Nationalism is a political ideology based on the principle that each nation has the right to form its own State to achieve the social, economic and cultural objectives or aspirations of a people, especially the achievement of an independent state. This ideology is characterized above all by the feeling of community of a nation, derived from common origins, religion, language and interests. It is a way of thinking that defends a nation or a region above everything, even above people. As a consequence of the French revolutionin Europe there was an extraordinary spread of nationalist sentiments opposed to the principle of dynastic legitimacy, according to which countries were nothing but patrimonial properties of kings.
In other parts of Europe, nationalism arose partly due to the same liberal ideals that the revolution transmitted, and also due to the influence of the idealistic and romantic doctrines that began to develop in Germany from the end of the 18th century.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, the nationalist ideal gradually spread to all the peoples of the world, and thus became one of the fundamental ideological elements of human societies. The inhabitants of a country would no longer be mere subjects of a king but citizens of a nation whose cultural essences confronted the very being of each individual.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, discrepancies developed between nationalists, thus producing serious conflicts between nations, most world wars began with nationalist disputes. Today, there are also terrorist organizations that commit assassinations under this pretext.
En el ámbito de la música, el nacionalismo fue un movimiento musical que surgió a mediados del siglo XIX con objeto de reafirmar los valores esenciales de cada raza o nación a través de su música popular o de su folclore.
