Reddit mentions of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition

To answer this question you have to understand the difference between a nation and a state. If you already know this difference, skip to the end. (I'm going to make some generalizations, forgive me if I stray too broad).

Edit: forgot the 20-year rule

A state, to borrow Max Weber's definition (which in many social sciences is a standard definition), is the institution which has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence in a given territory [1]. This usually means the state is the army and police, but also the taxation system to fund those organizations and the government to decide how they are used. A state, therefore, is a set of institutions: The government, the bureaucracy, etc.

A nation, in contrast, is a group of people who feel bound to each other into a collective by something shared, like religion, ethnicity, language, or other cultural elements. Benedict Anderson defines it as "an imagined political community" though with the caveat that he does so in the middle of a few paragraphs wherein he explains that it's a very tricky thing to pin down with a precise definition [2].

So, these terms aren't immediately clear, and in fact "nation," "country," "state," "nation-state," etc are often used interchangeably all the time by laymen and even journalists, leading to quite a bit of confusion about what each one means. Let's look at some examples:

A good example of a nation is the Jewish people. Though several times throughout their history they have had a state ("Israel"), for most of their history they have not, and they have maintained a shared tradition, religion, ethnic identity, and even some elements of language. During the Jewish Diaspora after the Roman annexation of Judea, Jews scattered throughout the world, not belonging to any particular state: they lived in the Roman Empire, Persia, China, and in the Middle ages throughout the many different Christian polities of Europe as well as throughout the middle east. Through this time they formed communities, often segregated either voluntarily or by force from other inhabitants of their homes, and they maintained an identity and shared recognition as a people, a "nation," adrift in the world. I'll come back with a few more examples after discussing states.

States, in one form or another, are much more pervasive. The simplest form of a state is a sedentary bandit, who, having decided to stop roaming around harassing villages for money, decides to settle down: he protects a village in exchange for regular tribute. Thus, the simplest state is a leader, his military force, and taxation to fund that military force (and of course a population to extract that taxation from). One obviously sees this structure copied across the world for most of recorded history: settled civilizations generally have a government (be it monarchy, oligarchy, republic, democracy, etc.), a means of commanding and supplying a military force, and a system of taxation or tribute in order to pay for that military. Clearly most states have found it prudent to go beyond this basic formula, and often create laws, establish order, promote particular religious beliefs, and provide services back to the people (infrastructure, education, health, etc). The usual date for the beginning of the "modern" idea of the state is the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, in which it was agreed by all the major European powers that states were sovereign, and that it is not the place of one state to interfere in the internal affairs of another.

So to return to the Jewish example, Jews at one point were in possession of a state of Israel, had their own kings, soldiers, and system of taxes and tributes. When they were conquered at various points (by Babylonians, Romans etc) the state was conquered and destroyed, but the nation persisted: the Jews kept on thinking of themselves as a people with a shared history, culture, religion and identity, and whether they were captives in Egypt or Babylon or adrift in the Roman empire (other states), they would remain a nation. Does this example make sense? When Israel was re-established as a state in the 20th century, the "nation of Israel" finally had a "state of Israel" to go "home" to.

In the modern world, you often see Nations and States come in various combinations. Some nations are spread across multiple states: the German "nation" between the World Wars was (in one conception) spread throughout Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc., and Hitler agitated that the entire German Nation should be united under the German State. Other times, one state contains several different nations: Spain, for example, contains Castillians, Basques, Catalans and others, and many Basques and Catalans feel that they are separate nations and should have their own states. The United States federal government is a State, under whose authority there are 50 "states", and much of the history of the US has been to meld together different immigrant groups and conquered peoples into one American "nation". The whole "melting pot" analogy is a classic attempt at "nationbuilding": trying to create shared values and traditions in order to bring different groups of people into one community. Putin's rationale for interference in Ukraine is based on the idea that the Russian residents there belong to the greater Russian Nation and should thus be re-incorporated into the mother country. This general process of trying to patch together "lost" or "separated" pieces of a nation is called "irredentism". Sometimes, nations/states get very lucky and the borders of the nation line up very closely with the border of a nation. Portugal is a classic example: Portugal is pretty much just Portuguese people (aside from immigrants of course); France is up there as a pretty good one. Other nations like Yugoslavia got so unlucky that they were torn apart by nationalist forces. Some states (like Syria or Iraq) are just carved out on a map and governments are forced to try to create a nation out of thin air by cobbling together a diverse group of people, many of whom have state aspirations of their own (like Kurds). Benedict Anderson gives the example of Siam as just something left over: it became a country just because everything around it was partitioned off into colonies!

