The title of this week’s article, which will come to you in two parts, came to me following a message I received from a reader in London. He stated that he had a problem with the spread of my platform and wondered if there was a way of knowing if those in authority and power read my weekly column. He claimed he was at a loss in understanding why most of the crises we have on our hands today were allowed to fester and blow up in our faces even though they had been predicted and, in some instances, solutions were proffered. I was not sure what to make out of the comment but to see it as a compliment rather than a criticism. I reminded him that our erstwhile head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, once said there are no bad governments but bad advisers who ruin the administration. Such an ill-thought-out statement never worked for Gowon as he was removed, and would not have worked in this case. Here in this era, good advice has been given but no one listened.
Fortunately, the reaction under review came at a time when I felt the need to re-engineer the topics and genre of the issues to discuss in my weekly column. So, I referred the comment to the reading club that meets every Thursday to review my articles. They opined that the column had become a voice for the voiceless and convinced me that the comments were huge compliments to my steadfastness. The majority voiced their fear that I might feel helpless and ignored one day, but pleaded with me never to think of giving up, if that day comes.
So, my question for this week: What comes first, nation-building or building of individuals? If we have to answer this question, it would require us to engage in massive research to untangle confusing answers to the question due to the chicken-and-egg situation buried therein.
If we begin by accepting the premise that nations are bigger than individuals, we can examine the relationship between nation-building and individual development.
Historically, most of the ancient and recently defunct empires, current geographical nations and civilizations have been developed by individuals, some powered by ideologies and ideologues, some by religion and some by revolutionaries in search of self-emancipation, self-determination/identity, or independence from a tyrannical government as in inspired revolutions. Let us examine a few examples.
The Ottoman Empire: Created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia (Asia Minor) it grew to be one of the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years and came to an end only in 1922 when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and various successor states in southeastern Europe and the Middle East. At its height, the empire encompassed most of southeastern Europe to the gates of Vienna, including present-day Hungary, the Balkan region, Greece and parts of Ukraine, portions of the Middle East now occupied by Iraq, Syria, Israel, and Egypt, North Africa as far west as Algeria and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The term ‘Ottoman’ is a dynastic appellation derived from Osman I (Arabic: Uthman), the nomadic Turkmen chief who founded the dynasty and the empire the 1300s.
The Greek Empire: Ancient Greece was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization existing from the Greek Dark Ages of 12th to 9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. AD 600) that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories—unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great’s empire (336-323 BC). In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.
Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban Poleis began to form in the 8th Century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars of the 5th to 4th centuries BC. The conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon spread Hellenistic civilization from the western Mediterranean to Central Asia. The Hellenistic period ended with the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic and the annexation of the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, and later the provinceof Achaea during the Roman Empire.
Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization, the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science and art.
The Roman Empire: The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of Romulus Augustulus in AD 476 in the West, and the Fall of Constantinople in the East in AD 1453. Ancient Rome became a territorial empire while still a republic, but was then ruled by Roman emperors beginning with Augustus (r. 27 BC – AD 14), becoming the Roman Empire following the death of the last republican dictator, the first emperor’s adoptive father, Julius Caesar.
Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th Century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd Century BC. Civil war engulfed the Roman state in the mid 1st Century BC, first between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and finally between Octavian and Mark Antony. Antony was defeated at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC, the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian imperator (“commander”) thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history usually dated from 27 BC to AD 284; they later awarded him the name Augustus, “the venerated.” Subsequent emperors all took this name as the imperial title Augustus.
The United States of America: The history of the United States was preceded by the arrival of Native Americans in North America around 5000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many disappeared in the 16th Century. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies were formed after 1600, and the United States was the first nation whose most distant origins are fully recorded. By the 1760s, the 13 British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After defeating France, the British government imposed a series of taxes, including the Stamp Act of 1765, rejecting the colonists’ constitutional argument that new taxes needed their approval. Resistance to these taxes, especially the Boston Tea Party in 1773, led to Parliament issuing punitive laws designed to end self-government. Armed conflict began in Massachusetts in 1775. In 1776, America declared independence from Britain, after their victory in the civil war, termed War of Independence. This was followed by the Declaration of the Bill of Rights, then the Constitution, and establishment of democracy as a form of governance.
(To be concluded next week)