Nationalism and State-building
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The Moon Kingdom of the Silver Millennium is, if you think about it, perhaps not the best state to model from. One of the most important things to a state is the survival of the state; not only did it not survive, their last stand failed in perhaps the most horrible way possible: the killing of all its inhabitants, and the destruction of the cities and the entire environment. The only thing saved were their souls.
It's hard to think of a historical parallel to this. Though ancient peoples were capable of immense cruelty, extremely punitive wars rarely make sense when you could just enslave the inhabitants. Rome's sack of Carthage did demolish the city, but after a week of mass murder they finally did enslave the remaining inhabitants. The Biblical Battle of Jericho is recorded as leading to the slaughter of every inhabitant, including their livestock, save one family who helped Israelite spies. Only once slavery was universally banned in the 20th century did mass murder and genocide become the norm.
However, a story like the Fall of the Moon Kingdom is perfect for a national myth. All national myths are structured much the same way:
1. Back in the old days things were great and we were all together.
2. Then some outside force came and ruined things, and we're living in the aftermath.
3. Through our struggles, some day we will restore the nation to its glory.
The manga version gives us all three phases of a national myth, showing a brief glimpse of the founding of Crystal Tokyo. Which is unusual because we only ever see the first two of them come to pass in reality. But who is "we" in this story, and who are the outsiders?
It turns out that "we" is formed by intentional acts of nation building. While culture and language do exist, sharing it does not mean you share the same nation, like Germany and Austria. Or how much variation in speech really counts as a new language, or is it just a dialect? Right now, Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia to prove that Ukraine is a nation.
And being a nation means that the people are involved in the destiny of the state. Not just a noble class, but all people born in the same place -- natives of the nation. This more or less implies modernity, and the forging of a new group identity that is only partially based on a place or a state. It's more fuzzy, yet more powerful.
I've been throwing these words around: state, nation, and country. But they're all subtly different. A state is simply an apparatus that governs people, with the implied legitimacy to govern. A country is an area of land, that may or may not have clear boundaries. But a nation is a place of natives — the ethnic people who make up the state. Nation states are something of a nineteenth century invention, a reaction to both colonization and a more educated, politically active population.
I could go into all sorts of detail on nationalism, but the most important fact is that the national myth often implies a very deep history of a state and this is simply not true. Nationalism is a new concept, and nations are new! The United States is one of the very oldest nation states, even though it claims to be a young one. Nationalism is a powerful concept, strong enough to have been at the heart of the most massive wars of the 20th century, but that doesn't make it true. Nations are a perfect example of what the prophet Bokonon would call a granfaloon — everyone says that a nation shares a purpose and a destiny, but that doesn't really make it so.
Going further back, it's really hard to tell much of anything about the politics of the Silver Millennium, both on Earth and its Moon. As a fanfic writer, I think you can fill in just about anything you want here, keeping in mind what I said earlier. It wouldn't make sense for a nationalist state to exist in the Bronze Age, for example, though it could have existed in prehistory, and we repeat our mistakes. One thing to note is that Serenity's retainers are from the planet Mau, so even back then being from the Moon did not fully determine citizenship.
Honestly, on the topic of the Silver Millennium, just read what we said a couple posts up-thread, but bear in mind that worry over the size of your neighbor's imperial conquest only needs personal greed or nobility fears, not national resentment. Kings were doing this long before there were nation states. This post is mainly concerned with future development.
In canon we see the outlines of a nationalist narrative — the fall of the Silver Millennium, the defeat of the Dark Kingdom et al., the birth of Crystal Tokyo — so I think it's safe to say that the Moon Kingdom of the future will be a nation. And that means that the early leadership has to choose to create a nation. Because unlike the Silver Crystal, a nation or even a state will not just be handed to Usagi. And it will not be an easy task.
Which comes to a core question: why even make a Moon Kindgom at all? Why not just, like, let people vote and figure it out themselves? Why even attempt state building and nation building, when both are known to be so hard? The case to build a nation is pretty easy, when you have such a ready-built national myth, and leaders with such a strong sense of purpose. The case to build a state around which to build the nation in the first place is much harder.
