The “origins problem” has loomed large in the historiography of nationalism in the Arab Middle East and for good reason: it is constitutive and representative of other issues surrounding the problem of nationalism. George Antonius published the first iteration of what might be termed the “standard [origins] narrative” in 1938. Since that time, the narrative has undergone a number of revisions, the most notable of which are by C. Ernest Dawn, Philip S. Khoury, and Rashid Khalidi, among others. Nevertheless, the narrative linking Arabists, disaffected urban notables, middle-strata intellectuals and activists, and the politics of patronage retains a number of problems that are encoded into its DNA:

1. 1. Inasmuch as the narrative situates nationalism within an autonomous realm of ideas and locates the source of ideological change within the self-enclosed debates held among a small circle of cultural producers, it is unabashedly idealist.

2. 2. Inasmuch as it treats nonelites as passive ideological consumers and/or the targets of elite manipulation, the narrative retains an elitist bias.

3. 3. Inasmuch as it conflates the origins of Arab nationalism with the origins of nationalism (at least in the Asiatic Arab world), the narrative presumes Arab nationalism to have a privileged claim on the allegiance of the Arabic-speaking population of the region and discounts the authenticity and legitimacy of territorially based nationalisms, among others, that have emerged there.

4. 4. Inasmuch as it presents Arab nationalism as just the next logical step after Arabism, it conflates two entirely different categories of phenomena, one political, the other cultural.

5. 5. Inasmuch as the narrative differentiates between nationalist and religious movements, it isolates each from the other, reifies the boundaries of both, and disengages religion from the very historical processes that made secular nationalist movements meaningful to the inhabitants of the region in the first place.

Over the past decade and a half, a number of scholars—many un-self-consciously—have drawn from and contributed to an altogether different framework that avoids the problems of the standard narrative. Rooted in cultural history and nationalist studies with a strong dose of Foucault, this framework provides the foundation for a new “grand narrative” of the origins and evolution of nationalism in the Arab Middle East (and elsewhere). Although only occasionally explicitly rendered, the framework consists of three propositions.

Proposition 1: There is a difference between a “culture of nationalism” and the nationalist movements that spawn in that culture. “Culture of nationalism” refers to a social imaginary inhabited by populations who view the assumptions associated with nationalism as self-evident and part of the natural order. Those assumptions are that all humanity is naturally divided into unified societies (nations), each of which has a discrete identity; a nation can be identified by certain characteristics (religion, language, common history), which all of its members share; only national sovereignty can ensure that the interests of the nation and its citizens are protected; nations enjoy a special relationship with a particular territory that is the repository for that nation's history and memory; and nations retain their essential characteristics as they travel through time. Situating nationalist movements in the region within the broader framework of a culture of nationalism undercuts the notion that Arab nationalism simply evolved out of Arabism by pointing out the revolutionary nature of the new order in which nationalisms are embedded.

Proposition 2: A culture of nationalism spread among the populations of the Middle East, as it spread among populations elsewhere, through their engagement in common practices associated with modern states and through their internalization of the organizational rationale underlying those practices. Thus, beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the disciplinary and representational regimens imposed by the Middle Eastern state (Ottoman, Egyptian, Qajar) reinforced the notion that populations were part of unified societies, that those societies had identities of their own, and that each individual's efforts contributed to a common project. The spread of a culture of nationalism points to the underlying efficacy of attempts to restructure the Middle Eastern state, even if specific programs misfired. Recent research in Mount Lebanon, Jabal Nablus, and Egypt, among other places, has demonstrated the speed with which even peasants responded to (and attempted to manipulate) the new dispensation.

Besides the policies of indigenous states, there were other factors behind the spread of a culture of nationalism in the region. In some places, colonial powers imposed practices and structures that directly contributed to its spread; in others, mostly outlying areas (e.g., Arabia), its spread occurred later as a result of state building within the context of the operant world system of nation-states. It bears mentioning that a narrative that associates the spread of nationalism with practical activity resolves the problem of idealism—and of elitism, because all elements of the population were simultaneously exposed to the same disciplinary regimen.

Proposition 3: Nationalist movements are distinct political movements that draw from the assumptions of nationalism and thrive in an environment in which a culture of nationalism has taken root. Although the diffusion of a culture of nationalism is an epochal event in the history of a region, nationalist movements are ephemeral phenomena. Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, a variety of political entrepreneurs in the region habituated to a culture of nationalism, from declining elites to “organic intellectuals” to government bureaucrats to emergent elites, began advocating political doctrines that cohered with that culture. Each of these entrepreneurs cherry-picked from a list of possible national characteristics—language, religious affiliation, citizenship, and residence in some bounded space—to distinguish their conception of nation from others. Thus, a variety of nationalisms—religious and secular, civic and ethnic—appeared episodically. Their success or failure depended entirely on contingent factors.

Viewing nationalist movements in this way enables us to avoid the teleology of the earlier narrative that gives pride of place to secular Arab nationalism, to demystify nationalist movements that privilege Islam as a national marker, and to restore agency to its rightful owner. All these nationalist movements are isomorphic, making their study, in the words of Fred Halliday, a problem of “comparative contingency.”Footnote ¹ This explains the ease with which the same individuals who at one point espoused Ottoman nationalism could become loyal Syrians and then Palestinians, depending on circumstances, or the ease with which advocates of one or another brand of secular nationalism in the 1960s could, over time, transfer their loyalties to nationalisms that privilege Islam as a national marker and base social reconstruction on so-called Islamic principles. Just as important, viewing nationalist movements in this way demonstrates just how unexceptional the history of nationalism in this region has been.