Anyway, to the point: why was France the first modern Nation? That claim is a very contestable one, and I'd like to see what /u/SanatKumara is using to back that up, but usually the claim dates to the French Revolution in 1789 in which the National Assembly declared France to be a nation and a state, or two years later in which the people of France (all adult males) elected a National Convention as its governing body, and perhaps further in 1793 when the convention ordered the mass mobilization of the entire French population to defend the country:
>From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic"

Placing an exact date on the idea is difficult, but what one can safely conclude is that whereas France had been a state for centuries, it had been a monarchical state owned, as it were, by the king (Louis XIV famously declared "I am the state"). In the Revolution, with the institution of a Republic, the people of France laid claim to the state, and by serving in the military en masse to defend the country, established that the French State and French Nation are one and the same, thus the modern Nation-State was born.

Please let me know if I can explain anything further!

TL;DR: Nations are groups of people with a shared identity. States are institutions like governments. When a discrete group of people has its own state, that's called a "nation-state". France was arguably (though very contestably) the first modern nation-state.

Yall motherfuckers need some Benedict Anderson.

The League of Nations - 1920.

Before the twentieth century, global identification is extremely complicated and generally geographically specific. We have the issuance of letters of passage all the way back to the middle ages, and early passports being given to ships for travel rather than individuals.

Nonstandardized passports began to be issued more to regular citizens in the mid/late-1800s, then became of special importance as needs to control borders during World War I grew - border controls, which generally never went away after the end the war.

Patsy Baudoin's review of The Passport: The History of Man's Most Travelled Document by Martin Lloyd in The American Archivist gives us an excellent summary of what happens next:

> Following World War I, however, in an anxious and unsettled era, it becomes much clearer that cooperation among nations, at least at the administrative level, was necessary for a passport system to work effectively and efficiently. In 1920, the League of Nations' Provisional Committee on Communications and Transit convened an International Conference on Passports, Customs Formalities and Through Tickets precisely to resume controlled travel and set the world back on a course of economic recovery. A far-reaching resolution emerged from this conference: signatories "should agree on a uniform style of passport issued to identical standards".

"The Passport: The History of Man's Most Travelled Document by Martin Lloyd", review by: Patsy Baudoin, The American Archivist, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Fall - Winter, 2005), pp. 343-346.

By July 1921, the fully redesigned passports with detailed specifications on size and content replaced the existing documents.

Here's the micro-history of the passport published by the Guardian.

Tangentially-related histories include the problems created with this system, which is that travelers now has to have a passport and be a citizen of a country. This is especially problematic for the growing number of stateless individuals persecuted and ousted from their homes - specifically Russian refugees following the country's civil war. This lead to the appointment of Norwegian explorer and statesmen Fridtjof Nansen as the League's High Commissioner for Refugees in order to deal with the growing crisis and his development of the "Nansen Passport" to be issued to the stateless. It was later used for Armenian and Turkish refugees as well. One of the real success stories for the League of Nations in my book. Here's a quick write up on Nansen from the UNHCR.

As for your questions about citizenship (which is going to be more complicated), the intersection of that, passports, and nationalism is when you'll have to turn to the ever ubiquitous Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. Probably the most necessary read for a foundational knowledge on these topics, and I believe it should answer at least a few aspects of your additional queries.

Language almost is nationalism. Because what unites people as a nation is extremely vague, not race or ethnicity or a single mono-culture, so people rely heavily on language to define who they are. Just see the language issue in Finland or Quebec or Lebanese attempts to classify Lebanese as its own language.

If you're interested in this subject, you definitely need to read Imagined Communities. It's a classic

Also Eric Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism talks about this as well. I always use the example of Italy when arab nationalism comes up in this sub, pointing out that Italians also speak non-intelligible dialects and teach their children Modern Standard Italian. That idea was from this book where he discusses the existence of dialects within national languages several times. I never got around to finishing it though. Need to find the time, but damn reddit just eats it up

I'll preface this by saying you're not actually arguing against what I'm saying as opposed to what you wish I was saying, it is a bit frustrating.

I never said Europe was multi-racial before the 19th century, simply that race wasn't a factor as much, and that the concept of whiteness didn't exist. Take for example Spain. Spaniards were considered both Spaniards and Christians, that was how they were defined. It didn't really matter that they had a duskier skin tone. Same thing with Sicilians and Neapolitans.

