Most diverse or divided nation in Europe?

[alfred russel]

1 million, so 16 times more than speak Scottish Gaelic and maybe 300,000 more than speak Welsh.  And that's one regional language.

First of all, it's not completely wrong that Italians speak Italian.

Second of all, the Scottish, Welsh, Irish and English derive from totally different ethnic stocks and language families, and have retained a strong sense of national identity and are even now in the process of voting for independence.  Italians on the other hand are derived from one ethnic stock (with a sprinkling of Germanic in the north and, I wager, even less Arab, Norman, and Greek in the south) and one language family.

Totally wrong. 

Italians are in the middle of the Mediterranean and have, either as Romans or as the head of the Catholic Church, been at the center of European civilization for the vast majority of the last 2,000 years. You'd get massive importations of slaves during the Roman period, and after that the Church, as well as trade and other cultural centers, would draw in people from across Europe. Italians are extremely diverse.  In the South, most people are going to have Greek, Arab, Balkan, Sicilian, native Siculi, Catalan, German and Norman ancestry.  In the north, you're going to have a ton of Celtic influence, some Greek influence,  and a lot more German and Slavic influence.  Whole parts of Italy were speaking Greek or Arabic long after the British Isles was a settled mix of two different Celtic groups and the English. 

I think Italy is at least as heterogeneous as Britain.  There really isn't some kind of magical Celtic-Germanic racial divide.  The origin of the Celtic peoples is in modern Bavaria and the Czech Republic, meaning they're not really that distant from the origin of the Germanic peoples in Denmark and old Saxony.  There was always German-Celtic intermingling, both on the continent and in Britain.  A lot of basic terms in Germanic and Slavic languages have Celtic roots. The Saxon migration had a huge impact on southern Scotland, which went from a Welsh-related Celtic language to English with no intervening period of Gaelic.   Also, the Norse invasion of the British isles pretty much hit the "Celtic" and "Germanic" parts pretty evenly, except maybe for Wales and Cornwall.

Spellus, Italy may have the diversity of the UK, but I don't think there are many parts of Italy that have a historical nation to try to restore (Venice maybe?). The history of Italy in a nutshell: The Roman Empire, under which Italy was united, followed by a bunch of dysfunctional and often short-lived feudal states that (outside of Venice) I doubt many would take much pride in, swept aside by a modern Italian state under which Italy transformed into a modern country.

Scotland, on the other hand, was effectively separate from England for all of its history prior to the early 18th century, and for a variety of reasons the following period of the UK is a bit of a difficult subject to base a modern identity.

Scotland was

[dps]

Fair enough.  You got some of the basics right, but I'm still pretty confidant that Italy is a lot more culturally and genetically diverse than Great Britain. 

I'd agree on genetically, but I'm not so sure about culturally.

[Barrister]

1 million, so 16 times more than speak Scottish Gaelic and maybe 300,000 more than speak Welsh.  And that's one regional language.

First of all, it's not completely wrong that Italians speak Italian.

Second of all, the Scottish, Welsh, Irish and English derive from totally different ethnic stocks and language families, and have retained a strong sense of national identity and are even now in the process of voting for independence.  Italians on the other hand are derived from one ethnic stock (with a sprinkling of Germanic in the north and, I wager, even less Arab, Norman, and Greek in the south) and one language family.

Totally wrong. 

Italians are in the middle of the Mediterranean and have, either as Romans or as the head of the Catholic Church, been at the center of European civilization for the vast majority of the last 2,000 years. You'd get massive importations of slaves during the Roman period, and after that the Church, as well as trade and other cultural centers, would draw in people from across Europe. Italians are extremely diverse.  In the South, most people are going to have Greek, Arab, Balkan, Sicilian, native Siculi, Catalan, German and Norman ancestry.  In the north, you're going to have a ton of Celtic influence, some Greek influence,  and a lot more German and Slavic influence.  Whole parts of Italy were speaking Greek or Arabic long after the British Isles was a settled mix of two different Celtic groups and the English. 

I think Italy is at least as heterogeneous as Britain.  There really isn't some kind of magical Celtic-Germanic racial divide.  The origin of the Celtic peoples is in modern Bavaria and the Czech Republic, meaning they're not really that distant from the origin of the Germanic peoples in Denmark and old Saxony.  There was always German-Celtic intermingling, both on the continent and in Britain.  A lot of basic terms in Germanic and Slavic languages have Celtic roots. The Saxon migration had a huge impact on southern Scotland, which went from a Welsh-related Celtic language to English with no intervening period of Gaelic.   Also, the Norse invasion of the British isles pretty much hit the "Celtic" and "Germanic" parts pretty evenly, except maybe for Wales and Cornwall.

Spellus, Italy may have the diversity of the UK, but I don't think there are many parts of Italy that have a historical nation to try to restore (Venice maybe?). The history of Italy in a nutshell: The Roman Empire, under which Italy was united, followed by a bunch of dysfunctional and often short-lived feudal states that (outside of Venice) I doubt many would take much pride in, swept aside by a modern Italian state under which Italy transformed into a modern country.

Scotland, on the other hand, was effectively separate from England for all of its history prior to the early 18th century, and for a variety of reasons the following period of the UK is a bit of a difficult subject to base a modern identity.

Scotland was

I think you're looking at it too much from a EU computer game perspective, and not enough culturally. 

[Admiral Yi]

You and Yi are thinking of the old theories of migration that have been significantly altered by the more recent studies BB is thinking of.

