the rule will outlast us all
the rule will outlast us all
cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/29013460
the local will outlast us all
56 comments
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Why did they have to use the word "nation"? With that word being used, the comment is even more stupid. A nation doesn't have to be a country...
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ITT: arguments about the Ship of Theseus
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every country is a Ship of Theseus at the end of the day.
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laughs in Byzantium
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"how old is a country" is almost nonsenscal. Constitutions have dates, countries are continuos fluid things. Ill illustrate with an example: How old is your family? do you go by your oldest relative, your last name, some ancient family tree, or do you go all the way to LUCA? it's nonsensical.
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New World vs Old World is so real. Am in North America, my love is from Europe. She casually has dusty books older then local archeological sites.
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We'll have to get into what makes a 'nation', but the Romanov Dynasty alone was ~300 years old. Political continuity between ruling houses does not denote a new national identity.
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Are you trying to tell me that the screenshot of some post from some rando who writes super assertively is WRONG!?
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Americans are dumb as feces.
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Am American, can confirm.
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ITT: Semantic arguments
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Wasn't Ancient Egypt thousands of years old?
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Ancient Egypt as we think of it had archeologists that studied the original smaller kingdoms that unified to become Egypt. Cleopatra is closer to our time than she was to the building of the Great Pyramids.
And if some dumbass wants to make some kind of argument about the US being a super special first Christian country, they should know that Ethiopia was the first country to declare itself as a Christian nation in the 300's CE....and has been a contiguous sovereign state since then.
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Ancient Egypt is generally regarded as the unifying to when Rome took over. That's like 3000 BC to somewhere around Caesars time. So like 3000 years they existed in that general form.
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Yup. Off the top of my head, it goes back to 2000 BCE or something kinda old like that..
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Around 6,600 HE, for the first dynasty. The last dynasty with a native ruler was the thirtieth dynasty, where Nectanebo II reigned from 9,342 HE to 9,360 HE.
Current year is 11,725 HE. (I use the Holocene calendar, albeit with a modification of -300 years, to correct for the fact that the Holocene era starts 300 years later than the commonly used Holocene calendar).
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This screenshot gets reposted a lot, and I really am not a big fan of it, for two reasons:
- A pub is not a country, and there are pubs in America that are older than America as well. Though this half of the planet only being known to dwellers of pub-having civilisations for a few hundred years seems to be rather much of a disadvantage.
- The concept of the US as a country is not very old but to the titular Yank's credit the US really is one of the oldest constitutional regimes in the world.
To elaborate on the second point, the US Constitution having been in continuous effect for nearly 250 years truly is rather impressive from a legal history perspective. While it's true that there has been a country called "France" for hundreds of years longer than the US, the French state in 1789 when the current American state began is not the same state as the French state of 2025, while the American state is still the same in its design and structure as in 1789. States are created by constitutions and laws but the idea of a "country" is nebulous and ill-defined. A state can be destroyed and replaced by revolution but the country is still there. So when someone says the USA is one of the oldest states in the world, that is mostly true.
For reference:
- The Fifth French Republic began in 1958, or 1946 if you count the Fourth Republic. The previous French state (Vichy France) was destroyed by Nazi Germany.
- The Federal Republic of Germany came into existence upon the entry into force of its Basic Law in 1949. The previous German state was destroyed by the Allies in World War II.
- Spain's constitutional regime only came into place after the death of Franco in 1975. The modern Spanish state came into existence in 1978 with the ratification of its constitution.
- The Russian state gained independence from the USSR only upon the latter's dissolution in 1991. Even if you count the Russian SSR government under the Soviet Union, remember that the Russian Revolution which destroyed the Czarist state only began in 1917 in any case.
- The current Chinese state began in 1949 when Mao Zedong proclaimed its establishment in Tiananmen Square after kicking the Republic of China off the mainland. The Republic of China still exists in Taiwan which infamously is a cause of numerous discomforts between inhabitants of the two regions.
- The current Japanese state was essentially created by the Americans after they occupied Japan. While the post-war constitution calls itself an "amendment" to the Meiji Constitution, in any case Emperor Meiji dissolved the previous iteration of the Japanese state (the Tokugawa Shogunate) in 1889 anyway.
The one major country I can think of right now whose government institutions can legitimately claim to have been in continuous existence for longer than the US is probably the United Kingdom. I'd say 1660 is the starting point of that, since prior to then, Britain was a republic. 1707 might be a valid date as well since it's when Scotland and England unified to form the United Kingdom. In either case that is older than 1789.
Edit: To the angry Europeans—before you comment, read the post carefully. I'm not talking about whether the US as a country is old. It most certainly is not. I'm saying that while the country is young, its institutions are comparatively old and have been in continuous operation for impressively long. No, they're not the oldest in the world by a long shot (I think San Marino takes that title) either. The idea of a country is defined by whatever the people who live in it define it to be, but the states and regimes that govern it come and go and are defined by laws and constitutions. And the one governing the United States has been around for longer than most.
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Switzerland existed continuously since 1291. San Marino since 800 something.
The USA is a child of Europe. Just accept it.
