Liberty over nationalism

Somehow I feel like I missed something from earlier in The Idea of Nationalism. The penultimate section of Kohn's final chapter was about Russia, and it wasn't until this that I realized that Kohn wasn't working on countries at random but rather sweeping from west to east (unless this is just how nationalism spread chronologically). 

The final chapter wraps everything up and works as a peak from which Kohn proclaims his conclusions. Surprisingly, and spoilers lay ahead, Kohn doesn't consider nationalism as the ultimate thing that humans strive for. Instead, he believes that liberty is the virtue that all people interested in helping humanity strive to reach and spread. Nationalism is just an expression of this drive for independence and self-sufficiency. 

Overall, Kohn's book deserves the high praise it has on its cover. It is a study of incredible breadth and some considerable depth. So much breadth in fact, that there are a few points at which I wish Kohn's project gave him more space to go further in depth. 

This book's also a little dated. I feel like Kohn's work on the ancient and medieval worlds is more evergreen, but his stuff about countries even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is probably a bit frayed. It has been 70 years since this book was first published, after all. 

But that shouldn't keep fans of history books from checking out Hans Kohn's The Idea of Nationalism. 

An unexpected contributor to nationalism

It's strange just how different the first two thirds of the twentieth century are from the final third. Really pointing to this difference is Kohn's constant reference to the peoples wedged between Russia and Western Europe as Slavs.

I've heard the term before, sure. I'm pretty confident that it's still in use today as well. But the way Kohn uses it, it sounds as if the lands stretching from Germany to Russia were occupied by loose groupings of people that were without any sense of being part of something bigger than themselves or their town.

Czechoslovakia and Serbia are the two countries Kohn's treats with as his book nears its end. And they're both rather exceptional. Czechoslovakia because they were able to follow the Western European model much more easily (being so close to Germany) and Serbia because hog exporters played a major role.

Yes. Hog exporters. It's right there on page 549.

Of course, Kohn points this detail out because it was these exporters who were the first to venture to other lands and to get the view of other countries, other nascent nations, that seems necessary to bring that sense of unity back home.

As exceptional as that little detail is, though, there's something even more exceptional still.

Kohn writes very little about the role of women in countries awakening to nationhood.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries women weren't exactly sitting in parliaments or heading newspapers, but surely Kohn omits some key contributions in missing any mention of the fairer sex.

More on Poland'd be nice

Kohn's tour of countries that became nations takes him to Eastern Europe in the latest lag of his book (pages 518-543). Having some Polish heritage, but knowing next to nothing about the country, this has made these pages of Kohn's some of the most interesting for me.

However, by Kohn's assessment, things didn't really work out for Poland. Unlike nations like Italy or Greece or Sweden, it didn't quite awaken as a nation just yet. Instead, it weakened itself through its stirring and was ultimately swallowed up by Russia and Prussia only to emerge again later on.

Through implication while he's discussing Hungary, Kohn notes that things didn't work out for that country either because its nobility regarded itself as the nation and discounted those of lesser rank. But as far as I can tell that wasn't the case with Poland. If anything, actually, Poland's problem during this century of national awakenings was trying too hard and aiming too high.

Again, while discussing Hungary, Kohn mentions that the reason that nation and Poland failed to launch into a true era of nationalism in the eighteenth century is that they both put too much stock in past achievements.

Sure, I can see why trying to revive the past could lead to ruin. Conditions and variables change and more often than not can't be reset to just where they were when great things were done. But what bothers me is that Kohn doesn't give these two countries more depth of coverage.

Concentrating on Poland or Hungary's not his purpose in writing about nationalism so broadly, but a close study of some failures might have made all of the successes he's written about truly stand out.

Patterns in nationalism

Kohn's whirlwind coverage of countries that wakened into nations continues with Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.

Gathered together like this, patterns among the ways in which nationalism emerges are starting to appear.

Generalizing broadly, it seems that the nations of Europe awoke either through poetry and drama or through the political work of individuals. Sometimes these two also worked in concert.

More often than not though (at least with the nations Kohn's covered so far), everything is sparked by a single individual's efforts. Not always while that person is alive, however, or in vogue.

In the case of Italy Vittorio Alfieri got people thinking about nationalism, but in an incredibly insular way. Alfieri decried the influence of anything from outside of Italy as such things threatened to corrupt the pure Italian-ism that had fostered the Roman Empire.

