When did the different modern European Cultures form?

When did the French start seeing themselves as 'France', the Spanish as 'Spain', etc? It didn't happen over-night, of course, it was all an evolution from older cultures, but I mean, around when did the modern cultures emerge (to use yet another example, when did 'England' become 'English', instead of 'Angle', 'Saxon', 'Norman', etc).

Spain became "Spain" in 1492, after the capture of Grenada and expulsion of the Muslim southern Iberian kingdoms. But the culture was Visigoth and North African mixed over 1000 years.

France was founded by the Franks. Their culture and nation began taking shape after Tours, 800-ish. France was not fully stable, however, until the 1200s, after the battle of Bouvines.

England was called England because the Pope at the time saw some Anglo-Saxons from the island, and saw how handsome they were, and called them Angels. Angeland, Angeland... say it 500 times, and you hear England. Get it? The culure was a mix between French Norman, Viking Norman, and Angle-Saxon.

When did the different modern European Cultures form?

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all the time, processes still going on.

They all have different points in history when this happened.

Actually, Spain became officially known as "Spain" in early 18th century. Prior to that, it was a personal union of kingdoms (Castille, Aragon etc.).

Dreadnought said:

France was founded by the Franks. Their culture and nation began taking shape after Tours, 800-ish. France was not fully stable, however, until the 1200s, after the battle of Bouvines.

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I give you the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War, courtesy of the Hundred Years' War and a more grave threat to the French nation than all the longbowmen in England. France was very badly splintered until near the end of that conflict; the complete collapse of the Burgundian state is one of the major things that has allowed France to exist in the modern day. (As are Jeanne d'Arc and the Bureau brothers and, as you mentioned, Philippe Auguste.) But yeah, you wouldn't really see anything recognizable as "France" until after the civil war was over. Despite the name.

'German' sort of existed for a long time, of course; while the Germans of Caesar's time were more Celtic than anything else (the vagaries between La Tene and Jastorf being extremely weird, difficult to figure out, and probably more to do with economics than culture), they still are somewhat distantly related to the modern Germans, who are largely descended from those dudes that came romping in in that huge domino-effect madness that caused the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was technically the "Holy Roman Empire [of the German Nation]" for most of its post-Carolingian existence (nobody's quite sure why Maximilian picked that particular name...at least, I think it was a guy named Max...been a long time since I read up on this), and there was a "Kingdom of Germany" that made up most of the HRE and which served as a stepping stone for the emperors to introduce their sons to the business of peace and war. After 1250 or so, the very loose identification the 'Germans' in the HRE had developed with each other largely collapsed into a mess of ministates and squabbling, and even with the introduction of first the Luxembourgs and then the Habsburgs, the Germans were both politically and culturally disunited. The Reformation made that somewhat worse, increasing the divides between the southern and northern parts of the region (north was generally Protestant, south was generally Catholic after the Counter-Reformation, to massively simplify things). Germans were very particularist and regionalist for a long time, and 'national' identification didn't much exist, despite the efforts of the Habsburgs to bring the HRE under total control (e.g. the first half of the Thirty Years' War). It is only with the torching of the Palatinate by Louis XIV and the fact that the HRE served as a battleground for the rest of the European Powers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that 'Germans' finally began to identify with one another. Napoleon's invasion and occupation and creation of the Confederation of the Rhine just made things go faster; no better way to get to nationalism than hating a common enemy like those nasty Frenchmen. In many ways, the war from 1813 to 1814 was a German Patriotic War, rapidly squelched at Vienna and by the Austrian agents following victory over the French, but the seeds of nationalism had been planted and would really burst into flame in 1848 and finally would come to fruition in 1870 and 1871. After that, we get all the fun pan-Germanism that helped lead to World War I. Frabjous day.

Dachspmg said:

I give you the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War, courtesy of the Hundred Years' War and a more grave threat to the French nation than all the longbowmen in England. France was very badly splintered until near the end of that conflict; the complete collapse of the Burgundian state is one of the major things that has allowed France to exist in the modern day. (As are Jeanne d'Arc and the Bureau brothers and, as you mentioned, Philippe Auguste.) But yeah, you wouldn't really see anything recognizable as "France" until after the civil war was over. Despite the name.

