Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress: The dismal fate of new nations

Download or read book Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress: The dismal fate of new nations written by Ernst B. Haas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has global liberalism made the nation-state obsolete? Or, on the contrary, are primordial nationalist hatreds overwhelming cosmopolitanism? To assert either theme without serious qualification, according to Ernst B. Haas, is historically simplistic and morally misleading. Haas describes nationalism as a key component of modernity and a crucial instrument for making sense of impersonal, rapidly changing, and heterogeneous societies. He characterizes nationalism as a feeling of collective identity, a mutual understanding experienced among people who may never meet but who are persuaded that they belong to a community of kindred spirits. Without nationalism, there could be no large integrated state. He explores nationalism in five societies that had achieved the status of nation-states by about 1880: the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan.