Nationalism

Nationalism is a concious attempt to create a unified sense of pride in a country and/or group of people. It can bring small, insignificant countries to power as with Japan or bring large empires down, as with the Ottomans. It may be tempting to say that the success of nationalism is based solely on the size of area it covers, bit it is not. It's success is based off it's unification. If a country is has a lot of nationalism, but it's not for the country as a whole, it will inevitably be brought down and nationalism would be it's destroying force. It is similar to what happened in France during the French Revolution. The Third Estate became nationalistic and unified. France as a whole was ripped apart and it's social structure remade, but the Third Estate remained strong until it fell to corruption. The provincial leaders of the Ottomans were very similar. The Ottoman Empire as a whole died out because it was not unified, but the provincial leaders remained strong because they had an easier time of keeping their smaller territories together and tightly knit.