Myth of Nations: The Medieval

¶ … Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe

Geary, Patrick. The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2003.

When the European Union was taking shape, there was a great deal of talk about the need to put aside old political and economic rivalries to create a new era of cooperation, in the interest of all member nations. According to the Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe by Patrick Geary, this was not the first time that Europe was united: during the height of the Roman Empire, so long as individuals worshipped Roman gods, obeyed Roman law, and swore allegiance to the Roman emperor, they could become fully-fledged Roman citizens, even if they were born to barbarian tribes. Notions of nationhood and belonging to a particular tribe or ethnic grouping only arose later, after the dissolution of the Roman Empire. This was the 'birth of nationhood,' or the strange notion that familial and geographic origin defines a person's identity in a static and unchanging fashion -- what became to be known as citizenship.

After the end of the Roman Empire, during the early modern era, Medieval Europe became a collection of fiefdoms. While the Romans were united by following a set of laws, the 'barbarian' tribes that took over the territories that were formerly part of the Roman Empire re-defined 'belongingness' as a very local phenomenon. The existences of many of these tribes were rooted in Roman perceptions, not ethnic origins, and familial clans held sway rather than any real, larger sense of shared unity. Geary examines this early history to show how nationalism is a fiction, a means of resisting attempts to create over-sweeping empires. Nationalism as an ideology is used by leaders to mobilize combatants, as was the case when Germanic tribes used nationalism to mobilize against Napoleonic expansion during the nineteenth century (Geary 23). Nationhood is not something inherent to the biology, geography, or history of Europe. Thus Geary contends that while the Roman Empire united Europe under a common ethos of laws, after its dissolution tribalism and a very regional notion of ethnicity took its place in a manner that still plagues Europe today, as contentious nationalist factions vie for recognition and power in the international community.

Many of Geary's facts are quite eye-opening in terms of what they reveal about the largely forgotten history of European nation-building. For example, France, which is today famously protective of its language, was made up of only slim majority of French speakers as late as 1900 (Geary 17). France is a heavily regionalized country, sporting vast differences in accent, culture, and cuisine, as well as a great deal of tension between the countryside and the city of Paris. Given the number of tribes that have invaded, settled in, or simply passed through France, how is it possible to call France a secure, static and unchanging essence of a people, as the modern myth of nationhood claims?

The myth of nations is a dangerous one, because it is believed by so many people, Geary contends. "Actually, there is nothing particularly ancient about either the peoples of Europe or their supposed right to political autonomy. The claims to sovereignty that Europe is seeing in Eastern and Central Europe today are a creation of the nineteenth century, an age that combined the romantic political philosophies of Rousseau and Hegel with 'scientific' history and Indo-European philology to produce ethnic nationalism. This pseudoscience has destroyed Europe twice and may do so yet again. Europe's peoples have always been far more fluid, complex, and dynamic than the imaginings of modern nationalists" (Geary 13).

One problem with the idea of ethnic 'self-determination' that Geary's book highlights is that it is virtually impossible to draw the line where it ends. "Surely, if Lithuanians or Croats have their own language, their own music, and their own dress, then they have a right to their own parliament and their own army" (Geary 9). But then what about Chechnya in Russia? How far can states break down into endless factionalism? The right to national self-determination was one of the diplomatic weapons that the U.S. used against the Soviet Union, alleging that Soviet-controlled states had a right to be independent nations. However, after the dissolution of the Soviet empire, this nationalistic concept almost immediately generated problems, most notably in the former state of Yugoslavia, where Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians all fought for what territories were historically 'theirs' and who had the right to declare themselves a people.