Thread 17933641

Rome was a nation-state. It was among the most ancient nation-states to exist. Trying to deny its status as such and implying it was some EU/UN type entity, or some weird other "polity" is basically enlightenment propaganda that the liberals invented the nation-state and if they did, it means they can take it away or alter it. But there is no consistent argument against this. Rome, the Roman Empire, had all the characteristics of a nation-state.

>>17933641 (OP)
please for the love of god read a single primary source from the enlightenment or middle ages talking about the roman empire

>posting le epic turboblob borders that did not even last one year

Anyway OP please explain what these "characteristics of a nation-state" are, because until you define them you aren't even making an argument. The "characteristics of a nation state" could mean anything. As I would define them, I don't think they existed in 117 AD, but I would hear your argument first.

>>17933658
Common identity, common citizenship, common culture, common religious beliefs. All these are defining characteristics of a nation-state. Rome, the nation, has existed since antiquity to 1453. Remnants of it exist in the form of modern day France, Italy, Russia, Greece, Spain.

>>17933665
ok now lets hear your authority for stating that these commonalities existed in 117AD to a meaningful degree to form a single dominant Roman identity.

>>17933676
People by and large identified with Roman citizenship. The Roman Empire engaged in Romanisation of the territories it held, in the form of Gaul, Iberia, etc.

It was the empire of the Italians. Only Italians were exempt from tribute and taxation, the other conquered areas had to pay tribute and send their wealth to Rome, This also applied to conscription overtime where Italians were largely exempted from it which is how you ended up with armies made up of a lot of foederati foreigners and mercenaries with shaky allegiances in the late empire

>>17933679
that is a bare claim, not an authority. Unless you have a time machine what you think doesn't matter. Where are you getting this information from?

>>17933702
History books, try opening one up.

>>17933711
another bare claim. What history book? Lets see a citation that backs up your claim.

>>17933716
>Roman and Gallic identities were opposed during an early – but brief – formative period; thereafter that opposition was supplanted by more familiar Roman contrasts, between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, military and civilian and so forth. … The spread of Roman style, right down to the most basic tableware, shows that even the poorest had learned to be impoverished in a Roman manner.

Source: "Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (1998)" by Greg Woolf

PLEASE learn to read.

>>17933641 (OP)
Do you even know what nation-state means sweetey? Where is your mom?

>>17933725
page number?

>>17933734
Page 206.

>>17933730
Definitely not whatever Westphalian propaganda claims it to be. Nation-states existed long before then.

>>17933641 (OP)
I have always found the insistence that nation states, or even nations being a purely modern thing to be strange. The Later Roman Empire is a pretty clear western example of one. They had a defined homeland, identity and idea of what a Roman was. You can go back even further and find it still, Ancient Egypt was a nation state, with all the same things which make up a one. Even smaller states like Assyria had a defined homeland and state to go with it, even though it extended beyond it. Or in the middle ages with medieval Germany and England, and obviously Byzantium.

>>17933812
Are Copts Roman?

>>17933875
Well they were. The divergence from Roman identity happened in the Middle Ages.

>>17933812
Because its easy to redefine or even abolish a nation-state, if it is younger and not as natural as people say it is. It also allows the creation of artificial "nations" like Belgium, which is the real reason for the Westphalian system. 'Nations' are not mentioned in the Westphalian concept, only 'states', and 'states' are a much more nebulous in nature. For a nation, you NEED a common identity. For a state, you just need a government ruling over a territory.

>>17933907
>artificial "nations" like Belgium
France, Italy and Germany are artificial nations too tho. Those countries were inhabited with very diverse people and were unified by force by Napoleon III, Garibaldi and Bismarck.


The difference with Belgium is that in Belgium there was no personality to unify

>>17933665
Yeah, people in Mesopotamia or Armenia felt very Roman indeed.

>>17933679
Nobody knows anything about what 99.5% of the population thought. There is no single source from an illiterate peasant.

>>17933641 (OP)
it was the og globohomo

>>17933982
No, not really. There were no diverse German nations, plural. The principalities were artificial, but Germania's been there since the Romans. Italy and France are basically Roman holdouts with some refugees that evolved differently overtime. The world is actually much smaller in terms of 'real' nations that historians would have you believe. Pretty much all of Africa and the Middle East are artificial nations though, still using colonial borders.

