7 ms·

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divid

by netcan 8y ago

This is slightly tagential, but bare with me... Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing. Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't the only way of seeing it. It was also a rise of nationalism. Muslim spain was part of a multi-ethnic empire. Post reconqista spain was an early form of nation state, with a national ideology. No room for minorities. Jews got the boot first, muslims followed. Refugees of an empire-to-nation-state transition. In the Ottoman empire (where most refugees went) remained multi-ethnic. That's what empires are. This continued until the empire fell. From that point, the transition to nationalism is stark. In what became turkey, there was no more room for Greeks or Armenians. Kurds were told to (melting pot) be Turkish. In the (many) other nation states that emerged from the ottoman empire (eg, iraq, syria), jews were effectively exiled in the mid-20th. Christians are now leaving. Cities & regions are dividing into homogenuous ethnic enclaves. No room for minorities in an ethnic state. Europe went through the same thing. The two wold wars moved europe from a collection of multiethnic empires to homogenuous national states. History repeats over and over. When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. Cultures die. So, i'm suggesting, the reason that ladino (and 6,000 other minority languages) are dying is the absolute victory of nationalism in the 20th century. Nationalism has no room for minorities, their culture or their language. These things wither in nation states. Ladino, with its 600 years of history will die too. It can't survive in the former ottoman empire because 90% of ladino speaking communities had to integrate or leave (just like the Spanish ultimatum that started it all). Most went to Israel, another national home, another place where ladino can't survive.

