Nearly all nation-states formed by incorporating diverse cultures through conquest and migration

Evidence

In the context of this volume, the main importance of migration lies in the way that it helps increase cultural diversity in many societies, creating the conditions for new forms of ethnic relations. Historically, nation-states have been based on the idea that a people with a common culture should form a political community within fixed geographical boundaries. In reality, nearly all nation-states have incorporated groups with diverse cultures through expansion, conquest, or migration. Creating a common culture has therefore involved lengthy (and often oppressive) processes of integration or assimilation. Globalization doubly undermines the conditions for consolidation of nation-states. First, national boundaries are becoming increasingly porous, so that the national society ceases to be the exclusive (or even the principal) focus for economic, social, and political life. Secondly, the growth of migration and the increasing diversity of migrants in terms of origins, culture, and economic and social characteristics lead to ever more rapid formation of new minorities. Thus virtually all countries of immigration are becoming multicultural societies, in which a range of ethnic groups tend to cluster together and maintain their own languages, cultures, and religions over generations. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3883 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It is true that the system of rule in Austria-Hungary and Czarist Russia served as a veritable education in tribal nationalism, based as it was upon the oppression of nationalities. In Russia this oppression was the exclusive monopoly of the bureaucracy which also oppressed the Russian people with the result that only the Russian intelligentsia became Pan-Slav. The Dual Monarchy, on the contrary, dominated its troublesome nationalities by giving to them just enough freedom to oppress other nationalities, with the result that these became the real mass basis for the ideology of the pan-movements. The secret of the survival of the House of Hapsburg in the nineteenth century lay in careful balance and support of a supranational machinery by the mutual antagonism and exploitation of Czechs by Germans, of Slovaks by Hungarians, of Ruthenians by Poles, and so on. For all of them it became a matter of course that one might achieve nationhood at the expense of the others and that one would gladly be deprived of freedom if the oppression came from one’s own national government. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 599 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nearly all nation-states formed by absorbing culturally diverse peoples, not by ethnic homogeneity — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3883; Migration erodes boundaries between languages, cultures, and nation-states — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3805; National identity is as constructed as minority ethnic cultures (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Nearly all nation-states formed by absorbing culturally diverse peoples, not by ethnic homogeneity #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3883
• Conquest by a nation either awakens conquered nationalism or degenerates into tyranny #complicates (0.75)
• Supranational empires educated subject nations in tribal nationalism by pitting nationalities against each other #complicates (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 599
• Nationalism in multinational empires disrupts internally instead of unifying as in nation-states #complicates (0.71) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 651