The Novelty of Nations
Even the vocabulary of nationalism is of a very recent vintage—it was not until well into the nineteenth century that the institutional phrases we take so for granted today—like “state,” “polity,” “federal,” “government,” or even “nation”—came into common usage. As short a time ago as the founding of the American republic, political discourse preferred to speak of “the commonwealth,” “the people,” “the confederation,” “the common land,” “the public,” “the community,” or “the cooperative welfare” in order to avoid the centralizing and unitary implications of “nationhood.” The New English Dictionary underscored that distinction as late as 1908 when it stated that the old meaning of “nationality” envisaged “little more than an ethnic unit” but that a wholly new meaning had begun to emerge that stressed the notion of “political unity and independence.”
At virtually no time in the past—but especially at no time during the age of Christendom—did men identify themselves in terms of a particular nation-state. Instead, they saw themselves as members of a family or a community--or, even more likely, of a faith. Jurisdictions and boundaries were set according to these relational and covanental loyalties rather than by governmental edicts. Thus patriotism was interpersonal rather than institutional.
