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Now what did unite it then? The sacred language. The sacred dead language. In case of Europe, that would be the sacred dead language of Latin. And that is why we call it the Latin civilisation, of all things.

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It is important to understand that the linguistic map did not really align with the political one. What is now Southern France used to speak vernaculars very different from those of the north, yet, similar to the Catalan vernaculars in the south.

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There was no single standardised French either, but rather lots of Romance (mostly) vernaculars, again, distinctive from each other, often to the point of mutual unintelligibility.

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How many vernaculars there were in Europe? The answer is yes. There were many and many. There was no single standardised German, for example, but rather a continuum of West Germanic vernaculars, distinctive from each other, often to the point of mutual unintelligibility.

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Imagine Europe as of 1500. There are lots of polities, large and small. Each polity is populated by the human beings who communicate with each other with the help of sounds. Their means of verbal communication are called vernaculars. Sound-based languages of the everyday life.

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Does the (wrong) Huntingtonian classification contain a grain of important truth within it? I think it does. Let’s take a glance at the “Western” vs “Orthodox” border, for example. Doesn't make much sense logically, yet clearly represents some reality on the ground.

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You cannot classify berries into the red, exotic, expensive, poisonous to dogs, growing only in Peru, and the ones you had absolutely loved in childhood. But that is exactly what Huntington is doing here:

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You know what does this Huntingtonian classification remind to me? A fictional “Chinese Encyclopaedia” by an Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges:

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani.org · 28/11/2024

In his “Clash of Civilizations” Samuel Huntington identified eight civilisations on this planet: Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Western, Orthodox, Latin American, and, possibly, African I have always found this list a bit dubious, not to say self-contradictory:

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Samuel, Huntington. "The clash of civilizations." Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22-49.

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani.org · 28/11/2024

We tend to forget how insanely rich was the UK compared to continental Europe just 100 years ago. Now look how did the tables reverse. Honestly, I find it unavoidable. A hegemon is bound to acquire nonsensical notions & practices. Then the hegemony goes, and all there is left is nonsense

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Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani.org · 24/11/2024

Haven’t had such a pleasant reading for a long, long time. Great content, great style, presentation

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What we forget is how thin it was. The civilisation of Russia proper existed as a patchwork of towns and noble estates surrounded by the vast sea of peasants. The distance between peasantry and the educated class was absolutely surreal And the better the soil, the worse it was

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This map shows how thin was the civilisation of Russia proper comparatively speaking. We tend to imagine old Russia, as the world of nobility, palaces, balls, and duels. And that is not wrong, because this world really existed, and produced some great works of art and literature

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The most literate regions of Empire are its Lutheran provinces, including Finland, Estonia & Latvia Then goes, roughly speaking, Poland-Lithuania Russia proper has only two clusters of high literacy: Moscow & St Petersburg. Surrounded by the vast ocean of illiterate peasantry

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Revolution and the Jews Literacy rates in European Russia, 1897. Obviously, the data is imperfect. Still, it represents one crucial pattern for understanding the late Russian Empire. That is the wide gap in human capital between the core of empire and its Western borderland.

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While there is an enormous number & diversity of niche, obscure, unobvious industries hidden in the back end, the four most basic and characteristic ones are: metallurgy, chem & petrochem, industrial machinery. Four Mother Industries the rest of manufacturing sector is based upon.

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Front End, however, makes only for the final, ultimate link of the manufacturing chain. Its earlier stages. Its earlier, more basic elements remain hidden from our sight. We will be calling them the Back End of manufacturing sector. Back end is whatever you don't see. Basic Industries.

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Long answer: Let's divide the manufacturing industry into two unequal sectors - Front End and Back End. Whatever you find on a supermarket shelf belongs to the Front End. Toys, clothes, bicycles, appliances. Consumer goods. Front end is whatever you see. Production of consumer goods = Front End.

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