Shit like Ukraine and Belarus is entirely fake.
>>17934109
Not even close. Anti-globohomo does not mean a bunch of artificial city-states and princely states.

>>17933641 (OP)
retarded post of the year front runner

>>17933665
get cubed hivan lmao

>>17934151
Read a book. Preferably not one by a complete retard like Fukuyama.

Mary Beard made this argument for post social war roman Italy specifically and it is not far from the truth. Doubly so considering say the heavy influence of Polybius' work (along with Plato's) and their concept of the mixed constitution on Montesquieu's tripartition of power among many other examples on post Renaissance writing.
The question here mostly is the definition of state. To sum it up you will find arguments that no modern states existed before 1600 or even later. What they mean by this is the modern bureaucratic state is a lot less reliant on balancing local power brokers off against each other than large tributary empires used to be. In some ways city states (the actual small ones with no outside possessions) resembled nation states the most out of anything before the modern period.
One way to view the creation of nation state would be a territorial state with a core and periphery where over time the periphery is subsumed into the core. This closely describes Roman Italy after the Social war. But unfortunately for triumphalist perspectives the period that follows if one of disturbance and collapse of the political regime. Augustus stabilizes the system and maintains a lot of continuity but also erases the main process that created roman Italy: the practice of mass mobilization slows down as permanent armies are settled in distant frontiers and over time increasingly recruited from there rather than from the original metropolis. Over many centuries citizenship becomes irrelevant as it is granted to more and more people, Italy loses its privilege of exemption from taxation as provincial military leaders, and Rome is replaced by provincial capitals as the seat of power. The one thing that remains until near the end for both imperial Rome and Constantinople is the grain dole (for the latter ended with fall of Egypt just a few years before the latter is reduced to capital of a rump state 2nd distant to the arab empire).

>>17934209
Almost forgot but late Assyria provides the best documented ancient analogue for late Rome. Assyrian status increasingly extended to provincial subjects, and cities other than the original city state migrated to as the seat of power according to political expediency. Not just the well known Nineveh but also less known Kalhu and Dur Sharrukin

>>17934209
The periphery BECAME the new Core. Byzantium and the Greek provinces were backwaters, then they eventually became the heartland of Roman culture, while the old core in Italy declined.

>>17933641 (OP)
>>17933657
They thought of themselves as a nation state. Marcus Aurelius outright calls Rome "his country" in Meditations.

>>17934267
The real backwaters were Wales and Morocco. The Romans never did much with either of them.

>>17934294
No he didnt, meditations is written in greek.

>>17934321
Another major cope by the Fukuyaman retards.

>>17934321
Do I really have to dig up the line for you? It’s in the book

>>17934209
>few years before the latter is reduced to capital of a rump state 2nd distant to the arab empire
The empire expanded and was at it's peak during the Macedonian dynasty, stronger than all Arab nations with the exception of Fatamids whom they were of at least equal in power.

>>17934336
but was the grain dole restored?

>>17933907
what russian brainrot does to a mf...

>>17934393
Fukuyaman cultists are the dumbest people on the planet, right on the same level as Flat Earthers.

>>17933641 (OP)
This is absolutely true. So was ancient Egypt.

>>17935031
This.

>>17933657
>a primary source
>from the enlightenment or middle ages
I agree with the point you're making. But bruh

>>17933641 (OP)
It was a city-state that morphed into something resembling a nation-state

>>17933679
Yes the were so Roman they had no problem at all splitting off into their own localities

>>17936036
You realize those were just different claimants to the title of Roman Emperor? There was no 'Gallic Empire' nor a 'Palmyrene Empire'. If you asked those who lived in either of them where they were living, they'd tell you Rome. They'd just tell you the Emperor of Rome is Postumus (or his successors) instead of whoever's in actual Rome.

Modern historians give them different names for easiness, but there's no such thing as a "Gallic Empire". Never was. Claiming they're different countries is dumber than the Byzantium shit.

Only Italy had a solid ''roman'' ethnic identity.

>>17936134
ethnicity =/= nationality. Sorry to say, Nazi.

>>17936036
>they had no problem at all splitting off into their own localities
All three of these claimed to be the sole Roman Empire and attempted to win that in reality.

