Historians of reddit, which country's history, other than your own, intrigues you the most?

Still don't agree.

With what, exactly?

Yugoslavia, czechoslovakia, East Germany are no more. Russia, Ukraine, Crimea?

East Germany's dissemination is called the "German Reunification." Why do you think that is?

To your other points, you are largely correct but this is what bothers me:

I think familiarity with a culture tends to make a person biased to thinking there is a fixed and immutable "core" of that country, and ignore exceptions as anomalies to their romantic narrative.

Culture changes over time, and certain areas of this country or that country might come into contention via war, political alliance, cultural influence, or what have you. There are also areas where frequent political upheaval or invasion give rise to a nebulous national identity that is hard to give a distinct timeline or border. You are right. You give salient examples of such.

This does not mean that all notions of national identity are driven strictly by romantic narrative. To use an example:

I've pointed out Northern Ireland. The sun never used to set on the British Empire; now the boundaries of the United Kingdom are unrecognizable from a century ago.

English hegemony as a distinct national identity can be traced directly back to 1510 via centralization under a single monarch of the Tudor dynasty, and possibly back to 1453 with French abdication at the end of the 100 Years' War.

Once again (and for the fourth time) I am referring to England and only England, not the United Kingdom and not the colonial totality of the English Empire, both of which are distinct and separate entities from England itself.

Yes, "romantic narratives" exist that try to trace England as an identity all the way back to pre-Roman conquest circa 120 C.E. I am not and never claimed to represent any of these narratives, and ignored them deliberately in the examples I cited.

Just because Czechoslovakia and Russia are ??? doesn't mean England isn't 1510 in big, bold letters. It depends entirely on context.

/r/history Thread Parent