Eric Hobsbawm - Nations Quotes

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Nevertheless it is evident — if only from the Greek example just cited — that proto-nationalism, where it existed, made the task of nationalism easier, however great the differences between the two, insofar as existing symbols and sentiments of proto-nacional community could he mobilized behind a modern cause or a modern state. But this is far from saying that the two were the same, or even that one must logically or inevitably lead into the other. For it is evident that proto-nationalism alone is clearly not enough to form nationalities, nations, let alone states.

Eric Hobsbawm

No serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist... Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.

Eric Hobsbawm

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

Eric Hobsbawm