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How Did the Nation-State Become Modern History's Most Violent Project? - The Difference Between Nations and States | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:00
welcome to sleepy facts about history we look
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at a world map and assume the colored shapes
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represent a simple natural arrangement one people
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one government one shared identity inside a defined
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border but the match between a nation and a state
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has never actually been completed anywhere understanding
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the difference between a state which is an institutional
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apparatus and a nation which is an imagined community
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of shared identity, reveals that the nation -state
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is not a natural fact. It is a modern historical
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project, and one of the most consequential and
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violent endeavors in political history. This
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episode examines how the aspiration to align
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people, government, and territory emerged through
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administrative centralization, mass education,
1:03
and the political claims of the French Revolution.
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It explores why multinational states like Switzerland,
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Spain and Canada resist simplification, and how
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stateless nations, diasporas and layered identities
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complicate the map. It also confronts the structural
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reality that defining who belongs inevitably
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requires defining who does not, a process that
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has driven exclusion, forced migration and genocide.
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I wanted to understand why a political idea we
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usually take for granted remains permanently
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unfinished. Some questions sound simple until
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you try to answer them, and the gap between the
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map and the actual world is one of those subjects.
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I kept returning to the tension between the warm
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solidarity this project can create, and the severe
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costs it demands from those who do not fit. This
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is a calm, careful look at the limits of an idea.
2:02
that continues to shape our world. Look at a
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world map and you see colored shapes, clean borders,
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names that promise a match between people and
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place. But that match has never been completed.
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Not in Japan. Not in France. Not anywhere. And
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the attempt to complete it is one of modern history's
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most consequential and violent projects. What
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is a nation -state? And has one ever actually
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been complete? Most of us look at a world map
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and see what appears to be a simple arrangement.
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Colored shapes. Names we recognize. France. Japan.
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Brazil. We assume each shape contains one people,
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one government, one shared identity. The word
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we reach for is usually country. Sometimes nation.
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Occasionally... State. We use these words interchangeably
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because the map makes them look the same. But
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they are not the same. And understanding the
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difference between them is the first step toward
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recognizing that the nation -state is not a natural
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fact. It is a project. One of the most powerful
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projects in modern history. And one that has
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never been fully completed anywhere. Let me separate
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these terms carefully. because everything that
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follows depends on this separation. A state is
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an institutional apparatus. It claims sovereign
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authority over a defined territory. It has government,
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law, administration, borders, and typically a
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monopoly on legitimate force within those borders.
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A state does not need to represent a single people.
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It needs to govern a territory and maintain order.
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The Habsburg Empire that stretched across Central
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Europe until 1918 was a state. It governed Germans,
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Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Romanians,
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Italians and others. It did not attempt to make
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them into one nation. It was a state, but not
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a nation -state. A nation is something different.
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A nation is a community of people who share.
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or believe they share ancestry, language, culture,
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history, citizenship, or political choice. The
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political scientist Benedict Anderson called
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it an imagined community, and this remains the
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most useful formulation. Imagined not because
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it is false, but because no member of a nation
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will ever meet most other members. The connection
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exists in the mind. cultivated through shared
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stories, symbols, and institutions. Think of
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a nation as a story a community tells about itself.
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Certain events are selected and elevated. Languages
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are standardized. Heroes emerge from regional
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figures. The story is told in schools, repeated
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in ceremonies, printed in newspapers, until it
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feels natural to those who hear it. Yet this
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story draws on real materials, actual languages,
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real histories, lived traditions, and it is always
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being edited, contested, and retold. A nation
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can exist without a state. The Kurdish people,
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numbering perhaps 30 million, share language,
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culture, and historical identity. They are divided
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across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. They are
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a nation without a state. A stateless nation.
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The Jewish people maintained nationhood across
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dozens of states and nearly 2 ,000 years before
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the establishment of Israel in 1948. Nation and
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state are analytically distinct. One is collective
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identity. The other is institutional power. A
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country is a looser term. We use it in everyday
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speech to mean a place on the map. It carries
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geographic and cultural connotations rather than
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precise institutional meaning. When someone says,
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I love this country, they may mean the state,
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the nation, the landscape, the culture, or some
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combination. Country is useful precisely because
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it is vague, but its vagueness makes it unsuitable
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for careful analysis. An empire is a political
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formation in which one center governs multiple
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peoples, territories or previously distinct political
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units, often without seeking cultural uniformity.
