Nationalism: A Chronological Reading

Abstract

As it is not possible to name any particular founders or pioneers in nationalism studies, instead of primordialist and modern interpretations, this paper reads nationalism in chronological order by dividing them into four sections. The first section focuses on how nationalism started to be defined as a concept by referring to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Sturm und Drang movement, Immanuel Kant’s definition of freedom, the importance given to language by Johann Gottfried Herder and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract, whereas the second one deals with the awakening of nationalism with reference to the French Revolution, John Stuart Mill’s seeing nation as a portion of mankind, Ernst Renan’s definition of the nation as a spiritual thing, and Marxism’s undefinition of the term. The third section discusses the acceleration of nationalism studies by mentioning Carlton J. H. Hayes’ classification of modern nationalism, Hans Kohn’s classification of nationalism into western and non-western and Edward Hallett Carr’s division of the history of international relations into three periods, and the last section analyses the period when nationalism studies is at its peak by giving references to the definitions of nationalism by Ernest Gellner as political principle, Elie Kedourie as an invented doctrine, Anthony David Smith as an ideological movement, Eric Hobsbawm as invented tradition, Benedict Anderson as imagined communities and Michael Billig as banal.