I found this article quite engrossing. Usually during my work day I find it hard to focus on anything for long, so I end up browsing eBay or watching short videos on my lunch hour. But this held my interest firmly and I feel like I learned something.
One aspect of this that isn't mentioned is that the European ethnicities are to a considerable extent artificial themselves, deliberately created by the states. The case I've seen most written about is France, where Paris imposed its concept of Frenchness, and particularly its dialect, on the rest of the territory. I've read that even in contemporary times, teachers weren't allowed to work in the region they grew up in, to ensure that French remains uniform. And back when the EU was being established, I remember one news story interviewing a farmer, "First I am Provencal. Second I am French. Third perhaps I am European." That's not to say that once such an ethnic homogeneity is created/enforced that it does not cause a coherence of the population.
A contrary example is Bret Devereaux' historical essays. In one he points out that the United States has never defined itself as a nation-state, that is, the homeland of a people with a common descent. (Which accounts for US patriotism centering on the political institutions of the state rather than the nation's deep history.) Much more interestingly, he argues that Rome didn't either, that the Roman conception of citizenship was always a legal one. This, and the pressure of various events, made it easy for Rome to expand citizenship (in various degrees) to wider ranges of people that they'd conquered as a device for obtaining cooperation. Late in the empire, citizenship was extended to all free males. Devereaux argues that this helps account for the long life of the Roman polity (about 2,000 years!) -- unlike most ancient empires, where one kingdom-nation conquered a bunch of its neighbors, who then broke away as soon as the empire inherited an incompetent king. By late empire times, the people of the empire thought of themselves as Romans and had no sense of being violated by Roman rule (even though they surely still saw themselves as ethnically different).
I wholly agree that states create ethnicities as much as ethnicities create states. Surely it is the former Africa is hoping for. The problem is that you need quite a strong state to begin with in order to forge a common identity. France was arguably the strongest state of Medieval and early modern times and they could not begin to create a common French ethnicity until the French revolution.
The Roman empire definitely had a set of core ideas that made it Roman, not unlike America. The Roman empire also succeeded, again like America, to create a Roman ethnicity out of the shared Roman idea. Just as contemporary English-speaking Americans share very few genes with British Englishmen, so late Roman Latin-speakers shared very few genes with the old inhabitants of the Tiber valley.
Over long periods of time I suspect that biological and ideological fraternity becomes muddled. The Roman empire was primarily ideas driven. But the even older Chinese empire was, at least superficially, more about ethnicity.
I guess it can move both ways. The Roman empire created its own ethnicity. But during the Migration period many ethnicities created their own empires (I am thinking specifically of the Vandals who were no more than a few tens of thousands when they entered Africa and carved out a powerful state for themselves, but the general concept applies to many tribes of the fifth century).
> The problem is that you need quite a strong state to begin with in order to forge a common identity.
There's a whole literature on "building state capacity" that I stumbled into. An essay on how the Mexican state was constructed during the 1800s. Before Porfirio Diaz, it was a mess. ("During [some particular year], Santa Anna was president four separate times.") That reminded me of Henry VII (who won the War of the Roses) then set about disarming the aristocracy. And Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. I once saw a synopsis of the post-Columbian history of Hispaniola, and it was a mess, or rather, resembled the Middle Ages in Europe, lots of rebellions and wars (mostly between the two halves). After Trujillo, the D.R. was politically stable, more or less, but Haiti remained a mess.
Anders! Hallå där. I've been wondering what's befallen you. It's good to see something new that you've written, even if the byline translates in American English as "This is an inconsequential post, I don't even know why I'm writing it." We're accustomed to Donald Trump over here, you know; we get confused without a bit of bombast and bluster.
Excellent piece, found the relative orderliness comprehendible, which is excellent by African conflict standards! Question: aren't you the type of guy who would love to sink your busy teeth into this bottomless topic? https://youtu.be/QzFMDS6dkWU
I sure would appreciate your opinion/information, many thanks in advance!
I admire good craftsmanship as much as anybody, especially good stonemasonry craftsmanship. But I simply do not have the time to watch more than an hour of American scholars discussing Egyptian stone vases. Of the fragments I did watch I understood they were impressed by the skill of the Egyptian artisans. An impression I no doubt share. But I can not give much more comment than that.
>>For the last three weeks Tove has been in rude health, instead she has dumped an infant on me which has increased my child minding duties and also led to a bit of sleep deprivation.
That's not fair! I didn't dump an infant on you: You threw me out to work.
On topic: I pressed the link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effacer_le_tableau on the genocide of the Bambuti pygmies and found about half a page of text. Apparently it is of very little interest that tens of thousands of people and (if I get it right) more than half of a ethnic group were killed off.
