Origins of the Concept of “National Sovereignty”: The Role of the Word “Nation”

This essay constitutes the first part of an investigation into the origin and consequences of the concept of “national sovereignty,” focusing specifically on the concept of “nation” as derived from the Latin natio and the languages that adopted this lexical root. Consequently, this conceptual analysis is circumscribed strictly to the philological sphere of the Latin word, excluding terms in other languages that do not originate from natio. Most notably, natio initially functioned as a synonym for the Latin gens, carrying a slightly negative nuance. The author compares natio primarily with other Latin terms for “community”—chiefly populus, patria, and civitas—and examines early attempts at definition by Quintilian and Saint Isidore of Seville. The collapse of long-distance human relations from the fifth century onward facilitated the transformation of Latin and the formation of the Romance languages. Under the author’s hypothesis, this shift prevented the Latin word gens from being recovered in the sense of “nation,” causing it to take on the broader meaning of “people.” As gens became relegated to the strictly legal domain (ius gentium), natio and its derivatives progressively established themselves in common usage. Nevertheless, natio continued to denote a community defined by kinship. Because kinship inherently involves degrees, a distinction arose between “general nations” and “particular nations.” Each “particular nation” formed part of a “general nation,” giving rise to “nations of nations” composed of smaller constituent units. The author details the role played by universities and councils of the Roman Church, particularly from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. From the fifteenth century onward, a “territorialization” of the concept of “nation” emerges in certain countries, potentially linked to the evolving meaning of the word “State.” Finally, this text anticipates the impact of introducing the idea of “national sovereignty,” illustrating this dynamic through the case of the Spanish Monarchy and its extension to the antipodes from the sixteenth century onward.