Eric Zuelow, a graduate student specializing in the history of British nationalism at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison, has assembled an impressive collection of resources related to the study of nationalism. With an advisory committee of well‐known specialists such as Rogers Brubaker and Crawford Young, the site <http://www.wisc.edu/ nationalism/> aims at an interdisciplinary examination of nationalism as a global phenomenon. This is definitely a site in development: periodically, I encountered notes indicating the intent to expand content. However, there is already a wealth of information included that will make this site of immediate interest to anyone with a curiosity about nationalism as an historic, political, or cultural development.
By way of introduction, the site offers a group of pages under the header “What is Nationalism?” Most scholarly works in this field open with the authors’ definitions of “the nation” and/or “nationalism.” Zuelow first excerpts key passages from the writings of several of the most prominent thinkers who have attempted such definitions. A second set of excerpts examines the origins of nationalism as either an ancient or a modern phenomenon. There is no attempt at analysis on Zuelow’s part here. Rather, he offers a framework with which to introduce readers to a selection of the scholarly debates. Both groups of excerpts may be of interest as a starting point for undergraduates, but more advanced scholars may skip them altogether.
Perhaps The Nationalism Project’s most profitable undertaking is the compilation of bibliographies of both books and journal articles. The last major undertaking of this sort is the well‐respected but now dated work of Karl Deutsch: Nationalism and National Development: An Interdisciplinary Bibliography, published by MIT in 1970 (which was actually available in punch‐card format at the time of publication ‐ probably the first electronic resource on the subject of nationalism). Prior to that, Koppel Pinson’s A Bibliographical Introduction to Nationalism (Columbia University Press, 1935) was the standard work. Clearly, new bibliographical treatment of this subject is long overdue, particularly given the recent explosion of interest in the topic. In the interest of maintaining a manageable amount of data, bibliographic coverage of journal articles included in The Nationalism Project begins with the year 1980. Zuelow argues that the 1983 publication of both Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism marks the beginning of a surge of interest in the study of nationalism. With very few exceptions (notably, Hans Kohn’s The Idea of Nationalism and Karl Deutsch’s Nationalism and Social Communication), books also follow this temporal criterion. Because Deutsch’s work covers scholarship up to 1966, the years between this date and Zuelow’s 1980 cut‐off point still remain uncharted territory.
The number of journal articles compiled to date for The Nationalism Project is truly amazing (over 1,000 journal articles indexed from over 20 journals). As of this writing, there are also 13 additional journals in line to be indexed. However, the organization of the journal bibliography truly leaves something to be desired. Access to bibliographical entries is by journal title. That is, for each journal indexed, articles are listed in chronological order. While I am sure this is an expedient method for posting citations to the web, the arrangement is extremely difficult for research purposes. Because it is impossible to search the articles electronically by author or subject, a simple alphabetical arrangement by author surname would be much preferred.
In addition to the bibliography of journal articles, the Nationalism Project also includes a much briefer list (35 titles) of book reviews and abstracts. The books selected for inclusion in this list are seminal works for anyone who is a student of nationalism and include such titles as John Breuilly’s Nationalism and the State, Partha Chatterjee’s The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Elie Kedourie’s Nationalism, and, of course, the Anderson and Gellner titles mentioned above. All titles include brief abstracts, but some are given more lengthy review treatment. Zuelow himself is the primary author of the abstracts, although University of Wisconsin graduate students and the book authors themselves are occasional contributors. A separate heading, “Recent Books”, links to a list of over 200 books in queue to be abstracted or reviewed. Do not let the heading fool you though. While most were published during the 1990s, there are a few with publication dates in the 1980s and 1970s. This is an excellent bibliography, and I look forward to its expansion.
A few sidelights may be of interest. For scholars searching for a forum in which to present their work, the site contains a page linking to both upcoming conferences as well as journal calls for papers. Another page provides a lengthy list of links to “scholarly resources/programs” that deal with nationalism. Academic programs, research organizations, journal homepages, associations, and syllabi are among the included links. A final links page contains similar information for those whose interest is in Great Britain and Ireland. Hopefully, as the site expands, other geographic regions will also merit their own individual sets of links.
Although The Nationalism Project seems to rely heavily on sociological, historical, and political treatments of nationalism, the interdisciplinary nature of this field of scholarship will make it useful to those in other disciplines as well. Additionally, while the site does attempt an international perspective, the overwhelming body of information presented relates to Europe. Great Britain is given especially thorough treatment. While this is not surprising, especially given the scholarly interests of the site’s compiler, one does hope that coverage of Asia and particularly Latin America will expand as the site develops. Recommended.
