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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I just received this paper (again) from academia.edu which tells you all you need to know
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Museums and the Origins of Nations
by Sheila Watson Published 2012
Research into the ways in which museum exhibitions tell stories about the origins of nations suggests that these are, in some ways, dissimilar from many traditional historical and archaeological narrative texts in that they depend, in part, on the physical experience of moving through space.
Using case studies this paper pays attention to the way in which this immersive process enables museums to tell contradictory and contrasting stories of the foundation of nations.
The notion of the ethnic origins of nations and the way museums re-invent nations over time are examined. Websites and guidebooks are also considered. Representing work in progress this paper suggests other areas of investigation for further study.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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My usual policy was to use some inoffensive event, well-covered by the MSM, to slip in some revisionist--or at any some revelatory--history.
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Remembering D-Day. Sort of. June 5, 2024
It’s the eightieth anniversary of D-Day so we’ve been provided
with more than the usual amount of commemorative programming
Commemorating, not describing, and there’s a difference. One is the myth, one is me telling you like it was (o.n.o.). Starting with a basic question most people don’t know the answer to.
What does the D in D-Day stand for? It stands for ‘day’. D-Day started at H-Hour, and I shall only be dealing here with the opening salvoes of the 6th of June 1944.
D-Day was a breeze. A walk in the park. A trip to the seaside. Sorry and all for the four thousand (American, Canadian and British) people who died that day but that’s the truth of it. Hitler’s vaunted and wildly expensive Atlantic Wall held the Allies up for… maybe half an hour.
That wasn’t entirely the Atlantic Wall’s fault, it had a lot to do with it being largely manned by Poles and Ukrainians who had volunteered to help the Germans — for reasons that made sense at the time — but who were now anxious not to be entombed in concrete for the Fatherland.
I have never heard one of them being asked on the telly for their recollections of the day, though the Germans are always asked for their views in these multicultural times of ours.
You will though be hearing a very great deal about ‘bloody Omaha’ because that was the one beach — out of five — that took some taking.
It was one of two American landing areas, the other being Utah beach. Utah was so unbloody the Americans lost two hundred men storming it, occupying it and then moving off it to meet up with the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions dropped earlier to make doubly sure. Hollywood doesn't make films about that one.
Why was Omaha so bloody? Mainly because of fearfulness about casualties, an abiding sin of the American military. They’re so nervous about being slaughtered in the American press they prefer slaughtering Americans in dribs and drabs because that means, though they lose more Americans in the long run, they scarcely get noticed in a single news cycle.
In this case the Omaha commanders launched their boats from mother-ships well out of range of German artillery, and then ordered their men to leave the boats well out of range of German small arms. In both cases, much further out than anyone else thought sensible. With the result that
1. Boats got swamped as they chugged the miles and miles towards Omaha beach in seas not designed for converted flat-bottomed Louisiana shrimpers
2. Amphibious tanks gradually became less and less amphibious
3. The infantry didn’t need the three days’ emergency supplies strapped to their backs if their feet didn’t touch the ground when leaving their landing craft
4. Even reluctant enemy soldiers will train their artillery and small arms on people they can see coming from afar
5. Long distance navigation in small boats meant missing the part of Omaha beach with exits, and landing on the part with cliffs and Germans, Poles and Ukrainians staring down at them
One of the programmes is, I see, What If… D-Day Failed? I’d better tell you in case ‘Professor Christopher Andrew and a group of guests’ don’t get round to it. Nothing very much. Assuming the operation wouldn’t have been remounted — and Churchill was not in favour of the first one — the war would have ended in the summer rather than the spring of 1945. The Red Army was routing the Wehrmacht with or without our help.
