ON NATIONALISM

Frank M. Turner, European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche, edited by Richard A. Lofthouse (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2014) (From "Chapter 10, Nationalism": "It was always difficult to determine exactly which ethnic groups could be considered as nations with claims to separate territorial and political existence. In theory any of them could, but in reality nationhood came to be associated with those ethnic groups that were large enough to support a viable economy, that had a history of  significant cultural association, that possessed a cultural elite which allowed the language to spread and flourish, and that had the capacity either to conquer other peoples or to establish and protect their own independence. Throughout the [nineteenth] century there were smaller ethnic groups who claimed to fulfill those criteria, but which  could not effectively achieve either indolence or recognition. They could and  did, however, create domestic unrest." Id. at 157. Might those last two sentences trigger in one's mind thoughts on "white nationalism" in twenty-first century America?).