The idea of nationalism being a new thing I have always felt is something that you could only really believe if you have really not read all that much from the past. When it comes to my country Norway, you find clear nationalistic tendencies in the some of the earliest sagas written in the middle ages after Norway's founding. It is clear that the nation is being lifted up and that there is a commonality between the people of the nation.
Great article, Keith. People love to forget that Roman citizenship wasn't extended outside of Italia until way later under Emperor Caracalla, which massively screwed up the empire for all time. Before Caracalla, only about 5 percent of the empire had citizenship. Kinda reminds me of the United States' switch to Jacksonian democracy in the 1820s.
Excellent article. As a further example from the classical era, it seems to me that the confederation of various previously warring gallic tribes under Vercingetorix against Julius Caesar can only be explained by a sense of shared ethnic identity. Same as the unification of Greek states against Persia’s invasions in the 5thC BC. Maybe a hostile outside force is necessary to forge a common national identity. BTW I believe Cheddar Man dates to 9th Millennium BC.
It happened much the same way with the Americans during the early Indian Wars. Pennsylvania was falling apart under the Quakers as every ethnic and sectarian groups were avoiding each other. The Indian attacks with the French assistance made everyone focused on what they have in common.
Thanks! I have been playing with the AI images trying to find something that doesn't look too much like it was AI generated. I think the sketch style suits Substack
I know you mention the city-states of Ancient Greece here, and maybe they do not 100% fit the category of 'nation'... but! I would still argue that they are essentially in the same category and it is clear, from the writings of at least the Athenians -- from Aristophanes to Xenophon -- that they had great pride in their People and Culture. City-state, nation, call it what you will: the behaviour is the same.
I would make the case that the Aztec Empire would have to be considered 'nationalistic' in some sense, considering that it consisted in a geographic location that had relatively definable borders, that the area was settled, that had its own coherent system of rule, it was hostile to outsiders, unincorporated peoples in the region, was constantly at war with those outside its borders and influence. (The Empire being a collection of three smaller city-states, I would imagine that it would also constitute a nation more appropriately than smaller regional societal structures that would not suitably fir the category)
There are examples, too, throughout the history of Asia, where national pride is clearly historically catalogued, and nationhood is very much a thing, even if usually discussed by some other name. We must remember that these tricky academics use language and its plasticity in often insidious ways. We must always be on our guard, and vigilant in countering their flawed narratives.
Yes the greeks didn't even consider other european ethnic groups as part of their nation. They believed a democracy had to be with people of the same ethnic group otherwise it was not really a democracy, as each population would be nepotistic in gaining power for their own group instead of having solidarity with the whole population.
Something to bear in mind, and that I'm gonna have to consider when writing Roman fantasy stories after my current crop are finished; Rome was to grant citizenship to a great many later and become more an idea, but that was as you said after several centuries. At one time, it was an ethnicity, and one must bear in mind while the Celts of Gaul were eventually Romanized it was a gradual process across almost five centuries.
As a philosopher, I am more worried about the logic of the argument from "nation states are modern entities". Philosophers like Popper, who accused nationalism, have used such an argument, but I really do not understand it.
For example, modern technology is also a new event. Does it follow that there is something wrong with it?
On a larger histprical scale, democracy is a modern event. Does it follow that there is something wrong with democracy?
Reasoning capability is comparatively new event. Does it follow that there is something wrong with it?
On the larger, biological and geological scale, human beings are a modern event. So what follows? Does it follow that there are no human rights?
British white identity was strong in the 40s. Churchill made distinction between White British fighting the war and Indians and Africans fighting the war. At this point, you're just bending history to fit your argument
Yes, in the sense that there are "subject peoples" who have been conquered. It's not much of an "empire" if there aren't conquered provinces of genetic foreigners.
However, the core of the empire is ALWAYS a "Herrenrasse," a "master race" or "lord-people."
Great article, thank you. After reading Tom Holland for quite a while, I'm wondering more and more if this nationalism is a reactionary movement to the decline of a central "religio", or rather, the cult of Caesar, which seems to have been the major glue of the empire
Brilliant article. Got me thinking when you touched on the topic of loyalty to their kin in central Rome during the invasion by Hannibal, could this be more due to monetary gain than the sense of national pride? Just a thought. Same can be said on the other side when Rome raided North Africa the people closer to Carthage would have more to lose due to it being an economic centre.
