Nationalism is a movement and a state of mind that brings together national identity, consciousness, and collectivities. It accomplished the great transformation from the old order to modernity; it placed imagination above production, distribution and exchange; and it changed the nature of power over people and territories that shapes and directs the social and political world. A five-state study that spans 500 years, this is a historically oriented work. The theme suggests that England was the front runner, with its earliest sense of self-conscious nationalism and its pragmatic ways; it utilized existing institutions while transforming itself; the Americans followed, with no formed institutions to impede them. France, Germany, and Russia took the same, now marked, path, modifying nationalism in the process. Nationalism is based on empirical data in four languages - legal documents, period dictionaries, memories, correspondence, literary works, theological, political, and philosophical writings, biographies, statistics, and histories. It explains the complex interaction of structural, cultural, and psychological factors and are concepts like identity, anomie, and elites.