Nationalism is a shared group feeling in the significance of a geographical and sometimes demographic region seeking independence for its culture and/or ethnicity that holds that group together. This can be expressed as a belief or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with or becoming attached to one's nation. Nationalism involves national identity, by contrast with the related concept of patriotism, which involves the social conditioning and personal behaviors that support a state's decisions and actions.

From a political or sociological perspective, there are two main perspectives on the origins and basis of nationalism. One is the primordialist perspective that describes nationalism as a reflection of the ancient and perceived evolutionary tendency of humans to organize into distinct groupings based on an affinity of birth. The other is the modernist perspective that describes nationalism as a recent phenomenon that requires the structural conditions of modern society in order to exist.

Nationalism is a political ideology that can be described from political, sociological and psychological perspectives.

A Nationalist may refer to an adherent of:

Political organizations

Pertaining to regions and nation-states

The Nationalist was an American socialist magazine established in Boston, Massachusetts in May 1889 by adherents of the utopian ideas of writer Edward Bellamy in his 1888 book, Looking Backward. Published by a "Nationalist Educational Association" closely associated with Nationalist Club No. 1 of Boston, the magazine served as the national organ of the Bellamyite movement in the United States until being supplanted by the weekly newspaper The New Nation in 1891.

Publication history

Background

The January 1888 publication of the utopian socialist economic novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887, by Edward Bellamy was greeted with acclaim in a small circle of intellectual society, primarily in Boston, home of the book's publisher, Tichenor and Company. Boston Globe journalist Cyrus Field Willard was among the first of those moved to political activity by the book's economic vision, and he wrote to the author, asking for Bellamy's blessings for the establishment of "an association to spread the ideas in your book." Bellamy had responded to Willard's appeal positively, urging him in a July 4 letter: