Alexander Maxwell
Biographic Data
| ID | 3682389 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander Maxwell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Maxwell |
| SIGNATURE | MAXWELL A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5332-5795 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 57 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1933 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Polylingual Nationalism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans: Reviving a Forgotten History
Polylingual nationalism refers to national concepts that imagine more than one language as integral to the titular national community. In East-Central Europe and the Balkans, polylingual nationalism has not been a focus of comparative or theoretical research, since nationalist historiographies have instead emphasized the link between nations and languages, conflating linguistic revival efforts with the so-called “national revival” of the 19th cen…
Polylingual Hungarian Nationalism in History and Historiography
Historians of nineteenth century Hungary typically trace the development of Hungarian nationalism from the noble natio hungarica through the transient Hungarus concept, both associated with the Latin language, to the Hungarian-language speaking Magyar nemzet, often imagined as the Magyar politikai nemzet, the “Hungarian political nation,” which simultaneously used Hungarian as the state language yet included non-Hungarian citizens of the Hungaria…
Grammar Textbooks for Slovak Pupils: Slovak Particularist Ethnolinguistic Nationalism in the 1850s
The creation of a Slovak literary standard to serve as a “national language” can be analyzed not only as part of intellectual history but also as part of the social history of rising literacy: a demographically significant population trained to write according to any particular literary standard forms a social interest group generating ethnolinguistic nationalism. Textbooks are interesting sources for both approaches. Focusing on the 1850s as a k…
The Banat of Temesvar: Borderland Colonization in the Habsburg Monarchy
Linguistic Panslavism and the Habsburg Empire
Vladimir Putin, Normative Isomorphism, and the Language/Dialect Dichotomy
This article analyzes Vladimir Putin’s 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as an example of political rhetoric invoking the language/dialect dichotomy. Curiously, Putin argued both that Ukrainian is a “dialect” of a greater Russian language and that Ukrainian is a distinct “language” different from Russian. As a form of political rhetoric, the language/dialect dichotomy draws its power from normative isomorphism, the i…
‘The Politics of a Lady’: Frugality, Fashion and Nationalism in Late Enlightenment Germany
Pan-Nationalist Influences on Literary Croatian and Norwegian Bokmål: Two Case Studies Showing Contingency in Nationalism
Language planners espousing pan-nationalism influenced the orthography of standard literary Croatian and Norwegian Bokmål. Specifically, ‘Slovak’ intellectuals Jan Herkel and Jan Kollár influenced the Croatian orthography of Ljudovit Gaj, and ‘Danish’ intellectuals Rasmus Rask and N. M. Petersen influenced Knud Knudsen's Bokmål. Slovaks and Danes influenced Croatian and Norwegian orthography because Croats and Norwegians imagined the ‘national la…
Central South Slavic Linguistic Taxonomies and the Language/Dialect Dichotomy: Rhetorical Strategies and Faulty Epistemologies
This article analyzes the epistemology of the language/dialect (L/D) dichotomy. The L/D dichotomy gives rise to disputes between "splitters", who want to split the speech of a given region into more than one "language", and "lumpers", who view the region as speaking one "language" albeit with diverse "dialects". While numerous linguists have declared the L/D dichotomy theoretically meaningless, thus taking an "agnostic" approach, linguists intere…
Lebanese Phoenicianism: Rebutting Anthony Smith's Ethno‐Symbolism
Examining national awakening in early twentieth‐century Lebanon tests the validity of Anthony D. Smith's ethno‐symbolism, which argues that modern national movements arise from older or ancient ethnic cores, which Smith calls ethnies . Since ethno‐symbolism contradicts Eric Hobsbawm's notion of an “invented tradition,” contrasting Smith with Hobsbawm illustrates the substance of Smith's argument. Supporters of independent Lebanon frequently procl…
Towards Modern Nationhood: Wales and Slovenia in Comparison, c.1750–1918, by Robin Okey
Rebels into Loyalists, or Loyalists into Rebels? Habsburg Officials and Their International Contacts during the Age of Revolutions
