A nation is a type of social organization where a collective identity—a national identity—has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, territory, and society. Some nations are constructed around ethnicity (see ethnic nationalism) while others are bound by political constitutions (see civic nationalism).
A nation is generally more overtly political than an ethnic group. Benedict Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community […] imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", while Anthony D. Smith defined nations as cultural-political communities that have become conscious of their autonomy, unity and particular interests. Black's Law Dictionary also defines nation as a community of people inhabiting a defined territory and organized under an independent government. Thus, nation can be synonymous with state or country. Indeed, according to Thomas Hylland Eriksen, what distinguishes nations from other forms of collective identity, like ethnicity, is this very relationship with the state.
The consensus among scholars is that nations are socially constructed, historically contingent, organizationally flexible, and a distinctly modern phenomenon. Throughout history, people have had an attachment to their kin group and traditions, territorial authorities and their homeland, but nationalism – the belief that state and nation should align as a nation state – did not become a prominent ideology until the end of the 18th century.
Etymology and terminology The English word nation from Middle English c. 1300, nacioun "a race of people, large group of people with common ancestry and language", from Old French nacion "birth (naissance), rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio (nātĭō), supine of verb nascar « to birth » (supine: natum) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe", literally "that which has been born", from natus, past participle of nasci "be born" (Old Latin gnasci), from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget", with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.
In Latin, natio represents the children of the same birth and also a human group of same origin.Dictionnaire Le Petit Robert, édition 2002. By Cicero, natio is used for "people".Dictionnaire Latin-Français, Gaffiot. In imperial Roman epigraphy, natio with an ethnonym marks a register of belonging positioned between civic membership and a more localized origo.
Nations in history The existence of earlier nations
The broad consensus amongst scholars of nationalism is that nations are a recent phenomenon. However, some historians argue that their existence can be traced to the medieval period, or a minority believe even to antiquity.
Adrian Hastings argued that nations and nationalism are predominantly Christian phenomena, with Jews being the sole exception. He viewed them as the "true proto-nation" that provided the original model of nationhood through the foundational example of ancient Israel in the Hebrew Bible, despite losing their political sovereignty for nearly two millennia. Regarding the latter, Jews maintained their cohesive national identity through collective memory, religion and sacred texts, which ultimately culminated in the emergence of Zionism and the establishment of modern lsrael.
Anthony D. Smith argued that among the polities of antiquity, only Egypt and Judah/Judea, at certain periods, developed enough to approximate true nations. He also examined the Neo-Assyrian and Persian Empires, concluding that these produced only "self-defining ethnies," while in the Greek case no nation formed at all for want of a unifying political framework or ideology, a gap he held to be even wider for the Phoenicians or Sumerians. Smith cited two factors, emergence "within the matrix of a political system," which let political ideology forge ethnies into nations, and shared religion as "the cement of social solidarity." However, Egypt's temple religion, tied to the divine Pharaoh, later grew distant from ordinary people under foreign rule and was displaced by Christianity, while Judah's religion of "God, Torah and Temple," bound to the Covenant and its "myths of ethnic election and the Promised Land," was "continually renewed" and grew more inclusive, especially after the Maccabean Revolt and the rise of the Pharisees, giving it, via the three monotheisms, lasting influence on later nation-formation. For Smith, the Jews of the late Second Temple period provide "a closer approximation to the ideal type of the nation ... perhaps anywhere else in the ancient world."
Susan Reynolds has argued that many European medieval kingdoms were nations in the modern sense, except that political participation in nationalism was available only to a limited prosperous and literate class, while Hastings claims England's Anglo-Saxon kings mobilized mass nationalism in their struggle to repel Norse invasions. He argues that Alfred the Great, in particular, drew on biblical language in his law code and that during his reign selected books of the Bible were translated into Old English to inspire Englishmen to fight to turn back the Norse invaders. Hastings argues for a strong renewal of English nationalism (following a hiatus after the Norman Conquest) beginning with the translation of the complete bible into English by the Wycliffe circle in the 1380s, positing that the frequency and consistency in usage of the word nation from the early fourteenth century onward strongly suggest English nationalism and the English nation have been continuous since that time.
However, John Breuilly criticizes Hastings's assumption that continued usage of a term such as 'English' means continuity in its meaning. Patrick J. Geary agrees, arguing names were adapted to different circumstances by different powers and could convince people of continuity, even if radical discontinuity was the lived reality.
