A random thought at 5 AM

[omorka]

Anniversaries are important. We all know that. National anniversaries are especially important - I was barely sentient for the bicentennial, but I remember having heard about it a lot. Everyone remembers reading about the Silver Jubilee and all that from Victoria's reign, in Britain.

So what's England going to do in 2066?

Who else (other than China) has thousand-year anniversaries? Does France have a defining event like that (Chalemagne's coronation, maybe)?

Makes the US look like an angsty adolescent, that does . . .

Comments

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I guess Britain really didn't have a government-destroying revolution like most other places. I'm pretty sure China has changed a lot over the course of the past thousand years, government and all.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure they did. Oliver Cromwell, all that. The difference was that the revolution there eventually failed.

And yes, it's a new icon. :)

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

By the way -- new icon?

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

Who else (other than China) has thousand-year anniversaries?

IIRC, I was in Zurich the summer of that city's 1000th b-day. I suppose, by extension, cities like Rome or Jerusalem or Athens would have such things, but I would think the starting dates might be harder to place...

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Rome should be fairly easy to place, considering the way things were dated pre-A.D. Jerusalem and Athens, on the other hand, would be tough.

But I was really thinking of national identities, not cities or even regions. And none of those cities has a national identity riding on it that is anywhere near as old as the city itself is. (Of course, then we get into issues of what, precisely, Judaism in the Diaspora was, and whether it counts as a national identity, and that gets all mixed up in the distinction between Israel-the-people, Israel-the-Holy-Land, and Israel-the-modern-nation-state. So perhaps we'd better quit while we're ahead.)

[pinesandmaples]

i think egypt is the only other country that can claim 1000+ years. ( think they're in the + part at this point because even non-biblical scholars acknowledge that egypt was around "back in the day"...as in, b.c.)

[brezhnev.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on how one would choose to define it. There are several countries that have been around that long, though not necessarily under the same dynasty, and some have been fragmented for a time or ended up as part of another empire, later to regain sovereignty. I think the Byzantines and Japanese have had the longest dynasties, though I'm not 100% sure about the former.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

The Byzantines aren't around anymore ("Istanbul was Constantinople; now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople - been a long time gone, Constantinople; why did Constantiople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks . . . .").

Japan probably counts. How old is the current Imperial family?

[brezhnev.livejournal.com]

The Byzantines aren't around any more, but when they were, they lasted as a state for about 1000 years, though they were not much more than a city-state by the end. The Greeks are independent once more, and although the ancient capital is gone, perhaps they might still commemorate the glory days.

The current Japanese imperial dynasty is about 1000 years old. But, the role of the Emperor is now more of a ceremonial one, and political power lies with the Parliament. So this might disqualify them as being the oldest current regime. I'm not sure if they have a day commemorating the founding of the dynasty, or if the exact day that took place is lost in the mists of time.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Given that we started here with England, and their royal family doesn't currently have much more political power than the Japanese imperial family, I think we can still count them.

Heh. Yet another parallel between the two strange island kingdoms on either side of Eurasia.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

But Egypt as it exists now and Pharaonic Egypt are really two different nations, in the same way that Roman England and England today are not the same nation, or Celtic Gaul and France. I'm really thinking of national identities that have perpetuated ove the thousand years or more. (Otherwise Greece would count.)