ABSTRACT
Many influences combined to determine the character of the new nationalism arising in the English colonies of North America. Some were inherent in the situation: the English tradition of constitutional liberties and common law, as expressed in the colonial charters, and the young and experimental character of the settlements so remote from European society and its time-honored distinctions. The new wave of democratic nationalism which swept America in the nineties sprang from the very foundations of the American Revolution. In the United States political nationalism and constitutional liberties antedated cultural nationalism, while in Central Europe future national independence and political rights were based upon many decades of toil and labor in the cultural field. A feeling of cultural nationalism was sorely needed in the young nation to cement the loose ties binding the distant communities and colonies with their divergent traditions and backgrounds.
