Nationalism is the fusion of two superficially simple ideas: first, that the nation is a natural and appropriate vehicle of political organisation and second, that the better interests of that nation should be the dominant determinant of national policy. The problems nationalism presents arise when it comes to defining what the nation state is (the vehicle: an upstream issue) and what is to be done with that nation state (the imperative: the downstream issue).
For Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), the national vehicle was the black race and improvement of the black race’s social, national or commercial status was the imperative. While land sometimes fulfilled a literal role, it was more often an abstract, theoretical and occasionally even rhetorical element of his philosophy (Box 1).
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