The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe [Paperback]

Patrick J. Geary (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691114811 | ISBN-13: 978-0691114811 | Publication Date: January 13, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this compelling historical treatise, Geary (Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages) debunks the myth that modern European national and ethnic groups can be traced to distinct ancient or early medieval peoples. Eighteenth- and 19th-century philosophers like Fichte, Herder and Hegel, among others, famously developed an idea of nationalism that linked the present state to a people unified by political goals, language and culture. While much of this work has been reevaluated, we still take for granted that today's ethnic or national groups correspond to certain distinct forebears and territories. Yet Geary argues that ancient languages and cultures were too fluid to be mapped onto particular geographic regions, and that peoples like the Gauls, Franks and Lombards did not think of themselves as homogeneous. Using the classical histories of Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus and Augustine, Geary demonstrates that in antiquity there was a tremendous diversity of peoples who might have been united temporarily under one leader, but who were not united by what we would call ethnicity or nationality. Thus, he contends, there was no such quality as the "essential soul of a people or a nation" in Europe until 18th- and 19th-century philosophers invented it. Geary argues in a social constructionist vein that "peoples of Europe are processes formed and reformed by history." But his arguments are important in light of the nationalistic excesses of the 20th century, and his conclusions are sure to provoke controversy among scholars. (Jan.)Forecast: Although designed for a general audience, Geary's academic tone will turn away any but the most stalwart readers which is unfortunate, given the importance of this topic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Geary's lucid and expert examination of the circumstances in which . . . stories and identities were created . . . offers a satisfying and . . . often a subtle approach to some of the most elusive aspects of a complicated period. Its methodology is brilliantly and persuasively vindicated. -- R.I. Moore, Times Literary Supplement



In this compelling historical treatise, Geary debunks the myth that modern European national and ethnic groups can be traced to distinct ancient or early medieval peoples. . . . [H]is arguments are important in light of the nationalistic excesses of the 20th century, and his conclusions are sure to provoke controversy among scholars. -- Publishers Weekly



An admirable survey of a complicated and important subject. -- Kelly McFall, History: Review of Books



Patrick Geary's The Myth of Nations is more timely than he could have anticipated. . . . Since 1989, this period--between the third and eighth centuries--has been persistently misrepresented by Europe's nationalist and racist populations, who claim to find in the Middle Ages some kind of justification for their policies. . . . Demythologizing the early Middle Ages entails first understanding how the myths were created in the 19th century. Geary is blunt ... it is impossible to map linguistic or ethnic identities onto national territories. . . . Ethnicity is 'impervious to mere rational disproof.' This is why Geary's message is so compelling, and why it matters to keep faith with reason: getting Europe's medieval past straight gives a bearing on its future. -- J.L. Nelson, London Review of Books

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Product Details

• Paperback: 261 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691114811
• ISBN-13: 978-0691114811
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #516,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Well-Grounded Review of National Identity, January 12, 2004

By 

Sho J. Morimoto "aresdracon" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Paperback)

Geary's work on the recent origins of ethnic nationalism sheds much-needed light on the subjects of ethnogenesis and national identity. His principal thesis is the difference between ethnic and constitutional peoples, between static and dynamic views of the social and political entities around us. He gives a quick overview of Enlightenment era scholarship on nationhood and national history to outline how ethnicities have become more defined, however artificially, from the 18th to 20th centuries. He then moves on to a rather detailed account of early Medieval Europe, the complex interactions between the barbarian tribes and the deteriorating Roman Empire, and finally the rise of the kingdoms of the Franks, Anglo-Saxons and other amorphously defined groups of people. He ends with a quick comparison between Zulu and European examples of ethnogenesis to hint at the universality of his argument, which is based primarily on West European history.

Geary is relatively easy to read, except when he goes into great detail about early medieval law without sufficient explanation, and his interesting arguments are well-supported. His aversion to maps, chronologies and other study aids make it slightly more difficult for us lay folk, especially since he refers to so many archaic place-names and territories. Nonetheless, one can still easily grasp his main points without knowing exactly who the Juthungi were or where Pannonia was.

