From Cavemen to Countrymen: The Linguistic Roots of Nationalism

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What does language have to do with nationalism? Why do some countries succeed in uniting their citizens under a common identity while others struggle? This book, based on an award-winning PhD thesis, makes a modest attempt at answering these questions. Its central argument is that the rise of modern nationalism has created a political landscape that necessitates the mobilisation of the masses into a common cultural form (nation), in order to integrate them into a common political form (state). Through a series of comparative case-studies, Sherry Sufi concludes that to achieve this, the most accessible formula for nationalists remains the combination of shared history and language, as opposed to the alternative route of exclusive appeals to ethnicity, religion, sect or ideology.