Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
"Ethnogenesis" is a term often used by modern historians to describe the birth of a new "ethnos" (people group). When used in the abstract it makes sense; to describe a moment of great upheaval within a people which begins a new era for them, separate from any other groups. But major issues arise when you attempt to pin down any one moment of genesis for any actual ethnos out there. The Ukrainians didn't pop up from nowhere when their SSR was founded in 1917, just as the Belgians or Slovaks existed before their own constitutions were laid down (if Belgians exist at all). Of course states themselves often can be traced to a moment of birth. The Italian State was created in 1861 at the King's coronation, but nobody would think that "Italians" didn't exist before then. There is basically no people who have a concrete ethnogenesis either politically or even, more interestingly, culturally or mythologically. It just isn't how nations form, and it isn't how we want to believe our nations form either. Instead nations develop out from their predecessors in an ethnic family tree extending back into time immemorial.
This "family of nations" idea presents a far more useful framework through which to understand human diversity, although it comes with certain caveats. First, unlike humans nations do not necessarily reproduce sexually: they can (e.g. most of the post-Roman states), but they can also develop through pure mitosis from a single parent (e.g. Iceland or Australia), or from the agglutination of disparate offshoots from several parents (e.g. the USA). Second, nations as beings are not constrained by time. Ethnicities can last for millennia, and can produce offspring throughout their lifespans. There is no point of national menopause, although most go through periods of barrenness interspersed with periods of fecundity. Let's look at some examples:
The multitude of Slavic nations which occupy eastern Europe have a mutual understanding they are part of the same "ethnic family", despite most of them splitting apart over a millennia ago. Their origins lie in the murky "Great Migration Period" which occurred after the collapse of the Roman State, a period of immense interest which contains the birth of most Europeans peoples, which Ihave selected the Slavs to be a representative example thereof. An agreed upon historic origin is (hotly) debated, but it is accepted that the core-part of most Slavic groups descends from one original "Slavic Tribe" which occupied the flat plains of the Upper Dnieper during the Classical period, and moved west into the Vistulan, Bohemian and Pannonian plains during the Great Migration Period. Here the origin-myth differs depending on which nation you are, but the general story goes thusly. The nascent Slavic court was based in the marshlands of Volhynia (around the modern day tripoint of Poland, Belarus & Ukraine), although the King (sometime called King Pan) remained nomadic, travelling along with the bulk of the Slavic horsemen. This travelling court was called the "White Croat". He had three sons named Lech, Czech & Rus (the eldest of which is debated, but was probably Lech). The Goths, who inhabited the land West of Volhynia, had recently moved their hordes South into Roman Territory leaving a vacuum in these more fertile lands, a vacuum which the Slavic King sought to take advantage of. The King's horsemen moved Southwest into Pannonia where they fought with the Huns and Avars, while his three sons took the second warband west into Bohemia. The King failed in establishing a kingdom in Pannonia, and was pushed further south into the hills of Illyria where the Croatian Kingdom was founded. The sons, however, succeeded in subduing their foes and took Bohemia, setting up a fortress on Mount Rip in central Bohemia. The sons split their warband in three, each heading out in a separate direction (apparently following three white eagles who had been nesting on Mt Rip). Prince Lech ended up in the Valley of the Vistula where he founded Poland. Prince Czech didn't get very far end ended up founding Prague and the Czech Nation. Prince Rus took his men back East into Volhynia and his descendents would found the city of Kiev, and eventually become the Russians.
Here we see a literal family as a stand in for the family tree, each branch being "brother nations". It is almost inconsequential whether the three princes really existed, it stands to reason that these nations are indeed part of a broader "ethnic family". This follows traditions seen in the Pentateuch and the generations of Noah, where each son is given a land which the people of are thenceforth known by.
