I wouldn't be too sure of that. Rambo is still very much alive and kicking. :)
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Britain's chief colonial rival was the French Empire. Britain went to war allied with France. Germany was seeking a dominant position on the continent. The colonies were peripheral and when war came they were left largely to their own devices.
Patriotism is a sentiment. Nationalism is an ideology predicated on the political sovereignty of a people. There is no getting around that. I do think I understand why the English, for example, favor this ahistorical conception of nationalism and that's because the national aspirations of the English were never frustrated or at least not for a very long time.
So it wasn’t just about France and Germany, it brought down empires and reshaped the world order, as did WW2 as did the previous Napoleonic wars and all the others before it, because the winners of large conflicts reshape geography and economics.
‘Patriotism is a sentiment. Nationalism is an ideology predicated on the political sovereignty of a people.’ Trying to get my head around that. The differences between patriotism and nationalism are not an English invention, they’re part of political definitions. For instance, it helps us understand why Nuremberg happened and it wasn’t because the Germans were patriots.
No one said it was just about France and Germany. No one said it was just about anything. I'm not sure what your point is here or at least how it relates to anything I've said.
No one said either were English inventions but that nationalism is predicated on the political sovereignty of a people isn't controversial. You mentioned Austria-Hungary. That's one of the more patently obvious illustrations of 1) the desire for political sovereignty at the heart of nationalism and 2) the internal (not external) thrust of nationalism.