In another thread MrThompson posited that there would be more basis for a sort of United States of the Commonwealth and America’ made up by the US, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland and the UK than there is for the EU.
The basis of the argument being mainly shared language, but I suppose there is an idea of Anglo Saxon culture somewhere in there as well.
I’ll be the first to agree that if there even is such a thing as common culture across vast groups of people, language would be the cement that holds it together.
However, and perhaps needless to say I beg to differ on the position that this by default leads to a nation or political union of people.
Therefore what I propose to debate is:
Is there a natural division of the world along lines of shared language and culture, or are these ever-changing results from the political and social unions we create?
A sort of hen and egg question of nation making if you like.
Good question, but one, in my opinion, that isn’t easily answered. In my opinion, I think one should look at how human socieities have formed throughout history and pay particular attention to how the modern nation-state came into exisistence. I’m sure there’s been plenty of research done in finding similarities in the characteristics of nation-states and how they came into existence.
I think good place to begin would be to look at the societies “worldviews” (shared cultural characteristics that incorporate such aspects as religion and/or values). A common language is important in helping unite those who share a common worldveiw (and possibly in helping to create one as well).
So I don’t think language in and of itself is sufficient in helping to create nation-states.
In short, I do not think there are any natural divisions in how nation-states are formed, although I think key factors are a shared worldview and language. (I should note that as part of a groups shared worldview, I believe the types of social and political organizations that are valued amonst those in the group are part of that group’s worldview as well).
Maybe a better place to start would be to look at how human socieities in general first emerged. This would entail looking at all of human history way back to when homo spaiens sapiens first emerged (and possibly even further back if one were to derive a basis for the formation of groups pre-language. If so, then maybe the social/political organizations built around production (staying alive) and reproduction came first). But this is way before the formation of what we know as nation-states. Still, I think a “bottom up” approach to this question has some merit, if only from a historically perspective.
Sorry, I probably haven’t contributed much to the debate - but it’s an interesting question nonetheless.
I think that my native Croatia (and the former Jugoslavia) would be a great example towards this OP:
Croatia: Western European. Catholic. Close ties to Germany. The Croatian dialect of Serbo-Croatian reflects this, with many German words in use. During the civil war, Germany gave tacit and overt support to the Croatian war effort.
Serbia: Eastern European. Orthodox. Close ties to Russia. The Serbian dialect of Serbo-Croatian has many Russian words in use. During the civil war, Russia gave tacit (and some overt) support to the Serbian effort.
These differences/groupings have been in place for hundreds upon hundreds of years, to varying degrees. The root of this particular division goes back to the fall of Rome.
So to sum up: There are ‘natural’* divisions in the world. Those divisions, to some degree, are based on some cultural ties, but I would also argue that cultural ties are more important then economic ties, when deciding such divisions.
*Natural in the sense that there is no active effort by the states in question to foster such ties; The ties are ‘grandfathered’ in from previous generations. (I know, at some point they had to start…)
Samuel Huntington thinks there is a natural distinction between regions and peoples, or “civilisations” as he calls them. We had a long discussion about that theory about a year ago, when I was here in a different incarnation of myself
I recall the conclusion was that the divisions between civilisations are blurry, espcially in some areas, but they’re there.
Geography may play a crucial role. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Great Britain enjoyed at least some degree of geographic isolation at critical points in their formative years, as did Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea.
I suppose if I had to offer some counter-examples to illustrate the point, I’d say that the French Empire is the one which was most confounded by geography. In Algeria’s case, it definitely helped to keep the original population culturally separate from the colonizers, despite the fact that it was considered French territory.
It’s not a perfect theory, though. Madagascar and Sri Lanka aren’t on my list of places to go gawking around like a tourist, though they would appear to have similar geographic advantages to Japan and Britain. Perhaps they’re too hot? I don’t know.
However, it seems to me that if you can get and hold a place that’s relatively isolated long enough for the new nation-builders to brutally supress the locals until they have an insignificant voice in public policy, you have the makings of a beer-swilling, car-building, snout-counting nation.
Sounds like Serbia and Croatia would have needed to get married in the first place in order to get one.
I’ll expand on what Brutus said - and yes even if it might sound by my tone that I disagree with you Brutus, I do agree with you, have patience to the third paragraph and you shall see. Me agreeing with Brutus, who would have thunk it?
The claim that any of the ethnic groupings on the Balkans has a national history is ahistorical misinformation at best and propagandist agitprop at its worst.
In antiquity the region was first the cradle of empire building itself and then succumbed to hundreds of years as the battle grounds between Rome and the Eastern tribes and Rome and the Balkan tribes and the Eastern tribes and the Balkan tribes… I think you get my drift. In post Roman era the region has been contested land between three empires. One that embraced Catholicism, one Orthodoxy and the third Islam. The petty kings and princes that controlled the region during those times were submissive to those empires, shifting sides quite opportunistically. The idea of nation-states arises after 1648. It doesn’t become a solid movement until mid 19th century. The Balkans sees its first signs of nationalism after that and it is with the slow dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the latter part of that century that the idea of nationalism takes root. Before that there was no such thing as a ‘Croatian; or ‘Serbian’ national identity, just a bunch of people who sided with different factions who vied for control in the area.
Lest you think that I am singling out the Balkans, I might add that this can be applied to most every part of Europe, with the difference that other regions were fortunate enough to not be caught in the jaws of an imperial vise like the Balkans were. All of the ‘history’ of ‘national heroes’ and ‘wars of liberation’ that predates the revolutions 1848 or at the earliest 1618 are comical in the way that the heroes and warring fractions would have been completely nonplussed by the word nationalism or reference to the nation they were supposedly heroes of as a ‘nation’, I’d be highly surprised if they would have understood quite exactly what you meant if you said for instance France to Roland (if he ever existed). They themselves were inhabitants of nations much larger, the Empires, but it is even doubtful that they had the remotest concept of those as ‘nations’ they were just a bunch of guys with a chip on their shoulder about this or the other issue, usually related to finances or personal slights.
The linguistic and cultural differences are a result of this strife and in no way a natural division that can be traced back to a ‘national history’.
Back to the topic at hand with some short answers
Hardly a nation on earth has started out with a common language. Common language grows from need. Need grows from unity. Unity is created by for instance organizing people under one nation. The US is a perfect example. 220 odd years down the line the nation still doesn’t have a single common language, but English is continuously successful in establishing itself as that common language. It will take a few more generations before that is complete though.
I agree.
See language. Add that common culture is an absurdity. Think of a London socialite and then a Yorkshire hog farmer. Common culture? They might as well live in completely different worlds let alone countries as far as culture goes. Language is much more important in that case and as I said that comes of unity, not the reverse. Language serves the polishing purpose of smoothing out the inevitable cultural difference within a group in as much as that it lets the socialite and the hog farmer explain themselves, and yet it doesn’t even start to bridge the canyon that separate the two. So no, culture doesn’t do it either.
Given that we are unlikely to attempt creation of nations separated by oceans past the dismal failure of the European colonials to do specifically that, I find it highly unlikely you’ll find a place viable for nation making that doesn’t have shared history. In any case I refer back to my little diatribe on the pretended national heroes and liberation wars. ‘The winner writes the history,’ always remember that.
Knowingly contradicting myself slightly as to the last part of the previous paragraph; I’d say geography has a decreasing importance. The information age and the event of continental travel make the world a smaller and smaller place. Historically it was however extremely significant and still remains so in many ways.
So my conclusion is that language and culture arises from the political and social unions we create. If done correctly they serve the purpose to cement that political and social union. If jumbled or caught in conflict between varying interest they can serve to divide and segregate. No natural divisions save along what was pointed out earlier re really gross lines as in continental and even then there is that vast grey zone where cultures meet and merge.
In that regard I’d guess you are thinking of the Himalayan division between the distinct cultures and ethnicity of China and India, and the mix of peoples in Indo-China.
While I think most of what you’ve said is very insightful, I have one question:
The fcat that such nationalism has been building for, at worst, only 150 years or so does not negate its significance to the people who identify with that nation or culture, though, does it?
Hit-and-run book recommendation: Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson. He examines the social, cultural, and political factors that give rise to the creation of nations and nationalism and references Sparc’s questions rather explicitly. He is particularly strong in his understanding of South America and East Asia. Definitely worth reading.
By no means. It’s just that the causality has to be put in the right order of flow.
In 1648 the break up of the Holy Roman Empire starts, its component principalities start gelling into autonomous units and the concept of nationality eventually follows. Not the other way around.
Or in the case of the Balkans: The Austro-Hungarian Empire starts crumbling towards the end of the 19th century. Its component parts gel much faster fueled by the stream of Nationalism and ideologies of freedom and equality that is already sweeping over Europe. It is however the disintegration of the larger unit that comes first.
Sometimes yes sometimes no. Socialism didn’t spring from discrete culture as such, but was significant in the creation of Nationalism in its late 19th century flavor. Political beliefs transcend culture easier than for instance language or religion does. Basically I think that it has to do with some of the universal concepts that political ideology must embrace by force of being politics (good and bad). There is of course that hazy line between religion and politics that complicates all this in not so few ways.
Last but not least political belief will have different stickiness on different cultural streams and will take somewhat different expression depending on the place, time and people involved. Take the 1848 revolutions in the lands that are today Germany. The early Socialist concepts inherited from the US and French revolutions were very sticky all over the place except in Bavaria. In Bavaria the idea of revolution seems to have been sticky though. Thanks to some bizarre events involving the world’s most famous cocktail dancer of the time and Mad King Ludwig I the usually conservative Bavaria had suddenly gone very liberal without any revolution, so instead of a Socialist revolution they had themselves the only Conservative popular revolution that I know of in history (which wasn’t a counter revolution).
