Our website uses cookies to understand content and feature usage to drive site improvements over time. To learn more, review our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Frames in Unit 2
Frames in Unit 2
The nation-state was a new kind of government in which a group of citizens could govern themselves in a particular territory. During the long nineteenth century, this was a radical idea.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
What were some of the biggest communities – empires – in 1750?
What other kinds of communities were important to people’s lives, or governed people, around 1750?
What, according to this video, did almost everyone share in this period, whether they lived in a big empire or a smaller community?
What were three new ideas about community that emerged in this period, according to this video?
What new kind of community did these ideas help to create?
: (music playing)
: The world in 1750 was composed
: of many diverse human communities.
: Empires stretched across vast regions of the world.
: Some of these empires dated back quite a long time.
: In Afro-Eurasia, the Ottoman Empire's conquest
: of the eastern Mediterranean
: began as early as the 13th century.
: Russian expansion in central Asia
: went back 300 years.
: Mughal rule over south Asia dated back about 200 years.
: The Qing Dynasty ruled China
: and parts of central Asia for a century.
: Similarly, some of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies
: in the Atlantic and the Americas
: can be traced back two or three centuries.
: At the same time, the British, French,
: and Dutch overseas empires were somewhat newer.
: But lots of people didn't live in empires.
: Many lived in smaller centralized states,
: mostly kingdoms of some sort,
: a form of government that dated back
: as much as 5,000 years.
: Others lived in even older types of organizations,
: small societies where all politics were local.
: These societies were led by councils or chiefs,
: connected by family or a shared sense of place,
: or in a confederation of villages
: loosely connected to each other.
: Of course, this didn't mean
: that their forms of community weren't changing or evolving,
: just that local conditions
: led to smaller, less centralized governance.
: The small size of these communities also doesn't mean
: that these people had no sense of community
: outside their local neighborhood or village.
: Many people sensed that they shared a language or a culture
: with people who didn't live
: in the same political unit as they did.
: Even more, people felt a sense of community
: with others who shared their religion, even far away.
: And many of their religions were very old indeed.
: Islam had existed for a millennium at this point.
: 18th century Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism
: were evolved from even older religious communities.
: One thing most people shared in common,
: whether they lived in a small community or a large empire,
: was an understanding that they were somebody's subjects.
: They shared a sense of not really having
: much political authority or standing of their own.
: Rather, they owed their allegiance to a chief,
: or prince, or ruler of some sort who had the right--
: or at least the power-- to make decisions for them.
: But that was about to change.
: (music playing)
: In the long 19th century,
: the era between 1750 and 1914, new ideas were emerging--
: individual sovereignty,
: the conviction that a person has the right
: to control their own body and choices;
: national sovereignty,
: the idea that people together have the right
: to make political decisions and exercise leadership;
: and nationalism,
: the belief that people, governing themselves,
: have the right to a homeland.
: So people created a new form of community
: called the nation-state.
: The nation-state is a state--
: a legal unit and a piece of territory--
: that coincides with a nation--
: a self-governing group of people.
: This change was a big deal, as you will see in this unit.
: But we have to analyze it a bit.
: In the first place,
: some people before 1750 had experimented with ideas
: that sounded something like sovereignty
: and something like governments
: that had elements of the nation-state.
: Also, after 1750, things changed gradually
: even where big revolutions
: created the first new nation-states
: like in Haiti, France, and the Americas.
: Finally, the long 19th century
: was also an era of empires,
: as we will discuss later.
: And empires were almost the opposite of the nation-state.
: Nevertheless, these new nation-states
: represented maybe the most important changes
: in the communities frame in hundreds of years.
: New technologies developed
: to support larger and larger states.
: Better methods of organization and communication
: extended the reach of the state,
: and new military technology made governments stronger
: than local warlords or nobles.
: With these new advantages, the nation-state dominated
: other forms of political organization.
: They came to cover just about the whole world.
: For better or worse, we live in a world
: of nation-states even today.