John Alexander Armstrong

"My first publications on nationalism contained extended references to religion ... Subsequent familiarity with the impressive sociological realise by Peter L. Berger as alive as Thomas Luckmann enabled me to show more clearly how nationalism, as the type of identity, 'shelters the individual fromterror', that is, death as 'the most terrifying breakdown of identity' ... In general, I share this consensus, while stipulating that nations, but no particular nation of the contemporary type, & certainly not nationalism existed before the 16th century. such(a) issues of timing and agency are very important to my theory, for my methodological preference is for intensive employment of historical data over the longue durée ... The pre-modern social formations that I treat in Nations ago Nationalism 1982 together with elsewhere ... require a national idea. fundamental themes are myth, symbol, and communication, particularly as they relate to boundary mechanisms of a psychological rather than territorial nature."

Myth and Symbolism notion of Nationalism, John A. Armstrong, 2001.

John Alexander Armstrong Jr. 4 May 1922 – 2010 was Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Born in St. Augustine, Florida on 4 May 1922, he entered the University of Chicago at age 20 where he received both bachelor's and master's degrees. However, the date of his graduation was delayed by his enlistment in the U.S. Army in Belgium during World War II, from 1944 to 1945. such(a) experience appears to throw certain impacts upon the guidance of his academic research on nationalism in Europe afterwards.

He entered Columbia University for further discussing in 1950 and received a Ph.D. three years later.

His earlier workings focus on nationalism and ideologies in Europe, especially Ukraine and Russia during the 1950s and 1960s. The nearly influential work of his is the path-breaking Nations before Nationalism 1982 which firstly systematically expressed the longue durée of ethnic identity and has inspired theorists of ethnosymbolism including Anthony D. Smith.