Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Horn of Africa

Download or read book Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Horn of Africa written by Dominique Jacquin-Berdal and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Jacquin-Berdal has given us a cogent and lucid defence of a modernist international relations perspective on nationalism. In contrast to current preoccupations with ethnicity, she demonstrates, through a rich and detailed empirical analysis of Eritrea and Somaliland separatism that the colonial territorial state provided the causal basis and motor for the rise of these and other African nationalisms. This book is an important and timely contribution to the theoretical literature on nationalism and to our understanding of contemporary politics in the Horn of Africa. It is important for two reasons. First, since the end of the cold war, the proposition that nations - and hence successful nation-states - invariably spring from an ethnic core has too often gone unchallenged. Those who hold this position tend to regard it almost as a self-evident truth. As Dominique Jacquin-Berdal's analysis impressively demonstrates, it is not. Secondly, most students of nationalism, whether they insist on the ethnic ancestry of the modern nation, or view it as an essentially modern construct, implicitly agree that the roots of the nation and nationalism lie within society rather than outside it. S