I really liked Geary's ideas, and so I wish he would have added a chapter developing his points on European myths of national origin into a more comprehensive theory that could be applied to such myths around the world.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Educational and Provocative, October 5, 2004

By 

Martin A. Schell (Klaten, Indonesia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Paperback)

A historian specializing in the history of Europe during the first millennium CE, Geary poses several important challenges to the notion of ethnic identity, a concept that is very much in vogue these days.

Analyzing the Roman Empire from about 200 CE onward, he shows how the fundamental idea of ethnicity arose in Europe. Romans were united by following a set of laws, while non-Romans were "barbarians" whose tribes were united by having been born in a given location. Roman historians categorized ethnic groups on the basis of common genetic ancestry and ascribed fixed characteristics to each tribe, but these were assumptions based on their own prejudices rather than facts based on objective observation.

Much of the book summarizes the shifting alliances of the "barbarian tribes" who sometimes fought for the Roman Empire (against other tribes) rather than against it. One point that Geary emphasizes several times is that the sudden appearance of a tribe on the stage of history is more often a result of remnants of earlier tribes regrouping under a new leader than it is a result of a "grand migration."

He also takes aim at the notion of "national language," calling it a political invention of the 19th century. Geary points out that only a bare majority of the French spoke French as recently as 1900. In the territories of the former Holy Roman Empire, only about a quarter of the population spoke German in the early 19th century, when German nationalism was first proposed by the Prussian Minister of State as an ideology for resisting Napoleon.

The book is written for a general audience and Geary's style is good enough to keep the reader interested, though the book occasionally bogs down in detail. I agree with the Amazon reviewer who suggested that maps would have been very useful to readers in visualizing the territories of the various tribes. If you have a historical atlas, I strongly recommend that you keep it nearby while reading this book. One drawback of targeting a general audience is that a lot of the evidence for Geary's ideas is buried in footnotes and he tends to expect the reader to accept his interpretations of primary sources.

I personally enjoyed most of the details and found this book to be an excellent education in how the Roman Empire transitioned into European feudalism. I also found many of the ideas provocative, such as the claim that nationalism was invented in the 19th century when various nations projected their origins back in time to legends that "authorized" them to inhabit the lands they controlled at the time. The idea that the Romans were united by agreement about a set of laws and a social contract that transcended the customs of their places of birth is worth contemplating as the United States struggles to find a core identity while respecting the rich diversity of peoples who say "I'm an American."

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Roman Stability and Barbaric Myth, April 29, 2002

By 

Tarpley B. Jones (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. (Hardcover)

In his short but complex book, Patrick Geary explains why the nomadic migrations of barbaric peoples, combined with the collapse of Roman authority,created a series of weak and temporal political units.
To appeal to the diverse citizens of these units (it is hard to call them kingdoms), many of whom were recently absorbed through conquest, leaders attempted to define their cultural identity and unity by appealing to mythic stories of ethnic purity. If the citizens of the unit could be coaxed to accept the commonality of origin, a sense of superiority over others was created. This served the leader's purpose by providing soldiers for future conquest and taxes.
By contrast, Roman citizens attained their status by agreeing to accept Roman law. Citizenship in the 300s and 400s was expanded to the point where a barbaric Frank or Goth could claim citizenship irrespective of his ethnic origin. When Rome was strong, the barbaric tribes were absorbed by it and they took pride in their Roman affiliation. As Rome weakened, the opposite occurred; Romans sought protection from their immediated neighbors and the distinction between the Imperial and the Barbaric faded. This movement of people from barbarian to Roman authority and then back to barbarian ultimately changed peoples identity so that they had no real ethnic roots. Attempts by modern populist leaders to claim an ancient historical connection to some mythical forebearers are precisely that--mythical connections that leaders have conjured up since the fall of Rome to separate, and finally legitimize, themselves from others.
Can anyone in France claim that they are truly descended from the Franks, when that territory was crossed, invaded, conquered and lost by Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals and other lesser groups all before 500 AD? History creates nations, and people adapt to nationhood for survival. A people's willingnes to recognize themselves as a nation is largely out of political necessity and economic expediency. Geary argues that nations are being formed today,and new arguements to identify and purify a people will be made. They are likley to be no less fragile than the Visigoth nation of the 400's.