I like to use two examples to help clarify nation vs state. Korea is one nation with two states. Canada is one state with multiple nations.
For one, when it became two different countries; both of them couldn’t be Britain, so one of them had to be the United States. But more generally, it ceased when its people stopped thinking of themselves as British and started thinking of themselves as American - and could back their belief with facts on the ground.
Let me just throw this out. Was the Confederacy a nation? Or do rebels only become a nation when they win?
If you can have a nation without a country, then why can’t you have a nation with multiple countries?
I think you could fairly say that they were an extremely short-lived nation. They functioned as a nation, and the US wasn’t able to instantly put a halt to that functioning.
Then what about the EU?
Not military? What about NATO?
The most accurate answer may be that America became a nation gradually. But in retrospect, even the mildest kind of nationalism requires an arbitrary start date. And we already have one – July 4, 1776,
I would actually make an argument for post-1865. Yes, America was a state. But even with the stronger federal government, it was still common for someone to see themselves as a citizen of their state than the country as a whole. It took the Civil War to really change that view.
The EU has made some steps towards being a nation. If it continues in that path, then at some point in the future, people might point to some event in our past, and say “That’s when the EU became a nation,” so I guess I am agreeing with your gradualist answer - but we can continue to disagree about the arbitrary start date
(NATO is just a military alliance)
Very interesting question. If I had to, push comes to shove, I would probably agree with @Chronos. The Confederacy was a nation and maybe still counts as one. It’s an interesting way to frame the political and cultural divisions that we’re seeing in the country today. We’re two nations with very differing values trying to coexist under a single constitutional/legal framework. It’s not inevitable that will lead to conflict, but I think it makes it far more likely.
To @Pleonast’s wiki links above, and @Johanna’s observations about France having multiple republics a “Nation” is a set of shared cultural values, language, and history. A “Country” or “State” is a legally recognized structure. Maybe internally and externally? The two can be connected, but are two separate and distinct things.
To respond directly to the OP I could see arguments made pointing to pre-1776 or, to @asterion’s point, post civil war. Both could make sense coming at the question from different perspectives.
I don’t feel like I’m really making an argument here, more an observation. Anyway, very interesting thread and discussion. Please carry on.
I’m seeing people making very good cases for their positions. I’m finding it fascinating as well.
You can’t be a Nation until you have your own song, a beer, wine, or at least Muffins.
You’ve missed the most essential function of a state: Foreign relations. You know, the Department of State? Ever wonder why they call it that?* The United States spoke as a single voice to other nations. That’s what the Declaration of Independence means by “to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station.” That’s what made the nation. Right there. Other nations like Germany and Italy had nationalities before unification. But American nationality was created congenitally with the United States in the Declaration.
*further, the office of secretary of state in the 50 several states is completely different from the federal State Department, because none of the several states can do foreign relations.
An aulacogen. A failed rift.
The story of the US begins on April 15th of 1775, when hostilities genuinely commenced. Hostilities were ended on March 4th of 1782, by an Act of Parliament ordering the cessation of British military action in America.
The treaty of '83 was a formality. In fact, the war itself was all but done before it started. The British generals seemed over-confident and almost lackadaisical: despite Washington’s army being only 20 miles from Howe’s winter quarters in Philadelphia, he took no action against them, at a time when he easily could have wiped them out and secured Washington’s surrender. The Americans made the British seem all but incompetent, despite being greater in number an better trained.
Can you call yourself a state if nobody recognizes you as such? Plenty of people have tried that without succeeding. Wouldn’t your definition call for France’s 1778 formal recognition to be the start?
The Declaration formalized the intent of the American nation to be a state. I argue that the nation preexisted the Declaration, as indicated by earlier things such as the Continental Congress of 1765. The Americans thought of themselves as culturally distinct before 1776, which is why they came together again then. That defines them as a nation, even while they were British subjects.
True, but this discussion is about the American nation, not the United States. There’s a lot of overlap, but they are not identical.
Since I’m playing devil’s advocate, I’d counter that there are piles of evidence that the colonists thought of themselves as good British subjects, but objected to being treated differently than British nationals.
Hence, they didn’t consider themselves a part of the British nation.
They considered themselves to be part of the British nation, and were upset that other Brits didn’t so consider them.
A lot of the colonists believed that they were British but were being denied the rights of Britons; that was their core complaint. The objection that you’re being denied the rights of Britons makes no sense unless you regard yourself as British in the first place. We have plenty of instances of colonists describing themselves as British,or English.
The confusion beween nation, a group of people with a shared culture, history, etc, and state, a legal/political structure, has already been noted in this thread. This confusion is common, but it’s worth noting that it’s also quite modern. In the nineteenth century we have the growth of the idea that a nation has an inherent right of self-government and thus the right to establish an independent, sovereign state to govern itself (and, in stronger versions, the nation has a duty to do this). From that, we get the notion that a nation that hasn’t yet acheived this is in some sense incomplete - still coming into being. This was an extremely powerful idea and is foundational for probably the majority of European states today — they were either assembled by aggregating small states that governed different parts of the same nation (Germany, Italy) or they were created by seceding from a larger, multinational state (Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Iceland, Finland and many others).
But nobody in the 1770s or 1780s thought llike this - nineteenth-century nationalist theory hadn’t arrived yet. We look back at the events of the period and see them as formative events in the shared history that defines the American nation, but Americans at the time may not have seen themselves as a distinct nation in the way that we now do. It’s probably unlikely that they would think that establishing self-government changed their national idenity or created a new national identity — they still spoke the same language, practised the same religion, looked back on the same history, expressed the same culture, etc, as they did immediately before independence. They were the same community as they always were; how could that be a different nation? Even if they say themselves asserting the rights of nationhood, that wouldn’t make them a new nation; they couldn’t to have the rights to assert unless they were a nation to begin with.