Heather Cox Richardson
I have thought a great deal this winter about nationalism. It seems to me that the rise of the internet, international trade, and NGOs begs us to ask whether or not nationalism was a twentieth-century phenomenon that had little meaning before the mid-nineteenth century, and will have little meaning after the mid-twenty-first century. The bouncing boundaries in this video seem to reinforce that suggestion:
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Good grief! Look at all those little Germanic principalities! But look at the persistence of the Golden Horde Mongols -- I just finished book one of Neal Stephenson and friends' series, The Mongoliad. Also, I had an opportunity to think about bioregionalism when I drove across the big north from NH to northern MN a couple of weeks ago. South of lakes Ontario, Huron, & Superior, but north of Erie and Michigan. Made me wonder if there's something that could tie together places like London ONT, Marquette MI, Duluth and Bemidji MN...
I think that point underpins the shift to transnational, transatlantic and global history in recent years. Scholars can no longer really justify studies that end at national boundaries because even at the height of nineteenth and early twentieth century nationalism, these were not impenetrable borders across which little flowed. They were simply lines on a map that often delineated only incidental differences between each side.
On the other hand, Europe is descending into economic nationalism over the Greek crisis in a way that suggests such boundaries still mean something today. And then there's Scotland...
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