Miroslav Hroch is one of the giants of nationalism studies, along with Karl Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, Eric J. Hobsbawm, Anthony D. Smith, and Benedict Anderson. His earlier work—Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985), first published as Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegungen bei den kleinen Völkern Europas (Prague, 1968)—has become a modern classic. A Czech Marxist, Hroch contributed to the social communication theories of nationalism by proposing three stages in the evolution of nationalism: Stage A, in which small groups of intellectuals, often clerics, wrote grammars and histories, collected folk tales and songs, and often in the isolation of their study began the elaboration of what will constitute the national; Stage B, when larger numbers of patriots—journalists, teachers, and political activists—spread the message of nationalism through the press, schools, and political circles; followed by Stage C, the moment when effective popular mobilization took place among the broader population. Carefully reconstructing the social backgrounds of the patriots who joined clubs and societies, subscribed to the first newspapers, and gave money to the cause, Hroch provided the first empirical sociology for nationalist movements. His conception of nation formation was both materialist—economic, social, and cultural factors coming together to create a larger space of social communication—and subjective—the formation of a “memory” of some common past, treated as “destiny” of the group. Instrumental use of national myths, as well as the hard work of historians to reconstruct the national past, contributed to the construction of modern nations.

First published in Göttingen in 2005 as Das Europa des Nationen, his latest work builds on his earlier research and pulls together his findings and musings of more than half a century of thinking about nations and nationalism. As might be expected from such a vast topic and the abundance of works on the subject, the book meanders through discussions of the ethnic roots of nations, the effects of modernization, and the elaboration of definitions and typologies. He takes a strong stance that nations are not simply the product either of ideas alone nor of social causes. Earlier state formations—what he refers to as state-nations (“a state that had developed its own distinctive culture in the medieval or early modern periods,” 30)—represented one path to nationhood, but the creation of ethnic identities and cultural bonds in national movements—as in the case of the Czech nation—constituted another.

Hroch is closer to the perennialist view of Anthony D. Smith, which emphasizes the importance of language and ethno-symbolism, than to the more culturally constructivist approach of Benedict Anderson, which concentrates more heavily on imagination. For him the nation is not simply a cultural construct. He argues that nations were “the result of decisions made by people in specific historical circumstances,” but this cannot be “explained solely by the transfer of ideas” (266). Nations are modern political spaces in which an increasing number of individuals identify themselves as members of the nation. In order for such identifications to exist, he contends, “historically rooted cultural (ethnic) ties, common historical experiences, and certain political institutions or institutionalized social and cultural relationships” are required (266). State-nations already had “national” identities, primarily among the ruling classes, since at least the Middle Ages, but national movements acquired their identity as nations from pre-existing ethnic ties and mobilization by intellectual elites.

The first path to nationhood, that of state-nations, began as “the existing patriarchal, feudal or Estates relationships and the old value systems had begun to falter, and when religious legitimacy upon which the old social system had been founded, had started to be questioned” (268). National movements had two options: assimilation, which occurred in states where the ruling nation had already developed a national identity; or developing their own national identity, as in the three multinational empires of eastern Europe, where the dominant state elites had not yet formed a firmly defined national identity. Hroch rejects characterizing these two ways of producing European nations with the word “nationalism,” which he reserves for a latter phase marked by “a truly dangerous intolerance, justified by ‘typical’ national arguments, aggression, and an uncritical overestimation of one's own nation” (267).

While the richness of this book is undeniable, readers may find its density of examples and references to particular cases daunting. Yet here a master of a particular historical and sociological literature endeavors to share his insights, and engaging with his explorations of nations and their origins stimulates new and productive thinking.