Empires are more like the opposite of nationalism than an example of it, even if the metropoles of empires tends to be nationalist. Nationalism is about the view that particular “people’s”, defined ethnically or just be citizenship should be sovereign and proud of it, empire is about the idea that one country can rule over many people’s. This is kind of a nitpick, as having stable coherent national identity maybe did help industiral rev start in Britain, I don’t know this history well enough to say. But in any case, the British Empire was hardly obviously net positive, it did huge damage to India in the 18th century for example (amongt many awful human rights abuses), when India was very developed by 18th century standards. And it’s not clear it was necessary for the industrial revolution to happen. Raw materials could have been bought rather than stolen for example, and Smith thought slavery was less efficient than free labour.
Empires are more like the opposite of nationalism than an example of it, even if the metropoles of empires tends to be nationalist. Nationalism is about the view that particular “people’s”, defined ethnically or just be citizenship should be sovereign and proud of it, empire is about the idea that one country can rule over many people’s. This is kind of a nitpick, as having stable coherent national identity maybe did help industiral rev start in Britain, I don’t know this history well enough to say. But in any case, the British Empire was hardly obviously net positive, it did huge damage to India in the 18th century for example (amongt many awful human rights abuses), when India was very developed by 18th century standards. And it’s not clear it was necessary for the industrial revolution to happen. Raw materials could have been bought rather than stolen for example, and Smith thought slavery was less efficient than free labour.