As much as nationalism is a matter of a collective ego (with all the negative and positive connotations of that word) another trend that's come out is that almost every nation that Kohn has chronicled draws inspiration to awaken to nationalism thanks to inspiration from another country. The French Revolution was just such an inspiration to Italy, much to Alfieri's chagrin.

Another 60 pages remain, and so I'll see about how these patterns carry forward.

Nationalism, "patriot," and language

From Ireland and Wales, Kohn has moved on to write of Holland, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. At this point I'm wondering if he'll get over to Asia at all. Though that seems especially unlikely.

What strikes me as the most dated feature of Kohn's writing, though, is his constant use of the word patriot.

When The Idea of Nationalism was first printed, in the 40s, the word stood for something to strive toward. A patriot was someone who expressed a desire to better the entire world through bettering his or her home nation. In modern usage, however, at least in North America, the word's gathered too many negative connotations to be taken seriously. Or to be regarded as a positive.

There's the infamous Patriot Act in the United States. And the general sense that a "patriot" isn't someone who stands up for some national good but who's fanatical about his or her country the same way that a football fan who paints himself and screams the whole game through is seen as fanatical about his team. In this age of irony where sincerity is seldom expressed, "patriot" is too strong a word to be of any good use.

Of course, that's not to say that there were no egos involved in the early nationalism that Kohn writes on. It seems like that's all it was - a country's population coming together to say "this country of ours sure is much greater than all those others."

In the case of Spain, for example, Spanish nationalism was fostered on the idea that Spanish literature was the only truly original European literature. Further, that the rest of Europe owed Spain a great deal in the literary field.

It was also thought that a country's language had to be pure for it to unite as one.

Given the way that English has fractured, maybe even to the point where "proper" English is where Latin was 100 years ago, it seems unlikely to unite anything much. Yet the bible, the book used to legitimize languages in the past, is being translated into LOLCat.

Kohn on Celts

Well, surprise of surprises, Kohn's final chapter isn't about Germany. Yet.

Instead,the chapter called, in part, "Toward the Great Awakening" has been about Wales and Ireland. Kohn's treatment of the growth of nationalism in these countries has been similar to his approach to Germany and Prussia.

Of course, by this point in The Idea of Nationalism the important historical trends and figures of the eighteenth century are well tread. As a result, Kohn is able to skim through the context of important events. This allows him to keep his discussions streamlined and is quite appreciated.

However, Kohn does drop names without giving them context. As far as I can tell, "Grattan" is used several times but Kohn never refers to him as Henry Grattan. 

That Kohn is able to freely drop names like this suggests that The Idea of Nationalism was written for a specialist audience. Yet, Kohn's smooth but dense prose is much more welcoming than a textbook's.

Given the breadth of his coverage so far, at the very least Kohn covers a wide range of emerging nations.

Kohn finally delivers on promise of folklore

At long last the chapter called "Folklore of the Past" talks of folklore. After spending nearly the whole chapter writing of trends and thinkers in German nationalism, Kohn spends the last 24 pages on Johann Gottfried Herder.

Herder's major contribution to the discussion about German nationalism is the notion that each peoples' nationalism is the way that they express humanity. All peoples express humanity in their own way, and so that method of expression reflects their national character. Folklore comes into this formulation since it is, to Herder, the essential expression of a national character.

All of this discussion of folklore is well and good. But it really could have stood on its own.

The pages upon pages of jumping around in time and across different thinkers and theories could have been organized in a more direct way. Or it could have been dropped all together. Cutting everything from this chapter but the discussion of Herder's ideas and work would have made it a mere 24 pages among chapters that are at least double that length, but still.

At least it would have only been about what it was advertised as being about.

Given where "Folklore of the Past" went, I'm confident that "Toward the Great Awakening" will continue to concentrate on Germany and its struggle with nationalism. Also, given Kohn's ending "Folklore of the Past" with a clear reference to Germany's assertion of its national pride, I'm confident that the World Wars will come up within the book's last chapter.

The Idea of Nationalism should then continue to be an interesting, if over lengthy, read.

The painful irony of historical nationalism

The more I read Kohn's history of German nationalism (that's what The Idea of Nationalism has become, these last hundred or so pages), the more nervous I become.

