Was Navarre Basque?

Onyx

Banned
Sorta relavent in my TL, Navarre gets overthrown by a Basque dynasty, but the question is that was Navarre Basque because if it is I would just remove the PoD of Navarre's detruction and keep it there, but I was wondering if the Basque ruled Navarre or what.
 
Not sure what you mean by "ruled". Navarre had a variety of foreign rulers ascending by marriage, does that disqualify them?
 
"Basque" was not a significant political notion as it is today (in medieval and early modern Europe, no concept similar to what is now understood as "nation" or "ethnicity" was particularly relevant to politics), but basically yes, a large part of Navarre was quite Basque-speaking in the Middle Ages and Early Modern and the region is still held to be Basque by most Basque nationalists to this day. IIRC, the constitution of the Basque Country specifically allows for a merger with Navarre if the Navarrese are ever to agree. I gather that the Navarrese feeling towards their "basqueness" is currently somewhat mixed.
By the way, in the Middle Ages much of what is now Basque Country used to be under the Crown of Navarre.
 
If anything, we can joke that Navarre ruled the basques, to the point that biscayans, under the their Haro dinasty lords, allied with the leonese-castilians against Pamplona. But maybe your question is more aimed towards ethnic/cultural compositon. Historically, the navarrese kingdom was a pluricultural entity (as almost everyone else in the Middle Ages), it would be an error to pretend to understand it in the more "monolithic" cultural and institutional categories we use in the time of the Nation-States, though obviously basque culture is very important there (as a native navarrese culture, not an exterior imposition or influence). Linguistically, occitan, french and, principally, aragonese are present besides the euskera, with the aragonese being widely used by the Court. The geographical distribution of aragonese and euskera in the navarrese territory broadly matched the current distribution of euskera and spanish.
You have to take into consideration also that euskera is not a unified language until more recent times, but a set of dialects, sometimes hardly mutually understable.

Most important, in the same sense, and coherently with the aforementioned difference of identitary concepts before the surge of nationalisms, you can`t project modern idea of basque identity in medieval Navarre, nor in the vascongadas so, summarizing, there is a large part of Navarre that is basque-speaking (actually this is, aparently, the original territory of the vascones) and and it plays a main role in the navarrese kingdom, though is not exclusive not necessarily solidary with other basque territories which always seeked and defended a large degree of local autonomy and that are oeprating in a world where corporative, dynastic and/or feudal interests prevail in political infighting over other considerations.

EDIT: Well, Falecius nijaed me. Though is the spanish constitution that allows a basque-navarrese union.
 
If anything, we can joke that Navarre ruled the basques, to the point that biscayans, under the their Haro dinasty lords, allied with the leonese-castilians against Pamplona. But maybe your question is more aimed towards ethnic/cultural compositon. Historically, the navarrese kingdom was a pluricultural entity (as almost everyone else in the Middle Ages), it would be an error to pretend to understand it in the more "monolithic" cultural and institutional categories we use in the time of the Nation-States, though obviously basque culture is very important there (as a native navarrese culture, not an exterior imposition or influence). Linguistically, occitan, french and, principally, aragonese are present besides the euskera, with the aragonese being widely used by the Court. The geographical distribution of aragonese and euskera in the navarrese territory broadly matched the current distribution of euskera and spanish.
You have to take into consideration also that euskera is not a unified language until more recent times, but a set of dialects, sometimes hardly mutually understable.

Most important, in the same sense, and coherently with the aforementioned difference of identitary concepts before the surge of nationalisms, you can`t project modern idea of basque identity in medieval Navarre, nor in the vascongadas so, summarizing, there is a large part of Navarre that is basque-speaking (actually this is, aparently, the original territory of the vascones) and and it plays a main role in the navarrese kingdom, though is not exclusive not necessarily solidary with other basque territories which always seeked and defended a large degree of local autonomy and that are oeprating in a world where corporative, dynastic and/or feudal interests prevail in political infighting over other considerations.

EDIT: Well, Falecius nijaed me. Though is the spanish constitution that allows a basque-navarrese union.

You explained it all much better than I could.
 
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