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Originally posted by Spanky
Skipped? You asked me for border changes that conformed to my theory. You didn't ask me for ones that didn't.
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Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I thought I asked you for a cite for your suggestion that 95% (or some such proportion) of European border changes conformed to the distribution of ethnic and linguistic groups.
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And are you saying that the poitical borders of Bulgaria don't follow ethnic bulgarian lines?
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I was pointing out that Bulgaria's borders changed repeatedly for reasons that apparently had everything to do with land grabs by other countries and nothing to do with following the distribution of Bulgarians.
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Man you are just being intentionaly obtuse in the face of overwhelming evidence. Everyone takes as a given that Europes borders conform to ethnolinguistic lines, but you fight it.
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I agree that it's most often true. But the debate we were having -- I thought -- was not about whether there is any truth to this phenomenom, but whether its is the sort of unstoppable world historical force that will inevitably redraw the map everywhere else. The more exceptions to it, the shakier your predictions look.
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I said that over time political borders conform more and more to political boundaries. I did not limit that to just political borders moving.
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The distinction you are drawing here eludes me. Sorry.
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I listed most of the major border movements of the past seventy five years, and you talk to me about adjustment to Bulgaria that started a hundred and thirty years agos.
I also found it pathetic that you are having to look stuff up on Wikepedia to counter my argument when this stuff is coming right off the top of my head. If you have to look stuff up to counter me doesn't that show you are looking for stuff that is pretty obsure and not as relevent?
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Dude -- the "creation of Bulgaria" is on your list, at #16. You brought it up, so I pointed to a bunch of times that Bulgaria's borders have changed since then. Rather than respond to each of your items, I picked that one, since I know a little about it. I will admit that I had forgotten some of the details of (e.g.) the Treaty of San Stefano.
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The creation of Bulgaria in itself was a huge step towards making Europe conform more to ethnolinquistic borders. At that point sixty percent of the people that spoke bulgarian lived in Bulgaria. The rest was just minor tinkering. And now Bulgaria is like ninety percent Bulgarian.
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OK, but like I said: If you're saying that once nations are formed, they tend to become more ethnically and linguistically homogenous, I agree -- but that is not support for what we started out discussing, which is whether the map is going to keep changing. All that is a reason to believe that the map will stay the same.
