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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27470 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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Ethnic wilting was contemporaneous with the decline and fall of the western Roman empire, if not its proximate cause. Hardly a point in favour of "civic nationalism"; the Germanic barbarians that Rome allowed to settle in its lands from the 3rd century onwards were never assimilated, and to use anachronistic language, formed a fifth column.

As for America - large-scale Irish Catholic (and later German) migration was the proximate cause of the collapse of the sort of agrarian yeoman republic that most of that American rebel leaders had envisioned. The sort of Irish people that showed up en masse in the 1840s - starving, illiterate, destitute, non-anglophone and uncivilised - ruptured the white/other distinction that had bounded the USA's participatory democracy for white landowning men, and necessitated the shift to managed democracy: yellow press, chickenfeed for the hoi polloi, the impossibility of complex public arguments and time horizons beyond the next election.

Were I making an argument for democratic universalism - I wouldn't - but if I were, I'd pick an example where a state identity has authentically and comprehensively erased localist ethnic distinctions into a single homogeneous "the people". 19th century France is actually not a bad example. Any country you can think of where ethnic division is still noticeable has not, ipso facto, succeeded in democratic levelling.

I would say that the Roman Empire could only be founded on ethnic nationalism. Over the course of centuries, it survived by slowly granting priviliges/power to ambitious and competent outsiders, starting with the Latins, then the Italians, then to provincials, ramping up with Trajan and peaking with the Illyrian emperors, and ultimately ceding it to barbarians like Stilicho or Alaric. So the seemly mutually exclusive ideas "civic nationalism worked for Roman Empire" and "the decline and fall of the Roman Empire tracks with the loss of its Roman character" can actually coexist.

Imagine the state capacity of Rome like the material of the balloon, and its prosperity as helium. As state capacity contracts, the balloon must release air, otherwise it will pop. It is a "bad thing" for Rome to be leaking power, of course, but necessary for survival. You can only leak power so long until there's no empire left, though.

As for America - large-scale Irish Catholic (and later German) migration was the proximate cause of the collapse of the sort of agrarian yeoman republic that most of that American rebel leaders had envisioned.

Having America remain an undeveloped, agrarian country that exported raw materials and imported manufactured goods was much more the vision of Britain than America, and was basically the relationship of dependency that most empires af the time practiced with their colonies. Some American founders did want an agrarian yeoman republic. Others, famously, didn't, and the most influential British-American founders were pushing policy to leave that dream behind and usher in an industrial future from the moment the country was founded, without any input from the poor, huddled masses of Ireland and Germany. Ironically, Jefferson, face of the whole agrarian-yeoman fad, probably did even more than Hamilton to encourage our infant industries:

The embargo had the dual effect of severely curtailing American overseas trade, while forcing industrial concerns to invest new capital into domestic manufacturing in the United States. In commercial New England and the Middle Atlantic, ships sat idle. In agricultural areas, particularly the South, farmers and planters could not sell crops internationally. The scarcity of European goods stimulated American manufacturing, particularly in the North, and textile manufacturers began to make massive investments in cotton mills

I am not arguing for a form of civic nationalism so extreme and unbounded that one decides to allow large numbers of unassimilated and highly militarized ethnicities into one's lands, and even makes them an essential part of your military forces. I think that is going too far. However, that does not mean that a more circumscribed form of civic nationalism does not work. Rome would never have become a superpower to begin with if it had stuck to ethnonationalism, it had to switch to civic nationalism in order to become a superpower empire.

As for America, the thing is, the agrarian yeoman republic would have been swept away by economic changes one way or another. After the industrial revolution, whether America had imported millions of Irish and other people or not, it would have been forced to switch to a different social/economic/political system one way or another because otherwise it would not have been able to compete with other great powers.

Rome had pretty much completed it's conquests by the time Augustus became emperor. They added a few bits and pieces like Britain and Dacia but nothing huge. The edict of Caracalla was still two centuries away at that point. So I wouldn't exactly call them civic nationalists when they became a superpower. Italians were very much the central ethnicity and the vast majority of the citizen body during their rise.

Italians are not the same thing as Romans. They did not see themselves as Romans. My understanding is that the Roman Republic's early rise to power was based in part on their willingness to assimilate other Italian powers into a new political concept rather than just attempting to utterly crush, enslave, subjugate, and kill them.

My understanding is that the Roman Republic's early rise to power was based in part on their willingness to assimilate other Italian powers into a new political concept rather than just attempting to utterly crush, enslave, subjugate, and kill them.

Kinda but not really. Look up the Social War. Rome tried to keep Italy as subject vassals with no political representation well past the point it became politically non-viable. They did allow regional autonomy, but viewed conquered populations as their natural lessers, and kept it that way until they had been hegemon over the Mediterranean for over fifty years (The Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars ended in the 140s BC, the Social War in 87 BC).

They were relatively tolerant, but they conquered most of the known world and kept it as their footstool for a couple generations on an ethnic nationalism model (for citizens of the city of Rome, specifically).

The transition to civic nationalism followed in degrees over the next few centuries.

And this was specific to italic peoples, it was not extended to iberians or illyrians or celts, among other early non-italic conquests.

Trajan (98-117) and Hadrian (117-138) were born in Hispania - the sources disagree on how ethnically Italian they were (most elites in the Italic colonies in Hispania were of mixed Italian-Spanish ancestry) but it didn't appear to matter politically. The Italic colonies in Hispania received the ius Latinum under the late Republic (meaning that local elites would acquire full Roman citizenship over time) and all of Hispania did in 74AD. So "not extended to Iberians" appears to be false by the 1st century AD.

The next dubiously-Italian emperor was Septimus Severus (193-211) - his mother was Italian, but his father was Carthaginian. Because tribal affiliation was inherited in the male line in Rome, he would not have been considered Italian by his subjects. His wife was Arab, so Caracalla (211-217) was only 1/4 Italian by blood quantum. After that ethnically Italian Emperors are the exception, not the rule. But I think you can argue that the empire is already in decline by that point.

Agreed that bringing Italy into the club was crucial to their success, but an essentially Italian empire is different from civic nationalism which would include anyone. I think there's a balancing act there where if you include too few people under your umbrella then you're small and vulnerable but if you open things up too much then you lose cohesion.

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