The old theory was that Romano-Britons were eliminated by Saxon invaders.  The new theory is that substantial numbers of Saxon invaders intermarried with Romano-Britons to create the English.

[alfred russel]

I think you're looking at it too much from a EU computer game perspective, and not enough culturally.

It depends what we are talking about...Ultimately I think Western Europe is quite homogenized--I think more than it ever has been before. But countries like the UK and Belgium have a chance to fracture in the near future.

If we are going to consider why the UK and Belgium have their current problems, I don't think culture the biggest part of the story.

[crazy canuck]

You and Yi are thinking of the old theories of migration that have been significantly altered by the more recent studies BB is thinking of.

The old theory was that Romano-Britons were eliminated by Saxon invaders.  The new theory is that substantial numbers of Saxon invaders intermarried with Romano-Britons to create the English.

And when recent genetic studies looked at your theory they concluded the "substantial number of saxon invaders" were not all that substantial after all and that the genetic makeup hasnt changed much for thousands of years - just as BB suggested.

[alfred russel]

And when recent genetic studies looked at your theory they concluded the "substantial number of saxon invaders" were not all that substantial after all and that the genetic makeup hasnt changed much for thousands of years - just as BB suggested.

In a debate on modern culture and politics, if we are looking for evidence of what was going on 1000+ years ago through genetic testing, I think we getting lost in the weeds a bit.

[Queequeg]

Spellus, Italy may have the diversity of the UK, but I don't think there are many parts of Italy that have a historical nation to try to restore (Venice maybe?). The history of Italy in a nutshell: The Roman Empire, under which Italy was united, followed by a bunch of dysfunctional and often short-lived feudal states that (outside of Venice) I doubt many would take much pride in, swept aside by a modern Italian state under which Italy transformed into a modern country.

Tuscany, Southern Italy+Sicily, Romagna and Lazio, Lombardy, Venice, Liguria and Savoie have all spent the vast majority of the last 1200 years as separate states with tenuous to non-existent ties beyond the Church and sometimes the Empire.  Heck, Sicily was Latinized as much by Normans as by "Italians."   

Heck, within that, a lot of these areas had autonomous cities or regions that absolutely hated each other. 

[Queequeg]

You and Yi are thinking of the old theories of migration that have been significantly altered by the more recent studies BB is thinking of.

The old theory was that Romano-Britons were eliminated by Saxon invaders.  The new theory is that substantial numbers of Saxon invaders intermarried with Romano-Britons to create the English.

IIRC the exact numbers are kind of in the middle.  I saw a statistic that the average East Anglian shares 60% of the Basque-derived native Briton haplogroup, while a Welshman shares about 90%.  That extra 30% is actually quite a bit though.  I got mistaken for a native a lot more in Berlin or Wurzberg than in Powys.  Most people in Turkey guessed I was Dutch or German.  My background is almost exclusively English. 

[Admiral Yi]

IIRC the exact numbers are kind of in the middle.  I saw a statistic that the average East Anglian shares 60% of the Basque-derived native Briton haplogroup, while a Welshman shares about 90%.  That extra 30% is actually quite a bit though.  I got mistaken for a native a lot more in Berlin or Wurzberg than in Powys.  Most people in Turkey guessed I was Dutch or German.  My background is almost exclusively English.

Not familiar with CC's new theory?

[alfred russel]

Spellus, Italy may have the diversity of the UK, but I don't think there are many parts of Italy that have a historical nation to try to restore (Venice maybe?). The history of Italy in a nutshell: The Roman Empire, under which Italy was united, followed by a bunch of dysfunctional and often short-lived feudal states that (outside of Venice) I doubt many would take much pride in, swept aside by a modern Italian state under which Italy transformed into a modern country.

Tuscany, Southern Italy+Sicily, Romagna and Lazio, Lombardy, Venice, Liguria and Savoie have all spent the vast majority of the last 1200 years as separate states with tenuous to non-existent ties beyond the Church and sometimes the Empire.  Heck, Sicily was Latinized as much by Normans as by "Italians."

Those states were frequently associated with foreign nations or the church. Do you really see them as the basis for a serious modern independence movement?

[Queequeg]

That's only a part of the topic of this thread.  I'm more interested in practical or primary identities rather than who wants to break away from whom.  An Irishman has far more in common with an Englishman than an inhabitant of Inner Mongolia does with a Fujianese man. 

[Razgovory]

The Lega Nord has promoted secession on occasion and independence or or greater regional control is fairly common in many Italian regions.

[Duque de Bragança]

How would Spain rank?  I don't really know how well established non-Catalan/Valencian ethnic identities are.  I'd actually be interested in anecdotes on the subject.  Galician linguistically is far closer to Portuguese, and I would be interested to know how "Spanish" certain non-Castilian types view themselves.

One should not confuse Spain with Castille, even if most of us speak Castillian now.

Don't tell that to a Portuguese.  For them every spaniard is a castillian, except for basques and catalans. Us galicians are honourary portuguese. 

Since I speak Castilian and am familiar with Mirandese (related to Astur-Leonese) my view is a bit more nuanced but yes there is some truth to that.

[alfred russel]

That's only a part of the topic of this thread.  I'm more interested in practical or primary identities rather than who wants to break away from whom.  An Irishman has far more in common with an Englishman than an inhabitant of Inner Mongolia does with a Fujianese man.

My opinion: western europe is basically a homogenized place and it is difficult to accurately generalize differences between populations beyond language and politics. Yes there are differences in that more Germans drink beer than in France. But show me a value and lifestyle profile of a random person and ask me to tell you if they are from Germany or France, and I can't do better than an educated guess.