Power and the Nation in European History

Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press
9780521845809
0-521-84580-7

Few would doubt the central importance of 'the nation' in the making and unmaking of modern political communities. But when did 'the nation' first become a fundamental political factor? This book engages.

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the expertise of modern historians in an attempt to resolve the issue. A deep rift still separates 'modernist' perspectives, which view the political nation as a phenomenon limited to modern, industrialized societies, from the views of scholars concerned with the pre-industrial world who insist, often vehemently, that nations were central to pre-modern political life also.