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taelor comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I find this interesting, considering that non-magical Italy didn't exist as a unified nation until 1861. It seems odd that the magical political map so closely mirrors the non-magical.
Edit: It seems that Transylvania has its own national Quidditch team seperate from Romania, though this does not neccesarily mean that they are independant -- Scotland, after all, has its own Quidditch team, despite being governed by the Ministry in London
Well, “Italy” was unified before, in the form of the Roman Empire. The magical sub-section of the world could simply have had very different history than the muggle one. Given that wizard population is so small and concerned with blood lines, it’s a likely hypothesis that they’d form and maintain more-or-less unitary communities bounded by language and the like, even if the muggle societies they’re overlaid on are fragmented into city-states.
This hypothesis would predict political unity between US and Canadian Wizards (same language, similar culture, divided by an arbitrary line drawn by muggles as a result of a series of conflicts that wizards probably don't care about). Does anyone remember hearing anything in Rowling!canon or MoR!canon about an independent magical Canada existing?
Edit: on further consideration, what it would actually predict would be unity between US and anglophone Canadian; if I recall my history right, the union of French and English speaking Canadians was also a result of muggle conflicts that wizards wouldn't care about.
British, US, and Canadian wizards?
On the other hand, in the modern world where wizards want to manage governments, muggle boundaries matter to some extent.
He may be referring to a subarea that was roughly what is modern day Italy. Out of universe what is there's a more likely set of explanations: Transylvania is a natural spooky/magical thing (hence Rowling's decision to include it as separate), and Eliezer doesn't know much history, so things like the unification of Italy aren't on his radar screen.
Eliezer not knowing stuff is generally low on my list of possibilities. Italian unification isn't terribly obscure. And Italy was always a unified geographic and cultural area, even in the period where it was politically disjoint.
History is very far from his areas of expertise, and it is an area where he's demonstrated gaps before (in particular, when talking about phlogiston as an example of a theory that didn't pay rent, and when using heliocentricism/geocentricism as an example). This isn't a very high priority area for him.