Renan's Nation and the Serenissima

Ernst Renan, in a more cynical moment, opined that a nation was merely a group of people united by a common mistaken view of history, and a dislike of their neighbours. But he also gave, in a lecture at the Sorbonne, a much more idealistic and hopeful conception of what a nation is.
After describing nation-states today as 'a historical result brought about by a series of convergent facts', and dismissing various conceptions of the nation---as a dynastic principle, as a racial, linguistic or religious community, as a community of common interest---as inadequate, he sets out his view: 'A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle ... the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice and devotion ... it is summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. A nation's existence is ... a daily plebiscite, just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.' He describes a nation as something which is actively created and shaped by individual human beings, not something imposed upon them: 'Man is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains. A large aggregate of men, healthy in mind and warm of heart, creates the kind of moral conscience which we call a nation.'
Renan's civic nation is just as pure an ideal as the perfectly competitive market: sounds wonderful in theory, but never quite realised in practise. For one, the state, often closely tacked onto the nation, is loath to allow the daily plebiscite to turn up any result not to its liking. And in the case of those (relatively) young states which emerged some fifty-odd years ago from the yoke of colonialism, how far can they be nations?
Renan described the two essential constituting ingredients of the 'spiritual principle' of the nation: 'the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories [and] the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form.'
The Serenissima has had a fairly colourful history over its last 190 years, full of development, conflict and traumatic change. But before that? The Singapore History Gallery at the National Museum seems to have had a lot of thought put into it, and is quite well-designed and -curated, but the pre-1819 exhibits are evidently a bit sparse. To a large extent, the Serenissima's history before 1819 is lost in the mists, and has become more myth than anything else. Our 'rich legacy of memories' is not nearly, perhaps, as rich as the nations of Western Europe, or Vietnam, or Japan. Some may bring in the memories of the immigrants from their homelands, the memories of the great civilisations of East and South Asia ... but then such a legacy is no longer the common possession of all of the Serenissima's inhabitants. These memories figure in the recent history and culture of the Serenissima, and their visible footprints and influences will eventually enter the shared memory of the Singaporean nation ... but as yet they do not constitute this shared memory. Still we do have a common memory, still small perhaps, but growing, and we have indeed 'performed great deeds together', even if other, older nations have performed still more.
As for 'the wish to perform still more [great deeds]', I am sure it is not lacking; probably out of a medley of historical and economic concerns, no part of the population seems too eager to secede from Singapore and strike it out as a separate republic.
So, yes, we are a nation. Or at least, are on the way there ... 190 may look a paltry figure to some, but it is nothing to be scoffed at. Over time the legacy will only grow richer, and the 'large-scale solidarity' stronger ... hopefully. Would-be nation-building campaigners take note, this is where your job lies: to consolidate and build the common memory, and to encourage a continued common future. But you would never be able to make it happen alone, without time on your side.