ABSTRACT
Many groups of people have political organizations to regulate the life of their communities. To claim a right to statehood is to claim a right to some territory over which the state can exercise political control. Among nationalisms that are not essentially territorial, we can distinguish, as indicated earlier, territorially specific from territorially nonspecific ones. Republicans like Machiavelli believed, by contrast, that allegiance should be given to lands in which a free life was possible. This chapter discusses claims to the sole occupancy of a territory which depend upon a certain kind of relationship, natural or sentimental, between a land and a people, a relationship which supposedly makes them the right sort of occupants for it. Economic nationalism identifies a nation as a territorial group working toward economic well-being in such a way that statehood is necessary for the achievement of its ends.
