Nations and Nationalism in World History

Steven Grosby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429663598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Nations and Nationalism in World History challenges the commonly accepted understanding of nations as being exclusively modern and European in origin by drawing attention to evidence that indicates that nations are found in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and throughout the world.

Locating the concept of nations at all periods of history and around the world, Steven Grosby discusses a diverse array of manifestations of nations throughout history, drawing upon its complex intersections with religion, ethnicity, law, politics, and warfare. Among the societies discussed throughout the text are ancient Israel, Sasanian Iran, medieval Sri Lanka, Korea, Vietnam, and Scotland. Grosby analyzes how the category nation can be used for historical comparison, indicating both the ways ancient and medieval nations differ from modern nations, and the different relations over time between nation and civilization. This analysis leads students to re-examine the assumptions of the historical periodization of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. It further distinguishes nation and the patriotic attachment to it from the uncivil ideology of nationalism.

This book will benefit students in world history and political science courses, as well as ethnic studies or peace and conflict studies courses that wish to provide some historical context.

1

Problems in the Study of the History of Nations and Nations in World History

DOI: 10.4324/9780429022494-1

The historian faces a number of problems when studying nations. The intention of this chapter, as an introduction to an analysis of nations in world history, is to draw attention to those problems. Doing so will set the stage for a discussion of the historical evidence in the chapters that follow. This chapter will also raise other problems beyond those of the history of nations that an investigation of that history cannot avoid. For in the course of that investigation, problems of how historians use categories to understand the innumerable events of the past, and even how to understand history itself, arise. We will begin with noting a few of the problems of analyzing nations and their history, and then turn to the problems of evaluating nations in world history. In the course of presenting these problems, the term “nation,” since it is so widely used, will, for the time being, be taken for granted as signifying the existence of a geographically extensive people, a social relation of a certain kind of “we.” A more precise definition will be given in the next chapter, where the various components of that definition are developed in greater detail.

One problem confronting the historian of nations is that significant differences beyond geographical location exist between nations. Some nations, for example, the English and German, have a common language, while others, such as the Swiss and Indian, do not. Some have a common religion, for example, the Pakistanis (Islam, although with acute communal tensions between the majority Sunni and the minority Shia) or the Sinhalese (Buddhism, although the Tamil minority is largely Hindu), while other nations, like the Americans, lack a common religion or, as the Dutch and Czechs, are seemingly religiously indifferent. Many nations have states, but other nations, for example, the Poles during the nineteenth century or the Kurds today, did not or do not. It may also be that significant differences exist between nations from different historical periods if, in fact, nations did exist at different times throughout world history. An investigation into nations in world history has to take into account these differences. The reasons for the differences will have to be analyzed; and, when doing so, comparisons between nations will be made. These comparisons are worth pursuing, not only for what they tell us about the historical processes that account for those differences, but also for what they tell us about how to understand what a nation is.

Given that there are considerable differences in the characteristics between nations, what do those differences say about the category “nation”? Do these differences indicate that our use of the category refers to so many historically diverse societies that the term nation ends up obscuring the significance of those differences, so much so that it might be better if historians did not use it at all? The argument of this investigation does not support that view. Nation is not a term developed by historians; it (more accurately, its version in Latin, natio, from which the English word nation is derived) has been used for approximately 2,000 years, and apparently similar terms in other languages have been used even longer. Nonetheless, the historian’s use of nation as a category of analysis must take into account this wide variation of characteristics, but, while doing so, also show that the category contributes to our understanding of different societies. To do both is one challenge of this investigation.

The differences between nations, not only throughout different areas of the world but, as will be argued, also from different historical periods, must be acknowledged. They are not to be avoided, whatever difficulties they may pose. Facts are never to be ignored for the sake of fidelity to some kind of assumption about historical development or because of the political preferences of the historian. At the same time, the categories, in this case nation, that historians use to analyze those facts are not to be taken for granted. The historian has to be aware that their use may, perhaps unintentionally, misrepresent the past by offering a lens—the category—that forces the historian’s understanding into a conception that may be alien to the past. For example, if the historian uses the category nation to describe certain societies of antiquity and the Middle Ages, doing so should not imply that those earlier societies had the same kind of culture as do nations today, that is, a culture that joins together numerous, geographically dispersed individuals who recognize themselves and others as being related as members of the “we” of the nation. Those ancient and medieval societies lacked the modern technology of radios, televisions, computers, and the mass production of books that have contributed to the existence of relatively cohesive cultures today. But the absence of those modern technologies does not necessarily mean that there may not have been other, different means in antiquity and the Middle Ages by which individuals were brought together as a “people.” Another challenge for the historian is to ascertain what those other means were and how the cultures of ancient and medieval nations differ from those of today.