You can think of it as Medieval style capitalism. The lord who can wring the most production out of a given territory will have an edge against the competitors and will thus be in a better position to gain market share, which in Medieval times meant conquering new territories. The result is a sort of societal evolution in which more productive societies are able to expand and less productive ones will be forced to contract.
Another angle is to view war as the great corruption killer. Societies can grow very corrupt, and thus unproductive, before collapsing outright. But in a war against a less-corrupted peer the corrupt state will be at a severe disadvantage enabling the less-corrupt state to move in and establish less corrupt governance. This is sort of what happened in Congo when un-corrupted Rwanda (by African standards at least) defeated the thoroughly corrupted Congo. Had Rwanda been allowed to conquer and hold Congolese territory it is likely that they would have put in place better governance (although, historically, military conquest has a tendency to corrupt the conqueror).
I think Anders means that straightforward land-grabbing wars cause state borders to get fixed at natural places that are easy to defend/hard to overcome, like rivers and mountain ridges, so the resulting states are more stable?
Many great empires don't really support this, e.g. Soviet Union after the European great wars wasn't particularly stable, many of the smaller conquered nations kept trying to separate, any chance they got. Similarly for other empires, which often lasted only as long as the great conqueror king was alive.
Some large empires have actually stabilized, it's my suspicion that for this to happen they've had to successfully massacre all the smaller nations that would otherwise destabilize the empire, or otherwise be so much stronger than the natives that the latter just wither away (what I mean they are pushed into the least productive pieces of land where they keep dying of infectious diseases, alcoholism and whatnot and can't grow into a strong resistance).
In more modern times the stability of a state has been very dependent on the coherence of its population. A common ethnicity is by far the most effective unifier of a state and for that reason alone it has been worthwhile to use warfare to unite one ethnicity in one state.
Nation states are generally more stable than multi-ethnic empires. Empires need a unifying idea that can bridge the ethnic differences. This is not impossible but it is harder. The United States has been very successful in this (“give me liberty or give me death”) but even there I think the unifying idea is giving way to an American ethnicity as the main glue holding the state together.
Russia used the Soviet idea to remain an empire right through the 20th century. An empire that could even conquer other states. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union I do not think that Russia has really had a unifying idea, Soviet nostalgia and kleptocracy do not really count. This has made the state weak, a weakness that has become very visible in the Ukrainian War.
I found this article quite engrossing. Usually during my work day I find it hard to focus on anything for long, so I end up browsing eBay or watching short videos on my lunch hour. But this held my interest firmly and I feel like I learned something.
One aspect of this that isn't mentioned is that the European ethnicities are to a considerable extent artificial themselves, deliberately created by the states. The case I've seen most written about is France, where Paris imposed its concept of Frenchness, and particularly its dialect, on the rest of the territory. I've read that even in contemporary times, teachers weren't allowed to work in the region they grew up in, to ensure that French remains uniform. And back when the EU was being established, I remember one news story interviewing a farmer, "First I am Provencal. Second I am French. Third perhaps I am European." That's not to say that once such an ethnic homogeneity is created/enforced that it does not cause a coherence of the population.
A contrary example is Bret Devereaux' historical essays. In one he points out that the United States has never defined itself as a nation-state, that is, the homeland of a people with a common descent. (Which accounts for US patriotism centering on the political institutions of the state rather than the nation's deep history.) Much more interestingly, he argues that Rome didn't either, that the Roman conception of citizenship was always a legal one. This, and the pressure of various events, made it easy for Rome to expand citizenship (in various degrees) to wider ranges of people that they'd conquered as a device for obtaining cooperation. Late in the empire, citizenship was extended to all free males. Devereaux argues that this helps account for the long life of the Roman polity (about 2,000 years!) -- unlike most ancient empires, where one kingdom-nation conquered a bunch of its neighbors, who then broke away as soon as the empire inherited an incompetent king. By late empire times, the people of the empire thought of themselves as Romans and had no sense of being violated by Roman rule (even though they surely still saw themselves as ethnically different).
I wholly agree that states create ethnicities as much as ethnicities create states. Surely it is the former Africa is hoping for. The problem is that you need quite a strong state to begin with in order to forge a common identity. France was arguably the strongest state of Medieval and early modern times and they could not begin to create a common French ethnicity until the French revolution.
The Roman empire definitely had a set of core ideas that made it Roman, not unlike America. The Roman empire also succeeded, again like America, to create a Roman ethnicity out of the shared Roman idea. Just as contemporary English-speaking Americans share very few genes with British Englishmen, so late Roman Latin-speakers shared very few genes with the old inhabitants of the Tiber valley.
Over long periods of time I suspect that biological and ideological fraternity becomes muddled. The Roman empire was primarily ideas driven. But the even older Chinese empire was, at least superficially, more about ethnicity.
