Human Geography By James Rubenstein

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Human Geography By James Rubenstein

• Chapter 7
• Key Issue 2
• Why Have Ethnicities Been Transformed into
  Nationalities?

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Nationality

• The identity with a group of people who share
  legal attachment and personal allegiance to a
  particular country.
• It comes from the Latin word nasci, which means
  to have been born.

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Ethnicity vs. Nationality

• People of the same ethnicity share religion,
  language, and material culture.
• In the U.S., nationality is generally kept
  reasonably distinct from ethnicity and race in
  common usage.

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Ethnicity

• Groups identified by distinct ancestry and
  cultural traditions.

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The Quebecois In Canada

• French Canadians, or Quebecois, share language,
  religion, and other cultural traditions that are
  distinctly different from the Anglo-Canadians.
• The Quebecois form a distinct ethnicity within
  the Canadian nationality or a second nationality.

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Rise of Nationalities

• Descendants of 19th century immigrants to the
  U.S. from Central and Eastern Europe identify
  themselves by ethnicity rather than by
  nationality.
• U.S. officials recorded the nationality of
  immigrants, but immigrants considered ethnicity
  more important.

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• The U.S. forged a nation out of a collection of
  ethnic groups.

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• To be an American meant believing in the
  "unalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the
  pursuit of happiness."

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Self Determination

• The concept that ethnicities have the right to
  govern themselves.

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• During the 19th and 20th centuries, political
  leaders have attempted to organize Earths
  surface into a collection of nation-states.

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Nation-State

• A state whose territory corresponds to that
  occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been
  transformed into a nationality.

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• The territory of a state rarely corresponds
  precisely to the territory occupied by an
  ethnicity.

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Nation-States in Europe

• During the 19th century, ethnicities were
  transformed into nationalities throughout Europe
• Most of Western Europe was made up of
  nation-states by 1900.
• Following World War I, many European boundaries
  were redrawn according to the principle of
  nation-states.

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• During the 1930s, Nazi Germany claimed that all
  German-speaking parts of Europe constituted one
  nationality and should be unified into one state.

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Denmark No Perfect Nation-States

• The territory occupied by the Danish ethnicity
  closely corresponds to the state of Denmark.
• The southern boundary with Germany does not
  divide Danish and German nationalities precisely.

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Denmarks Territories

• Denmark controls two territories in the Atlantic
  Ocean that do not share Danish cultural
  characteristics-the Faeroe Islands and Greenland.

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Greenland

• Denmark controls Greenland, which is the worlds
  largest island.
• Only 13 are considered Danish.
• In 1979 Greenlanders received more authority to
  control their own domestic affairs.
• One decision was to change all place names in
  Greenland from Danish to the local Inuit
  language.

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• Greenlands new name is Kalaallit Nunaat.

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Nationalism

• The loyalty and devotion to a nationality.

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Nationalism

• A nationality must hold the loyalty of its
  citizens to survive.
• Nationalism typically promotes a sense of
  national consciousness that exalts one nation
  above all others.
• Mass media is the most effective means of
  fostering nationalism.

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• Most countries regard an independent source of
  news as more of a risk than a benefit to the
  stability of their government.

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• States foster nationalism by promoting symbols of
  the nation-state, such as
• Flags and
• Songs

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Centripetal Force

• An attitude that tends to unify people and
  enhance support for a state.
• The word centripetal means directed toward the
  center.

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Centrifugal Force

• Means to spread out from the center.

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Multiethnic States

• A state that contains more than one ethnicity.
• Belgium is a nation divided among Dutch-speaking
  Flemish and French-speaking Wallons.

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Multinational States

• A state that contains more than one ethnicity
  with traditions of self-determination that agree
• to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other
  as distinct nationalities such as the United
  Kingdom.

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The United Kingdom

• A multinational state, the United Kingdom
  contains four main nationalities England,
  Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
• Today the four nationalities hold little
  independent political power, although Scotland
  and Wales now have separately elected governments.

