Were Ancient Folk Nationalist?

Presence of a state with a defined area of control.
See: King of the French vs King of France

No. Nationalism is very much a 19th century invention.

People identified with their co-religionists (muh sect only), their Lord/King/Bishopric/whatever in an abstract way, but more often it was with their immediate geographic community. The notion that they were ONE PEOPLE based on speaking more or less the same language was a novel idea. Really, it was a way to break from the then traditional supra-national structures, like church and empires.

It's not the same, unless you such a broad umbrella definition of 'nationalism' that everything becomes it. Applying modern sensibilities and understanding to humans before a particular concept existed is the first taboo of history.

Nationalism is just kin based collectivism or tribalism. Singling it out as something especially new or modern is kind of bs. It's the same in group/out group psychology that dominated human politics forever simply larger in scale.

Not in modern sense, no. We are talking about multi-ethnic empires here. A lot of their people just waited to stab their masters in the back.

>simply largr in scale
That's pretty important difference.

>No. Nationalism is very much a 19th century invention
Bullshit. A nation is a people.
See

Nationalism is a modern invention. It uses symbolism and imagery to construct a narrative that seeks to form a tribal sense of unity out of a nation state, which by necessity is ordinarily too large or heterogeneous for such unity.

Retard see

> Why don't people accept something I pulled out of my ass as the official definition of nationalism ?

>why don't people accept the marxist definition of nationalism as a totally new concept that fell out of the sky precisely in 1821?

Proto-nationalism did exist in Iran and probably Egypt. We don't know much about Carthage.

Europran 19th century nationalism obviously didn't exist before the 19th century.

The first nationalists were Bohemian (Czech) Hussites. If you read about them it's hard to argue they weren't nationalist.

Tribalism is actually the antithesis of nationalism. Paternal line is all that matters in tribalist societies and loyalty ended up being more valued than blood anyway. Plus no defined state structure which is what nationalism is all about.

ancient greeks got together to fight off the persians despite their constant wars
they felt some identity among themselves is that what you have in mind?

You're wrong though. Anyone who has been through basic civilization classes knows that 19th century nationalism is largely based on linguistics and is unlike tribalism before it.

>implying paternal lines aren't good enough for most nationalists
>implying nationalists didn't reward non ethnics that were loyal to their cause all the same
>implying there is a meaningful distinction between nationalist state apparatus and tribal elders innawoods dictating policy

Tribes didn't organize themselves along shared linguistic heritage now?

Get out.

I don't think a nationalist would argue that a full blown nigger with a German paternal ancestor somewhere down the line counts as a real German.

Not him, but they literally don't. Read literally anything about the tribal units of the Eurasian steppe, do you think all Huns spoke a Hunnic language?

Tribes never organized themselves along common linguistic heritage then?

Yeahhhhh no.

This post is painful to read.

>How is tribalism even different from nationalism?
Actual known and personal blood ties versus vague and romantic connections with strangers.

If you were part of a tribe, that meant you were part of a small family that was directly related to known people who are part of a larger clan, who themselves are directly related to a larger tribe.

Tribes adopted unrelated people all the time.

Why is a tribesman's connection to other strange members of the larger clan any less romantic than nationalism?

It's not.

>Tribes never organized
Never would be quite the absolute statement, but language was far less relevant than you might believe. Most big tribes were formed by allying and absorbing smaller tribes that spoke a different language anyway.
>Yeahhhhh no.
Go back to r*ddit if this is your way of arguing. Are you a woman or something? Get a hold of yourself.

>Never would be quite the absolute statement, but language was far less relevant than you might believe. Most big tribes were formed by allying and absorbing smaller tribes that spoke a different language anyway.
Nice backpedalling.

In which case that unrelated person becomes directly related to a family of the tribe.

Because it's tangible. You can go meet your father who can take you to meet his fathers and brothers and cousins.

>Because it's tangible
Common tongues and culture are just as tangible.

>why people can't be a rootless cosmopolitan whore like me?

No, they are not. These are mutually appreciated activities based on independent adoption of concepts.

A nation is simply an extension of a family/village/tribe/pack/troop/...

Nationalism is simply an expression of a basic animalistic instinct that all social animals have. It's basically genetic, even.

