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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Critical Review
What Rough Beast?
By Eugen Weber
Abstract
Eric Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism since 1780 effectively describes the novelty and artificiality of the modern nation and nation-state, emphasizing the role that cultural and political elites have played in constructing nations, especially through nationally homegenous schools and partly invented national traditions and histories. By defining traditionalism as the congruence between nation and state, however, Hobsbawm gives insufficient attention to the sense in which nationalism goes beyond national patriotism to express chauvinsim, xenophobia, and paranois. He is also too sanguie about the ethnic conflicts that will inevitably arise in the multilingual societies he endorses.