Even so I’m glad D-Day succeeded — take no notice of my inappropriate levity — because if it had failed the Russians wouldn’t have stopped at Berlin. They would probably even now be sitting in concrete emplacements in Normandy. Or rather Poles and Ukrainians would be.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Museums and the Origins of Nations by Sheila Watson published 2012 |
An early punt was that the Franks Casket was carved for the Exposition Universelle des produits de l'Agriculture, de l'Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Where did you get that highly useful gobbet (if it isn't your own punt)?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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It was a Wiley punt, when you study the catalogues, it is the sort of thing that was being produced, and would fit in rather well, but I haven't managed to find the exact casket listed yet. Of course the Exposition was expected to draw huge visitor numbers..... 6 million people had visited the London exhibition, and that was a financial success roughly £20 million in today's terms, obviously other traders, who were not given the privilege of exhibiting were selling alongside both events.
Paris was of course devised to be better and bigger than London.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The official version kinda fits with your theory [lifted from RevHist, blue = official blurb]
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| The panels were in a Paris antique shop where they were bought in 1857 by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks. It had been dismissed as ‘some Ancient carvings in ivory’, and turned down by the Museum’s Trustees in 1858 when offered to them for 100 guineas. He subsequently donated the panels in 1867 to the British Museum, where he was Keeper of the British and Medieval collections |
With Franks now in his casket, the BM needed a provenance for theirs and sent out ace investigator, W H J Weale, to find one. It was to prove a long and winding road.
First problem: Franks had omitted to mention the name of the shop, there was nothing in the archives, so Weale was stymied from the off. That could be finessed. Franks and Weale overlapped at the museum so maybe Franks mentioned the name of the shop to Weale in passing and both of them had omitted to pass it on to the museum archivists. Not ideal but it meant Weale could hit the road
Second problem: After forty years would the shop still be there? The life-cycle of antique shops being what they are.
Third problem: If it was, would they remember selling some old panels to an English gent forty years before?
Fourth problem: If they did, would they remember where they got the panels from?
All things considered, it might be better to adjust the provenance and, sure enough, the British Museum’s official provenance for the Franks Casket now reads
| In the possession of a family at Auzon (France) in the early nineteenth century; Professor P.P. Mathieu before ca. 1850; Jean Baptiste Joseph Barrois (d. 1855), 1850s; Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1858; The British Museum, London, 1867, by gift. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This was the start of a sequence of stories arising out of a BBC exposé. Needless to say the BBC was as useless as the British Museum.
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Wanna Buy A Museum? June 12, 2024
The British Museum is available. Only one careless owner.
My last book described, inter alia, the chronic shortcomings of the British Museum. It totally bombed. The BBC have just put out a telly programme and a ten-part radio series on the chronic shortcomings of the British Museum and it echoed round the world. The difference?
* Theirs was about a curator half-inching Greek and Roman ‘gemstones’ from the vaults and selling them on eBay.
* Mine was about forgeries made by people long dead.
Missed a trick there. Except there have been developments. I could be echoing round the world any time soon. [“Godspeed, Mick, we’re right behind you, we like nothing better than reflected glory here at medium.com, but we’re not going to boost you because we’re a bunch of craven muppets.”]
Some years back a collector of Classical gemstones noticed that one was being offered for sale that he swore blind he remembered being in the British Museum’s collection. Since he knew the BM is not permitted to sell spare stock he was understandably perplexed. So he did a bit of checking around and discovered this wasn’t the only one, a fair few had turned up for sale in various places.
He gathered all his findings together and presented them to the British Museum. The British Museum said, “Thank you very much, now fook off.” I paraphrase but that was their general attitude. I got the exact same treatment when I presented my own dossier.
The collector was first puzzled, then annoyed, and finally so enraged that he started a one-man crusade. Not just at the British Museum’s incompetence for apparently allowing their precious objects to tippy-toe out the door and onto the open market but their sheer and total refusal to recognise anything was amiss.
Every time he presented them with some new enormity, they upped ‘fook off’ to new heights of patrician indifference. And eventually downright hostility. Welcome to the club, pal.
Anyway this carried on for a bit until the MSM took notice which led to the police being involved which led to a swathe of the British Museum’s top brass being forced to walk the plank. All the way up to but carefully not including the toppermost brass of all, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, George Osborne, our late Chancellor of the Exchequer and eminence grise of David “Dave” Cameron’s Tory government.
