Building Nations In and With Empires—A Reassessment

t is hardly likely that anyone in the future will achieve what Charles V, Louis XIV and Napoleon I failed to do. The founding of a new Roman Empire or of a new Carolingian empire would now be impossible ... France, England, Germany and Russia will, for centuries to come, no matter what may befall them, continue to be individual historical units, the crucial pieces on a checkerboard whose squares will forever vary in importance and size but will never be wholly confused with each other. Nations, in this sense of the term, are something fairly new in history.” Isn’t it striking that Renan in his famous lecture Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation names four of the strongest European Empires (or rather their imperial core areas) as examples of nations? And isn’t it also striking how little attention has been paid to that curious fact by historians? This famous passage from Ernest Renan’s lecture is one of the most often quoted definitions of the national principle: