I'm writing a timeline that has nothing to do with OTL. But I'm wondering how nationalism could have risen earlier than it did in OTL and how it people would act and what types of governments would form if it was in a time period tech level rise like the 1500/1600's?
Earlier rise of Nationalism
- Thread starter The Doctor
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Susano
Banned
Well,national identity has always existed. It just was not a political factor in those times when politics were solely on dynastic politics. Thus, I see the rise of nationalism as a political force to be inevitably tied to the rise of democracy. You cant get a democratic awakening without a rise of nationalism, and OTOH if you have an earlier democratic awakening you will get an earlier rise of nationalism.
alright but how would fights for this occure? Would the national government be more powerful than the revolting population or what type of reaction would occure?
)What type of situations can lead to a nationalist feeling in a region? One way I can think of is a general culture(german) is overrun by another one and then pushed back (Napoleon) creates an area that wants to unify as one. Am I right?
Broadly speaking, this does create nationalism. Really, you need something to make people see themselves as distinct from another group in close proximity. Although, as a general rule, I am loathe to apply the term nationalism to anything too early (really before the 19th century), a good example of proto-nationalism being brought into existence is the Hundred Years war. It is really here that you see a french national identity establish itself, in the wars to drive back the Plantagenets. The following road would be rocky, and Nationalism itself doesn't crop up for centuries, but this is when the idea of France as more than just Il de France crops up.
At least in terms of europe, this sort of shows what you need. For centuries, loyalty is to one's lord, one's king. Other factors are important, but they aren't always consistent or relevant. For nationalism to develop, you need the idea of a state to stretch beyond merely a ruler or institution, but to be a concept of a unified body of people. You have to transform patriotism (loyalty to one's state; itself not easily defined until maybe the 16th century) to nationalism, and to do that you probably have to make nation and state relatively synonymous.
I Blame Communism
Banned
True in a philosophical sense; but what Susano is pointing out is that the instinct to divide ourselves and form communities absed on shared language, history, and identity is a human instinct going back to the most ancient writing we possess.
Goes back further than that. Any anthropologist looking at pre-literate tribes sees the same thing. It is surely part of the human condition since we had (more than one?) language.
Valdemar II
Banned
I agree somewhat with Susano, modern nationalism began clearly as a part of the pro-democracy movement of the enlightment. But it's not the entire picture the rise of nationalism was just as much part of the growing literacy of the area, schooling, growing urban population and centralising states. French style nationalism was in many disconnected from the democracy movements (through the democracy movement adopted it easily) and was mostly based on a strong central state made primary up by several closely related linguistic groups. I think early nationalism can happens as part of earlier centralising of major states and early attempt at universal education.
A ealier unified (North) Italy would be a good primus motor for the creation of nationalism. I can't see it happens early in Germany, Germany was simply to backward for that until the 18th century.
A ealier unified (North) Italy would be a good primus motor for the creation of nationalism. I can't see it happens early in Germany, Germany was simply to backward for that until the 18th century.
Susano
Banned
Eh. Big part of that was the 30 Years War. In the 16th century Germany did have some prime economical centres like Belgium, Nuremberg, Ausgburg...
Valdemar II
Banned
Yes but Germany was still backward and rural compared to Italy in the 16th and 17th century. The 30 Year Wars only worsen a existing situation, it didn't create it. There's really not a lot that can be done with it, the problem was climatic not political. The Mediterranean lend itself better to urban civilisation than the Baltic and Central European climate, northen France wasn't much better off climate wise, and there we only saw French nationalism really beginning in the 17th century too. The only area where we see a early great extention of urbanisation in north Europe, Netherlands, the decentral structure which make the urban expansion possible lend itself badly to the development of modern nationalism.
ninebucks
Banned
True, but that depends on whether you would consider a tribe and a nation as coterminous.
Anyway, this discussion seems to overlook the strength of non-national identities, (to Christendom, or to your lord, or anything in between). If nationalism is the ideology that says that the loyalty to the nation should always be above all other loyalties, then it seems the way to bring about nationalism earlier would be to weaken all other recipients of people's loyalties. And conversely, the way to delay nationalism, would be to reinvigorate those alternative loyalties.
The concepts of 'nation' and 'state=independent political entity' are historically entirely separate concepts, which we forget these days.
The post WWI 'national self-determination' was a lovely idea in theory, and corrected obvious past wrongs, but it created, quite possibly, even more.
The situation in England and (much of northern) France, where you had a reasonably well defined sense of nation which largely corresponded to the existing state, was somewhat anomalous. If 'empires' ruling over multi-ethnic peoples had stayed the norm (Angevin Empire, perhaps), then 'national' loyalties would be expressed in quite different ways...
About nationalism and democracy, I don't think democracy is really necessary.
I read in Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" that French nationalism began as a result of the 100 Years' War. Things were pretty feudal back then.
I read in Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" that French nationalism began as a result of the 100 Years' War. Things were pretty feudal back then.
Hendryk
Banned
But that's tribalism, not nationalism. Nationalism requires a sense of shared identity with people we've never met, and that is a result of societal and political developments of the 18th and 19th centuries.
I Blame Communism
Banned
True, but the one grows from the other, and wholly imaginary "nations" have, it seems to me, existed from before the 18th C, just secondary to other real or imagined kinships. Ottokar the Great, after all, "was no German".
Hendryk
Banned
It's not like this is a virgin field. A fair bit of academic research has been conducted in the origins and growth of nationalism. Any claim that "national identity has always existed" will require substantiation, since it goes against academic consensus on the topic.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Is anything a virgin field? Not much. Name any topic in history or anything else and I an find someone better qualified than me to discuss it. I don't have a university education; might I be forgiven for drawing my own conclusions from basically limited reading?
I'd be fascinated to hear the academic consensus on this and what it's based on, but it's not very helpful to just tell my own conclusions are wrong and my bases for them invalid without noting what the academic consensus in fact is. Live and learn, what? If my conclusions are wrong, I'd like them to be challenged, so I can reach better ones.
After all, I'm the one who's taken an actual quote from a historical source.
Hendryk
Banned
My comment was intended for Susano, whom I was referring to, and with whom I've had this debate on several previous occasions. Every time he will make a similar claim, that a sense of national identity has always existed, and when pressed to substantiate his claim will come up with some apocryphal anecdote. That's not good enough. I want to see that claim backed up by actual academic evidence.
As for you, if you're interested in the topic, I'll recommand two essential books I've mentioned previously: Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson and Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 by Eric Hobsbawm.