Power and the Nation in European History

Description

Few would doubt the central importance of the nation in the making and unmaking of modern political communities. The long history of 'the nation' as a concept and as a name for various sorts of 'imagined community' likewise commands such acceptance. But when did the nation first become a fundamental political factor? This is a question which has been, and continues to be, far more sharply contested. A deep rift still separates 'modernist' perspectives, which view the political nation as a phenomenon limited to modern, industrialised societies, from the views of scholars concerned with the pre-industrial world who insist, often vehemently, that nations were central to pre-modern political life also. This book represents the first attempt to engage with these questions by drawing on the expertise of leading medieval, early modern and modern historians.

Len Scales is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Durham. He has written articles for various journals such as Past and Present and the Journal of Contemporary History. Oliver Zimmer was educated at the University of Zurich (Lic. Phil. I) and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Ph.D.), and he began his academic career at the University of Durham in 1999. In 2005 he took up a University Lectureship (CUF) at Oxford. Previous publications include A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland 1761-1891 (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (Macmillan, 2003).

'The sixteen essays in L. Scales and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History combine to form an excellent volume, ranging chronologically from medieval to modern times.' Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature