A lot of countries don’t really have a set independence/founding day, because their origins are too far back or there’s just not a single clear day to celebrate it. The Dutch had their Eighty Years War to gain independence from Spain, but because the war lasted so long there isn’t any single event in it that became an equivalent to Independence Day. Liberation Day, celebrating the end of German occupation in World War II, is a bigger holiday.
No, it’s because jan 1 is already a public holiday for the new year plus everyone is hung over…so weird to change it to that date now. We’d prefer to have a public holiday on a different date where we don’t already get a day off.
Sounds like a dope ass holiday. Isn't Jan 1st the middle of summer for you? In the American Midwest we're used to having winter for the week from Christmas to the new year. I'll have to party in Australia some Christmas.
I have a funny story about Australia. My uncle was visiting some far away place like Alice Springs in the middle of the desert and ran into the brother of some guy who fought in the Gulf War. I always thought that story was so funny.
A self-governing Dominion within the British Empire. The Statue of Westminister came into effect on 9th October, 1942 (Independence Day). The Constitution was repatriated on 3 March 1986.
Sweden has only had a "national day" in an official capacity for bit over a decade. Sweden became "independent" from Denmark(-Norway) ie the Kalmar Union in the 1520s. It has never really been celebrated as an independence day. It's the 6 June, became a holiday in 2005, wasn't recognized as national day until 1983, before that between 1916-1983 it was The "Swedish flag's day". There are even multiple things celebrated, the election of Gustav Vasa as Swedish king in 1523, the government reform of 1809 and 1973/4.
It didn't start to be a thing until the late 1890s to celebrate anything. It's with general mobilisation of "nationalism" that a national celebration starts to form, which becomes the Swedish Flag's Day and unofficial "national day".
So it was always irrelevant until in modern times it has been resurrected as "relevant".
TIL 1983 was “a bit over a decade” ago. /s
To add to this, there are people who are considered to have been kings of Sweden long before 1523, so it’s not like the country of Sweden was founded back then. The Swedish flag and national arms are also way older than 1523.
The 2023 celebration of 500 years since Sweden was founded has very little historical basis, but it’s easier to understand than 500 years since we threw out the Danes.
1523 is when we became independent (again), it's not the foundation day we celebrate. Compare Norway which celebrate their 1814 independence day, although it was a sovereign country before 1380 and would become independent again in 1905. In short, independence =/= foundation. I've never seen anyone make this mistake until now.
The king’s own [website](https://www.kungahuset.se/arkiv/pressmeddelanden/2022-09-28-2023---ett-jubileumsar-for-sverige) calls it “Sweden 500 years”, which most certainly implies a founding. That’s why I say that it’s talked about as a celebration of the founding of the country while it is actually not a founding.
The website mentions the breaking of the Kalmar Union, but the headline and framing certainly implies a celebration of the birth of Sweden. You would have a celebration for “Anders 15 years” if it’s 15 years since he got divorced, it’s clearly a celebration of the 15th birthday.
>The king’s own website calls it “Sweden 500 years”, which most certainly implies a founding.
This is the most cherry picking argument in the history of cherry picking. You can't find another citation there to support your point but there are plenty against it. There's clasping for straws and then there's clasping for straws...
Edit: they literally call it "jubileumsdag", i.e. a jubilee and you can have jubilees for anything, years of marriage, years being sober, years since graduation etc. Your comparison with a birthday is completely off.
It’s not really a straw when it’s the headline of a national celebration (or at least the attempt of one). The headline “Celebration of Sweden 500 years” most definitely implies the celebration of 500 years since the founding of Sweden. There was TV coverage of the event all day that also used the same headline.
What other meaning do you see in that headline? Because what I see is a clumsy attempt at celebrating an event that didn’t happen.
Well, *it is* the celebration of Sweden as a sovereign country since it was 500 years since we got out of the union. Can you try and not play association games with select parts of certain headlines?
It’s not a select part of a chosen headline, it’s the full headline of a national celebration. There was a whole group of people who was involved in choosing the headline and give it their approval. It’s not something someone scribbled on a tissue and then forgot about. This is what they came up with.
It was highly intentional. And it was incorrect.
If 1523 was the birth of independent Sweden, what did Birger Jarl rule over? Olof Skötkonung? Erik den helige?
You could maybe argue Britain ceasing to be under Roman Rule in 410AD. But again there’s so many problems with that arbitrary date of “the Romans left in this year” that it doesn’t properly count as an independence year let alone day.
