Nationalism

 
The concepts of Nation and Nationalism are interrelated.

A Nation is:

"Any sizable group of people united by common bonds of geography, religion, language, race, custom, and tradition and through shared experience and common aspirations. ...[N]ot all national groups have achieved statehood, although they all aspire to it."

Jack Plano and Milton Greenberg, The American Political Dictionary eighth ed. (NY: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, Inc., 1989): 17.

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"...A group of people who feel themselves to be a community bound together by ties of history, culture, and common ancestry.  Nations have 'objective' characteristics which may include a territory, a language, a religion, or common descent (though not all of these are always present), and 'subjective' characteristics, essentially a people's awareness of its nationality and affection for it."

James G. Kellas,  The Politics of  Nationalism and Ethnicity (NY: St. Martin's, 1991): 2-3.

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"any sufficiently large body of people whose members regard themselves as members of a 'nation', will be treated as such."

E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780 second ed. (NY: Cambridge University Press-Canto editions, 1992): 8.
 

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Nationalism is:

"primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent"

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1983): 1.

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E.J. Hobsbawm: stages in the development of Nationalism:

• "First, 'national consciousness' develops unevenly among the social groupings and regions of a country;
• "Second, ...national movements ... [have] three phases... Phase A was purely cultural, literary and folkloric and had no particular political or even national implications...
• "In phase B we find a body of pioneers and militants of 'the national idea' and the beginnings of political campaigning for this idea...
• "[In] phase C... nationalist programmes acquire mass support, or at least some of the mass support that nationalists always claim they represent.  The transition from phase B to phase C is evidently a crucial moment in the chronology of national movements."
   

E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780 second ed. (NY: Cambridge University Press-Canto editions, 1992): 12.