Canon, for once, gives us essentially zero clues on the genesis of the state. The only thing we know is that the Sailor Guardians have a lot of power, and they use that power to protect people. It's not a huge leap to see what they do as Max Weber's definition of a state which involves legitimate violence. If beating up on Youma and space aliens is legitimate violence, then they're all acting like a state from the first time they said "Make Up!" It's technically vigilantism, but I don't think anyone in government is going to tell them to stop doing it.
In my view, there is not a huge difference between a group running a "protection racket" and a government -- especially in feudal and pre-feudal systems. Mercenary companies could and did conquer territory for themselves, which were eventually seen as legitimate kingdoms. The yakuza are largely descended from the nobility of Japan that lost the war of the Meiji Restoration; they actually do some measure of real protection, and not just protection from themselves.
It's not to see the Sailor Team, essentially a vigilante gang with clearly structured leadership, has the potential to evolve into a state if they keep protecting people, and if other people begin to follow their orders. Modern states are formed for a variety of reasons, including for security amongst dangerous neighbors, for the promotion and safety of trade, and to have an official way of conflict resolution. My first post on Crime handled the last case, and it's obvious to see that these women are a defense against hostile aliens. I don't think any of these gals have a clue how to run an economy, though.
In our fanfiction though, there won't be a grand moment where people suddenly decide to found a state. In the distant future of the setting, they'll probably identify it as the coronation of Neo-Queen Serenity, but that's just ceremony. I'm not saying that ceremony isn't important, it's just not close to the whole story.
There will be two habitable places on the Moon early on in our story -- Moonbase Alpha in Plato Crater and Moon Castle on the "shore" of Mare Serentiatis. They are only close in a relative sense, with ~1320 km of lunar surface between them, roughly the distance from New York to Chicago, or Paris to Madrid. But much, much closer than any other settlements, and reachable within an hour or two of flight by both sides (no sonic booms in no atmosphere).
I'm sure we're going to write chapters on the first meetings, and how things start at the castle. But if those settlements become permanent, which they will for various plot reasons, they will face common problems: obtaining resources, trade, tourism, and security from the Earthly states that come to visit. Eventually, the states of Earth will come knocking, looking for resources. And so the people of the Moon will have to decide what to do, collectively.
This collective decision will look a lot more like a committee meeting than a stained glass window featuring Usagi bearing the scepter and tiara beneath the Moonbase Alpha mission patch. We're deconstructing, after all. There will be some Zoom meetings in there too, not just the Founders around a table doing heroic Founding Things. (The stained glass will come later.)
As we move on to larger settlements, the people running the state will try to build an identity out of the people who come up to the Moon. (Not all states form this way. Many nationalists are outside the state trying to remove the colonizers, but there's no reason for that to happen here.) It's not an ethnic identity, but is more likely to be a cultural one, as Americans and Canadians have. I think Princess Mars, in particular, is going to advocate that their new beginning is a chance to start a revolution in people's hearts, one of love and passion. Probably joined by Princess Uranus, who will want to guide a new era. (See! It's canon!)
But let me bring up an old era first. There's been a meme going around about women being surprised how often men think about the Roman Empire. I admit that I am male, and I have brought them up here an awful lot. But they're useful, because they cover a lot of different peoples and governments, and they lasted a thousand years! If your state has Millennium in the name, there aren't many other examples to think of. (There is only one state today that has lasted over one thousand years, the Republic of San Marino.)
But you know who else thought about the Roman Empire? Pretty much every other state. There's probably no more widely claimed thing than being the true successor to the Roman Empire. Pretty much every nation in Europe has claimed to be the successor to Rome, trying to reclaim lost glories, even while Rome itself still existed over in the Eastern half. The Germans claimed to be Rome, having not really ever been a part of Rome, but who cares when the Pope says it's okay? Russia claimed to be the Third Rome, while the United States' symbolism and architecture is intended to evoke the Roman Republic. While it's a bit about recapturing past glories, it's also about claiming new greatness.
More or less the same thing is going on with the nation building project in China, where the newly invented people of the Han nation are reflecting the ancient Han Emperor. Nationalism is a story that says that the people who live in a place are the ones that belong there, because they always have lived there.