In the city and not in the country the "Eclogues" were probably written. Blessings brighten as they take their flight, and most poetry in praise of country life is written in the town. Shut out from his home, a thousand sweet illusions gather about the memory of it. The poet feels the tender grace of a day that is dead. Tityrus, who had worked the farm on shares and had enabled Virgil of old time to play the gentleman farmer while he gave his thoughts to poetry, is now exalted into an Arcadian shepherd. The tending of flocks is the only real work of life; love-making and contests of verse and song are its solaces and delights.
That such a poem could have been published in the year 37 before Christ, in the midst of the second great civil war, shows not only the idealizing powers of the true poet, but also the large fruitage of Virgil's previous years of calm. There is a *naïveté* and a liquid flow to the "Eclogues" which witness to the rise of a new force in literature. Pollio is said to have pressed the poet to the writing of them, and Theocritus is said to have furnished the model and the inspiration. But no one who has in imagination reclined with the writer *sub tegmine fagi* can ever banish from his mind the delightful freshness of the verse, the charm of the Italian landscape which pervades it, and the impression of Virgil's wonderful love for nature. Nature seems actually to live and speak. She mourns for the dead Caesar, as in Greek poetry she mourned for the dead Daphnis. "In the last Eclogue," as another has said, "all the gods of Arcady come to console the poet when his faithless lady has forsaken him to follow his rival to the wars. This passage suggested the august procession of the superhuman mourners of Lycidas, which in its turn suggested to Shelley the splendid fragment of Adonais."
In the "Georgics," published in 30 or 29 B.C., after the great victory of Actium had made Augustus sole ruler of the Roman world, we have a more sober and lofty poem, whose temper of chastened hope and serene endeavor, to use the phrase of Prof. Sellar, befits the time of settlement. The word "Georgics" might be translated "Field-work." It is a glorification of industry. The country is not now the scene of perpetual holiday, as it was in the "Eclogues." Work is to be done, and the four sorts of work give their themes to the four books, which successively treat of tillage, trees, herds, and bees. Here too, Virgil had his model, and the model was Hesiod's "Works and Days." He had his prompter also; for Mæcenas, the generous patron and encourager of timid genius, urged the writing of them.
There was reason enough for the advice. The long wars had been times when regular government was almost suspended. Rapine and corruption had stalked in the track of the advancing armies. There was danger that the old virtues of the republic would be buried in the republic's grave. What could arrest the decay of Roman life? Nothing but a revival of the principles which at the first had made Rome great. Industry, frugality, simplicity, love of home, and reverence for law—these must take the place of strife and luxury, of ambition and greed. With a true poet's insight and with a true patriot's hope, Virgil seems to have risen to the occasion. He clothes with a halo of imagination and invests with a tender beauty all the homeliest details of country labor and country life. The "Georgics" would be the greatest of didactic poems if they were meant to be a didactic poem at all. But this is a mistaken notion; they were never intended to answer for a book of instruction to the farmer. Their object rather was to elevate men's conceptions of the arts of peace, to dignify humble toil, to teach the love of country, to inspire reverence for nature's laws.
These poems give us, more plainly than any others, Virgil's ideas about nature and about government. Nature to him means universal law. The same authority which in the "Æneid" appears as Fate, appears in the "Georgics" as Nature. "Thus Nature," he says, "at first imposed these laws, these eternal ordinances, when Deucalion first cast stones in an empty world, whence the hard race of men arose." But Nature, to Virgil's mind, does not exclude intelligence, or prevent the care and purpose of the gods. Hear him once again: "Incessant labor conquers all things"; "for gods there are"; "Jove hurls the lightning"; "therefore venerate the gods"; "may they now save the Saviour of the State!"
And so Virgil's doctrine of divine government leads to his doctrine of human government. That too has divine sanctions. Augustus, who had pacified the world and saved the State, was the very embodiment at once of the will of the gods and of eternal law. It is not necessary to regard Virgil as a mere court poet, who flatters Augustus as a matter of trade. Nor was the deification of the emperor a piece of sycophancy. Perverse and idolatrous though it was, it was still in large part, as I shall hope to show, the blind exaggeration of a noble sentiment—the sentiment of loyalty and of reverence for divinely appointed powers. As the Hebrews of old called human judges "gods," because they were appointed by God to stand in his place and administer justice in his name, so the apotheosis of the Cæsars and Virgil's declaration that Augustus would be exalted to heaven, as a new star filling the gap between the Virgin and the Scales, were in some degree a poetical recognition of the fact that the powers that be are ordained of God, and that his faithful representatives shall partake of God's own immortality.
