The contribution of Arabs to Spanish culture is enormous but that doesn't hide that in medieval times, almost everybody (including them) had barbaric customs.
What I did say was that they were multi-ethnic. Even with all the pogroms, jizra and other forms of discrimination, numerous minorities existed. Empires were multi ethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual and such.
When those empires gave way to modern nation states (or earlier precusurs, like Spain and Portugal), multiculturalism died. This is the story of the 20th century.
The process is still ongoing, particularly in ex-ottoman states..
There are arguably good and bad things about empires. Multiculturalism^ is a trait of empires. Groups like the spharadim, small communities with their own customs, beliefs and language, exist because empires existed.
Btw... this is not new. King Cyrus, Alexander & Genghis Khan's Empires are notably remembered for their multiculturalism.
^Real multiculturalism. I don't hate melting pot migration, but I don't count it as multiculturalism.
Agrarian empires like the Roman one were absolutely massive, juggernauts that just couldn't be stopped. Yet the Middle Ages were a period of small, warring nations, with comparatively much smaller empires arising. Warfare slowly civilized to the point where the common people barely felt the sting.
The peace of Westphalia took place in 1648, creating the notion of an international system law that was bigger than the individual agreements penned between states.
The Napoleonic France of the 1800s represented a sharp break from this world, almost a repeat of the old juggernauts.
What caused empire to stop working and the polities to get ever smaller? I think the answer belongs in what your parent was getting at, people coalesced into ethnic communities and just wouldn't participate in the building of empire anymore. So existing empires broke up and nation-states arose.
The classic 20th C nation-state went hand-in-hand with 20th-C warfare: it needed both massive industry, and every single man. The Ottomans and other relics of earlier times fell apart under the stress of such wars; the states that survived were those with a strong identity. Such identities were partly fostered for this very purpose.
But we seem to have moved on from this, war is again a profession of a few (plus high-tech weapons), conscripting the millions would be of no use. And in parallel our ties to nations are weaker than before, both whether we'd fight for the flag & conversely whether the country is interested in safety nets etc. Our economy is also much less nation-based: GM in its heyday was quite unlike Apple. He calls this emerging form a "market state".
Earlier forms also fought very different wars, he argues that Westphalia (and Waterloo) were among a series of such transitions, each entailing changes to what states are legitimate, and what kind of wars they fight.
Anyway if this sounds interesting then his book "The Shield of Achilles" is cautiously recommended. Someone really needs to write a condensed version... but if you're willing to skip a bit, the ideas are great.
I'm not really sure what drives it, honestly. I'm just talking observationally, about what kind of polities ended up emerging, however they emerged.
We are now living in an era of near absolute nationalism. Polity & nation are nearly synonyms for our generation.
I agree with the criticism that 14th-15th century Spain was not really a national state, but (like you) I think that the distinction is mostly a matter of convention. I'm calling it a proto-nation state.
The emerging Spanish language, culture, and pre-existing religious identity became a core part of what Spain is. Minority languages, customs and religions became a (literal and metaphorical) heresy. They were eventually all given the same ultimatuum as the Jews (again, metaphorically and literally), assimilate into the mainstream religion, language and culture or leave.
- The pressure of mendicant orders.
- The pope.
Some of these processes are literal decrees, banning practices, languages or people. Some are less legible, like "soft power" in modern terms. I'm interested in the long term results, which was (in the case of Spain early on, and many/most places subsequently) a decisive change from multiculturalism (like the sephardi community of Bosnia represents) to national monoculturalism.
That is, over the centuries societal pressures and dynamics were such that a more monolithic identity succeeded a patchwork of language, dialect and culture.
My argument (I suspect we disagree) is that Spain was an earlier example of something that happened widely in the 19th, 20th and is still ongoing: Nation states emerging from empires and advancing towards cultural homogeneity, to the detriment of multiculturalism which existed under most empires.
When Turkey "emerged" this involved a similar process, expulsion (and worse) of Armenians & Greeks, and conformity pressure on other minorities.
A similar thing happened in Poland, which was barely more than 50% polish speaking catholic when my grandmother was born there, and is 9X% polish catholic now.
When Ireland emerged from Britain, migrations and border gerrymandering ensured "Irish Catholic" homegeneity.
But, it is also true that empires tended to be pluralistic, in that different cultures lived within them for very long periods. Nation states value cultural cohesion and national homogeneity, and pluralism has, in many cases, ceased when nations succeeded empires politically.
Compare nearly any central or austrian european capital in 1900 or 2000. They became far more homogeneous. Take ottoman cities (Cairo, Istanbul, bagdad...), pluralism reversed. It some cases (eg Istanbul), it receded fast and hard. In others, it took longer.
Nations are abstract. They don't weep. They don't bleed. They don't suffer. Neither do Empires. These are metaphors.
People are subjigated, not nations. They can be equally subjugated by empires or nations, whichever happens to be in charge.
Wherever you happen to live, it's probably a nation state.
There were good and bad things about both. Im not suggesting a return to empires. I am just encouraging people to notice that nationalism and nation states is not The Natural And Eternal Way Of Things. It's a template we squeezed the entire world into over the last 100 years.
One side effect of this has been an end to millennia of multiculturalism, often bloody. Europe needed genocide (eg Jews), mass forced migrations (eg Germany) and forced cultural conversions (eg Netherlands, Belgium..) before they arrived at ethnically homogeneous parcels of land.
Turkey did this too. Genocide for Armenians, forced migration for Greeks, cultural conversions therapy for Kurds and arabs.
Syria & Iraq are dividing into ethnicly homogeneous regions. If your ethnicity (eg yazidi, Greek, aramean..) Is too small for an enclave, you are probably leaving the region or converting.
The ladino speakers of Bosnia are a remnant of the multicultural legacy of the ottoman empire.
I was not referring to a nation as political abstract but as a group of people sharing common descent/history/culture/language, inhabiting a particular territory. They do suffer, bleed and weep.
> One side effect of this has been an end to millennia of multiculturalism, often bloody.
You seem to be operating on the premise that caliphates were peaceful multicultural, almost utopian, societies. They weren't. All kinds of crimes against the subjugated people were the norm. And it's not just the massacres, slavery, and the usually stuff but also bizarre practices like the blood tax practiced by the Ottoman empire (young Christian boys taken from their families, converted to Islam, trained into Janissaries, and sent back to kill their own people)
As for Syria/Iraq, it wasn't any pretty under Ottoman rule. Perhaps a quote from Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad describing Damascus massacre can help paint the picture.
They say those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the 'infidel dogs.' The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a Christian in Damascus!
edit: typos, formatting
With less genetic variable, effective treatments would be stumbled upon faster, if even just through GP trial and error.
Chinese medicine man who knew his clients inside and out, etc
Nations as in "a group of people united by common descent, history, culture, and language, inhabiting a particular state or territory" most certainly did exist.
> Within the boundaries of the empire you had peace and prosperity.
Then you don't know much (or anything) about the life of people conquered by caliphates.
Nationalism and nation states. We live in a nationalist world. All places and all people are politically divided into nations. Nationalism is so dominant that we barely think of it as a thing.
Anyway.. ladino & it's speakers are descendants of refugees from the spanish reconquista and inquisition period. It's generally seen though a christian/muslim lens, but this isn't the only way of seeing it. It was also a rise of nationalism.
Muslim spain was part of a multi-ethnic empire. Post reconqista spain was an early form of nation state, with a national ideology. No room for minorities. Jews got the boot first, muslims followed. Refugees of an empire-to-nation-state transition.
In the Ottoman empire (where most refugees went) remained multi-ethnic. That's what empires are. This continued until the empire fell. From that point, the transition to nationalism is stark.
In what became turkey, there was no more room for Greeks or Armenians. Kurds were told to (melting pot) be Turkish. In the (many) other nation states that emerged from the ottoman empire (eg, iraq, syria), jews were effectively exiled in the mid-20th. Christians are now leaving. Cities & regions are dividing into homogenuous ethnic enclaves.
No room for minorities in an ethnic state.
Europe went through the same thing. The two wold wars moved europe from a collection of multiethnic empires to homogenuous national states.
History repeats over and over. When emperise gives way to nations, minorities suffer. Cultures die.
So, i'm suggesting, the reason that ladino (and 6,000 other minority languages) are dying is the absolute victory of nationalism in the 20th century. Nationalism has no room for minorities, their culture or their language. These things wither in nation states. Ladino, with its 600 years of history will die too.
It can't survive in the former ottoman empire because 90% of ladino speaking communities had to integrate or leave (just like the Spanish ultimatum that started it all). Most went to Israel, another national home, another place where ladino can't survive.