We are not a nation

I just read a well written blog article criticising a variety of responses to hurricane Katrina's destruction. While I agree with the geographical points made - they are usually forgotten by people over here - the article has switched me on to something that as been cropping up an awful lot over the last couple of years. OK: I'm slow on the uptake.

When I talk about the USA, I talk as an Englishman living in Barcelona. I'm not a 'European' because I don't know what that means. No one that I've ever met in my travels describes themselves as 'European', but it is a term almost universally employed by Americans I've met.

I feel that this points to something of a misconception. While it is correct to style citizens of the USA as 'Americans' because they live in one country, a nation with one central government, there is no sense in trying to refer to all citizens in the European Union as 'Europeans'. People in Cordoba have as much in common with people in Copenhagen as people in New Orleans have with the citizens of Cape Town. It's a meaningless term, used to bunch together a group of wildly differing cultures and races to make a lazily constructed argument work.

The natural response to this may be "Oh come on, there is a lot of shared ideology and culture in Europe - you know that, Tom!" - and this is true. But no more than there is between us and Americans. So if we refer to 'Europeans', there is no real way the term works except as a description of people from a huge area with varying cultures and races, not united in any real sense.

Perhaps this (like most things) is the fault of the European Union? I get the idea that a lot of people over here have been keen to explain to Americans they meet, how close the European Union has brought us together. It's true that I can work in Cordoba or Copenhagen without applying for a special work permit. It's true that a factory can close in Peterborough and move to Prague without much being done to stop it. But it doesn't mean that I understand a word of Danish, Czech, Dutch or most of the other languages spoken here.

And this is the point: when Americans use the term 'Europeans', they put a sort of onus on EU citizens to act like Americans do. That is to say, we're all members of one Union, so we should work together instead of fighting all the time. I don't think that many Americans realise just how little we have in common with eachother, and how important our individual national traits and traditions really are to us.

We are not one nation, but dozens of nations, with impossibly inter-connected histories for sure, but with very powerful and often clashing interests. Americans like to bemoan the fact that Europeans can't stop fighting amongst themselves for more than 50 years or so. Christ, we don't like that either. But it happens sometimes because we are not one nation - and when you have dozens of nations in a small area, conflicts will occur.

As Alan Partridge noted, "Shit happens".

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September 24, 2005 | Filed Under Language, Politics 

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