During the Age of Revolutions, the Habsburg monarchy initially opposed nationalist movements as revolutionary. While the monarchy later sought to co-opt loyal patriots, historical memory often imagines the Habsburg state as implacably opposed to both nationalism and nationalist movements. In practice, however, Habsburg officials and central European nationalisms overlapped and engaged with each other in surprising ways. Their interaction problema…
The European Union as a “Nation”: The “Nation” that Effaces Itself
This article examines the European Union (EU) in light of Benedict Anderson's definition of the nation as “an imagined community ... imagined as inherently limited and sovereign.” Current scholarship mostly rejects the possibility of an EU nation, or treats it only as a possible eventuality, not a current reality. Interpreting Andersonian “sovereignty” through the lens of political legitimacy, the EU nevertheless satisfies all four of Anderson's …
The Dialects of Panslavic, Serbocroatian, and Croatian: Linguistic Taxonomies in Zagreb, 1836–1997
If linguistic nationalism presupposes a homogenous national language, then “dialect” taxonomies become interesting objects of study. This article examines three instances of linguistic nationalism published in Zagreb. The three texts, published in 1836, 1919, and 1995, come from (1) Ljudevit Gaj and Jan Kollár, (2) Dragutin Prohaska, and (3) Miro Kačić. The different texts propound three quite different taxonomies of “dialects” within the imagine…
Early Modern Terminology for Dialect: Denigration, Purism, and the Language-Dialect Dichotomy
When the language-dialect dichotomy first emerged in the early modern period, several scholars devised terminological alternatives, particularly for the subordinate lower half of the dichotomy. This article examines a series of terminological alternatives in their social and linguistic contexts, considering terms from the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic linguistic zones. Our case studies suggest that there were two main reasons for coining neologis…
Popular and Scholarly Primordialism: The Politics of Ukrainian History during Russia's 2022 Invasion of Ukraine
While nationalism theorists have mostly rejected primordialism, politicians and the wider public typically have a primordialist and essentialist understanding of national history. On the eve of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin invoked several primordialist tropes so as to justify military action, which is unsurprising in a politician. Yet Western scholars criticizing Putin's historical narratives in newspaper editorials or in sch…
The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine and its Lessons for Nationalism Studies
Sciendo provides publishing services and solutions to academic and professional organizations and individual authors. We publish journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications
The nation versus the ‘not‐quite‐nation’: A semantic approach to nationalism and its terminology
A ‘semantic approach’ to nationalism might focus on how political actors use the word ‘nation’ to legitimate political demands, often contrasting that word with other similar words, such as ‘ethnicity’ or ‘tribe’, which might be generalized as ‘not‐quite‐nations’. The semantic approach must also address the problem of linguistic diversity, and proposes that the word for ‘nation’ in languages other than English should be the word which bestows leg…
Greece and Germany as Models for Habsburg Panslavs
In the early 19th century, Habsburg Panslavs sought not Russian expansion but instead linguistic and cultural unity between Slavs speaking different “dialects.” To make their vision of literary unity despite political fragmentation more persuasive, Panslavs invoked the examples of Ancient Greece and modern Germany. Greek and German examples feature prominently in the writings of Jernej Kopitar, Josef Šafařík, Jan Kopitar, and Jan Kollár, all of w…
Pan-Nationalism as a Category in Theory and Practice
This article theorizes “pan-nationalism” as an analytical category in the context of nationalism theory by contrasting “pan-nationalism” with “nationalism.” What does the prefix “pan-” imply? One can identify a “multiple-statehood” criterion: pan-nationalism extends across state frontiers. Observers also use the prefix pejoratively to connote extremism or revanchism. The pejorative tendency means that the difference between “nationalism” and “pan…
Scientific eroticism, beauty theorists, and the borders of the erotic: John Roberton’s Kalogynomia and Alexander Walker’s Beauty
