Nationalism: a Definintion

Nationalism:

the force that binds a group of people together in a nation. It happens when a group of people within a nation have an overwhelming sense of pride in themselves, what the believe in, and or their country. It can sometimes be a positive force for change, as in Japan when the Japanese sense of nationalism helped them become a strong power in the world. When a country believes that they are the best, they will do everything in their power to show this. Most of the time this need to prove themselves put countries on the right track to making themselves better or maybe even taking over other countries, as we saw with imperialism. Nationalism can also be a destructive force, as with the Ottoman empire. Nationalism only works when the entire country bands together as one, and not just a group of people coming together to separate themselves. When the Turks came together in the Ottoman empire, it helped take down the rest of the empire eventually because they no longer identified themselves as an Islamic state as they had for so long. Though nationalism can be used to take over other countries through making them believe that your ideas are better, it should be pure sense of pride to begin with.