F. C. Erasmus became South Africa's defence minister in 1948 after two decades as the leading political organiser for the National Party. Although an architect of the Nationalists' post-war victory, he was not considered a minister of the first rank. Erasmus initiated a process of ridding the defence force of officers who he believed were associated with the government of the Anglophile Jan Smuts and replacing them with party supporters. As a result, the military often lost experienced and talented officers, many with combat exposure. Erasmus felt that the armed services had been too British in ethos and appearance. He inaugurated tighter regulations on bilingualism, introduced Boer rank titles, launched new uniforms and original medals and decorations, to the acclaim of the Afrikaner Volk. His purpose was to have a defence force which was uniquely ‘South African’.

The recently deceased George Mosse was one of the leading cultural and intellectual historians of modern Germany and Europe. His important contributions to our understanding of modern culture were his historical analyses of racism, fascism, and nationalism as cultural phenomena of our times. This article concentrates on Mosse's analysis of nationalism.

The masculinist rhetoric of the northern Italian separatist party, the Lega Nord, is an example of nationalist status affirmation. The stereotyped contrast between effeminate southerners and masculine northerners developed at the end of last century is used to affirm the superiority of the masculine North. The Lega's rhetoric parallels mainstream concerns on Italy's international status, and proposals for reforms to make Italy more ‘masculine’ and European. The use of a gendered language for the affirmation of national status reveals a belief in a normative hierarchy of nations, but also introduces a tension between a ‘masculinist’ status affirmation and a model of modernity which includes the emancipation of women as one of its principles.

In this article I examine the coherence of ‘liberal nationalism’, namely, the attempt to combine liberal and nationalist ideas. Attempts have been made to marry these ideas because of the belief that nationalism has continuing influence and importance for the achievement of liberal objectives, such as respect for identity, democracy and justice. Two central ideas in liberalism are the idea of self-respect as a primary good and the idea of critical reflectiveness. A central idea in nationalism is the idea of the importance of the nation as a community. If critically reflective individuals are to possess self-respect then, I argue, the value of membership of particular national communities needs to be argued for against criticism. By rejecting an appeal to universal principles, however, nationalists are unable to provide a reasoned defence of the importance of particular national communities, and therefore unable to satisfy the liberal commitment to self-respect resulting from critical reflection on membership of a national community. The particularism of nationalism, indeed, pulls against the universalism of liberalism so that ‘liberal nationalism’ constitutes an incoherent construct.

In ‘Dog in the Night: The Limits of European Nationalism 1789–1894’ Farrar, McGuire, and Thompson question the role of nationalism as a political prime mover (Farrar et al. 1998). A postmodernist objection to grand narratives may lie behind their critique, but the case is put through a more conventional examination of the historical record. The writers select seven events for scrutiny, divided into two types. The first comprises happenings of a broadly popular, history from below kind: the French Revolution, the German response to Napoleon, the German Revolution of 1848 and the Eastern Crisis of 1875–8. The second group of events is more orientated to international relations, and thus the events looked at – the Crimean War, Bismark's alliances and the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 – are less likely to have been driven by popular concerns as opposed to state interests. Nevertheless, Farrar et al. argue that given the alleged pervasiveness of nationalism at the time, the events ‘could be expected to reveal it’ (1998: 548). Their basic method is to identify historians who appear to give a determinant, or at least a central, role to nationalism as the historical motivator of the various events, and then to question whether or not it in fact was. In each instance they suggest that contrary to the view that nationalism was a key force in nineteenth century politics, it was marginal relative to sectional and material interests. It was, as it were, an absent player on the nineteenth century European stage, in the very era in which it was thought to have become so dominant.

Two cross-national women's organisations, one in Northern Ireland the other in Bosnia-Herzegovina, are observed here in interaction with each other. The article explores the connection between their ability to sustain such cross-community alliances and their choice to be women's projects. In so doing, it addresses the question ‘are feminism and nationalism compatible?’ Not all the women are ‘anti-nationalist’ in philosophy, but they draw distinctions between variants of nationalism, and may be described as ‘anti-essentialist’. The article distinguishes between variants of ‘feminism’, recognising it, too, as a plurality of movements. An anti-essentialist understanding of ethnicity and nation is partnered in both the Network and Medica by an anti-essentialist feminism, in which a woman's family role is minimised and value placed instead on her autonomy and agency. Certain forms of feminism and nationalism are thus compatible – but the configuration may be progressive or retrograde.

I applaud the journal's publication of Pryke's reply and appreciate the invitation to respond. Whether or not readers agree with our article, Pryke's response suggests that the piece fulfilled our purpose of provoking discussion. Pryke's comment is even-handed, perceptive and does an excellent job of highlighting the issues and indeed the hazards of pursuing this intellectual Loch Ness Monster. While disagreeing on many points, he and we are in fact much closer than he implies.

NIRA YUVAL-DAVIS, Gender & Nation. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1997. 157 pp. £12.95 (pbk.). LOIS WEST (ed.), Feminist Nationalism. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. 294 pp. £13.99 (pbk.). RICK WILFORD AND ROBERT L. MILLER (eds.), Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 212 pp. £14.99 (pbk.). CYNTHIA COCKBURN, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. London and New York: Zed Books, 1998 247 pp. £14.95 (pbk.).