But if you step back to our national myth for a new Moon Kingdom, it's not quite the same. First of all, it's not going back to Rome or Han, it's inspired by something much further back and more mysterious. Only Minako and Setsuna really remember much more than the occasional glimpse. No one really wants to bring back the glorious state quite the way it was. In fact, Princess Pluto will be deeply worried about trying to resurrect the Silver Millennium too closely. After all, it turned out very badly for everyone. All states must eventually end, but it ended up failing utterly.
What the nation-building exercise then becomes is a reflection of the desires of the people of the Moon, and especially its greatest people. If they're going to be guiding into a new era, then they will build a culture by example, and it will become part of people's identity. There's no legitimacy to be gained by following ancient traditions or Rome, so they can build a truly feminist state without worrying about the past.
Our new Moon Kingdom will not be an excessively nationalist state, largely because leadership does not need the legitimize its rule the way. With the power in their persons, and the claim on what is an actual uninhabited territory, there's less need to justify themselves as an autochthonous people. At the same time, I don't see how they could escape the forces of realpolitik at our current level of development. People want to belong to things, be it nations, political parties or sports fandoms. (I've mentioned the Romans enough, but you can get all three of these together in the Nika riots.)
The one thing I don't get to is: what's beyond nationalism? Maybe the European Union just keeps getting bigger? Right now, nationalism is kicking the EU's ass, though. Marxists theoretically wanted an international revolution, but all of the communist states in real life eventually became staunchly nationalistic. Star Trek hints at a postnationalist world, but doesn't really have any way to get there. And then treats other alien species as other nations. Post-scarcity seems to be part of the equation, but I don't really know. I don't know if I can know.
Perhaps in the Crystal Tokyo of the the canon future, there's no need for nationalism. It's hard to say much at all; the only political activity we know of is the partisanship and terrorism of the Black Moon Clan, and we'll never get rid of all of those kinds. Neo-Queen Serenity is said to rarely leave the palace in this future, representing the beautiful but static End of History. I don't believe it. Takeuchi is feeding us a nationalist myth, not the real future of the world.
Don't assume that the Moon Kingdom will become this static, beautiful, unchanging place of eternal happiness. Because that is simply not a real place. The end state for both our fanfic Moon Kingdom and our canon Crystal Millennium can't really be static. What it means to be a subject of Her Royal Bunnyness will change over time, and that's a good thing.
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The Moon Kingdom of the Silver Millennium is, if you think about it, perhaps not the best state to model from. One of the most important things to a state is the survival of the state; not only did it not survive, their last stand failed in perhaps the most horrible way possible: the killing of all its inhabitants, and the destruction of the cities and the entire environment. The only thing saved were their souls.
It's hard to think of a historical parallel to this. Though ancient peoples were capable of immense cruelty, extremely punitive wars rarely make sense when you could just enslave the inhabitants. Rome's sack of Carthage did demolish the city, but after a week of mass murder they finally did enslave the remaining inhabitants. The Biblical Battle of Jericho is recorded as leading to the slaughter of every inhabitant, including their livestock, save one family who helped Israelite spies. Only once slavery was universally banned in the 20th century did mass murder and genocide become the norm.
However, a story like the Fall of the Moon Kingdom is perfect for a national myth. All national myths are structured much the same way:
1. Back in the old days things were great and we were all together.
2. Then some outside force came and ruined things, and we're living in the aftermath.
3. Through our struggles, some day we will restore the nation to its glory.
The manga version gives us all three phases of a national myth, showing a brief glimpse of the founding of Crystal Tokyo. Which is unusual because we only ever see the first two of them come to pass in reality. But who is "we" in this story, and who are the outsiders?
It turns out that "we" is formed by intentional acts of nation building. While culture and language do exist, sharing it does not mean you share the same nation, like Germany and Austria. Or how much variation in speech really counts as a new language, or is it just a dialect? Right now, Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia to prove that Ukraine is a nation.
And being a nation means that the people are involved in the destiny of the state. Not just a noble class, but all people born in the same place -- natives of the nation. This more or less implies modernity, and the forging of a new group identity that is only partially based on a place or a state. It's more fuzzy, yet more powerful.
I've been throwing these words around: state, nation, and country. But they're all subtly different. A state is simply an apparatus that governs people, with the implied legitimacy to govern. A country is an area of land, that may or may not have clear boundaries. But a nation is a place of natives — the ethnic people who make up the state. Nation states are something of a nineteenth century invention, a reaction to both colonization and a more educated, politically active population.
