PROFESSOR Miroslav Hroch’s worthwhile study of the growth of nations in Europe focuses more on exploring the theories of nation building than on the narrative of European history.

An over-complicated read, clearly aimed at an academic audience, its main conclusion is that the European nations emerged in two forms.

In a neat reversal of the usual formulation of nation states, Professor Hroch talks of “state-nations,” primarily England — later Britain — and France, where a strong unified state emerged around which a nation grew into coherence and, much more commonly, describes how nations emerged from national movements within other entities, the former Austrian empire being an example.

Hroch describes how religion, myth-making and wars have contributed to these processes.

Nation states have proven to be the most effective vehicle for delivering enduring political progress and that has certainly been the case in Europe, though when it has attempted to impose the structure of nation states in other regions it has not been a successful transplant, as is witnessed most tragically and violently in the Middle East.

Nations have been organic and driven from within, a lesson unfortunately lost on the naive Western “nation builders” who fill the ranks of Western government-sponsored NGOs from Kosovo to Afghanistan.

Thus the conundrum remains of how to have a successful nation without resorting to nationalism? Hroch’s answer would seem to be a “democratic” and “enlightened” nation.

Europe’s two major wars in the 20th century led to a general distrust of nationalism and much of the initial, but now flagging, momentum for the EU came from the idea that everything bad in Europe stemmed from national rivalries and nationalism which could be swept aside by a hazy, romantic and illusionary notion of “Europe.”

In the corridors of the Eurocracy in Brussels are still to be found fatuous signs “Mon Pays — Europe” (“My country — Europe”).

But it is entirely unlikely that “Europe” will ever evoke the same loyalty and commitment that the nation state can.

As “Europe” stumbles, the classical nation state remains a more useable vehicle for co-operation.

The danger is, though, that as “Europe” stumbles, the siren cry of nationalism and nationalistic solutions will become ever louder.

Review by Michael Hindley