A person who advocates for autonomy or self-governance, especially in political contexts; someone who believes in individual or regional independence.
From autonomy + -ist (one who believes in or practices something). Emerged in 19th-century political discourse to describe advocates of local or individual self-determination.
Autonomists were especially important in European politics—they fought for regions to have their own governments rather than be ruled from a distant capital. Today, independence movements in Scotland, Catalonia, and elsewhere carry on autonomist thinking.
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