Colonial national identity

[Kukulofori]

Generally speaking, did a person living in, say, New Amsterdam feel a strong Dutch identity?

Were there even really national identities before nationalism came along?

[ev]

Good question, precisely where and when nationalism emerged is difficult to determine, but its development is closely related to that of the modern state and the push for popular sovereignty that came to a head with the french revolution in the late 18th century.

Before nationalism came along you could have a friend on the other side of a river who spoke Italian and you French, and you would both consider yourselves apart of the same community, however in the advent of nationalism and the 'different cultures' between them (which were in most cases languages, cuisine and taboo) they were forced to assume a national identity by the state, which at that time was very crude being influenced by semi-feudal lordships and churches.

Nationalism was critical to ensuring that lords and royalty would maintain (fundamentally) the same property relations of today's bourgeoisie - that they would be living off the labor of today's workers and peasants (the proletariat).

Nationalism is just imaginary geographical divisions created by the ruling elite to further enslave us.

Then we come to the state...

[Agrippa]

The constant structuring and restructuring of European national identity to suit the needs of the capitalist political order is rather obvious. However, it doesn't mean that European (or any other) ethnic distinctions are necessarily a product of the creation of modern nation-states. A French-speaking and Italian-speaking person can consider themselves members of the same community, absolutely, but their cultural differences must be recognized and respected.

[bricolage]

However, it doesn't mean that European (or any other) ethnic distinctions are necessarily a product of the creation of modern nation-states.

It depends where you are looking, for example with the case of Italy which has been mentioned when the country was unified only about 10% I think of the people actually spoke what is now Italian, Massimo D'Azeglio famously remarked "we have made Italy now we must make Italians", and then other cases like Romania where the language was written in Cyrillic before it was decided to shift it to Latin based to isolate the people from pan-Slavic tendencies. There are many other examples like this where the identities that exist today, not necessarily ethnic but then Italian isn't an ethnic category, are wholly a product of the rise of nationalism and the nation-state.

[kalu]

Nationalism as a specific phenomenon, rather than a vague, ahistorical allusion to "a people," is thoroughly modern and interconnected with the rise of the state, capitalism and "the West." I recommend the deservedly famous Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson and Partha Chatterjee's postcolonialist rebuttal, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World.

[Raúl Duke]

example with the case of Italy which has been mentioned when the country was unified only about 10% I think of the people actually spoke what is now ItalianThis is true, even today many regions (except Tuscany, because what we call Italian is the dialect of Tuscany/Florence) have different dialects that most of the population of the region speaks (although all of Italy knows what we call Italian).

The same applies to Spain, where there's many languages besides what we call Spanish (which is Castillan)