It is common to think of nationalism as a modern, secular form of identity that supplanted the influence long exercised by universalistic religions in shaping conceptions of temporal authority, membership, rights or privileges, and obligation in human societies. Under stereotypically modern conditions, religion is supposed to be largely confined to its own spiritual sphere, operating on a separate plane from that of the national. Yet the chapters in Part ii have shown how much more complicated the relationship between transcendentally transnational and boundedly national frameworks of belief and belonging can be. They are shown to operate not on separate, parallel planes, but as fields of belief and action that intersect, converge, and shape – as well as clash with – one another in myriad ways.

Since the early 1980s, the study of nationalism has been revived as a distinct subject of enquiry in its own right.1 The seminal works of Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Anthony D. Smith, published in the 1980s and 1990s and now classics, have contributed to radically changing our reading of nationalism, offering paradigms for both its deeper understanding and radical deconstruction.2 Crucially, these scholars set the main terms of a debate that is still ongoing today. The major distinctions among the advocates of perennialism3 (fewer and fewer), the so-called modernists (still the predominant school), and Anthony Smith’s ethno-symbolists (ever growing in number), have remained largely intact to this day, more than thirty years later.

Anthropologist Georg Elwert has argued that neither ethnic groups nor nations constituted a “natural order,” but instead competed with other types of social organization for the place of central organizing structure in the historic past. He even argued that there had been social structures where there were no “‘we-groups’ based on ethnicity.”1 However, most commentators do give emphasis and weight to the role of ethnos in the formation of communities, especially the modern nation. No historian of nationalism knows exactly when to begin the history of any given nation, but all know that identity is a complex issue. Perhaps we also know that definitive and final answers are unlikely to be ever established, even if we know when and where an event took place. Nationalism as an ideology depends on loyalty and certainty, nationhood as an international system depends on legality and legitimacy, but historians have to live with an intelligent ambiguity.

In 1921, Marianne Weber published one of the greatest works of her late husband, Max, a book destined to become one of the foundations of modern social theory. Economy and Society was of such a scope and breadth that it touched on almost all aspects of social, economic, and political thought and, inevitably, a section was devoted to the nation. According to Weber, the latter could never be defined unambiguously, in terms of the qualities and traits shared by those who saw themselves as its members. The nation, he argued, meant “above all, that it is proper to expect from certain groups a specific sentiment of solidarity in the face of other groups.” Thus, “the concept belongs in the sphere of values” and there “is no agreement on how these groups should be delimited or about what concerted action should result from such a solidarity.”

In 1992, Eric Hobsbawm rejoiced in the fact that historians were making headway in the study of nationalism and that this, in turn, suggested that the phenomenon was “past its peak”: ‘The owl of Minerva which brings wisdom, said Hegel, flies out at dusk. It is a good sign that it is now circling round nations and nationalism.” Others, writing at that time, were less optimistic. The French essayist Alain Minc wrote of the resurgence of the nation and expressed his fears that Europe might soon become “entrapped, once again, in nationalistic reactions.” After half a century on the path toward internationalism, he argued, once again the nation would dominate the political horizon. A few years later, Anthony D. Smith even quipped that, if anything, we were experiencing the “high noon” of nationalism and the “owl of Minerva ha[d] not stirred.”1

A quick glance across a set of world maps spanning the period from the 1500s to the present creates the impression that an early modern era dominated by empires gave way, by fits and starts over the course of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, to a modern global system composed of nation-states. Indeed, the prevalent view of nationhood and nationalism as quintessentially modern phenomena is, in part, premised on the typological and chronological contrast between empire (understood as a realm composed of various lands and peoples governed under a diversity of legal and institutional arrangements) and nation-state (understood as a more homogeneously governed polity whose legitimacy is derived from its claim to embody the will and interests of a particular people) and on the notion that the transition from the former to the latter was unidirectional and irreversible.