John Roberton’s Kalogynomia (1821) and Alexander Walker’s Beauty (1836) claimed to be scientific works teaching readers to appreciate female beauty. The books present explicit sexual content in technical anatomical prose. We situate these books in the context of late-Georgian radical publishing. We argue that they occupy an interesting intersection between the scientific and the erotic. By treating women’s beauty as a question for science, the bo…
Contingency and “National Awakening”
Scholars often describe the early stages in the development of nationalism with the metaphor of “national awakening,” which originally comes from historical actors. Several scholars, notably Ernest Gellner, criticize the metaphor for its implicit teleology and essentialism. Much recent scholarship considers non-national loyalties, such as regionalism, civic pride, monarchism, or national indifference, reflecting an understandable weariness with t…
Primordialism for Scholars Who Ought to Know Better: Anthony D. Smith’s Critique of Modernization Theory
A theory of nationalism should explain the evidence provided by the historical record, but also provide unexpected insight. The modernist theory of nationalism, espoused among others by Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, provides a surprising chronology of nationalism’s modernity. The modernization theory of nationalism has attracted extensive criticism from Anthony Smith, who proposed instead a theory he called “ethnosymbolism.” This article c…
Glottonyms, Anachronism and Ambiguity in Scholarly Depictions of Juraj Križanić/Юрий Крижанич
This article is a case study in the politics of glottonyms. Most glottonyms are also ethnonyms; that is, the name of a linguistic variety is usually the name of an ethnographic collective, typically or stereotypically a 'nation'. The Russian language, for example, shares its name with the Russians; the Croatian language with the Croats, and so on. Of course, 'nations' and 'languages' do not always coincide, despite the naive tendency to equate th…
Sampling error in lexicostatistical measurements: A Slavic case study
Preview this article: Sampling error in lexicostatistical measurements, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/dia.18004.fel-1.gif
Typologies and phases in nationalism studies: Hroch's A-B-C schema as a basis for comparative terminology
The study of nationalism encompasses so many themes that scholarly communication between different subfields has become difficult. Scholars might facilitate comparison by acknowledging different types of nationalism, but an overview of various taxonomies of nationalism shows that binary taxonomies have a problematic normative subtext, while most non-binary taxonomies have failed to reach a broad audience. Miroslav Hroch, who intended his A-B-C ph…
Contingency and “National Awakening”
Scholars often describe the early stages in the development of nationalism with the metaphor of “national awakening,” which originally comes from historical actors. Several scholars, notably Ernest Gellner, criticize the metaphor for its implicit teleology and essentialism. Much recent scholarship considers non-national loyalties, such as regionalism, civic pride, monarchism, or national indifference, reflecting an understandable weariness with t…
Primordialism for Scholars Who Ought to Know Better: Anthony D. Smith’s Critique of Modernization Theory
A theory of nationalism should explain the evidence provided by the historical record, but also provide unexpected insight. The modernist theory of nationalism, espoused among others by Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, provides a surprising chronology of nationalism’s modernity. The modernization theory of nationalism has attracted extensive criticism from Anthony Smith, who proposed instead a theory he called “ethnosymbolism.” This article c…
Analyzing nationalized clothing: Nationalism theory meets fashion studies
Many key problems in the study nationalism theory can be examined through the lens of clothing practices. This article relates the study of clothing to nationalism theory. It suggests clothing is an example of Billig’s ‘banal nationalism.’ Asking who is forbidden, obliged, or permitted to wear nationalized clothing reveals how patriots imagine the national community. Plans to introduce a national costume hint at the imagined locus of sovereignty.…
Nationalists rejecting statehood: Three case studies from Wales, Catalonia, and Slovakia
While many nationalism theorists define nationalism in terms of the desire for an independent state, empirical study shows that many nationalists make demands that not only fall short of statehood, but explicitly abjure claims to political independence. We document non‐state‐seeking nationalism with three case studies: Welsh national politics in the decades before the First World War, Catalan national politics related to the 2006 Status law, and …
