Nationalism and After

Carr argues that nationalism is not a primordial or natural phenomenon but a historical byproduct of industrial capitalism and the accompanying transformations in society and politics . He treats it as a specific stage in the evolution of political organization, one that became dominant through the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. The nation-state, in Carr's analysis, is at least as aggressive as individuals and 'probably less capable than any other groups in modern times of reaching agreement with one another' . Nationalism is therefore not a source of order but a persistent threat to international stability.

Carr argued that nationalism 'is being sapped by modern technological developments which have made the nation obsolescent as the unit of military and economic organization and are rapidly concentrating effective decision and control in the hands of great multinational units' . He predicted in 1945 that 'we shall not again see a Europe of 20, and a world of more than 60 independent sovereign states' . This prediction proved spectacularly wrong: decolonization multiplied the number of sovereign states far beyond sixty, making Carr's technological determinism one of the book's most criticized elements.

The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) dismantled interwar liberal utopianism by insisting that power is always an essential element in politics. Nationalism and After (1945) extends that realist critique but shifts its focus. Where the earlier book attacked the League of Nations as an expression of satisfied powers' interests, the later book diagnoses nationalism itself as the fundamental obstacle to international order . Carr does not abandon realism here, but he argues that a rational internationalism must be built on individual welfare rather than national security—a vision that some critics find surprisingly idealistic for the author of The Twenty Years' Crisis .

Carr predicted that technological and economic forces would concentrate power in 'great multinational units,' making the nation-state obsolete. He completely missed decolonization, which saw European empires rapidly dismantle and dozens of new sovereign states emerge across Asia and Africa . His technological determinism led him to underestimate the enduring political appeal of national self-determination, particularly among colonized peoples. The prediction's failure illustrates a broader limitation of Carr's method: his emphasis on structural economic forces left little room for the contingent political struggles that reshaped the post-war world.

The book was a best-selling classic when it appeared in 1945, sparking intense debate that has continued ever since . It was reissued by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021 with a new introduction by leading Carr scholar Michael Cox, who situates the work in Carr's career and the historical events that shaped it . As the world confronts a rising tide of nationalism, reviewers argue the book 'remains a beacon of hope in an era where reasoned critical analysis has never been more urgently required' . One contemporary assessment notes that while not widely read today, it 'speaks to our own time' .

Critics find Carr's preferred global arrangement objectionable. He ridicules the idea of equality among nations—arguing it is absurd to claim China, Albania, and Brazil are 'equals'—and instead insists that what matters is that individual Chinese, Albanians, and Brazilians are treated as equals . This leads him toward a vision of world government that many readers find unduly idealistic, especially coming from the realist who attacked utopianism. The tension between Carr's realist method and his internationalist prescription remains a central point of scholarly debate.