Introduction

Alain Dieckhoff

Christophe Jaffrelot

pp. 1-9

in: Alain Dieckhoff, Christophe Jaffrelot (eds), Revisiting nationalism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

Abstract

Probably in order to highlight the massive importance of their subject, scholars working on nationalism and ethnic issues have tended to document their research by giving impressive figures: Donald Horowitz, in 1985, mentioned that 10 million lives had been lost in the previous forty years as a result of ethnic violence.¹ In 1994, Ted Gurr emphasised that during that year eighteen of the twenty-three wars being fought stemmed from nationalist or ethnic conflicts.² This quantitative approach to nationalism is certainly not the most interesting one—still less as it suggests that nationalism is inherently violent—but it reconfirms in its own way that nationalism is certainly the most potent force in the world today, and has been so for almost two hundred years.