Although Kohn is writing in a wildly different time than our own, I continue to find his definitions of nationalism, its elements, and examples of it to be quite enlightening. So far (having just wrapped up chapter one) these have been simplistic. As an example, he constantly highlights the idea that shared experience is necessary for nationalism to develop. Nonetheless, this makes the first chapter an excellent primer and raises my expectations for the rest of the book.
Getting a little meta, actually, being fresh off of H.I. Marrou's masterpiece and considering that he was writing in the same decade as Kohn, there's some national character shining through Kohn's writing. Granted, education isn't nearly as racially charged as nationalism can be, but Kohn's not afraid of reporting generalizations, unlike Marrou. Though that's the problem with nationalism. Just as no land, even when defined by people, will be uniform over the expanse of national borders, so too will no people, even when defined by the land, be uniform.
But, Kohn is quick to define nationalism as an identity that a group agrees on and then gives themselves up to. In his thinking, nationalism succeeded religion as the driving force of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also notes that in the future this mindset may well be replaced with something else. Though he leaves the sense that nationalism will still be around in individual psyches when that happens, just as religion is still kicking around in most people's.
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