What’s the Difference Between Patriotism and Nationalism?

They’re two words that get a lot of people talking these days, and not necessarily in a good way. They’re also two words that are sometimes used interchangeably, as both effectively refer to some manner of pride in or loyalty to your home country. But despite their similarities, there’s a distinction between patriotism and nationalism—and it’s not quite as clear-cut as many people think.

Yes, patriotism tends to be used more positively, and we might talk of someone who’s done something “wonderfully patriotic” for their country. Nationalism, meanwhile, tends to be viewed more negatively and is associated with movements all over the world that aggressively (and even violently) promote one country above all others. Yet the difference between these two runs a lot deeper that just good vs. bad. To get to the bottom of precisely how these words have ended up being used the way they are today, we need to take them back to their roots. 

1. Quick Definitions
2. Putting the Patriot in Patriotism 
3. Putting the Nation in Nationalism
4. Putting the Chauvin in Chauvinism 
5. Putting the Jingo in Jingoism 
6. Nations Divided

Quick Definitions

Putting the Patriot in Patriotism 

The word patriotism popped up before nationalism—its earliest known use in the written record dates to the mid-1600s, when the Scottish writer and translator Sir Thomas Urquhart wrote of “a knot of Scottish bankers” in London, who are so “rapacious” in their love of money and property that they “hug all unto themselves,” with no respect of “vertue, honor, kinred, patriotism, or whatever else” [sic].

In his characteristically wordy style, Urquhart labeled these unscrupulous characters “quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets.” His love of toying with language and inventing his own words (quomodocunquizing means “making money by any means necessary,” by the way) suggests that he may have seen fit to coin the word patriotism, too, given that his writing is, to date, its earliest known attestation. Whether or not that’s the case, the word is clearly based on the earlier noun patriot, which was adopted into English from French in mid-1500s, and from there can be traced back via Latin to a Greek word meaning “father”—so a patriot, ultimately, is someone who loves or remains steadfastly loyal to their “fatherland.”  

Putting the Nation in Nationalism

Nationalism appears to be a more recent invention: It was recorded in English in 1798. The word nationalist was in use slightly earlier, in 1791 (and an even earlier use of that word has been unearthed in the mid-1600s, albeit in a different context referring to the church). Continue stepping further back in time, and we can trace all of these national words, via French, to a Latin word meaning “birth.” So while patriotism is loyalty to the land of one’s fathers, nationalism is, quite literally, loyalty to the land where you were born.

If those two literal meanings sound strikingly similar, there’s a good reason for that. At the time of their earliest appearances in the language, both nationalism and patriotism were essentially used in the same way: to describe little more than a person’s devotion to a single country. The earliest record of nationalism that we know about, in fact, defines it as simply “the love for a particular nation.” The two words continued to be used in this overlapping way throughout the 1800s, remaining mostly free from negative connotations. Elsewhere in the language, however, things were beginning to turn a little sour.

Putting the Chauvin in Chauvinism 

It’s not a word that you might expect to encounter in a discussion of nationalist fervor, but chauvinism originally referred to a kind of overbearing, blindly unquestioning love and advocacy for one’s own country—precisely the kind of worldview that we might describe as nationalist today.

Etymologically, the word chauvinism alludes to Nicolas Chauvin, a (possibly fictitious) 17-year-old soldier in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Armée of the early 1800s. Despite supposedly being severely injured in his service to his country and the Napoleonic cause, Chauvin was apparently happy with his 200-franc military pension and various honors and decorations, and maintained an undying loyalty to Napoleon’s imperialist France long after his retirement and his return to his quiet life in the French countryside.

His unquestioning loyalty to his country’s cause was either later satirized (or invented, since no one is entirely sure whether Chauvin genuinely existed) in an 1831 theatrical revue called La Cocarde Tricolore (“The Tricolor Cockade”). The show’s enormous success doubtless helped to popularize chauvinism as a byword for this kind of excessively nationalist way of thinking, and eventually the word slipped into use in English in the 1850s. There, over time, it came to be used more generally of any kind of unreasonably superior attitude—and in particular, that of a male chauvinist.

At around the same time, across the Channel in England, Chauvin’s brand of ultranationalism was being lampooned in another form of 19th-century entertainment. 

Putting the Jingo in Jingoism 

In the mid-1870s, a music hall singer and comic named G.H. MacDermott, a.k.a. “The Great MacDermott,” achieved considerable success with a song entitled “We Don’t Want To Fight,” or “MacDermott’s War Song.”

At the time, Britain and Russia were engaged in a bitter and protracted imperialist rivalry over their control of central Asia—a period now known as the Great Game—which led to the two superpowers clashing multiple times throughout the 1800s. In the decades following the Crimean War (1853–56) in particular, Britain’s stance with Russia became increasingly hardened, so that when Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877, the British government sided with the Turks, and sent a fleet into Turkish waters to dissuade the Russians. “MacDermott’s War Song,” written by legendary music hall artist G.W. Hunt, summed up the war-weary yet resolute attitude of much of the country of the time:

“We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo! if we do
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.
We’ve fought the bear before, and while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.”

By Jingo has been a British expression of surprise or resolve since the 1600s (possibly a reappropriation of magicians’ presto-esque call of “jingo!” into a minced oath invoking Jesus). But as rousing as MacDermott’s song may have been, not everyone was quite so happy with the prospect of Britain entering into another costly and protracted war with Russia on the other side of the continent. In March 1878, a report in London’s Daily News labeled those who supported the government’s aggressive foreign policy “Jingoes,” in light of the success of MacDermott’s tune. Before long, their worldview also came to be called “jingoism”—a term that, just like chauvinism before it, was used to refer to an undying and unquestioning belief in the power and eventual triumph of one’s own country. 

Nations Divided

The near-constant conflicts and strained international relations of the 1800s pushed people’s patriotism to its limits. As belligerent nations and power-hungry leaders had repeatedly encroached on national borders, declared war on one another, and invaded sovereign territory, some of the people in the middle of it all became intent on defending their home and local way of life. Fiercely proud nationalist movements emerged all over the world, including in France (in the aftermath of the Napoleon era), Italy (which had only recently unified), and South and Central America (where independence movements sought to sever ties with colonial rulers).

But as these senses of self became more heightened, a new kind of isolationist advocacy for one’s own country began to infect politics around the world—and a new term became necessary to describe the sentiment. It was around this time that the meaning of nationalism began to shift away from that of patriotism. While patriotism remains attached to a kind of positive and sometimes selfless devotion to the cause of one’s own country, nationalism has come to be used of the viewpoint that promotes one country above, and at the expense of, all others.

As the world and our politics have continued to change, precisely how that “country” or “nation” defines and draws boundaries around itself has changed too, with some nationalist movements today promoting the cause of a single culture or group within that country’s population. These increasingly accentuated divisions (and the fact that some nationalist movements embraced more violent means of achieving their goals) means the word has amassed more negative associations. What once had been merely a synonym of patriotism, therefore, has gradually shifted into increasingly darker territory, reflecting a similar shift in the politics of the modern world.

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