Closer Look: Nationalism, Country, Crimea

(Beijing) – The British-Czech philosopher Ernest Gellner argued in his famous book Nations and Nationalism that nationalism carries with it contradictions.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, when a number of nation states were established after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman and Qing empires on different continents, the modern idea of nationalism was shaped on the basis of people sharing the same nationality, language and territory. The problem is that there is a huge number of ethnic groups, but a country cannot be divided to account for them all.