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Lädt ... Europäische Völker im frühen Mittelalter. Zur Legende vom Werden der Nationen.von Patrick J. Geary
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. Patrick Geary's The Myth of Nations has only become more relevant in the fifteen or so years since its first publication. In this short, lucid, but highly thought-provoking book, Geary explores how the period between the third and ninth centuries have been appropriated by nationalists and racists who claim to find in that period a definitive origin of contemporary European peoples. Geary dismantles these myths and shows instead that the names of ethnicities are less descriptors of biological continuity than they are representative of shifting claims over time. Rather than pinpointing the ethnogenesis of European peoples as a thing that happened at some fixed point in the early Middle Ages, Geary argues that it is a process, beginning in Late Antiquity and continuing through to the present day. This should be accessible to the interested lay reader, and also of use in the college classroom. I definitely liked it, and it pretty much shook my entire perception of peoplehood - reading the brief section on the Bulgars and how they had split from the Avars is totally and utterly unlike anything I was taught in school in terms of the origins of the Bulgars. Being Bulgarian, this really caused me to reconsider everything I was taught about our historical continuity as a people - a concept which really is quite ridiculous. Geary does a great job in describing the fluidity of identity and how ethnicity or peoplehood is a construct, that "peoples" are heterogenous units, constantly evolving and amalgamating, sometimes disappearing altogether in the course of history. The writing was excellent, and I felt the book was an appropriate length. What I would have liked to hear more is how exactly the notion of nationhood was formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how historians manipulated and reinterpreted history for their political purposes. But I guess he indirectly tells us that, because the peoples of the Late Antiquity themselves invented genealogies and histories to consolidate and validate their political power. In reality this has always happened and will continue to happen, and it is important for us Europeans (and all peoples, really) to realize the mechanics of ethnogenesis and not to be fooled by nationalist rhetoric. Not that I necessarily have a quarrel with nationalism as such, but I do object to the politicizing and manipulation of history as is so often observed within such political groups. This book also reminded me why history and the study of history is important - history means a lot in terms of our self-identification, and it's important to be informed when political leaders use and abuse history for their own aims. It's important that historians speak out on issues such as these and break down illusions of the past that can be extremely harmful. The reason I'm giving a 3.5-star rating and not a 4-star, is that I found the middle section a bit dull, to be honest. The fusion of barbarians and Romans was described in too much detail for a layman like me, and I had difficulty keeping up sometimes. What that really tells me is that I should step up my game and learn some more about my history - something which this book has inspired me to do. (less) This book was published 15 years ago, but it has only gotten more relevant. The warning about the impermanence of 'nations' is a good alternate view to much of the campain noise we have been hearing in recent elections. I was also delighted to get a rather clearer view of the 'Völkerwanderungen' than I had ever seen before. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Modern-day Europeans by the millions proudly trace back their national identities to the Celts, Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, or Serbs--or some combination of the various peoples who inhabited, traversed, or pillaged their continent more than a thousand years ago. According to Patrick Geary, this is historical nonsense. The idea that national character is fixed for all time in a simpler, distant past is groundless, he argues in this unflinching reconsideration of European nationhood. Few of the peoples that many Europeans honor as sharing their sense of ''nation'' had comparably homogeneous identities; even the Huns, he points out, were firmly united only under Attila's ten-year reign. Geary dismantles the nationalist myths about how the nations of Europe were born. Through rigorous analysis set in lucid prose, he contrasts the myths with the actual history of Europe's transformation between the fourth and ninth centuries--the period of grand migrations that nationalists hold dear. The nationalist sentiments today increasingly taken for granted in Europe emerged, he argues, only in the nineteenth century. Ironically, this phenomenon was kept alive not just by responsive populations--but by complicit scholars. Ultimately, Geary concludes, the actual formation of European peoples must be seen as an extended process that began in antiquity and continues in the present. The resulting image is a challenge to those who anchor contemporary antagonisms in ancient myths--to those who claim that immigration and tolerance toward minorities despoil ''nationhood.'' As Geary shows, such ideologues--whether Le Pens who champion ''the French people born with the baptism of Clovis in 496'' or Milosevics who cite early Serbian history to claim rebellious regions--know their myths but not their history. The Myth of Nations will be intensely debated by all who understood that a history that does not change, that reduces the complexities of many centuries to a single, eternal moment, isn't history at all. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Geary az egész elé rittyent egy frenetikus bevezetést, amivel tudomásomra hozza, mik azok a kortárs jelenségek, amelyek egészen konkrétan ezekből a zűrzavaros évszázadokból vezethetők le. Olyan első harminc-negyven oldal ez, hogy halleluja és heuréka – végig az volt az érzésem, mintha Geary helyettem beszélne, megfogalmazná azt, amire magam is mintha gondoltam volna, csak épp nem tudtam eddig világosan megfogalmazni. Adomány az ilyen szöveg, bár illik ilyenkor megvizsgálni, nem csak én látom-e a szövegbe azt, amiről olvasni akarok. (Amúgy: azt hiszem, nem.) Aztán persze jön a masszív értekezés a római polgárságról, a barbár gensről, átláthatatlan népmozgásokról, de ekkor már érdekelve vagyok. Figyelek.
Elképesztően aktuális téma ez. Ma, amikor az iszlám gyökerű vallási intoleranciára a nyugati államok paradox módon nem vallási, hanem nacionalista intoleranciával felelnek*, érdemes szem előtt tartani, mennyire egy tőről fakad ez a két jelenség. Egyikük a Koránból, másikuk valamiféle nemzeti őstörténetből merít ideológiai igazolást – de hasonlítanak abban, hogy legfeljebb közvetett kapcsolatban állnak azok valódi tartalmával. Mindketten előnyben részesítik a kézzelfogható tények helyett a szubjektumokat, így hatástalanok ellenük a racionális érvek. És végezetül: mindkettejük végső érve a terrorizmus. Úgyhogy jó lesz figyelni.
* Még azok az államok is – most nem jut eszembe a nevük –, akik nincsenek közvetlen kapcsolatban a terrorizmussal. ( )