TY  - BOOK
AU  - Geary, Patrick J.
TI  - The myth of nations: the Medieval origins of Europe
SN  - 9780691114811
U1  - 305.80GEA 
PY  - 2002///
CY  - Princeton
PB  - Princeton University Press
KW  - Nationalism--Europe--History--19th century
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-187) and index
N2  - Modern-day Europeans by the millions proudly trace back their national identities to the Celts, Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, or Serbs--or some combination of the various peoples who inhabited, traversed, or pillaged their continent more than a thousand years ago. According to Patrick Geary, this is historical nonsense. The idea that national character is fixed for all time in a simpler, distant past is groundless, he argues in this unflinching reconsideration of European nationhood. Few of the peoples that many Europeans honor as sharing their sense of ''nation'' had comparably homogeneous identities; even the Huns, he points out, were firmly united only under Attila's ten-year reign
ER  -