Nation is a term used to refer to a group of people or inhabitants who share the same ethnic origin, of the same language and relatively homogeneous customs, that is, similar among their pairs. In addition to presenting all these aspects, a nation to be considered as such needs to add a feeling of belonging to the whole of this group, that is, there must be a willingness on the part of individuals to form a nation.
To sustain the progress of a nation, from a cultural point of view, citizens adopt the same customs, the same moral standards that govern what is right and wrong, the same religion and the same habits social. Furthermore, there is always a search for spatial or geographic cohesion, that is, a constant search for individuals from the same nation to always remain close and united in the same place.
To ensure this union, the different nations seek to consolidate their territories in order to secure its possession and sovereignty. But what is territory?
Territory it is a space delimited and appropriated by power relations. The political territory would be that in which there is a division established by internationally recognized rights and legislation that ensure the autonomy and sovereignty of a given people. So, we can say that a
state (with a capital "E", different from state, which corresponds to a province), to be constituted, it needs to establish its territory.In this way, we can understand that the vast majority of nations - after the advent of modernity and the diffusion of the European model of State throughout the world - began to seek the fixed constitution of their respective countries, which would then be considered like national states or Nation-states. But whoever thinks that a State is necessarily the holder of a territory in which only one nation is found is wrong. On the contrary, most countries aggregate, in the same territory, several nations, constituting what is called by multinational states, like Brazil.
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
And it is precisely this mismatch between State and Nation existing in different places that manifests most of the countless ethnic conflicts or zones of political instability around the world. An example is Spain: this country is composed of numerous ethnic groups or nations, some of them with strong separatist feelings, such as the Catalans and the Basques. In other cases, there are conflicts between different nations over the same territory, as is the case in conflict between Israel and Palestine, which, of course, transcends national values and settles on geopolitical reasons.
Although the establishment of a State with multiple nations is possible, there are those who advocate the idea of that a country must be maintained only by a specific nation, that is, the State must necessarily be a nation. These are called nationalists, which seek to ensure that a nation is always governed by one of its members, always in the service of their specific interests.
By Me. Rodolfo Alves Pena
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PENA, Rodolfo F. Alves. "What is a nation?"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/o-que-e/geografia/o-que-e-nacao.htm. Accessed on July 27, 2021.
