“Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms: Print Culture and Egyptian Nationalism in Light of Recent Scholarship.” A Review Essay of Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski,Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945, Cambridge Middle East Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Pp. 297

Abstract

Anthony D. Smith has argued that the idea of the “nation-state” conflates two historical and ideological processes that, even with Western European history serving as the paradigm, were often distinct. Nor was there any uniform evolution in these processes from one stage to the other. For Smith this has meant that “Eastern Europe and the Third World have all been trying to imitate a rather singular model whose ethnic homogeneity, like its parliamentary institutions, simply cannot be transplanted. They have been pursuing a Western mirage … [where] even in the West, the much soughtafter marriage of state and ethnie has not turned out to be all that happy and enduring.” Smith assumes that true nations are based onethnie, meaning a shared memory of culture, language, and history identified with specific territory stretching into the past that creates both a bond within the group, the precursor to nationhood, and a sense of distinction against other such groups. Here he opposes those whom he calls the “modernists,” who may argue with one another about what constitutes nationalism but agree that it reflects the development of nationhood in the modern era and is not an inevitable extension of ancient historical and cultural bonds.