Is nationalism necessarily aggressive and expansionist (45 Marks)

Nationalism has been viewed as the ideology which has an aggressive and expansionist view on life. The reason of this can be blamed on the ideologies very selfish view, always wanting what is best for the group of people involved rather than the collective like if we go to the ideology of socialism or liberalism. However to really view and to see if the ideology of nationalism is expansive and aggressive the best thing to do would be to look at the different types of nationalism that come up in history and to try and analyse these to see if they are necessarily aggressive and expansionist. These types are Liberal nationalism, Cultural nationalism, conservative nationalism and then expansionist nationalism.

Within the ideology of liberal nationalism there is very little evidence to suggest that it is aggressive and expansionist. Since this form of nationalism is a hybrid between liberalism and nationalism it can be viewed as a form of nationalism that is less self obsessed because it also cares more about the people within the nation instead of just generally the nation. Also the early liberal nationalist believed highly in something called self-determination this is where some nations believed that they should be free from nation states. This therefore means that maybe they can be viewed as expansionist since some countries who were once owned by others are now asking to be freed within the argument of self determination and some could be seen to get aggressive. However it can also be argued that they are only reclaiming what they lost so therefore they are not being expansionist. This is like the idea of Manzinni wanting Italy to be freed of nation states.

The idea of conservative nationalism can be viewed as a bit more aggressive then Liberal Nationalism only because of the fact of there views on immigration.