Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:10:19.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Nationalism in the late twentieth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2012

E. J. Hobsbawm
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Get access

Summary

Since this book was first published in early 1990, more new nation-states have been formed, or are in the process of formation, than at any time in this century. The break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia have so far added sixteen to the number of internationally recognized sovereign entities, and there is no immediately foreseeable limit to the further advance of national separatism. All states are today officially 'nations', all political agitations are apt to be against foreigners, whom practically all states harry and seek to keep out. It may therefore seem wilful blindness to conclude this book with some reflections on the decline of nationalism as a vector of historical change, compared to its role in the century from the 1830s to the end of World War II.

It would indeed be absurd to deny that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regional and international system of which, as one super-power, it was a pillar for some forty years marks a profound, and probably permanent, historical change, whose implications are, at the time of writing, entirely obscure. However, they introduce new elements into the history of nationalism only insofar as the break-up of the USSR in 1991 went far beyond the (temporary) break-up of Tsarist Russia in 1918-20, which was largely confined to its European and transcaucasian regions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Nations and Nationalism since 1780
Programme, Myth, Reality
, pp. 163 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×