Origins and Characteristics of Macro‐Nationalism: A Reflection on Pan‐Latinism's Emergence at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Appearing across Europe in the late nineteenth century, macro‐nationalist movements or pan‐movements – pan‐Latinism among them – participated in the ‘first globalisation’. During that period, European powers’ new domination of a considerable part of the world gradually homogenised the planet politically and economically. In this context, the pan‐movements placed nationalism on a larger scale than ever before. Mining various cultural, linguistic and ‘racial’ criteria, each macro‐nationalist movement promoted projects of supra‐national integration among all German‐speaking, Slavic‐speaking or Romance‐speaking peoples. Proposing a conceptual framework for analysing this phenomenon, this article situates macro‐nationalism within nationalism's broader history, underscoring similarities and differences in relation to the dominant model of nation‐state nationalism. I show how the pan‐movements drew constitutive elements from different phases in nineteenth‐century nationalism and became crystallised in a context marked by intensified armed conflicts and imperial rivalries. Focusing on the case of pan‐Latinism, I highlight the major role played by intellectual and political elites in this ideology's development and discuss the extent of its relevance to other social classes.