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.

Len Scales (Edited by), Oliver Zimmer (Edited by)

9780521845809, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 June 2005

402 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 3.2 cm, 0.71 kg

'The sixteen essays in L. Scales and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History combine to form an excellent volume, ranging chronologically from medieval to modern times.' Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature

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.

Introduction Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer
Part I. Approaches and Debates: 1. Were there nations in antiquity? Anthony D. Smith
2. The idea of the nation as a political community Susan Reynolds
3. Changes in the political uses of the nation: continuity or discontinuity? John Breuilly
Part II. The Middle Ages: 4. Germanic power structures: the early English experience Patrick Wormald
5. The historiography of the Anglo-Saxon 'nation-state' Sarah Foot
6. Exporting state and nation: English institutions and English identity in medieval Ireland Robin Frame
7. Late medieval Germany: an under-Stated nation? Len Scales
Part III. Routes to Modernity: 8. The state and Russian national identity Geoffrey Hosking
9. Ordering the kaleidoscope: the construction of identities in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since 1569 Robert Frost
10. Nationhood at the margin: identity, regionality and the English crown in the seventeenth century Tim Thornton
11. The nation in the age of Revolution Ian McBride
Part IV. Modernity: 12. Enemies of the Nation? Nobles, foreigners and the constitution of national citizenship in the French Revolution Jennifer Heuer
13. Nations, nation and power in Italy, c.1700–1915 Stuart Woolf
14. Political institutions and nationhood in Germany, 1750–1914 Abigail Green
15. Nation, nationalism and power in Switzerland, c.1760–1900 Oliver Zimmer
16. Nation and power in the liberal state: Britain c.1800–c.1914 Peter Mandler.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]