Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
....But in the Middle East and Central Asia the ethnic groups are much bigger, but where the colonial lines are drawn, the lines are not natural and will move towards the natual borders, ethnolinquistic borders. ...
OK. Massive ethnic movements only happened after WWII. ...
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On the first point up there, I do think a lot of middle eastern boundaries have some relation to prior Ottoman boundaries, and are not like the African boundries, where basically they represent which colonial power got there first, or the American boundaries, where it's some combination of who got there first and how colonial powers like England and Spain divided up and ruled their colonies.
But the boundaries in Ottoman hands relate to how it was convienent for a central empire to rule, and that empire regularly moved tribes or people of specific ethnicities around to meet its own needs.
On the second point, there are lots of massive movements prior to WWII, ranging from the movement of Germans east in the 13th through 15th centuries, the movements that accompanied the Reformation, the settling of the pale in Ireland, movements of French or Germans into or out of Alsace-Lorain and movements of Germans and Danes into and out of Schlesswig-Holstein, etc. In the period before WWII in the 20th century, the Greek/Turkish/Armenian population moves and transfers were particularly notable.
But, there is an odd kind of stability that hangs over the core states of Europe for several centuries (right after the Reformation on), and it may be that stability that is unusual and gave birth to nationalism of the sort that prevails in the West today.
