European national identities were built on Germanic origin myths derived from Tacitus

Evidence

Before the creation of the nation-state, identity was shaped by ethnic status and a powerful sense of place. The recent scholarship on “medieval nationalisms,” much of which are situated around Benedict Anderson’s 1996 book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, does not suggest that medieval identities constituted some kind of pre-modern statehood. Ethnogenesis, the formation of identity according to one’s understanding of his or her origins, is a more apt descriptor for what went on in the Middle Ages. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 86 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The noble savage trope originated with Tacitus, not colonial Europeans — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1238; Tacitus’s Germania projected a polemical fantasy onto real peoples — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 1250; Medieval identity formed through ethnogenesis rather than national statehood — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 86 (+4 more)

Related

• Medieval identity formed through ethnogenesis rather than national statehood (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval identity was localized rather than European or continental (similarity 0.87)
• Tacitus’s Germania projected a polemical fantasy onto real peoples (similarity 0.84)
• The noble savage trope originated with Tacitus, not colonial Europeans (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Europeans had no European identity, only local one (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Medieval identity formed through ethnogenesis rather than national statehood #corroborates (0.40) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 86