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Updated: June 12, 2025
In this first method of nation-making, then, which we may call the Oriental method, one now sees but little to commend.
A struggle for national unity brings out the stronger qualities of man's nature, but is not a magic remedy for rivalries between the leading minds in the state. On the contrary, it accentuates for the time being the differences of temperament and the clash of individual opinions which accompany a notable effort in nation-making.
The process of nation-making is one of which we have obvious examples in the most recent times, and which is going on now. The most simple example is the foundation of the first State of America, say New England, which has such a marked and such a deep national character.
Now if we ask why the Roman government found itself thus obliged to sacrifice personal liberty and local independence to the paramount necessity of holding the empire together, the answer will point us to the essential and fundamental vice of the Roman method of nation-making. It lacked the principle of representation.
The feeble activity of the freedom-making principle was checked, for the time being, by the energy of the nation-making power. They were not antagonistic forces only in the natural order of things, the earliest stages in the evolution of the former had to come after the first steps were taken in the development of the latter.
In the historic survey upon which we are now to enter, we shall see that the Roman Empire represented a crude method of nation-making which began with a masterful career of triumph over earlier and cruder methods, but has now for several centuries been giving way before a more potent and satisfactory method.
She has proved again that the only safety in the world for either an individual or a nation is to be loved and respected, and in these days no one respects slavery or loves threats. From an American point of view, any sacrifice, any war, were better than the domination of the Prussian methods of nation-making.
We are dealing with early ages; nation-MAKING is the occupation of man in these ages, and it is war that makes nations. Nation-CHANGING comes afterwards, and is mostly effected by peaceful revolution, though even then war, too, plays its part.
The misfortune of Bulgaria in this generation of the nation's life a misfortune which is being rapidly repaired is that she has no middle class: and no class with any "tradition" of leadership behind it. There are the peasants admirable material for nation-making heroic, thrifty, moral, industrious, practical.
"The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it to constitute one state," wrote Sir John Seeley, "are three, common nationality, common religion, and common interest. These may act in various degrees of intensity, and they may also act singly or in combination." In the Low Countries religion has up to the present been a stronger nation-making force than nationality.
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