Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2017

 

“Nations” before Nationalism: A Historical Survey of the Situation in the West

(Abstract)

 

Zhang Fengyang, Luo Yuwei and Yu Jingdong

 

 

The anthropological definition of “nation” usually refers to such elements as a common language, customs, cultural continuity and historical memory. However, these elements are also found in ethnic groups. A survey of the history of this concept indicates that the word “nation” entered early modern European politics through a complex discourse competition. Over time, its definition has been profoundly influenced by the construction of the modern state: a common region was viewed as the state’s “territory” and a common language as a “national language” that was the same across the country, while shared “origins,” “cultural context” and “memory” were in fact reshaped through chronicles of state history and related literary representations. The constitutional provision in the third article of the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which attributes sovereignty to the nation, is the classic political expression of nation discourse. Definition of the nation as a political community must therefore be based on the spatial scale of the territorial state, with the many ethnic groups living within such a state being understood as communities in the cultural sense.