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

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

The modern sense of the word is no older than the eighteenth century, give or take the odd predecessor.

but the willingness to acquire this,

(2)

precisely that it represented the common interest against particular interests,

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’.

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

Historians are professionally obliged not to get it wrong, or at least to make an effort not to.