ABSTRACT
A readable nation How are nations and nationalism diff erent in the age of Enlightenment than in earlier periods? I would like to begin to address this question by looking at the term “nation-state.” e rapid rise of nation-states during the Enlightenment profoundly changed Europe. If we glance back at Renaissance Europe, we see a complex patchwork of “some fi ve hundred more or less autonomous political units,” consisting of such entities as principalities, city-states, fi efdoms, and so on, but this number “by 1900 had shrunk to about twenty-fi ve,” consisting almost entirely of nation-states.1 Not only did the rise of nation-states eliminate many of these older “political units,” but it also changed the internal structure of the societies within them. us to talk about nationhood in the age of Enlightenment, it is useful fi rst to talk about “nation-states.”
