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Rousseau And The Paradox Of The Nation-State, Timothy Lang

History Open Access Publications

The nation-state, as it emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century, was perhaps the most paradoxical political institution of its age. Liberals endorsed nation-states, believing they would lead to peace, prosperity, and good government. But all too often they did the opposite. Reading Rousseau’s Social Contract against the eighteenth-century state system reveals one way in which political thinking at the end of the Enlightenment anticipated this paradox. Neither nationalism nor the nation-state were fully developed concepts at the time, though the glimpses of them that appeared in Rousseau’s works suggest just how problematic the emerging nation-state might be. Rousseau set …