ABSTRACT

English patriotism, Harold Nicolson must have thought, does not peddle the 'easy hope or lies' that nationalism, as he understood it, depends upon. 'English pride' is not the complacency and self-satisfaction about the country that fosters them. One reason for thinking of nationalism as a sentiment of attachment to one's nation rather than as a belief that the nation is the proper object of such a sentiment may be the view that this attachment arises not from any belief but, rather, from a natural human disposition. Welsh nationalism, by contrast with mainstream Irish nationalism, is founded on an assertion of the distinctiveness of Welsh culture from, in particular, that of England. 'Nation' is a much older word; of Latin etymology, it was used in its original sense in the eighteenth century. Nominalism introduces a use of the word 'nation' that, like the legal or scientific uses, is essentially an observer's rather than a participant's.