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The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British
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Empire, all governed diversity rather than suppressing
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it. Empires typically organized difference. They
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categorized subjects by religion, ethnicity or
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status. and governed each category differently.
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The empire did not need its subjects to become
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one people. It needed them to pay tribute, provide
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labor, and accept imperial authority. A kingdom
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is a state ruled by a monarch, typically defined
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by dynastic legitimacy rather than national identity.
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The kingdom of France in the 17th century was
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not the French nation -state. It was the domain
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of the Bourbon dynasty. acquired through marriage
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war inheritance and negotiation a peasant in
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provence and a peasant in brittany might not
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have understood each other's speech the king's
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authority reached them through local lords regional
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customs and distinct legal traditions rather
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than through any direct national administration
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his legitimacy came from god and dynasty not
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from representing a nation and then there is
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the nation state The nation -state is not simply
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a state that happens to contain a nation. It
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is an aspiration, a project, an attempt to make
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the boundaries of a state and the boundaries
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of a nation coincide, to align people, government
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and territory. The nation -state claims not merely
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to govern a territory, but to embody a people.
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This is a specific, modern and remarkably ambitious
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idea. And it is the subject of this episode.
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To understand why this matters, we need to test
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the idea against the world as it actually exists.
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Because the world does not fit the model, consider
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Switzerland, a single state with four official
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languages. German, French, Italian, Romance.
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Multiple linguistic communities with distinct
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cultural traditions. Switzerland has maintained
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political unity for centuries without attempting
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to create a single Swiss ethnicity or impose
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one national language. It functions. Its citizens
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hold a robust civic identity. But it is not a
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nation -state in the aspirational sense. Consider
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Belgium, where a language border runs east -west
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across the country, dividing Dutch -speaking
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Flanders in the north from French -speaking Wallonia
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in the south. drive north from Brussels and the
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street signs change from French to Dutch. The
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newspapers change language. The political parties,
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television stations and universities operate
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in separate linguistic worlds. Brussels itself
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is officially bilingual, an island of French
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surrounded by Dutch -speaking territory. Yet
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it is the capital of a single state. Belgium
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has organized political life without achieving
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or without attempting, the alignment that the
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nation -state project demands. Consider Spain,
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with Catalans, Basques, Galicians and Andalusians
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alongside Castilians. Consider the United Kingdom,
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which contains English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern
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Irish identities, with Cornwall and other regional
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loyalties beneath those. Consider Canada, with
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its french -speaking quebecois nation within
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an english majority state consider india with
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its 22 constitutionally recognized languages
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and extraordinary religious ethnic and cultural
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diversity these are not failed nation states
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they are multinational states that have organized
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political life without achieving or without attempting
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the alignment that the nation -state project
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demands Now consider the nations that lack state.
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The Kurds, as I mentioned, divided across four
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Middle Eastern states. The Palestinians, whose
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national identity is recognized but whose state
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remains unrealized. The Tibetans, the Uyghurs,
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the Rohingya. The Basques and Catalans, who have
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states they do not wish to leave but nations
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they wish to recognize. The Scots, who voted
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in 2014 on whether to dissolve their three -century
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union with England. The Quebecois, who have held
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two referendums on independence. Bees are not
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marginal cases. They are central to understanding
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that nations and states do not naturally pair
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like matching socks. Consider diasporas. The
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Chinese diaspora stretches across Southeast Asia,
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the Americas, Australia and Europe. The Indian
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diaspora numbers over 30 million. The Irish diaspora,
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driven by famine and emigration, created Irish
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American, Irish Australian and Irish Canadian
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identities that persist generations after departure.
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These populations maintain national or ethnic
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connections that cross state boundaries entirely.
