Suchergebnisse

Historically and contemporaneously the interrelations of the nations of the British Isles are as important as their differentiation. Modern revisionist historians, Irish and British, understand this better that many politicians and publicists. Nationalism as separatism and strong national consciousness are commonly confused when the English media consider Scotland. Gordon Brown stresses 'Britishness' to preserve the union but this is counterproductive. All his examples of British events are English, none Scots or Welsh, and his British values are mainly universal. A true construction of Britishness is to see it as a strong but narrow practical legal and political framework within which different cultures, old and new, can both flourish and intermingle. So strong are both social and economic interrelations that Scottish independence could be less consequential than commonly supposed.

The issue of interrelations between security and threat has a history as long as the history of mankind. Human beings since the beginning of times have always had needs of higher and lower importance, these needs sometimes collide with the needs and interests of others, thus creating a threat. Originally, the meaning of the term 'security' was limited only to the armed protection of territories against the enemies from neighboring countries. With time other layers of threat were recognized and determined. Nowadays, protection against external aggression is just one of many threats which must be dealt with to provide security to a state, other threats are related to economic, ecological, social or cultural aspects.

It has been long pointed out that the destinies of the various sections of mankind began to be interrelated long before the twentieth century, with its global wars and cold wars; or even the nineteenth century, the century of European world hegemony. Here we will study certain of the historical ways in which these destinies were intertwined; in this way we may distinguish more valid modes of tracing large-scale history and of comparing the societies involved in it, from a number of popular but unsound modes of trying to do so. I shall speak mostly of the ages before modern times, noting only briefly at the end of the paper certain crucial ways in which modern interrelations among human societies have been different from earlier ones.