Berlin offers a typically high level and broad-based discussion of nationalism and its relationship to nationality or national consciousness and the idea of the nation. The first part of this chapter will explore the structure of his essay and then its main arguments. The chapter begins with subtle distinctions between nation, national consciousness and then nationality as an ideological form and explores the claim that nationalism has been relatively overlooked compared to the other main ideologies that emerged out of the post–French Revolution world. The language of nation was important for the development of the modern European nation state, and especially in the context of the retreat of empire. He argues that the success of the nation state system should have left the language of the nation to fade from view. However, nationalism surprises because of its prevalence, and Berlin seeks to explain this in terms of rectifying a national political wound and the rise of a new elite in that context seeking a political language to recreate a new political order. The final part of the chapter notes the surprising prevalence of this Eurocentric language in the post-Eurocentric world.