>Your point about these few that served in leadership positions (name one after the collapse of Rome and before the 19th century) once again does not dispprove my point at all. They were exceptions, not the norms. They were a tiny percentage of the population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas-Alexandre_Dumas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal (Pushkin's ancestor to boot)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_de%27_Medici,_Duke_of_Florence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevanico

There's more. Of course they weren't the majority, they're nowhere close to be even today, and it's unlikely it'll change for some time yet. But the fact is that physical appearance wasn't that big of a deal if you had skills and ideas to offer.

>The idea that a shared identity wasn't facilitated by a shared appearance is ridiculous. Our whole system in Europe between the fall of Rome and the modern era had one of its most basic pillars on the concept of continuity of generations. From King to peasant, the idea of family and inheritance was central. [...]

I never argued against this, merely that religion, origin and allegiance were far more important determinants. If you were black or moorish back then, sure you got some odd looks and you'd always be apart and special, but there wasn't that racialist bent you find in the 19th century. You weren't considered necessarily "inferior" and generally monarchs welcomed strangers to their court, using their skills and cultural innovations to improve their realm. Examples could be Peter the Great travelling around Europe to learn shipbuilding, the Austrians adopting (or at least popularising) coffee after the Battle of Vienna, where large Ottoman stocks were seized and so on and so forth. And this is just in a European context, there's many more examples elsewhere of successful cultural integration.

>[...] To put it down to what you say would deny the existence of nations in the first place. We would all become some generic and bland culture, with no heart or sole, no sense of inclusiveness that builds the nation.

If you're interested in how nations form, I strongly suggest reading the following:

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism

*Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A cultural approach

Please don't think I'm just title dropping, but nations and nationalism happen to be topics close to my heart, and in academia, the essentialist approach has been largely discredited. The three authors above present a range of opinions that could interest you. I personally prefer Anthony Smith combined with a conflict driven approach to the formation of nations (basically, nations form because they encounter other nations and thus define themselves in comparison to them. I can expand more on this in another post.)

>No, it is well established amongst the elite in Europe. The majority of people in Europe want reduced immigration. Wanting immigration is really at this point an extremist idea.

I'm not saying that people do not debate whether or not there should be less or more immigrants, merely that almost no one is advocating closing the borders and taking in no immigrants at all. After all, unless natality rates rise across the West, we will have to keep "importing" immigrants.

>And if we accept mass non-white immigration, then we can say good bye to that. Any invasion breaks the continuity of generation (as I noted, there remains an issue with the British identity as a result of the Anglo-Saxon invasion), but one which leaves such a visible break is bound to bring an end to nations.

I disagree, it merely means that the British identity will change. Strangely enough in Canada we don't seem to have half the issues you have with your ethnic immigration, and we are basically a nation of immigrants, many of which are non-white.

>As I say, the biological fact of race is irrelevant. It is the pysical appearance. Europe has always been white. We might be about to see a huge upheaval in the demographics of our continent, and with that will come and end to our continuous and historic culture, just as happened with the collapse of Rome.

And this is the thing. You don't actually disagree with this point. You know this will change culture, to the point at which it is unrecognisable. It will be something new. The difference is, I don't want this to happen, and you do.

Okay, this is the point where I explain my actual position, which I've alluded to in my earlier posts. Having discussed Rome, I think I clearly highlighted the difference between taking small bits of culture from different people here and there and using them to enhance your own culture (Republic-Early Empire) versus uncontrolled hordes of migrants rampaging through your territory (late empire). One does not lead necessarily to the other.

The original topic was about small enclaves (Chinatowns) and the integration of small parts of other cultures to enhance the dominant culture.

This is what I support: Limited immigration with an open-minded policy, in order to create the best culture possible, while maintaining the historical and cultural heritage (especially the language) of the dominant culture.

I never said mass immigration was desirable. On the other hand I did take a historical perspective by saying that given the current rates of immigration and the increase of mixed marriages, the British culture in a few decades/centuries will look very different than it does now, and might even not be majority white as opposed to mixed. It's just how things are, as our world becomes more inter-connected, boundaries become more malleable, especially with communication technologies.

Finally, we should see other cultures as potential sources of wealth. Take what is good for us, then leave the rest. We're already doing it daily. Look at all the sushi shops around, hell, Manchester even has a Curry Mile (though I believe Curry was invented in Britain by Indian immigrants, correct me if I'm wrong there). Shisha bars, alcohols from everywhere around the world, world litterature etc...

In its literal definition, a White Nationalist is someone who believes that their race (White) and sovereign residence (nation/country) are of utmost importance. This belief usually rests on the acceptance of racial theory and necessary competition (commonly called "racism") - as well as accepting whatever authority assigns sovereignty (usually seen as military power).


