ABSTRACT
All Europeans and Americans are descended, more or less distantly, from primitive tribesmen. Clan life, that is, tribal life, long endured in Ireland and Scotland; and England was once upon a time a heptarchy of tribal states. Tribalism was, and wherever it survives still is, a primitive, small-scale, and usually intensive type of nationalism. This chapter discusses four factors which contributed to the submergence of primitive nationalism, that is, of tribalism: the rise of international military empires; the spread of international "world" religions; linguistic and literary; and economic development. The construction of military empires was usually accompanied and sustained by a fusing of tribal gods and rites into an imperial pantheon, with supreme divinity and worship being attributed to the emperor. Primitive tribes had a primitive and mainly self-contained economy. They might engage in barter with their neighbors, or they might get what they wanted by raiding or fighting them.
