I would suggest (not only in Europe, but also in North America) that the new dividing lines did very much involve "communities and territories," just not between/among them. Nationalism, by it's nature, is a communal and tribal phenomenon. Racism and discrimination are, ultimately, a tribal phenomenon, arising from people's common inclination to favor those whom they see as members of their own tribe. The trouble arising from Europe and modern West's choice to focus on the abstract rather than synthesizing a new tribal identity for their denizens meant that many of the existing tribes and communities, especially the more reclusive (and/or more powerful and better organized ones) became their enemies.
I think the founders of EU had a different vision as they appreciated the power of common tribal identity. After all, Adenauer, Schuman, and Gaspari were all (Catholic) Christian Democrats and Germanophones educated in German (defined broadly) institutions--both their education and formative professional practices.
I tend to blame this failure on the rise of identarianism, which, in turn, I think, is a modern form of blatant racism in "woke" wrappings masquerading as "anti-fascism." Nothing keeps someone from a seemingly "different" tribe to partake in rituals of the new tribe and assimilate as its member, except for stubborn fanatics who refuse to be trustworthy members of their new society, I think. The "new" tribe, to better accommodate a broader array of members, can also assimilate aspects of various existing tribes into it's rituals. This is hardly new: every major institution has evolved in this manner. This is how Cathilicism got patron saints, Virgen de Guadalupe, and Japanese Jesuit Zen masters, for example. If course, this would not have been easy: Chinese rites controversy lasted two centuries, after all, for instance. Setting up bureaucratic institutions around legalism and abstractions seemingly forgoes these difficulties, but as they say, easy come easy go.
I do wonder if this is where "non-West" does better than the West. The Chinese Jews and Muslims (the Hui in Chinese heartland, not tribes in outlying regions not historically part of the imperial Chinese core) had no problem becoming good Confucians in the middle ages and later, and they generally came under no pressure to renounce their old tribal identities to join new ones, for example. But, this was also the way of the old Roman Empire as well....
History is geography, geography is history. When 'Europe' was the Mediterranean, the natural non-sea route was through central Asia to northern India and China. The ancient Greeks seemed to believe that they were essentially the same race as Central Asians (including Persians and Chinese. The 'others' were the 'blondes' of northern Europe, who seemed the real threat and an unfathomable mystery to the civilized sea dwellers. Somehow, as the centre of gravity of Europe went north, then it was the lands to the east that were othered. Of course, you could point out that the 'Rus' were originally Vikings....
Perhaps Roman societies naturally escalate towards apocalyptic violence unless a mutually acceptable scapegoat can be found, but not so much Confucian. China has addressed this issue repeatedly and is worth studying for that alone.
China has suffered semi-apocalyptic violence fairly often, usually when the dynasty changed (in the Yellow Turban rebellion it's estimated that between 3 to 7 million people have died, which is about the population of the whole of Roman Italy at the time), the last one being of course the war with Japan.
The only apocalyptic violence China has suffered has been at the hands of Mongol and Roman Societies. There have been dynastic Chinese wars, but they were domestic war of succession.
I'd put Sino-Japanese war squarely to the apocalyptic column, and don't think about Japanese as Roman. Westernised, yes, but culturally still closer to China than Europe.
But that also goes to the point of where you threats can come from. For China, the main threats were from the north - Mongols, and later Manchu, both of which conquered China, the former as Yuan, the latter as Qing, and those two dynasties are close to 400 years of the second millenium.
I'm not even sure I'd accept China as a single continuous state since the First Emperor, really. Neither of the two dynasties above were Han (and while Qing used China and Qing interchangeably, it was very clear that China != Han).
Then you had many periods of smaller entities - Warring States, Three Kingdoms, Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern and Southern Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms (with Vietnam breaking off), etc. etc. I can't do a count right now, but I'd say China was reasonably unified about half of its history (and less as Han ruled entity), so calling it "just" civil wars doesn't make much sense to me TBH.