I could go into all sorts of detail on nationalism, but the most important fact is that the national myth often implies a very deep history of a state and this is simply not true. Nationalism is a new concept, and nations are new! The United States is one of the very oldest nation states, even though it claims to be a young one. Nationalism is a powerful concept, strong enough to have been at the heart of the most massive wars of the 20th century, but that doesn't make it true. Nations are a perfect example of what the prophet Bokonon would call a granfaloon — everyone says that a nation shares a purpose and a destiny, but that doesn't really make it so.
Going further back, it's really hard to tell much of anything about the politics of the Silver Millennium, both on Earth and its Moon. As a fanfic writer, I think you can fill in just about anything you want here, keeping in mind what I said earlier. It wouldn't make sense for a nationalist state to exist in the Bronze Age, for example, though it could have existed in prehistory, and we repeat our mistakes. One thing to note is that Serenity's retainers are from the planet Mau, so even back then being from the Moon did not fully determine citizenship.
Honestly, on the topic of the Silver Millennium, just read what we said a couple posts up-thread, but bear in mind that worry over the size of your neighbor's imperial conquest only needs personal greed or nobility fears, not national resentment. Kings were doing this long before there were nation states. This post is mainly concerned with future development.
In canon we see the outlines of a nationalist narrative — the fall of the Silver Millennium, the defeat of the Dark Kingdom et al., the birth of Crystal Tokyo — so I think it's safe to say that the Moon Kingdom of the future will be a nation. And that means that the early leadership has to choose to create a nation. Because unlike the Silver Crystal, a nation or even a state will not just be handed to Usagi. And it will not be an easy task.
Which comes to a core question: why even make a Moon Kindgom at all? Why not just, like, let people vote and figure it out themselves? Why even attempt state building and nation building, when both are known to be so hard? The case to build a nation is pretty easy, when you have such a ready-built national myth, and leaders with such a strong sense of purpose. The case to build a state around which to build the nation in the first place is much harder.
Canon, for once, gives us essentially zero clues on the genesis of the state. The only thing we know is that the Sailor Guardians have a lot of power, and they use that power to protect people. It's not a huge leap to see what they do as Max Weber's definition of a state which involves legitimate violence. If beating up on Youma and space aliens is legitimate violence, then they're all acting like a state from the first time they said "Make Up!" It's technically vigilantism, but I don't think anyone in government is going to tell them to stop doing it.
In my view, there is not a huge difference between a group running a "protection racket" and a government -- especially in feudal and pre-feudal systems. Mercenary companies could and did conquer territory for themselves, which were eventually seen as legitimate kingdoms. The yakuza are largely descended from the nobility of Japan that lost the war of the Meiji Restoration; they actually do some measure of real protection, and not just protection from themselves.
It's not to see the Sailor Team, essentially a vigilante gang with clearly structured leadership, has the potential to evolve into a state if they keep protecting people, and if other people begin to follow their orders. Modern states are formed for a variety of reasons, including for security amongst dangerous neighbors, for the promotion and safety of trade, and to have an official way of conflict resolution. My first post on Crime handled the last case, and it's obvious to see that these women are a defense against hostile aliens. I don't think any of these gals have a clue how to run an economy, though.
In our fanfiction though, there won't be a grand moment where people suddenly decide to found a state. In the distant future of the setting, they'll probably identify it as the coronation of Neo-Queen Serenity, but that's just ceremony. I'm not saying that ceremony isn't important, it's just not close to the whole story.
There will be two habitable places on the Moon early on in our story -- Moonbase Alpha in Plato Crater and Moon Castle on the "shore" of Mare Serentiatis. They are only close in a relative sense, with ~1320 km of lunar surface between them, roughly the distance from New York to Chicago, or Paris to Madrid. But much, much closer than any other settlements, and reachable within an hour or two of flight by both sides (no sonic booms in no atmosphere).
I'm sure we're going to write chapters on the first meetings, and how things start at the castle. But if those settlements become permanent, which they will for various plot reasons, they will face common problems: obtaining resources, trade, tourism, and security from the Earthly states that come to visit. Eventually, the states of Earth will come knocking, looking for resources. And so the people of the Moon will have to decide what to do, collectively.
