This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Hoppenbrouwers, P. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Such Stuff as Peoples are Made on

Ethnogenesis and the Construction of Nationhood in Medieval Europe

Department of Medieval History, University of Amsterdam. E-mail: p.c.m.hoppenbrouwers{at}uva.nl

Peoples, or ethnic communities, ‘have been present in every period and continent’, says the cover of a recent volume on ethnicity.¹ If true, we should also be aware that ‘peoples’ in the recorded past are social entities which are always to a large extent constructed and constantly changing during continuous processes of state formation. This article aims at summarising the building blocks and leitmotifs, derived from Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition, that medieval authors, in particular the clerical writers of histories, used in their construction of peoples in a time when political communities developed state-like features which required some measure of national identification. Understandably, the development of national identities in medieval Europe proved to be a complex interplay, in which the imagining of ‘Self’ was inextricably bound up with the judgement of ‘Other’ within the boundaries of that period's mental outlook.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?