tronko 8y ago
Muslim Spain was not a peaceful place of convivence. Numerous pogroms and killings happend during that time, e.g. the Granada Massacre of 1066 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre The contribution of Arabs to Spanish culture is enormous but that doesn't hide that in medieval times, almost everybody (including them) had barbaric customs.
- netcan 8y ago
  I never said it was. Neither was the ottoman empire. Both also made formal distinctions between people based on religion. European empires weren't equal or peaceful either. What I did say was that they were multi-ethnic. Even with all the pogroms, jizra and other forms of discrimination, numerous minorities existed. Empires were multi ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual and such. When those empires gave way to modern nation states (or earlier precusurs, like Spain and Portugal), multiculturalism died. This is the story of the 20th century. The process is still ongoing, particularly in ex-ottoman states.. There are arguably good and bad things about empires. Multiculturalism^ is a trait of empires. Groups like the spharadim, small communities with their own customs, beliefs and language, exist because empires existed. Btw... this is not new. King Cyrus, Alexander & Genghis Khan's Empires are notably remembered for their multiculturalism. ^Real multiculturalism. I don't hate melting pot migration, but I don't count it as multiculturalism.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
OnlineCourage 8y ago
The late 1400s was very far away from Nationalism. You are thinking of the early 1800s. The first truly Nationalist state was France under Napolean or some would say the USA, but even earlier USA barely held itself together for the first 20 years.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  No, he's onto something. Don't let popular understanding and terminology blind you, what we're looking at here is the shift from war as the primary driver of polity creation to what we now call popular sovereignty. This shift would have taken hundreds of years and Christianity would have been a huge driver. Agrarian empires like the Roman one were absolutely massive, juggernauts that just couldn't be stopped. Yet the Middle Ages were a period of small, warring nations, with comparatively much smaller empires arising. Warfare slowly civilized to the point where the common people barely felt the sting. The peace of Westphalia took place in 1648, creating the notion of an international system law that was bigger than the individual agreements penned between states. The Napoleonic France of the 1800s represented a sharp break from this world, almost a repeat of the old juggernauts. What caused empire to stop working and the polities to get ever smaller? I think the answer belongs in what your parent was getting at, people coalesced into ethnic communities and just wouldn't participate in the building of empire anymore. So existing empires broke up and nation-states arose.
  - iguy 8y ago
    Philip Bobbitt would argue that it was in large part different kinds of wars. The classic 20th C nation-state went hand-in-hand with 20th-C warfare: it needed both massive industry, and every single man. The Ottomans and other relics of earlier times fell apart under the stress of such wars; the states that survived were those with a strong identity. Such identities were partly fostered for this very purpose. But we seem to have moved on from this, war is again a profession of a few (plus high-tech weapons), conscripting the millions would be of no use. And in parallel our ties to nations are weaker than before, both whether we'd fight for the flag & conversely whether the country is interested in safety nets etc. Our economy is also much less nation-based: GM in its heyday was quite unlike Apple. He calls this emerging form a "market state". Earlier forms also fought very different wars, he argues that Westphalia (and Waterloo) were among a series of such transitions, each entailing changes to what states are legitimate, and what kind of wars they fight. Anyway if this sounds interesting then his book "The Shield of Achilles" is cautiously recommended. Someone really needs to write a condensed version... but if you're willing to skip a bit, the ideas are great.
emanreus 8y ago
> When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. The very creation of those empires was a violent subjugation of nations through carnage and pillaging. But who cares about their suffering that lasted for centuries as long as we have muh multi-ethnic caliphate, right?
- uluyol 8y ago
  You are speaking as though the improvements in life expectancy today require the loss of ethnic diversity which just plain isn't true. I doubt anyone would really want to live in the past, but that doesn't mean that everything we have today is strictly better.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    An interesting benefit that I've never considered before would be a medicinal advantage. With less genetic variable, effective treatments would be stumbled upon faster, if even just through GP trial and error. Chinese medicine man who knew his clients inside and out, etc
- irrational 8y ago
  Especially when one empire replaces another. Just look at the history of the Near East. The Akkadian empire replaced by the Assyrian empire, replaced by the Neo-Assyrian empire, replaced by the Neo-Babylonian empire, replaced by the Persian empire, replaced by the Greek "empire", replaced by the Roman empire, replaced by the Palmyrene empire, eventually replaced by the Ottoman empire. Each replacement was of course violent and caused massive societal upheavals.
- empath75 8y ago
  Nations as a concept didn't exist when those empires were founded. And it's really a trade off. Within the boundaries of the empire you had peace and prosperity. It was on the frontiers that people suffered.
  - emanreus 8y ago
grangerize 8y ago
Just to add to this, actually Ottoman Empire's parliament had more representation for minorities than the current parliament of Turkey which is a funny fact. Despite this, conditions were already bad for minorities as you mentioned. Look at the Turkish Parliament now, Kurdish representation is constantly being oppressed, there is almost no representation for other minorities such as Christians, Armenians.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  I completely agree with you but just for the sake of completeness, there is one Armenian MP in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garo_Paylan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garo_Paylan This doesn't change much though since MP representation/population ratio is ridiculous, and the whole system is corrupt (and biased against minorities) anyway.
comyesa 8y ago
We already gave Jews a country, there's no need for them to suffer :')
xenihn 8y ago
Do you consider the United States an empire?
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  To an extent. The US still has territories that were conquered in previous wars that have not been integrated. Puerto Rico is the biggest example, maybe, though there are other smaller ones.
thrower123 8y ago
Spain is not a particularly great example; I'd categorize it very much as an evolution of the preceding feudal traditions. The country was born out of a marriage alliance between Castile and Aragon, and familial ties continued to govern a significant chunk of Spain's foreign policy throughout the early modern era, whether that is marriages into Portugal, into the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, or the French Bourbons, or the whole confusing mess of Italian adventures with Naples et al. Spanish national identity still carries a lot of these fractures from the medieval regions that were never melded completely together - Basque and Catalonian autonomy movements are the prime example.
- tronko 8y ago
  Nor Catalonia, Nor Basque Country were medieval kingdoms and indeed their nationalist resurgence started at the end of XIX century.
grumpydba 8y ago
I think you view is too simplistic. I've talked with Albanian friends about the persecutions/humiliations endured during the ottoman domination. They mentioned catholic people who had to live in the mountains, far from the rivers and in absolute poverty to keep their religion. Let's also not forget the genocidal behavior of the ottoman empire against the Lebanese Christians, the Serbs and the Greeks (mostly in the 19th century).
- netcan 8y ago
  I think you might be misunderstanding me. I'm not claiming that empires (or the ottoman empire specifically) was good, or that persecutions didn't hapoen. All sorts of awful ethnic persecutions happened within empires. American slavery was initially a British imperial institution. The word pogrom comes from the Russian empire. But, it is also true that empires tended to be pluralistic, in that different cultures lived within them for very long periods. Nation states value cultural cohesion and national homogeneity, and pluralism has, in many cases, ceased when nations succeeded empires politically. Compare nearly any central or austrian european capital in 1900 or 2000. They became far more homogeneous. Take ottoman cities (Cairo, Istanbul, bagdad...), pluralism reversed. It some cases (eg Istanbul), it receded fast and hard. In others, it took longer.
  - grumpydba 8y ago
    Well my point was that some nations were victim of genocide and disappeared under the ottoman empire. So the culture of the minority was under constant assault there

