This course explores the history, politics, and recent literature on the formation and longevity of empires, the making of nations, and the development of nationalism. Theories of the nation have moved from ideas of their essential, primordial quality through a moment of social construction featuring the processes of modernization to a more cultural, discursive approach emphasizing the role of imagination and invention. These theoretical advances have been developed primarily by historians and literary analysts, but in recent years social science thinking on nationalism has borrowed freely, often critically, from the emerging literature. We will both develop a narrative of the emergence of nations and explore some of the ways in which social science has employed and developed the body of theory on nationalism, looking at paradigms taken from international relations, identity theory, anthropology, and various psychological theories.
Empires, however, have not been as deeply theorized and explained as nations. Yet much more of human history has been concerned with empires rather than nations. This course will look particularly at the Ottoman, tsarist Russian, and Soviet Empires to investigate how they maintained themselves in the modern age, now they met the challenge of the discourse of the nation, and attempted to reform themselves in the dangerous world of Realpolitik.Intended Audience:
Graduate Students.