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III. Edmund Burke and the Origins of the Theory of Nationality1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

A. B. C. Cobban
A. B. C. Cobban
Affiliation:
Research Scholar of Caius College, Cambridge; Lecturer in History at Armstrong College, Newcastle
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Extract

While there seems no end to the polemics of nationalism, a critical analysis is far to seek; for which reason an account of the beginnings of the theory of nationality in the eighteenth century may be of value to the political theorist as well as of interest to the historian. We may say of its beginnings, because although nationality as a fact is in England and some other countries of Western Europe a heritage of the Middle Ages, as a theory it is much more recent in origin. In Shaw's Saint Joan, Pierre Cauchon, discussing with Warwick the popular uprising in France under the Maid, says, “If I were to give it a name I should call it—nationalism.” Mr Shaw's Bishop is nearly four centuries in advance of his age. It was not till the nineteenth century that men in general began “to call it nationalism,” and under the guidance of such as Wordsworth and Mazzini to understand in some degree what they implied when they did so. The Revolutionary upheaval and the Napoleonic dominion were necessary to rouse the nations to self-consciousness. But these events, though they may partially account for the fact, do not altogether elucidate the theory of nationality. For its veritable beginnings we must look earlier. It is a significant fact in considering the causation of the nationalistic movement that the first and possibly still the wisest of the theorists of nationality had developed his ideas long before the Revolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , 1926 , pp. 36 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1926

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References

page 37 note 1 Works (Bohn's ed. 1873), VI. 23.

page 37 note 2 Works, v. 219–20.

page 37 note 3 Locke, Second Treatise on Government, sec. 212.

page 38 note 1 Acton MSS. 4967 (Univ. Lib. Camb.).

page 38 note 2 Acton MSS. 4967.

page 38 note 3 Acton MSS. 4967.

page 39 note 1 Works, VIII. 439.

page 39 note 2 Works, II. 368.

page 39 note 3 Acton MSS. 4954.

page 39 note 4 Works, VI. 147.

page 39 note 5 Works, II. 368.

page 39 note 6 Works, II. 439.

page 39 note 7 Works, VI. 147.

page 40 note 1 Works, II. 367.

page 40 note 2 Works, II. 101.

page 40 note 3 Works, VIII. 39–40, 141: Impeachment of Hastings, May 30th, June 5th, 1794.

page 41 note 1 Acton MSS. 4956. Cf. Letters to Mary Gladstone (1904), p. 49, Dec. 14th, 1880.

page 41 note 2 Acton MSS. 4965.

page 42 note 1 Annual Register, 1763, i. 48–9.

page 42 note 2 Ann. Reg. 1768, i. 2.

page 42 note 3 Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 44.

page 42 note 4 Ann. Reg. 1768, i. 59.

page 42 note 5 Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 10.

page 42 note 6 Ann. Reg. 1763, i. 45.

page 43 note 1 Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 4.

page 43 note 2 Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 6.

page 43 note 3 Ann. Reg. 1769, i. 32.

page 43 note 4 Ann. Reg. 1772, i. 37.

page 43 note 5 Ann. Reg. 1772, i. 4.

page 43 note 6 Ann. Reg. 1772, i. 2.

page 43 note 7 Works, will.

page 44 note 1 Mr Burke's Table Talk, Mrs Crewe (Misc. Philobiblion Soc. VII.), 13.

page 44 note 2 Ann. Reg. 1758, i. 11.

page 45 note 1 Windham's Diary (1866), p. 322; Burke to Windham, Oct. 13th, 1794.

page 45 note 2 Works, v. 79.

page 45 note 3 Corr. of Burke (1844), IV. 21.

page 45 note 4 Corr. of Burke and Laurence (1822), p. 218, May, 1797.

page 45 note 5 Corr. of Burke and Windham (1910), p. 214, April, 1797.