“No serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist... Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.” PoliticalBeliefNationsToo MuchSeriousCommittedNationalismHistorian Author:Eric Hobsbawm
“In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation should not separate the power holders from the rest.” ShouldStatesPoliticalGivenPrinciplesCuttingParticularTheoryBoundariesNationalismExcludedLegitimacyContingency Book:Nations and Nationalism Source: Nations and Nationalism
“Amid the welter of vague political abstractions ... where meanings shift so quickly and so subtly, not only following changes of thought, but often manipulated artificially by political practitioners so as to obscure, expand, or distort ... a certain broad consistency in its relations to other kindred terms is the nearest approach to definition which such a term as Imperialism admits. Nationalism, internationalism, colonialism, its three closest congeners, are equally elusive, equally shifty, and the changeful overlapping of all four demands the closest vigilance.” PoliticalCertainThreeTermFourDemandApproachRelationDefinitionsFollowingNationalismBroadsColonialismClosestConsistencyVagueObscureImperialismAbstractionElusiveVigilanceKindredOverlappingInternationalism Author:J. Allan Hobson