Abstract.This article considers the debate that has recently developed in studies of nationalism between those scholars who see the nation as a modern and constantly changing constructionex nihiloand those who see it as an immemorial, unchanging communal essence. It outlines the so‐called ‘gastronomical’ and ‘geological’ metaphors of nation formation and suggests a synthetic model which balances the influence of the ethnic past and the impact of nationalist activity. It shows that the central question which has divided theorists of nationalism is the place of the past in the life of modern nations. The author recognises the role of nationalists in national mobilisation but stresses that nationalists are not social engineers or mere image makers as modernist and post‐modernist accounts would have it, but rather social and political archaeologists whose activities consist in the rediscovery and reinterpretation of the ethnic past and through it the regeneration of their nationa