When did the term "Nationality" first come into use? How did ancient civilizations refer to themselves? By ethnicity?
score:19
This is not a complete answer because your question is actually a huge topic with many possible approaches.
Birth is ethnicity
My personal view on this is that, long ago, at a time when the nomadic way of life was the rule, nations did not relate to geographical origin but rather to birth.
The etymology of various IE languages is very clear on this:
In Latin. Your clan name is your gens, later your "family name" (nomen) and conveys the notion of ascendancy in various cognates some of which have found their way in English (e.g. genus). The word nation itself is from Latin natio and goes back to *gnascor with an initial g : "to be born" (Meillet).
In Greek the same holds true with γένος (race) which comes from γίγνομαι "to be born".
Old English is (and more generally all German languages are) also very clear: cyning (King, see German König) is the leader of the kin (family "cynn"). See also German Kind (child).
All these considerations were still applicable even after tribes had settled down (owing to the mastering of agriculture and metallurgy) because the geographical origin was until recently a reliable indication of your ethnicity.
Us and them
Overall it seems that the "us and them" way of seeing things was very common. I was recently reading this Wikipedia article about Samnium and there was an interesting conjecture, developed by Pokorny, about the relation between various Indo European tribe names: Suebi, Semnones, Suiones, Senones, Serbs, Sabelli, Sabini, etc., as well as a large number of kinship terms. The general concept is "our own kith and kin,". It also yields English self, German selbst, etc...
Nations identified by commonalities
In antiquity, City-states could be grouped in nations, mostly through their common language.
Greek cities, despite their constant rivalries, had a strong conviction of their commonalities with each other (κοινή, κοινός = common) and of their differences with other nations mostly based on language (βάρβαρος who speak gobbledygook).
Even Phoenicians or Etruscans who were could be considered as a mosaic of city states saw themselves as nations and had their own endonyms (Rasena/Rasna "the men", Kenaani/Kinaani "Canaanites").
Of course the differences between endonyms and exoyms sometimes blur the picture, but this is yet another fascinating topic.
Upvote:15
"Nationalism" as a term in its modern definition Regularly being referred to as an author of remarkable influence on the terms nationality and nationalism in their modern recipation is Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). In his work Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity (1784–91), he is at least one of the first to claim that human societies naturally tends to form nations as a basis for their social framework. Like other german philosophers, he implies that the founding of modern national states is the logical result of societies defining themselves on the basis of a common cultural history, language, and territorium. In order to develop and identify their human subjectivity in completion, people would have to be amongst their own kind, which on the other hand would allow diversiveness and individuality to emerge from society without limitation.
Context of german delay German approaches to define a progressive nationalism was highly motivated by the advanced progress of france and england in building modern states with effective economies and governments. Not being able to overcome the stagnant feudalistic conditions in the many german microstates, the originally democratic ideals of the national movements quickly transformed to an aggressive and exclusive ethno-nationalism, which is seen as a german speciality by many.
Modern nations necessitated by enlightenment and industrial revolution Probably the most influent motivation for building states implementing modern nationalism as we know it was the dramatic change of the means of production and the rise of the bourgeois class. Impelled by the natural-law-theories of thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, which provided arguments for a reliable, strong, centralistic state that could guarantee for properties of the bourgeois agenda like private property, commitment to legal contracts, and defending of the newly introduced human rights.
The revolutions in Great Britain and France were the opportunity to constitute modern national states in Europe that put an end on their predecessors's regiments of monarchy and absolutism, which couldn't realize the political and social unity which the (democratic) nationalism with its equality amongst men (like in 'male') and construed cultural heritage/identity could provide.
Edit: "Nationalism" as opposed to the nation in traditional meaning Ancient civilized societies usually meant identification with an autonomous city-state or a monarch. Given that modern nationalism and enforcing movements were an outcome of a new view on history and revolutionized forms of production, trade and exploitation, it seems legit that even though the term "nation" had been used before, the framework it referred to to be understood as being distinct from what became its meaning in the 18th and 19th century.
More post
- 📝 What did ex-Gladiators do after being freed?