>>17936388
And they never, ever called themselves a 'Gallic Empire'.

>>17936402
This.

>>17933641 (OP)
It quickly devolved out of being a nation-state

>>17933665
Nah, i’m calling bull. The Romans as an let foreigners pile in and mix up the command of the thing with them. The Romans as an ethnic group disappeared during the 3rd century. They had a low brithrate, and their degenerate ways and constant civil wars extinguished them. That was kind of part of the whole crisis.

>>17937815
Italy was the most populated region of the entire empire, so unless you believe literally millions of Romans died in civil war, which they didn’t. Such an argument makes no sense. Not to mention dumb shit about birth rates as if they decreased when there is no evidence what so ever that it did

>>17937811
No, it didn't. It remained one until the end in 1453.

>>17937815
War didn't kill them, plague did. Along with dispersing huge amounts of families via land grants to soldiers

>>17933641 (OP)
What a retarded take. Yeah, Rome was such a great unified nation-state that they literally had different laws for Roman citizens (ius Romanum) and non-Roman peoples (ius Gentium), and that they organized their army along ethnic lines (core vs. auxiliary regiments). And when it fell apart, all the Romanic languages that developed were literally a mix of vulgar Latin and whatever language was dominant locally. And they were such nationally conscious people that the entire Eastern half of the empire spoke Greek instead of Latin for centuries.
Fucking retard.

>>17938426
National identity has 0 to do with ethnicity or language, you dumb Nazi retard.

>>17938429
>A nation-state is a political entity where a nation (a group of people with a shared identity) and a state (a political organization ruling a territory) coincide.
By that logic, Rome was a nation state (shared identity: living in the Roman Empire). But so is the European Union (living in Europe). Or the United Nations General Assembly (being human).

Do you even know what the term "nation-state" actually means?
If anything, I'm the opposite of a nazi by claiming Gauls and Syrians didn't see themselves as being the same.

>>17938433
No one considers themselves European, nor United Nationsian. The EU wants to be a nation-state, and it could certainly end up one, but it's a long way from being one.

>>17938426
>had different laws for Roman citizens (ius Romanum) and non-Roman peoples (ius Gentium), and that they organized their army along ethnic lines (core vs. auxiliary regiments).
Defunct by Caracalla's reign.
>and whatever language was dominant locally
There were no other languages in nearly all of the West other than Latin. All other languages outside of Britain were effectively extinct.
>And they were such nationally conscious people that the entire Eastern half of the empire spoke Greek instead of Latin for centuries.
And they still recognised each other as being Roman, what's your point? They had a shared identity.

>>17938435
If anything, modern Greece is a 19th century invention that wants to LARP as antiquity. Most Greeks within the Ottoman Empire called themselves Roman, or Rhomaion.

>>17938435
>what's your point?
The point is, OP is trying to frame Rome as this single, unified people, which it never was. The Roman Empire was inhabitated by hundreds of different peoples with different customs, gods, languages, and even laws. THE Roman didn't exist.

I don't even know why he's doing it. So what?

>>17938439
>The Roman Empire was inhabitated by hundreds of different peoples with different customs, gods, languages, and even laws.
No, not really. The Roman Empire had a definitive core, and a periphery which included tributaries. Some of those tributaries were outright assimilated into Roman culture.

I'm doing it because braindead retards like you insist nation-states are something artificial, rather than something completely normal and part of human development since the dawn of mankind.

>>17938441
Because nation-states ARE artificial, you moron. Every political entity is. It's an abstract set of rules everyone seems to agree on for some reason. The only "natural" state of order is the family or, at best, some kind of clan structure.
Go read a book, you retarded rightoid

>>17938472
No, nation-states have been commonplace as early as humans existed. Tribalism and then nationalism is completely natural state of things. Dumbass philosophers and liberal theorists like Fukuyama (Aka King of Tards) are retardmaxxing.

>>17933641 (OP)
Rome was much of a nation-state as Canada is, aka not at all.

>>17939107
Canada is not a nation-state. It's a part of the British nation-state that UK gave up on, so it exists in this limbo state.

>>17939348
This.

>>17938472
>Every political entity is
Man is a political animal.

>>17933641 (OP)
We decide your history now.

>>17938472
Absolutely wrong.