If We All Band Together

In my History of English podcast, we covered the Anglo-Saxon invasion quite a few episodes ago. The pattern was that when the Britons, Celts were fighting amongst themselves about who was going to be king of whom, the various North Sea tribes (which we call Angles, Saxons, and Jutes but likely included others) were able to not only successfully raid against them, but gradually settle and eventually become kings over all of them. The pattern repeated when the Danes were invading in the 9th C. The Anglo-Saxons, now the reigning groups, kept slugging it out over who was going to be king of Mercia, who of Northumbria, who of Wessex, so the Danes came in and became kings of most of them.  It would have been all of them but for Alfred the Great, who succeeded in unifying what was left against the invaders.  In a generation or so the roles were reversed. The Danes broke into factions - most significantly, they would have little to do in coordinating with the Norwegian Vikings who were operating in the North and West of the British Isles - and Alfred's descendants were able to subdue them and reclaim rulership.

It is a repeated pattern everywhere.  Groups that think of themselves as distinct find that some invader is even more an enemy than the tribes nearby, and a good leader is able to unify them for a common cause. Yet they mostly only trust the very local original group. The Dwarves are for the Dwarves. Alfred stressed the importance of a common language, of laws held in common, drawing from the practices of all the factions, and national pride based on scholarship and learning. This is how nations are built out of duchies. Yet as a group gets more powerful, getting to run it becomes an ever-greater prize.

The Native American tribes did not think of themselves in that "We are Native Americans, these Europeans are a common enemy" way, but as separate groups of Narragansetts, Penobscots, MiqMaqs. There is nothing especially stupid or shortsighted about this. It's just the way that humans think.The English, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese in the New World thought of themselves this way as well. Roman emperors neglected their borders and the invaders, because the more pressing danger was a personal rival.

Yet banding together is not only difficult, but dangerous.  Unwieldy alliances tend to have follow-up betrayals and even wars after they succeed. There have been strong attempts over the past century to have pan-Slavic or pan-Arabic powers, yet the internal rivalries seem to eventually win out. The Anglosphere is nowhere enforced, yet retains significant meaning.