Advantages And Disadvantages Of Nationalism

“ Nationalism is the most important political ideology of the modern era.” Wrote John Breuilly in Wolf’s book (1996: 137). If it plays one of the most important role on the world political stage, nationalism is also one of the most complex and controversial issue of the current politics. This can be due to the multiplicity of definitions of nationalism. For some people it is the result of an “underlying national reality”, for some other it is a political association, or a cultural community or even just a myth. Breuilly mentions two reasons to that problem. The first one is the “sheer universality and apparent power of nationalism”. And the second one is that nationalism has a descriptive (there are nations) and prescriptive (the nations have specific rights) claim. That creates debates on one or the other claim, if not on both of them. Moreover nationalism can be approached in different ways. We can see it from a “national framework”, or as a “political expression” from the different nations, or as a political doctrine, or

The first theories on nationalism date from the late 19th century. These debates were much more “ethical and philosophical” (Smith in Nationalism, History and Theory 2005 : 17).They were more questioning the advantages and disadvantages than the historical roots of the nationalist movement. The idea of nationalism wasn’t so wide-spread at a practical level. The nations were still in formation and there were the emergence of others ideologies like the communism . And at the same time history became a professional domain. The first University chair opened in 1810 in Berlin, so almost one century after the beginning of the industrialisation. And even the historian had the mission to interpret the present through the past, they were used by the different government to serve national purpose. So we can express some doubt concerning their