So, to give an example from the USA: If someone believes that a) "White people" have to look out for "their own" b) the USA has to look out for "its own", they are literally a White Nationalist. You can absolutely have Black Nationalists, Asian-American Nationalists, etc. It's just "my race and my nation come first".


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My personal thoughts:

Racist Nationalism is one of those things that is easy to shout at but difficult to actually argue against without a fair amount of knowledge. It's a very common-sense approach that was popularized by rulers to justify power imbalances. The concept of sovereign "nations" was started by empires (like Britain and Spain) to absorb foreign citizens into their tax base and was agreed upon by other strong "nations" as a way to divvy the resources of weaker nations among themselves. There is no particular reason why national boundaries should be more of an a priori imperative than religious or personal boundaries - they only gain relevance when things like land rights and military actions come into the picture. But, as systems like land-sharing or events like the Crusades have proven, those things aren't exclusive to nations either.


On race - economic class or culture of origin is a far stronger determinant of things like psychological profile, test scores, etc. than anything called "race". "Race" is little more science than phrenology - slight differences in physical appearance and structure are not a guarantee of anything but susceptibility to certain genetic diseases. For example, fourth generation and onward Asian-Americans lose those "Asian math skills" and other academic stereotypes associated with Asians. It turns out collectivist, system-driven cultures tend to make better math students, not having a large epicanthal fold. The arbitrary nature of these biases would be more obvious if we referred to groups like "White-people" and "Black-people" as "White-skinned people" and "Black-skinned people".


There are other way to be a Racist Nationalist - namely if you equate race and culture and see certain cultures as inferior. This is the popular form of it on the political Right, at the moment, as it allows people to switch racial (which are now "cultural") groups by "acting White/Black". I guess the right term for that would be Culturist Nationalist, which has sort of the same origination issues as Nationalism ("culture" is fluid and only really defined to oppose other "cultures").

If you have developed them, what sorts of factors are these seeds? I'm curious because nationalism doesn't emerge until the nineteenth century (though proto-nationalisms definitely did exist prior (especially in actual communities, such as Greek city-states) and many argue the French Revolution is the first major expression of European nationalism), and many of it's necessary conditions, such as widespread literacy, public education, and organized, strongly institutionalized states did not exist in the Late Medieval/Renaissance period. How have you tweaked your setting in order to make for nationalism to arise?

Also, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but if you haven’t, one of the most important texts on nationalism is Benedict Anderson’s [Imagined Communities] (http://www.amazon.com/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Nationalism-Revised/dp/1844670864/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426955808&sr=1-1&keywords=imagined+communities). The link is to a revised version published in 2006, (Anderson updates his core arguments to account for newer scholarship), and it’s definitely the one book I’d recommend reading to anyone wishing to incorporate nationalism into their world.

Despite being factually wrong in many, many regards the take away is our current state of affair are anything but stable, with change being the only constant (Crimea being a good example).

This video has been posted on /r/europe with the comments pointing out some of its gross inaccuracies.

If your interested these are the comments for the same video from /r/history.


My personal quib is the very visualization itself. By presenting the change of euope with a map and changing "states" it falsely attributes our modern nation-states with the kingdoms and political entities of the past, as if they were time immemorial entities . The modern nation-state is based on the political entity of a "nation". What we even conceive of a "nation" didn't exist till after the french revolution (to go with a rough and ready time period). Nations, and the states that claim to be their legal representations, are constructs that did not exist 400 years ago.

So to start the video at 1144 and have nomenclatures such as "France" or "England" is a model simplifications which result in a falsifications by misrepresenting and wrongly equivocating the nations we have today with previous political entities which existed in the same geographical areas.

The European age of cartography didn't begin till the end of the 15th century. Why that's important is videos like this engage in historical revisionism. As without maps you cannot have imagined political communities superimposed onto a map, creating the entities we colloquialy call countries, so to do so reifies things that didn't exist in the way it's being portrayed to us the viewer.

For more information on Nationalism check out Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson

If you want to really punish/enlighten yourself, here's a decent chunk of the texts from the course list:

Nations and Nationalism (New Perspectives on the Past)

The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Wiles Lectures, 1996.)

The Brothertown Nation of Indians: Land Ownership and Nationalism in Early America, 1740-1840

Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century

Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration

Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837; Revised Edition

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New Edition)

Globalisms: The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-first Century (Globalization)

> Communities tend to be strongest (at least in my experience) when they are grounded in places, but communities also aren't LIMITED to their places.

