In a previous essay, I looked at the shaping of an Italian national identity within the early Roman Empire, and argued, contra modern scholars, that an ethnic Italian identity based on shared ancestry was well developed within the Roman Empire, and remained a source of pride throughout its existence.
The presence of this kind of primordial nationalism in pre-modern empires seriously undermines the claims made by the modernist school of thought in the sociology of nationalism, which is treated as orthodoxy in many sociological departments in the West. (more…)