Nationalism, Liberalism and Progress: The Rise and Decline of Nationalism (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)

Ernst B. Haas

ISBN 10: 0801431085 / ISBN 13: 9780801431081

Published by Cornell University Press, 1997

About this Item

Very Good condition. Good dust jacket. Volume 1. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp.

Seller Inventory # L12C-03723

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Nationalism, Liberalism and Progress: The Rise and Decline of Nationalism (Cornell Studies in Political Economy)
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801431085
• ISBN 13: 9780801431081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

Has global liberalism made the nation-state obsolete? Or, on the contrary, are primordial nationalist hatreds overwhelming cosmopolitanism? To assert either theme without serious qualification, according to Ernst B. Haas, is historically simplistic and morally misleading.

Haas describes nationalism as a key component of modernity and a crucial instrument for making sense of impersonal, rapidly changing, and heterogeneous societies. He characterizes nationalism as a feeling of collective identity, a mutual understanding experienced among people who may never meet but who are persuaded that they belong to a community of kindred spirits. Without nationalism, there could be no large integrated state.

Nationalism comes in many varieties, some revolutionary in rejecting the past and some syncretist in seeking to retain religious traditions. Haas asks whether liberal nationalism is particularly successful as a rationalizing agent, noting that liberalism is usually associated with collective learning and that liberal-secular nationalism delivers substantial material benefits to mass populations. He also asks whether liberal nationalism can lead to its own transcendence. He explores nationalism in five societies that had achieved the status of nation-states by about 1880: the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan.

Several of these nation-states became exemplars for later nationalists. A second, forthcoming volume will consider ten societies that modernized more recently, many of them aroused to nationalism by the imperialism of these "old" nation-states.

About the Author

The late Ernst B. Haas was Robson Research Professor of Government at the University of California, Berkeley.