- Location
- Grittysborough
- Pronouns
- he/him
So, there was a bit of discussion about citizenship, along with the attendant debate about the privileges and responsibilities thereof, over in Chat, and it made me think about citizenship and nationality as concepts.
For one thing, they are a fairly new concept as we understand them. Citizenship itself is a very old concept, of course, but the meaning of British, French, American, Swedish or Chinese citizenship today against is very, very different from what was meant in Athens when they discussed what it meant to be a citizen of the polis.
Citizenship itself has even changed back and forth within a single idea — Roman Citizenship, for example, was originally a very exclusive club, alike to the Athenians, and which literal civil wars were fought over the definition thereof, and whether even other Latin-speakers from Rome’s region could hold citizenship rather than being mere associates. And then, a few mere centuries later, Roman citizenship was extended to essentially every free person who happened to reside in and identify with the much more vast Roman Empire. This ideal of Roman citizenship became so powerful that it took several centuries to break down in the Latin West beyond what it took the Empire itself in the west to fall; when the Eastern Romans had dealings with Goths, Franks and Lombards, for centuries thereafter, it was done with the understanding that the people living under the latter Germans were all Roman citizens, even though the Empire had contracted. When the Eastern Roman Empire would expand back into the west, many of these people were instantly fully reintegrated into the civic life of the Empire, as though the Empire had never gone away, and it wasn’t for a very long time that Roman citizenship would become associated in the Empire with the Greek language and Greek culture, once again gaining an linguistic-ethnic identification — and one which was utterly divorced from its original meaning.
In medieval times, the citizen as a resident of a particular city with rights there was back to being the norm, and it isn’t until the latter-day republics of the modern age that you start to see the ideal of citizenship be restored, along the lines of Roman Citizenship — the United Provinces, to an early, but limited, degree, but much more so when you see Corsica, the United States and the French Republic coming in. And, even then, that concept didn’t spread into monarchies immediately, with subjecthood - and owed fealty or loyalty to a particular sovereign - being the norm. And, given monarchies with effectively free subjects being common even in that age, the difference between being a subject of the Swedish Crown and being a citizen of the United States was minuscule — indeed, one could very well argue that Swedish subjecthood was far more broad and liberating than American citizenship for a very long period of time before Sweden adopted citizenship.
Which then comes to our modern understanding of nationality and citizenship as related, if distinct, concepts. The idea of one’s nation rather than one’s sovereign being the major defining element in determining to what you owed your allegiance is a very, very modern concept. Of course, nations exist, and nations have fought for independence, freedom and liberty since long before the seventeenth century, but our modern understanding of citizenship, nationality and nationalism are all born of a very much modern understanding of what these things mean, and based upon a fundamental rejection of the idea that a sovereign makes a state, with instead a state making a sovereign.
Anyway, all of this is a very, very wordy introduction to a question — how could our conception of these ideas be different in different AH? Even if you go along with the citizenship of the Enlightenment, even that was more exclusive than our modern understanding of it in the West is — what if it remained so? What if it was framed differently?
And, for that matter, is our modern, western understanding of citizenship so wrapped up in the Roman Empire and its legacy that the entire concept might not even exist in a timeline where that Empire went a different direction, or never formed at all? Would the concept be so alien that we could hardly even refer to it as such, except in the specific case of cities and the right to own property there?
Thoughts, anyone?
For one thing, they are a fairly new concept as we understand them. Citizenship itself is a very old concept, of course, but the meaning of British, French, American, Swedish or Chinese citizenship today against is very, very different from what was meant in Athens when they discussed what it meant to be a citizen of the polis.
Citizenship itself has even changed back and forth within a single idea — Roman Citizenship, for example, was originally a very exclusive club, alike to the Athenians, and which literal civil wars were fought over the definition thereof, and whether even other Latin-speakers from Rome’s region could hold citizenship rather than being mere associates. And then, a few mere centuries later, Roman citizenship was extended to essentially every free person who happened to reside in and identify with the much more vast Roman Empire. This ideal of Roman citizenship became so powerful that it took several centuries to break down in the Latin West beyond what it took the Empire itself in the west to fall; when the Eastern Romans had dealings with Goths, Franks and Lombards, for centuries thereafter, it was done with the understanding that the people living under the latter Germans were all Roman citizens, even though the Empire had contracted. When the Eastern Roman Empire would expand back into the west, many of these people were instantly fully reintegrated into the civic life of the Empire, as though the Empire had never gone away, and it wasn’t for a very long time that Roman citizenship would become associated in the Empire with the Greek language and Greek culture, once again gaining an linguistic-ethnic identification — and one which was utterly divorced from its original meaning.
In medieval times, the citizen as a resident of a particular city with rights there was back to being the norm, and it isn’t until the latter-day republics of the modern age that you start to see the ideal of citizenship be restored, along the lines of Roman Citizenship — the United Provinces, to an early, but limited, degree, but much more so when you see Corsica, the United States and the French Republic coming in. And, even then, that concept didn’t spread into monarchies immediately, with subjecthood - and owed fealty or loyalty to a particular sovereign - being the norm. And, given monarchies with effectively free subjects being common even in that age, the difference between being a subject of the Swedish Crown and being a citizen of the United States was minuscule — indeed, one could very well argue that Swedish subjecthood was far more broad and liberating than American citizenship for a very long period of time before Sweden adopted citizenship.
Which then comes to our modern understanding of nationality and citizenship as related, if distinct, concepts. The idea of one’s nation rather than one’s sovereign being the major defining element in determining to what you owed your allegiance is a very, very modern concept. Of course, nations exist, and nations have fought for independence, freedom and liberty since long before the seventeenth century, but our modern understanding of citizenship, nationality and nationalism are all born of a very much modern understanding of what these things mean, and based upon a fundamental rejection of the idea that a sovereign makes a state, with instead a state making a sovereign.
Anyway, all of this is a very, very wordy introduction to a question — how could our conception of these ideas be different in different AH? Even if you go along with the citizenship of the Enlightenment, even that was more exclusive than our modern understanding of it in the West is — what if it remained so? What if it was framed differently?
And, for that matter, is our modern, western understanding of citizenship so wrapped up in the Roman Empire and its legacy that the entire concept might not even exist in a timeline where that Empire went a different direction, or never formed at all? Would the concept be so alien that we could hardly even refer to it as such, except in the specific case of cities and the right to own property there?
Thoughts, anyone?