Center-defined dynastic realms could rule heterogeneous non-contiguous populations

Evidence

Kingship organizes everything around a high centre. Its legitimacy derives from divinity, not from populations, who, after all, are subjects, not citizens. In the modern conception, state sovereignty is fully, flatly, and evenly operative over each square centimetre of a legally demarcated territory. But in the older imagining, where states were defined by centres, borders were porous and indistinct, and sovereignties faded imperceptibly into one another. Hence, paradoxically enough, the ease with which pre-modern empires and kingdoms were able to sustain their rule over immensely heterogeneous, and often not even contiguous, populations for long periods of time. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 74

Categorization

• XREF: Directly scaffolds later discussion of the nation as bounded/territorial imagined community and its exclusionary border logic relevant to Islamophobia readings.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that porous-bordered center-defined realms sustained heterogeneous populations better than flat modern sovereignty is a dense, paradigm-shifting point about the relationship between governance form and ethnic homogeneity.