There is a promise in the "Georgics" which indicates the consciousness in Virgil's mind that the time was near when he could venture upon a larger task than any he had yet achieved. He declares that he will yet wed Cæsar's glories to an epic strain. The "Æneid" is the fulfillment of that promise. Ten years of work he spent upon it. In the "Eclogues" he had followed in the track of Theocritus; in the "Georgics" he had imitated Hesiod; now in his last great poem he mounts higher, and aspires to produce a work like those of Homer.
The "Æneid" indeed is intended to be an "Odyssey" and an "Iliad" in one, the first six books with the wanderings of Æneas aiming to be an "Odyssey," and the last six books, with their battles on land, aiming to be an "Iliad." The hero, however, as befits the unity of the epic, is in both halves of the story the same, the pious Æneas; and the great object of the poem is to show how the universal empire of Rome, which the gods had willed and Fate had decreed, was first established on the Italian shores. Virgil will write a poem that reflects the genius and the destiny of the Latin race; he will dignify the history of Rome by linking it to the heroes of antiquity and the counsels of heaven; he will clothe his theme with all the splendors of legend and song; he will reproduce the Homeric poems in Italy; he will himself be the Homer of Rome.
The idea of nationalism being a new thing I have always felt is something that you could only really believe if you have really not read all that much from the past. When it comes to my country Norway, you find clear nationalistic tendencies in the some of the earliest sagas written in the middle ages after Norway's founding. It is clear that the nation is being lifted up and that there is a commonality between the people of the nation.
Great article, Keith. People love to forget that Roman citizenship wasn't extended outside of Italia until way later under Emperor Caracalla, which massively screwed up the empire for all time. Before Caracalla, only about 5 percent of the empire had citizenship. Kinda reminds me of the United States' switch to Jacksonian democracy in the 1820s.
Excellent article. As a further example from the classical era, it seems to me that the confederation of various previously warring gallic tribes under Vercingetorix against Julius Caesar can only be explained by a sense of shared ethnic identity. Same as the unification of Greek states against Persia’s invasions in the 5thC BC. Maybe a hostile outside force is necessary to forge a common national identity. BTW I believe Cheddar Man dates to 9th Millennium BC.
It happened much the same way with the Americans during the early Indian Wars. Pennsylvania was falling apart under the Quakers as every ethnic and sectarian groups were avoiding each other. The Indian attacks with the French assistance made everyone focused on what they have in common.
Wonderful article.
Great article Keith!
Great article. I’m new to substack but loving the clean format. And good use of AI generation btw.
Thanks! I have been playing with the AI images trying to find something that doesn't look too much like it was AI generated. I think the sketch style suits Substack
Outstanding, Keith. I was absorbed. Thank you.
I know you mention the city-states of Ancient Greece here, and maybe they do not 100% fit the category of 'nation'... but! I would still argue that they are essentially in the same category and it is clear, from the writings of at least the Athenians -- from Aristophanes to Xenophon -- that they had great pride in their People and Culture. City-state, nation, call it what you will: the behaviour is the same.
I would make the case that the Aztec Empire would have to be considered 'nationalistic' in some sense, considering that it consisted in a geographic location that had relatively definable borders, that the area was settled, that had its own coherent system of rule, it was hostile to outsiders, unincorporated peoples in the region, was constantly at war with those outside its borders and influence. (The Empire being a collection of three smaller city-states, I would imagine that it would also constitute a nation more appropriately than smaller regional societal structures that would not suitably fir the category)
The Aztecs also had a strict 8-tier caste system.
https://www.fcusd.org/cms/lib/CA01001934/Centricity/Domain/1168/Aztec%20social%20pyramid%20readings.pdf
There are examples, too, throughout the history of Asia, where national pride is clearly historically catalogued, and nationhood is very much a thing, even if usually discussed by some other name. We must remember that these tricky academics use language and its plasticity in often insidious ways. We must always be on our guard, and vigilant in countering their flawed narratives.
