Finally, spatial extension of the interest circle into greater distances—not necessarily coinciding with its actual enlargement—is what enables the individual to confront at least his narrower circle in an egoistic way. Until the time of Henry III and Edward I, English status groups were deeply divided because their interests extended variously beyond their homeland. An English nobleman had a much more intense interest in a foreign war conducted by other nobles than in domestic struggles over the law. An urbanite was much more interested in the orderliness of the commercial situation in the Netherlands than in that of English cities, unless some matter directly touched his own concerns. The great officers of the church felt themselves to be members of an international ecclesiastical entity, rather than showing any specifically English sympathies. Only after Henry and Edward did these classes begin to merge into a unified nation, and with that the segregation ceased whose egoistic character had been associated in every respect with the earlier cosmopolitan extensions of interest.

XREF: Connects to the sociology of nationalism debates (Anderson, Gellner) and to theories that nationalism emerged only with modernity — here Simmel ties it to interest-circle geography.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 700