A Real Brain Twister, or, How to Outline the Evolution of the Concept of Nation between the Enlightenment and the Year 1939?

Abstract

Most historians studying the evolution of the concept of nation and national idea in East Central Europe, assume that through the nineteenth century the political meaning was gradually giving place to the ethnic understanding of ‘nation’. Without radically questioning this evolution of the meaning, I would like to stress that it is far from obvious. Starting with the Enlightenment, the term and concept of ‘nation’ were used so widely in the Polish public debates that it is relatively easy to find quotations to support any generalisation. Any decision about choosing some source materials and discarding some others is inevitably grounded in certain methodological and philosophical assumptions. Some assumptions have to be accepted (for otherwise, a historian would not be able to say anything), but we need to be conscious that their choice is, in the last resort, arbitrary.