Nationcraft and the Origins of Territory: Experiencing Romanía in the Medieval Empire of New Rome

Abstract The modernism debate in the historiography of nationhood and nationalism has fizzled out to a curious détente: the idea that nationhood and nationalism are unique to ‘modernity’ remains dominant, but ‘premodern’ fields continue to research ethnonational phenomena while largely avoiding the vocabulary. Compelling research continues to be produced on both sides of the pre/modern divide, but there is little cross-fertilization between the two. This article returns to the modernism debate, to argue for the utility of political economy as a mode of analysis able to address the dynamics of nationcraft across a range of times and places. The case study is the production and experience of national territory in the medieval empire of New Rome, traditionally termed Byzantium. Between the eighth and thirteenth centuries East Roman political economy produced a national territory known as Romanía, ‘Romanland’, experienced for the most part in terms strikingly similar to the ‘countries’ produced by contemporary nation-states, including a kind of patriotism. The implication, fleshed out with comparative suggestions in the conclusion, is that similarities and differences between the nationcraft of different times and places should be situated in political and economic motions, rather than a pre/modern binary.