What Is A Nation

Download or read book What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings written by Ernest Renan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernest Renan was one of the leading lights of the Parisian intellectual scene in the second half of the nineteenth century. A philologist, historian, and biblical scholar, he was a prominent voice of French liberalism and secularism. Today most familiar in the English-speaking world for his 1882 lecture “What Is a Nation?” and its definition of a nation as an “everyday plebiscite,” Renan was a major figure in the debates surrounding the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the birth of the Third Republic and had a profound influence on thinkers across the political spectrum who grappled with the problem of authority and social organization in the new world wrought by the forces of modernization. What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings is the first English-language anthology of Renan’s political thought. Offering a broad selection of Renan’s writings from several periods of his public life, most previously untranslated, it restores Renan to his place as one of France’s major liberal thinkers and gives vital critical context to his views on nationalism. The anthology illuminates the characteristics that distinguished nineteenth-century French liberalism from its English and American counterparts as well as the more controversial parts of Renan’s legacy, including his analysis of colonial expansion, his views on Islam and Judaism, and the role of race in his thought. The volume contains a critical introduction to Renan’s life and work as well as detailed annotations that assist in recovering the wealth and complexity of his thought.

Download or read book What Is a Nation? written by Timothy Baycroft and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-06-29 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume analyses and compares different forms of nationalism across a range of European countries and regions during the long nineteenth century. It aims to put detailed studies of nationalist politics and thought, which have proliferated over the last ten years or so, into a wider European context. By means of such contextualization, together with new and systematic comparisons, What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914 reassesses the arguments put forward in the principal works on nationalism as a whole, many of which pre-date the proliferation of case studies in the 1990s and which, as a consequence, make only inadequate reference to the national histories of European states. The study reconsiders whether the distinction between civic and ethnic identities and politics in Europe has been overstated and whether it needs to be replaced altogether by a new set of concepts or types. What is a Nation? explores the relationship between this and other typologies, relating them to complex processes of industrialization, increasing state intervention, secularization, democratization and urbanization. Debates about citizenship, political economy, liberal institutions, socialism, empire, changes in the states system, Darwinism, high and popular culture, Romanticism and Christianity all affected - and were affected by - discussion of nationhood and nationalist politics. The volume investigates the significance of such controversies and institutional changes for the history of modern nationalism, as it was defined in diverse European countries and regions during the long nineteenth century. By placing particular nineteenth-century nationalist movements and nation-building in a broader comparative context, prominent historians of particular European states give an original and authoritative reassessment, designed to appeal to students and academic readers alike, of one of the most contentious topics of the modern period.

Download or read book What Is A Nation? written by Ellen Mitten and published by Carson-Dellosa Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn About What Makes A Nation, Including Political Boundaries, Government Systems, Money, And Shared Traditions. Social Studies Based Leveled Readers For Use In Guided Reading And Social Studies Instruction.

Download or read book Legitimacy and Revolution in a Society of Masses written by M. F. N. Giglioli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions surrounding the concept of legitimacy—the force that keeps a polity together, and whose absence causes it to shatter—are possibly the most important concern of a study of politics. M. F. N. Giglioli examines the shift to a distinctly modern understanding of the concept in Continental Europe, following the crisis of liberal rationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the search for new ways of envisaging the determinants of collective action into the twentieth century.The author examines certain aspects of the intellectual and political background of early twentieth-century theories of legitimacy elaborated by Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci. These theories are interpreted as the outcome of a contested process of redefinition of the concept, itself prompted by the social and political circumstances of the late nineteenth century, such as economic modernization and the attempt to incorporate the working class into the political system.This is the first book in a generation to offer a general reassessment of issues of legitimacy in political thought at the turn of the twentieth century. It examines the development of the concept in France, Italy, and Germany during the half-century or so following the Paris Commune. It discusses six key critics of classical Victorian liberalism on the revolutionary Left and the conservative Right. The political position and biography of each is a central focus of the study, as the culture of the age was decisively shaped by reflection on the social role of intellectuals.

Download or read book Imagined Communities written by Benedict Anderson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2006-11-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.

Download or read book Nation Like No Other written by Newt Gingrich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s become fashionable among the liberal elite to downplay, deride, even deny America’s greatness. The political correctness police insist that America is “hated” around the world for being too big, too powerful, too rich, too successful, too loud, too intrusive. And besides, it’s not nice to brag. They are completely missing the point. America’s greatness, America’s exceptional greatness, is not based on that fact that we are the most powerful, most prosperous—and most generous—nation on earth. Rather, those things are the result of American Exceptionalism. To understand American Exceptionalism, as Newt Gingrich passionately argues in A Nation Like No Other, one must understand our unique birth as a nation. American Exceptionalism is found in the simple yet utterly remarkable principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.” Our nation is exceptional, continues Newt, because we—unlike any nation before or since—are united by the belief and the promise that no king, no government, no ruling class has the power to infringe upon the rights of the individual. And when such a government attempts to do so, we will vigorously reject them. Sadly, many politicians and leaders today have forgotten our sacred commitment to these ideals. Our government has strayed alarmingly far from the scope of limited powers framed by our Founders. Meanwhile, the liberal media seek out, and sometimes create, stories intended to portray America as a bully and a thief. Even our own president seems clueless, assuring us that yes, yes, he believes in American exceptionalism, just like the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the British in British exceptionalism. But American Exceptionalism is not about cheerleading for the home team. It’s about recognizing and honoring the history-making, world-changing ideals our Founding Fathers enshrined to make this a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. And, as Lincoln warned, we must rededicate ourselves to those principles, lest our truly exceptional nation perish from this earth.

Download or read book A Nation of Immigrants written by John F. Kennedy and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In this timeless book, President Kennedy shows how the United States has always been enriched by the steady flow of men, women, and families to our shores. It is a reminder that America’s best leaders have embraced, not feared, the diversity which makes America great.” —Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright Throughout his presidency, John F. Kennedy was passionate about the issue of immigration reform. He believed that America is a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, deserving the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland. This 60th anniversary edition of his posthumously published, timeless work—with a foreword by Jonathan Greenblatt, the National Director and CEO of the ADL, formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League, and an introduction from Congressman Joe Kennedy III—offers President Kennedy’s inspiring words and observations on the diversity of America’s origins and the influence of immigrants on the foundation of the United States. The debate on immigration persists. Complete with updated resources on current policy, this new edition of A Nation of Immigrants emphasizes the importance of the collective thought and contributions to the prominence and success of the country.