According to the World-Systems Analysis I mentioned in my former post, mini-systems & world-empires don't exist anymore: Since the 16th century, they all gradually became incorporated into one single world-economy, the modern world-system!
National propaganda fits this world-economy very well: It’s political units are rivals, so the minds of their own inhabitants should be directed in favor of their political existence, to avoid inner struggle and thus maintain a strong international competitive position. A national psyche serves this aim very well, so they create & spread their own national culture:
- Printing press wasn't invented much earlier than the 16th century, allowing the distribution of uniform texts on a wide scale
- The emerging nation states might have abused unique historical records to write their own fictional past & burned those quite unique originals
Did the then brand new nation states abuse the new technology to spread the new message to conquer as much as possible minds?
The world-empire of the Middle Ages facilitated long-distance trade by building caravan-saray along the main (silk)roads. These mainly east-west-oriented tracks allowed diseases to spread quite easily to similar climate belts in the Old World. Although heirs to the throne were already competing each other in the 14th century, weakening the central authority, the black death forced the emperor to quarantine his empire into smaller regions. Now these provinces had to rely on themselves, contributing to a psyche for an unnecessary imperial authority.
The kings of the provinces started to create their own “world-empires”, psychologically supported by a quickly generated “national history”. It led to a competitive atmosphere in acquiring resources, sometimes by fighting each other, but mainly resulting in a quest to colonize as much as possible terrain in the rest of the world: The world-empire disintegrated into a world-economy!
