly, a very controversial ideology. It has been condemned for promoting divisiveness and conflict, particularly in its more extreme variants, by those who have preached universalistic forms of liberalism or socialism. The demise of nationalism has been regularly predicted, and indeed its survival seems incompatible with trends in the modern world towards a global economy and culture on the one hand, and the devolution of power to regions and localities on the other. Yet nationalism continues to confound predictions, and retains its appeal in a variety of circumstances, in the advanced industrial or post-industrial countries of the western world, in some of the most economically backward countries of the third world and, most conspicuously of all, in the troubled fragments of the former Soviet empire, where nationalism is proving more potent than socialism or neo-liberalism.