Yes the greeks didn't even consider other european ethnic groups as part of their nation. They believed a democracy had to be with people of the same ethnic group otherwise it was not really a democracy, as each population would be nepotistic in gaining power for their own group instead of having solidarity with the whole population.
Something to bear in mind, and that I'm gonna have to consider when writing Roman fantasy stories after my current crop are finished; Rome was to grant citizenship to a great many later and become more an idea, but that was as you said after several centuries. At one time, it was an ethnicity, and one must bear in mind while the Celts of Gaul were eventually Romanized it was a gradual process across almost five centuries.
As a philosopher, I am more worried about the logic of the argument from "nation states are modern entities". Philosophers like Popper, who accused nationalism, have used such an argument, but I really do not understand it.
For example, modern technology is also a new event. Does it follow that there is something wrong with it?
On a larger histprical scale, democracy is a modern event. Does it follow that there is something wrong with democracy?
Reasoning capability is comparatively new event. Does it follow that there is something wrong with it?
On the larger, biological and geological scale, human beings are a modern event. So what follows? Does it follow that there are no human rights?
My understanding is that its's more an attempted refutation of the Nationalist argument that Nations have always existed.
All empires are multiracial and multicultural.
And to the extent that they function, the sovereign centre is an ethnic bloc with a strong national identity.
It's no coincidence that the British Empire crumbled when the White ethno-block at the centre stopped perceiving itself as a (racial) Nation.
British white identity was strong in the 40s. Churchill made distinction between White British fighting the war and Indians and Africans fighting the war. At this point, you're just bending history to fit your argument
Yes, in the sense that there are "subject peoples" who have been conquered. It's not much of an "empire" if there aren't conquered provinces of genetic foreigners.
However, the core of the empire is ALWAYS a "Herrenrasse," a "master race" or "lord-people."
Most empires are superficial multicultural because usually all the people in power are usually the same race
Great article, thank you. After reading Tom Holland for quite a while, I'm wondering more and more if this nationalism is a reactionary movement to the decline of a central "religio", or rather, the cult of Caesar, which seems to have been the major glue of the empire
Brilliant article. Got me thinking when you touched on the topic of loyalty to their kin in central Rome during the invasion by Hannibal, could this be more due to monetary gain than the sense of national pride? Just a thought. Same can be said on the other side when Rome raided North Africa the people closer to Carthage would have more to lose due to it being an economic centre.
Question, you say "it would be a mistake to claim that some of these examples were “nationalist” in the sense we understand it today..."
To what extent, if any, is nationalism a modern invention. How much credence does the modernist understanding of nationalism have?
Surely an understanding of this question is necessary if one wishes to defend a primordial position of nationalism.
Read stone age herbalists first book on this topic
"""
In the city and not in the country the "Eclogues" were probably written. Blessings brighten as they take their flight, and most poetry in praise of country life is written in the town. Shut out from his home, a thousand sweet illusions gather about the memory of it. The poet feels the tender grace of a day that is dead. Tityrus, who had worked the farm on shares and had enabled Virgil of old time to play the gentleman farmer while he gave his thoughts to poetry, is now exalted into an Arcadian shepherd. The tending of flocks is the only real work of life; love-making and contests of verse and song are its solaces and delights.
That such a poem could have been published in the year 37 before Christ, in the midst of the second great civil war, shows not only the idealizing powers of the true poet, but also the large fruitage of Virgil's previous years of calm. There is a *naïveté* and a liquid flow to the "Eclogues" which witness to the rise of a new force in literature. Pollio is said to have pressed the poet to the writing of them, and Theocritus is said to have furnished the model and the inspiration. But no one who has in imagination reclined with the writer *sub tegmine fagi* can ever banish from his mind the delightful freshness of the verse, the charm of the Italian landscape which pervades it, and the impression of Virgil's wonderful love for nature. Nature seems actually to live and speak. She mourns for the dead Caesar, as in Greek poetry she mourned for the dead Daphnis. "In the last Eclogue," as another has said, "all the gods of Arcady come to console the poet when his faithless lady has forsaken him to follow his rival to the wars. This passage suggested the august procession of the superhuman mourners of Lycidas, which in its turn suggested to Shelley the splendid fragment of Adonais."
