A nationalist movement is a social and political movement for obtaining and maintaining national identity and autonomy among a group of people that some of its members consider a nation. The underlying principle of its motivating ideology, nationalism, is to uphold national interest or national identity as the primary basis on which political decisions are made.

Most historians agree that, as an ideology, nationalism became prevalent in North America and Western Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and shortly thereafter in Latin America. The first wave of nationalist movements reached its peak during the 1848 revolutions in Europe, which led to the unification of Germany and Italy. Toward the end of the nineteenth century a second wave swept Eastern and Northern Europe, as well as Japan, India, Armenia, and Egypt. Soon nationalist movements spread to most of Asia and parts of Africa. In the...