This book goes to press at a time of persistent national strife on a world-wide scale. The events in New York on 11 September 2001 have only underlined the relevance of gaining deeper insight into the subject of nation-states in historical context. At that time, the manuscript of this volume was ready to be edited for publication.

During the four years of preparation of its content the editors and authors could draw on the experience gained from the fruitful collaboration with colleagues on the collection of essays contained in Economic Change and the National Question in Twentieth-Century Europe. The opportunity to expand the scale and scope of this theme occurred to the editors in connection with organising the Session of the International Economic History Association for the Nineteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslo (6–13 August 2000) on ‘Economic Change and the Building of the Nation-State in History’. We had indeed been aware that the exploration of the economic element in the building of nation-states should not be confined to Europe and, therefore, cases cover all continents.

The notion of the ‘nation-state’ – as a distinctive framework of modern polity – has its roots in the late Enlightenment and early Romanticism. It connects with the materialisation of novel ‘public sphere’ in Europe against the background of the disintegration of the feudal system, including the repudiation of (Western) Christendom's claim to universality, and the rise of civil (bürgerlich) society.

In this process a major agency was the absolutist state.