Nationalism is a sense of identity with the nation.

It is similar to tribalism, and

like the family, is held together by a sense of kinship.

As a term, resource nationalism is an ill-defined and indeterminate concept. It is

used in this study to describe the desire of the people of resource rich countries
to derive more economic benefit from their natural resources. It also addresses
the resolution of their governments to exercise greater control of their
respective countries non-renewable natural resource sectors. The key tenets of
the sentiment are the:
 Political doctrine on state ownership of natural resources
 Perception that the state can both effectively and efficiently unlock
resources, and facilitate a more
 Inclusive and equitable dispensation of mineral rents
 Political need for employment creation and facilitating higher levels of
labor absorption
 Leveraging the mining sector to enhance the strategic and fiscal capacity
of the state through rents
 Quest for value-addition from the raw material produced
 Minerals-related industrialization and the accompanying economic
diversification driven by the
 Extractive sectors. The critical issue here is the manner in which this is to
be achieved.
It was nationalism that cemented most of the European powers in the modern
era, turning them from dynastic states into nation-states, and it was the spread of
nationalist ideology that helped destroy the British, French, Ottoman, Dutch,
Portuguese, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian/Soviet empires. Nationalism is the
main reason the United Nations had fifty-one members immediately after its
founding in 1945 and has nearly 200 members today. It is why the Zionists
wanted a state for the Jewish people and why Palestinians want a state of their
own today. It is what enabled the Vietnamese to defeat both the French and the
American armies during the Cold War. It is also why Kurds and Chechens still
aspire to statehood; why Scots have pressed for greater autonomy within the
United Kingdom, and it is why we now have a Republic of South Sudan.

Understanding the power of nationalism also tells you a lot about what is
happening today in the European Union. During the Cold War, European
integration flourished because it took place inside the hot-house bubble
provided by American protection. Today, however, the United States is losing
interest in European security, the Europeans themselves face few external
threats, and the EU project itself has expanded too far and badly overreached by
creating an ill-advised monetary union. What we are seeing today, therefore, is
a gradual renationalization of European foreign policy, fueled in part by
incompatible economic preferences and in part by recurring fears that local (i.e.,
national) identities are being threatened. When Danes worry about Islam,
Catalans demand autonomy, Flemish and Walloons contend in Belgium, Germans
refuse to bail out Greeks, and nobody wants to let Turkey into the EU, you are
watching nationalism at work.

The power of nationalism is easy for realists to appreciate and understand, as my

sometime collaborator John Mearsheimer makes clear in an important new
paper. Nations -- because they operate in a competitive and sometimes
dangerous world -- seek to preserve their identities and cultural values. In many
cases, the best way for them to do that is to have their own state, because ethnic
or national groups that lack their own state are usually more vulnerable to
conquest, absorption, and assimilation.

Nationalism in Brazil:
Brazil was initially a colony of Portugal, established during the Portuguese
colonization of the Americas. Historians are not sure on the precise moment
when Brazilians developed a local nationalism, distinct from the Portuguese one.
In some cases it is pointed to the discovery itself, in others it is attributed to the
explorations of the bandeirantes or the South American theater of the Dutch–
Portuguese War in the 17th century.
Still, the first cases of a strong nationalist sentiment emerged in the 19th century.
The white Brazilian-born colonial oligarchy developed sentiments against the
colonial system, and manifested hostility to the Portuguese authorities. There
were local conspiracies to secede from Portugal as early as in 1789, but the
Independence of Brazil took place in the 1820s, after the transfer of the
Portuguese Court to Brazil during the Napoleonic Wars. Brazilians had a desire
for self-governance and resented that wealth of the nation was taken to Portugal.
After independence, Brazilian nationalism maintained its anti-Portuguese
sentiment, expanding to anti-British and anti-Spanish American sentiments
(specially against the countries of the Río de la Plata Basin, Argentina, Paraguay
and Uruguay), shaping an anti-foreign nationalism. The anti-Portuguese
sentiment was in fact a common sentiment across all of Brazil, and helped to
keep the country unified during the late colonial periods and the first chaotic
years after independence. The Brazilian monarchy was also a unifying factor, as
the majority of the elite accepted the authority of the kings and feared the
consequences of a potential revolution of their slaves. The elite envisioned a
country of white peoples, but the slaves and mulattos composed almost the two-
thirds of the Brazilian population. For this end, they encouraged European
immigration, to increase the number of white people.
The anti-Portuguese sentiment also led to an increased use of the French
language, in detriment of the Portuguese language. France was seen at the time
as a model of civilization and progress. The literary nationalism began in the
1840s with the works of José de Alencar, who used French literary models to
describe the regions and social milieus of Brazil. Nationalist literary works
became more complex in the second half of the 19th century.