I was thinking, alot of the old Colonial nations which recently gained independence have large ethnice imbalances, such as all of Africa and the Middle East, would it be in the Great powers interests to do this as for them never to pose a threat and to keep them under control?
I think malice had very little to do with it; I think thought had very little to do with it. It was more or less, “here’s the territory we conquered, let’s make a state out of it and be done with it.”
Creating “ethnic” states didn’t always work out so well either; look at India & Pakistan and how peaceful that turned out.
that’s the nature of colonies, give the people just enough to keep them happy while you exploit their national resources, and quash any talk of revolution or independence.
But both of those are multi-ethnic states. India has 22 official languages. Despite which, it’s mostly at peace internally, and what strife it has is less ethnic than religious (e.g., Hindus vs. Muslims, Sikh separatism).
I’ve often suspected that the United Kingdom “arrainged things” in Palestine, but then it all got out of hand…
you’re right, of course, although I suppose I was imprecise. The British East Indian colonies were split up along predominantly ethnic/religious lines. My point is that a purely ethnic state is no particular guarantee of peace.
I think it is more about each colonial power having control over it’s prior colonies (thus, one ethnic group might be spread over the ex-colonies of several European nations). Second, within a colony a colonizing power might encourage defacto integration of the various ethnicities, by either encouraging internal migration towards areas where more labor was needed (or away from areas that colonizers wanted) or by setting up one ethnic group as its chosen administrators/enforcers/junior whitemen. As a result, clean borders and viable states might not go hand in hand.
A third factor is that leaders who grew up or trained under European administration might think of the territory as a coherent unit in the way his (or her) ancestor might not have. Certainly Indonesia makes little sense as a unit (except as “everywhere the Dutch used to be”). I suppose greed on the part of whatever leader or ethnic group grabbed power first (and was therefore unwilling to cede independence/autonomy/anything to other portions of the former colony - I’m looking at you Nigeria).