Though “they” was a moving target. The number of folks who were radicalized by the continuing struggle increased sharply of the 1770s, so that Franklin had to struggle to keep up - he was in England to complain about British treatment of the colonies, but while he was there, the situation had changed so much that his moderate positions started to look like he was too accomodating to the UK (leading to protests against him by more radical colonials in Philly).
What happens if you consider Indigenous peoples as well as colonialists or European settlers in what became the country known as the United States?
OTOH, most people spoke of “these United States” rather than “the United States” until after the Civil War.
I think the American revolutionaries certainly did think of themselves as constituting a new nation with a unique culture distinct from British culture. The question is how long it took that attitude to filter down to the common folk. The US is a fairly unusual case where, arguably, the nationalist movement achieved independence before the “nation” really existed.
I think there are two reasonable answers to the question of when a group of people become a “nation”; when the large majority of the people defined as being in the nation actually identify as being in the nation, and when the consensus of world opinion agrees that they are a nation (which does not necessarily mean that they have a State).
For the second criterion, France recognized us in 1778, but most European countries didn’t formally recognize us until the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
For the first…probably somewhere around that time? Of course there were still some Loyalists around after the Revolution. I’m not sure at what point you could say the vast majority of the population stopped identifying as British.
Nonsense, there are lots of culturally distinct regions forming part of a larger nation. The Declaration was what made the United States exist. Its stated purpose was “to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station.” That’s all it took. There was no United States until the ratification of independence and the Declaration made it so.
No. The Declaration established the United States “to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station” in 1776. That did it. Anyway, the first country to recognize the United States was Morocco, not France, in 1777. You didn’t know that? Really?
Indeed. There was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (in which the ruler of Hanover was an Elector in their Electoral College)
When does a person start: when they’re born, when they’re conceived, or some other point?
My instinct is to call the Declaration of Independence the conception and the ratification of the Constitution the birth, but it’s not something I’ve carefully thought about.
What Thudlow says. A good way to put it might be to say that the Continental Congresses, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, the Constitution and the other events mentioned in the OP are all signficant aspects of the shared history that defines the American nation as we know it today, but it’s the totality of that shared history, rather than any single event, that matters.
I think a lot of it hinges on what makes a “nation”. I mean, I feel like in the most absolute sense, it’s when you’re recognized as being sovereign over your own territory. That means that you’ve got to win your rebellion and be recognized as a peer by other nations, which is why I chose 1783. Otherwise every two-bit rebellion that declares independence would be a nation, and that’s not true.
And yes, that means the Confederacy wasn’t a nation either; just a rebellious part of the US. Same for Catalonia and Spain; they declared indepence nine years ago, but nobody paid them any attention, and they’re still part of Spain and not an independent nation.
Of course there are other nations that aren’t sovereign ones on the international stage- various tribes here in the US call themselves “Nations”, but aren’t out there being internationally recognized, writing treaties, etc… Are they nations? What about the Steeler Nation?
So I’m drawing the line at being recognized by your peers as one of them.
And there are nations that are not independent states.
The Americans started acting as a nation through the various Continental Congresses held in the decade before independence. The Declaration is grounded in the fact that the Americans were already a nation, and asserted that that nation was henceforth a state. The American nation founded the United States.
I think it’s important to recognize that the American nation and the United States have been ever-evolving concepts. Americans recognized that they were distinct from other British subjects, even while they accepted being British subjects. Regional identities continued even as the American nation became more concrete. The United States has been centralizing from the beginning, the Articles to the Constitution to the incorporation of amendments to the several states.
The birth of the United States is well documented, while the birth of the American nation is not.
Under this criterion, no nation has ever existed.
Morocco implicitly recognized the United States in 1777,[1][2] after Sultan Mohammed III signed a decree granting American ships protection and free access to Moroccan ports.[3] The Sultan previously expressed his desire to be a “friend of the Americans”.[3] Morocco formally recognized the United States on June 23, 1786, when a treaty of peace and friendship was signed.[4]
I deliberately removed Morocco from the list because of the lapse in time between the implicit recognition and the formal recognition. My stance is that only written on paper and signed documents count. But if you disagree I also deliberately included an Other choice so that anybody could declare their disagreement.
I think people (particularly the Catalans) do accept Catalonia as being a nation, though not an independent State. They have their own language and centuries of history. Likewise Native American tribes are certainly nations. I would agree that at least some conception that political sovereignty is desirable is essential to be a nation, even if nobody is actively pursuing that goal at a particular moment in history. So the Cherokee are still a nation, while Steeler Nation is not. Alberta, likewise, is not a nation because only a small minority of Albertans want to be a nation.
In the case of America, national identity emerged at the same time as political independence. The successful revolutionary movement created conditions in which diverse groups of people came to identify as a nation based on their shared experience of the revolution. The same could have happened with the Confederacy, but since they lost the war I don’t think they ever qualified as a real nation, just a notional nation.
Then there’s Texas. We definitely have a sort of dual identity that’s a little different than merely identifying as a resident of a state, and it’s largely due to our historical background. We were actually a fully-fledged nation for a while, with diplomatic recognition and everything, before we agreed to be annexed by the United States. Are we a nation in that same sense as Catalonia?
It’s all pretty murky, and if I had to venture a guess, it’s probably because there are multiple definitions of the word “nation”. Anyone know if these concepts are clearer in other languages?
1980 Winter Olympics (Miracle on Ice):
Moderating:
No context link. Please don’t do this again.