Nation

A nation is a community of people formed

on the basis of a combination of shared
features such as language, history,
ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation
is thus the collective identity of a group of
people understood as defined by those
features. Some nations are equated with
ethnic groups (see ethnic nationalism) and
some are equated with affiliation to a
social and political constitution (see civic
nationalism and multiculturalism).[1] A
nation is generally more overtly political
than an ethnic group.[2][3] A nation has also
been defined as a cultural-political
community that has become conscious of
its autonomy, unity and particular
interests.[4]

The consensus among scholars is that

nations are socially constructed and
historically contingent.[5] Throughout
history, people have had an attachment to
their kin group and traditions, territorial
authorities and their homeland, but
nationalism – the belief that state and
nation should align as a nation state – did
not become a prominent ideology until the
end of the 18th century.[6] There are three
notable perspectives on how nations
developed. Primordialism (perennialism),
which reflects popular conceptions of
nationalism but has largely fallen out of
favour among academics,[7] proposes that
there have always been nations and that
nationalism is a natural phenomenon.
Ethnosymbolism explains nationalism as a
dynamic, evolving phenomenon and
stresses the importance of symbols,
myths and traditions in the development of
nations and nationalism. Modernization
theory, which has superseded
primordialism as the dominant
explanation of nationalism,[8] adopts a
constructivist approach and proposes that
nationalism emerged due to processes of
modernization, such as industrialization,
urbanization, and mass education, which
made national consciousness
possible.[5][9]

Proponents of modernization theory

describe nations as "imagined
communities", a term coined by Benedict
Anderson.[10] A nation is an imagined
community in the sense that the material
conditions exist for imagining extended
and shared connections and that it is
objectively impersonal, even if each
individual in the nation experiences
themselves as subjectively part of an
embodied unity with others. For the most
part, members of a nation remain
strangers to each other and will likely
never meet.[11] Nationalism is
consequently seen an "invented tradition"
in which shared sentiment provides a form
of collective identity and binds individuals
together in political solidarity. A nation's
foundational "story" may be built around a
combination of ethnic attributes, values
and principles, and may be closely
connected to narratives of
belonging.[5][12][13]
Etymology and terminology
The English word nation came from the
Latin natio, supine of verb nascar « to
birth » (supine : natum), through French. In
Latin, natio represents the children of the
same birth and also a human group of
same origin.[14] By Cicero, natio is used for
"people".[15] Old French word nacion –
meaning "birth" (naissance), "place of
origin" –, which in turn originates from the
Latin word natio (nātĭō) literally meaning
"birth".[16]

Black's Law Dictionary defines a nation as

follows:
nation, n. (14c) 1. A large group
of people having a common
origin, language, and tradition
and usu. constituting a political
entity. • When a nation is
coincident with a state, the term
nation-state is often used....

...

2. A community of people
inhabiting a defined territory
and organized under an
independent government; a
sovereign political state....[2]
The word "nation" is sometimes used as
synonym for:

State (polity) or sovereign state: a

government which controls a specific
territory, which may or may not be
associated with any particular ethnic
group
Country: a geographic territory, which
may or may not have an affiliation with a
government or ethnic group

Thus the phrase "nations of the world"

could be referring to the top-level
governments (as in the name for the
United Nations), various large
geographical territories, or various large
ethnic groups of the planet.

Depending on the meaning of "nation"

used, the term "nation state" could be used
to distinguish larger states from small city
states, or could be used to distinguish
multinational states from those with a
single ethnic group.

Medieval nations
Susan Reynolds has argued that many
European medieval kingdoms were
nations in the modern sense except that
political participation in nationalism was
available only to a limited prosperous and
literate class.[17]

Adrian Hastings has claimed that

England's Anglo-Saxon kings mobilized
mass nationalism in their struggle to repel
Norse invasions. He argues that Alfred the
Great, in particular, drew on biblical
nationalism, using biblical language in his
law code and that during his reign selected
books of the Bible were translated into Old
English to inspire Englishmen to fight to
turn back the Norse invaders. Hastings
argues for a strong renewal of English
nationalism (following a hiatus after the
Norman conquest) beginning with the
translation of the complete bible into
English by the Wycliffe circle in the 1380s,
positing that English nationalism and the
English nation have been continuous since
that time.[18]

