Stuart Woolf

"[These] essays originated in a series of lectures and seminars held by the Graduate School of Contemporary European Studies and the Centre for the Advanced Study of Italian Society of the University of Reading in 1966-7." Bibliography: p. 369-377.

Nationalism has become so integral a part of life in Europe today that it is virtually impossible not to identify oneself with a nation-state, and yet nationalism is historically a modern phenomenon. This reader helps the student to gain an understanding of this important subject by offering: a substantial and wide-ranging introduction key texts, including John Stuart Mill and Otto Bauer a selection of texts from 1861 to the present which emphasize how the understanding of nationalism has changed over time a comparative European analysis pieces previously not published in English a number of lengthy texts to offer students the possibility of studying in depth. As well as providing the central building blocks for informed theoretical discussion, Stuart Woolf also tackles controversial issues such as the difference between the development of nationalism in western and central-eastern Europe and the relationship between nation-state and national identity.

Italian society has, over the centuries, offered a microcosm of western European society in its cultural, political and economic experiences. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Italy's social structure and the changes wrought within it had major implications for the political development within the Italian states, and Professor Woolf studies this interaction within the context within western Europe.--Cover.