The historian must also keep in mind that there are always different ways to examine the past and different categories to be used in that examination. Some categories may be more useful than others in illuminating the past. Furthermore, the aspect of the past that the historian chooses to investigate will have a bearing on the categories that the historian uses to examine the past. A historian interested in, for example, the development of astronomical observation or the development of the techniques of agriculture and the breeding of livestock may have little need for the category nation.

This problem of the category nation—that it must encompass a wide variability of characteristics that are constitutive of different kinds of nations while nonetheless referring to a specific kind of society—is further complicated by the fact that the characteristics of any particular nation are not fixed, as if a nation were a lifeless material object; as if it were, for example, a stone, whose features remain largely unchanged over time. Not only may one nation differ in many ways from another nation, but also any nation itself changes over time, often in ways that are barely discernible but sometimes in ways that are dramatic. Obviously, in many important ways, today’s Israelis are different from the ancient Israelites of the seventh century BCE; the Iranians or Armenians of today are different from the Iranians or Armenians of the sixth century CE; the English or the French of today are different from the English or French of the thirteenth century CE; and the Americans of 2021 are different from the Americans of 1776. The very use of the category nation must not prejudice the historian into assuming a substantial continuity between those societies of the past and those of today by ignoring those changes. Nevertheless, continuities of different kinds also exist, such as a self-designating name and usually the use of the same language. The language spoken by ancient and modern Iranians—Persian—is largely the same, and different from the languages spoken by the peoples of those territories adjacent to Iran. The territory of America is not the same today as it was in 1776; nevertheless, not only has its original area remained, but so also and importantly has fidelity to, for example, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the tradition of English common law, and some of the conceptions and idioms of the biblical tradition. Thus, the historian of nations faces the problem of evaluating the relation between change and continuity over time.

That change takes place in the many different kinds of social relations that humans form is obvious enough. Even a friendship between two individuals is constantly changing, often imperceptibly but sometimes dramatically; nonetheless, the friendship, however different from one moment in time to another moment, remains. The friendship between individuals is kept “alive,” despite any number of changes, by each of them maintaining the memories of the past relation between them. Those memories influence how the individuals evaluate one another, thereby also influencing their actions toward one another in ways that differ from how they may act toward a person who is not a friend. In a way, a friendship, if it is to continue to exist, is being continually re-created by that evaluation. But that continual re-creation is possible because of certain facts of the past relation—shared moments of warm comradery but perhaps also moments of deep disappointment—are sustained by being brought into the present in the mind of each of the individuals who are friends. When doing so, each individual may actually have a different and changing recollection of the facts of the past relation; but even so, those memories are not created out of thin air, as if they were merely imaginary. Even in those more enduring relations of greater intimacy and intensity, as between a husband and a wife, recollections of the past differ. Many events between a husband and wife are remembered similarly by each of them, but many are not. But that those recollections may differ in no way means that there wasn’t and isn’t a shared past between them. While a marriage may continue over time, it also is continually changing through time.

Unlike the personal relation of a friendship, the social relation of a nation has a number of institutions that convey and sustain the recollections and achievements of the past, and the traditions that embody them, among numerous individuals who have never met and will not meet each other but who still view themselves as being related to each other by sharing those traditions. There are, for example, temples, churches, and mosques organized around and conveying a religious tradition. There are courts with lawyers and judges for the adjudication of disputes according to the law and so forth. Often these institutions are part of the state, but they need not be. The English Inns of Court, where lawyers were trained, were separate from the state; so, too, the religious institutions of many nations have been independent from the state. Those institutions furnish the rules and norms throughout the population that looks toward them for guidance, thereby joining together that population into a distinctive, territorially extensive social relation. They assume the existence of, and provide a pattern for, acceptable behavior, conveying, for example, the traditions of what is lawful or what is religiously proper. The stable pattern of the coming together of various traditions, sustained by institutions, is what is meant by the term “culture.”

