Nationalism in most West European states after 18th century meet the criterion of political nationalism, which is also the nationalism that modernists including Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson refer to in their works.
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Such conclusion of features of cultural nationalism is based upon Hutchinson's observation of nationalism of late nineteenth century India and China, respectively represented by Swami Vivekananda and Liang Qichao.
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He emphasised the boundaries for human identity by adopting the social interaction model of Fredrik Barth and argues that 'groups tend to define themselves not by reference to their own characteristics but by exclusion, that is, by comparison to "strangers"'.
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Nonetheless, in his later works, he agrees with most modernists including Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm that national identity had been an invention, and the only remaining disagreement would be 'over the antiquity of some inventions and the repertory of pre-existing group characteristics that inventors were able to draw upon'.