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Nobody denies that the USA is a "child of Europe[an colonisers]". San Marino I concede has institutions which have been longer than those of the USA. But the current iteration of the Swiss Confederation is not (and I refer to the state institutions, not the concept of Switzerland). The Old Swiss Confederacy was destroyed by Napoleon when he invaded and replaced by a so-called "sister republic" which governed Switzerland until his he got rid of it a few years later. What exists today is only as old as the Congress of Vienna, perhaps a little older than that if you consider the time that Diet spent arguing over the constitution.
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Nop, nop nop.
You focused on the notion of state versus nation (what the screenshot talk about).
The nation of France exists since centuries and have never been reset by any war or change of leadership.
We didn't reset our identity as Franc(ais) because we updated our government system (we iterate it several time and will continue probably soon by another version).
Sometime it's monarchy, sometimes it's republic. Depend on what happens to us.
But the nation of Franc(e) started to exists when Clovis Ier merged several kingdoms at around the 500 AD. We learn that in history class when we are young and learn about our history (for those interested: wiki).
Using one of the government iteration of a nation to say: it's no more, let's reset everything is missing the point of the global message.
Does the usa reset when updating its constitution?
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Did you even read the god-damn comment?
The concept of the US as a country is not very old
it's true that there has been a country called "France" for hundreds of years longer than the US
Yes, the notion of France as a country is older than the US. But the French Republic is not. The institutions change, the country endures. The US is a young country but its institutions are surprisingly old. That's the whole fucking point.
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Yeah... I was like, so you think most European countries are less than 100 years old because rulers changed, or some piece of paper changed? WTF?
Certainly a display of American exceptionalism, and education.
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Constitutions don't make a country. People do.
If we're going by constitutions nevertheless, San Marino is older. Even when we go by founding of the country or community living there, San Marino is definitely older.
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Constitutions don't make a country. People do.
I agree completely with this which is why I said basically the same thing in my comment. I'm saying that while 250 years old for a country is not very old, going 250 years without suffering some kind of complete collapse in state institutions is pretty long.
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Small correction in an otherwise very interesting message:
The previous French state (Vichy France) was destroyed by Nazi Germany.
Vichy France is the result of the destruction of the Third Republic by Nazi Germany. But de jure, the Third Republic's constitution was still legitimate until the new constitution of 1946.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that the Third Republic's constitution was abrogated by the Constitutional Law of 1940 which gave all powers of the state to Philippe Pétain. Pétain then established the Vichy regime as a collaborationist government and decided against writing a new constitution for his regime, and that lasted until the German occupation forces decided to just take over the rest of France and rule it directly.
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Oh fuck off. Poland had a form of democracy in the 1300s. Yes along with monarchy.
And fuck the right of with this ussr and russia. Same shit different name. Same imperialists oligarch cancer since ever it existed. Bullies and bootlickers. They are just taking turns to raid their neighbours.
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Did you even read the comment? I said that the US's government institutions are quite old, but the country is young. Yes, there has been a country named "Poland" around for much longer. But Poland has also governed by a succession of states, most not lasting very long (which as you probably know, is related to the actions of the other country you mention). I'm not saying that the idea of the US as a country is old, I'm saying its government institutions are older than usual.
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1707 might be a valid date as well since it’s when Scotland and England unified to form the United Kingdom. In either case that is older than 1789.
The 1707 Acts of Union led to the Kingdom of Great Britain. It was the 1800 Acts of Union that led to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Super interesting, thanks for sharing your knowledge!
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this answer contains a lot of errors and misconceptions. You shouldn't keep it in memory
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Fun fact: the city I lived in before moving was established in 1776. The one I'm in now is almost a thousand years older. The country is just about the same age as the latter.
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I'm from Denmark and the history of my city starts like this:
I oldtiden lå der et hedensk kultsted, indtil Roskilde Biskop Svend Nordmand opførte en stenkirke omkring år 1000.
translated means:
In ancient times there was a pagan cult site until Roskilde Bishop Svend Nordmand built a stone church around the year 1000.
It just so happens to be near Trelleborg, an old viking fortress, so the "pagan cult site" was viking settlement, but as it was the catholics that brought the written word, they got to write history.
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Fun fact: ive visted a city thats thousands of years old several times (I think roughly 5,000 years old)
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Bitch please, if my country hadn't discovered the land you are living in right now, you wouldn't be a nation. And my country is still there.
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Your country is Paleolithic hunter-gatherers from the North Asian Mammoth Steppe?
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You guys could have chosen a different way to settle in those lands besides going all crazy for gold and wiping out the Aztecs in the process.
While you were doing that, my country was shipping off boats full of horny guys to fuck into existence our own settlements.
Make love, not war!
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And I agree with you. But I am not responsible for what a bunch of assholes did 500 years ago when I wasn't even the idea of a human being. I despise what they did, but I don't feel, and never will, responsible for what they did. I can (and already do) fight for their mistakes to not happen again, but I wasn't there so what they did is not my fault.
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The land was already discovered, by the people living in it and even by outsiders like the Nordics. The people from the Pacific islands (I don't know if the correct term is Polinesia) are also said to have come into contact. From the 15th-16th century onwards, some outsiders decided to destroy civilizations and claim the lands. Yes, the modern nations wouldn't exist without imperialism and colonization, but I think many indigenous people would have preferred to develop and see the rise and fall of their nations during those centuries (and into the present) without said imperialism and colonization. My latter point is that it is not a "flex", in case you were thinking it is.
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