The Ethnic Origins of Nations

by Anthony D. Smith

This book is an excellent, comprehensive account of the ways in which nations and nationhood have evolved over time. Successful in hardback, it is now available in paperback for a student audience.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology, Anthropology, Race, Academic

332 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Anthony D. Smith was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics, and is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies. His best-known contributions to the field are the distinction between 'civic' and 'ethnic' types of nations and nationalism, and the idea that all nations have dominant 'ethnic cores'. While Smith agreed with other authors that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, he insisted that nations have pre-modern origins.

Reviews

[Natkó Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting subject and I greatly appreciate this book. It is a great work. Nevertheless, many times I felt the author was repeating himself over and over and he wrote the same thing again and again in different sentences and in different chapters.

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

A monumental piece of work, it took me a year or so of browsing it before I understood its worth.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book which should amount to a tabletop reference manual for any politician. It contains not only a deep analysis of the birth, life, interaction, change, and disssolution of an ethnie subsequently of a nation, as one of the possible results of such an evolution warning unheeded by any and all colors of the political spectrum.

[Atila Demirkasımoğlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok önemli bir kitap. Milliyetçiliklerarası farkları az dikkate alıyorsa da mutlaka okunmalı

[Vik · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes clear distinction between ethnicity and nationalism, and the journey of the former to latter. I think it is a useful interjection in the modern perspective to nationalism with ignores or downgrades the importance of past, history and ethnic origins.

[Francie Kaye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read 3-4 chapters for PH Indigenous Ethnic History class. I'll make a comprehensive review right after I finish the class kasi I'm still confused w/ the conflated sense of ethnic communities becoming nations

[Steven]

I think it's something of a mixed bag.

[Igor Zurimendi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really enjoy reading historical comparative sociology, but I ended up thinking that this book could have been a lot shorter.

[Lukas op de Beke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insightful but repetitive and pompous.

[lovel d.a. hearn]

i'm not an ethnosymbolist.