To nationalism via universalism

Moving from a sweeping narrative about a swathe of history to a dense discussion tracing the growth of nationalism, Kohn covers a lot of ground in the last half of his chapter on Rome and the Middle Ages. Dense as it is, were you to boil it down, though, you'd come out with a single word: Rome.

It seems that as things moved toward the Renaissance (or Early Modern period as the new trend in academia would have it), every group of people thought that they would be the ones to unite the world by means of restoring Rome. Some Italians thought it. Some French thought it. Some Germans. Some Eastern Europeans, too. Yet, Kohn holds back any ascription of nationalism to these ideals, since none of them were proposing a nation as a group of people that would be self-aware and autonomous. At the time, "nation" was applied to territories and not social groups. In fact, in this capacity the term was used to denote a division within the larger universal whole of humanity rather than individual groups in and of themselves.

Still, as Kohn points out, the idea of nationalism was there, and just wasn't ready to be expressed. Or, as Michel Foucault might put it, the episteme of the Middle Ages had not yet shifted into that of the early modern period - Western civilization could comprehend this new idea in snatches but not yet adequately express it. It especially was not expressed en masse.

Nonetheless, there seem to be some "national" qualities that could be found in the British Isles earlier than anywhere else in Europe.

Because of their isolation they would be self-aware on a group level fairly early into the Middle Ages. But that raises the question of whether or not that self-awareness was merely geographical or also social or political. Further, Kohn's point about social groups adopting patron saints as a pre-cursor for nationalism, raises the question of whether Beowulf could qualify as such a patron for the Anglo-Saxons.

Clearly, reading Kohn is opening windows onto the issue of medieval Anglo-Saxon nationalism (or whatever it might be called). But, what I'm left wondering is how many of those windows will open onto rich scenic views and how many will open onto brick walls.