STANDARD 4OBJECTIVE B

Evolution of the Contemporary Political Pattern

Nation-State Concept (STivBi)

Nation-State: a form of political organization in which a group of people who share the same history, traditions, or language live in a particular area under one government

Sovereignty: Ability of a state to govern its territory free from control of its internal affairs by other states.

Political pattern of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries in western/central European.

The continent was dominated by two distinct types of countries. One type was the incipient national states such as England, France, Spain, and Portugal.

Other type was the empires in central and Eastern Europe.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) held that the Prince of any realm could determine the religion of that realm, as part of an arrangement that governed how territorial units in the Holy Roman Empire would relate to one another. This gave birth to a notion of sovereignty based in law.

This legal principle became the foundation on which all units were to relate to one another, and the strong de facto sovereign arrangements of the west ensured that sovereignty was understood to be all encompassing.

The sovereignty principle is significant because it provided a theoretical foundation for carving territory into largely autonomous governmental units.

This meant that the exercise of power was no longer seen in human hierarchical terms, but instead was to be exercised at a single scale -- that of the state.

However, as long as authority was vested in absolutist rulers and institutions, the system was subject to warfare and collapse.

nationalism -- the idea that each ethno-cultural community (nation) had the right to control its own affairs, and that the exercise of power ultimately rested with the members of that community.

These nations were said to possess an immortal sprit that was more important that individuals.

Nationalists believed that all progress and creative energy comes from the national spirit and the nation can demand supreme loyalty of its members and that the ideal form of government is one in which nations govern the territory they occupy -- the nation-state

The actual pattern of peoples in Europe forced intellectuals to argue that nations could develop in a variety of ways.

Some were diverse peoples, knit together in centralized states (the English, the French, and the Spanish)

some were the product of nineteenth-century movements to unify diverse peoples based on some sense of cultural continuity (the Germans and the Italians)

some were the product of early twentieth-century movements to free a group from dominance by another self-defined nation (the Irish and the Norwegians)

some were the product of movements to achieve self-determination from empires (the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Croatians).

In the United States, the concept of nationalism calls for the blending together of very diverse people into a new nation.

The nation-state ideal has become a pervasive notion undergirding the modern state system

The vast majority of the countries of the world are not nation-states in the original meaning of that term.

Today we learn about Russians fighting Chechens, Palestinians seeking their own state, Basque separatists demanding greater autonomy from Madrid, Tamils and Singhalese fighting one another in Sri Lanka, and many more conflicts among peoples.

Colonialism and Imperialism (StivBii)

Colonies Three motives: “God, gold, and glory” Today = some remaining colonies

The sun never sets on the British Empire.It involves complex relationships between

cultural imperialism, economic development, and cross-cultural communication. And invasion, let's not forget the invasion.

The major players in the colonizing game were Spain, Britain, France, and Germany

British Empire

Areas Colonized

New World, in Asia and Oceania, and finally in Africa

Each individual colony was treated uniquely depending on the home government, time period, and race of the inhabitants Spaniards in Central America, for example, killed many of

the natives and forced the survivors to covert to Christianity. The indigenous peoples essentially became slaves on their own land.

The British American colonies, on the other hand, who were primarily white and Christian already, had a relatively large number of liberties, including (limited) freedoms of assembly and religion.

Imperialism

Imperialism describes the unequal relationship between a country (dominator) and its colonies (dominated). Colonies are often purposely kept less economically developed than the parent country, or metropole.

imperial power has access to markets for their manufactured goods and a stable supply of raw materials, giving the metropole a distinct advantage over countries that are not as imperial. During the Industrial Revolution, for example, Britain relied on Indian cotton for manufacturing textiles.

Importance

Colonies are also geopolitically important, as they give the colonizing power a resource advantage over other countries and offer a base from which to maneuver, something that is especially important in times of war. Indians, Canadians, and Australians all fought for King and country during World War I, bolstering Britain's military power.

Colonial Possession, 1914

Colonial Possession, 2006

Democratization (StivBiii)

to make (a country or organization) more democratic

to make (something) available to all people : to make it possible for all people to understand (something)

Transition from a totalitarian regime to a democracy

Must come from with in or from the people