ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with some of those peoples among whom, at least in a substantial political class, there developed many centuries ago a national consciousness which was never interrupted by external blows. The long process by which in Europe sovereign states arose and nations were formed has its origins in the collapse of the Roman Empire, the attempts to revive an imperial power and the still slower withering away of its mythology. The rise of the centralised sovereign state in the West was accompanied by the rise of new social groups. Hispania was the name given by the Romans to the whole Iberian Peninsula: from it derive the names España and Spain. The last Scandinavian state to come into existence was Iceland, which separated from Denmark in several stages. It obtained effective home rule in 1874; was recognised as an independent state linked with Denmark only by a common monarchy in 1918; and formally proclaimed the union dissolved in 1944.