ABSTRACT
In the concluding pages of his Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Eric Hobsbawm asks whether the world history of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century will be written, as that of the nineteenth century could be, in terms of “nation-building.” He does not think so. Nations and ethnic groups will rather be seen as perhaps offering some resistance to, but mostly retreating before, adapting to, or being absorbed or dislocated by a new supranational restructuring. One sign that the national phenomenon is past its peak is indeed the progress historians have recently made in studying it: “The owl of Minerva which brings wisdom, said Hegel, flies out at dusk. It is a good sign that it is now circling round nations and nationalism” (Hobsbawm 1990: 182-183).
