“The origins of nationalism lay not in the folk, nor in the individual's repressed passion for some sort of wholeness or identity, but in the machinery of world political economy.” Where do we find an elaboration on that? You can find an exact, word-for-word elaboration of that quote in Tom Nairn’s classic 1975 essay, “ The Modern Janus” , published in the New Left Review . [1, 2, 3, 4] Nairn later integrated and expanded this thesis into his foundational 1977 book, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism . [5, 6, 7] Nairn's text provides a specific structural framework that elaborates on how the global economy—rather than romantic ideas of "the folk"—manufactured modern nationalism: 1. The Core Argument: The Uneven Development of Capitalism Nairn rejects the romantic view that nationalism naturally bubbles up from ethnic roots or a psychological need for belonging. Instead, he argues that nationalism was a structural byproduct...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51