I know that the Chinese state likes to present itself as a continuous entity since the First Emperor, but IMO it doesn't hold more water than say Italy has been a continuous state since Etruscs run it.
It's a stretch, but not really that much. Because Han today aren't really Han what they were two millenia ago. Italy was run over number of times, but so was China. Culturally and linguistically, there's definitely a strong link between Italy around 100 BC and today's Italians.
As I wrote above, Qing was very explicit that China != Han. Mongol, Tibetans, Vietnamese, there was a number of non-Han ethnicities within China (ignoring the fact that even Han is a very broad-brush ethnicity, which includes "real" Han, but also Hakka etc..)
Same goes for culture, both non-Han dynasties were culturally quite different from Han. Even "Chinese" as a language has a number of dialects (Yue, commonly known as Cantonese, being probably the most famous, which has significant incluences from SE Asian languages as far as I know), some of which aren't really that compatible in the spoken form. Again, I'm far from an expert on that, but would wonder how much those "dialects" look like Romance language family (assuming it can even be compared on some reasonable scale).
Or, if you want to look at it differently, we could take Germany, although there the history is a bit shorter with a larger state being probably Francia so 5th century. Or, if you want later, HRE, which really could be claimed as a the "Germany since 800". Ethnically and culturally at least as much homogenous as China, shattered at times until morphed into Germany proper in 19th century as a fully homogenised state.
- Not entirely. Vikings were considered a threat (until they Christianised), as late as 11th century.
Almohavids were a threat, as late as 15th century.
It's more that as both of these threats were neutralised, the borders there were established by the coast. On the east, there's no coast, so there can't be a natural barrier against "barbarism".
You can actually see the same with Russia, where there are a few (depending on how you count, but really less then 10) corridors where Russia can be invaded. Hence even Catherine the Great said (paraphrasing) - the only way to defend my borders is to extend them, which Russia has been doing before and ever since, in an effort to eliminate the gaps. And when it couldn't it at least tried to create buffers.
In fact, I'd argue that it's true for pretty much any nation, that it will consider threats coming from unsecured borders - US was afraid of Canada as long as it was mainly influenced by the UK not the US, and don't get me started on US/Mexico relations over the years.
So really, Europe's no different.
As a side note on the Waffen SS - you have (Russian) Kaminsky Brigade, and of course, as far as Wehrmacht goes, the whole Hiwi stuff and Vlasov's RLA. Which, with the exception of Vlasov (as THE traitor) is rarely mentioned in Russia, not that most of the other states mention their citizens participating in WW2 on the wrong side do.
As far as I know, Poles are about the only ones who had trivial collaboration of the occupied countries, and the non-occupied participants (US/UK) had often non-trivial number of Axis sympathisers.
That all said, I agree that Europe failed to put together something that would bind it together. IMO, the issue there is that - especially post UK's admission to the EU, but even before to an extent, thanks to German reluctance to take any non-economic stance - it concentrated on the economic side, assuming that once most if not all will be doing well economically, the other stuff will take care of itself. Which doesn't really work like that. It also didn't help that historically European nations preferred to homogenise themselves in many ways (culture, language, religion, you name it. For good reasons at the time), so a heterogenous EU is far from what comes as "natural" to pretty much all of Europe.
It is my firm belief that most, if not all (I don't know about any, but am willing to give it a benefit of doubt) ideologies are based on ignoring one or more aspects of human and societal behaviour. So is the EU one, the question is whether it can change. Not necessarily under the EU banner, which now may be really broken, but under some other ideology that may be at least a bit more close to the reality.
Typo: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/europes-inner-demons " if some of them have a basis in fact, facts themselves were never the issue for those who pedalled them." should be "peddled"
Late comment, so apologies.
