The Rise Of Nations: Earlier Forms of Nationalism

Nationalism as we know it didn't really emerge until around the 18th century or so. But WI it had emerged earlier as a reaction to the Renaissance or even in the late Middle Ages? Could the breakup of the Western Roman Empire have somehow triggered an earlier sense of national identity in, say, the Franks or the Goths?
 
It's all that imagined community stuff what's tricky. What connection would a Frank in Frisia feel with a Frank in Gascony? What could possibly develop in the Eastern Roman Empire or Burgundy? Not much, I don't think. Not a tight enough communication network to make everybody aware of all that's going on around them and throughout the 'nation', and the political structures didn't allow for much popular participation, which seriously hinders efforts at building up some kind of national movement. Overcome those obstacles and your well on your way, but it'll be a challenge for sure.

There might've been some chance of building up some halfhearted nationalist movement in Italy during the fall of Rome (say 410-480) but even that would probably be driven on by the elites and nobody else would give much of a shit about it.

I've heard arguments in favor of the idea that some kind of proto-nationalism was brewing in the Hundred Years War, but only in the later stages of the war and not at the beginning of it all.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
As Loaf said, without communication networks that bind people together over large distances, you'll get decentralized governing solutions. That the Catholic Church was able to create a somewhat coherent ideology that covered all Western Europe before the Reformation was an amazing achievement.
 
Prevent feudalisation and keep tribal affiliation of peasants and warriors and nationalisms could evolve from that.
 
You could see an earlier, proto-nationalism during the Renaissance or the Reformation. That was the time of speculation on autocephalous churches and the vernacular, two ideas that lent themselves to OTL's roots of nationalism. And the great thing about nationalism? It spreads.
 
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You have a kind of proto-nationalism in Norway and Sweden during the Danish rule in the 1400s (the Kalmar Union). The Danes put Germans and Frisians as tax collectors, men who knew little and cared even less for the free peasantry's rights and freedoms. Thus, foreign became equal to bad and it became an us against them thing.
 
To get nationalism you need to get to a national identity or national history, both of which usually require the nation-state. AFAIK, you could possibly have such a system come to exist under very centralized, or ethnic-oriented states throughout history though. The Greeks, for one, had a proto-nationalist sense, especially after the several attempted Persian invasions. The Romans as well had a certain sense of 'Rome' as something above-and-beyond the city or the empire.

However, neither of these things are the same as the nationalist fervor that swept that Europe (and America) after the French Revolution, and the world during decolonization.
 
Usually is a key word. Such things as the Hussites seem to indicate that nationalism could have begun earlier. Without a nation state.
 

Susano

Banned
Prevent feudalisation and keep tribal affiliation of peasants and warriors and nationalisms could evolve from that.

That, in fact, is key, IMO. National identities (or call them tribal identities if you like, but its the exact same) have always existed, however always in varying strengths and forms. The Germanic tribes of the migration era and beyond that certainly had an identity. The early centuries of the East Frankish (i.e. German) Realm were marked by conflicts between Franks and Saxons, and that very much on a level of identity, as another example.

What changed all that was the rise of the nobility as an own class. Class consciouesness, over the generations, became much more important than national identity, and nobles had much more in common with each other than with their lower class compatriotes. Additionally, the rise of monarchs and nobles meant that states were now ruled according to dynastic principles, even if that means collecting far apart or ethncially very different territories (see the rise of the Habsburg Empire as example).

Hence when Enlightment and Revolution came, and monarchs and nobles were taken down some pegs, it was inevitable that national identity would be strengthened again, and hence that nationalism would come.

What is needed is to weaken monarchy, nobility and most of all the dynastic principle coming with it.
 
So in other words maintain that Kings/Dukes/Princes can only belong to the people and chose wives from the people or create an earlier form of elective rulers.
 
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