Nation-States

Abstract

A definition of the nation-state is entirely appropriate before entering upon this discussion. A nation-state is, in the first place, a state that is a fairly advanced, differentiated, comprehensive and autonomous political organisation disposing of armed forces and the taxing powers needed to support them, and some arrangement for making these responsive to a concept of public interest. In the second place, that state’s ‘public’ is defined in a broader manner than that of a city-state, and in a yet different manner from that of an empire. If Venice may be taken as a standard case of a city-state then the political community in such a state may be seen to be confined to citizens of the city proper; the inhabitants of other territories ruled by Venice, for instance those of Crete or of the ‘mainland’, had no part in its public life; nor did that community respond to the concept of ‘Italy’. Portugal or England, by contrast, extended their political communities beyond their capital cities, to the limits of the national domain. In the third place, a nation-state is not an empire; it has no universal or global aspirations but rather some inherent limits to its extension. These could be geographical limits, such as those of islands and peninsulas; or some related concept of natural frontiers such as France had. Or it might include in its political community all those of similar ethnic background, or speakers of a certain language and no others, or, finally, all those loyal to, and served by, that state. The concept of nation implies limits; and the identity of a particular nation is a definition of the limits observed by it.