The birth of nations in the 17th century and the rise of nations in the following centuries were both attempts to consolidate concurrent identities into one concrete geography from their cultural space, this nation constitutes a set of ethno-cultural identities. As vapor condenses and collects into a pool of water, so too did the nation draw the cultural and tribal allegiances and collect them in concretely. Nations were autonomous religious zones, so that catholic zones and a protestant zones could exist as distinct entities.

Only in nations could "blood and soil" be drawn into the foreground as a unifying concept."One land, one law, one people", and the German obsession to collect all german speaking peoples into one country, are foreground aspects of social life and the state. Nationalism did not create racial in-group preferences, differences in culture, language, religion, allegiance to certain political factions, etc. Nations emerged as a consequence of these and in the nationalists' attempt to consolidate these identities they thought they would prevent the conflict of these identities. The consolidation of these identities neither created them, nor did it remove them, and the conflicts of identities simply became inter-national, rising and converging with the catastrophe of the first war.

Tribalism, in-group preferences, polity, etc. are ubiquitous, the "nation" is one manifestation of these. The nation is today believed to be some metaphysical entity that is anthropomorphised into an individual. The actions of a government, people, or culture, are ascribed to the "nation" and we often talk about nations as though they were entities or individuals. In the aristocratic society, the ruler was often referred to by his title: "my noble Buckingham, good Northumberland!", etc whereas now the "nation" has become a metaphysical Emperor. The foundation of ideological "nationalism" is essentially the same as that of aristocracy.

>nations were invented in the 17th century

Jesus fucking chris, what kind of koolaid are you drinking?

Peace of Westphalia, European settlements of 1648, which brought to an end the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch and the German phase of the Thirty Years’ War. The peace was negotiated, from 1644, in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück. The Spanish-Dutch treaty was signed on January 30, 1648. The treaty of October 24, 1648, comprehended the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand III, the other German princes, France, and Sweden. England, Poland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire were the only European powers that were not represented at the two assemblies. Some scholars of international relations credit the treaties with providing the foundation of the modern state system and articulating the concept of territorial sovereignty.

britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia

Nations existed long before the modern state system.

It depends how you define nation. The continuity of a particular race, religion, culture and language is not itself a "nation", the Jews are an example of this and did not have a nation for centuries. It is the consolidation of these into a fenced region which is then believed to be the set of its identities that constitutes a nation. The word "nation" is unhelpful, I prefer my own terminology: prescriptive and descriptive states. The former defines its population and the latter is defined by its population. These are held in dialectical tension and one assumes the foreground, so that a modern nation-state can remove your citizenship but not your nationhood. England, the nation was a descriptive state while Britain, the Empire, was a prescriptive one. "Nationalism" is a modern and liberal concept, but we're probably talking past each other at this point.

A nation is typically an ethnic or other group of people identified with a certain geographical area under a common rule, but migratory groups are also often called nations.

You seem to be equating a nation to a state as opposed to an ethnicity. A nation can exist without its own (nation) state.

Here we go again

You're still repeting ad nauseam your BS despite being refuted again and again

Jesus Christ this thread is retarded. Nationalism is literally just a type of tribalism. All nationalism is tribalism but not all tribalism is nationalism

If you don't understand the historical significance of what was going on in the early to mid 19th century with regards to the concept of the Nation you need to leave the history board

This.

And I think you've been on /pol/ too much then.

What really happened in the 19th century is that a lot of nations were suddenly told they were a single nation because they shared some common traits.

You're putting the cart before the horse and pulling definitions out of your ass. Nationalism is a 19th century word and notion. You're doing exactly what I just said was in error: applying a (more) modern term and concept to humans before the term and concept existed. It is a fallacy to presume nationalism is some natural state of humans.

Even the concept of "a nation is a people" is subjective. What "people"? This particular in-group 'cause we said so? In that very broad sense, that is basic human organization. But that is not nationalism. Nationalism is the idea that millions of people, the vast majority of whom you will never know or even meet, are part of the same exact tribe. This is NOT how people viewed their relations to others pre-19th century.

This has nothing to do with Marxist revisionism or whatever, you dolt.

They were religious reformists, m8. The desire for more Church functions in the local vernacular was not new, though the Hussites were the first mass movement for is (it wasn't their only gripe). A desire for mass in the vernacular was exacerbated first by increasing education/academia in general (in the local language rather than purely in Latin), and then given a huge boost by the printing press. This wasn't really nationalism, but more about egalitarianism.

It depends how much you rely on circular logic. But in fact, there are enough exceptions that suggest it wasn't a key factor. It wasn't a conscious choice to organize along linguistic lines.

