I'm going to share here a text by one of my favorite thinkers Ernest Renan who wrote a text what is a nation.
" A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the present consent, the desire to live together, the will to continue to assert the inheritance that we have received undivided. Man, gentlemen, is not improvised.
The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of a long past of efforts, sacrifices, and devotions. The cult of ancestors is the most legitimate of all; our ancestors made us what we are. A heroic past, great men, glory (I mean true glory), that is the social capital on which a national idea is based. To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to want to do them again, these are the essential conditions for being a people. We love in proportion to the sacrifices we have made, the ills we have suffered. We love the house we have built and that we pass on. The Spartan chant: "We are what you were; we shall be what you are" is in its simplicity the abbreviated hymn of every homeland.
In the past, a legacy of glory and regrets to share, in the future a common program to be realized; to have suffered, enjoyed, hoped together, that is what is worth more than common customs and borders conforming to strategic ideas; that is what one understands despite the diversity of race and language. I said just now: "to have suffered together"; yes, suffering together unites more than joy. In terms of national memories, mourning is better than triumph, because it imposes duties, it commands common effort. A nation is therefore a great solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that have been made and of those that one is willing to make again...
I agree with in general but at once it is neither as simple or as complex.
Australia is a counterpoint to much of it. The great military sacrifices of WWI & II happened AFTER we united as a single nation. There was no uniting revolution and no conflict with one part of the continent against another as in North America. No cult of heroes or of great men or of glories - that was yet to happen.
A sense of nationhood however did develop in less than a hundred years from the first drop off.
No great tapestry of cultural endeavors, no unique language - 100 years or less was too short for that to occur. No culmination of a long, past effort.
If Australia is a nation then it contradicts much of what Renan has written which I think is Eurocentric and very valid in that context.
Australia had a lot of advantages in becoming a nation. We could pick up the concept of nationhood off the shelf which had the representative gov't formula shrink wrapped to the box. Not five go's at it, just one. A lot countries haven't got there yet.
Renan has a major omission right here. A monarchical governed country can be a nation but may not be. France wasn't till after the Hundred Years War. A representative governed country must be a nation or it dissolves and quite a number do.
There does seem to me to need to be a spark, an ethos to unite people together in a common effort. For England that was mostly raiding France (and later on Spanish treasure ships). There was more Viking influence in England and the bit of France that had been viking'ed belonged to England so I think that makes sense.
Renan is too low key on the spark aspect - it doesn't need to be a bloody war, but can be just a unifying concept.
In the case of Australia, we conceived of ourselves as more manly, better britons. Better Britons was the meme behind our nationhood. The way we chose to express that was to gather our best cricketers together and thrash England at cricket - 89 years after the first drop off. We endeavor to repeat this every two years.
Not every Australian is cricket mad - I'm not that enthusiastic myself - and I'm sure some left wing non cricket loving Australians will disparage this. It is undeniable though that Better Britons beating Older Less Virile Britons was our spark.
Once again, it was impossible for me to share all of his text here, because in fact he takes examples of models of nations or empires from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia throughout his lecture. It is not absolutely Eurocentric. In addition, he argues that it is not race, religion, or a dynasty that creates a nation. He takes examples of various nations that have existed throughout history, which largely proves that this is not the case, even if these criteria can play a role to some extent.
And your example does not invalidate what Renan says. After all, as the famous phrase here goes, "the exception proves the rule.
With that famous phrase I didn't buy it when I was 5. :) It was mostly used to justify the inanities of English spelling but the great vowel shift is the better explanation.
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This guy makes a good point. Many people in the US feel disenfranchised. Their government has ignored them for too long and if it pays any attention at all it is not to make our lives better. President Trump tapped into this sentiment. Myself and 80 million other Americans are falling behind while special interests are getting rich. The working class existed just to pay the bills. The 4 years Trump was in the White House was the first time in my life I felt like I had real representation in Washington.
