[derstander]

> I mean... most European countries (modulo some exceptions like Germany) existed (non-continuously) for at least a thousand years.

This is interesting to me. What does it mean for a country to exist non-continuously? I can understand making the case under some sort of continuity despite dramatic changes in e.g. control of land or type of government. Sort of like a nation-state Ship of Theseus.

But I don't understand how this works under the non-continuous case. If the temporal connection is broken how is it the same entity?

[troad]

I don't think anyone claims it's /exactly/ the same entity (except in a legal sense after a government-in-exile is restored home, such as after World War II). But there's a general sense that a country can in some way be a continuation of a previous one, particularly if it shares the same language and a similar territory.

Compare the borders of something like the Duchy of Bohemia and the modern-day Czech Republic. That's two states over a thousand years apart, separated by centuries of highs and lows, including uncountable foreign invasions and Austrian rule for four centuries. And yet there's something obviously parallel to them - states ruled from Prague, inhabited largely by Czech speakers, extending to virtually the same territory.

Europe's natural and linguistic borders are relatively stable, so the emergence of similar states over similar territories in time is not unexpected.

[nindalf]

> a country can in some sense be a continuation of a previous one, particularly if it shares the same language and a similar territory.

This is the sort of thing that’s true, but only if you don’t think about it deeply. People in England definitely spoke English, but that doesn’t mean that we would be able to understand them. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the first major works of literature in English, but 99.9% of Englishmen alive today wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it because of how much English has changed.

> In Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye. At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye, Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See At many a noble aryve hadde he be.

This book needs to be translated into English for us to understand it, despite it being written in an older form of English.

And obviously, English isn’t a special case. Every language has evolved over time, to the point where it’s nearly impossible to understand a few hundred years later. So sure, we think the people who lived in this city a few hundred years ago are our countrymen, but realistically we wouldn’t be able to speak a word to each other.

[troad]

> This is the sort of thing that’s true, but only if you don’t think about it deeply.

I have a linguistics degree and a passion for historical linguistics that will result in me talking your ear off about Indo-European ablaut, so this is probably the first time in my life I've ever been accused of failing to think deeply about language variation / change!

But I do agree with tsunamifury's comment - what you say is interesting, but rather beside the point. What's relevant is a sense of continuity, not whether the modern speakers would understand the original language or not. (I'm unsure why the latter would be relevant at all?) As Benedict Anderson has argued, a nation is above all an imagined community, so what's relevant is that Czech speakers picture a sense of continuity with the speakers of Slavic dialects in 1000 AD, and not with - say - the speakers of Celtic or Germanic dialects spoken at the same time.

(It's worth noting that your example is fairly unrepresentative, by the by. English is a language with an unusually high rate of change (though I'm surprised you went with Chaucer, which many educated English speakers can largely follow, and not something like Beowulf, which no English speaker could understand without training). It's also worth noting that the Slavic languages are languages with an unusually low rate of change, so a text as old as Chaucer would be relatively much easier for Czech speakers to read.)

[nindalf]

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you thought so. I meant it is a widely held belief among most people. They would feel a stronger affinity for their ancestors from a thousand years ago than for their neighbour, if their neighbour looked different to them.

I meant to say that this idea that the people 1000 years ago being “my people” doesn’t hold up to close inspection. There is no continuity in a meaningful sense if you can’t communicate with them, wouldn’t agree with them on anything even if we could, and couldn’t even find a common activity to do together. They’d be about as alien as a green man from Mars. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re not going to convince people to stop idealising ancestors.

[aryonoco]

This is true of some languages which have a high rate of change, such as English, but much less true of others. As a native Persian speaker for example, I can read the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) of Ferdowsi, which was written around 980 (very much contemporary of Beowulf), and understand about 95% of it. Nearly every literate Iranian would be able to read it without an issue, and at most modern prints have footnotes to explain the words which have fallen out of use.

Not every language changes at the rate English does.

[brabel]

> I meant to say that this idea that the people 1000 years ago being “my people” doesn’t hold up to close inspection.

I think what you're saying is absolutely true, and a better example would be culture in general. There's a certain continuity in the cultural practices of a people in a certain region, with religion being one of the most resilient... but also other things like food, music and, of course, language.

