What Is Nationalism?

Abstract

Nationalism, like nation, is very hard to define clearly and unequivocally. The contention that nationalism is what nationalists make of it is, in fact, an evasion. There are no two authors, whether sociologists, historians, political scientists, or psychologists, who define nationalism in the same way. This may lead novices in the study of nationalism to infer that, having read a few works on the subject, they are even less knowledgeable than when they began.1