As Hobsbawm mentioned; it is impossible to understand last two centuries of the history without understand the term of “nation” and the vocabulary derived from it. Although the terms such as “nation”, “nationalism”, “national identity” can change according to the context, and the notions which are used to explain them also are fuzzy, the main concern here is to develop an understanding for these concept.
    In the book Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 it is argued that the explanations were made about “why certain groups have become “nations” and others not” according to single criteria such as language or ethnicity or combination of common language, common territory, common history, cultural traits etc. Explanation of Stalin is one of the best known examples:

“A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life and physical make-upmanifested in a community of culture.”¹

    Before 1884, the word “nación” simply meant that “the aggregate of the inhabitants of a province, a country of kingdom” and also “a foreigner”.² But now it is given as “a State or political body which organizes a supreme centre of common government” and also “the territory constituted by the state and its individual inhabitants, considered as a whole”.³ The “nação” of the Enciclopédia Bresileira Mérito is “the community of the citizens of a state, living under the same regime or government and having a communion of interests; the collectivity of the inhabitants of a territory with common traditions, aspirations and interests, and subordinated to a central power which takes charge of maintaining the unity of the group”.⁴ Dictionary of Spanish Academy defined it as “the collectivity of persons who have the same ethnic origin and in general, speak the same language and possess a common tradition”.⁵ As we can observe from these different definitions that, until 1884 the link between government and the nation did not exist. And here the question that should be asked is that what happened and such link between these two occured.
    According to those definitions, since most of the states did not share same ethnicity or linguistic structure, they were not homogeneous, as a result, states could not be equated with nations. So we can say that nation has not a territorial meaning as state does because people from different nations “can live together in the same province, even quite a small one”.⁶ As New English Dictionary mentioned in 1908 that the old meaning of nation was the ethnic unit but “recent usage rather stressed “the notion of political unity and independence” ”.⁷ As French phrase highlighted that “one and indivisable”, nation considered as “the body of citizens whose collective sovereignty constituted them a state which was their political expression”. We can support this idea with John Stuart Mill’s thought. He did not define nation by the sentiment of nationality. He also added that the members of a nationality “desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be the government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively”. And sovereign people began to link the nation to a territory. We can say that nations do not make states but other way around. So, as Walter Bagehat mentioned that “nation-making” was the main content of the nineteenth century.
    At that point we need to look at the underlying reason of this “nation-making” process. As Molinari said that the division of the humanity into different nations derives from the economic necessity. As we all know that the Industrial Revolution is the turning point of the history. After the Revolution, with industrialization, role of the state began to increase within the newly created economic system. In other words, nation-states have a specific function in the development of capitalist process. J.B. Say put claimed that “no nation has ever attained a level of wealth without being under a regular government”.⁸ This phrase shows us that here, “nation implied national economy and its systematic fostering by the state, which in the 19th century protectionism”.⁹
    If we look at the chronological order accordingly, we need to examine the mercantalist period. At that time main actors began to appear as states since the main aim was to maximize their wealth. This system can also be called as the “zero-sum” game; because, one nation (Later on, with Adam Smith’s famous book “Wealth of Nations” a critic to this cruel “zero-sum game” appeared. Although he did mention states by saying “nations”; because he actually stressed a defined territory on his way to construct his idea, it was obvious that whatever the name of the new economic system would be, main actors within this system will be the states.) cannot increase its wealth if she imports. So, she needs to export and only import when she needs rawmaterial, as in the case of England for the production of textile products.
    As the economic system of the world was shifting from mercantalism to liberalism and then to neo-liberalism, with the beginning of the era of globalization which reflects the augmentation of the trade relations among countries (especially after the periods of Wold Wars), a modern kind of nationalism emerged. For the definition of this kind of nationalism what is relevant is not race or ethnicity but common belief, as in the case of Great Russia, or common language, as in the example of the unification of Albenia. Although we immediately think about the Hitler’s Germany when we said the race is irrelevant in the determination of nationalism, Hobsbawm argued that “what brought “race” and “nation” even closer was the practice of using both as virtual synonyms, generalizing equally wildly about “racial” / “national” character, as was then the fashion.”.¹⁰
    In the light of the phrase of Massimo d’Azeglio “We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians.”¹¹, one of the important tools that is used by the states to make nations in the process of “nation-making” is language.
During the transition period from agricultural society to an industrial one -with an increase in trade relations among different provinces, different city-states, or states- need for a common language occured. Then, people who did not need such a tool previously need to meet on a common ground to sustain their economic activities. Since the main concern of the states today is to maintain a continuous improvement in their economic figures, the necessity of a common language gave birth to the commonality of the education in the hand of the state authority. As Gellner claimed that this communality is vital to mobilize educated masses for such a continuous growth and improvement.¹² We can also say that, creating a common language does not serve only for an economic purpose but also to create a common culture and a feeling of belonging which explain the term “nationality” that we understand.

1. Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Questions, pp. 8
2. E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, pp. 14
3. pp.14
4. pp.15
5. pp.15
6. pp.17
7. pp.18
8. pp.28
9. pp.29
10. pp.108
11. pp.44
12. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism