Polyethnicity & National Unity in World History

by William H. McNeill

Schools have taught us to expect that people should live in separate national states. But the historical records shows that ethnic homogeneity was a barbarian trait; civilized societies mingled peoples of diverse backgrounds into ethnically plural and hierarchically ordered polities. The exception was northwestern Europe. There, peculiar circumstances permitted the preservation of a fair simulacrum of national unity while a complex civilization developed. The ideal of national unity was enthusiastically propagated by historians and teachers even in parts of Europe where mingled nationalities prevailed. Overseas, European empires and zones for settlement were always ethnically plural; but in northwestern Europe the tide has turned only since about 1920, and now diverse groups abound in Paris and London as well as in New York and Sydney. Age-old factors promoting the mingling of diverse populations have asserted this power, and continue to do so even when governments in the ex-colonial lands of Africa and Asia are trying hard to create new nations within what are sometimes quite arbitrary boundaries. In demonstrating how unusual and transitory the concept of national ethnic homogeneity has been in world history, William McNeill offers an understanding that may help human minds to adjust to the social reality around them.

Genres: History

96 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 1986

About the author

William Hardy McNeill was a historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in The Rise of the West (1963). He was the Robert A. Milikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987.
In addition to winning the U.S. National Book Award in History and Biography in 1964 for The Rise of the West, McNeill received several other awards and honors. In 1985 he served as president of the American Historical Association.
In 1996, McNeill won the prestigious Erasmus Prize, which the Crown Prince of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander presented to him at Amsterdam's Royal Palace.
In 1999, Modern Library named The Rise of the West of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th century.
In 2009, he won the National Humanities Medal. In February 2010, President Barack Obama, a former University of Chicago professor himself, awarded McNeill the National Humanities Medal to recognize "his exceptional talent as a teacher and scholar at the University of Chicago and as an author of more than 20 books, including The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963), which traces civilizations through 5,000 years of recorded history".