LAUSR

Abstract This article revisits the debate on the modernity of nations considering recent critical approaches to national phenomena. It proposes an alternative model that addresses the existence of empirical evidence about nations before the 19th century without erasing key changes in the history of nationhood, such as the rise of the principle of national sovereignty. The model draws on existing literature and a corpus of British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese ego-documents from the Age of Revolutions. The study of patterns of usage of national languages in these life narratives supports the abandonment of the premodern/modern antinomy and the implementation of a more complex account. The proposal distinguishes republican, genetic, nonpoliticized ethnotypical, politicized ethnotypical, liberal, romantic, biological, cultural, and democratic forms of nationhood. It then develops the genetic and the ethnotypical forms using source materials and readdresses the issue of “modernity” in the light of this evidence.