Nationalism as classification: Suggestions for reformulating nationalism research
Instead of thinking about “national identity,” scholars of nationalism would do well to study nationalism as a process of classification, treating national conflict as disputes over nationalized categories. Disputes over national classification take various forms: patriots argue over which category applies, which categories exist, and which categories have which status. Techniques for imposing classificatory categories also deserve attention. The…
Popular and Scholarly Primordialism: The Politics of Ukrainian History during Russia's 2022 Invasion of Ukraine
While nationalism theorists have mostly rejected primordialism, politicians and the wider public typically have a primordialist and essentialist understanding of national history. On the eve of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin invoked several primordialist tropes so as to justify military action, which is unsurprising in a politician. Yet Western scholars criticizing Putin's historical narratives in newspaper editorials or in sch…
Effacing Panslavism: Linguistic classification and historiographic misrepresentation
In the early nineteenth century, several Slavic intellectuals believed in a single Slavic nation speaking a single language, though positing various taxonomies of the nation's component “tribes” and the language's component “dialects.” Nevertheless, recent scholars, both historians and linguists, prove so extraordinarily unwilling to acknowledge the existence of Panslavism that several falsify the historical record so as to make historical figure…
Positing “not-yet-nationalism”: Limits to the impact of nationalism theory on Kurdish historiography
This article examines the impact of nationalism theory, and specifically the theory of national awakening, on Kurdish historiography. Kurdish experts cite several famous nationalism theorists, but seem most impressed by Anthony Smith's model of a singular transformation in which a not-yet-national community becomes a proper nation. Kurdish experts do not always use Smith's terminology, however, and often invoke other scholars in support of the si…
Multiple Nationalism: National Concepts in Nineteenth-Century Hungary and Benedict Anderson's “Imagined Communities”
Nineteenth-century Slovaks expressed loyalty to both a Hungarian “political nation” and a Slavic “cultural” or “linguistic” nation, and invoked multiple linguistic nations, variously imagined as Pan-Slavic, Czechoslovak or Slovak. Comparing the Slovak and Croat experience in nineteenth-century Hungary shows that “nation” status bestowed concrete political benefits. Since historical actors invoke the “nation” for multiple communities, the desire f…
István Széchenyi, the casino movement, and Hungarian nationalism, 1827–1848
The establishment of the Nemzeti Casino (National Casino) in Pest helped establish civil society in nineteenth-century Hungary. Count István Széchenyi, hoping to modernize Hungary on the English model, established the casino in 1827 as a public forum for the Hungarian nobility. By transcending caste divisions between nobles and bourgeois elites, Széchenyi's casino served as an unofficial parliament and stock exchange, and generally helped cultiva…
Central South Slavic Linguistic Taxonomies and the Language/Dialect Dichotomy: Rhetorical Strategies and Faulty Epistemologies
This article analyzes the epistemology of the language/dialect (L/D) dichotomy. The L/D dichotomy gives rise to disputes between "splitters", who want to split the speech of a given region into more than one "language", and "lumpers", who view the region as speaking one "language" albeit with diverse "dialects". While numerous linguists have declared the L/D dichotomy theoretically meaningless, thus taking an "agnostic" approach, linguists intere…
The Dialects of Panslavic, Serbocroatian, and Croatian: Linguistic Taxonomies in Zagreb, 1836–1997
If linguistic nationalism presupposes a homogenous national language, then “dialect” taxonomies become interesting objects of study. This article examines three instances of linguistic nationalism published in Zagreb. The three texts, published in 1836, 1919, and 1995, come from (1) Ljudevit Gaj and Jan Kollár, (2) Dragutin Prohaska, and (3) Miro Kačić. The different texts propound three quite different taxonomies of “dialects” within the imagine…
Early Modern Terminology for Dialect: Denigration, Purism, and the Language-Dialect Dichotomy