But even with the existence of institutions, changes, sometimes significant, occur. The Iranians of antiquity were Zoroastrians, while today they are Muslims. Thus, a culture can only be relatively stable, because traditions, and the relation between one tradition and another, are always changing, if for no other reason than the demands of the present confront traditions with new challenges. In the face of always unexpected, new demands, disputes arise over how to adapt those traditions to different conditions brought about by those new demands. Often, as is characteristic of the writing of history, disagreements arise over how the past is recollected. The facts of the past still exist for the historian, but which facts are understood as being significant and how they are to be interpreted change, as historians’ interests change in light of the ever-changing circumstances in which the historians find themselves. This is why each generation of historians writes its own history.

Sometimes traditions and the institutions that bear them may even be rejected: a “revolution” occurs, politically when, for example, the institutions and traditions of kingship are rejected as in the English, French, and Russian revolutions; or religiously, for example, the Christian rejection of the Jerusalem Temple and its priesthood, or the Protestant rejection of the primacy of the Pope and the Catholic Church. Moreover, and importantly, a culture can only be relatively stable not only because of change over time but also because a culture at any particular time is rarely, if ever, uniform. There are, except in totalitarian societies, tensions between different traditions within any culture, for example, between religion and politics, one obvious example of which is the so-called Investiture Struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and various kings, beginning with the reforms of Pope Gregory VII at the end of the eleventh century CE.

If the existence of a nation assumes a culture that joins together numerous individuals who are otherwise unknown to one another into a people, what do the ever-changing traditions over time and the tensions between the traditions within that culture mean for our understanding of the category nation?¹ The problem here for the historian of nations is ascertaining how, at any particular time and over time, the members of a society understood themselves as being related to one another. The historian must examine the different ways by which the recollections of the past were conveyed and sustained so that the recognition of being related as members of a nation existed. However, when doing so, the historian must always keep in mind that no culture, including those of modern nations, is uniform; there are always tensions of various kinds within it.

Two problems confronting the historian of nations have already become apparent. One is the variability of characteristics between different nations. The second is that for any particular nation, many of its features change significantly over time, and, yet, there are other features that are continuous, even if that continuity has also undergone a degree of change. A third problem is determining when nations appeared in world history. Did nations exist in antiquity and the Middle Ages, or are they exclusively modern? Should the historian use the category to describe certain earlier societies in parts of the world outside Europe? Addressing this third problem will be the focus of this book. When taking up this third problem, the other two problems must be kept in mind.

Addressing the problem of whether or not historically much earlier societies were nations, or whether or not it is useful for the historian’s understanding to characterize them as nations, involves more than a careful examination of the features of those societies. Of course, that examination is necessary. However, evaluating when nations appeared in world history often may be influenced by the categories of the periodization of world history: ancient, medieval, and modern. That periodization often contains a number of assumptions that influence how the past is viewed, which past or which part of the past receives the attention of the historian, and what might be the relation of the past to the present. If that periodization is taken for granted, the historian may be overly influenced by it. The historian may draw sharp distinctions between those different periods. If so, the categories of that periodization may keep the historian from the careful determination and examination of a great deal of evidence from antiquity and the Middle Ages that might indicate the earlier appearance of nations.² If a historian, based on an assumption of a decisive historical distinction between modern and pre-modern, takes for granted that nations only recently appeared in the historical record, that is, they are modern, evidence from antiquity and the Middle Ages may not even be considered.³

Societies of the past should be investigated using their own terms and categories. When doing so—to emphasize the problem before us—is the historian entitled to characterize, albeit with qualifications, some societies of the past as nations? While it is clear that there are significant differences between, for example, Sasanian Iran and Iran today, Korea of the Koryŏ period and Korea today, England of the thirteenth century and England today, and even America of 1776 and America today, recognition of those differences should not preclude a careful examination of those societies as possibly being nations in those earlier historical periods.

In analyz...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Problems in the Study of the History of Nations and Nations in World History
• 2. Categories: Nation, National State, Nationalism, Patriotism
• 3. Nations in Antiquity
• 4. Nations in the Middle Ages
• 5. Nations in Modern Times
• 6. Conclusion Nations and History: Theoretical Challenges
• Index