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appeared in certain nationalist doctrines in the 19th century. Nationalism is frequently associated with anti-liberal tendencies. It is often expressed in a strident emotional voice, appearing to prefer the aims of the nation over those of its individual members. In its extreme manifestations it displays aggression towards other nations and ethnic groups, is obsessed with myths about its ‘glorious past’, and develops leadership cults. But there were also milder, more humane, forms of nationalism that took their cue from liberal beliefs and that were enthused by liberal ideals. Foremost among those ideals was liberty, now transplanted into the increasingly popular doctrine of national self-determination or self-rule. Liberty was seen as a good not only for individuals but for national and ethnic groups eager to acquire the recognized capacity to decide their own fates. Given that many of those groups were under foreign or colonial rule, the plea for liberty became specifically a plea for emancipation from domination by others, with republican or anti-imperialist undertones. Self-determination was thus advanced as a universal and equal right of all nations. The cultivation of national identity was, from a liberal viewpoint, part of the respect due to individuals, for whom such identity mattered. A prominent exponent of liberal nationalism was Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72), one of the architects of the unification of Italy in the 19th century. Mazzini commended the individual right to well-being but regarded a person’s country as the ultimate protector of those rights. For him, a nation was an association of free and equal people bound together by love of country.

The rise of social liberalism
    Significantly, liberalism was coming to terms with the fact that groups and communities were formative social units. True, there still were tensions between the more individualistic and the more communal tendencies within liberalism and those were not resolved in the 19th and 20th centuries, nor have they been since. But the flame of sociability, already detectable in the proto-liberalisms of earlier centuries, now began to blaze strongly. The main site of that new illumination was not a liberal nationalism but a liberal communitarianism. A number of factors contributed to that further change of direction of liberal thought.
    First, instead of a theory of individual utility as advocated by the Benthamite Philosophic Radicals, a new notion of social utility came to the fore. If individuals could maximize their own well-being, some liberals asked why that could not apply to societies as well. Inspired also by continental philosophers, a number of British liberals argued that society was entitled to pursue social goods, provided that they did not clash with individual rights. Indeed, there were areas of social activity, such as investment in long-term future projects or the protection of marginalized groups, that were beyond the capacity of individuals to facilitate.
    Second, new theories of social evolution were gaining ground. The influence of Charles Darwin stretched way beyond the natural sciences. Some theories of social evolution were notorious for apparently suggesting that the survival of the fittest principle operated also among human beings and that—nature being ‘red in tooth and claw’, in Alfred Tennyson’s memorable phrase—competition and the elimination of rivals were inescapable. But another version of evolutionary theory, less dramatic but in the long run more influential, maintained that human beings were becoming more rational and sociable. Unlike all previous forms of life—so the argument ran—that process endowed them with the ability to change the trajectory of evolution itself and to plan the course of their own futures in conjunction with others. Left-leaning liberals were fascinated by that theory’s message. It appealed to their belief in human rationality and in the making of valuable choices for