Transcript
A threads post saying “There has never been another nation ever that has existed much beyond 250 years. Not a single one. America’s 250th year is 2025. The next 4 years are gonna be pretty interesting considering everything that’s already been said.” It has a reply saying “My local pub is older than your country”.
Who did the US get independence from, buddy?
The Kingdom of Great Britain, which ceased to exist in 1800 and lasted less than a century.
Use the same definition (unchanged political institutions) and tell me how long the Roman Empire lasted.
Well there’s that… but these people are free from the restraints of logic.
the u.s. is ‘young’, relative to the world stage, this is true; but its constitution is among the oldest in the world… and it is starting to show its age.
Yeah, this is a misunderstanding among conservatives. Our legal system and government structure is woefully outdated, but our country is really young.
It’s like a teen athlete being really proud that he has the oldest sneakers of all the competitors.
Worse, it’s like a teen athlete being really proud that he has the world record for best stickballer, so he drops out of school to play stickball full time.
Then when everybody else wants to play an actual sport with actual rules where people wear helmets and don’t die, suddenly the teen starts starts swinging his stick through people’s windows and at people’s heads.
Your analogy has nothing to do with the topic. The topic is about the age of the countries, and their constitutions.
It was “showing its age” a not long after it was made. Two years later the French based their first written constution on the US one. Then other nations followed suit over the years and wanted their own, and they already thought the French one was the better option as a starting point.
In fairness, given that the French are currently on their fifth attempt at a republic, the other nations were arguably wrong.
I’d say if you measure success by being able to change and try again instead of trying to keep a dead thing alive then maybe they were right
Constitutionalism is a new idea. Pioneered by America. Of course America will have the oldest until it collapses.
England? If we talk about nations that became part of other nations, venice, lots of former city states in germany are even older
Wait till these people find out about Japan.
I used to be in the record business, and worked for a time for a Chinese record company who was releasing indigenous folk and classical music.
Western music traces back about 1000-1200 years, while Chinese music has an unbroken written musical tradition going back several thousands of years.
China gets a bit fuzzier in between dynasties and revolutions. But there are definitely multiple post-Unification dynasties that lasted longer than 250 years.
I mean sure they’ve still got a royal line, but the royal family wasn’t always in power. Like is it fair to say that the Tokugawa government is the same as the meiji restoration government, is the same as the modern government?
You’re conflicting state and nation I think. Both are also pretty loose terms. Nations didn’t really exist before nationalism in the 1800s and states are just big ships of thesiii
I was thinking more along the lines of governmental continuity, which has just as arbitrary lines. But less arbitrary in some cases like conquest or dynastic change. Like there was something that happened between Julius Caesar and Agustus. The line isn’t super clear, but the Republican government and the empire definitely have some key differences even if the Senate was never really disolved.
But I remember Louis XIV saying something like “I die, but the state remains”. So I think in some proto form “the state” or something larger than just the ruler has existed on and off throughout history.
Like is it fair to say that the Tokugawa government is the same as the meiji restoration government, is the same as the modern government?
The Edo Period alone spanned 268 years. The Heian Period nearly made it to 400.
Even if you evaluate these as distinct, they individually outstip the US.
While the US is pretty old as a state, most societies have a direct continuation from one state to the next. It’s not like when France overthrew its monarchy they stopped being France or seeing themselves as French. So they may see their continuous history as much older than the current state, with the Kingdom of France going back to 987.
The US doesn’t have a continuous history prior to 1776 because they mostly come from Britain but they denounce their British heritage and they settled in NA but also denounce the heritage of the local peoples there. So the average American sees their entire history as starting at 1776, maybe a little bit further back to include the initial colonies and that’s about it.
It’s not like when France overthrew its monarchy they stopped being France or seeing themselves as French.
They didn’t even stop being a monarch (for very long). I think they’re on something like their Fifth Republic at this point, because they keep going back and doing Bourbon Restorations, cause some of them cannot stop being monarchists no matter how hard they try.
Monarchists are like the fucking hydra. Chop off a thousand heads and you somehow get two thousand more monarchists in their place. It’s bananas.
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: “Kings. What a good idea.” Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
Well it’s the 5th republic as of the constitutional reform of 1958. And the 4th republic was founded in the aftermath of WW2 and Germany dissolving the French government. The 3rd republic was founded after the 2nd Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The 2nd Empire was founded when Louis Napoleon Boneparte crowned himself emperor in 1852 and dissolved the 2nd republic. The 2nd republic was founded in 1848 after Napoleon (the other Napoleons uncle) was defeated at Waterloo ending the 1st Empire of Napoleon which lasted from 1804 to 1815 (with a brief holiday to Elba). The 1st republic was founded in the revolution of 1792 (the one with the heads being chopped off) until Napoleon seized power in a coup.
There has in fact only been one period of bourbon restoration in 1815. But since then and the 2nd Empire there has been little to no appetite for monarchy to return in France beyond a few crazed loonies.
I am sorry, but walking property of French feudals wasn’t part of French nation.
That aside, kingly blood from year 987 has, due to arithmetics of human procreation, gotten into most people from European countries by now. So technically a modern Frenchman can associate with a king of France from 1000 years ago, if they want that. Just doesn’t make much sense.
XIX century romanticism is the problem. Everyone has learned of their nation’s long and mythologized history because of that. Everyone believes that, which to an extent makes that real. Sibelius’ music, Goethe’s poetry, Vasnetsov’s paintings, whatever. Strong aesthetic and symbolic. While German national-socialists kinda made too much of this distasteful, they’ve also made new things that came before them seem old and good. And by comparison more real.
If we do direct continuations, the US can do that with England.
Even more than that, the nations of rhe western hemisphere have an unusual history, because they have an actual recorded starting point. Many countries have a history that goes back to before recorded history, fading into myth.
But in 1492, more or less, suddenly there was this brand new land mass to settle, and the major western powers immediately started to claim it. A new population developed over many generations, for well over 200 years, with no real connections to Europe, other than political, and that distant rule began to chafe. Eventually they revolted and established a brand new nation, something that was a nearly non-existent concept to nations that had been established since before recorded time.
The European powers be like “What are you talking about, starting your own country? That’s not how it’s done.” And the Colonies be like “Yeah? Watch us.”
As an American, its wild to see things in other countries that are hundreds, or even thousands of years old, when almost nothing in America is older than about 300 years.
So the average American sees their entire history as starting at 1776
Well yeah. That’s kind of the way words work. Of course there was history before that with England. Which had history before them from France, German, Rome, etc. If we, US people, are talking about before 1776 with the colonies, that time is generally referred to as “Colonial History”
When the French stopped being a monarchy, it’s gov’t changed, the rules of law changed, it was effectively a different country. If a group of friends play football, then the next time they play basketball, they are playing different sports. Same people though.
While the state of France goes back to the Franks under king Childerich in the late 400s, the modern nation of France evolved during the French revolution and the Napoleonic era.
The very idea of “nation” as a political entity build upon ethnicity instead of loyality to a ruler is younger than 250 years, so technically the claim that the US is one of the oldest, if not the oldest nation in the world is correct. I doubt though that the person OP quoted is aware of the meaning of the word nation other than a synonym for country.
I believe the ottoman empire (1299–1922) would like a word.
