ABSTRACT
It was during the latter half of the nineteenth century that the-oretical enquiries into the phenomenon of nationalism began in earnest. Although many of these early contributions were partial in their scope by our contemporary standards, by 1914 the groundwork for many subsequent analyses had been laid. However, there are two important preliminary points to consider before investigating early writings on nationalism. First, as Anthony Smith has noted, there was usually ‘no attempt to fashion a general theory applicable to all cases’.3 Rather, interest in nationalism at this stage was largely ‘ethical and philosophical’.4
Instead of searching for underlying causes or general trends, the scholars of the period were ‘more concerned with the “merits and defects” of the doctrine than with the origins and spread of national phenomena’.5 The
German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, for example, was clearly in favour of the spread of nationalist doctrine per se and noted that ‘the grandeur of history lies in the perpetual conflict of nations, and it is simply foolish to desire the suppression of their rivalry’.6 The British historian and aristocrat Lord Acton, by contrast, famously felt that the advent of nationalism was ‘a retrograde step in history’.7
