Nation Building in the Wake of Colonialism: Old Concepts in New Settings

Abstract

The dissolution of the European colonial empires in the second half of the twentieth century resulted in another postwar period where many new states were constituted. Liberation movements had invoked the ideal of the nation in the fight against the colonial powers and, having gained independence, took the nation state as the model for sovereign statehood. Although the leaders of the newly liberated countries were in very different settings from their counterparts in the earlier waves of nation state formation, the basic problems were felt to be much the same. On the linguistic and cultural front, the challenges were the ever intractable issues: how to achieve national unity, how to ensure independence, and how to educate the national population effectively.