Finally the BBC got round to making their programmes about it, alerting the world to it, and the new brass, including a chastened but fiercely determined George Osborne, assured the British public via the good offices of the national broadcaster, that lessons had been learned and it could never happen again.
The BBC on our behalf said, “Thank you very much, your lordships, we’re so glad it turned out to be a case of one bad apple not being spotted in time, and for which those responsible for such negligence have been called to account. Everything is once more sweetness and light at the British Museum and indeed Britain herself. God save the king.”
With some new revelations about these ‘gemstones’. Oh dear, poor British Museum. Poor Britain. It was good knowing you. I’ll tell you the full story in due course but first I want to see if my body ends up floating in the Thames because that will be final proof I was right all along. Or I get ten views whichever is the sooner.
Let’s make that five.
I did get five so you can read the denouement here https://medium.com/p/ad59a20cf239
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| British Museum wrote: | | Word and image enter here a new and important Anglo-Saxon life together, in an iconographic programme which seems to be based on parallels rather in the manner of Biblical types (a form of exegesis certainly known at Monkwearmouth/Jarrow). The Adoration of the Magi, for example is juxtaposed with the Weland legend, in which the birth of a hero also makes good sin and suffering, while the adjacent sides symbolising the founding of Rome and destruction of Jerusalem draw an obvious contrast. However, while the Germanic scenes on the lid and right-hand side remain opaque to analysis, |
There are no German/Anglo-Saxon bits at all.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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More from the Good Book [The Franks Casket is known to others as the Auzon Casket.]
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| As for the troubled history of the right side panel, see T. Pàroli, ‘The Carrand Panel of the Auzon Casket’ |
The panel may be in hoggish Italian hands but its message is for the world. Though not perhaps this world
| The runic text of this panel presents many problems as well. For some reason, most of the vowel-runes have been replaced with new, and seemingly arbitrary, runes, and many of the spellings are unusual, making the translation somewhat difficult. It may be read as: Her ltos sitafo on ltarmberga; regl(re) drigip; swa ltiri ertre egi sgrref, sarden sorga rend sefa lorna. A possible translation is: ‘Here a host sits on the mound of grief; misery endures; so to (her or them) Erta prescribed dread, a sad grave of sorrow and troubled heart.’ |
Very moving but, one would venture to suggest, perhaps more northern than southern European
| The text does not seem to relate directly to the scene, but there are a number of connections; mourning over a grave being the most obvious theme in common. The most curious item is the name ‘Erta’, who may possibly be related to Urt’l, the Norn responsible for cutting the threads of fate, which would argue in favour of the three figures on the right being the Norns. |
My thoughts entirely but could it, I’m just running this up the flagpole, be English?
| The fifth panel is least well understood, but was definitively explained by A.C. Bouman in 1965. Bouman compellingly interprets the right panel as celebrating the brothers Hengist and Horsa who, according to both Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, founded England in the mid-fifth century A.D. In particular, it depicts Hengist mourning Horsa after he died at the battle of Aegelesthrep in 455 A.D. |
If so, the message from the Carrand Panel can be melded with the cryptic scenes on the Franks Casket to convey, in pictorial form, the Anglo-Saxons’ prediction that their language would one day rule the world
| Although Bouman did not appreciate it, once the fifth panel is correctly understood as relating to Hengist and Horsa, the rest of the Casket falls into place as using the other great world events as metaphors for the history and destiny of England. |
Dear Lord, the sun will never set on the Museum Empire until somebody does something about it. I suppose it will have to be us.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A sequel to the above and the story of my life.
