[NewsyHacker]

Some aspects of nationalism can certainly be traced to the Enlightenment. For example, the concept of one country = one language stemmed from the ideologues of the French revolution, who swiftly went to work suppressing regional languages in their own country. This fell like a lit match on Austro-Hungary, where each ethnic group now felt even greater pressure to carve out its own space on linguistic grounds.

[jackcosgrove]

I grant that the Enlightenment principle of the commonality of all people would lead to a universal language, and ending regional languages is the first step of that. However delineating linguistic boundaries based on national ones seems more like a throwback to the Westphalian settlement than to a universalizing movement. Just because something happened during the ferment of the Enlightenment doesn't mean its pedigree is pure; there are always atavistic forces at work.

[dirtyhippiefree]

You’re missing the key point expressed as exchanging theological conflict for political conflict through nationalism. Humans are a predator species and that doesn’t change.

To wit: “ Hume and his acolytes had not counted on the translation of superstition and intolerance from religion into politics. Just as soon as people stopped being willing to kill and die for their religion, they started killing and dying for their country.”

[hef19898]

Austria-Hungary collapsed after WW1, quite some time after Enlightment. It survived the Napoleonic Wars just fine.

[saghm]

I thought that the political entity was known as the Holy Roman Empire up to the Napoleonic wars, and that Austria-Hungary was what it went by after. Maybe that's their point; at least nominally the basis of the empire went from being religious to being based on secular culture/ethnicity, and eventually a lot of the land previously part of the Holy Roman Empire instead eventually merged with Prussia into what became Germany.

[NewsyHacker]

Austria-Hungary finally collapsed after an entire 19th century full of ethnic strife, where many ideologues specifically pointed to French Revolution values.