Kohn's well aware of this thing that makes me nervous, though he just juts his chin out towards it as painfully ironic sentiments come up. Sentiments found in statements along the lines of 'Germany is a great nation and a protector of the weak,' or Goethe's own "the Germans are like the Jews, they can be oppressed but not annihilated" (415).

It's statements like these that really set the stage for Germany in the twentieth century. And that make me squirm as I read. Writing in 1947, it's clear that they make Kohn nervous as well.

Nonetheless, at the time the comparison between the Jews and Germans was yet another manifestation of an Anglo/Saxon people seeing themselves as the wandering chosen. I swear there's some sort of history- and society-spanning complex there.

Getting back to the matter of nationalism. The late eighteenth century saw this movement take off in Germany, as the people began to take an interest in claiming a nation of their own. One man in particular, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstop, even went so far as to dedicate his life to writing Germany's national epic poem. It was a project that took him twenty seven years to complete.

Kohn dwells quite a bit on the poetry of the time at this point in his discussion. Particularly, he's emphasizing the contemporary idea that poetry needs to be accessible to urbanite an ruralite alike. Hopefully this discussion of poetry is gradually bringing him to the promised folklore.

Over-intellectualizing nationalism?

Turning back to the eighteenth century, Kohn looks at philosophers and the influence of classical Greece on German nationalism. The latter of these turns contemporary intellectuals away from any notion of a specific German nationalism and toward something more universal.

At the time, Germany was a collection of regions, each ruled by its own monarch. Thus, some of the intellectuals considered Germany the ideal example for the rest of the world to follow when it came to a single political entity being made of several smaller kingdoms.

However, that's just what the intellectuals were thinking.

This approach to a history of something as broad as "nationalism" bothers me.

Earlier in the book, Kohn dismissed much of the German peasantry as being characterized by an overpowering desire to obey and avoid making waves. So they're discounted.

He's written of the princes of Germany and how they were more concerned with their own power and its continuation than anything like the idea of nationalism.

Now, hearing about people like Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller is fine, but incredibly limited. It wouldn't bother me quite so much if Kohn tried to connect their ideas to events or movements that happened after their deaths (when it's reasonable that anything cutting edge had become mainstream or simply accepted), but he doesn't. In these last few sections, his focus has been almost entirely on individual thinkers and their own ideas of nationalism and where Germany should go in regards to it.

This current chapter, "Stirrings in the Old World: The Folklore of the Past" still has another 38 pages in which Kohn could look at the after effects of these thinkers' ideas. Alternatively, the next chapter "Stirrings in the Old World: Toward the Great Awakening" could be about just that entirely. If either is the case, then Kohn's book stands a good chance of truly being a great work of historical political science.

Compelling history writing regains momentum

Just as it was starting to flag, The Idea of Nationalism has picked up speed once more. How does Kohn manage this shift amidst his discussion of the ups and downs of nascent German nationalism in the nineteenth century? With a section about contemporary Swiss nationalism, of course!

What makes Switzerland a special case, in Kohn's analysis, is that it had always been a collection of democratic city states in one way or another. It needed only pull together into one. Thus, fertile ground for nationalism was to be found there. And this healthily growing plant spread its pollen south, back to the Vaterland.

For German intellectuals of the time took Switzerland as an example and suggested the principalities pull together. A league of the princes was formed, and then nearly as quickly abandoned because of a widespread fear among Europe of a powerful empire existing in its heartland. That, and the princes in this league cared less about the people and societies that they ruled than about their own power and influence.

Ultimately, then, the discussion of nationalism among German intellectuals turned to democracy. As Johann Michael Afsprung wrote:

"'If such frail creatures as men are to be governed by mere men, then it can be done in fairness only democratically; it could be done aristocratically only if they were governed by angels, and monarchically if they were to be governed by God'" (390).

Even in the middle of a lengthy chapter, quotes like these and Kohn's chapter-like sub-sections are well placed. Some of the endings, such as that of section 10 (the quote above) even function as cliffhangers of a sort.

Prussia? What Prussia?

The Idea of Nationalism shows its age somewhat as chapter seven goes forward.

Kohn spends a considerable amount of space in this chapter writing about the Prussian experience with nationalism. That experience being that all of the ingredients were present, but instead of being turned toward fostering a strong universal feeling or idea, they were turned to gaining power for the ruling house of Hohenzollern.