When the language-dialect dichotomy first emerged in the early modern period, several scholars devised terminological alternatives, particularly for the subordinate lower half of the dichotomy. This article examines a series of terminological alternatives in their social and linguistic contexts, considering terms from the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic linguistic zones. Our case studies suggest that there were two main reasons for coining neologis…
The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine and its Lessons for Nationalism Studies
Sciendo provides publishing services and solutions to academic and professional organizations and individual authors. We publish journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications
The nation versus the ‘not‐quite‐nation’: A semantic approach to nationalism and its terminology
A ‘semantic approach’ to nationalism might focus on how political actors use the word ‘nation’ to legitimate political demands, often contrasting that word with other similar words, such as ‘ethnicity’ or ‘tribe’, which might be generalized as ‘not‐quite‐nations’. The semantic approach must also address the problem of linguistic diversity, and proposes that the word for ‘nation’ in languages other than English should be the word which bestows leg…
Pan-Nationalism as a Category in Theory and Practice
This article theorizes “pan-nationalism” as an analytical category in the context of nationalism theory by contrasting “pan-nationalism” with “nationalism.” What does the prefix “pan-” imply? One can identify a “multiple-statehood” criterion: pan-nationalism extends across state frontiers. Observers also use the prefix pejoratively to connote extremism or revanchism. The pejorative tendency means that the difference between “nationalism” and “pan…
Czechoslovak Ruthenia's 1925 Latinization campaign as the heritage of nineteenth-century Slavism
In 1925, two newspapers, both published in Uzhhorod, advocated using the Latin alphabet in the Czechoslovak province of Ruthenia. Efforts by the Czech Agrarian party to consolidate the Republic played some role, but the plans mostly emerged from a longer tradition of Slavic thought which imagined literacy in more than one alphabet, conforming to more than one literary standardization. We trace the nineteenth-century history of Slavic linguistic i…
The Handsome Man with Hungarian Moustache and Beard’: National Moustaches in Habsburg Hungary
Growing facial hair acquired nationalist symbolism in nineteenth-century Hungary. This article documents and analyses Hungarian moustache patriotism, contrasting Hungarian circumstances with moustache culture elsewhere in Europe. In various eras of Hungarian history, starting with the Reform Era (1825–48), continuing through the 1848 Revolution and ending with Dualism and the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, Hungarian moustaches variously symbo…
Twenty-five years of A-B-C: Miroslav Hroch's impact on nationalism studies
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Miroslav Horch's 1985 Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations in English translation. The work first appeared as Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegungen bei den kleinen Völkern Europas in 1968. The English translator of this famous study, Ben Fowkes, has since established h…
National Endogamy and Double Standards: Sexuality and Nationalism in East-Central Europe during the 19th Century
Journal Article National Endogamy and Double Standards: Sexuality and Nationalism in East-Central Europe during the 19th Century Get access Alexander Maxwell Alexander Maxwell History Department, Victoria University, Wellington New Zealand Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 41, Issue 2, Winter 2007, Pages 413–433, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/41.2.413 Published: 01 December 20…
Literary dialects in China and Slovakia: Imagining Unitary Nationality With Multiple Orthographies
Article Literary dialects in China and Slovakia: imagining unitary nationality with multiple orthographies was published on November 13, 2003 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 2003, issue 164)
Crime: The Situation To‐day 1
Hungaro-Slavism
Literary dialects in China and Slovakia: Imagining Unitary Nationality With Multiple Orthographies
Article Literary dialects in China and Slovakia: imagining unitary nationality with multiple orthographies was published on November 13, 2003 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 2003, issue 164)
Magyarization, language planning, and Whorf: The word uhor as a case study in Linguistic Relativism
