ABSTRACT
Europe was the birthplace of the nation-state and modern nationalism at the end
of the seventeenth century when the traditional Westphalian state system was
established (Krasner 1988). At that time also the notions of nation and
democracy were first expressly linked ideologically. On the practical level, so
were nationhood, statehood and war. On 20 September 1792, on the battlefield
of Valmy, in North Eastern France, the ragtag French army, under fire from the
much better trained and better equipped Prussian infantry, held its ground to the
revolutionary and symbolic battle-cry of ‘Vive la Nation’. This led Goethe, who
was present at the battle, to declare ‘this date and place mark a new epoch in
world history’ (Furet and Richet 1965: 185). In Western Europe the dominant
idea was born that the only option for emancipation of the people was through
nation-state governance.
