I’m sorry if I am putting this in the wrong forum. It might be better suited for Questions.
Many nations have been created from previously unconsolidated lands that were all or mostly independently before. Iraq comes to mind: it was cobbled together from various places with little in common but for Islam and having been ruled by the Ottomon Empire. It had constant internal violence that was mainly only quieted by brutal dictatorship. The Holy Roman Empire changed constantly but under Charles V especially you had lands with nothing in common but an emperor, and that too was a disaster.
The U.S. was of course once a created nation that had a bumpy takeoff but ultimately most would agree it worked out. Canada had some bumpy language and history issues but also cooled nicely.
What would you think are the best and worst cases of creating nations? Do you think religious differences are the single most divisive factor when places are consolidated into one land?
(I have a personal interest in the subject, but I promise I’m not a student doing homework and I haven’t been for many years. ;))
I don’t see how Iraq fits your definition of “created nation” at all. The regions of Iraq were not previously independent; they were part of the Ottoman Empire. Iraq was formed by a larger entity breaking up, not by an amalgamation of previously independent parts.
But they had not been a ‘unit’ before. NYC, New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and New York state have all been part of the U.S. since the 18th century and were settled and had alliances with each other for a century before that, but if they suddenly became the independent nation of Metropolis it would be a very new entity.
I think the distinction that’s trying to be made is the difference between a nation that’s predominantly the ancestral homeland of one ethnic group, or a bunch of closely related ones, like say… the Netherlands, where most people are Dutch, and that’s where the Dutch originated.
Most big European nations fall in this category- Germany, Italy, the UK and even Spain does, if you go far enough back. In their cases, it’s a result of feudalism.
There are 4 categories of “constructed nations” that I can see, and they overlap:
Ones where the sub-units have a lot of linguistic and cultural similarity.
Ones where the sub-units do not have a lot of linguistic and cultural similarity.
Ones where the sub-units self-assembled into the larger nation.
Ones where the sub-units were forcibly united in some fashion.
1 and 2 can’t overlap, and 3 and 4 can’t overlap, so your options are 1/3,1/4, 2/3, 2/4 for nation types, with 1/3 meaning that the sub-units had a lot of cultural and linguistic similarity and self-assembled.
Using these categories, the US would be a 1/3 style nation, and somewhere like Italy would be a 1/4 nation. Iraq would be a 2/4 nation, and Switzerland might be a 2/3 nation.
Old Yugoslavia might have been a 2/4 nation.
Personally, I think the most stable ones tend to be the 1/X ones. Very few nations with prominent minority groups that are very different from the majority tend to do particularly well- the politics seems to devolve into “us vs them”.
I largely disagree (natch). Sure, there were a few wars, and there remain a few, shall we say, issues regarding the country’s borders, but all and all Israel managed to found a more or less stable, democratic country - no coups, no dictatorships, no civil wars. How many other post-colonial nations can boast that? Plus, they managed to revive a language and build an entirely new national culture, which in terms of nation-building, is nothing to sniff at.
