ABSTRACT
In spite of reservations from some individual authors who feared mass rule, the principle of nationality triumphed at the end of the nineteenth century. Although it was not yet clear whether “nationality” was to be interpreted in a racial, ethnic, or linguistic sense. Foremost among the proponents of nationality were the Balkan peoples who clamored for independence from Ottoman rule under the benevolent eye of the Western great powers in the name of their linguistic distinctiveness. It was thus that the “principle of nationality” came to be associated with a linguistic identity and this was the meaning which it was to retain.