However, since 1947, Prussia has been officially abolished as a country. Kohn published this book in 1944. Quite honestly, though, this emphasis on a country that is no more is really the only thing that's reminded me of the book's age so far. I've been perfectly fine chalking up other smaller ticks to the eccentricities of any good historian.

Pulling things back from Prussia, Kohn gets into it only as a sub-section of his general study of German nationalism. The folklore has yet to really make a star appearance, as promised by the chapter's title, but at this point I think it might have just been Kohn's highlighting the sexiest part of this chapter. After all, folklore was big in the 1940s, as it had been in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Nonetheless, it's interesting to know that German nationalism was inspired by English, French, and American nationalism though it also aimed to undercut them. To those Germans concerned with such matters, nationalism that came from civilization was of a lesser order than that which came from the nation itself. In line with Rousseau's idea of the earliest humanity being the purest (as it was free from civilization's taint), the nation's character was understood to be embodied in the practices and traditions of the common people.

With eighty-two pages left in this chapter, it's entirely possible that a more folklore-centric discussion lurks ahead, but that seems rather doubtful. Kohn will likely instead continue forward in time, detailing all of the steps that Germany took to arrive at its contemporary state.

A Germany divided

Chapter seven of Hans Kohn's The Idea of Nationalism is certainly about the old world. However, instead of looking further at the nationalism of France or England, he turns to Germany and the rest of what he considers central and Eastern Europe.

On the one hand, I appreciate this look at a country that I've always considered to be very western in its culture and ideology. On the other, it feels like he's using Germany as a stand in for Russia, India, and the rest of the "central and eastern" old world when it comes to nationalism. What about Poland? Norway? Estonia?

It seems like we'll not be hearing much about the smaller countries just yet. If at all. 

Twenty pages in, this chapter also has yet to really mention much about the relationship between nationalism and folklore promised in its title ("The Folklore of the Past"). Kohn's noted that the romantic idea that a nation's true spirit exists in its common people and their practices was prevalent among eighteenth century German thinkers. But that's as close as he's come to folklore.

In fact, so far, he has done little else but paint a picture of a stark divide between classes. Apparently, there were those in the upper and intellectual classes who wanted to and worked to create some sort of German nationalism and there were those in the middle classes who liked the idea of nationalism, but were too caught up in being good citizens to really do much about it. 

From the perspective of narrative, Kohn has set up a conflict that could lead to the creation of a German nationalism. Now it's a matter of seeing how he delivers. 

Kohn on America: It's all about the idea

In the final parts of Kohn's look at America as nascent nation, he concentrates on major matters for nationhood. Things like education, language and literature. Neatly summed up, it comes down to the fact that there were many people like Noah Webster.

Webster believed that America's best bet was to strike out anew - to create its own language (to Webster, curiously, American English was enough), education system, and literature. When a proponent of something accurately predicts the state of a whole language for the next century, it's fair to say that he can be agreed with.

But, people like Webster faced plenty of opposition from conservative corners in the early years of the union and gradually those who were still concerned about Europe entered the fray. The first decades of the nineteenth century were host to Napoleon and his conquests after all. Kohn mentions nothing about an American fear that they would be next, rather that Americans bristled at the idea of Europe coming under one power, but I imagine there was a mix of the two sentiments at work.

Kohn closes the chapter with further mention of Jefferson and his singular belief in non-denominational agrarian societies. On the former of these two aspects, Kohn gives some attention to where religion stood in early US policy.

This attention is enough to turn up a 1796 treaty between the US and Tripoli that included the statement: "As the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" (312). Kohn is quick to note that this treaty was ratified by the senate without controversy.

Ultimately, though, as Kohn reminds us all, it was the idea of America - this new found land where a person's name or status had no meaning, and where there was no precedent for European governance - that drew people together. And throughout its early years, this is what people believed in, fought for, and kept ever at the fore of their minds.

Thus ends Kohn's study of newborn nationhood. Up next appears to be a look at how folklore helped old countries to find a new sense of national identity. It's a bit of a strange set up, the sequence of chapters being vaguely chronological, but I appreciate the variety that it offers. The geographical jumps that Kohn makes keep things relatively fresh.

