Creating new non-national empires

Susano

Banned
See what Susano posted, nationalty based political bodies is a farely recent creation the 19th century wasn't too happy a place for it. Remember prior to nationalty based states patronage and bureaucracy.
Nationhood wasn't an ingrained point of view until the 19th century at least.

Haha, you basically turned my post around 180°. I said nationalities states, not nation states - i.e., states including several different nation(alitie)s. Those all crashed in the 19th century (well, A-H 18 years after 19th century, but close enough), and again several nationalities states (USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) collapsed in the 90s. Thus I say its a discarded concpet and the nation state has proven its worth.

Anyways, youre wrong. Nationalism as a political force didnt really become a factor in European politics before the 19th century, but national identity was always around (and did also play part in politics now and then, see Grman Kingdom in the 9th and 10th century), and was very much always already independant of "citizenship" or dynastic states - there never was any Habsburg national identity, instead people would still identiy as Hungarians, Bohemians/Czechs or Germans. Meaning those national identities, unlike what youve said, did not develop out of formed states, but already were there. Cant really speak about China, but I imagine it was similar there.
 

Susano

Banned
I'm fairly sure there was an understanding of nation-hood long before the 19th century, it's just prior to the nation-state, nation and state were separate concepts.

Theyre still seperate concepts. There was simply less of a wish to establish the former (nation-state) ;)
 
Anyways, youre wrong. Nationalism as a political force didnt really become a factor in European politics before the 19th century, but national identity was always around (and did also play part in politics now and then, see Grman Kingdom in the 9th and 10th century)
Despite your touting of this kingdom as an example of German identity, I would like to point out that in this period regional identities were much stronger, largely superseding any "national" identity. Here's my example I always give to explain this point: take a commoner in Regensburg. He would identify himself first as a member of his family, as a Regensburger, then a Bavarian, and finally maybe vaguely (three adverbs!) as a German. But tribal identities were much more prevalent.
 
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