Cultivated middle classes drove vernacular nationalist movements across Europe

Evidence

If the implied answer is ‘hardly,’ its significance derives from the fact that, all over the Europe surrounding Switzerland, the first half of the nineteenth century saw the burgeoning of vernacular nationalist movements in which ‘cultivated middle classes’ (as it were, philologists + capitalists) played central parts. Why then did nationalism come so late to Switzerland, and what consequences did that lateness have for its ultimate shaping (in particular, its contemporary multiplicity of ‘national languages’)? — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 480

Categorization

• QUESTION: The puzzle of Swiss lateness is itself a useful test case for the modularity claim.
• XREF: connects to: Official nationalism is a reactive response to earlier popular national movements — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 348; Hungarian noble elites shifted their political language from Latin to Magyar — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 431; Capitalism’s global spread spawned nationalism as its historical cost — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 370 (+7 more)

Related

• Wealth and schooling determined where nationalist revolution began earlier (similarity 0.80)
• Nationalist movements typically fused aristocrats, intellectuals, and businessmen in distinct roles (similarity 0.80)
• Official nationalism is a reactive response to earlier popular national movements (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s global spread spawned nationalism as its historical cost #expands (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 370
• Wealth and schooling determined where nationalist revolution began earlier #expands (0.82) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 309