ABSTRACT
Nationalism, that state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be owed to the nation-state, today remains the strongest of political emotions. Nationalism reflects the chaos of history itself. As a historical phenomenon, it is always in flux, changing according to no preconceived pattern. Essentially a product of British individualism and French egalitarianism, nationalism in its early stages stressed the libertarian formula. The early modern nationalism was concerned with two major ideas: the primacy of the state and the principle of sovereignty. The nationalism that began in western Europe represented a rejec-tion by dissatisfied peoples of the traditional sociopolitical order. A puzzling element of the new nationalism is its persistence at a time when both political and economic demands seem to run in the opposite direction. Nationalism from its beginning encompassed both large and small sovereign nations.