This paper examines nineteenth-century ethnonyms for Hungarian in the Hungarian German and Slovak languages in light of the Whorfian hypothesis. Nineteenth-century Hungary witnessed nationalist tensions between Slovaks and Hungarians. These tensions partially took the form of a dispute over the non-coincident meaning of the national ethnonyms for Hungarian : the Hungarian word Magyar conflates ethnic Hungarians with citizens of Hungary, while Slo…
Multiple Nationalism: National Concepts in Nineteenth-Century Hungary and Benedict Anderson's “Imagined Communities”
Nineteenth-century Slovaks expressed loyalty to both a Hungarian “political nation” and a Slavic “cultural” or “linguistic” nation, and invoked multiple linguistic nations, variously imagined as Pan-Slavic, Czechoslovak or Slovak. Comparing the Slovak and Croat experience in nineteenth-century Hungary shows that “nation” status bestowed concrete political benefits. Since historical actors invoke the “nation” for multiple communities, the desire f…
“Such a smoking nation as this I never saw…”: Smoking, Nationalism, and Manliness in Nineteenth-Century Hungary
Tobacco smoking became an important marker of Hungarian national identity during the nineteenth century. This national symbol ultimately had an economic origin: Hungarian tobacco producers resisted the tobacco monopoly of the Habsburg central government, and led an ultimately successful consumer boycott of Austrian products. Tobacco nationalism, however, became a common theme in Hungarian popular culture in its own right, as tobacco use came to s…
National Endogamy and Double Standards: Sexuality and Nationalism in East-Central Europe during the 19th Century
Journal Article National Endogamy and Double Standards: Sexuality and Nationalism in East-Central Europe during the 19th Century Get access Alexander Maxwell Alexander Maxwell History Department, Victoria University, Wellington New Zealand Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 41, Issue 2, Winter 2007, Pages 413–433, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/41.2.413 Published: 01 December 20…
Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language and Accidental Nationalism
The Slavs saw themselves as Hungarian citizens speaking Pan-Slav and Czech dialects - and yet were the origins of what would become in the twentieth century a new Slovak nation. How then did Slovak nationalism emerge from multi-ethnic Hungarian loyalism, Czechoslovakism and Pan-Slavism? Here Alexander Maxwell presents the story of how and why Slovakia came to be
Typologies and phases in nationalism studies: Hroch's A-B-C schema as a basis for comparative terminology
The study of nationalism encompasses so many themes that scholarly communication between different subfields has become difficult. Scholars might facilitate comparison by acknowledging different types of nationalism, but an overview of various taxonomies of nationalism shows that binary taxonomies have a problematic normative subtext, while most non-binary taxonomies have failed to reach a broad audience. Miroslav Hroch, who intended his A-B-C ph…
Twenty-five years of A-B-C: Miroslav Hroch's impact on nationalism studies
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Miroslav Horch's 1985 Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations in English translation. The work first appeared as Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegungen bei den kleinen Völkern Europas in 1968. The English translator of this famous study, Ben Fowkes, has since established h…
Herder, Kollár, and the Origins of Slavic Ethnography
Philosophy of Johann Gottfried von Herder thoroughly informed ideas of a poet Ján Kollár. Nevertheless, Kollár was more than merely a conduit for transmitting Herder’s ideas: he selected, interpreted and transformed Herder’s philosophy in the service of his literary Pan-Slavism. *** Filozofija Johanna Gottfrieda von Herderja je močno zaznamovala zamisli pesnika Jána Kollárja. Kljub temu pa Kollár ni bil zgolj “odvod” za prenos Herderjevih idej, s…
Patriots Against Fashion
During the era of the French revolution, patriots across Europe tried to introduce a national uniform. This book, the first comparative study of national uniform schemes, discusses case studies from A
The Tyranny of Queen Fashion
Anti-fashion campaigners frequently used political metaphors. Anxieties about feminine power, and specifically male fears of falling under feminine control, drove several anti-fashion polemicists to a political metaphor of fashion as illegitimate feminine government. Sartorial nationalism, in this reading, was the struggle against the tyranny of an allegorical “Queen Fashion.”
