Nationalism and Nation

The meaning of nationalism can vary temporally and spatially. In Europe in early 19th century nationalism was associated with democracy, liberalism, and demand for civil and constitutional liberties. Later in the century, nationalism assumed a more aggressive role which was tied to military rivalries and national expansion at the expenses of other people. In a general term, nationalism can be "the feeling of belonging to a group united by common racial, linguistic, and historical ties, and usually identified with a particular territory".1

In 1983 Benedict Anderson in his book Imagined Community theorized that a nation is an imagined political community.2 According to Anderson it is imagined because members will never know most of their fellow-members. Second, the nation is imagined as limited because beyond the imagined boundaries lie other nations. Thirdly, nation is imagined as a sovereign because the concept of nation was born in an age which Enlightenment and revolutions were undermining the legitimacy of the divine-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Lastly, nation is imagined as a community which has a deep, horizontal comradeship. It is this comradeship that many people were willingly to die for such an imagined community. In Western Europe, the 18th century marked not only the dawn of age of nationalism but also the dusk of the traditional religious mode of thinking. The doubt on paradise and the uncertainty of salvation had created a void that helped a secular transformation of mortality into continuity, and contingency into meaning. New nations of the 18th century always loom out of an immortal past and move towards a limitless future, it is eternal.3 It is by historical chance that nationalism in Europe came into being following a changing perception on religion.

According to Henrietta Harrison, China was an imagined community long before the 19th century. It was a centralized state, beneath the emperor there was a bureaucracy run by elites who were forming the cultural community that was shared by the majority of the people. With the arrival of the Western powers in 1840s, China was forced to change from culturalism to nationalism.4 So, next time when someone asks you about patriotism, you may think deeper before answering.


Note
1. Alan Bullock et al edit, The Harper Dictionary of Modern Thought (New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977), page 409.
2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Community: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London[England]: Verso Editions, 1983), page 15.
3. Ibid., page 19.
4. Henrietta Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China 1911-1929 (Oxford University Press, 1999), page 7.