Primordialism

Primordialism or perennialism is the argument which contends that nations are ancient, natural phenomena.

Primordialism can be traced philosophically to the ideas of German Romanticism, particularly in the works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Johann Gottfried Herder. For Herder, the nation was synonymous with language group. In Herder's thinking, language was synonymous with thought, and as each language was learnt in community, then each community must think differently. This also suggests that the community would hold a fixed nature over time.

Primordialism encountered enormous criticism after the Second World War, with a few scholars of nationalism coming to treat the nation as a community constructed by the technologies and politics of modernity. Though largely rejected by most theorists of nationalism, some of its ideas have found parallels in ethnosymbolism.