Sixteenth-century bourgeois statism often ran against, not with, nationalist sentiment.

Evidence

Wallerstein presents an interpretation that is inconsistent with respect to the distinctions to be made between statism and nationalism: “It was only in the late seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries within the framework of mercantilism that nationalism would find its first real advocates amongst the bourgeoisie. But in the sixteenth century, the interests of the bourgeoisie were not yet surely fixed on the state. Too large a number were more interested in open than in closed economies. And for state builders, premature nationalism risked its crystallization around too small an ethno-territorial entity. At an early point, statism could almost be said to be anti-nationalist, since the boundaries of ‘nationalist’ sentiment were often narrower than the bounds of the monarch’s state.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1513

Categorization

• XREF: This nuance between statism and nationalism is a useful corrective to anachronistic readings of early capitalist interests — resonates with Robinson’s critique of Eurocentric historiography.