ABSTRACT
As Anthony Smith rightly points out in chapter 1 of this volume, the modern world is made up of nation-states. As he also notes, this was not always so. It is the transition from a more diverse social and political world to one in which the units, at least formally, conform to a single pattern, that has led historians, political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists to investigate the causes of the rise of nationalism, the characteristics of the nation itself (as distinct from the claims of nationalist doctrine), and whether nations can survive without states, and if so, under what circumstances.