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The nation -state model cannot account for them,
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except by treating them as anomalies. or by pretending
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they have fully assimilated, which they often
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have not. Consider disputed borders. Kashmir,
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divided between India, Pakistan and China, with
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a population that does not fully identify with
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any of the three. The border between Armenia
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and Azerbaijan, redrawn by war in 2020, leaving
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populations on the wrong side of new lines. The
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Crimean Peninsula. claimed by Ukraine and Russia,
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with a population of divided loyalties. Borders
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on maps look fixed. They are not. They are claims,
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and claims are contested. Consider citizens with
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layered identities. A person may be a citizen
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of France, of Algerian family origin, Muslim
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by religion, Parisian by residence, Berber by
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ancestry. and French -Algerian by self -identification.
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Which of these is the nation? The stake claims
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her as French. She may accept that, resist it,
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layer it with other loyalties, or move between
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contexts where different identities matter more
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or less. The nation -state project wants to simplify
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this. The reality of human experience resists
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simplification. So, if the world does not naturally
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align nation and state, How did the idea that
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it should become so powerful? The nation -state
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emerged as a modern project through specific
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historical developments that made it possible
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to imagine, and then to attempt, the alignment
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of people, government, and territory. This was
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not inevitable. It was not the natural endpoint
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of political development. It was one possibility
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among several, and it became dominant through
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particular conditions. The philosopher and anthropologist
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Ernest Gellner argued that nationalism, and by
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extension the nation -state, was linked to the
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functional requirements of modern industrial
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society. Industrial economies needed mobile,
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literate, interchangeable workers. They needed
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standardized communication. They needed people
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who could move from region to region, enter new
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occupations and participate in mass politics.
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This required a shared language. a shared education,
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a shared set of references. The pre -modern world
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of local dialects, regional loyalties, and illiterate
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peasantries could not supply this. The nation
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-state project supplied it by creating standardized
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national cultures, where fragmented local ones
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had existed. Consider the mechanisms. Administrative
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centralization replaced local and regional authority
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with national bureaucracies. The census classified
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populations into national, ethnic, and linguistic
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categories, thereby helping to create the identities
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it claimed merely to count. Picture a census
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form arriving at a household. The questions demand
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a single answer. What is your nationality? Your
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mother tongue? Your ethnic origin? The hand hesitates.
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The categories were designed elsewhere. by officials
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who spoke a different dialect who organized the
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world into boxes that do not match the life lived
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in this room yet the form must be completed the
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identity is recorded and in being recorded it
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is shape mass education taught standardized national
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languages and national histories in classrooms
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across a state's territory picture a child in
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a classroom perhaps in brittany or provence in
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slovakia or catalonia learning a word in the
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standard national language that their parents
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would not use at home. The teacher writes on
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the board. The child repeats. The language of
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instruction is not the language of the kitchen
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table. Over years, this child will learn to operate
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in two linguistic worlds, but one of them carries
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the weight of the state, of examinations, of
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official documents, of advancement. The other
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remains private, regional, increasingly associated
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with the past. Print media, newspapers, novels,
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pamphlets created what Benedict Anderson called
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simultaneity. This was the sense that thousands
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or millions of anonymous others were reading
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the same words, thinking the same thoughts, sharing
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the same time. Conscription took young men from
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their villages and mixed them with others from
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different regions. teaching them to fight and
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die for a nation rather than a locality or a
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lord. Mass political participation gave ordinary
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people a stake in the state, but increasingly
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defined that stake in national terms. These mechanisms
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created the capacity for national identity. But
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the French Revolution supplied the political
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claim that transformed this capacity into a new
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form of legitimacy. The revolutionaries declared
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that sovereignty resided not in the king, but
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in the nation. The people became the source of
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legitimate authority. This was a radical claim.
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It meant that the state derived its right to
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govern from representing a nation, not from divine
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right or dynastic inheritance. The revolutionary
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wars that followed spread this principle across
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Europe, sometimes by conquest, sometimes by inspiration.
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The idea that each people should have its own
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state gained force throughout the 19th century,
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culminating in the redrawing of Europe's map
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after World War I, according to the principle
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of national self -determination. But here we
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must be careful. The Treaty of Westphalia in
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1648 is often cited as the origin of the modern
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state system. It established principles of territorial
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sovereignty and non -interference that were genuinely
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important. But it did not create nation states.
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It created sovereign states. States that claimed
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exclusive authority within their borders. The
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nation state came later, with the additional
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requirement that this sovereign state represent
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a specific people. The Westphalian state could
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be multinational, dynastic, even religiously
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divided. The nation -state could not, or at least
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aspired not to be. The project of alignment had
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a structural consequence that we cannot avoid.