Florin Curta cites Medieval Bulgarian nation as another possible example. Danubian Bulgaria was founded in 680–681 as a continuation of Great Bulgaria. After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav on the eve of the 10th century. Hugh Poulton argues the development of Old Church Slavonic literacy in the country had the effect of preventing the assimilation of the South Slavs into neighboring cultures and stimulated the development of a distinct ethnic identity. A symbiosis was carried out between the numerically weak Bulgars and the numerous Slavic tribes in that broad area from the Danube to the north, to the Aegean Sea to the south, and from the Adriatic Sea to the west, to the Black Sea to the east, who accepted the common ethnonym "Bulgarians". During the 10th century the Bulgarians established a form of national identity that was far from modern nationalism but helped them to survive as a distinct entity through the centuries.
Anthony Kaldellis asserts in Hellenism in Byzantium (2008) that what is called the Byzantine Empire was the Roman Empire transformed into a nation-state in the Middle Ages.
Azar Gat also argues China, Korea and Japan were nations by the time of the European Middle Ages.Azar Gat, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013, China, p. 93 Korea, p. 104 and Japan p. 105.
The Bulletin de la Société de géographie (1855), Maury (1855), Marty (1916), and Gadzekpo (2002) argue that, the Serer ethnoreligous group found in present-day Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania, are a nation, and one of the oldest inhabitants of the Senegambia region.Bulletin de la Société de géographie, Volume 26. Société de Géographie (1855), pp. 35 – 36. (retrieved 18 February 2026). Quote: "La nation sérère, aujourd'hui dispersée en plusieurs petits États sur la côte ou refoulée dans les bois de l'intérieur, doit être une des plus anciennes de la Sénégambie."Maury, Alfred, Rapports à la Soc. de géographie, volume 1 (1855). p. 25 (retrieved 18 February 2026).Marty, Paul, L'Islám en Mauritanie et au Sénégal. E. Leroux (1916), p. 49.Gadzekpo, Seth Kordzo. "History of African Civilisations." Rabbi Books (2002), p. 137. . The Serers of the north originated from the ancient kingdom of Takrur, now part of present-day Fouta Toro – which was part of Serer country,Chavane, Bruno A., "Villages de l’ancien Tekrour", Vol. 2, Hommes et sociétés. Archéologies africaines, p. 10, KARTHALA Editions (1985), . who, from the 11th century, faced religious and ethnic persecution from Islamic forces, resulting in the Serer Exodus from Takrur to the south.Chavane, Bruno A., "Villages de l’ancien Tekrour", Vol. 2, Hommes et sociétés. Archéologies africaines, KARTHALA Editions (1985), p. 38, . The influence of Serer religion, history, culture, and traditions, on the land has been so immense that, historian, Professor Charles Becker, in his paper "Vestiges historiques, trémoins matériels du passé clans les pays Sereer" (1993) writes:
After a thousand years of religious and ethnic persecution, the Serer, "today scattered in several small states on the coast or pushed back into the woods of the interior, must be one of the oldest in Senegambia." They form the third largest ethnic group in Senegal, and form a minority in neighbouring Gambia, Mauritania, and to a lesser extent, Guinea-Bissau.
Criticisms In contrast, Geary rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names. He criticizes historians for failing to recognize the differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study."
Similarly, Sami Zubaida notes that many states and empires in history ruled over ethnically diverse populations, and "shared ethnicity between ruler and ruled did not always constitute grounds for favour or mutual support". He goes on to argue ethnicity was never the primary basis of identification for the members of these multinational empires.
Paul Lawrence criticises Hastings's reading of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People as evidence of an early English national identity, instead observing that those writing so-called 'national' histories may have "been working with a rather different notion of 'the nation' to those writing history in the modern period". Lawrence goes on to argue that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves, pointing out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what the majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor."
Use of term nationes by medieval universities and other medieval institutions
A significant early use of the term nation, as natio, occurred at medieval universitiesSee: nation (university). to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all at the University of Paris, who were all born within a pays, spoke the same language and expected to be ruled by their own familiar law. In 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson was elected twice as a procurator for the French natio. The University of Prague adopted the division of students into nationes: from its opening in 1349 the studium generale which consisted of Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish nations.