As far as I’m concerned, the easiest way to settle this discussion with
IgorS as to whether Gran Colombia was a nation is to pull out a bunch of different dictionaries and discussions re: the definition of a nation. I do so below. As dictionaries are a good last word on definitions here, this will accordingly be my last post responding to IgorS’ conclusory statements about what is and what isn’t a nation, his description of Gran Colombia as not being a nation because it was short-lived, and his
description of ethnicity being what differentiates an “artificial” civ from a “non-artificial” civ. Anything else IgorS says on that topic I simply will not reply to, as this post encapsulates a good counter to his arguments thus far.
After all,
there are many ways to define a nation, and Gran Colombia meets several definitions of "nation" (discussed below with citations). I have, in the interests of not dragging out quibbles over wording, focused on responding to quotes from IgorS’ most recent post that go towards the definition of what a “nation” is.
It doesn't matter how many times you are going to bring this quote. It still does not make Gran Colombia a nation. It was a country, a political entity, that was trying to become a nation, but eventually split due to the fact the people of that country had totally different ideas as to what this "Gran Colombia" thing should be. This is not a nation. This is a failed project.
Actually, it does matter how many times I quote it—you have never combated the quote with anything resembling evidence. Between you and a US president who lived during the time Gran Colombia existed, I’ll take John Quincy Adams’ opinion, especially since you have no backup for the suggestion that Gran Colombia was not a nation. A “failed project” that was a nation is still a nation. As I said earlier, a nation is a nation, no matter how short-lived.
And you seem to keep ignoring the fact that Gran Colombia didn't last long. You look at this as something insignificant, but this is a very major issue. You bring the US as an example again, but you keep ignoring the fact that when I talk about the US I talk about what it has become, not just its beginnings. The United States has developed a culture, it has its own history, there is such a thing as American people, however artificial this nation is. It just did not happen with Gran Colombia. Period.
AND
An artificial state cannot become a nation from existence because it is artificial. It needs time to develop into a nation.
I did not ignore Gran Colombia's short duration but discussed the short duration as not cutting against it being a nation (similarly, the Palmyrene Empire's short life span doesn't mean it was not an empire in that time). No definition of “nation” I have ever seen is predicated on how long it was in existence. (See below.) That’s why it’s simply wrong to make it a required part of a definition of a nation.
Oxford Dictionaries says a
nation is “
A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory.” Nothing there saying that shared history has to be long.
Collins English dictionary says that a nation can be “
an aggregation of people or peoples of one of more cultures, races, etc, organized into a single state”, “a community of persons not constituting a state but bound by common descent, language, history, etc” or “a federation of times, esp of Native Americans” or “the territory occupied by such a federation”. Meanwhile,
Dictionary.com defines a nation as “
a large group of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own”, “
the territory or country itself” (and you already acknowledged Gran Colombia as a “country”), “a member tribe of an American Indian confederation” or “an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or cognate languages”.
Merriam-Webster says a nation is “nationality”, “a politically organized nationality”, “
a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government”, or “a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status”.
All the above definitions lack anything about duration of time being required to become a nation. So when you fixate on Gran Colombia’s 12-year duration as a sign it was not a nation, no dictionary above agrees. And as you presented no sources re: a length of time required, I have to assume it's part of how
you want to define a nation, as opposed to how a nation is
actually defined.
Global Policy Forum, an independent watchdog that monitors United Nations work,
says this:
A nation is a large group of people with strong bonds of identity - an "imagined community," a tribe on a grand scale. The nation may have a claim to statehood or self-rule, but it does not necessarily enjoy a state of its own. National identity is typically based on shared culture, religion, history, language or ethnicity, though disputes arise as to who is truly a member of the national community or even whether the "nation" exists at all (do you have to speak French to be Québécois? are Wales and Tibet nations?). Nations seem so compelling, so "real," and so much a part of the political and cultural landscape, that people think they have lasted forever. In reality, they come into being and dissolve with changing historical circumstances - sometimes over a relatively short period of time, like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
That “imagined community” is, as the site points out, a disputed concept with multiple definitions around different factors, and many nations are short-lived and “dissolve with changing historical circumstances”. That doesn’t mean those (short-lived) nations didn’t exist.
You again go back to the Ottoman Empire, even though it has nothing to do with this matter. And yes, there was no such thing as "Ottoman people". These people are Turks, and they referred to themselves as Turks or Rumis, not as Ottomans. Ottoman was the name of the political entity, but the people who created it were the Turkish people. So this is why I am against the Ottoman Empire as a civ, it should be Turkey. And before you get started with the whole Jannissary thing again, talking about how the Ottoman Empire was comprised of various peoples, this has nothing to do with it. The civilization should be Turkish, but of course it should also have all the relevant elements from its history, like Jannissaries, who were not ethnically Turkish, and so on. A civilization should revolve around a nation, and in the case of the Ottomans, we have a real nation - the Turks. When it comes to artificial civilizations, like the Americans or "Gran Colombians", we need to look at whether they have indeed become a nation.