The Medieval Bulgarian nation is another

possible example. Danubian Bulgaria was
founded in 680-681 as a continuation of
Great Bulgaria. After the adoption of
Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one
of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its
leading cultural position was consolidated
with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its
capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th
century.[19] The development of Old Church
Slavonic literacy in the country had the
effect of preventing the assimilation of the
South Slavs into neighbouring cultures and
it also stimulated the development of a
distinct ethnic identity.[20] A symbiosis was
carried out between the numerically weak
Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in
that broad area from the Danube to the
north, to the Aegean Sea to the south, and
from the Adriatic Sea to the west, to the
Black Sea to the east, who accepted the
common ethnonym "Bulgarians".[21] During
the 10th century the Bulgarians
established a form of national identity that
was far from modern nationalism but
helped them to survive as a distinct entity
through the centuries.[22][23]

Another example of Medieval nationalism

is the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), a
document produced by Scottish nobles
and clergy during the Scottish Wars of
Independence. The purpose of the
document was to demonstrate to the Pope
that Scotland was indeed a nation of its
own, with its own unique culture, history
and language and that it was indeed an
older nation than England. The document
went on to justify the actions of Robert the
Bruce and his forces in resisting the
occupation and to chastise the English for
having violated Scottish sovereignty
without justification. The propaganda
campaign supplemented a military
campaign on the part of the Bruce, which
after the Battle of Bannockburn was
successful and eventually resulted in the
end of England's occupation and
recognition of Scottish independence on
the part of the English crown. The
document is widely seen as an early
example of both Scottish nationalism and
popular sovereignty.

Anthony Kaldellis asserts in Hellenism in

Byzantium (2008) that what is called the
Byzantine Empire was the Roman Empire
transformed into a nation-state in the
Middle Ages.

Azar Gat is among the scholars who argue

that China, Korea and Japan were nations
by the time of the European Middle
Ages.[24]

Use of term nationes by medieval

universities and other medieval
institutions

A significant early use of the term nation,

as natio, occurred at Medieval
universities[25] to describe the colleagues
in a college or students, above all at the
University of Paris, who were all born
within a pays, spoke the same language
and expected to be ruled by their own
familiar law. In 1383 and 1384, while
studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson
was elected twice as a procurator for the
French natio. The University of Prague
adopted the division of students into
nationes: from its opening in 1349 the
studium generale which consisted of
Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish
nations.

In a similar way, the nationes were

segregated by the Knights Hospitaller of
Jerusalem, who maintained at Rhodes the
hostels from which they took their name
"where foreigners eat and have their
places of meeting, each nation apart from
the others, and a Knight has charge of
each one of these hostels, and provides
for the necessities of the inmates
according to their religion", as the Spanish
traveller Pedro Tafur noted in 1436.[26]

Early modern nations

In his article, "The Mosaic Moment: An
Early Modernist Critique of the Modernist
Theory of Nationalism", Philip S. Gorski
argues that the first modern nation-state
was the Dutch Republic, created by a fully
modern political nationalism rooted in the
model of biblical nationalism.[27] In a 2013
article "Biblical nationalism and the
sixteenth-century states", Diana Muir
Appelbaum expands Gorski's argument to
apply to a series of new, Protestant,
sixteenth-century nation states.[28] A
similar, albeit broader, argument was
made by Anthony D. Smith in his books,
Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of
National Identity and Myths and Memories
of the Nation.[29]

In her book Nationalism: Five Roads to

Modernity, Liah Greenfeld argued that
nationalism was invented in England by
1600. According to Greenfeld, England
was “the first nation in the world".[30][31]

Social science
Scholars in the 19th and early 20th century
offered constructivist criticisms of
primordial theories about nations.[32] A
prominent lecture by Ernest Renan, "What
is a Nation?", argues that a nation is "a
daily referendum", and that nations are
based as much on what the people jointly
forget as on what they remember. Carl
Darling Buck argued in a 1916 study,
"Nationality is essentially subjective, an
active sentiment of unity, within a fairly
extensive group, a sentiment based upon
real but diverse factors, political,
geographical, physical, and social, any or
all of which may be present in this or that
case, but no one of which must be present
in all cases."[32]

In the late 20th century, many social

scientists argued that there were two
types of nations, the civic nation of which
French republican society was the
principal example and the ethnic nation
exemplified by the German peoples. The
German tradition was conceptualized as
originating with early 19th-century
philosophers, like Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
and referred to people sharing a common
language, religion, culture, history, and
ethnic origins, that differentiate them from
people of other nations.[33] On the other
hand, the civic nation was traced to the
French Revolution and ideas deriving from
18th-century French philosophers. It was
understood as being centred in a
willingness to "live together", this
producing a nation that results from an act
of affirmation.[34] This is the vision, among
others, of Ernest Renan.[33]

Debate about a potential

future of nations
There is an ongoing debate about the
future of nations − about whether this
framework will persist as is and whether
there are viable or developing
alternatives.[35]

The theory of the clash of civilizations lies

in direct contrast to cosmopolitan theories
about an ever more-connected world that
no longer requires nation states.
According to political scientist Samuel P.
Huntington, people's cultural and religious
identities will be the primary source of
conflict in the post–Cold War world.

