Power and the Nation in European History - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521845807 ISBN 13: 9780521845809

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Few would doubt the central importance of 'the nation' in the making and unmaking of modern political communities. But when did 'the nation' first become a fundamental political factor? This book engages the expertise of modern historians in an attempt to resolve the issue. A deep rift still separates 'modernist' perspectives, which view the political nation as a phenomenon limited to modern, industrialized 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.

About this title

Book Description:

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 book represents the first attempt to breathe new life into the scholarly debate surrounding the formation of nations and nationalism in European history by drawing on the expertise of leading medieval, early modern and modern historians.

About the Author:

Len Scales is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Durham. He has written articles for various journals such as Past and Present and the Journal of Contemporary History.

Oliver Zimmer was educated at the University of Zurich (Lic. Phil. I) and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (PhD), and he began his academic career at the University of Durham in 1999. In 2005 he took up a University Lectureship (CUF) at the University of Oxford. Previous publications include A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland 1761-1891 (Cambridge, 2003) and Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (2003).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0521845807
• ISBN 13: 9780521845809
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 402
• Editor: Scales Len, Zimmer Oliver