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2nd Great British Museum Heist Jun 14, 2024
The first one is here https://medium.com/p/53008f59ffbd
| A total of around 2,000 items were either stolen or damaged. They comprised classical Greek and Roman gems (including cameos and intaglios), along with gold rings, earrings and other jewellery. The earliest pieces dated from the late Bronze Age, but most were from the Classical period (with a few modern fakes). Agencies |
This is not entirely accurate. What should have been on the card at the British Museum was ‘Small, oldish-looking bits and bobs. Pricey but not priceless.” Here are a few of the lost and found
They are generically called ‘Classical gemstones’ but no-one really knows what they are. They are the sort of things that aren’t (quite) worth sending off for specialist appraisal and not (quite) worth putting on display. None of them can be objectively dated, they have never been catalogued and they have no provenance. These ‘keepsakes’ have been gathering dust in the British Museum’s vaults along with millions of other neglected artefacts acquired since 1753.
To be perfectly honest, none of them would have been of the slightest interest to man or beast if the bloke in charge of them, the Keeper of the Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum, hadn’t decided in c. 2012 to start quietly removing the choicer items and selling them on his own account. Kerching!
What they actually are can be gleaned from this exchange between the BBC and the chap who’s temporarily been put in charge now his predecessor has reluctantly had to be let go. Perhaps you’ll be able to spot it.
BBC News Culture & Media Editor: As to why there were conditions that allowed gems to be stolen in the first place, for Tom Harrison one answer lies further back in history. It’s all to do with how popular they once were.
Tom Harrison, Keeper, Greece and Rome Dept, British Museum: This was the type of material that had been enormously fashionable in the eighteenth century so people collected gems to what may seem now a crazy extent. But then there began to be suspicions, particularly as you moved into the nineteenth century, that some of these were not in fact authentic but modern fakes so at that point they may have been put to one side as not worthy of the collection.
No, none the wiser? Maybe a crash course in ancient artefacts and how we come by them might help. These are the salient points to bear in mind:
* Small stuff just gets lost. Wherever they were made, whatever status they had two or three thousand years ago, they weren’t kept by anybody (or any body) that would ensure they were on hand for two or three thousand years ready to be given over to a museum or similar institution for safekeeping.
* They mostly turn up singly and serendipitously, if they turn up at all. Literally, by ploughmen walking behind ploughs saying “Ooh-ahh, what ’ave we ’ere.” Such finds will, in all probability, end up either in a private collection or a public institution that will preserve them.
* Or they are found during archaeological digs. Then they definitely will. Though none of the British Museum ones were, as far as is known.
So let’s now gallop forward to the eighteenth century, the time when these things were being collected ‘to what may seem now a crazy extent’, according to Tom Harrison, the British Museum’s current expert on Classical bric-à-brac. Tom’s not on hand right now but we can reconstruct what he would have said, if asked.
Mick Harper: Were there a lot of ploughmen in the 18th century, Tom?
Tom Harrison: There certainly were, Mick.
Mick Harper: Did they turn up a lot of Classical gemstones?
Tom Harrison: No, I suppose not. Maybe some.
Mick Harper: Were there a lot of archaeological digs in the 18th century?
Tom Harrison: Decidedly not. A few antiquarians went in for a bit of scattergun excavation.
Mick Harper: Did they turn up a lot of Classical gemstones?
Tom Harrison: No, I suppose not. Maybe some.
Mick Harper: So you agree there will be precious few Classical gemstones around in the eighteenth century?
Tom Harrison: Well, yes, that would seem to follow.
Mick Harper: So where do you suppose these eighteenth century collectors were able to acquire their Classical gemstones ‘to a crazy extent’?
Tom Harrison: Ooh-ahh, I ’adn’t thought of tha-a-t. ’Tis a mystery and no mistake. Maybe you can enloiten an old duffer loik I.
Mick Harper: If there is no feasible manner these bijoux objets d’art could have got from ancient times to the eighteenth century in such unfeasible quantities, they must have been made in the eighteenth century, no?
Tom Harrison: It does seem the only plausible explanation.
Mick Harper: Would manufacturing things of that nature have been a straightforward proposition for the workshops of the time?
Tom Harrison: Certainly. The V & A have shelves full of such material. Labelled as ‘contemporary’, of course, not Classical.
Mick Harper: So if collectors thought they were collecting Classical gemstones but were being presented with modern fakes, what would they have required?
Tom Harrison: Some form of authentication, obviously.