Kohn's concentration on America

Although he doesn't state it outright, the focus of Kohn's Chapter VI in The Idea of Nationalism is to study a nation as it is made into such. The focus of this study? None other than those United States.

One of the things that Kohn notes is the fundamental nature of the U.S.'s Constitution. Interestingly, he writes that because it is so essential to U.S. nationalism, the Constitution could never be changed (289). He doesn't say anything about amending it, but changing it, at least in Kohn's mind, would be on par with altering a law of nature. Were time travel available, it would be interesting, though potentially catastrophic, to see what changes in the original would cause to happen in the present.

What Kohn's point comes down to, though, is that the U.S. didn't benefit as a nation from its Revolution. After the dust had settled each state was still parochial and different enough from the rest to be distrustful of them. The sense that I'm left with in the middle of this chapter is that two things nonetheless brought those colonists together.

One was their mutual hatred of Europe and the styles of government for which it stood: aristocracy, hierarchy, monarchical tyranny. The other was that they could all agree that they distrusted Europe more than each other and were able to band together to one-up the old country.

The road to this inference was littered with notable quotes. Like this one from English economist Josiah Tucker (on the impossibility of a union): "...[the Americans] will have no centre of union and no common interests. They never can be united into one compact empire under any species of government whatever; a disunited people till the end of time" (283).

Or from Thomas Jefferson (on the corruption of Europe): "I think we shall be virtuous as long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case, while there remain vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe and go to eating one another as they do there" (300).

Anglo-Saxon Israelites and history in America

It seems like Anglo-Saxon peoples have a strange propensity for identifying with the biblical Israelites. The combination of the Angles and the Saxons that overtook Britain while Rome teetered and fell did it, and so too did those from the British Isles who colonized America.

Though perhaps these historically separate peoples' identification with the biblical Israelites reveals nothing more than their giving equal measures of authority to the bible. And why not? In both historical moments it was a common text, in much the same way that the Jurassic Park movie or the Harry Potter book series is today. Referring to something that the largest number of people will recognize is half the point of making such references.

At any rate, from the way Kohn writes of it, eighteenth century Europe was excited by the political developments across the Atlantic. To many, the new world offered the perfect place to put their high minded political ideals into practice. After all, First Nations aside (something that European thought of the time did with ease), it was a place without a history where, as Kohn quotes Benjamin Franklin: "...America, where people do not inquire concerning a stranger, What is he? but What can he do?" (275).

No doubt it's that attitude towards a person's making his or her own merit combined with the sentiment that it was better to look ahead than to look back for ideas that contributed much to America's modern view of history.

A view that Eddie Izzard did a great job of summing up over fifteen years ago (Dress to Kill (1998)):

Rousseau on nations

The past is more than a foreign country, it's populated with people who had some hilarious ideas. Like the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and his belief that a Christian republic was unthinkable. The USA is a diverse amalgam of states and faiths, but it'd nonetheless be curious to see Rousseau's reaction to its modern form.

Dipping into territory that would seem more familiar to H.I. Marrou, Rousseau also had some particular ideas about education.

Kohn wraps up his chapter on the development of sovereignty with an overview of Rousseau's work framing constitutions for both Corsica and for Poland. The former was an all new nation, and so there was no true challenge for the philosopher there. The latter offered more to try him.

As part of his recommendations, Rousseau suggested that the Polish people be steeped in their native history and culture. To ensure that they were properly educated, he stated that Polish children would learn of all of their country's products by 10, all of its provinces, roads, and cities by 12, all of its history by 15, and all of its laws by 16 (256). Rousseau's idea being that this sort of education would allow Poland's citizens to kindle in their hearts a love for their country's total greatness.

Knowing only the capital, that they inevitably make beer there, and that Nintendo products are notoriously hard to find within its borders, I must be among the worst Poles ever.

Nationalism and the persistence of dead languages

Hans Kohn's mention of The Works of Ossian is far too brief. Anyone willing to fake an entire collection of heroic poetry allegedly about the Celtic forebears of Great Britain is someone with a very strong national feeling. Though perhaps such a person was exceptional in his having that feeling, or his conception of "nation" is just too loose for Kohn.

No doubt, the reason that Kohn just gives a brief mention to James Macpherson's forgery is that he's really concentrating on France in his discussion of shifting ideas of sovereignty. I think he's justified in doing so, but also missing out on what's going on in the peripheries.

