The twenty-first century is witnessing a truly transnational revival of a very old set of ideas. Despite romantic attachments to old symbols, these late modern nationalism movements are not simply replicas of the previous two waves of nationalism in the 1860s and 1920s. Nor is it true that today's nationalism movements want simply to return to the past and effect a nationalist 1930s-style retrenchment. From Putin's macho revivalism, through to Trump's shocking victory and Xi's strongman regionalism, nationalists engage with the economic context of our time and address issues born of globalization. Crucially, in their vision for international relations they seek the destruction of key international norms in a drive to restore a vision of sovereignty predicated on a survivalist understanding of state power.

 

Global Nationalism, edited and framed by Pablo de Orellana and Nicholas Michelsen, brings together the latest research by up-and-coming early career researchers and scholars. Beginning with a succinct history and typology of contemporary nationalism and its predecessors, this book offers analysis of several cases of contemporary nationalism, examining how specific movements define identity, address grievances and propose identity-based solutions. Key themes and lessons emerge from the study of a variety of cases, from the very ideas animating nationalist thought, to their expression in a wide variety of nationalist movements around the world. The reflections on the ecosystem of nationalist ideas and movements offered in this volume are a vital starting point in the study of contemporary nationalism as a global twenty-first century phenomenon.

 

Speakers

Dr Pablo de Orellana is an inter-disciplinary scholar-working on diplomacy, nationalism and the relationship between art and conflict. He graduated in French and Italian at Oxford before a Master’s in International Relations at Cambridge, leading to a PhD at King’s College London, completed in December 2015.

 

His research on how diplomatic communication constitutes the representations upon which policy is made threads together his passion for political philosophy, literary analysis, history and aesthetics. In this research, theoretical approaches are put to work analysing archival research determining how policy comes to identify the political identity of peoples and their contexts.

 

These research interests are combined with and often parallel to interests in literature, drama, aesthetic theory, poetry, archaeology, and especially art history. De Orellana has published on diplomacy, North African politics, European affairs, xenophobia and identity politics, Renaissance philosophy, Critical Theory and Art History art in peer-reviewed as well as less formal publications.

 

Dr Nicholas Michelsen was awarded his undergraduate degree in International Relations and Philosophy by the University of Sussex, and holds an MA in International Conflict Studies and an MRes in War Studies from King’s College London. He wrote his doctoral thesis in the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

 

Photo credit to DJ Sturm