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The nation -state creates belonging by defining
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who does not belong. The attempt to make political
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boundaries coincide with the chosen people necessarily
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involves drawing boundaries of inclusion and
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exclusion. This can take civic forms or ethnic
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forms. and most actual nation -states combine
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both. Civic nationalism defines the nation through
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citizenship, political choice, and shared institutions.
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Anyone can theoretically become a member by accepting
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the nation's principles and participating in
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its institutions. The French republican tradition
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tends in this direction, at least in theory.
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Ethnic nationalism defines the nation through
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ancestry, language, culture, blood. Membership
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is inherited, not chosen. The German tradition
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historically leaned this way, with citizenship
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laws based on descent rather than birthplace,
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until relatively recently. But these are ideal
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types. Real nation -states mix them. France has
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struggled with whether Muslim citizens can fully
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belong to the secular republic. Germany has gradually
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moved toward birthplace citizenship while maintaining
20:57
elements of ethnic definition. United States,
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often cited as a civic nation, proclaimed universal
21:04
principles while simultaneously defining citizenship
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through racial exclusion for most of its history.
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This tension remains unresolved. The United States
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exemplifies what all actual nation -states demonstrate.
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Civic and ethnic definitions are ideal types,
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not descriptions of real political communities.
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The process of defining who fits produces solidarity,
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collective purpose, shared sacrifice. It also
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produces marginalization, displacement, persecution,
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violence. The partition of India and Pakistan
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in 1947 was an attempt to align religious nations
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with territorial states. It produced mass displacement
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and death, with estimates of killed ranging from
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several hundred thousand to two million. Picture
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the new border cutting through Punjab, a line
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drawn on maps in London and Delhi by men who
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had never walked those fields. Villages found
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themselves divided. Families discovered they
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lived on the wrong side of a boundary that had
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not existed a week before. Trains moved in both
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directions, crowded with people who had become
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refugees in their own homeland, carrying what
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they could, leaving what they could not. The
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borders drawn did not solve the problem they
22:28
addressed. Muslims remained in India. Hindus
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and Sikhs remained in Pakistan. Bangladesh separated
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from Pakistan in 1971. demonstrating that religious
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identity alone could not sustain national unity.
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The nation -state project here revealed its power
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and its limits simultaneously. The Armenian Genocide
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of 1915 occurred in the context of a collapsing
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Ottoman Empire and the Young Turk attempt to
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create a Turkish nation -state from its remnants.
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The Greek -Turkish Population Exchange of 1923
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was an attempt to solve the problem of minority
23:10
populations through forced migration. It tried
23:14
to make the state and the nation coincide by
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removing those who did not fit. The Holocaust
23:20
was the most extreme version of this logic, attempting
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to create a racially pure nation -state through
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mass murder. These are not aberrations from the
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nation -state project. They are its most horrifying
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possibilities. latent in the very attempt to
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align people, government, and territory. I am
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not saying that the nation -state inevitably
23:43
produces genocide. I am saying that the structural
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requirement of defining who belongs carries this
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possibility within it. The same process that
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creates warm solidarity among those defined as
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insiders can turn vicious toward those defined
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as outsiders. This is not a moral failing that
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can be eliminated by better intentions. It is
24:07
built into the project itself. So we return to
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the central question. Has a nation -state ever
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actually been complete? Japan is often cited
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as the model homogenous nation -state. Yet Japan
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contains the Ainu people of Hokkaido, whose language
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and culture were suppressed by assimilation policies
24:29
for more than a century, now recognized officially
24:32
but still marginalized in practice. The Okinawans
24:36
of the Ryuchu Islands have experienced their
24:39
territory as a military colony, their language
24:42
treated as a dialect, their identity as not quite
24:46
Japanese. Japan contains a Korean minority, growing
24:50
immigrant populations from across Asia, and internal
24:54
regional diversity that Japanese nationalism
24:57
has historically suppressed rather than accommodated.