Nonetheless, it's fascinating to know that French had no problem becoming a universal language in the eighteenth century, but struggled to become a common language within France. For the longest time Latin persisted as the language of instruction, though most of the contemporary philosophers and writers put their thoughts down in their nation's common tongue.

Eventually, Latin was pushed aside in favour of French as the language of instruction and politics, and was thereby legitimized. That this happened some time after ideas of governance started to swing around to the governed governing themselves really gives substance to the idea that Latin was a prince among languages.

And indeed it was.

Latin had been the language of instruction and diplomacy for centuries, and yet, it outlasted the much older idea of governance by an active monarchy in Europe. Though Latin wasn't subject to as much change as governance was over the centuries. Given that, perhaps it rusted shut in a way and that's why it lasted that little bit longer.

A universal individualism

As society at large became more secular the dream of universalism followed suit. Because individualism became more mainstream alongside this secular dream of a united humanity, I can see why New World Order conspiracies persist. Universalism and individualism are kind of paradoxical after all, but, if Kohn is to be believed, both are necessary for the establishment of modern nationalism. One world government conspiracy theories are just a product of the paradox, the result of staunch individualism bashing into a drive for universalism. Though the individualism involved in such theories is simultaneously on the personal and national level.

Anyway, along with the roots of such conspiracies, Kohn's coverage of the emergence of sovereign states deeply involves France. He notes how France of the seventeenth century had some great thinkers (Rousseau, Descartes, etc.). He mentions that during this time the French were the most wide ranging of the European peoples. And, he makes it clear that French was the language to learn if you wanted to appear truly civilized and sophisticated. Add that to the list of things that change very slowly.

What's interesting is that this romantic perception of French lasted to the present despite the long period of England's nigh global dominance. Though the French (and Spanish, and Portuguese, and Dutch, and Germans) were involved in colonizing the world, too. Maybe it's lasted so long because it was the English who dominated. But Kohn's not reached that point in history just yet.

Heavy on the primary sources, please

The latter half of Kohn's chapter on the Renaissance and Reformation is all about the nation he believes is the biggest player in the spread of modern nationalism: England.

His focus on the island nation of northwestern Europe is quite useful for me. It gives me things to argue against with my case for Beowulf as a kind of national poem of Anglo-Saxon Britain.

His spending so much space on England and its progression through the various nationalisms he presents is also helpful because of the definitions of those nationalisms that he provides. Right now it looks like an Old Testament nationalism (seeing a people as set apart by a divine destiny) comes closest to what I think is expressed in Beowulf and other major Anglo-Saxon writings. There's definitely a note of a Germanic sense of superiority in there, too, though not enough to completely crush the Celtic culture the Anglo-Saxons found when they came to Britain's bright shores.

One thing that's becoming clearer the more I read of Kohn is that he uses a lot of quotations. I mean, to the point where there's easily a 70/30 split between quotations and original prose in some paragraphs. It's neat to see history in its makers' words, though.

Ideas spurred by nationalism

Kohn's numerical sub-headings are great milestones along the path of his arguments and examples, but naming them would've made them more helpful. As he gets further into the place of nationalism in the Renaissance and Reformation, each of these subsections focuses on a different nation. So far transitional conclusions and descriptive introductions have made each subject clear, but replacing the numbers with names would make for a smoother reading experience.

Not that Kohn's writing is anything but smooth. Although most of this chapter has been summaries of what happened in the regions of Europe that would later become its major nations, the book still reads like a reported story rather than an enumeration of events with causes and effects clearly outlined. It makes for some entertaining reading.

It's also the sort of stuff that further fuels my other projects.

For the Beowulf project Kohn keeps mentioning the conditions in which nationalism thrives and the elements that constitute it. Kohn also seems to have overlooked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a piece of writing in a mundane language specifically designed to unify a disparate people. I know that this function of the Chronicle has been written on before, but being reminded of it in this capacity has given me another piece of evidence to argue that the early medieval Anglo-Saxons were actually trying to create a national unity. A unity that consumed what was left of the British Celts.

On the less academic side, reading about Castile being isolated within its mountains got me wondering about world building through storytelling. Specifically if it could be possible to achieve the effect of a gradually widening world found in the great RPGs in a series of books.

The big question I'm left with is which one of these matters will be the first to prove useful.