Kohn's whirlwind coverage of countries that wakened into nations continues with Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.
Gathered together like this, patterns among the ways in which nationalism emerges are starting to appear.
Generalizing broadly, it seems that the nations of Europe awoke either through poetry and drama or through the political work of individuals. Sometimes these two also worked in concert.
More often than not though (at least with the nations Kohn's covered so far), everything is sparked by a single individual's efforts. Not always while that person is alive, however, or in vogue.
In the case of Italy Vittorio Alfieri got people thinking about nationalism, but in an incredibly insular way. Alfieri decried the influence of anything from outside of Italy as such things threatened to corrupt the pure Italian-ism that had fostered the Roman Empire.
As much as nationalism is a matter of a collective ego (with all the negative and positive connotations of that word) another trend that's come out is that almost every nation that Kohn has chronicled draws inspiration to awaken to nationalism thanks to inspiration from another country. The French Revolution was just such an inspiration to Italy, much to Alfieri's chagrin.
Another 60 pages remain, and so I'll see about how these patterns carry forward.
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