The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. By Patrick J. Geary. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 199. $24.95.
This book begins with a fascinating introduction, in which the delicate and generally
ineffectual faŤade of political order among contemporary European national
and ethnic groups that has resulted from centuries (indeed millennia) of
national and nationalistic mythmaking is problematized as a political issue vital
to any rational conception of contemporary Europe: from Northern Ireland to
Kosovo and the Basque region to Hungary, nation, state, and ethnicity practically
nowhere coincide on the same territory. The issue goes deeper, however: "Any
historian who has spent much of his career studying this earlier period of ethnic
formation and migration can only look upon the development of politically
conscious nationalism and racism with apprehension and disdain, particularly
when these ideologies appropriate and pervert history as their justification. This
pseudo-history assumes, first, that the peoples of Europe are distinct, stable, and
objectively identifiable social and cultural units, and that they are distinguished by
language, religion, custom, and national character, which are unambiguous and
immutable.
Jerold C. Frakes
University of Southern California |
|