'German' sort of existed for a long time, of course; while the Germans of Caesar's time were more Celtic than anything else (the vagaries between La Tene and Jastorf being extremely weird, difficult to figure out, and probably more to do with economics than culture), they still are somewhat distantly related to the modern Germans, who are largely descended from those dudes that came romping in in that huge domino-effect madness that caused the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was technically the "Holy Roman Empire [of the German Nation]" for most of its post-Carolingian existence (nobody's quite sure why Maximilian picked that particular name...at least, I think it was a guy named Max...been a long time since I read up on this), and there was a "Kingdom of Germany" that made up most of the HRE and which served as a stepping stone for the emperors to introduce their sons to the business of peace and war. After 1250 or so, the very loose identification the 'Germans' in the HRE had developed with each other largely collapsed into a mess of ministates and squabbling, and even with the introduction of first the Luxembourgs and then the Habsburgs, the Germans were both politically and culturally disunited. The Reformation made that somewhat worse, increasing the divides between the southern and northern parts of the region (north was generally Protestant, south was generally Catholic after the Counter-Reformation, to massively simplify things). Germans were very particularist and regionalist for a long time, and 'national' identification didn't much exist, despite the efforts of the Habsburgs to bring the HRE under total control (e.g. the first half of the Thirty Years' War). It is only with the torching of the Palatinate by Louis XIV and the fact that the HRE served as a battleground for the rest of the European Powers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that 'Germans' finally began to identify with one another. Napoleon's invasion and occupation and creation of the Confederation of the Rhine just made things go faster; no better way to get to nationalism than hating a common enemy like those nasty Frenchmen. In many ways, the war from 1813 to 1814 was a German Patriotic War, rapidly squelched at Vienna and by the Austrian agents following victory over the French, but the seeds of nationalism had been planted and would really burst into flame in 1848 and finally would come to fruition in 1870 and 1871. After that, we get all the fun pan-Germanism that helped lead to World War I. Frabjous day.

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Oh, wow. Thanks for the information!

Dreadnought said:

England was called England because the Pope at the time saw some Anglo-Saxons from the island, and saw how handsome they were, and called them Angels. Angeland, Angeland... say it 500 times, and you hear England. Get it? The culure was a mix between French Norman, Viking Norman, and Angle-Saxon.

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Gregory I supposedly made the quip about some Angles he saw being sold, but that didn't determine the way that the inhabitants of what is now England saw themselves. In fact the notion of "the English" as a distinct and unified people, as opposed to just a bunch of different kingdoms at war with each other, was basically invented by Bede. He coined the name "English" - before then, most people would have thought of themselves as "Saxons" (if they thought of themselves as anything other than Mercians/Wessexians/etc). So the notion of "English" certainly predated the Norman conquest by a couple of centuries.

Dreadnought said:

Spain became "Spain" in 1492, after the capture of Grenada and expulsion of the Muslim southern Iberian kingdoms. But the culture was Visigoth and North African mixed over 1000 years.

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What?!!

The culture remained Visigoth and northern African for 1000 years?

Pannonius said:

Actually, Spain became officially known as "Spain" in early 18th century. Prior to that, it was a personal union of kingdoms (Castille, Aragon etc.).

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It was in the constitution of 1812 that the name of "Spain" appeared in an official text. Also it was in early 19th century, not 18th.

gangleri2001 said:

What?!!

The culture remained Visigoth and northern African for 1000 years?

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Yes, he seems to be missing the key 'Roman' element of the equation. The vast majority of the people of Spain, even after the Visigoths and Sweboz rolled through, were Romanized Celtiberians, Romanized so far as to retain little to none of their original cultural practices. So 'Spain' ended up being a syncretic mix of those Romans, the Sweboz, the Visigothi, and the Arab/Berber group.

As far as state entities go, you can name the War of Succession in the early 1700s as the first time a unified entity called Spain existed under one set of institutions (though I think it was officially still named something long and annoying), it was the Bourbon kings who first set about building a genuinely unified Spanish state. But the de facto union existed as early as Carlos V's ascension or even the marriage of Fernando and Isabella since the personal union was never broken. You could probably name 1492, 1520, 1714, 1808, 1830, 1931, 1939 or 1975 as dates where modern Spanish culture originated, depending on how you define "modern" and "culture".

