Nation-states and nationalism appear to many people today as almost natural phenomena, deep-rooted parts of a human landscape dominated by artifice and change. This apparent naturalness is one of the most remarkable political achievements of the past two centuries. In the early nineteenth century, if asked “Where are you from?,” most of the world’s inhabitants would have named a province, town, or village. Away from home, some Europeans might have answered “France,” “Poland,” “Italy,” or “Germany.” But none of these names carried the political or emotional meanings they acquired in the course of the nineteenth century. The populations of France and Poland were divided by language, local loyalties, and social station; divisions were deepened in France by the 1789 Revolution, in Poland by the country’s forced partitions between Prussia, Austria, and Russia from 1772 to 1795. Italia and Germania were ancient Roman names of provinces that had never been politically united. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of most other Europeans, and of people everywhere: they were not national animals until nationalism – a specific kind of politics driven by a novel ideal – made them so.