The first ever ideal of a nation came into being with the French revolution in 1789. The revolutionaries wanted the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens.
This sense of collective identity emphasize the notion of a United community enjoying equal rights under a constitution a new French flag the tricolour was chosen to replace the formal royal standard.
As the news of the fall of the monarchy of France reached different cities of Europe, the members of educated middle classes began setting up Jacobin clubs and this prepared the way for the French armies which moved into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and much of Italy in the 1790s. Thus, the idea of a nation was carried abroad.
In 1882, a lecture was delivered at the university of Sorbonne in which the French philosopher Ernst Renan outlined his understanding of what makes a nation.
It stated:
“A nation is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice and devotion. A heroic past great men, glory, that is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea.
To have common glories in the past, to have a common will in the present, to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more, these are the essential conditions of being a people. A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity... Its existence is a plebiscite...A province is it's inhabitants; if anyone has the right to be consulted, it is the inhabitant.
A nation never has any real interest in annexing or holding on to a country against its will. The existence of nations is a good thing, a necessity even. Their existence is a guarantee of liberty, which would be lost if the world had only one law and only one master.”
Renan criticized the notion suggested by others that a nation is formed by a common language, race, religion or territory.
From the emergence of nationalism, It is, indeed, a strong belief that a nation is one in which the citizens come to develop a sense of common identity and share history or descent. That it came through the struggles, through the actions of leaders and the common people.
It is to be kept in mind that the rise of a nation or a national belief can never be thought of as a way of colonialising others nation. Nation is formed by the fraternity, liberty, sovereignty, equality and all the struggles of the past that it's people have been through. That the people stand together for their nation's protection, and their pride and love for it reflects through their unity of the people themselves.
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