The term Spain or "the Spains" is much older, but in the early modern period it essentially meant "Iberian" and included the people of what is now Portugal. This is quite similar to people talking about Germany and Germans or Italy and Italians in this period... there was nothing natural or inevitable about their union under a single state.

Really it all depends on what your political and nationalist sympathies are. Ganglieri has rather neatly demonstrated one extreme. As a regional nationalist he sees Spain as quite an artificial thing even today and, following that particular national myth, he places the date of its "formation" quite late. For him the formation of Spain involves the subjugation of Catalunya and he therefore links it to the imposition of the Crown of Castille's laws on the Crown of Aragon territories, which in the Catalan nationalist view is seen as a conquest and forced integration of a different "nation" as opposed to, say, a Bourbon drive towards modernisation, centralisation and state-building similar to that in France.

Spanish/Castillian nationalists on the other hand, mythologise incessantly about 1492 or even Numancia in order to build their own fanciful claims to the natural unity of the entire present-day territory of the Kingdom of Spain, an "eternal" Spain and an "eternal" Spanish people. It's all about the essential sameness and natural unity of Spain throughout history, with Castillian traits and norms seen as universal "Spanish" ones much like England and the UK get blurred together.

The Basques, for their part, have a rather hilarious tendency to cast back into the Late Stone Age to make their own nationalist claims, but were certainly a demonstrably distinct people even during antiquity (they were, nationalist myths aside, probably the only group of Iberian-speaking pre-celtic people in Europe to resist assimilation and either romanisation or germanisation or celtisation).

There was a time when, far from seeing themselves as separate from "Spain", the people of Viscaya and Navarra saw themselves as the original Spanish, superior to the rest of the Iberian peninsula and its natural leaders by virtue of purity and nobility of blood (there are some rather amusing 16th century records of intellectual arguments about whether Tubal, a grandson of Noah, was Castillian or Basque). They had special rights which essentially made them all lowest-grade nobles and this led to them dominating the organs of governance under the monarchy.

Construction of the Basques as separate didn't start til the 19th century, and some early nationalists often didn't even see Euskera as vitally important to this. So, despite the demonstrable long lineage of Basque separateness, you could equally say that the Basque nation and its modern culture began with Sabino Arana.

The same probably goes for other countries - how much you believe in some "eternal" national character in a particular people in a particular place determines how far back you think the "nation" formed. But if you see all these identities as rather artificial and constructed, you're going to take a different view.

gangleri2001 said:

What?!!

The culture remained Visigoth and northern African for 1000 years?

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As opposed to what?

And yes, I did leave out the (important!) Roman part of the equation. My mistake.

The Visigoths came in 400s, and North Africans came 700s. OK, it wasn't 1000 years exactly. But what is your point?

gangleri2001 said:

What?!!

The culture remained Visigoth and northern African for 1000 years?




It was in the constitution of 1812 that the name of "Spain" appeared in an official text. Also it was in early 19th century, not 18th.

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Sorry, my mistake. But certainly 1492. didn't mean anything from a constitutional point of wiev.

Dreadnought said:

England was called England because the Pope at the time saw some Anglo-Saxons from the island, and saw how handsome they were, and called them Angels. Angeland, Angeland... say it 500 times, and you hear England. Get it? The culure was a mix between French Norman, Viking Norman, and Angle-Saxon.

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Considering that the Angles were one of several tribes invading sub-Roman Britain, along with the Jutes, Saxons, Frisians and even a handful of Franks, this seems pretty unlikely. The name is generally accepted to come from their proposed homeland of Angeln in modern Schleswig, just as the Jutes, Frisians and Saxons came from Jutland, Frisia and Saxony.

Plotinus said:

Gregory I supposedly made the quip about some Angles he saw being sold, but that didn't determine the way that the inhabitants of what is now England saw themselves. In fact the notion of "the English" as a distinct and unified people, as opposed to just a bunch of different kingdoms at war with each other, was basically invented by Bede. He coined the name "English" - before then, most people would have thought of themselves as "Saxons" (if they thought of themselves as anything other than Mercians/Wessexians/etc). So the notion of "English" certainly predated the Norman conquest by a couple of centuries.

