Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T18:26:13.437Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Nationalism as a Civil Religion in the Thought of Abraham Lincoln, Carl Schurz, and Otto von Bismarck

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2013

Elisabeth Glaser
Affiliation:
German Historical Institute, Washington DC
Hermann Wellenreuther
Affiliation:
Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany
Get access

Summary

Any discussion of nationalism in the thought of nineteenth-century statesmen must begin with a definition of the term. According to Hans Kohn, nationalism is “a state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due to the nation-state.” Carlton J. Hayes called it a “modern emotional fusion and exaggeration of two very old phenomena - nationality and patriotism,” and Boyd C. Shafer explained that it existed “when a people are devoted to the entity they call their country . . . and consider themselves to be separate and one and so different from other peoples that they should have an independent state.” Adrian Hastings thought that it derived from a “belief that one's own ethnic or national tradition is especially valuable and needs to be defended at almost any cost through creation or extension of its own national state,” and Drew Gilpin Faust stressed the necessity of an idea in the creation of Confederate nationalism. According to Peter Loewenberg, all these emotions can be traced back to early childhood, the home, and considerations of “us” and “them.” The idea that every nation, often defined by language, should have its own state became so powerful a movement during the nineteenth century that hardly any major or minor country remained untouched by the concept. It truly developed into a civil religion, a faith so strong that it virtually competed with the older theistic variety.

Type
Chapter
Information
Bridging the Atlantic
The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective
, pp. 103 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×