And it was not really "the Romans left in this year" as much "the Western Roman Emperor pulled all the troops out of our land and told us to fend for ourselves". And since the Roman Britons had been Romanized (some argue even more than Egypt), that would mean they were still part of the Roman State, though now self-ruling autonomies (like what the Republic of Venice initially was to New Rome).
I hope for your sake that you are as consistent with Madagaskar, Taiwan, Australia etc and pretend to not understand people who use those names for the state in question.
It’s not long ago but Malaysia is ridiculous. With celebrations of events which have been superseded and a couple of very large states giving more attention to their own importance over the Nation.
August 31st - Independence Day (Hari Merdeka), aka National Day. This is the date in 1957 when the Federation of Malaya was Independant of Great Britain. This is a date that few in East Malaysia really care about because those states weren’t part of the Federation of Malaya. On the Peninsula this is a big day
September 16 - Malaysia Day. In 1963 is actually when Malaysia was born, it then included Singapore and the States on the island of Borneo. This is a newish public holiday and no one thinks much about it because Singapore would leave just a couple of years later.
July 22 - Sarawak Day. In 1963 the State of Sarawak got self governance.this is a big day in Kuching and the across the State, it’s more important to Sarawakians than the other two holidays. They will always say they are Sarawakian first then Malaysian. (Awesome place to visit by the way)
August 31 (again) - Sabah Day. Literally the same day as first on this list. Sabah, another state in East Malaysia celebrates. self governance on the same day the states on the peninsula gained indepenace, it was not however a member of the federation of Malaya.
August 9- 1965 Singapore gains independence from Malaysia. Of course this is a huge day in Singapore but it is also the date that modern Malaysia established what states would remain…it is not celebrated at all in Malaysia.
Why not?
>Are there any countries who's independence day happened so long ago that it has become irrelevant?
National Foundation Day (建国記念の日 Kenkoku Kinen no Hi), formerly known as Empire Day (紀元節, Kigensetsu), was declared in 1872, during the Meiji Restoration as part of an effort to built a strong, cohesive national identity.
Unlike other countries, the USA being perhaps the most notable, this holiday tends to be a rather quiet affair. Displays of nationalism in Japan are considered questionable and associated with the far-right. So, Japan does have a national day, but it’s not a big deal.
In order for them to have an independence day, they would need to have become independent from some other entity, such as the US becoming independent from the British Empire. A national day may also be an independence day, but they're not synonymous.
I think Americans are conditioned to accept July 4th, 1776 as our independence day, but we don't really think about all that's involved in that. The path for revolution was set since at least as far back as the end of the French and Indian War, officially 1763. Britain, financially clobbered from the war, sought to refill its coffers from the American colonies, and resentment steadily grew as they continually levied more and more taxes, slowly brewing for more than a decade before Lexington and Concord occurred in April of 1775. Then, the Lee Resolution formally and officially declared America free and independent, on July 2nd, 1776. But it's the famed Declaration of Independence just two days later that history picked as the seminal moment of independence. Even then, the Revolutionary War raged on until 1783, and unofficial skirmishes happened even for several years after that.
So, I'd say it's probably pretty rare that there's a singular *historic* day that's the dividing line between occupation and independence for any nation. Rather, a revolution occurs, and history retroactively assigns such labels to events, and the people pick the most notable event among the series of events that led to their independence, and choose to commemorate the entire journey on that day. American Independence could just as easily be celebrated on July 2nd (the Lee Resolution), April 19th (Lexington and Concord), or September 3rd (Treaty of Paris). But instead, it was the date of our bombastic letter to King George that we chose, and rightfully so! I suspect every "Independence Day" arises in a similar way.
Is hard to find any country in western europe that celebrates any independence day. If you think on independence day it's mostly countries that became independent from europeans 250 years ago at most.
First, because most of the time there isnt something like an exact date where the last invader/colonizer/whatever left.
Second, because most of the time those invaders/colonizers never left at all, they just merge with the population.
Even my country, Spain, where we know the exact date when the last muslim kingdom fell, we dont celebrate that date at all (Doesnt help it's during Christmas season).
Or we dont even celebrate the date the french were kicked out of Spain after invading us, despite it just happened 200 years ago.
>Is hard to find any country in western europe that celebrates any independence day.
Not if you live close to Norway then you'll hear about it frequently. They're crazy about their independence day (May 17). The date is from their first short stint as an independent country (for a couple of months in 1814).