However, all of those change over time. It's funny for me that the Americans of today would almost certainly consider the Americans of the 1950's a bunch of racists and homophobes. A culture can change over time so much as to be more different in 75 years than when actually compared with that of other countries. The continuity exists but change can be very fast. Look at the culture of any European "country" and you'll see just how much change happens. An extreme example, perhaps: the Swedes of the year 1000 compared with the Swedes of 2000. The people inhabiting what we call Sweden today were Vikings back then. I don't believe they had a concept of Sweden yet, as a country, though the regions around Stockholm (which didn't exist yet) and Uppsala (a small region which later grew far North and South to form Sweden proper) seem to have already had a sort of cultural identity (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians). These people were raiders and conquerors - they may have founded the Kievan Rus state and served as elite guards in the Byzantine Empire, which shows just how much of a bad ass warriors they were. How does present-day liberal, tolerant and egalitarian Swedes relate to their ancestors? If they could meet today, the modern fella would lose their head in no time, literally.

[int_19h]

I don't know about Swedes, but here's (a subset of) modern Norwegians:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxOSqSUgNzE

[anon84873628]

England is also a funny example because one of their defining traits is the cultural continuity of the monarchy. Which, as I understand it, is the main justification for why the monarchy still exists today. A person from Chaucer's time transported to London today would have no trouble figuring out who's the king.

[jbandela1]

> Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the first major works of literature in English, but 99.9% of Englishmen alive today wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it because of how much English has changed.

That is true for Beowulf, but not for Chaucer. If you just read the words in Chaucer, pronouncing them exactly as you would if your were sounding them out, you will be able to understand pretty much the entire thing after at most a few hours practice.

We did this in my freshman English class and it was a lot of fun.

[neilkk]

> states ruled from Prague, inhabited largely by Czech speakers, extending to virtually the same territory.

More like two polities which share a capital city, but barely have either a language or a geography in common. The idea that Bohemia is essentially Czechia has no more reliable historical basis than belief that it belongs to Greater Germany, or to Czechoslovakia.

[nottorp]

Before the european revolutions in the 19th century, the notion of a national state didn't really exist.

It was more about who controls what. Doesn't mean the actual population of the controlled areas changed much.

To give an example from my country's history, Romania has been divided into 3 provinces until very recent (historically speaking) times.

The first unification happened in 1600 when Michael the Brave, the king of the southernmost province, managed to take control of all 3 for about a year. He didn't proclaim himself king of Romania, he called himself king of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania.

100-150 years earlier, Stephen the Great, the king of Moldavia hit Wallachia militarily several times during his reign... not to conquer it and unify but to place a king friendly to him on the throne.

Pretty sure you can find examples like this in any country's history. Germany and Italy for sure, since they've been divided politically into smaller provinces for a thousand years.

[rdlw]

Poland was occupied by Germany during WWII. The people still considered themselves Poles during this time, and the only reason there wasn't a 'Poland' was because of military strength, so it seems silly to say that early 1939 Poland and late 1944 Poland are different countries because of lack of continuity. Certainly, almost all Poles will tell you the country 'began' (it kind of had a soft start) in 966, and not in 1944.

(Note: there was technically the government-in-exile in London, which you could argue maintained continuity, but I don't think it's necessary so I'm leaving that out of this.)

[rocqua]

This (and most other examples here) could just as easily be explained by nationalism. specifically nationalist projects to claim a much older heritage for the current nation state, to legitimize the current nation, and to give it a glorious and hard fought past so people will be proud of their country.

Personally I think a lot of the idea of countries having existed 'for a long time' is the result of these nationalist projects that all occured in the 1800 hundreds

[scns]

> This (and most other examples here) could just as easily be explained by nationalism.

Tribalism?

[JdeBP]

Cue all of the animated YouTube videos about Poland's border changes caused by WW2! (-:

[brabel]

What we call Poland today was part of so many kingdoms, empires, Duchy's it's not even funny. WWII was just the last of a long history of changes.

[GrumpySloth]

You could legitimately argue that it began in 1918 though.

