ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by charting the historical geography of state formation, before considering the changing roles of national institutions and impacts on notions of what it means to be a citizen. The boundaries of many states are consistent with the territories inhabited by particular nations, but there are also many states that contain more than one nation within their boundaries. In order to understand how national states are constituted and come to operate, it is necessary to think historically as well as geographically. The historical evolution of the nation-state is often traced through four broad phases: pre-agrarian, agrarian, industrial and post-industrial. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the European colonial powers sought to integrate subjects of their colonies into their European-centred economies and European notions of ‘civilization’. Most of Africa and Asia escaped from colonial domination in the twentieth century, often through violent national ‘liberation’ struggles against colonial powers and white colonial settler populations.