With the precedent set by the aforementioned "generations of Noah", many Christian nations aimed to place themselves as solutions to one of the Old Testament's most tantalising mysteries, the "Lost Tribes of Israel". When the Hebrews first dwelt in Palestine they were made up of 12 tribes each descendants of one of sons of Jacob. Eventually 2 of these tribes (Benjamin & Judah) split off from the others to create the Kingdom of Judah, and are what we now know as Jews. The other 10 tribes created a separate state to the North, but this land was invaded by the Assyrian Empire and her people exiled. This is basically where the history of these tribes ends in the canonical narrative, leaving their fates up to the creativity of a millennia of historians, theologians and fantasticians. Many have discovered "traces" of these tribes across the world, with individuals claiming descent of their nation from one of the lost tribes. While this has been a popular topic for many centuries, it really ramped up in the 18th century and the archaeological boom, when legitimate scholars travelled the world to find proof of the lost tribes' whereabouts. The most famous of such claims in by the Mormons who believe that American Indians have at least a ruling caste & culture derived from some of the lost tribes. Others include self-proclaimed ancestry by the Afghans and the Samaritans, and even the entire Japanese race, a strange idea which was somewhat popular for a while in Northern Tohoku. Today this belief usually plays a part in a broader premillennialist eschatology, which requires the lost tribes to gather together again before the second coming.
Everyone knows the foundation myth of Rome, the twin brothers divided over petty rivalry and the "original sin" of Romulus which consolidated power within the "Pomerian". However the simplicity of this story was built upon over the centuries, and combined with many other myths of the Latin people. The most influential of these was Virgil's Aeneid, where he claims the twins were themselves descendants of Prince Aeneas of Troy who fled the city after its destruction by the Hellenes. Due to Rome's hegemonic influence over Western culture, it became common across the successors of the Roman Empire to equally claim the heirdom of Troy, and thus Rome. France, Britain & Spain all developed similar myths to that of Aeneas giving a clear line of succession from Ilium to their own state which can be studied by themselves, but probably more influential than these was the development of an agreed-upon interstate system that became mutually agreed upon across the territory of the Western Empire under the Vatican Patriarch. Although informal, its influence includes the system of European peerage which equivocated noble ranks across the continent. To claim a rank meant to claim legitimate descendency in accordance with the rules, one could not just claim the rank of "King" without any right, for example, and get away with it. In effect this created a pan-Christendom system where every noble had their own realm, but eventually each had fealty to the one Emperor, even if this could not be practised de-facto. The "Roman Empire" carried itself onwards through this system, which each nation under it being able to legitimately call itself "an heir of Rome" (although not "the" heir).
We see this acutely in the "two emperor problem". Ever since the first Caesar, the noble rank of "Emperor" has been paramount. And the European system which developed out of Rome allowed for only one. This was, for hundreds of years, agreed to be the Emperor of Constantinople, who held a direct descendency from the Caesars of Rome (sort of) and even geographical proximity to Troy (although this is not really a constituent argument). However in 800 the Pope named Charlemagne Emperor too, granting him the title of "Holy" and "Roman". From then on these two emperors coexisted in paradox to one another, a fact which became the major political factor that lead to the Great Schism of the Church two and a half centuries later. This idea of "one true emperor" carried forward all the way into the modern era, when the reformation and eventual new-emperors of France and Germany did away with the notion altogether once the HRE was no more. But we can clearly see the desire for these nations to claim succession from a legitimate source: even Napoleon knew he couldn't be truly an "emperor" until he had defeated the Holy Roman Emperor and taken the crown for himself, just as the Tsars of Russia could only legitimise themselves as the heirs to Constantinople, and so spent decades attempting to subdue to Turks with the aim of taking the city for themselves (see Catherine the Great's "Greek Plan"). Through adherence to these laws, nations place themselves in the lineage of the Church, of Rome, and of Troy.
***We see there are scant few nations which claim a true "ethnogenesis" ex nihilo. Japan is one, the Greeks another (sort of). The vast majority instead claim descent from one or more prestigious parent nations, from which they derive their culture, blood, or legal legitimacy. When we look from a historical perspective we see the same patterns. No peoples emerge from a vacuum, but derive from combinations of nearby groups in a chain which extends beyond our vision into the murky past of prehistory. Placing an exact moment on this genesis (or more rightly "ethnoconception") is arbitrary and is a form of bureaucratic modern revisionism to legitimise the "post-history" static view of the modern map of nations as inviolable and with eternal "rights", rather than a snapshot of a shifting tapestry of interrelated groups with familial links to one another and transitional areas between them. It is important not to forget that "the nation" precedes "the state", and fealty to one's nation should not be confused with a devotion to a "project" like a specific state or governmental system. One may put his effort into an occupation or project, but one can only truly "love" family.