The Ottoman Empire has everything to do with this matter. When you discuss definitions of "nation", it helps to have discussions of illustrative examples. The Ottoman Empire is an excellent example of a multi-ethnic nation—the various ethnic groups within the Ottoman Empire were subsumed into a gigantic political entity. You also incorrect when you say there were no Ottoman people. There were, and they were multiethnic, so when you say “In the case of the Ottomans, we have a real nation – the Turks”, I have to wonder whether you refer to the ethnic group or the citizens of the Turkish state (and if so, which Turkish state—the Ottoman Empire, or the modern nation-state of Turkey?) In either case, they comprised multiple ethnic groups and focused more on citizenship as forming what constituted a “Turk” than on ethnicity as constituting a “Turk”. In this regard, see pp. 61-63 of
Haldun Gülalp’s Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: Challenging the Nation-state. Ottoman Turkey obviously focused more on Muslim identity since Kemal Ataturk (founder of the modern Turkish state) focused on secularism in the state. (see book above in that regard too).
And your statement that the Ottoman Empire should just be called “Turkey” raises questions about
your earlier statement that the Romans and Italy are different enough that they can be separate entities. To me, it makes no sense that in your view, Ottomans and modern Turks are somehow not different enough that they can be separate entities in light of your attitude to Romans and Italy, particularly in light of the numerous differences in government and culture between the Ottoman Empire and the modern nation-state of Turkey.
I disagree when you say we must “look at whether they have indeed become a nation”. As earlier discussed re: your weird requirement that a nation needs to have lasted a certain amount of time to be considered a nation, there’s no waiting process that something that was deemed a nation in its own time has to go through in order to be considered a nation now. Gran Colombia was a nation then, in the views of people living at the time, and no sources suggest it was somehow “not” a nation. So we don’t even need to bother with whether the Gran Colombians “have indeed become a nation”. They were a nation from the beginning.
Again, you are looking at a single historical event, and trying to make a civilization out of it. The United States is not just the Revolution/War of Independence, it has a little more to its history and culture, you know. Gran Colombia was just that - a revolution, and then it fell apart. This is indeed not enough.
No definition of Gran Colombia I have found calls it “a revolution” that “fell apart” (and by the way,
Simon Bolivar’s revolutions that led to Gran Colombia’s founding were successful, so to say that Gran Colombia was “a revolution” which fell apart is simply false—it was a nation that later split into multiple smaller nations). It was a republic which several countries (including Venezuela, the United Provinces of New Granada, etc) signed on to, it waged war, had a bicameral congress with separation of powers vis-à-vis the courts—it was in function, and form, a nation-state and nation. Gran Colombia wasn’t “just that - a revolution” either. I already cited
Gran Colombia’s war with Peru as another historical event defining it.
The difference between an artificial civ and and a non-artificial civ is ethnicity. There is such a thing as ethnically Greek, no such thing as ethnically American.
You would simply call things “artificial” as support for the idea that something is artificial. But you never describe what creates that artificiality, or distinguishes it, from say, the artificiality (or artifice) of a nation-state. Many nation-states now are not consolidated around ethnicity and are focused on a certain bound of territory or loose culture—but many cultures can coexist in a nation-state, including foreign cultures—and this goes for nation-states like Argentina as well as more obviously multi-ethnic ones like the United States of America. Your discussion of ethnicity as differentiating “artificial” and “non-artificial” civs goes towards the concept espoused by
ethnic nationalism, but that’s only one of many ways to define a nation (as discussed above).
As stated by the cultural anthropologist with the top answer in the Quora thread, “
What is the difference between a nation and an ethnic group?”, “
Nations/State are made up of a variety of groups of people and have clear boundaries and borders (though they sometimes change), at least in theory…An ethnic group is a group of people that self-identify as having something particular in common, in their language, origin stories, gender norms, and a host of other factors”. So no singular ethnicity is required to be a “nation” or a “state” (similarly, none of the dictionaries above require a singular ethnicity as a core component of a nation, though that can be
one way in which a nation is created).
And what I find most immensely offensive about your statements is that you accuse me of saying things I never said. I have never denied the existence of the people and cultures that comprised Gran Colombia. On the contrary, this is what I keep trying to tell you - that there is such a thing as a Colombian civilization, and a Venezuelan civilization, and an Ecuadorian civilization, but not a Gran Colombian civilization. Yes, they were all born from the same independence movement, but making Gran Colombia a civilization is like making a political party a civilization. A civilization should be about the people. Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador - all went their separate ways, developed their unique cultures with Gran Colombia being a starting point, a historical event in the history of all those nations.