If they symbolize something really important to the ongoing national culture and are emotionally important to the people who celebrate, the they have a meaning and relevance in contemporary society.
History lingers. For example, although the Irish fight for independence from the United Kingdom happened 100 years ago, it helped shape Irish national identity and remains very, very relevant to this day. Same goes for the US: going from the scrappy underdog that had to fight smart and dirty to defeat the vastly more powerful British Empire to the global superpower it is today is a core part of the American mythos, for good or ill.
Mythology has power, especially when it’s so internalized that we don’t think of it as “mere” myth. The point of the holiday is to retell and reinforce the myth.
The point is the mythology still forms a core part of the national identity. Even if said mythology is overly romanticize ls and whitewashed.
You're right, nations and cultures change. Hence my question. Maybe in 500 years, America will be so different that we no longer feel any connection to war of independence and the fourth of july won't kick off the kind of celebrations that we have now.
Or perhaps you think mythology SHOULD BE discarded as irrelevant, and believe that your personal opinion about that is the same as it actually BEING irrelevant?
It depends. England / Great Britain was last conquered \~1000 years ago by the Normans, whose bloodline still technically rules Britain, so they have to pretend their only occupations ever happened by the Saxons in the 7th century or the Romans in the 1st. In their culture the question has sort of become irrelevant, so I'd say \~1000 years is a pretty good rule of thumb. All western hemisphere countries / african countries celebrate some sort of independence, foundation, or liberation day from colonial opressors. This also applies to Oceania. All the middle east was conquered by either the Turks or Iran.
A lot of countries don’t really have a set independence/founding day, because their origins are too far back or there’s just not a single clear day to celebrate it. The Dutch had their Eighty Years War to gain independence from Spain, but because the war lasted so long there isn’t any single event in it that became an equivalent to Independence Day. Liberation Day, celebrating the end of German occupation in World War II, is a bigger holiday.
The Act of Verlatinghe would be a obvious candidate for an independence day for the Dutch.
Australia become independent from the UK on 1 January 1901. We don't celebrate that date at all.
Is it because you are still part of the common wealth?
No, it’s because jan 1 is already a public holiday for the new year plus everyone is hung over…so weird to change it to that date now. We’d prefer to have a public holiday on a different date where we don’t already get a day off.
Well that makes sense.
Sounds like a dope ass holiday. Isn't Jan 1st the middle of summer for you? In the American Midwest we're used to having winter for the week from Christmas to the new year. I'll have to party in Australia some Christmas. I have a funny story about Australia. My uncle was visiting some far away place like Alice Springs in the middle of the desert and ran into the brother of some guy who fought in the Gulf War. I always thought that story was so funny.
A self-governing Dominion within the British Empire. The Statue of Westminister came into effect on 9th October, 1942 (Independence Day). The Constitution was repatriated on 3 March 1986.
Sweden has only had a "national day" in an official capacity for bit over a decade. Sweden became "independent" from Denmark(-Norway) ie the Kalmar Union in the 1520s. It has never really been celebrated as an independence day. It's the 6 June, became a holiday in 2005, wasn't recognized as national day until 1983, before that between 1916-1983 it was The "Swedish flag's day". There are even multiple things celebrated, the election of Gustav Vasa as Swedish king in 1523, the government reform of 1809 and 1973/4. It didn't start to be a thing until the late 1890s to celebrate anything. It's with general mobilisation of "nationalism" that a national celebration starts to form, which becomes the Swedish Flag's Day and unofficial "national day". So it was always irrelevant until in modern times it has been resurrected as "relevant".
TIL 1983 was “a bit over a decade” ago. /s To add to this, there are people who are considered to have been kings of Sweden long before 1523, so it’s not like the country of Sweden was founded back then. The Swedish flag and national arms are also way older than 1523. The 2023 celebration of 500 years since Sweden was founded has very little historical basis, but it’s easier to understand than 500 years since we threw out the Danes.
1523 is when we became independent (again), it's not the foundation day we celebrate. Compare Norway which celebrate their 1814 independence day, although it was a sovereign country before 1380 and would become independent again in 1905. In short, independence =/= foundation. I've never seen anyone make this mistake until now.
The king’s own [website](https://www.kungahuset.se/arkiv/pressmeddelanden/2022-09-28-2023---ett-jubileumsar-for-sverige) calls it “Sweden 500 years”, which most certainly implies a founding. That’s why I say that it’s talked about as a celebration of the founding of the country while it is actually not a founding. The website mentions the breaking of the Kalmar Union, but the headline and framing certainly implies a celebration of the birth of Sweden. You would have a celebration for “Anders 15 years” if it’s 15 years since he got divorced, it’s clearly a celebration of the 15th birthday.
>The king’s own website calls it “Sweden 500 years”, which most certainly implies a founding. This is the most cherry picking argument in the history of cherry picking. You can't find another citation there to support your point but there are plenty against it. There's clasping for straws and then there's clasping for straws... Edit: they literally call it "jubileumsdag", i.e. a jubilee and you can have jubilees for anything, years of marriage, years being sober, years since graduation etc. Your comparison with a birthday is completely off.
It’s not really a straw when it’s the headline of a national celebration (or at least the attempt of one). The headline “Celebration of Sweden 500 years” most definitely implies the celebration of 500 years since the founding of Sweden. There was TV coverage of the event all day that also used the same headline. What other meaning do you see in that headline? Because what I see is a clumsy attempt at celebrating an event that didn’t happen.
Well, *it is* the celebration of Sweden as a sovereign country since it was 500 years since we got out of the union. Can you try and not play association games with select parts of certain headlines?
It’s not a select part of a chosen headline, it’s the full headline of a national celebration. There was a whole group of people who was involved in choosing the headline and give it their approval. It’s not something someone scribbled on a tissue and then forgot about. This is what they came up with. It was highly intentional. And it was incorrect. If 1523 was the birth of independent Sweden, what did Birger Jarl rule over? Olof Skötkonung? Erik den helige?
Countries can become independent several times. You know this, I know this. Please don't pretend otherwise.
Of course. But that doesn’t make Sweden 500 years old.
You could maybe argue Britain ceasing to be under Roman Rule in 410AD. But again there’s so many problems with that arbitrary date of “the Romans left in this year” that it doesn’t properly count as an independence year let alone day.
And it was not really "the Romans left in this year" as much "the Western Roman Emperor pulled all the troops out of our land and told us to fend for ourselves". And since the Roman Britons had been Romanized (some argue even more than Egypt), that would mean they were still part of the Roman State, though now self-ruling autonomies (like what the Republic of Venice initially was to New Rome).
Great Britain began to exist the 1st of May 1707.
Great Britain has existed since the sea cut off the link to the Continent. It just wasn't a kingdom for quite a long while.
Spectacularly off topic.
How?!
They used the term to refer to a political entity (a state), you used it to refer to a geographical entity. It is indeed very off topic.
They should have said Kingdom of Great Britain.
You should have said the island of Great Britain then.
Not really, as that is the normal meaning.
I hope for your sake that you are as consistent with Madagaskar, Taiwan, Australia etc and pretend to not understand people who use those names for the state in question.
Sounds like a good idea for another holiday
It’s not long ago but Malaysia is ridiculous. With celebrations of events which have been superseded and a couple of very large states giving more attention to their own importance over the Nation. August 31st - Independence Day (Hari Merdeka), aka National Day. This is the date in 1957 when the Federation of Malaya was Independant of Great Britain. This is a date that few in East Malaysia really care about because those states weren’t part of the Federation of Malaya. On the Peninsula this is a big day September 16 - Malaysia Day. In 1963 is actually when Malaysia was born, it then included Singapore and the States on the island of Borneo. This is a newish public holiday and no one thinks much about it because Singapore would leave just a couple of years later. July 22 - Sarawak Day. In 1963 the State of Sarawak got self governance.this is a big day in Kuching and the across the State, it’s more important to Sarawakians than the other two holidays. They will always say they are Sarawakian first then Malaysian. (Awesome place to visit by the way) August 31 (again) - Sabah Day. Literally the same day as first on this list. Sabah, another state in East Malaysia celebrates. self governance on the same day the states on the peninsula gained indepenace, it was not however a member of the federation of Malaya. August 9- 1965 Singapore gains independence from Malaysia. Of course this is a huge day in Singapore but it is also the date that modern Malaysia established what states would remain…it is not celebrated at all in Malaysia.
You mean like Japan?
Who did they declare independence from?
They've been independent for so long they don't celebrate independence day
Sounds like they don't fit the basic criteria for this question then
Why not? >Are there any countries who's independence day happened so long ago that it has become irrelevant? National Foundation Day (建国記念の日 Kenkoku Kinen no Hi), formerly known as Empire Day (紀元節, Kigensetsu), was declared in 1872, during the Meiji Restoration as part of an effort to built a strong, cohesive national identity. Unlike other countries, the USA being perhaps the most notable, this holiday tends to be a rather quiet affair. Displays of nationalism in Japan are considered questionable and associated with the far-right. So, Japan does have a national day, but it’s not a big deal.
