La disputada cronología de la nacionalidad: fuerismo, identidad vasca y nación en el siglo XIX

Abstract

Ethnicity could feed in several forms and ways the process of nation building during the nineteenth century. The Spanish-Basque case is a good historical proof of it. «Fuerismo», the political discourse which mainly contributed to build 19 th Century Basque identity, was an ethno-regionalist movement which shaped a ethno-civic identity discourse which served as a vehicle for the construction of a national identification, which was first referred to Spain and, since the end of the century, also to the Basque Country. The ocean was not a border, but rather a bridge in this process. Basque diaspora also became a social space where a new collective identity was built. This discourse was aimed at enabling the better integration of Basque migrants into the new American nation-states during the age of the masses. The key element in this discourse was ethnicity. However, ethnicity was not primarily defined in primordial terms, but rather in instrumental terms, as a way to incorporate overlapping collective identities to the Basque one. This constitutes the main factor which helps reconstructing the chronology of Basque nationality in the modern times.