Anyone familiar with Ernest Gellner's work cannot help but be struck by the tension that runs throughout it over the inevitability and the contingency of nationalism. On the one hand, Gellner identified the rise of nationalism with the global, secular transition from Agraria to Industria. Challenging liberal and Marxist claims that nationalism was in fundamental conflict with the requirements of modern society, Gellner maintained that nationalism rather was rooted in industrialism – and specifically, its generalisation of a ‘high culture’ as a means for effecting a complex and constantly shifting division of labour. As Gellner wrote, ‘Although those who participate in it generally, indeed almost without exception, fail to understand what it is that they do, the movement is none the less the external manifestation of a deep adjustment in the relationship between polity and culture which is quite unavoidable.’

At the same time, Gellner consistently maintained that nationalism in its specific manifestations was ‘a contingency, not a universal necessity’. For Gellner, it was the dog that failed to bark that provided the vital clue to understanding nationalism and, specifically, the arbitrariness of its particular incarnation, in sharp contrast to the primordial and inevitabilist claims of nationalists themselves; as he argued, ‘most potential nationalisms must either fail, or, more commonly, will refrain from even trying to find political expression’. ‘Nationalism as such is fated to prevail’, he wrote, ‘but not any one particular nationalism.’