Among the most powerful forms of group identity in the modern era are the nation and the nation-state (as well as the tribe). the word nation comes from the Latin nasci, “to be born”. The emotions and attachments first focused on family, tribe, clan, or other kinship group extended gradually outward to larger bodies of belonging and connectedness. These came to command a “unique mutual affection and willingness to fight and die for each other.” The basic group identity includes shared culture, history, tradition, language, religion, and sometimes “race”, as well as elements of territory, politics, and economics. In Idols of the Tribe, Harold Isaacs recognizes that the nation has eluded all efforts of scholars to agree on what precisely it is (p. 174). For Rupert Emerson, “The simplest statement that can be made about a nation is that it is a body of people who feel they are a nation.”
The facts seem to suggest that whether a “tribe” or “people” can become or remain a “nation” depends mainly on the conditions of power (or lack of it), and the given political circumstances of the time. If a “nation” is a culturally homogenous group, then some nations become “states” and some do not. In the latter case, they remain known as “tribes” or “minorities”.
Isaacs also addresses the distinction between the “nation” or “nationality” as in essence cultural or political.
In modern Europe, the cultural concept is generally traced back to Johann Gottfried Herder, who conceived of a Volk formed around the core of a common language, and as keeper and carrier of the common heritage. He could never have dreamed that the Germamn Volk would become the driving spirit of Hitler’s Reich.
The guiding ideas of the political concept of the nation, were the Social Contract, General Will, and Democracy, and developed into passport holding citizenship in the state. After the Reformation, the fusion between nationality and religion was loosened, with some of the religious sentiments transferred to the modern state. In wars between nations, it was still preferable to “have God on our side.”