If you haven't read Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, I highly recommend it. This statement is amazing when contextualized into Place and Space theory. It kind of sounds like you already have read it though, or you at least have a working knowledge of one of the main concepts.

Maybe they should just get you something to read...

http://www.amazon.com/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Origin-Nationalism/dp/1844670864/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291654497&sr=8-1-spell

That isn't a time frame that he is pulling out of his arse. The nation state in its current form is widely accepted by academia to have existed for about 200 years, state (often multi-ethnic) and nations both existed before then but not in a cohesive way that we know them today. The Wiki page on it is really quite good for a overview and if you what something more rigorous I would turn to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities.

(this is gonna be long -- I hope you take the time to read it, as you seemed quite eager for me to clarify my position)

That's not my #1 -- not even close. And an odd assumption for you to make. But I'll briefly address it before moving on to the we're a different people thing.

Canada is one of many nation-states on the planet to successfully host regional multilingualism among its population. Although anglo Canada hasn't adopted French en masse, it remains an entirely workable aspect of the federation. The advanced rates of bilingualism among anglo Quebecers (75%) and franco Quebecers (40%) are encouraging. The relative monolingualism of anglo Canada can be ascribed to the fact that English, globally, is just exponentially more useful than French. A unilingual French speaker simply has drastically reduced mobility and opportunity compared to a unilingual English speaker. That's not "Francophobie!!!", it's just a contemporary condition of a world that's increasingly in touch with itself, and has more-or-less settled on English as a common form of communication. Those of us who are bilingual are undeniably the most privileged of all. So, lucky Quebec. That could be a real advantage, moving forward (rather than a threat, as some designate it).

Anyhow, the protection of the French language is better supported by the Canadian federation than it could be by an independent Quebec. The weight of 35 million consumers for whom many importations are required to be bilingual must be measured against the 7 million of a Quebec state. Also, Quebec's increased reliance on the United States for trade and partnerships would undeniably require a greater openness to English than is currently required of cross-national relationships.

So - French? So what. There's nothing about Quebec being mostly French while the ROC is mostly English that prohibits a functioning federation of provinces.

Anyhow, on to ethnic nationalism! The magic of our people, and the shared histories that we've been told about but never experienced, and the structural inequities that no longer exist that we remain persistently indignant about.

The polling on PQ voting intention that came out today is pretty telling. They are behind in every age category but one: 65+. Can you guess why this might be?

First, that generation was the last to actually live the inequality perpetrated by a minority of anglophone factory owners and francophone church officials and politicians. Second, they are of a generation that might maintain certain ontological views that are no longer accepted in 'the West'.

Here is a foundational text that you should look at. It's called Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism.

The term imagined is key here: the idea that your people group -- that you defend and for whom you so presumptuously speak -- are actually entirely abstract -- a massive group of people whom you can and will never meet, imagined as a conglomeration of your textual experiences, beliefs, and personality. It's a completely fallacious -- though sometimes powerful -- conception.

(I think you can google up a pdf of the introduction, if you're interested):

http://www.amazon.ca/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Origin-Nationalism/dp/1844670864

Now your next question might be -- so what? What's wrong with this? Well, here's the most important thing you will read this year, that really does a nice job of summing up contemporary Western thought on identity and nation-building:

http://204racethought.wikispaces.com/file/view/Balibar+Is+There+a+Neo-Racism.pdf

Etienne Balibar's "Is There are Neo-Racism" describes the rise of right-wing nationalism in the West, and he suggests that these movements are enabled by new forms of discrimination based on culture and arbitrary definitions of 'belonging' rather than race -- though they function in the same way.

For this kind of nationalism to function, there must be maintained an "inside" and an "outside". Such movements will be eager to publicly delineate which cultural behaviours reflect our proper values. Narratives about the impending repression and assimilation of our culture will be circulated. This all sound familiar?

Now, none of this is to say that there aren't regional difference in resources, climate, political views, and demographics in Canada, or that these views shouldn't be reflected more keenly in the democratic discourse. Does the Canadian federation do a good job of maintaining regional autonomy while redistributing wealth to deal with inequalities? Meh. Sort of. Could be better, surely. Are these technocratic hurdles worth dissolving the federation over? Considering the very real risks and instabilities that this would impose, in a global economy that is not on very stable footing, probably not.

But none of this was about technocratic reasons, anyhow. Quebec has a lot of autonomy in provincial governance, as it is. This is about your assertion that our people require our own country. It's an outdated and ignorant form of argumentation. I think we can do better than this kind of jingoistic, patriotic blather if we're going to ask all citizens of this province to assemble around a project of better governance and equality. Don't you?