István Széchenyi, the casino movement, and Hungarian nationalism, 1827–1848
The establishment of the Nemzeti Casino (National Casino) in Pest helped establish civil society in nineteenth-century Hungary. Count István Széchenyi, hoping to modernize Hungary on the English model, established the casino in 1827 as a public forum for the Hungarian nobility. By transcending caste divisions between nobles and bourgeois elites, Széchenyi's casino served as an unofficial parliament and stock exchange, and generally helped cultiva…
The Whangaroa Incident, 16 July 1824 A European–Māori Encounter and Its Many Incarnations
This paper examines an incident in 1824 in which the Ngāti Pou of Whangaroa Harbour (New Zealand) boarded a European ship, holding its crew and three missionaries captive for two hours. During the 19th century the incident was retold approximately 30 times in Europe and America. This paper describes the original incident from primary sources and then discusses how the various incarnations of the story enabled different authors to draw diverse mor…
The Handsome Man with Hungarian Moustache and Beard’: National Moustaches in Habsburg Hungary
Growing facial hair acquired nationalist symbolism in nineteenth-century Hungary. This article documents and analyses Hungarian moustache patriotism, contrasting Hungarian circumstances with moustache culture elsewhere in Europe. In various eras of Hungarian history, starting with the Reform Era (1825–48), continuing through the 1848 Revolution and ending with Dualism and the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, Hungarian moustaches variously symbo…
Positing “not-yet-nationalism”: Limits to the impact of nationalism theory on Kurdish historiography
This article examines the impact of nationalism theory, and specifically the theory of national awakening, on Kurdish historiography. Kurdish experts cite several famous nationalism theorists, but seem most impressed by Anthony Smith's model of a singular transformation in which a not-yet-national community becomes a proper nation. Kurdish experts do not always use Smith's terminology, however, and often invoke other scholars in support of the si…
The Nation as a 'Gentleman's Agreement: Masculinity and Nationality in Nineteenth-century Hungary
Carole Pateman's idea of the 'sexual contract' can be adapted to study the nationalist imagination. If a society defined through a sexual contract is equated to the 'civic nation,' then the sexual basis of an 'ethnic nation' might be called the 'gentleman's agreement.' The terms of the gentleman's agreement, while never articulated as clearly as the sexual contract, nevertheless reveal themselves in cultural practices. Hungarians presupposed a na…
Czechoslovak Ruthenia's 1925 Latinization campaign as the heritage of nineteenth-century Slavism
In 1925, two newspapers, both published in Uzhhorod, advocated using the Latin alphabet in the Czechoslovak province of Ruthenia. Efforts by the Czech Agrarian party to consolidate the Republic played some role, but the plans mostly emerged from a longer tradition of Slavic thought which imagined literacy in more than one alphabet, conforming to more than one literary standardization. We trace the nineteenth-century history of Slavic linguistic i…
Nationalism as classification: Suggestions for reformulating nationalism research
Instead of thinking about “national identity,” scholars of nationalism would do well to study nationalism as a process of classification, treating national conflict as disputes over nationalized categories. Disputes over national classification take various forms: patriots argue over which category applies, which categories exist, and which categories have which status. Techniques for imposing classificatory categories also deserve attention. The…
Effacing Panslavism: Linguistic classification and historiographic misrepresentation
In the early nineteenth century, several Slavic intellectuals believed in a single Slavic nation speaking a single language, though positing various taxonomies of the nation's component “tribes” and the language's component “dialects.” Nevertheless, recent scholars, both historians and linguists, prove so extraordinarily unwilling to acknowledge the existence of Panslavism that several falsify the historical record so as to make historical figure…
Sampling error in lexicostatistical measurements: A Slavic case study
Preview this article: Sampling error in lexicostatistical measurements, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/dia.18004.fel-1.gif
Analyzing nationalized clothing: Nationalism theory meets fashion studies
Many key problems in the study nationalism theory can be examined through the lens of clothing practices. This article relates the study of clothing to nationalism theory. It suggests clothing is an example of Billig’s ‘banal nationalism.’ Asking who is forbidden, obliged, or permitted to wear nationalized clothing reveals how patriots imagine the national community. Plans to introduce a national costume hint at the imagined locus of sovereignty.…
Nationalists rejecting statehood: Three case studies from Wales, Catalonia, and Slovakia
While many nationalism theorists define nationalism in terms of the desire for an independent state, empirical study shows that many nationalists make demands that not only fall short of statehood, but explicitly abjure claims to political independence. We document non‐state‐seeking nationalism with three case studies: Welsh national politics in the decades before the First World War, Catalan national politics related to the 2006 Status law, and …
Scientific eroticism, beauty theorists, and the borders of the erotic: John Roberton’s Kalogynomia and Alexander Walker’s Beauty
John Roberton’s Kalogynomia (1821) and Alexander Walker’s Beauty (1836) claimed to be scientific works teaching readers to appreciate female beauty. The books present explicit sexual content in technical anatomical prose. We situate these books in the context of late-Georgian radical publishing. We argue that they occupy an interesting intersection between the scientific and the erotic. By treating women’s beauty as a question for science, the bo…
Sociology (31 works) · Political science (30 works) · Nationalism (29 works) · Law (28 works) · History (25 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (22 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · History (17 works)