Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
Why are people nationalistic? Why do they like to live in countries whose political boundaries conform to national boundaries?
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See - give me a shorter take and I can get back into it.
I'm not at all convinced people are nationalistic; I think that we all identify ourselves in a variety of ways, and that those ways vary depending on time and place. There is a need for group identity, but it can be a religious, linguistic, regional, tribal or ethnic identify, or some combination of them.
What was Yugoslavia is a great example. Today, there are almost tribal nationalisms. A hundred years ago, the Pan-Slavic movement reigned supreme (Yugoslavia translates to "South Slav", and the country itself was the outcome of a very conscious effort to develop a Slavic consciousness out of the mess that was the disintegrating Ottoman empire), and declaring a strong affinity to being "Bosnian" would have been unthinkable.
Nationalisms also come and go. I don't think Cornish national sentiment is strong any more, for example. And the people who are the Scots today developed from many very different tribal configurations.