Mick Harper: Who, in the eighteenth century, could provide such authentication?
Tom Harrison: Various institutions, the British Museum would have been my choice naturally.
Mick Harper: But the British Museum wouldn’t have authenticated bucket loads of tat they would know immediately were modern fakes, would they?
Tom Harrison: We certainly wouldn’t, no.
Mick Harper: Unless the British Museum was instructing crooked workshops to make them and then flogging them off to collectors as the real deal because they were chronically short of money but long on ambition. At the time.
Tom Harrison: It’s out of the question we would have done any such thing, but I wouldn’t put it past the Ashmolean.
Mick Harper: And when the craze came to an end or — in your words — doubts were being expressed about their authenticity, what would the British Museum have done with any unsold stock?
Tom Harrison: The Ashmolean, you mean. They’d stick them in the vaults, I would imagine. You never throw anything away in this game.
Mick Harper: And yet two thousand of them seem to have ended up in your own vaults.
Tom Harrison: I agree that is difficult to account for.
Mick Harper: But they wouldn’t have been catalogued or anything like that?
Tom Harrison: There’d be no point.
Mick Harper: So overall, what do you reckon?
Tom Harrison: Is that the time? Must rush. Nice talking to you.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| The runic text of this panel presents many problems as well. For some reason, most of the vowel-runes have been replaced with new, and seemingly arbitrary, runes, and many of the spellings are unusual, making the translation somewhat difficult. It may be read as: Her ltos sitafo on ltarmberga; regl(re) drigip; swa ltiri ertre egi sgrref, sarden sorga rend sefa lorna. A possible translation is: ‘Here a host sits on the mound of grief; misery endures; so to (her or them) Erta prescribed dread, a sad grave of sorrow and troubled heart.’ |
Let's guess at some of the jumps that the experts made to get to a "possible translation", working on the basis of improving the last expert.
The poem is in runes.
Inserted are coded vowel runes.
There are no breaks between words.
To get a poem they have broken these coded runes into words and decided that some of the words they do not understand must be personal names. Out of this has been created a 3 line Anglo-Saxon poem/verse with punctuation.
This has been done (presumably) by looking at the scenes portrayed to help translate and make sense of the verse, we cannot know whether these translators are experts in semiotics, or not. Presumably they in part relied on "experts" who had previously published, of which there are many, and this helped or influenced their best attempt at translation.
Her Hos sitiꝧ on harmberga;
agl[.] drigiꝧ swa hiræ Ertae gisgraf
sarden sorga and sefa torna.
Underlying all this is a big assumption that runes are Anglo-Saxon/Germanic/Norse etc, never never French. If someting is found in France with runes on it, it is understood as non-French origin and put down to gift or trade.......Ortho is very sure on this. So all experts were looking for Germanic, Anglo-Saxon history or mythology.
So why is the only known bit of the provenance France?
In the possession of a family at Auzon (France) in the early nineteenth century; Professor P.P. Mathieu before ca. 1850; Jean Baptiste Joseph Barrois (d. 1855), 1850s; Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1858; The British Museum, London, 1867, by gift.
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Could the opaque Germanic/Englishs scenes actually be French?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I would go for a more extreme Voynich-style explanation. The fakers just put in random runes knowing the 'experts' would strive might and main to turn them into something that made sense. There is actually danger in using a genuine message--it might unknowingly contain a giveaway anachronism.
Even if it is recognised as nonsense, the savants will simply say the artist was unlettered and just putting in runes because they look artistic.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I got into a spat with a rival on Medium about 'nation states'. He had just posted up a dutiful account of them and when I disputed it he accused me of not knowing anything about them. Me! Mr Know-It-All. So I decided to post up a piece on Medium defining them. That would show him.
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The Immortality of the Nation State October 12, 2024
The term ‘nation state’ is familiar enough. But what are they?
The official definition can be disregarded. It was composed by historians who are not qualified to speak of such things. What is needed is a systems analyst, so here goes.