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Multiethnic Problems

• Ethnicities do not always find ways to live
  together peacefully.
• In some cases, ethnicities compete in civil wars
  to dominate the national identity.
• In other cases, problems result from confusion
  between ethnic identity and national identity.

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Former Soviet Union

• The worlds largest multinational state, was an
  especially prominent example until its collapse
  in the early 1990s.

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The 15 Republics

• The republics that once constituted the Soviet
  Union are now independent countries.
• The Soviet Unions 15 republics were based on
  the 15 largest ethnicities.
• With the breakup, less numerous ethnicities are
  now divided among more than one state.

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15 Independent States

• The newly independent states consist of five
  groups,
• 3 Baltic,
• 3 European,
• 5 Central Asian,
• 3 Caucasus, and
• Russia.

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Baltic Nation-States

• Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had been
  independent countries between 1918 and 1940.
• Lithuania most closely fits the definition of a
  nation-state 81 are ethnic Lithuanians.
• These three countries have clear cultural
  differences and distinct historical traditions.

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Baltic Nation-States
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European Nation-States

• To some extent, the republics of Belarus,
  Moldova, and Ukraine now qualify as
  nation-states.
• Belarusian and Ukrainians became distinct
  ethnicities because they were isolated from the
  main body of Eastern Slavs--the Russians--during
  the 13th and 14th centuries.

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European Nation-States
Crimean Peninsula
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Crimean Peninsula

• 2/3rds of the population are Russians.
• Crimea voted to become independent of Ukraine.
• The Soviet Union's largest fleets were stationed
  there.
• Russia and the Ukraine agreed jointly maintain
  the naval base and ships at Sevastopol.

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The Tartars

• 166,000 Tatars have migrated to Crimea from
  Central Asia in recent years.
• The Tatars once lived in the Crimea, but the
  Soviet leadership deported them to Central Asia.
• The Tatars prefer to be governed by Ukraine.

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Moldova

• Moldavians are ethnically indistinguishable from
  Romanians.
• In 1992, many Moldavians pushed for
  reunification with Romania, but it wasnt simple.
  
• The Soviet government transferred a sliver of
  land from the east bank of the Dniestria to
  Moldova.

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• Inhabitants of east bank of the Dniester River
  are Ukrainian and Russian, who oppose Moldova's
  reunification with Romania.

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Central Asian States

• The five states in Central Asia carved out of
  the former Soviet Union display varying degrees
  of conformance to the principles of nation-state.
  
• Together the five provide an important reminder
  that multinational states can be more peaceful
  than nation-states.

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Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan

• 77 of Turkmenistan are Turkmen, with ethnic
  Turkmen are split between Turkmenistan and
  Russia.
• 80 of Uzbekistan are Uzbek, with Uzbeks split
  between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

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Kyrgyzstan

• 52 Kyrgyz, 18 Russian, and 13 Uzbek.
• The Kyrgyz-Muslims who speak an Altaic
  language-resent the Russians for seizing the best
  farmland.

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Kazakhstan

• Twice as large as the other four Central Asian
  countries combined.
• The country is divided almost evenly between
  Kazakhs and Russians, a recipe for conflict.
• Kazakhstan has been peaceful, in part because it
  has a somewhat less depressed economy than its
  neighbors.

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Tajikistan

• 65 Tajik, 25 Uzbek, and only 3 Russian.
• Suffers from a civil war among the Tajik people.
  
• The civil war has been between Tajiks who are
  former Communists and an unusual alliance of
  Muslim fundamentalists and Western-oriented
  intellectuals.

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Russia

• Now the Largest Multinational State.
• Officially recognizes the existence of 39
  nationalities, many of which are eager for
  independence.
• Russia's ethnicities are clustered in two
  principal locations.

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Ethnicities in Russia

• Ethnicities are clustered either in the center
  of Russia or on its borders.
• Most were conquered by the Russians in the 16th
  century.
• Independence movements among the ethnicities are
  flourishing.

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Chechnya

• Chechnya was brought under Russian control in
  the 1800s.
• When the Soviet Union broke up, the Chechens
  declared independence.
• If Chechnya gains independence other ethnicities
  will follow suit.
• The region contains deposits of petroleum.

