A new and comprehensive look at the reasons behind successful or failed nation building Nation Building presents bold new answers to an age-old question. Why is national integration achieved in some diverse countries, while others are destabilized by political inequality between ethnic groups, contentious politics, or even separatism and ethnic war? Traversing centuries and continents from early nineteenth-century Europe and Asia to Africa from the turn of the twenty-first century to today, Andreas Wimmer delves into the slow-moving forces that encourage political alliances to stretch across ethnic divides and build national unity. Using datasets that cover the entire world and three pairs of case studies, Wimmer’s theory of nation building focuses on slow-moving, generational processes: the spread of civil society organizations, linguistic assimilation, and the states’ capacity to provide public goods. Wimmer contrasts Switzerland and Belgium to demonstrate how the early development of voluntary organizations enhanced nation building; he examines Botswana and Somalia to illustrate how providing public goods can bring diverse political constituencies together; and he shows that the differences between China and Russia indicate how a shared linguistic space may help build political alliances across ethnic boundaries. Wimmer then reveals, based on the statistical analysis of large-scale datasets, that these mechanisms are at work around the world and explain nation building better than competing arguments such as democratic governance or colonial legacies. He also shows that when political alliances crosscut ethnic divides and when most ethnic communities are represented at the highest levels of government, the general populace will identify with the nation and its symbols, further deepening national political integration. Offering a long-term historical perspective and global outlook, Nation Building sheds important new light on the challenges of political integration in diverse countries.

"The book contains a presentation and critical consideration of the ideas of historians on the major problems, processes, events, and personalities of the era of the Bulgarian (national) Revival. It is dominated by the effort to understand how the Bulgarian Revival has been conceived of and imagined while keeping a certain distance from the various views presented, whether critical, ironic, or simply that inherent in the presentation of another person's view."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Written in the last years of Sir Surendranath Banerjea's life, A Nation in Making is not only the autobiography of a pioneering leader in Indian politics but also a commentary on public life. In the pages of this book, we are offered insights into the life of the founder of the Indian National Association and twice president of the Indian National Congress. We grasp the vision motivating his landmark appeals-including one to the British to modify the 1905 Partition of Bengal, reinstitute habeas corpus and grant India a Constitution based on the Canadian model. Most of all, we understand the mind of a phenomenal leader-a trailblazer with the refrain, 'agitate, agitate'; a moderate with a quarrel with B. G. Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi; and an ardent exponent of nationalism and a representative form of government. Insightful, honest and sincere, this book immortalizes the work of those who, like Banerjea, 'placed India firmly on the road to constitutional freedom...by constitutional means'

This sweeping narrative presents an original and compelling explanation for the triumph of the antislavery movement in the United States prior to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln's election as the first antislavery president was hardly preordained. From the country's inception, Americans had struggled to define slavery's relationship to freedom. Most Northerners supported abolition in the North but condoned slavery in the South, while most Southerners denounced abolition and asserted slavery's compatibility with whites' freedom. On this massive political fault line hinged the fate of the nation. Graham A. Peck meticulously traces the conflict over slavery in Illinois from the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 to Lincoln's defeat of his arch-rival Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 election. Douglas's attempt in 1854 to persuade Northerners that slavery and freedom had equal national standing stirred a political earthquake that brought Lincoln to the White House. Yet Lincoln's framing of the antislavery movement as a conservative return to the country's founding principles masked what was in fact a radical and unprecedented antislavery nationalism. It justified slavery's destruction but triggered Civil War. Presenting pathbreaking interpretations of Lincoln, Douglas, and the Civil War's origins, Making an Antislavery Nation shows how battles over slavery paved the way for freedom's triumph in America.

This book offers the first interpretive synthesis of the history of Andean peasants and the challenges of nation-making in the four republics of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia during the turbulent nineteenth century. Nowhere in Latin America were postcolonial transitions more vexed or violent than in the Andes, where communal indigenous roots grew deep and where the 'Indian problem' seemed so daunting to liberalizing states. Brooke Larson paints vivid portraits of Creole ruling élites and native peasantries engaged in ongoing political and moral battles over the rightful place of the Indian majorities in these emerging nation-states. In this story, indigenous people emerge as crucial protagonists through their prosaic struggles for land, community, and 'ethnic' identity, as well as in the upheaval of war, rebellion, and repression in rural society. This book raises broader issues about the interplay of liberalism, racism, and ethnicity in the formation of exclusionary 'republics without citizens'.

How to Make a Nation: A Monocle Guide reveals all you need to make a happy, vibrant and successful nation. From designing a better parliament, choosing a flag and creating social capital to taking care of your young and old, using culture to gain soft power and devising a national brand, this is a book for anyone who fancies a stint as PM, wants to be a more engaged citizen or just believes they deserve good government. This is a book about the small and big things that can make our nations work better for everyone who calls them home. Our 340-page guide features original photography and illustrations printed on a selection of great papers and bound with a linen cover. It is also available in a deluxe limited edition. Published by Gestalten.--

Brazinsky explains why South Korea was one of the few postcolonial nations that achieved rapid economic development and democratization by the end of the twentieth century. He contends that a distinctive combination of American initiatives and Korean agency enabled South Korea's stunning transformation. Expanding the framework of traditional diplomatic history, Brazinsky examines not only state-to-state relations, but also the social and cultural interactions between Americans and South Koreans. He shows how Koreans adapted, resisted, and transformed American influence and promoted socioeconomic change that suited their own aspirations. Ultimately, Brazinsky argues, Koreans' capacity to tailor American institutions and ideas to their own purposes was the most important factor in the making of a democratic South Korea.