ABSTRACT

The scholarly community is highly divided on the role of nationalism in our daily political life. Some regard it as a source of political progress whereas others view it as a powerful force leading to political evils. James Sheehan observed that writers on nationalism can be divided into two diverse but distinguishable groups. Whereas nationalists themselves perceive nationalism as a natural, irresistible force, the critics and victims of nationalism – many of them are émigrés or exiles such as George Mosse, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, and Benedict Anderson – often emphasize its historicity, artificiality, and sometimes even its pathology.1 The two different views reflected somehow different political impacts of nationalism in both domestic and international fronts. In the eighteenth century nationalism appeared in its civic and revolutionary dimension as a weapon against the Old Regime,2 and in the nineteenth century innumerable movements of national liberation appealed to nationalism in their struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Nationalism was connected to liberalism and political progress in many Western countries such as Great Britain, the United States, and France; it continues to be so in some developing countries, including China.3