[praptak]

I can speak of Poland which had a discontinuity of 123 years. For most practical purposes Poland 1918 was not Poland 1795. It had none of the military alliances nor administrative obligations, just a new country out of nothing.

The only continuity was in the collective mind of people who identified as Polish and grabbed the opportunity to fight and (re-)establish their own country.

Now if you look at the continuity of ideas, it gets pretty philosophical so we could leave it to philosophers... if it wasn't for the fact that people use the ideas to justify wars. I don't have a confident answer for continuity between "being Polish in 1795" and "being Polish in 1918".

[eesmith]

Was Iceland a country when it was founded? Or later, with the start of the Icelandic Commonwealth? Did it end being a country after the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king in 1262?

If it was always a country, then go west. When Eric the Red founded Greenland, was it a European country? Did it become a country? After the Norse died, the Danish-Norwegians still claimed sovereignty, and reestablished a colony. The place is now a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark.

[jononor]

Some examples were given as answers, occupations etc. But even when nothing like that happens, in the "continuous" case - a country is still undergoing changes. Laws, language, culture, people, etc are not the same 100s of years later. So even that is kind of a Ship of Theseus type of challenge...

[groestl]

I think non-continuous succession of the same entity comes down to using or grandfathering the law, claiming the same assets, but also honoring liabilities of the predecessor. It's the same as with companies.

[marginalia_nu]

Mostly through people still living in the same place remembering the glory days of old. If you look at Poland and Lithuania, which became Poland-Lithuania, which roughly split so that Poland went into Prussia and Lithuania into Russia; where Prussia lasted for 100 years and ended with WW1 where Poland re-emerged and had their common sense of identity enhanced by Hitler almost immediately re-invading, and Lithuania existing as part of the USSR for some additional 100 years before breaking out and doing their own thing.

There's still a cultural identity in these places. The people living in them weren't replaced or relocated, primarily the flag and regent.

[gerikson]

Prussia lasted until 1947 (de jure) even if it had been subsumed into the German Reich in 1932:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

State of Israel had 2000 years of disconinuity, both the state and the (spoken) language.

[lloeki]

> What does it mean for a country to exist non-continuously?

What does "country" means? State? Geography? Leadership? Ancestry? People?

If you get far back enough the birth of France starts with Gaul which bears more than a passing resemblance with today's France:

https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/3044d40d-8af2-47aa-81e5-785...

And around 50BC with Vercingétorix surrendering to the Romans at Alésia the tide turns and it gets administratively split up largely to ensure they don't come together as a force against the Roman Empire again. Then as the Roman Empire starts showing cracks, various local powers emerge again:

https://www.alex-bernardini.fr/histoire/images/division-gaul...

Then "France" itself starts to exist since Clovis I united Franks in 481 and around 511 looks somewhat the same as today again if you squint hard enough:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fb/3b/79/fb3b7985c2063f6a9839c6918...

But then in 840 it gets split in three after infighting among Charlemagne grandchildren, tearing the whole thing apart again:

https://www.lhistoire.fr/sites/lhistoire.fr/files/img_portfo...

Middle one's fate is to dwindle, west one will become France, right one will become Germany.

France's shape will then vary a lot through time, alliances, weddings, and battles, sometimes eaten at on the east, west, north, south, but more or less gravitating around the center part.

But then here comes Prussia in 1870, then WW1, then WW2, culminating in the partial occupation then administration of northern and western France between 1940-42 and a literal fork of France leadership and government: France de Vichy led by Pétain in the south east, France Libre led by De Gaulle exiled in London. In theory the Vichy government was also leading occupied the north of France but in practice it was ruled by Germany.

1942 comes and Germany resolves the conundrum by forcefully merging south with north, France de Vichy becomes devoid of any power (not that it had much before, being a satellite state of Germany), France is de facto a part of Germany, essentially leaving only France Libre as an actual French government, which is not even in any part of the territory!

So again, what does "country" means? State? Geography? Leadership? Ancestry? People? There's definitely some ship of Theseus going on along these 2k years, as well as forks, takeovers, infighting, and whatnot. This abridged version only highlights so much as there's much more intricacy to it, reality is incredibly messy, yet somehow "France" going all the way back to Gaul over 2k years carries some sense.