by Lynne Jones

About the author: Lynne Jones is a psychiatrist and writer who has lived and traveled extensively in Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia. She is the author of the book States of Change: A Central European Diary.

“Nationalism is currently the main motor of history,” British journalist Neal Ascherson stated at a talk in the autumn of 1991. And even the most cursory reading of the media would bear this out. The multinational post-Communist states are disintegrating; native peoples throughout the Americas are gaining a new assertiveness in challenging the legacy of Columbus; Germans are asking for self-determination in the Italian South Tyrol; and a poll in Scotland showed that half of those interviewed wanted Scotland to be fully independent while a further 27 percent wanted more powers handed over from Westminster.

To anyone interested in the psychological aspects...