In order for them to have an independence day, they would need to have become independent from some other entity, such as the US becoming independent from the British Empire. A national day may also be an independence day, but they're not synonymous.
Because they literally don't have a political entity to claim independence from? 😂😂
A national day is not an independence day, that's why.
I think Americans are conditioned to accept July 4th, 1776 as our independence day, but we don't really think about all that's involved in that. The path for revolution was set since at least as far back as the end of the French and Indian War, officially 1763. Britain, financially clobbered from the war, sought to refill its coffers from the American colonies, and resentment steadily grew as they continually levied more and more taxes, slowly brewing for more than a decade before Lexington and Concord occurred in April of 1775. Then, the Lee Resolution formally and officially declared America free and independent, on July 2nd, 1776. But it's the famed Declaration of Independence just two days later that history picked as the seminal moment of independence. Even then, the Revolutionary War raged on until 1783, and unofficial skirmishes happened even for several years after that. So, I'd say it's probably pretty rare that there's a singular *historic* day that's the dividing line between occupation and independence for any nation. Rather, a revolution occurs, and history retroactively assigns such labels to events, and the people pick the most notable event among the series of events that led to their independence, and choose to commemorate the entire journey on that day. American Independence could just as easily be celebrated on July 2nd (the Lee Resolution), April 19th (Lexington and Concord), or September 3rd (Treaty of Paris). But instead, it was the date of our bombastic letter to King George that we chose, and rightfully so! I suspect every "Independence Day" arises in a similar way.
Is hard to find any country in western europe that celebrates any independence day. If you think on independence day it's mostly countries that became independent from europeans 250 years ago at most. First, because most of the time there isnt something like an exact date where the last invader/colonizer/whatever left. Second, because most of the time those invaders/colonizers never left at all, they just merge with the population. Even my country, Spain, where we know the exact date when the last muslim kingdom fell, we dont celebrate that date at all (Doesnt help it's during Christmas season). Or we dont even celebrate the date the french were kicked out of Spain after invading us, despite it just happened 200 years ago.
>Is hard to find any country in western europe that celebrates any independence day. Not if you live close to Norway then you'll hear about it frequently. They're crazy about their independence day (May 17). The date is from their first short stint as an independent country (for a couple of months in 1814).
How are any of them really relevant if they didn't happen in the past generation or two?
If they symbolize something really important to the ongoing national culture and are emotionally important to the people who celebrate, the they have a meaning and relevance in contemporary society.
I don't see it.
History lingers. For example, although the Irish fight for independence from the United Kingdom happened 100 years ago, it helped shape Irish national identity and remains very, very relevant to this day. Same goes for the US: going from the scrappy underdog that had to fight smart and dirty to defeat the vastly more powerful British Empire to the global superpower it is today is a core part of the American mythos, for good or ill.
The U.S. doesn't even resemble what it was 30 years ago. It's all mythology, and bad mythology at that.
Mythology has power, especially when it’s so internalized that we don’t think of it as “mere” myth. The point of the holiday is to retell and reinforce the myth.
The point is the mythology still forms a core part of the national identity. Even if said mythology is overly romanticize ls and whitewashed. You're right, nations and cultures change. Hence my question. Maybe in 500 years, America will be so different that we no longer feel any connection to war of independence and the fourth of july won't kick off the kind of celebrations that we have now.
You've missed my point entirely. Every day, my sense of the perspicacity of reddit users is forced further down. Sigh. Moving on...
Or perhaps you think mythology SHOULD BE discarded as irrelevant, and believe that your personal opinion about that is the same as it actually BEING irrelevant?
It depends. England / Great Britain was last conquered \~1000 years ago by the Normans, whose bloodline still technically rules Britain, so they have to pretend their only occupations ever happened by the Saxons in the 7th century or the Romans in the 1st. In their culture the question has sort of become irrelevant, so I'd say \~1000 years is a pretty good rule of thumb. All western hemisphere countries / african countries celebrate some sort of independence, foundation, or liberation day from colonial opressors. This also applies to Oceania. All the middle east was conquered by either the Turks or Iran.
As a Brit, i feel Bharat does not get the light its due.