Proto-nationalism: Borders and Rulers

We're Not So Different

150th episode wooooo! this time, we continue our miniseries on what we're calling Proto-nationalism in the Middle Ages by talking about two very big materialist reasons why they couldn't really have nationalism back then: malleable borders and dynastic rulership. Medieval borders were porous, light-enforced at best, and changed overnight based on the confusing, overlapping rights that various rulers had over a plot of land. rulership, meanwhile, was personalized and heavily influenced by dynastic concerns and marriage alliances, meaning it could change at the drop of a hat based on a marriage going bad or a third son dying early and passing the land in question to a completely different family. these factors were so limiting that they essentially made nationalism, as we know it today, an impossibility in the Middle Ages. though we do address the special case of Medieval China here too.