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Originally Posted by Exeter
You make some good points.
Geographical realities such as islands, rivers and mountainous are indeed important in the formation of nation-states. Nation-states are of course different from the multi-ethnic historical states. The latter were merely political entities. Nation-states have an ethnic and cultural component. Could we say states preceded nation-states?
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The did. Kingdoms, for example, are a form of state.
And so did nations precede nation-states.
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I think insular people tend to be more xenophobic.
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Something along those lines.
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Other than that the ideas behind nationalism was spread to the rest of Europe with Napoleon.
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That's debatable. Modernist Nationalisms were. Traditionalist Nationalism, on the other hand, was not.
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'Dardanidae duri, quae uos a stirpe parentum
prima tulit tellus, eadem uos ubere laeto
accipiet reduces. Antiquam exquirite matrem:
hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris,
et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis.'
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
–Plato–
'Many people, I believe, wish for a society where faith, decency, pro-life convictions and national self-determination within Europe can flourish; and not be swallowed up in a dictatorial EU bureaucracy.'
–Gerry McGeough, Irish Nationalist and POW–