Power and the Nation in European History

This book is a ground-breaking contribution to debates surrounding the formation of nations and nationalism in European history.

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 breathes life into the scholarly debate surrounding the formation of nations and nationalism in European history.Few would doubt the central importance of the nation in the making and unmaking of modern political communities. The long history of 'the nation' as a concept and as a name for various sorts of 'imagined community' likewise commands such acceptance. But when did the nation first become a fundamental political factor? This is a question which has been, and continues to be, far more sharply contested. A deep rift still separates 'modernist' perspectives, which view the political nation as a phenomenon limited to modern, industrialised 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. This book engages with these questions by drawing on the expertise of leading medieval, early modern and modern historians.