The nation-state is shrinking to just a flag, some sports teams and a pile of debts
I view nationalism as an outsider. Living in Paris with my American wife and my British passport, supporting Holland at football and South Africa at cricket, I’m baffled that anyone would want to die for their country. And, in fact, for most of history they didn’t. Nationalism – the notion that people who shared a culture and language should govern themselves in one state – is a fairly new idea. To quote the opening words of Elie Kedourie’s book Nationalism: “Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.”