I would suggest (not only in Europe, but also in North America) that the new dividing lines did very much involve "communities and territories," just not between/among them. Nationalism, by it's nature, is a communal and tribal phenomenon. Racism and discrimination are, ultimately, a tribal phenomenon, arising from people's common inclination to favor those whom they see as members of their own tribe. The trouble arising from Europe and modern West's choice to focus on the abstract rather than synthesizing a new tribal identity for their denizens meant that many of the existing tribes and communities, especially the more reclusive (and/or more powerful and better organized ones) became their enemies.
I think the founders of EU had a different vision as they appreciated the power of common tribal identity. After all, Adenauer, Schuman, and Gaspari were all (Catholic) Christian Democrats and Germanophones educated in German (defined broadly) institutions--both their education and formative professional practices.
I tend to blame this failure on the rise of identarianism, which, in turn, I think, is a modern form of blatant racism in "woke" wrappings masquerading as "anti-fascism." Nothing keeps someone from a seemingly "different" tribe to partake in rituals of the new tribe and assimilate as its member, except for stubborn fanatics who refuse to be trustworthy members of their new society, I think. The "new" tribe, to better accommodate a broader array of members, can also assimilate aspects of various existing tribes into it's rituals. This is hardly new: every major institution has evolved in this manner. This is how Cathilicism got patron saints, Virgen de Guadalupe, and Japanese Jesuit Zen masters, for example. If course, this would not have been easy: Chinese rites controversy lasted two centuries, after all, for instance. Setting up bureaucratic institutions around legalism and abstractions seemingly forgoes these difficulties, but as they say, easy come easy go.
I do wonder if this is where "non-West" does better than the West. The Chinese Jews and Muslims (the Hui in Chinese heartland, not tribes in outlying regions not historically part of the imperial Chinese core) had no problem becoming good Confucians in the middle ages and later, and they generally came under no pressure to renounce their old tribal identities to join new ones, for example. But, this was also the way of the old Roman Empire as well....
Humans are no different than any other animal with regard to our tribal predatory behavior. Except perhaps we are the most vicious species.
You can acknowledge our instinctive behavior and accommodate it, or learn the hard way.
History is geography, geography is history. When 'Europe' was the Mediterranean, the natural non-sea route was through central Asia to northern India and China. The ancient Greeks seemed to believe that they were essentially the same race as Central Asians (including Persians and Chinese. The 'others' were the 'blondes' of northern Europe, who seemed the real threat and an unfathomable mystery to the civilized sea dwellers. Somehow, as the centre of gravity of Europe went north, then it was the lands to the east that were othered. Of course, you could point out that the 'Rus' were originally Vikings....
Perhaps Roman societies naturally escalate towards apocalyptic violence unless a mutually acceptable scapegoat can be found, but not so much Confucian. China has addressed this issue repeatedly and is worth studying for that alone.
I disagree.
China has suffered semi-apocalyptic violence fairly often, usually when the dynasty changed (in the Yellow Turban rebellion it's estimated that between 3 to 7 million people have died, which is about the population of the whole of Roman Italy at the time), the last one being of course the war with Japan.
The only apocalyptic violence China has suffered has been at the hands of Mongol and Roman Societies. There have been dynastic Chinese wars, but they were domestic war of succession.
I'd put Sino-Japanese war squarely to the apocalyptic column, and don't think about Japanese as Roman. Westernised, yes, but culturally still closer to China than Europe.
But that also goes to the point of where you threats can come from. For China, the main threats were from the north - Mongols, and later Manchu, both of which conquered China, the former as Yuan, the latter as Qing, and those two dynasties are close to 400 years of the second millenium.
I'm not even sure I'd accept China as a single continuous state since the First Emperor, really. Neither of the two dynasties above were Han (and while Qing used China and Qing interchangeably, it was very clear that China != Han).
Then you had many periods of smaller entities - Warring States, Three Kingdoms, Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern and Southern Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms (with Vietnam breaking off), etc. etc. I can't do a count right now, but I'd say China was reasonably unified about half of its history (and less as Han ruled entity), so calling it "just" civil wars doesn't make much sense to me TBH.
