1. Introduction

The “Matter of Britain” is the name given to a corpus of literature and legends associated with the first-millennium island of Great Britain and associated places. A mishmash of historical fact, out-and-out fiction and points in between, it gave national myths to a land which arguably did not exist, and created a patria around which patriotism could coalesce.

Which brings to me to this article: who do we speak of when we speak of the British? What is the nation state?

2. Westphalia And Britain-As-A-Legal-Entity

Kingdoms, tribes, principalities and dukedoms have a problem: where are they bounded and what happens when the dynasty fails? Before the 17th century island or peninsular realms had obvious borders but for continental powers it was less clear cut and they warred frequently over contested ground. The exhaustion of the Thirty Years’ War was solved by the Treaty, or “Peace” of Westphalia in 1648.

As a rough rule of thumb this is when the concept of the sovereign nation state arrived. A “nation” is a bunch of people who think of themselves as “us”, a “state” is a legal entity with legal continuity over time, and a “sovereign” is the legal source of all power and law. But put them together with defined boundaries and now you have a remarkably powerful legal entity that can survive the death of its dynasty and can develop democracy further. Such a state is termed a Westphalian state and proved so successful it eventually spread out of Europe to Asia, Africa and eventually the world.

If you have a Westphalian state you can have Westphalian sovereignty. Each state doesn’t interfere in the other’s internal affairs, each state interacts by international law, and peace can be obtained by diplomatic discussion between states.

3. Herder And Britain-as-a-Volk

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was a Prussian philosopher who contributed to Romantic nationalism by emphasizing the cultural uniqueness of nations. Herder argued that language, history, and cultural traditions such as folklore, dance, music and art were central to a national identity, which Herder called a Volksgeist and its people a Volk. Following the revolutions of 1843 these national identity concepts led to the German Empire and the Kingdom of Italy.

4. Renan And Britain-as-Consensus

Ernest Renan’s lecture “What is a Nation?” in 1882 further developed the concept of nationhood. Unlike Herder, Renan argued that a nation is not solely defined by race, language, or religion, but rather by a shared history and a desire to live together, a day-to-day plebiscite on who is the “us” in “us”.

5. Communism And The National Question

Nation states are great because you can put people in them. As the nineteenth century empires collapsed after WW1, whole new countries were invented to put them in: Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Turkey amongst others. This gave the Communists in Russia an interesting problem: if you want to replace national dictatorships of the bourgeoisie with a single worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat, is there a place for the nation state? Lenin said that national self-determination was a necessary condition for the victory of socialism, Stalin said that “national-cultural autonomy” would hinder the unification of nations into a higher proletariat dictatorship, and eventually the Soviets settled on nation states could exist until they could be merged.

Whilst all this was going on, Stalin came up with a handy definition of a nation: a group of people united by a combination of a common language, common territory, common economic life, common history, or common culture, in various degree. This a-la-carte choose-your-topping definition enabled more flexible definitions to evolve.

6. HMQ And Britain-As-Family

In a speech in South Africa in 1947 on the occasion of her 21st birthday the then-Princess Elizabeth made a vow that “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family”. During her speech she also used the phrases “British Family of Nations” and “Commonwealth”. The later HMQ Queen Elizabeth II was a slight woman who outlasted stouter men but her definition of “British Family of Nations”, albeit sentimental, allowed the existence of a still-extant Empire containing many lands, races and religions, and allowed the adjective “British” to be used for them all.

But in the 1960s as the Empire contracted, Commonwealth men and women with “British” on their passports migrated to the UK drawn by opportunities in the Home Nation. But many were not white and did not receive the welcome that “British Family of Nations” suggested. 

7. Powell And Britain-As-Racial-Ethnos

Enoch Powell was a British scholar, writer and politician who served as MP from 1950 to 1987 though not for the same party. He was also a massive racist who believed that races could not peacefully coexist in the same place and time. This definition of the country as an ethno-racial concept was popular and I insist that it swung the UK General Elections in 1970 and February 1974. But over time men and women of different races met, fell in love and had children, and in the last half-century the importance of racism in British politics has reduced greatly. The concurrent adoption of a weaker form by the new Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, adopting dog-whistles if not the full-fat version, drew the sting of Powell’s more overt stance.

8. Thatcher And Britain-As-Principles

Margaret Thatcher is nobody’s idea of an antipatriot, with her British patriotism loud, clear and expressed. But in contradistinction to Powell’s loyalty to the British racial ethnos she defined her patriotism as loyalty to British principles. This enabled her to privatise nationalized industries and move them to the free market, disconnecting the economy from nationality and from the land. But this opened Pandora’s box and that disconnect went on to enable the pro-Europeanism of Howe, the liberal interventionism of Blair, and ultimately the European Union’s supranationalism and even Euronationalism – “Europe-as-a-nation” – with phrases such as “The European Civil War” gaining traction. Distraught at this supercession she railed against Europeanism, but too late.

9. Hannan And Anglosphere Patriotism

Daniel Hannan did not invent concepts such as the Anglosphere or CANZUK (an agglomeration of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, what used to be called “The Old Commonwealth”). But he did popularize them and weaponize them in opposition to Euronationalism. Tactically it was a smart move, as it gave a valid alternative to membership of the European Union and enabled Brexit in 2016. But strategically it was a problem, as it further disconnected British nationalism from Britain.

This cumulated in the American version of National Conservatism and conferences such as the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Ironically transnational, it inspired and nourished Kemi Badenoch who returned from that conference in 2025 with a new mission statement of defending Western Civilisation. Which was nice. Unfortunately for her, a few days later President Trump dynamited the Western Alliance, cutting her off at the knees.

10. Techbros And Britain-As-A-Service

The confluence of AI, Cryptocurrency and social media has created the possibility of nation states being bypassed, and some billionaires – the techbros – have realized this. If you have AI you can automate bureaucracy, if you have cryptocurrency you can automate banking, and if you have social media you can dictate common thought and automate and monetise virtual labour (Varoufakis calls this latter point “technofeudalism”), and if you have all three you can bypass or build your own sovereign state. You can do it top-down as Curtis Yarvin suggests, by hollowing-out institutions, replacing them with loyalists, ignoring the courts and creating an autocracy, or bottom-up as Balaji Srinivasan suggests, by taking over a city or unincorporated land and building from there. The latter is being done by venture capitalists in the city of Próspera in Honduras, the former is currently being done by Musk in Washington, puppeting the United States like the cordyceps fungus puppets an ant. Even worse as per Ian Bremner, you can replace the nation state (at least in part) and create a stateless global dictatorship of the bourgeoisie beyond the dreams of Marx.

11. Leon And The Digital Nomads

In a recent set of comments, gadfly and professional tourist @Leon pointed out a problem that nobody has really solved. The internet has disconnected people from the nation state and common interests matter more than national identity. Combined with the impact of COVID, working-from-home and digital nomad visas, this enables the rich to flit from state to state at whim and makes it increasingly difficult to tax them. This cuts nation states off at the knees, with the wealthy no longer in the national “us” but in their own virtual and untethered State of the Very Rich. Solutions have been suggested but given that governments are beholden to the wealthy, they are unlikely to succeed and the autocratic alternative is spreading.

12. Conclusion

A map divided by lines and tiled by colour is called a “choropleth”. You’ve grown up with them your entire life, whether the pink of the British Empire, the red of the Soviet Union, the blue of the EU, or blue and red US election maps, and you’ve assumed this arrangement is eternal and universal. But it isn’t. As shown above humanity organizes itself differently over time and we are going thru another phase-shift. Will the nation state survive this?

I don’t know. I do know that the land will survive. There will still be national myths with archers in forests, magicians in caves and castles, and madmen in blue boxes. There will still be fields in which you can thrust your fist and have it come up green and wet. There will still be children playing in those fields, even if they don’t sing “Ringstone Round”. But what about the nation state? Will there still be a United Kingdom? Will there still be a Britain?

And, if there is, will it matter?

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