Introduction

Nationalism is inconceivable without the ideas of popular sovereignty preceding without a complete revision of the position of ruler and ruled, of classes and castes. The aspect of the universe and of society had to be secularized with the help of a new natural science and of natural law as understood by Hugo Grotius and John Locke. The growth of nationalism is the process of integration of the masses of the people into a common political form. Nationalism therefore presupposes the existence, in fact or as an ideal, of a centralized form of government over a large and distinct territory. Before nationalism, language was very rarely stressed as a fact on which the prestige and power of a group depended. Nationalism our identification with the life and aspirations of uncounted millions whom we shall never know, with a territory which we shall never visit in its entirety is qualitatively different from the love of family or of home surroundings.