Modern states, unions and movements often describe themselves with the word “one”. They speak of one nation, one people, one currency, one law and one voice. The wording is old and attractive, because it promises belonging and shared purpose. This article looks at how that vocabulary developed and what it has been used to do, with attention to language and history. The question is how institutions talk about unity, and not whether any particular claim of unity is right. Sports rankings, idioms and solitary figures are a different subject and are left aside.
The words behind unity
English “one” comes from Old English ān, related to words in other Germanic languages and, more distantly, to Latin unus and Greek hen. From the Latin root come many English words that carry the same idea: unity, union, unite, unify, uniform, unique, universe and university. The family of words shows how often the idea of “one” has been used to describe larger wholes. A “universe” is literally something turned into one, and a “union” is a joining of separate parts into a single body.
This vocabulary matters for politics because it makes a claim about composition. To speak of “one nation” is to say that many individuals and regions belong together as a single thing, and any such claim can be argued about. Unity is sometimes a description of something already felt and sometimes a goal that leaders hope to achieve.
One out of many
A famous example is the Latin motto e pluribus unum, “out of many, one”. It appears on the Great Seal of the United States, which was adopted in 1782, and it expressed the idea that separate colonies and later states formed a single union. It was never the official national motto: in 1956 Congress adopted “In God We Trust” for that purpose. The significant point is its grammar, which keeps both the many and the one in view.
Other states use similar formulas. Switzerland’s unofficial motto, in Latin, translates as “one for all, all for one”, and it is associated with the country’s federal structure. The motto of the European Union, adopted in 2000, is “United in diversity”, which also holds both ideas together. These examples show that the language of oneness is often used in societies that are composed of distinct parts, partly because they have the greatest need to explain how the parts belong together.
One nation
The phrase “one nation” has had several political lives. In Britain, the novelist and politician Benjamin Disraeli had earlier written, in his 1845 novel Sybil, of “two nations”, rich and poor, and a later tradition of “One Nation” Conservatism took the opposite phrase as a programme of social cohesion. In the United States, the Pledge of Allegiance describes “one nation”, and the words “under God” were added in 1954.
In Germany, the slogan “Wir sind ein Volk” (“we are one people”) became prominent in the demonstrations of 1989 as East German protesters turned from calls for reform towards unification, which took place in 1990. In the nineteenth century, Italian unification, completed in 1861, was framed in similar terms. In each case the language of oneness helped to define a political aim.
It is worth noticing that the same words can also be used in less benign ways. Slogans that demand a single people or a single leader have been used by regimes that suppressed minorities and dissent. The vocabulary of unity has no moral content of its own: it depends on who is included, who decides and what is done in its name.
One currency, one law, one market
Economic and legal institutions also use singleness as a goal. A common currency simplifies exchange and signals political union. The euro was introduced as an electronic currency in 1999 and as notes and coins in 2002, and it is among the most prominent modern examples of a currency shared across many states. Debates about it show that “one currency” was disputed from the start, since a single monetary policy affects different regions differently.
The history of standard measures and time illustrates the same pattern. Railways in the nineteenth century pushed towns to adopt a common time, and local weights and measures gave way to national and then international systems. Calendars follow the same course: the Gregorian reform of 1582 was adopted at different times in different countries. Each step replaced a set of local practices with a single standard, and each gained efficiency while losing some local variety.
In law and politics, “one person, one vote” became a widely used slogan for equal representation, and it entered American constitutional discussion in the 1960s in cases about how electoral districts should be drawn. The phrase uses one in a different sense: not a single body, but one equal share each.
Singleness with qualifications
Some uses of “one” explicitly accept differences. Hong Kong’s governing formula since 1997, “one country, two systems”, puts one and two in the same phrase, which shows that the political meaning of the number is flexible. Federal states combine a single national government with regional ones. The phrase may therefore describe a loose unity, a tight unity or a formula that admits both.
Language shows the same tension. A shared language is often seen as a bond, yet many countries have several languages and manage them in different ways.
How to read the slogans
A few questions help when reading any claim of unity.
- Who is the “one” supposed to include, and who might be left out?
- Is the unity a description, a hope or a demand?
- What is being made single: a currency, a law, a people, a market or a voice?
- Does the phrase leave room for difference, as in “out of many, one”, or try to remove it?
The result is a vocabulary that is easy to repeat and hard to define, which is part of why it has lasted.