I know that the Chinese state likes to present itself as a continuous entity since the First Emperor, but IMO it doesn't hold more water than say Italy has been a continuous state since Etruscs run it.
it doesn't hold more water than say Italy has been a continuous state since Etruscs run it.??
Come, come. China's civilization is continuous, ethnically homogenous and self-repairing. Italy's is none of those things.
It's a stretch, but not really that much. Because Han today aren't really Han what they were two millenia ago. Italy was run over number of times, but so was China. Culturally and linguistically, there's definitely a strong link between Italy around 100 BC and today's Italians.
As I wrote above, Qing was very explicit that China != Han. Mongol, Tibetans, Vietnamese, there was a number of non-Han ethnicities within China (ignoring the fact that even Han is a very broad-brush ethnicity, which includes "real" Han, but also Hakka etc..)
Same goes for culture, both non-Han dynasties were culturally quite different from Han. Even "Chinese" as a language has a number of dialects (Yue, commonly known as Cantonese, being probably the most famous, which has significant incluences from SE Asian languages as far as I know), some of which aren't really that compatible in the spoken form. Again, I'm far from an expert on that, but would wonder how much those "dialects" look like Romance language family (assuming it can even be compared on some reasonable scale).
Or, if you want to look at it differently, we could take Germany, although there the history is a bit shorter with a larger state being probably Francia so 5th century. Or, if you want later, HRE, which really could be claimed as a the "Germany since 800". Ethnically and culturally at least as much homogenous as China, shattered at times until morphed into Germany proper in 19th century as a fully homogenised state.
I suspect that we are in a rabbit hole of infinite depth and with infinite branches..
Threat from the East.
- Not entirely. Vikings were considered a threat (until they Christianised), as late as 11th century.
Almohavids were a threat, as late as 15th century.
It's more that as both of these threats were neutralised, the borders there were established by the coast. On the east, there's no coast, so there can't be a natural barrier against "barbarism".
You can actually see the same with Russia, where there are a few (depending on how you count, but really less then 10) corridors where Russia can be invaded. Hence even Catherine the Great said (paraphrasing) - the only way to defend my borders is to extend them, which Russia has been doing before and ever since, in an effort to eliminate the gaps. And when it couldn't it at least tried to create buffers.
In fact, I'd argue that it's true for pretty much any nation, that it will consider threats coming from unsecured borders - US was afraid of Canada as long as it was mainly influenced by the UK not the US, and don't get me started on US/Mexico relations over the years.
So really, Europe's no different.
As a side note on the Waffen SS - you have (Russian) Kaminsky Brigade, and of course, as far as Wehrmacht goes, the whole Hiwi stuff and Vlasov's RLA. Which, with the exception of Vlasov (as THE traitor) is rarely mentioned in Russia, not that most of the other states mention their citizens participating in WW2 on the wrong side do.
As far as I know, Poles are about the only ones who had trivial collaboration of the occupied countries, and the non-occupied participants (US/UK) had often non-trivial number of Axis sympathisers.
That all said, I agree that Europe failed to put together something that would bind it together. IMO, the issue there is that - especially post UK's admission to the EU, but even before to an extent, thanks to German reluctance to take any non-economic stance - it concentrated on the economic side, assuming that once most if not all will be doing well economically, the other stuff will take care of itself. Which doesn't really work like that. It also didn't help that historically European nations preferred to homogenise themselves in many ways (culture, language, religion, you name it. For good reasons at the time), so a heterogenous EU is far from what comes as "natural" to pretty much all of Europe.
It is my firm belief that most, if not all (I don't know about any, but am willing to give it a benefit of doubt) ideologies are based on ignoring one or more aspects of human and societal behaviour. So is the EU one, the question is whether it can change. Not necessarily under the EU banner, which now may be really broken, but under some other ideology that may be at least a bit more close to the reality.