Was at a lecture about this today. The lecturer argued that nationalism was something that came to be during the late 18th and early 19th century, and that they didn't think their country the same way we do today. And that State would be a better word to describe this. Anyone know anything about this?
You might be interested in a very recent post on the origins of nationalism:
Not particularly, previously governments and states weren't expected to be some kind of representative of a greater whole or "folk". It was during the enlightenment that ideas of national consciousness and national self determination became popular in Europe at least. As a result states and increasingly irrelevant dynasties had to create a sense of national unity to legitimate themselves. There wasn't really this expectation previously as most citizens saw the legitimacy of their leaders being based on their ability to protect them from foreign invaders and make sure they have the means to survive. As enlightenment ideas became more and more popular then we get writers like Fichte who would use words like "fatherland" and give a kind of biological significance to nationhood not as a political union but as a something primordial and unavoidable. Subsequently increases in war making capabilities meant that the nation had to be created due to the increased size of the state. There is an old maxim- "States make war, war makes states". Basically the state became a uniform political unit after the middle ages and so needed to imagine a uniform group of people (the nation) into existence to legitimate itself.
SOURCE: Benedict Anderson "Imagined Communities"