25:00
The idea of Japanese homogeneity was itself constructed
25:05
through modern education, media and state policy,
25:08
not discovered as a pre -existing fact. The same
25:13
pattern repeats elsewhere. South Korea's apparent
25:17
success required the division of 1945 and the
25:21
war that followed, creating two states where
25:24
one nation had existed. The Scandinavian states
25:28
achieved relative homogeneity partly through
25:31
emigration. Millions of Swedes and Norwegians
25:34
left for America, removing diversity through
25:38
departure rather than inclusion, and each contains
25:42
indigenous or linguistic minorities that complicate
25:45
the national story. France, with its revolutionary
25:48
tradition of civic nationhood, suppressed regional
25:52
languages and identities through the 19th and
25:54
20th centuries. These were not celebrated as
26:02
part of French diversity, but attacked as obstacles
26:05
to national unity. The French nation -state was
26:09
built through centralization and standardization
26:12
that had real costs for those who did not fit
26:14
the model. And France today contains populations
26:17
of North African, Sub -Saharan African, and Caribbean
26:21
origin whose full belonging remains contested.
26:25
The United States presents perhaps the most complex
26:29
case. Founded on civic principles, it has repeatedly
26:33
defined nationhood through racial exclusion.
26:37
Native Americans were removed or confined to
26:40
reservations. African Americans were enslaved,
26:44
then segregated, then subjected to mass incarceration.
26:48
Asian immigrants were excluded entirely for decades.
26:52
The hyphenated American, Irish American, Italian
26:56
American, Mexican American, suggests a layered
27:00
identity that the nation -state project wants
27:03
to resolve into simple American -ness, but that
27:06
keeps reasserting its complexity. The ongoing
27:10
debates over immigration, citizenship, and who
27:13
truly belongs reveal that even this apparently
27:16
civic nation -state has not achieved stable alignment.
27:21
What we find, everywhere we look, is not the
27:24
completed nation -state, but the ongoing attempt.
27:28
The project continues. States still standardize
27:33
languages through education. They still construct
27:36
national histories. They still define citizenship
27:40
through inclusion and exclusion. They still struggle
27:44
with populations that do not fit. The nation
27:47
state is not a condition that has been achieved.
27:51
It is a direction that states move in with greater
27:54
or lesser success. with greater or less of violence
27:58
with greater or lesser acknowledgement of the
28:01
costs this has implications for how we understand
28:04
the world we inhabit the united nations is organized
28:08
around sovereign states with recognized territories
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but many of those states are multinational many
28:16
nations lack states many people hold identities
28:21
that cross borders that layer upon each other
28:24
that resists the simplification the nation -state
28:27
project demands. The international system assumes
28:31
a world of nation -states, because that is the
28:34
language we have inherited. But the reality is
28:38
messier, more interesting and more human. The
28:42
nation -state is one of the most consequential
28:45
political ideas of the modern era. It has organized
28:48
international relations, justified wars, redrawn
28:52
borders, shaped identities, created solidarity,
28:55
and produced exclusion. Understanding that it
28:58
is a project rather than a natural fact allows
29:01
us to see the contingency behind arrangements
29:04
we might otherwise take for granted. It allows
29:07
us to ask, who benefits when this alignment is
29:11
pursued? Who pays the costs? What alternatives
29:15
exist? What loyalties and identities are suppressed
29:20
in the attempt? The nation's state is not a lie.
29:25
It is not merely ideology or false consciousness.
29:29
The identities it cultivates are real to those
29:32
who hold them. The solidarity it creates can
29:35
be genuine and valuable. The institutions it
29:38
builds can function effectively. But it is not
29:42
a description of how the world naturally is.
29:45
It is an aspiration for how some people think
29:48
the world should be. And like all aspirations,
29:51
it is incomplete, contested, and never fully
29:55
realized. We began with a map, colored territories,
30:00
names we recognize. Now we might look at that
30:05
map differently. We might see not the natural
30:08
division of the world into peoples and states,
30:11
but a particular way of organizing political
30:14
life. One with a specific history, specific mechanisms,
30:19
specific consequences and specific limits. We
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might see the work that goes into making the
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map match the world, and the world match the
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map. We might see the people who do not fit,
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the identities that cross lines, the histories
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that complicate simple stories. We might see
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that the nation -state has been one of the most
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powerful projects in modern history, and that
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it has never been completed anywhere.