08-03-2009, 06:46 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-"brihaspati"+-->QUOTE("brihaspati")<!--QuoteEBegin-->ramanaji,
German nationalism was formed in a tussle between two colliding forces - Roman imperial centralization versus Germanic, tribal, confederationist regionalism. Germans did not need to be a German nation, they were forced to become one by Rome. Throughput Europe we will see this struggle to maintain tribal centrifugal forces in the northern passages against centralization based around the Mediterranean. The Saxons, Nordics, Danes stubbornly resisted Christianization, and Christianization was deliberately adopted as an imperialist centralization tool by the later Romans and their successor regimes of the Franks (ironically one of the Germanics displaced by the Romans).
This was also why Christianity, a faith basically alien to the European, had to be deliberately brought in by Rome - and edited/reconstructed as per requirements of the empire to overrule and erase the indigenous "pagan", so that regional, local identifications did not survive. To rise again as a German nation, the roots had to be therefore discovered or invented in the pre-imperial past of indigenous beliefs and culture.
Linguistic revival only paves the way to search for common roots, and therefore a common geographical origin of the various components of the loose tribal confederation. The Catholic Christianity would hamper the process in trying to blur any such potential distinction from the imperial heritage. Thus they would need to assert their regional, indigenous, version of the prevailing faith as a first step. But the very need to use Christianity itself againt Christianity, creates problems in the absence of an alternative equally centralizing philosophy that helps in the formation of a homogeneous German identity.
Typically fractious collections of identities, who fail to recognize their own inherent commonalities, need an external enemy or inavder who does not recognize those differences and sees some commonality. Being equally treated or humiliated, the smaller quarrels of identities break down. The Germans therefore had to wait for the Napoleonic wars to do the final melding.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
German nationalism was formed in a tussle between two colliding forces - Roman imperial centralization versus Germanic, tribal, confederationist regionalism. Germans did not need to be a German nation, they were forced to become one by Rome. Throughput Europe we will see this struggle to maintain tribal centrifugal forces in the northern passages against centralization based around the Mediterranean. The Saxons, Nordics, Danes stubbornly resisted Christianization, and Christianization was deliberately adopted as an imperialist centralization tool by the later Romans and their successor regimes of the Franks (ironically one of the Germanics displaced by the Romans).
This was also why Christianity, a faith basically alien to the European, had to be deliberately brought in by Rome - and edited/reconstructed as per requirements of the empire to overrule and erase the indigenous "pagan", so that regional, local identifications did not survive. To rise again as a German nation, the roots had to be therefore discovered or invented in the pre-imperial past of indigenous beliefs and culture.
Linguistic revival only paves the way to search for common roots, and therefore a common geographical origin of the various components of the loose tribal confederation. The Catholic Christianity would hamper the process in trying to blur any such potential distinction from the imperial heritage. Thus they would need to assert their regional, indigenous, version of the prevailing faith as a first step. But the very need to use Christianity itself againt Christianity, creates problems in the absence of an alternative equally centralizing philosophy that helps in the formation of a homogeneous German identity.
Typically fractious collections of identities, who fail to recognize their own inherent commonalities, need an external enemy or inavder who does not recognize those differences and sees some commonality. Being equally treated or humiliated, the smaller quarrels of identities break down. The Germans therefore had to wait for the Napoleonic wars to do the final melding.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->