until they discovered from the end of the century on, that an unlimited readiness to assimilate was not enough, if the receiving nation was not prepared to accept the assimilee fully.

as to the assumption that it did not require to be spelled out, since it was already obvious.

Besides, for the nineteenth century conquest provided the Darwinian proof of evolutionary success as a social species.

but the willingness to acquire this,

precisely that it represented the common interest against particular interests,

The equation nation = state = people, and especially sovereign people, undoubtedly linked nation to territory, since structure and definition of states were now essentially territorial. It also implied a multiplicity of nation-states so constituted, and this was indeed a necessary consequence of popular self-determination. As the French Declaration

He also added that the members of a nationality ‘desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively’.

community’ in order to avoid the centralizing and unitary implications of the term ‘nation’ against the rights of the federated states.12

Early political discourse in the USA preferred to speak of ‘the people’, ‘the union’, ‘the confederation, ‘our common land’, ‘the public’, ‘public welfare’ or ‘the