Not an argument.

Also, I completed a history MA in (basically) nationalist theories. So come at me, bro.

We're talking a few hundred people versus tens of millions. Some modern societies talk about clans, like Somalis or various Turkics for example, but really these are historical notions that thanks to modern medicine have exploded the populations of a group, so the "clans" may be now several hundred thousand. This is an anomaly.

In times past, a "common tongue" would imply close (and a relatively small) geographical presence. I don't think you understand how fractured and variant dialect gradients were in the past. The majority of people in a given region would not move very far over the course of their lives.

No. It's more than just geography.

And that is a modern notion. Taken to its extension, it necessitates that every nation should also have its own state.

The difference between the tribe and the nation is that the identity of the tribe is based on blood relations, whereas nations are imagined communities where you know a specific place's boundaries is inhabited by the same people that share your culture, language, customs and religion

There's also the (distant) blood relation through ethnicity. And the culture, customs and religion part can vary from one nation to another.

>Or is it just something Romans

Romans didn't have nationalism in our modern day understanding, but rather a big pride in their country because being a roman citizen gave you a certain set of privileges. That's why the SPQR was named "Patria"

Being a citizen and being a Roman were too different things. You could have all the benefits legally of citizenship and still be treated as a second class because you weren't Roman. The word of someone born and raised in the Eternal City was always worth more than any provincial, including those from the rest of the Italian peninsula. Just go look up how they treated the Samnites even in the 1st century AD.

>ancient greeks

>Group identity

You must be joking. If you were not from the same city as the rest of the people you were literally viewed as a sub-human, regardless of which greek city-state we're talking about

Tribes can be pretty big and the connection through blood is most likely imagined too.

>Nationalism is very much a 19th century invention.

Maybe to shitty civic states like France and USA.

Nationalism as a collective identity of people that was passed generation to generation existed ever since medieval times

To claim that nationalism is a 19th-century invention is painfully retarded for two reasons:

Firstly: nationalism is an extension of tribalism, which is an extension of social animal behaviour. This goes back millions of years.

Secondly: nations have existed for thousands of years. At least the ones we have evidence for.

Greeks did identify as a group you dunce. They formed rival city states, but non-Greeks were barbarians.

>civic states like France and USA
We just copied Gayrmany

If you want to blame someone blame the Gayrmans

Two Frenchmen with horribly disparate dialects would still get on together much better than they would with a german. The un-intelligibility of the various dialects of "pre nationalist" standardization of national languages is exaggerated in any event. Language standardisation wasn't exactly built on shakey ground the way you seem to imply.

Tribalism is a broad term that basically includes any instance of an exclusive group.
Nationalism brings in an adherence to the idea of a well-defined homeland.

>And that is a modern notion.

No its not

>Nationalism is literally just a type of tribalism. All nationalism is tribalism but not all tribalism is nationalism

You are seriously retarded. Take your idiotic pseudo-intellectual notions back to pol

>No. It's more than just geography.
Which is why I mentioned more than geography.
In fact, I even said geography isn't even a necessary element since migratory communities are also often considered "nations".

Care to give an example?

> the connection through blood is most likely imagined too.

You're taking the term "imagined" literally. When i say that, i mean a particular non-physical abstract notion that each individual creates in his head based on a collective feeling of belonging to a group of persons that do not necessarily share the same blood as you nor part of your extended family.

>Greeks did identify as a group

They did identify as a culture, but not as a nation, and even so that didn't stop them from slaughtering each other whenever they had the chance. Whereas a nation's members do not wage war between one another unless politics are involved, which is ultimately the difference between a tribe and a nation.

>nationalism is whatever I want it to be

>dat circular logic
>facegif.palm
You're taking an assumption as if it's given. Way to beg the question, dolt.

>Two Frenchmen with horribly disparate dialects would still get on together much better than they would with a german
Nice assumption. Do you get along with everyone you meet from the same country as you? And *always* better than someone from another country?

Besides, if we're talking about pre-modern times, the concept of "Frenchman" and "German" did not exist. (Well, OK, it kinda did for France, being a clear exception. But a royalist and a republican would not have got on very well...)

Here's an important but tangential question: Where are you from and how many languages do you speak?

Neighbouring dialects could understand each other, and you would certainly recognize a dialect of your language. Most are mutually intelligible with varying degrees of work. The point is rather that they mark you as "other".

