Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism

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Cambridge University Press, 2013 - History - 441 pages
What are the origins of nationalism and why is it capable of arousing such intense emotions? In this major study, Azar Gat counters the prevailing fashionable theories according to which nations and nationalism are modern and contrived or 'invented'. He sweeps across history and around the globe to reveal that ethnicity has always been highly political and that nations and national states have existed since the beginning of statehood millennia ago. He traces the deep roots of ethnicity and nationalism in human nature, showing how culture fits into human evolution from as early as our aboriginal condition and, in conjunction with kinship, defines ethnicity and ethnic allegiances. From the rise of states and empires to the present day, this book sheds new light on the explosive nature of ethnicity and nationalism, as well as on their more liberating and altruistic roles in forging identity and solidarity.
 

Contents

Introduction is nationalism recent and superficial?
1
The evolution of kinculture communities
27
From tribes to statehood
44
Premodern ethne peoples states and nations around the world
67
A Ethnos and citystate
68
B The premodern national state
83
C Were empires ethnically blind?
111
Premodern Europe and the national state
132
C Was the premodern European nation impossible due to religion empire dynastic rule inequality and dialect fragmentation?
212
Modernity nationalism released transformed and enhanced
244
what enabled what?
246
B Civic nations or ethnic nations? Europe the Englishspeaking immigrant countries Latin America Africa and Asia
260
C National conflict and solidarity in a globalizing world
313
State national identity ethnicity normative and constitutional aspects
328
Notes
388
Index
435

A The mushrooming of national states in emergent Europe
140
B Southern versus northern Europe
185

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About the author (2013)

Azar Gat is Ezer Weitzman Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University. His more recent publications include A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (2001), War in Human Civilization (2006), named one of the best books of the year by The Times Literary Supplement, and Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How it is Still Imperilled (2010).

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