This collective decision will look a lot more like a committee meeting than a stained glass window featuring Usagi bearing the scepter and tiara beneath the Moonbase Alpha mission patch. We're deconstructing, after all. There will be some Zoom meetings in there too, not just the Founders around a table doing heroic Founding Things. (The stained glass will come later.)
As we move on to larger settlements, the people running the state will try to build an identity out of the people who come up to the Moon. (Not all states form this way. Many nationalists are outside the state trying to remove the colonizers, but there's no reason for that to happen here.) It's not an ethnic identity, but is more likely to be a cultural one, as Americans and Canadians have. I think Princess Mars, in particular, is going to advocate that their new beginning is a chance to start a revolution in people's hearts, one of love and passion. Probably joined by Princess Uranus, who will want to guide a new era. (See! It's canon!)
But let me bring up an old era first. There's been a meme going around about women being surprised how often men think about the Roman Empire. I admit that I am male, and I have brought them up here an awful lot. But they're useful, because they cover a lot of different peoples and governments, and they lasted a thousand years! If your state has Millennium in the name, there aren't many other examples to think of. (There is only one state today that has lasted over one thousand years, the Republic of San Marino.)
But you know who else thought about the Roman Empire? Pretty much every other state. There's probably no more widely claimed thing than being the true successor to the Roman Empire. Pretty much every nation in Europe has claimed to be the successor to Rome, trying to reclaim lost glories, even while Rome itself still existed over in the Eastern half. The Germans claimed to be Rome, having not really ever been a part of Rome, but who cares when the Pope says it's okay? Russia claimed to be the Third Rome, while the United States' symbolism and architecture is intended to evoke the Roman Republic. While it's a bit about recapturing past glories, it's also about claiming new greatness.
More or less the same thing is going on with the nation building project in China, where the newly invented people of the Han nation are reflecting the ancient Han Emperor. Nationalism is a story that says that the people who live in a place are the ones that belong there, because they always have lived there.
But if you step back to our national myth for a new Moon Kingdom, it's not quite the same. First of all, it's not going back to Rome or Han, it's inspired by something much further back and more mysterious. Only Minako and Setsuna really remember much more than the occasional glimpse. No one really wants to bring back the glorious state quite the way it was. In fact, Princess Pluto will be deeply worried about trying to resurrect the Silver Millennium too closely. After all, it turned out very badly for everyone. All states must eventually end, but it ended up failing utterly.
What the nation-building exercise then becomes is a reflection of the desires of the people of the Moon, and especially its greatest people. If they're going to be guiding into a new era, then they will build a culture by example, and it will become part of people's identity. There's no legitimacy to be gained by following ancient traditions or Rome, so they can build a truly feminist state without worrying about the past.
Our new Moon Kingdom will not be an excessively nationalist state, largely because leadership does not need the legitimize its rule the way. With the power in their persons, and the claim on what is an actual uninhabited territory, there's less need to justify themselves as an autochthonous people. At the same time, I don't see how they could escape the forces of realpolitik at our current level of development. People want to belong to things, be it nations, political parties or sports fandoms. (I've mentioned the Romans enough, but you can get all three of these together in the Nika riots.)
The one thing I don't get to is: what's beyond nationalism? Maybe the European Union just keeps getting bigger? Right now, nationalism is kicking the EU's ass, though. Marxists theoretically wanted an international revolution, but all of the communist states in real life eventually became staunchly nationalistic. Star Trek hints at a postnationalist world, but doesn't really have any way to get there. And then treats other alien species as other nations. Post-scarcity seems to be part of the equation, but I don't really know. I don't know if I can know.
Perhaps in the Crystal Tokyo of the the canon future, there's no need for nationalism. It's hard to say much at all; the only political activity we know of is the partisanship and terrorism of the Black Moon Clan, and we'll never get rid of all of those kinds. Neo-Queen Serenity is said to rarely leave the palace in this future, representing the beautiful but static End of History. I don't believe it. Takeuchi is feeding us a nationalist myth, not the real future of the world.
Don't assume that the Moon Kingdom will become this static, beautiful, unchanging place of eternal happiness. Because that is simply not a real place. The end state for both our fanfic Moon Kingdom and our canon Crystal Millennium can't really be static. What it means to be a subject of Her Royal Bunnyness will change over time, and that's a good thing.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto