A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history.[1] In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up.[2][3] In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state.[1] The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.[1]
According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people;" "a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation;" "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.[4]
An alternative view, expressed by Otto Bauer, author of Social Democracy and the Nationalities Question (1907), that "A nation is an aggregate of people bound into a community of character by a common destiny." would include Jews. R. Springer, author of The National Problem (1909), also cited by Stalin in his discussion of this matter, held similar views.[4]
The word nation came to English from the Old French word nacion, which in turn originates from the Latin word natio (nātĭō) literally meaning "that which has been born".[5]
As an example of how the word natio was employed in classical Latin, the following quote from Cicero's Philippics Against Mark Antony in 44 BC contrasts the external, inferior nationes ("races of people") with the Roman civitas ("community"):
"Omnes nationes servitutem ferre possunt: nostra civitas non potest."
("All races are able to bear enslavement, but our community cannot.")
— Cicero, Orationes: Pro Milone, Pro Marcello, Pro Ligario, Pro rege Deiotaro, Philippicae I-XIV[6]
An early example of the use of the word "nation" (in conjunction with language and territory) was provided in 968 by Liutprand (the bishop of Cremona) who, while confronting the Byzantine emperor, Nicephorus II, on behalf of his patron Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, declared:
"The land...which you say belongs to your empire belongs, as the nationality and language of the people proves, to the kingdom of Italy.'"
— Liutprand, Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana ad Nicephorum Phocam [7]
[edit] Medieval nationes
A significant early use of the term nation, as natio, occurred at mediaeval universities[8] to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all at the University of Paris, who were all born within a pays, spoke the same language and expected to be ruled by their own familiar law. In 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson was elected twice as a procurator for the French natio. The University of Prague adopted the division of students into nationes: from its opening in 1349 the studium generale which consisted of Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish nations.
In a similar way, the nationes were segregated by the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, who maintained at Rhodes the hostels from which they took their name "where foreigners eat and have their places of meeting, each nation apart from the others, and a Knight has charge of each one of these hostels, and provides for the necessities of the inmates according to their religion", as the Spanish traveller Pedro Tafur noted in 1436.[9]
- ^ a b c World Book Dictionary defines nation as “the people occupying the same country, united under the same government, and usually speaking the same language”. Another definition is that nation is a “sovereign state.” It also says nation can refer to “a people, race, or tribe; those having the same descent, language, and history.” World Book Dictionary also gives this definition: “a tribe of North American Indians.” Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary defines nation as “a community of people composed of one or more nationalities with its own territory and government” and also as “a tribe or federation of tribes (as of American Indians)”.
- ^ "Nation". Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged (10th ed.). http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Nation. Retrieved 17 June 2011. "1. an aggregation of people or peoples of one or more cultures, races, etc, organized into a single state: the Australian nation"
- ^ Bretton, Henry L. (1986). International relations in the nuclear age: one world, difficult to manage. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 5. ISBN 0-88706-040-4. http://books.google.ie/books?id=wCpKUmCpmoEC&lpg=PR4&dq=0-88706-040-4&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q=0-88706-040-4&f=false. Retrieved 17 June 2011. "It should be stated at the outset that the term nation has two distinctly different uses. In a legal sense it is synonymous with the state as a whole regardless of the number of different ethnic or national groups–nationalities–contained within it. In that sense, one speaks of nation and means state."
- ^ a b Joseph Stalin. "Marxism and the National Question" (in English translated from Russian). Prosveshcheniye, Nos. 3-5, March-May 1913. Marxists Internet Archive. Archived from the original on unknown date. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm. Retrieved April 14, 2012.
- ^ Harper, Douglas. "Nation". Online Etymology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nation. Retrieved 5 June 2011. .
- ^ Online at Tufts.edu
- ^ Taken from an online translation at UCdavis.edu
- ^ see: nation (university)
- ^ Pedro Tafur, Andanças e viajes.
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