In the "Georgics," published in 30 or 29 B.C., after the great victory of Actium had made Augustus sole ruler of the Roman world, we have a more sober and lofty poem, whose temper of chastened hope and serene endeavor, to use the phrase of Prof. Sellar, befits the time of settlement. The word "Georgics" might be translated "Field-work." It is a glorification of industry. The country is not now the scene of perpetual holiday, as it was in the "Eclogues." Work is to be done, and the four sorts of work give their themes to the four books, which successively treat of tillage, trees, herds, and bees. Here too, Virgil had his model, and the model was Hesiod's "Works and Days." He had his prompter also; for Mæcenas, the generous patron and encourager of timid genius, urged the writing of them.
There was reason enough for the advice. The long wars had been times when regular government was almost suspended. Rapine and corruption had stalked in the track of the advancing armies. There was danger that the old virtues of the republic would be buried in the republic's grave. What could arrest the decay of Roman life? Nothing but a revival of the principles which at the first had made Rome great. Industry, frugality, simplicity, love of home, and reverence for law—these must take the place of strife and luxury, of ambition and greed. With a true poet's insight and with a true patriot's hope, Virgil seems to have risen to the occasion. He clothes with a halo of imagination and invests with a tender beauty all the homeliest details of country labor and country life. The "Georgics" would be the greatest of didactic poems if they were meant to be a didactic poem at all. But this is a mistaken notion; they were never intended to answer for a book of instruction to the farmer. Their object rather was to elevate men's conceptions of the arts of peace, to dignify humble toil, to teach the love of country, to inspire reverence for nature's laws.
These poems give us, more plainly than any others, Virgil's ideas about nature and about government. Nature to him means universal law. The same authority which in the "Æneid" appears as Fate, appears in the "Georgics" as Nature. "Thus Nature," he says, "at first imposed these laws, these eternal ordinances, when Deucalion first cast stones in an empty world, whence the hard race of men arose." But Nature, to Virgil's mind, does not exclude intelligence, or prevent the care and purpose of the gods. Hear him once again: "Incessant labor conquers all things"; "for gods there are"; "Jove hurls the lightning"; "therefore venerate the gods"; "may they now save the Saviour of the State!"
And so Virgil's doctrine of divine government leads to his doctrine of human government. That too has divine sanctions. Augustus, who had pacified the world and saved the State, was the very embodiment at once of the will of the gods and of eternal law. It is not necessary to regard Virgil as a mere court poet, who flatters Augustus as a matter of trade. Nor was the deification of the emperor a piece of sycophancy. Perverse and idolatrous though it was, it was still in large part, as I shall hope to show, the blind exaggeration of a noble sentiment—the sentiment of loyalty and of reverence for divinely appointed powers. As the Hebrews of old called human judges "gods," because they were appointed by God to stand in his place and administer justice in his name, so the apotheosis of the Cæsars and Virgil's declaration that Augustus would be exalted to heaven, as a new star filling the gap between the Virgin and the Scales, were in some degree a poetical recognition of the fact that the powers that be are ordained of God, and that his faithful representatives shall partake of God's own immortality.
There is a promise in the "Georgics" which indicates the consciousness in Virgil's mind that the time was near when he could venture upon a larger task than any he had yet achieved. He declares that he will yet wed Cæsar's glories to an epic strain. The "Æneid" is the fulfillment of that promise. Ten years of work he spent upon it. In the "Eclogues" he had followed in the track of Theocritus; in the "Georgics" he had imitated Hesiod; now in his last great poem he mounts higher, and aspires to produce a work like those of Homer.
The "Æneid" indeed is intended to be an "Odyssey" and an "Iliad" in one, the first six books with the wanderings of Æneas aiming to be an "Odyssey," and the last six books, with their battles on land, aiming to be an "Iliad." The hero, however, as befits the unity of the epic, is in both halves of the story the same, the pious Æneas; and the great object of the poem is to show how the universal empire of Rome, which the gods had willed and Fate had decreed, was first established on the Italian shores. Virgil will write a poem that reflects the genius and the destiny of the Latin race; he will dignify the history of Rome by linking it to the heroes of antiquity and the counsels of heaven; he will clothe his theme with all the splendors of legend and song; he will reproduce the Homeric poems in Italy; he will himself be the Homer of Rome.
"""
- Augustus Hopkins Strong, "The Great Poets And Their Theology" (https://www.biblestudytools.com/classics/strong-great-poets-and-their-theology/virgil.html)