No, making Gran Colombia a civ is nothing like making a political party a civilization, unless by political party you mean “the ruling government of a country”, and even that would not encompass Gran Colombia. A civilization is always necessarily about "the people" (as opposed to collections of finely made shoes), so that’s neither here nor there. An artificial nation-state is still necessarily going to involve people. What you said which was offensive was that the Gran Colombians were never “a people”. By definition, they were. “people” is literally the plural of “person”, and that’s what Gran Colombia’s republic was comprised of, united under a single government. What is that if not “a people”? Unless, that is, you are referring to the singularly ethnic definition of “a people”, which would exclude a whole range of multiethnic groups from Civilization, and is more ethnically focused than the previously cited definitions of "nation".
Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador all eventually going their separate ways doesn’t mean their unity in Gran Colombia somehow ceased to be the unity of a nation.
It was populated with citizens of an entity called "Gran Colombia". They did not develop into a nation the way the US, Brazil or Australia have. And yes, I did call Gran Colombia a country. It was a country, a political entity. Nothing more.
Per the dictionary citations above, your statement that Gran Colombia was a “country” and “political entity” but “[n]othing more” that “did not develop into a nation” is incorrect. There are many ways to define a nation, and Gran Colombia fits many of the definitions of nation I cited above. Among them, the
Oxford Dictionaries say a nation is “A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory.”
Collins English dictionary says that a nation can be “an aggregation of people or peoples of one of more cultures, races, etc, organized into a single state”. Meanwhile,
Dictionary.com defines a nation as “a large group of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own”, “the territory or country itself” (and you already acknowledged Gran Colombia as a “country”).
Merriam-Webster says a nation is “nationality”, “a politically organized nationality”, “a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government”, or “a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status”.
Under these definitions (as opposed to some of the other more Native-American focused definitions cited earlier above for comprehensiveness for example), Gran Colombia is a nation—multi-ethnic, organized into a single state, with a more or less defined territory and government. If we want to go the ethnic route, that’s only one of several ways to define a nation (and, as cited above, often as applied to American Indians or Native Americans).
So you are saying that if Firaxis put something in the game it always works? The Huns did not work. Stealing city names from other civilization was one of the dumbest things in this franchise's history, and many people did not like it. The same is true for Scythia as a civilization with Slavic modern day city names (because we have no idea what the Scythians themselves had called those places), and for the Holy Roman Empire as a civ in Civ IV, which many people consider to be among the worst civ ideas of all time alongside the Celts and the Native Americans.
I never said if Firaxis puts something in the game it “always works”. I already pointed out elsewhere that I don’t approve of Australia’s inclusion in Civ. I simply disagreed that lacking a city-list was a death knell for inclusion in Civ. As I pointed out, Firaxis found a way to make the Huns function without a defined city list. “Many people did not like it” you say. Well, many people also liked the Huns as well. Not liking one aspect of a civ is a far cry from disliking the civ itself. If Firaxis was only to include civilizations based on what “many people” think, they would please no one and outrage “many people” regardless. I’m glad they’ve not always gone for non-controversial leaders or civs, as they raise important discussion points. I think we all agree that “Native Americans” was a bad civ in Civ IV, but as far as I’m concerned all they needed to do to make it work better was to call that civ “Sioux”. In function if not in form the “Native Americans” were fine. It’s just they had an objectionably vague, all-too-broad name (i.e. imagine if “Caucasians” was a civ).
Every game of civ is an alternate history. So why not a Gran Colombia that survived and prospered?
Not that I particularly want it (or voted for it) but of the 3 most popular choices in the poll its the most interesting to me.
Agreed! (Frankly, I don't really like modern nation-states in Civ generally) Civ abounds with what-ifs and they are a core part of its identity. We all know that an India led by Mohandas K. Gandhi certifiably did not exist in 4000 B.C.E., and we have many ancient empires (like the Romans) that did not endure to the modern day but are nevertheless allowed to do so in Civ, and even have great musical themes when reaching that age.
Civilization uses history as a backdrop, but that doesn’t mean we ought exclude entire peoples simply because they didn’t last all that long in real life. (Gran Colombia was a rare time when numerous South American states united in a republic, and its dissolution marked a new round of the sad divisions and political tensions in South America that endure to some extent today.) The Civilization series has embraced everything from nation-states (United States of America) to empires (Ottoman, Mongolian, Holy Roman Empire) to republics (Venice) to people-groups (Cree) to loosely confederated nomads that were never united or even of the same polity (Scythians). I fail to see why Gran Colombia, a republic, a country, a nation, must be excluded from Civilization. This is especially true considering that each Civilization game always brings in new and interesting civilizations—even if we don’t always approve of the choices (for example, I still don’t approve of Australia’s inclusion, but I like their gameplay). How deprived of interesting historical threads we would be if Kongo wasn’t in Civ VI, or Mali in Civ IV, or the Republic of Venice in Civ V! I'm all for Firaxis giving us more dark horse civ choices, though I would like them to focus on civilizations in South America and Africa for the next expansion.
And before you cry "But America!," I'm all for cutting America, too. And I'd have no objection to John Winthrop or another colonial leader leading America.
