--- In cybalist@..., Håkan Lindgren <h5@...> wrote:
> My 2 cents about the naturalness of nationalism...
>
> Isn't nationalism a quite recent thing, perhaps not older than the
19th century?
>
> If we are asked today "Who are you" we (are supposed to)
answer "I'm a Swede", "I'm an Englishman" etc, but if you asked
someone the same question a couple of hundred years back he would
answer "I'm the son of so-and-so, from the village of so-and-so." His
ideas of roots and identity had nothing to do with the idea of
nations.
>
> In my mind, nationalism is connected to 19th-century industrialism.
Industrialism broke up the villages and a lot of old traditions;
people needed a new basis for their identity, and the basis that was
given them was the idea of the nation. There was a lot of
nationalistic work being done during the 19th century, as if people
were trying to grow into their new nationalistic clothes, from the
composing of pompous national hymns to the collecting of folk tales,
which previously hadn't been worthy of any serious interest.
>
> Hakan
19th century nationalism is connected with the spread of railroads
and the dispersion of wealth by it and the new professions it
engendered: Station Master, Post Master, G.P.'s combined with the old
ones: Priest and School Teacher. Those were the ones that got
together Saturdays to play whist. They were trying to find out: We
are (French, German, Swedish, Danish), what do we have in common? In
other words, the nation and its extent became defined by the national
railroad system. Even today, national standards in railroads bedevil
the attempted European cooperation. Britain eg. has a loading profile
so narrow that only purpose-built waggons cross the Channel. Still,
if ask an English train-spotter (or other expert) why they don't do
something about it, they get furious or change the subject. Why this
is so, I don't know. Ancient hard-wired ideas of hunting rights in
humans?
Sorry for the digression.
Torsten
Torsten