I guess it can move both ways. The Roman empire created its own ethnicity. But during the Migration period many ethnicities created their own empires (I am thinking specifically of the Vandals who were no more than a few tens of thousands when they entered Africa and carved out a powerful state for themselves, but the general concept applies to many tribes of the fifth century).
> The problem is that you need quite a strong state to begin with in order to forge a common identity.
There's a whole literature on "building state capacity" that I stumbled into. An essay on how the Mexican state was constructed during the 1800s. Before Porfirio Diaz, it was a mess. ("During [some particular year], Santa Anna was president four separate times.") That reminded me of Henry VII (who won the War of the Roses) then set about disarming the aristocracy. And Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. I once saw a synopsis of the post-Columbian history of Hispaniola, and it was a mess, or rather, resembled the Middle Ages in Europe, lots of rebellions and wars (mostly between the two halves). After Trujillo, the D.R. was politically stable, more or less, but Haiti remained a mess.
Thanks for taking the time to write this very informative post. It changed my perception of the conflicts in Congo.
Anders! Hallå där. I've been wondering what's befallen you. It's good to see something new that you've written, even if the byline translates in American English as "This is an inconsequential post, I don't even know why I'm writing it." We're accustomed to Donald Trump over here, you know; we get confused without a bit of bombast and bluster.
Excellent piece, found the relative orderliness comprehendible, which is excellent by African conflict standards! Question: aren't you the type of guy who would love to sink your busy teeth into this bottomless topic? https://youtu.be/QzFMDS6dkWU
I sure would appreciate your opinion/information, many thanks in advance!
I admire good craftsmanship as much as anybody, especially good stonemasonry craftsmanship. But I simply do not have the time to watch more than an hour of American scholars discussing Egyptian stone vases. Of the fragments I did watch I understood they were impressed by the skill of the Egyptian artisans. An impression I no doubt share. But I can not give much more comment than that.
>>For the last three weeks Tove has been in rude health, instead she has dumped an infant on me which has increased my child minding duties and also led to a bit of sleep deprivation.
That's not fair! I didn't dump an infant on you: You threw me out to work.
On topic: I pressed the link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effacer_le_tableau on the genocide of the Bambuti pygmies and found about half a page of text. Apparently it is of very little interest that tens of thousands of people and (if I get it right) more than half of a ethnic group were killed off.
I still don't quite understand what's supposed to be so great about wars of conquest. Care to explain?
You can think of it as Medieval style capitalism. The lord who can wring the most production out of a given territory will have an edge against the competitors and will thus be in a better position to gain market share, which in Medieval times meant conquering new territories. The result is a sort of societal evolution in which more productive societies are able to expand and less productive ones will be forced to contract.
Another angle is to view war as the great corruption killer. Societies can grow very corrupt, and thus unproductive, before collapsing outright. But in a war against a less-corrupted peer the corrupt state will be at a severe disadvantage enabling the less-corrupt state to move in and establish less corrupt governance. This is sort of what happened in Congo when un-corrupted Rwanda (by African standards at least) defeated the thoroughly corrupted Congo. Had Rwanda been allowed to conquer and hold Congolese territory it is likely that they would have put in place better governance (although, historically, military conquest has a tendency to corrupt the conqueror).
I think Anders means that straightforward land-grabbing wars cause state borders to get fixed at natural places that are easy to defend/hard to overcome, like rivers and mountain ridges, so the resulting states are more stable?
Many great empires don't really support this, e.g. Soviet Union after the European great wars wasn't particularly stable, many of the smaller conquered nations kept trying to separate, any chance they got. Similarly for other empires, which often lasted only as long as the great conqueror king was alive.
Some large empires have actually stabilized, it's my suspicion that for this to happen they've had to successfully massacre all the smaller nations that would otherwise destabilize the empire, or otherwise be so much stronger than the natives that the latter just wither away (what I mean they are pushed into the least productive pieces of land where they keep dying of infectious diseases, alcoholism and whatnot and can't grow into a strong resistance).
In more modern times the stability of a state has been very dependent on the coherence of its population. A common ethnicity is by far the most effective unifier of a state and for that reason alone it has been worthwhile to use warfare to unite one ethnicity in one state.
Nation states are generally more stable than multi-ethnic empires. Empires need a unifying idea that can bridge the ethnic differences. This is not impossible but it is harder. The United States has been very successful in this (“give me liberty or give me death”) but even there I think the unifying idea is giving way to an American ethnicity as the main glue holding the state together.
Russia used the Soviet idea to remain an empire right through the 20th century. An empire that could even conquer other states. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union I do not think that Russia has really had a unifying idea, Soviet nostalgia and kleptocracy do not really count. This has made the state weak, a weakness that has become very visible in the Ukrainian War.