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inuity.I believe what Gellner demonstrates is that nations hold a sense of member
exclusiveness yet nationalities aren’t fixed because they are a result of a past obscured into the present.What we believe makes up a community is a developed construction.“Nationalism is a state of mind,in which supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due the nation-state.A deep attachment to one’s native soil,to local traditions and to established territorial authority…”(Hans Kohn 1965:9).Kohn argues nationalism and therefore nationalities are rooted in the product of history.Kohn demonstrates through events in history how nationality was able to develop.He claims Hebrews and Greeks were the first people to view themselves as different to other groups of people like the barbarians.Under Alexander’s rule at the end of the fourth century
B.C.the idea people were citizens of mankind(not of a nation).From here the Romans organised society based around a common law and civilization that wasn’t exclusive like the Greeks.During the middle ages Christianity taught the regulation of thought,social life and attitudes that dominated private and public life and formed
mankind into one community.In the Renaissance and Reformation period ancient classics and the Old Testament began to be read in a new light with a new understanding.This led to ideas such as polis and patria being revised.Kohn suggests the translation of the Bible became the starting point for national languages to develop and the invention of printing made literature cheap and accessible.The introduction of
a central dynastic state,an absolute monarch in Western Europe destroyed feudal and local allegiances,integrating loyalty and growing economic interdependence.This
required larger territory units than before.After the French revolution the state ceased
to be seen as the monarchs and instead became the peoples.It was a nation that was responsible for its own destiny and one where nation and state could be identified together.
Both Gellner and Kohn demonstrate the difficulties of producing definitions.Their arguments show the complexity of the construction of nations and nationalities but incontrasting ways.Both suggest although in different contexts that nationalities aren’t
fixed.Kohn argues cultural features of a nation distinguish them from other nationalities but that they are not essential factors to their existence or definition. Instead Kohn would argue the nation state is the source of cultural energy.The reason Kohn suggests is that he claims in the past religion was the foundation of education
and shaped people’s mind and characters not a nationality and its cultures.Gellner’s argument seems to suggest otherwise.In a similar way to Gellner though Kohn does
believe the most essential element to a nation is a living and active will.Therefore it
could be argued that national identity is a social construction.
“Through their print language,people were invited to imagine a national community,to assume acollective identity whose limits they could not possibly define on the basis of their particular personal
experience.The bonding and,where necessary,assimilatory functions of language are this crucial tonationalist ideology.In fact,they are crucial not only to those collectivities engaged in theconstruction of a national identity but also to those which set out to protect or reconstruct a national identity which already exists”(Lynn Williams 1999:8).<