%%EOF trailer O&S|b�-�k����z`�w��a�g/��xZNY�X��Fi��j���G��I[�!r�xB+lvY��^[`-����cC����&ي�Ş�yG*o� x�Q�-���IwP�pS,��tXƽ��t�}�;�lhT��؞���V6��>�G�|}�"�n�&`��"3�B^l�jw=���c��"?zwtA��9n�U��/�|1]����4έ�i%J���X��?�?�Lu���7����n�|n���ww6������w��w}�n�U>t��=�q�?��w�e�xA�yݷ�{�yp���)bl�R)-|�D��p ��MK���艑�U��4� If we move now from Athens, Sparta, and the Israelite tribe to the Roman Empire the situation is a wholly different one. This exclusive concern with language, like an excessive preoccupation with race, has its dangers and its drawbacks. Parrie draws with is a whole cluster of complex and interlocking references to the values of the patria of classical republicanism. I want now to try and make these difficult questions somewhat more precise, for the slightest confusion regarding the meaning of words, at the start of an argument, may in the end lead to the most fatal of errors. Had history so decreed it, the Loire, the Seine, the Meuse, the Elbe, or the Oder could, just as easily as the Rhine, have had this quality of being a natural frontier, such as has caused so many infractions of the most fundamental right, which is men's will. 2* I have left patrie in the original French because it seems to me that to translate it into another European (or, indeed, non-European) language would be to eliminate the kinds of association the term had, in a very large number of countries, throughout the epoch of liberal-democratic nationalism. The wish of nations is, all in all, the sole legitimate criterion, the one to which one must always return. The religion of Athens was the cult of Athens itself, of its mythical founders, of its laws and its customs; it implied no theological dogma. Rivers have led races on; mountains have brought them to a halt. Principles, in such cases, always emerge through the most unexpected surprises. 0000001195 00000 n The same thing took place after almost all the Norman conquests. In Bohemia, for instance, the Czech and German elements are superimposed, much like oil and water in a glass. Editor: What is a Nation? The old principle, which only takes account of the right of princes, could no longer be maintained; apart from dynastic right, there is also national right. I shall adopt an absolutely cool and impartial attitude. peace and civilization. 0000001563 00000 n No, it is no more soil than it is race which makes a nation. His History of the Franks is an account of life in Merovingian Gaul. It is clear that, in such matters, no principle must be pushed too far. This fact was itself the consequence of another important feature, namely, the fact that the Franks, Burgundians, Goths, Lombards, and Normans had very few women of their own race with them. No nation traces its origins back to Alexander the Great's momentous adventure, fertile though it was in consequences for the general history of civilization. An Englishman is indeed a type within the whole of humanity. Consider the great men of the Renaissance; they were neither French, nor Italian, nor German. The union of England, Ireland, and Scotland was likewise a dynastic fact. 32 0 obj <> endobj A province, as far as I am concerned, is its inhabitants; if anyone has the right to be consulted in such an affair, it is the inhabitant. There is thus created a kind of primordial right analogous to the divine right of kings; an ethnographic principle is substituted for a national one. A nation's existence is, if you will pardon the metaphor, a daily plebiscite, just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life. Community of interest brings about trade agreements, but nationality has a sentimental side to it; it is both soul and body at once; a Zollverein is not a patrie. We touch here on one of those problems in regard to which it is of the utmost importance that we equip ourselves with clear ideas and ward of misconceptions. There are not ten families in France that can supply proof of their Frankish origin, and any such proof would anyway be essentially flawed, as a consequence of countless unknown alliances which are liable to disrupt any genealogical system. These formations always had a profound raison d'etre. According to the ideas that I am outlining to you, a nation has no more right than a king does to say to a province: 'You belong to me, I am seizing you.' Upon what criterion, however, should one base this national right? The same thing took place after almost all the Norman conquests. Americans tend to use the words “nation” or “country” to refer to what we mean by the word “state.”7 Nonetheless, the following characteristics can be recognized as the common currency of nation-states in the current global order. The wide zone that the House of Capet had added to the narrow strip of land granted by the partition of Verdun was indeed the personal acquisition of this House. The nations are not something eternal. Man is everything in the formation of this sacred thing which is called a people. Switzerland and the United States, which have formed themselves, like conglomerates, by successive additions, have no dynastic basis. Nowadays, a far graver mistake is made: race is confused with nation and a sovereignty analogous to that of really existing peoples is attributed to ethnographic or, rather linguistic groups. What I propose to do today is to analyse with you an idea which, though seemingly clear, lends itself to the most dangerous misunderstandings. (Notes followed by an asterisk are the translator's.). 