Editing Nation (section)

=== Criticisms ===
In contrast, Geary rejects the conflation of early medieval and contemporary group identities as a myth, arguing it is a mistake to conclude continuity based on the recurrence of names. He criticizes historians for failing to recognize the differences between earlier ways of perceiving group identities and more contemporary attitudes, stating they are "trapped in the very historical process we are attempting to study".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Özkirimli |first1=Umut |title=Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction |date=2010 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=London |pages=77–78 |edition=2nd}}</ref>

Similarly, [[Sami Zubaida]] notes that many states and empires in history ruled over ethnically diverse populations, and "shared ethnicity between ruler and ruled did not always constitute grounds for favour or mutual support". He goes on to argue ethnicity was never the primary basis of identification for the members of these multinational empires.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Özkirimli |first1=Umut |title=Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction |date=2010 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=London |pages=77–78 |edition=2nd}}</ref>

Paul Lawrence criticises Hastings's reading of [[Bede]]'s ''[[Ecclesiastical History of the English People]]'' as evidence of an early [[English national identity]], instead observing that those writing so-called 'national' histories may have "been working with a rather different notion of 'the nation' to those writing history in the modern period". Lawrence goes on to argue that such documents do not demonstrate how ordinary people identified themselves, pointing out that, while they serve as texts in which an elite defines itself, "their significance in relation to what the majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lawrence|first1=Paul|editor1-last=Breuilly |editor1-first=John |title=The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism |date=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-876820-3 |page=715 |chapter=Nationalism and Historical Writing}}</ref>