>Nice assumption. Do you get along with everyone you meet from the same country as you? And *always* better than someone from another country?
I'd necessarily get along with a person from the same country as me because the communication barrier wouldn't exist. Are you being purposefully obtuse or just retarded now?

Yes, it is.

Nationalism = states organized on ethnic lines
Nationalism =/= "ethnicities exist"

Both nationalists and anti-nationalists get confused by this for some reason.

>dat circular logic
Explain.

Bullshit. Your odds of getting along with someone from (assuming you're English-speaking) Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, South Africa, etc. etc. are reasonably high. You're not going to get along with some dude who just raped your mother and then shot her in the face just because you're both wearing "Team USA" shirts.

It's a weak argument bro. If I were you I'd just let it quietly die.

>English is now a transnational lingua franca in the era of post nationalism therefore two French men in the 19th century wouldn't have had a better rapport with one another even if their dialects were disparate when compared to the rapport they would have with a german or an Englishman that didn't speak a lick of french

Die retard. Don't even bother coming up with a rebuttal, I'm not even going to bother to read it.

>nationalism has always existed no matter what, but under other names, therefore I can take any example as proof of my argument

Again, the concept of nations was invented in the 19th century. YOU might apply the name retroactively to group X, Y, or Z, but that does not mean X, Y, or Z saw themselves as a nation according to your definition. More than likely, they did not.

>Being this much of an uneducated peasant in such a vast and complicated subject as nationalism

If we define the nation and therefor nationalism as a sentiment shared by people that adhere to a common culture, set of principals or other values that create a solidarity between members of a community, then we might as well call gays as members of a nation. Yes, there is such a thing as Queer nationalism in case your simple mind didn't comprehend.

However, gays/lesbians/whateveryoucallthem are basing their solidarity in this case with their sexual orientation. Which is not enough in itself for them to be named a nation, because the reproductive factor is important in transmitting these set of principles and solidarity feeling to the next generations of your community in order for it to survive as a culture. A thing which has existed since medieval times. First in the forms of "christian nations", then as european cultures and societies became more and more complex, so did this exact feeling of what defined the collective solidarity called nationalism evolve in parallel.

No it's not you fucking retard. All the various german stats prior to unification were very well aware that it's members are part of a single nation and are part of an imaginary unified country which did not yet exist. Just because in the german case there are written records of it in modern times does not mean it did not exist in prior times. Holy shit do the people that browse this fucking place even bother to read on the shit they give their opinion on?

>the concept of nations was invented in the 19th century
Look up the definition of "nation" and hang your head in shame.

Glad to see you have taken opted for my advice to let your weak argument die. Pride comes before a fall, of course.

It also means to have feelings of superiority of ones own country over others

Not even him but you reaffirmed his argument but you're too stupid to even realize it. People who can speak in a common tongue can relate to each other better right off the bat than people who can't.

You use a lot of words to say very little.

Medieval peasants didn't give a fuck what cultural traits were being transmitted on the other end of their Sprachbund. 19th century nationalism was not really a grass-roots movement. It was promulgated by educated romantics and then picked up by the military/ruling classes before even beginning to spread to the peons.

>relying on the dictionary to make your point
nigga puh-lease. We may have slightly different working definitions of what a "nation" and nationalism are, but I am viewing it in the political sense, which is the predominant way the pleb on the street would view it. What's your nation? (Insert country name here)

Relate to each other ≠ nationalism inherent. As I said, it's a weak argument.

Only Americans think that nation is a synonym of country. Anywhere in Europe it means an ethnic group.

>Relate to each other ≠ nationalism inherent. As I said, it's a weak argument.
Common langue is the fundamental building block of nationalism. Two Frenchmen from opposite sides of France would necessarily be able get along with each other better right off the bat than they would with a german right across the Rhine through ease of communication alone. Not too difficult to understand.

It's more complicated than that bud. And I should know, because I am Eurofag btw.

That still doesn't mean they would, and it still doesn't 'presto chango' make nationalism. It takes more than that. Not too difficult to understand.

>>relying on the dictionary to make your point
>nigga puh-lease.
That's where you learn what words mean.
You fucking retard.

>he learns things from the dictionary.
>mfw I'm conserving with someone who thinks 8-year old logic is some kind of checkmate.

>You use a lot of words to say very little.

You confuse the idea of a nation with the process of nationalism

Nationalism is a modern phenomena. Tribalism is what you're thinking of.