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Russians in Other States

• Decades of Russian domination has left a deep
  reservoir of bitterness among other ethnicities
  once part of the Soviet Union.
• Russian soldiers have remained stationed in
  other countries, in part because Russia cannot
  afford to re-house them.

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Russians in Other States

• Other ethnicities fear the Russians are trying
  to reassert dominance.
• Russians claim that they are now subject to
  discrimination as minorities in countries that
  were once part of the Soviet Union.

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• Russians living in other countries of the former
  Soviet Union feel that they cannot migrate to
  Russia, because they have no jobs, homes, or land
  awaiting them there.

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Turmoil in the Caucasus

• The Caucasus region gets its name from the
  mountains that separate Russia from Azerbaijan
  and Georgia.
• Home to several ethnicities, who have a complex
  set of grievances against each other in the
  region.
• Every ethnicity wants to carve out a sovereign
  nation-state.

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Azeris (or Azerbaijanis)

• Azeris trace their roots to Turkish invaders in
  the 8th and 9th centuries.
• An 1828 treaty allocated northern Azeri
  territory to Russia and southern Azeri territory
  to Persia (now Iran).

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Azeris (or Azerbaijanis)

• Azeris make up 90 of the country's total
  population.
• Another 6 million Azeris are clustered in
  northwestern Iran.
• Iran restricts teaching of the Azeri language.

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Armenians

• More than 3,000 years ago Armenians controlled
  an independent kingdom in the Caucasus.
• During the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
  hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in
  a series of massacres organized by the Turks.

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Armenians

• Others were forced to migrate to Russia.
• After World War I the allies created an
  independent state of Armenia, but it was soon
  swallowed by its neighbors.
• Turkey and the Soviet Union divided Armenia.

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Armenians

• The Soviet portion became an independent country
  in 1991.
• More than 90 of the population in Armenia are
  Armenians.
• Armenians and Azeris have been at war with each
  other since 1988 over the boundaries between the
  two nationalities.

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Georgians

• The population is more diverse than that in
  Armenia and Azerbaijan.
• The Abkhazians in the north want an independent
  state, while the Ossetians in the south want to
  rejoin Russia.

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Revival of Ethnic Identity

• Ethnic identities never disappeared in Africa,
  where loyalty to tribe often remained more
  important than loyalty to the nationality.
• Europeans thought that ethnicity was an
  insignificant relic, but were wrong.

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Ethnicity and Communism

• From 1945 until the early 1990s, attitudes toward
  communism and economic cooperation were more
  important political factors in Europe than the
  nation-state principle.

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• The Communist government of Bulgaria repressed
  cultural differences by banning the Turkish
  language and the practice of some Islamic
  religious rites ... to remove ... obstacles to
  unifying national support for the ideology of
  communism.

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Ethnicity and Communism

• The administrative structures of the former
  Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia
  recognized the existence of ethnic groups.
• Local governments were designed to coincide as
  closely as possible with the territory occupied
  by the most numerous ethnicities.

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Rebirth of Nationalism in Eastern Europe

• Breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia give
  more numerous ethnicities the opportunity to
  organize nation-states.
• Less numerous ethnicities exist as minorities in
  multinational states, or divided among more than
  one of the new states.

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Rebirth of Nationalism in Eastern Europe

• Especially severe problems have occurred in the
  Balkans.
• Bulgaria's Turkish minority pressed for more
  rights.
• Minority ethnicities in the Soviet Union,
  Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia opposed the
  long-standing dominance of the more numerous
  ethnicities.

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• The relatively close coincidence between the
  boundaries of the Slovene ethnic group and the
  country of Slovenia has promoted the country's
  relative peace and stability, compared to other
  former Yugoslavian republics.

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Rebirth of Nationalism in Eastern Europe

• Sovereignty has brought difficulties in
  converting from Communist economic systems and
  fitting into the global economy.
• But problems of economic reform are minor
  compared to the conflicts where nation-states
  could not be created.