As the twentieth century draws to a close, we are learning to see the extent to which accounts and definitions of cultures are influenced by human biases and purposes, benevolent in what they include, incorporate, and validate, less so in what they exclude and demote. A number of recent studies have argued openly acknowledged their culture's hybrid past, nineteenth-century European commentators habitually passed over these acknowledgments without comment.
Another example is the use of "tradition" to determine national identity. Images of European authority over other cultures were shaped and reinforced during the nineteenth century, through the manufacture and reinterpretation of "rituals, ceremonies, and traditions". At a time when many of the institutions that had helped maintain imperial societies were beginning as if her rule were not mainly a matter of recent edict but of age-old custom.
Similar constructions have also been made by native cultures about their precolonial past, as in the case of Algeria during its war of independence from France, when decolonization encouraged Algerians to create idealized images of what they believed their culture to have been prior to French occupation. This strategy is at work of independence elsewhere, giving their adherents something to revive and admire.
Though for the most part colonized societies have won their independence, in many cultures the imperial attitudes of uniqueness and superiority underlying colonial conquest remain. There is in all nationally defined cultures an aspiration to sovereignty and dominance that expresses itself in definitions of cultural identity. At the same time, paradoxically, we from being unitary, monolithic, or autonomous, cultures actually include more "foreign" elements than they consciously exclude.
What this question is testing
Topic
The author is showing that the way nations and cultures define themselves isn't neutral — it's shaped by present-day anxieties and political needs, and especially by the manufacture of "tradition."
Framework
Highlight Noteworthy. The author isn't arguing against a single opponent. The author is showcasing a body of recent scholarship that makes a striking point.
Main Point
The simpler version: when a culture says it's usually a story they're telling themselves now to serve current needs. Imperial powers do it (Britain in India, dressing up Victoria's rule as ancient tradition). Decolonizing nations do it (Algerians inventing an idealized pre-French past). But the truth, the author says, is that all cultures are mixed up — they include far more "foreign" stuff than they let on.
P1: Greek civilization, retold
Recent scholars say modern stories about cultural identity reflect modern anxieties. Greek civilization actually had African and Eastern roots — but nineteenth-century European scholars buried that to support European dominance.
P2: How "tradition" gets faked
Nineteenth-century Europeans manufactured ceremonies and traditions to legitimize their power. When old institutions were weakening and they needed to look more legitimate, they projected their authority backward in time. Queen Victoria becomes empress of India — and they celebrate her with "traditional" jamborees that aren't actually traditional at all. The point of calling them "traditional" is to make a brand-new edict feel ancient.
P3: This isn't just an imperial trick
The same thing happens in colonized cultures. During the war for Algerian independence, Algerians constructed idealized images of their precolonial culture. Revolutionary poets do this in lots of independence movements — giving people a noble past to rally around.
Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.