From time to time — and from time immemorial — human beings organise themselves into territorial units that have more or less independence from other political units. These ‘states’ arise somewhat haphazardly and last until they either dissipate or get incorporated into another political unit.
We have records of these independent political entities going back to c 3000 BC and for the first four thousand years and with the possible exception of Egypt and China none of them are around today. No matter how large the empire, no matter how prosperous the city state, they all proved to be ephemeral.
| After 1000 AD a new sort of political entity arose that was not ephemeral. |
This was the ‘nation state’. They have no defining characteristic save this immortality. For some reason, once a nation state gets established it continues to exist within the same borders forever. It is this ‘same borders’ rule that rules out China from being a nation state. For now. Egypt, it would seem, has acquired hers. Probably.
| There are lots of countries in the world today that are not nation states. |
Russia being a notable example. It may have been around for half a millennium as a political entity, and no doubt it will be around for another half a millennium, but until it acquires permanent borders it won’t be a nation state. That is one of the reasons in favour of nation states: non-permanent borders make for noisy neighbours.
But this is also what bedevils analyses of nation states. It is always a post hoc definition: you don’t know that a country’s borders will be permanent until… they are. The very term ‘immortality’ has to be qualified with
It would only take one nation state to cease to exist and the whole schemata would collapse. Or, as we might say, ‘brings to an end the epoch of the nation state’. [Note, a nation state can disappear temporarily should it be occupied or partitioned, but if it is a nation state it will sooner or later re-emerge and with its old borders.]
We can examine two nation states, Belgium and Holland, to see how powerfully these twin principles of ‘immortality’ and ‘same borders’ operate. The formal boundary between the two countries defies all logic, cutting off the best port in the region, Antwerp, from the sea and generally being a total pain for both countries — economically, militarily, politically… logically.
| Yet neither seem able to do anything about it. |
The boundary was established back in the sixteenth century as the ceasefire line in a series of wars by which the northern half of the Spanish Netherlands gained its independence and became the nation state of Holland (as we can call it for convenience). The southern half remained Spanish and went through a number of trials and tribulations until, in 1830, it became what proved to be the nation state of Belgium.
| So why can’t they sort out their border? |
‘You have this bit, we’ll have that bit, and the Scheldt can be the border between us.’ In the short term it was because the Dutch said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to allow Antwerp access to the sea, it will adversely affect the trade of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.’ In the long run, the only answer appears to be
| ‘Because we’re nation states.’ |
The idea that nation states have to be ‘national’ in the sense of containing some discrete collection of like-minded souls is quite erroneous (though it helps enormously). Belgium, for instance, is a nonsensical shotgun marriage between Dutch-speakers and French-speakers who don’t get on one little bit. Never have, presumably never will.
Any fool can see the northern half of Belgium should join up with their fellow Dutch and the southern half go to France. Even splitting the country into two countries is favoured by many on both sides.
| But none of this can happen |
because Belgium is a nation state and hence immortal. And so, for that matter, are Holland and France who can’t change their borders. It’s all very well saying, ‘Watch this space’ but we’ve been expecting it since 1830 and it hasn’t happened yet.
That’s enough for now. This is a new idea and needs getting used to before embarking on the why’s and wherefores of nation states. And don’t worry, all those caveats and objections that are teeming through your brain have been thought of and catered for. Mostly. Kinda. Like I say, it’s a new idea.
Late breaking news: I’ve added https://medium.com/p/ff482f4bbfcb and https://medium.com/p/7fccb263afb2 to complete the story. For now.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Nation State, Part Two October 13, 2024
Part One is here https://medium.com/p/406ff93b7e39
Leaving Japan and Korea aside for the moment, the nation state was a European invention. Leaving aside for the moment why that was, we can observe how the phenomenon started and how it spread.
England became a permanent political entity in the eleventh century thanks to the efforts of Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans. But it was only fleetingly an independent one, generally being part of a wider ‘empire’ of Danes, Norman and Angevins. It was no different from other contemporary territorial entities that flittered in an out of the history of medieval Europe (indeed the world).
