Most of us would say we're from some country. But have you ever stopped to think about what a country actually is? If they are actually real or just imaginary ideas that we have come to agree upon and accept? And how they have come to play such a determining role in our lives? Subscribe To My Channel:
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Music Credit:
Nujabes – Rainy Way Back Home
Script:
If you think about it, countries don’t exist. They are only an imaginary idea that most people in the world have agreed with. But that’s probably not the answer you were looking for.
As with most aspects of our lives, countries first exist because of our genetics. Humans evolved in small hunter and gatherer bands instilling a great need in us to feel part of a group. While most modern humans don’t live in hunter-gatherer bands you can still find us satisfying our need to belong by identifying with different groups. In high school you see this in the hierarchical division of students from nerds, to jocks, to the popular crowd. In adulthood you see this with how many identify as particular sports fans, parts of a particular religion, avid consumers of particular brands, etc.
Some call the transition to the modern country that we are all familiar with and live in as the rise of the nation-state. Before the nation-state most people probably identified themselves with their region or local lord. Most did not leave their villages and knew little of the world at large. Around the middle of the last millennia – say around 1500 when economic, scientific, and philosophical change was rapidly occurring in Europe – many monarchs began to try to conquer and unify all the territories and people under their control in order to become more powerful. To encourage unity, many monarchs encouraged their subjects to feel loyal toward them which would mark the first steps toward the idea of nationalism.
One example is Russia. For most of the medieval period Russia was simply a small kingdom located around the city of Moscow. Over hundreds of years the rulers of Moscow took more and more land through both diplomacy and war, and eventually conquered much of what is now considered to be Russia. When Ivan the Terrible came of age, he was throned as the first Czar of Russia. He destroyed the nobility and granted bureaucratic positions to successful traders of the commercial class. Similar occurrences happened all over Europe in, for example France, England and more. By the 19th century most, if not all, of the western world had been divided into new political units known as countries or nation-states. But what about the rest of the world?
The rest of the world did not have the luck that the west did where countries developed organically. From the Age of Exploration to the Industrial Revolution, the dominance of Europe’s economy and military allowed it to colonize pretty much the entire world. Part of this meant dividing up the world into colonies agreed upon by European powers. At times this meant drawing a simple arbitrary straight line to make things easier. After WWII and the start of decolonization, the borders stayed put and grouped together people with different cultural, racial, and linguistic identities, while splitting apart others. This created a sh*t load of chaos which, 70 years later, can still be felt. Many argue this is one of the main reasons as to why the Middle East and Africa are so f*cked up.
However, borders may be an idea of the past as we move into the 21st century. Currently in Europe, national borders have little meaning. It’s similar to how the United States works. All citizens who belong to a country that is part of the European Union can travel, live, and work freely throughout. All internal tax and trade restrictions have been removed. And many identify no longer as a citizen of their country, but as a citizen of the European Union. Many of us however, refuse to even think about what citizenship and border lines actually mean - and instead of working on fostering friendship and partnership across borders, we subject ourselves to our most basic human emotions. Those that may have allowed us to evolve into what we are today, but that may keep us from evolving into what we might be tomorrow.
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