The theory was originally formulated in a

1992 lecture[36] at the American Enterprise
Institute, which was then developed in a
1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The
Clash of Civilizations?",[37] in response to
Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of
History and the Last Man. Huntington later
expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order.

Huntington began his thinking by

surveying the diverse theories about the
nature of global politics in the post–Cold
War period. Some theorists and writers
argued that human rights, liberal
democracy and capitalist free market
economics had become the only
remaining ideological alternative for
nations in the post–Cold War world.
Specifically, Francis Fukuyama, in The End
of History and the Last Man, argued that
the world had reached a Hegelian "end of
history".

Huntington believed that while the age of

ideology had ended, the world had
reverted only to a normal state of affairs
characterized by cultural conflict. In his
thesis, he argued that the primary axis of
conflict in the future will be along cultural
and religious lines. Postnationalism is the
process or trend by which nation states
and national identities lose their
importance relative to supranational and
global entities. Several factors contribute
to its aspects including economic
globalization, a rise in importance of
multinational corporations, the
internationalization of financial markets,
the transfer of socio-political power from
national authorities to supranational
entities, such as multinational
corporations, the United Nations and the
European Union and the advent of new
information and culture technologies such
as the Internet. However attachment to
citizenship and national identities often
remains important.[38][39][40]
Jan Zielonka of the University of Oxford
states that "the future structure and
exercise of political power will resemble
the medieval model more than the
Westphalian one" with the latter being
about "concentration of power, sovereignty
and clear-cut identity" and neo-
medievalism meaning "overlapping
authorities, divided sovereignty, multiple
identities and governing institutions, and
fuzzy borders".[35]

See also
Politics
portal
Society
portal
Citizenship
City network
Country
Government
Identity (social science)
Imagined Communities

Invented tradition
Lists of people by nationality
Meta-ethnicity
Multinational state
National emblem
National god
National memory
Nationalism
Nationality
People
Polity
Qaum
Race (human categorization)
Separatism
Irredentism
Society
Sovereign state
Stateless nation
Tribe
Republic
Republicanism
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Further reading
Manent, Pierre (2007). "What is a Nation?" (ht
tp://www.mmisi.org/IR/42_02/manent.pdf) ,
The Intercollegiate Review, Vol. XLII, No. 2,
pp. 23–31.
Renan, Ernest (1896). "What is a Nation?" (htt
ps://archive.org/stream/poetryofcelticra00re
nauoft#page/60/mode/2up) In: The Poetry
of the Celtic Races, and Other Essays. London:
The Walter Scott Publishing Co., pp. 61–83.
Leach, Michael (2016). Nation-Building and
National Identity in Timor-Leste (https://book
s.google.com/books?id=iiglDwAAQBAJ) .
Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781315311647.
Smith, Anthony D. (1981). The Ethnic Revival
in the Modern World (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=Pks7AAAAIAAJ) . Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 9780521232678.
Smith, Anthony D. (1995). Nations and
Nationalism in a Global Era (https://archive.or
g/details/nationsnationali0000smit) .
Cambridge: Polity Press.
ISBN 9780745610191.
Smith, Anthony D. (2000). The Nation in
History: Historiographical Debates about
Ethnicity and Nationalism (https://books.goog
le.com/books?id=mXhxE1lgmhEC) .
Hanover: University Press of New England.
ISBN 9781584650409.
Smith, Anthony D. (2010) [2001]. Nationalism:
Theory, Ideology, History (https://books.googl
e.com/books?id=WUEszleiXNMC) (2. ed.).
Cambridge: Polity Press.
ISBN 9780745651279.
Smith, Anthony D. (2009). Ethno-symbolism
and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (https://
books.google.com/books?id=nAaTAgAAQBA
J) . London and New York: Routledge.
ISBN 9781135999483.
 Smith, Anthony D. (2013). The Nation Made
Real: Art and National Identity in Western
Europe, 1600-1850 (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=ZgtEwZUGtggC) . Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
ISBN 9780199662975.

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