Things changed in the thirteenth century when King John lost Normandy and England found itself as ‘just England’. But with the unique advantage in Europe of not having anybody major on its borders and therefore not having to be a permanent war-state to keep people out (and a permanent temptation to incorporate them in).
But England was not a nation state. It had no settled boundaries with either Wales or Scotland. This meant it either
(1) carried on being a war-state like everyone else or
(2) set up large semi-independent organisations on the Welsh and Scottish borders to keep the Welsh and Scots out (with the permanent temptation to incorporate them in).
But any state that adopts the latter policy will have a continuous record of political instability because any time the central government is weak it will be prey to one or other of these necessarily powerful organisations seeking to take over the whole shooting match. That’s just the way things are in all non-nation states, whether it is the Roman Empire or the Holy Roman Empire. It is not a recipe for progress.
But gradually, with geography having given England, Wales and Scotland the priceless boon of not having anyone else sticking their noses in, they were able to sort things out for themselves. Wales was extinguished and Scotland became a proto-nation state. That did not mean an end to wars between England and Scotland — they carried on until 1650—but it did mean an end to either (1) or (2).
That is the great gift of the nation state. Once there is a settled idea of ‘an England’ and ‘a Scotland’ and once they have a settled border, there is no need for either a standing army or overmighty provincial subjects. You can always raise an army when needs must. Meanwhile you can get on and do what people do when they’re not living in either a permanent war state or in chronic political instability:
King John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne might be everyone’s villains but they presided over a land that had the highest combination of prosperity and security the world had thus far ever seen. Stick that in your quiver, Kevin Costner.
Of course it was early days in the march to full nation statehood but reviewing later English medieval history it quickly becomes obvious what being ‘just England’ entails vis à vis the other European states who resolutely refused to become ‘just France’ or ‘just Germany’.
* It simplifies your foreign policy no end.
* The capability to raise ad hoc armies (and navies) like no-one else could.
* The wherewithal to pay large cash sums to anyone you feel needs encouragement to do your bidding.
The French were the first to find out what having a nation state on the doorstep entails. France was infinitely larger and more powerful than England but was a country of the old-fashioned sort: a permanent war state constantly strapped for cash, having enormous appanages at all points of the compass thirsting to take over the whole of France (or ally with England to become bigger appanages). They didn’t stand a chance against an opponent with no such complications.
So France had to become a nation state out of sheer desperation. Which meant Spain had to do so as well. And that meant a Portuguese nation state. The English were soon also-rans now their advantage was over but at least they had started the nation state dominoes falling. They were soon falling all over a very surprised world.
The third and final part is here ttps://medium.com/p/7fccb263afb2
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Part three of the trilogy
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The End of the Nation State October 14, 2024
Consider the fate of your country. Your non-nation state country. If you are small — say, a city state — you might be very rich, you might be very powerful, but sooner or later you will get extinguished by someone richer, someone more powerful. You might be Venice and last for a thousand years but your fate is sealed.
Or maybe you are Rome and you start growing and growing territorially until you are too rich and too powerful to be extinguished by anyone. But since non-nation states don’t have any mechanism to stop growing one day you are going to out-grow your own ability to administer and defend yourself. Then you are in big trouble because non-nation states don’t have a mechanism to stop contracting, so you are likely to disappear altogether.
Unless you are the Ottoman Empire and contract in the era of the nation state, then your contraction will end when you have reached the Turkish Anatolian heartland. Though it is still early days to declare Turkey a nation state. (The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a homeland to call their own.)
| Nation states have the recipe for immortality. |
They cannot expand, they cannot contract, they have permanent borders. They are no different from other types of states — they are just as greedy, just as paranoid — but this does not impinge on their own survival:
* A nation state can have an empire the sun never sets on but so long as all the extra baggage is overseas this will not affect its own borders.
* A nation state can be so small it is constantly being overrun but it will resume as if nothing happened once the peace talks get going.
So are we doomed to be a world of nation states? Ah well, that’s a different question but at least, now we know what a nation state is, we are in a better position to find out. Here endeth the lesson.
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