For the past couple of days or so I have been reading a book (review forthcoming) that is about the little peoples who inhabited the area originally known as Lotharingia. This name is not likely to be very familiar to people, but the lands of Lotharingia are more familiar to others in that they have been a familiar object of contention between the rival powers of France and Germany that have sought to dominate them throughout history, even as they have sought to find freedom and safety for themselves in their own smaller states and areas. It so happens, as a matter of coincidence (or not), that a great deal of my own ancestry happens to come from this particular area, among the Swiss, Rhenish Germans, Dutch, and inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine whose homelands are the fragmented remains of a division of lands between the three grandsons of Charlemagne in 843.

When one thinks of the evils that the Germans and French have inflicted upon the small peoples whom they sought to dominate between them, all so that they could increase the size of their own empires without a great deal of concern for the wishes and well-being of those under their rule, it is easy to get upset that so much of history focuses on the egotism of rulers and the horrors that they inflict on the world in order to obtain what they desire and so little attention is given to the desire of people to remain free in their own smaller communities, which are so often doomed to be the battleground of those who wish to be great and powerful. It is not enough merely to be a battleground, but crops are burned, cities destroyed, ordinary people starved and tortured and killed by the thousand all to gratify the ego of those who already have under their control more than they can handle.

A great deal of life’s pleasures come from the little places that one calls home. What makes someone a cosmopolitan is not destroying their little local identities, the places one calls home, the people and areas one knows intimately well, but rather being a citizen of many such little areas, each with their own characteristics, concerns, and ways. Ultimately, we do not belong to any great world except by being a part of many small worlds. Sometimes these worlds end up lasting for many generations, defying the forces of gigantism and decay to destroy what has been maintained over a long duration of time. Sometimes these small worlds flicker into existence only for a moment before vanishing once again into the mists of time to be entirely forgotten, unless they were fortunate enough to have gotten the attention of someone who was able to immortalize them in some fashion. Not all places or times are so fortunate as to have someone who witnessed them, understood them, and took their story down so that others, later on, can bring them into remembrance once again.

While rulers in such places as Versailles, Madrid, and Vienna quarreled over what slices of land to include in their sprawling empires, there were a host of little people in harm’s ways in small river valleys or communities that hoped to know peace, preserve their way of life, and live free to enjoy the simple pleasures to be found in meadows or pastures, quirky small towns, and the occasional trade ports that connected these areas to the wider world. But as is often the case in the history of the world, little peoples are not often left in peace by those who wish to throw their weight around and become big people on the face of the earth. Whatever great resources and blessings have been placed on the wicked in the world around us, it never satisfies those megalomaniacs who see in a world of innumerable small pieces that live in irritable harmony with those around them places to be crushed and added to their existing domains, out of a misguided belief that small communities are not viable unless they are dominated by some larger central power rather than left to find their own level, whatever it may be. The world would be a much better place if the little people were not caught in harm’s way, but alas, we must deal with the world as it is and not how we would wish it to be.