ABSTRACT
“Nation states,” independent polities with – ideally at least – a shared sense of identity, govern much – but far from all – of the world of the twenty-first century. A shared ethnicity, language(s), religion, and/or history is often critical to national identity. It is all too easy for the modern person to assume that the nation state is the obvious form of human governance, and look to history for evidence of the inevitable spread of the nation state once it first emerges on the scene. “Nation” refers instead to the people that together comprise the state. A “nation state,” then, is simultaneously an idea and a description of political reality: It makes sense only if people come to see that a particular nation should comprise a particular state. Political institutions became another source of identity.
