18
To sum up, the competing explanation that the Homeland is shaped by the nation
fails as a general explanation because historically membership in the nation often
depended on the prior definition of the shape of the Homeland. Rather than that shared
conceptions of the nation determine the territory of the homeland, it seems that shared
conceptions of a Homeland often played a crucial role in the establishment of nations. In
other words, in important historical cases the competing explanation has the causation
exactly backwards. Moreover, it comes perilously close to a tautology to argue on the one
hand that the Homeland is defined by the spatial distribution of the nation and then, when
asked for a definition of the nation to argue on the other hand that it is defined by the
Homeland.
17
(I.e., “France is where the French live” and “the French live in France.”)
While the question of territorial attachment has been recognized as important for
long time by (political) geographers, it has been posed almost always for individual
cases. For example, in 1903 the famous French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache
attempted to answer the question of “What is France?” in his famous Tableau de la
géographie de la France. He asked “How did a fragment of the earth’s surface which is
neither a peninsula nor an island and which from the standpoint of physical geography is
not, strictly speaking, a unit (un tout), come to achieve the status of a political country
(contrée politique) and ultimately become a fatherland (patrie)?” (Guiomar, in Nora (ed.)
English Ed. 1997: 187) Appealing to a Ratzelian principle, Vidal de la Blache argued that
it was France’s very diversity that created its unity. (Guiomar 1997: 1075) It is now
recognized, however, that Vidal de la Blache never attempted to provide a comprehensive
and theoretical systematic answer. (Guiomar 1997: 1088)
17
See footnote 8. At minimum, some exogenous factors must influence the shape of the Homeland. This
would also have to be true if Nation and Homeland were mutually constitutive. Herder’s arguments are
insufficient.
Convention