by netcan 8y ago

tronko 8y ago

Muslim Spain was not a peaceful place of convivence. Numerous pogroms and killings happend during that time, e.g. the Granada Massacre of 1066 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_Granada_massacre The contribution of Arabs to Spanish culture is enormous but that doesn't hide that in medieval times, almost everybody (including them) had barbaric customs.

netcan 8y ago
I never said it was. Neither was the ottoman empire. Both also made formal distinctions between people based on religion. European empires weren't equal or peaceful either. What I did say was that they were multi-ethnic. Even with all the pogroms, jizra and other forms of discrimination, numerous minorities existed. Empires were multi ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual and such. When those empires gave way to modern nation states (or earlier precusurs, like Spain and Portugal), multiculturalism died. This is the story of the 20th century. The process is still ongoing, particularly in ex-ottoman states.. There are arguably good and bad things about empires. Multiculturalism^ is a trait of empires. Groups like the spharadim, small communities with their own customs, beliefs and language, exist because empires existed. Btw... this is not new. King Cyrus, Alexander & Genghis Khan's Empires are notably remembered for their multiculturalism. ^Real multiculturalism. I don't hate melting pot migration, but I don't count it as multiculturalism.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

OnlineCourage 8y ago

The late 1400s was very far away from Nationalism. You are thinking of the early 1800s. The first truly Nationalist state was France under Napolean or some would say the USA, but even earlier USA barely held itself together for the first 20 years.

vinceguidry 8y ago
No, he's onto something. Don't let popular understanding and terminology blind you, what we're looking at here is the shift from war as the primary driver of polity creation to what we now call popular sovereignty. This shift would have taken hundreds of years and Christianity would have been a huge driver. Agrarian empires like the Roman one were absolutely massive, juggernauts that just couldn't be stopped. Yet the Middle Ages were a period of small, warring nations, with comparatively much smaller empires arising. Warfare slowly civilized to the point where the common people barely felt the sting. The peace of Westphalia took place in 1648, creating the notion of an international system law that was bigger than the individual agreements penned between states. The Napoleonic France of the 1800s represented a sharp break from this world, almost a repeat of the old juggernauts. What caused empire to stop working and the polities to get ever smaller? I think the answer belongs in what your parent was getting at, people coalesced into ethnic communities and just wouldn't participate in the building of empire anymore. So existing empires broke up and nation-states arose.
- iguy 8y ago
  Philip Bobbitt would argue that it was in large part different kinds of wars. The classic 20th C nation-state went hand-in-hand with 20th-C warfare: it needed both massive industry, and every single man. The Ottomans and other relics of earlier times fell apart under the stress of such wars; the states that survived were those with a strong identity. Such identities were partly fostered for this very purpose. But we seem to have moved on from this, war is again a profession of a few (plus high-tech weapons), conscripting the millions would be of no use. And in parallel our ties to nations are weaker than before, both whether we'd fight for the flag & conversely whether the country is interested in safety nets etc. Our economy is also much less nation-based: GM in its heyday was quite unlike Apple. He calls this emerging form a "market state". Earlier forms also fought very different wars, he argues that Westphalia (and Waterloo) were among a series of such transitions, each entailing changes to what states are legitimate, and what kind of wars they fight. Anyway if this sounds interesting then his book "The Shield of Achilles" is cautiously recommended. Someone really needs to write a condensed version... but if you're willing to skip a bit, the ideas are great.