- 📝 Shantyboat communities on the upper Mississippi River Valley
- 📝 Was a Žaltys a real snake?
- 📝 Were medieval city states like Venice and Milan feudal?
- 📝 Military intervention in government in India and Pakistan
- 📝 Has any place exhumed more dead bodies than San Francisco?
- 📝 Population disparities between New York City and Boston
- 📝 How were German soldiers chosen to be flown out of Stalingrad?
- 📝 When did "skipping" grades become common and when did it stop in USA?
- 📝 Why did the British control Hong Kong over 99 years?
- 📝 When did Europeans realize Native Americans had weaker immunity to Old World diseases?
- 📝 Who was Mathilda von Merckens and which was her castle?
- 📝 Why was June 24th chosen for the date of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist?
- 📝 What was the range of people's social lives like, before the technology for long distance communications developed?
- 📝 Did the Ptolemaic Egyptians know how old the Pyramids were?
- 📝 Is there any support within the scholarly community for Cyrus Gordon's "Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations"?
- 📝 Who was 'Viscount Yi' and what did he do to survive in the court of a madman?
- 📝 Did any contemporary sources write about Jesus?
- 📝 Why did Ancient Pueblo peoples build their homes in cliffs?
- 📝 In which estate were the soldiers prior to the French revolution?
- 📝 What was the average weather during the times of the Ancient Greeks?
- 📝 Did Russian winter seriously contribute to German defeat on the Eastern Front in WWII?
- 📝 Was touching your nose a greeting in second millenium Mesopotamia?
- 📝 Up to what levels were World War II commanders known for fighting at the battle front?
- 📝 How much of colonialism profit was continued post-colonialism by neo-imperialism/neo-colonialism?
- 📝 Did the Americans trade destroyers in the "destroyer deal" that they would later need themselves?
- 📝 Was swordsmanship important in the American Civil War?
- 📝 Was it widespread during the 17th and 18th Century for British country people to be evicted and replaced with more profitable agriculture?
- 📝 Where was the AT&T radio station in 1942 in New York?
- 📝 What's known about Tullia's son?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 When did the term "Nationality" first come into use? How did ancient civilizations refer to themselves? By ethnicity?
- 📝 When and why did the use of the lifespans of royalty to limit clauses in contracts come about?
- 📝 How did people react to Cavendish bananas when they first replaced the Gros Michel strain?
- 📝 When and how did the term "Nazi" start replacing the term "Germans" in the context of WW2?
- 📝 When did the terms, 1-point, 2,-point, 3-point, etc... perspective come into use?
- 📝 When did the trademark symbol come into use?
- 📝 When and how did the concept of posthumous reward and punishment enter ancient Judaism?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 When did worshipping of ancient Greek gods come to an end?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- 📝 How did Medieval armies survive the use of mail armor in the deserts of the Middle East?
- 📝 How did the ancient Greeks synchronize time?
- 📝 How did gold come to symbolize lower ranks than silver in the United States Air Force?
- 📝 How much did it cost to attend events at the ancient Roman colosseum?
- 📝 How to explain the apparent discrepancy in the use of papyrus vs. clay tablets between Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia?
- 📝 When did the round house fall out of vernacular use throughout Britain and Ireland?
- 📝 What / When was the first use of concentration camps in history?
- 📝 When and how did the Han ethnic group become by far the biggest ethnic group in China?
- 📝 When did the use of fabricated speeches in historical works go out of fashion?
- 📝 When did books first become affordable to the general population?
- 📝 Where did the term "Middle Ages" come from?
- 📝 When and how did classic "Italian" cuisine come to be?
- 📝 When did the Roman Forum fall into disuse?
- 📝 When did the use of chevrons as military rank devices begin?
- 📝 How did Moldova and Romania become separate in the first place?
- 📝 How did ancient armies keep the route of supplies to their battlefield?
- 📝 When did the First Barbary War start?
- 📝 When and how did the West lose its dependency on the USSR for Titanium?
- 📝 How did the ancient Chinese coordinate armies of tens and hundreds of thousands?
