ABSTRACT
Four developments, representing a curious inversion of the factors which had operated to submerge primitive tribal nationalism, served in late Middle Ages and early modern times to resuscitate national feeling in Europe and to initiate the large-scale nationalism with which people are familiar today. These were, the rise of vernacular literatures and relative decline of Latin, attended by waning of cosmopolitanism among intellectuals and waxing of national cultures; the emergence of the monarchical national state, as a political institution stronger and more efficient than feudal or city state, or surviving relic of the Roman Empire; transformation of guild or manorial local economy into a national-state economy, with resultant national regulation of commerce, industry, and agriculture; disruption of Catholic Christendom and establishment of national churches. Literary differentiation of nationalities was accompanied in early modern times, in Europe and more especially in western Europe, by political differentiation, that is, by the erection of sovereign national states.
