@ OP, question: How much are we talking of nationalism as shorthand for:
"Primary political identities and loyalties are not as the citizen of a large state, and cut across or within large states (what we'd call internationalism or localism, lacking a more fitting term)"
rather than as shorthand for "States in theory are imagined to properly coincide with a single ethno-linguistic group".
The latter seems possible to imagine butterflying - it already doesn't really apply in the UK for just one example of a state with at least four "nations".
Removing the former out seems to preclude any kind of functioning large modern states, ones where individuals are willing to pay substantially into the state, economically, and become committed to and involved in its political and military processes.
On another note, just as another general question (without thinking about it too deeply), how much of the story of nationalism in Europe (and the world) is the story that groups were faced with the problem of collapse of existing states and empires due to war, and then had to find a political logic to put a viable state back together again? What happens if you're part of a multi-ethnic, dynastically defined empire and the dynasty collapses?
"Primary political identities and loyalties are not as the citizen of a large state, and cut across or within large states (what we'd call internationalism or localism, lacking a more fitting term)"
rather than as shorthand for "States in theory are imagined to properly coincide with a single ethno-linguistic group".
The latter seems possible to imagine butterflying - it already doesn't really apply in the UK for just one example of a state with at least four "nations".
Removing the former out seems to preclude any kind of functioning large modern states, ones where individuals are willing to pay substantially into the state, economically, and become committed to and involved in its political and military processes.
On another note, just as another general question (without thinking about it too deeply), how much of the story of nationalism in Europe (and the world) is the story that groups were faced with the problem of collapse of existing states and empires due to war, and then had to find a political logic to put a viable state back together again? What happens if you're part of a multi-ethnic, dynastically defined empire and the dynasty collapses?