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I've also read that the term "English" gained popularity after the Danish invasions as a way of unifying the Danes and Saxons under a single banner. Apparently the term "English" was, for whatever, less offensive to Danes than "Saxon" was. This may be wrong, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

The treaty of Westphalia can be seen as a key point in the construction of national identities as it was with this treaty that borders between countries became secured and nations which were are recognisable today began to grow.

Pannonius said:

Sorry, my mistake. But certainly 1492. didn't mean anything from a constitutional point of wiev.

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1492 in terms of status quo of the kingdoms of the iberian peninsula didn't mean absolutelly NOTHING with the exception of Grenada. The year of the marriage between isabella and fernando was 1469 and the year of the "unification" actually was 1479.

BTW, for those who think that the culture remained a mixture of visigoths, northern africans and romans for thousand years, try to answer the following questions:

*How do you explain the extraordinary production of literature of the catalan, galician and portuguese jongleurs and the naval revolution leaded by catalans and portuguese?

*How do you explain the presence of the basque people, the only people in the iberian peninsula from the ancient world?

*How do you explain the cultural golden age aimed by Alfonso X the Wise and his school of translators of Toledo?

*How could you tell me why did the arabian upper and syrian middle class rule the culture of the Al-Andalus (specially under the Cordoba caliphate but also in the subsequent taifa kingdoms) if the cultre was mainlly northern african?

*How come did appear the extraordinary exception in the jewish community of the sefardites if the culture was just a visigothic-roman-african mixture?

*And how do you explain that, with the exception of some things of catalan tradition and culture, no one in the iberian peninsula claims to have visigothic roots?

gangleri2001 said:

BTW, for those who think that the culture remained a mixture of visigoths, northern africans and romans for thousand years, try to answer the following questions:

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An oversimplification, obviously; I myself only aimed to adjust the problem of missing the largest group, the Romans. Of course the Iberian peninsula has a much greater mix; the Sweboz, for example, are one of the weirdest introductions...

However, I would like to note that the evidence connecting the current Euskara to the ancient world is scanty at best and largely circumstantial; good money is on their migration in the fifth century, not in their preexistence during the Roman Republic.

Dachspmg said:

An oversimplification, obviously; I myself only aimed to adjust the problem of missing the largest group, the Romans. Of course the Iberian peninsula has a much greater mix; the Sweboz, for example, are one of the weirdest introductions...

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But Did something last from the germanic tribes here in cultural terms? Could you answer this question affitmatively and show me that answer? Because I can't.

However, I would like to note that the evidence connecting the current Euskara to the ancient world is scanty at best and largely circumstantial; good money is on their migration in the fifth century, not in their preexistence during the Roman Republic.

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Actually it was a roman historian from the middle (or maybe late? I'm not sure right now) republic who first wrote about the basques. Sorry if I can't tell you his name, I'm not good at remembering names of historians

gangleri2001 said:

But Did something last from the germanic tribes here in cultural terms? Could you answer this question affitmatively and show me that answer? Because I can't.

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I would assume linguistically, especially since the settled region of the Sweboz was one of the few that largely escaped the Moorish conquests, but I don't know enough about that to give a definitive answer either.

gangleri2001 said:

Actually it was a roman historian from the middle (or maybe late? I'm not sure right now) republic who first wrote about the basques. Sorry if I can't tell you his name, I'm not good at remembering names of historians

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I am not sure that Vascones == Basques, and neither are many historians. Pliny and Strabo did write about them, but there is no conclusive evidence connecting the two.

Traitorfish said:

Considering that the Angles were one of several tribes invading sub-Roman Britain, along with the Jutes, Saxons, Frisians and even a handful of Franks, this seems pretty unlikely. The name is generally accepted to come from their proposed homeland of Angeln in modern Schleswig, just as the Jutes, Frisians and Saxons came from Jutland, Frisia and Saxony.

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It's not that unlikely. In French, Germany is called "Allemagne", because the Allemans were the German tribe that lived the closest to the French border. So I why couldn't it be that the name for England was derived from the Angles tribe? (in Dutch, the Angles are called "Angelen" and England is called "Engeland")

I don't agree with the relation to "angel" (which is derived from the Latin Angelus). I guess it's just coincidence...