emanreus 8y ago

> When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. The very creation of those empires was a violent subjugation of nations through carnage and pillaging. But who cares about their suffering that lasted for centuries as long as we have muh multi-ethnic caliphate, right?

uluyol 8y ago
You are speaking as though the improvements in life expectancy today require the loss of ethnic diversity which just plain isn't true. I doubt anyone would really want to live in the past, but that doesn't mean that everything we have today is strictly better.
- acct1771 8y ago
  An interesting benefit that I've never considered before would be a medicinal advantage. With less genetic variable, effective treatments would be stumbled upon faster, if even just through GP trial and error. Chinese medicine man who knew his clients inside and out, etc
irrational 8y ago
Especially when one empire replaces another. Just look at the history of the Near East. The Akkadian empire replaced by the Assyrian empire, replaced by the Neo-Assyrian empire, replaced by the Neo-Babylonian empire, replaced by the Persian empire, replaced by the Greek "empire", replaced by the Roman empire, replaced by the Palmyrene empire, eventually replaced by the Ottoman empire. Each replacement was of course violent and caused massive societal upheavals.
empath75 8y ago
Nations as a concept didn't exist when those empires were founded. And it's really a trade off. Within the boundaries of the empire you had peace and prosperity. It was on the frontiers that people suffered.
- emanreus 8y ago

grangerize 8y ago

Just to add to this, actually Ottoman Empire's parliament had more representation for minorities than the current parliament of Turkey which is a funny fact. Despite this, conditions were already bad for minorities as you mentioned. Look at the Turkish Parliament now, Kurdish representation is constantly being oppressed, there is almost no representation for other minorities such as Christians, Armenians.

gnulinux 8y ago
I completely agree with you but just for the sake of completeness, there is one Armenian MP in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garo_Paylan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garo_Paylan This doesn't change much though since MP representation/population ratio is ridiculous, and the whole system is corrupt (and biased against minorities) anyway.

comyesa 8y ago

We already gave Jews a country, there's no need for them to suffer :')

xenihn 8y ago

Do you consider the United States an empire?

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
To an extent. The US still has territories that were conquered in previous wars that have not been integrated. Puerto Rico is the biggest example, maybe, though there are other smaller ones.

thrower123 8y ago

Spain is not a particularly great example; I'd categorize it very much as an evolution of the preceding feudal traditions. The country was born out of a marriage alliance between Castile and Aragon, and familial ties continued to govern a significant chunk of Spain's foreign policy throughout the early modern era, whether that is marriages into Portugal, into the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, or the French Bourbons, or the whole confusing mess of Italian adventures with Naples et al. Spanish national identity still carries a lot of these fractures from the medieval regions that were never melded completely together - Basque and Catalonian autonomy movements are the prime example.

tronko 8y ago
Nor Catalonia, Nor Basque Country were medieval kingdoms and indeed their nationalist resurgence started at the end of XIX century.

grumpydba 8y ago

I think you view is too simplistic. I've talked with Albanian friends about the persecutions/humiliations endured during the ottoman domination. They mentioned catholic people who had to live in the mountains, far from the rivers and in absolute poverty to keep their religion. Let's also not forget the genocidal behavior of the ottoman empire against the Lebanese Christians, the Serbs and the Greeks (mostly in the 19th century).

netcan 8y ago
I think you might be misunderstanding me. I'm not claiming that empires (or the ottoman empire specifically) was good, or that persecutions didn't hapoen. All sorts of awful ethnic persecutions happened within empires. American slavery was initially a British imperial institution. The word pogrom comes from the Russian empire. But, it is also true that empires tended to be pluralistic, in that different cultures lived within them for very long periods. Nation states value cultural cohesion and national homogeneity, and pluralism has, in many cases, ceased when nations succeeded empires politically. Compare nearly any central or austrian european capital in 1900 or 2000. They became far more homogeneous. Take ottoman cities (Cairo, Istanbul, bagdad...), pluralism reversed. It some cases (eg Istanbul), it receded fast and hard. In others, it took longer.
- grumpydba 8y ago
  Well my point was that some nations were victim of genocide and disappeared under the ottoman empire. So the culture of the minority was under constant assault there