0000000016 00000 n This religion was, fundamentally, the cult of the Acropolis personified. It is frequently quoted or anthologized in works of history or political science pertaining to nationalism and national identity. Is Germany an exception in this respect? It is quite true that the majority of modern nations were made by a family of feudal origin, which had contracted a marriage with the soil and which was in some sense a nucleus of centralization. It undoubtedly is not. %PDF-1.3 %���� Languages are historical formations, which tell us very little about the blood of those who speak them and which, in any case, could not shackle human liberty when it is a matter of deciding the family with which one unites oneself for life or for death. The United States and England, Latin America and Spain, speak the same languages yet do not form single nations. Separated from each other for the best part of 700 years, the two populations have become not only strangers to each other but wholly dissimilar. At the present time, the existence of nations is a good thing, a necessity even. A kind of equilibrium has long been established. Germany is Germanic, Celtic and Slav. As a consequence of what was said previously, I will not have to detain you very much longer. Established at first through violence but subsequently preserved through [common] interest, this great agglomeration of cities and provinces, wholly different from each other, dealt the gravest of blows to the idea of race. The Spartan song -"We are what you were; we, will be what you are"-  is, in its simplicity, the abridged hymn of every patrie. 0000000918 00000 n The Roman Empire was much more nearly a country. In the tribes and cities of antiquity, the fact of face was, I will allow, of very real importance. Unity is always effected by means of brutality.What in fact did the German peoples accomplish, from their great invasions in the fifth century AD up until the final Norman conquests in the tenth century? Geography is one of the crucial factors in history. Ludwig von Mises called this essay: "the last word spoken by the older Western liberalism on the problems of state and nation.". Aside from anthropological characteristics, there are such things as reason, justice, the true, and the beautiful, which are the same for all. Let us allow these intriguing studies full freedom of discussion; let us not mix them up with matters which would undermine their serenity. 11 Aglauros, who gave her life to save her patrte, represents the Acropolis itself. �,�ܝ~qF8&^�Q��.��� C�����r#5�F"�=r�e|$��e��"�D��\�K Y�xZ��MɊ�����:���cqi``Kk 1%�X�gTRRj``���...`5`q`��c�D������ V.������Ӏ�G�;��&�. I shall not discuss this question in relation to France, for I would need to be able to read the secrets of the future in order to do so. `France' became quite legitimately the name of a country to which only a virtually imperceptible minority of Franks had come. startxref Christianity, with its universal and absolute character, worked still more effectively in the same direction; it formed an intimate alliance with the Roman Empire and, through the impact of these two incomparable unificatory agents, the ethnographic argument was debarred from the government of human affairs for centuries. One lies in the past, one in the present. Human wills change, but what is there here below that does not change? We have now seen what things are not adequate for the creation of such a spiritual principle, namely, race, language, material interest, religious affinities, geography, and military necessity. Furthermore, much has been made of the linguistic qualities of the Oaths of Strasbourg, sworn by Louis and Charles to each ocher's armies, in Old French and Old High German respectively. Renan wrote "What is a Nation" in order to save liberalism, classically understood, from the rise of statism as a result of the French Revolution of 1789. Holland, which - through an act of heroic resolution - created itself, has nevertheless contracted an intimate marriage with the House of Orange, and it will run real dangers the day this union is compromised. Rather, he is what has emerged out of the cauldron in which, presided over by the King of France, the most diverse elements have together been simmering. Religion and the rites were family rites. It may be worth noting that, in the domain of scholarship, Fustel de Coulanges' The Ancient City (1864), a study which profoundly influenced Emile Durkheim and which Renan himself had very probably read, shattered the vision of classical republicanism which men such as Robespierre and Saint Just had entertained. A community of interest is assuredly a powerful bond between men. 887-907. Roman domination, although at first so harsh, was soon loved, for it had brought about the great benefit of putting an end to war. Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate, for the ancestors have made us what we are. Can you be sure that the Germans, who have raised the banner of ethnography so high, will not see the Slavs in their turn analyse the names of villages in Saxony and Lusatia, search for any traces of the Wiltzes or of the Obotrites, and demand recompense for the massacres and the wholesale enslavements that the Ottoss inflicted upon their ancestors?

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