States System, Demographic History of

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STATES SYSTEM, DEMOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF

It is commonplace in the early twenty-first century, as it has been for the past two centuries, to speak of nation states as the primary unit of territory, identity, and citizenship for the world's population. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a world without nation states. The nation state system however has a specific history of geographic, social, political, and economic organization and is a comparatively recent phenomenon. There is also an emerging body of work on globalization that questions the longevity of the nation state system and proposes scenarios for a post-national world. Intriguing as the "end of the nation state" thesis may be, the nation state system appears to be firmly intact without any outward signs of collapse or major reconfiguration–although still characterized by the rise and fall of nations. How natural is this system? What historical shifts have taken place to shape the present geography of nation states? What, if any, are the indications that this "natural order of things" is undergoing a transformation?

The nation state system developed in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the emergence of the centralized state upholding the right of exclusive authority within the defined territorial state. The concept of we the people, we the nation became the new geography of association and citizenship. Hence, the people constituting the nation became the ultimate source of the state's legitimacy and the idea of the nation itself became the natural repository of political loyalty. This emergence, however, is the product of complex circumstances and historical contexts that warrant careful scrutiny.

Many commentators refer to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) as representing the beginning of the modern system of states. The Treaty, really a series of treaties that collectively ended the hostilities of the Thirty Years War, marked the culmination of the anti-hegemonic struggle against the Hapsburg ambitions for a supranational empire while also signifying the collapse of Spanish power outside the Iberian Peninsula, the fragmentation of Germany, and the rise of France as a major power in Europe. The principles that were established at Westphalia are of critical importance. It was now to be an accepted organizational pattern that the independence of a state invariably meant that it had jural rights, which all other states were bound to respect. This was the beginning of the modern framework of interstate relations. The Treaty established a secular concept of international relations, permanently replacing the medieval idea of a universal religious authority acting as the final arbiter of Christendom. Thus, any notion of an authority above the sovereign state was now rendered redundant.

An Old World Geography

The treaty of Westphalia may have set the stage for a new global geography of independent nation states and its associated claims over sovereignty and citizenship. However, this took place on an already networked globe. Some of the newly salient borders seemed natural, others completely arbitrary. Well before the European imperial expansion there were wide-ranging linkages among populations that were the result of identifiable material processes. One such linkage derived from the development of contending hegemonic political and military systems, which sought to extract surpluses from distant populations through conquest and empire building. Another linkage was the growth of long-distance trade, which connected zones of specialization along the routes of commerce. These developments in turn produced extensive grids of communication, which bound together different populations under the aegis of dominant religious or political ideologies.

The extension of this system beyond the European heartland has been a contradictory and profoundly disturbing process. In the nineteenth century the system of states each claiming sovereign rule was far from complete. Through various colonial and imperial arrangements, the "comity of nations" spread into lands distant from its origin; but it was not yet coterminous with the globe. The system was economically, culturally, and ideologically less heterogeneous than it was to become in the twentieth century.

The expansion of European powers and the secular transformations of culture, science, political and administrative organization, and technology provided the framework for the modern system. The demographic shifts associated with the crisis of feudalism, involving changing relationships between town and country, and between city and city, were also significant factors.

For some scholars the obvious context within which to analyze and understand the origins of nation states is the historical emergence of the capitalist world economy. Most of Europe in the late Middle Ages was feudal–consisting of relatively small, self-sufficient economic units based on the direct appropriation of the small agricultural surplus produced within a manorial economy by a small class of nobility. Areas of economic activity and trade were well defined. Expansion and contraction occurred at three levels–geography, commerce, and demography–each of which played a part in the establishment of new forms of surplus extraction based on more efficient and expanding production and the development of core states within this world system.

State formation is also inextricably linked to various attributes of civilizations quite apart from commercial activity. The historian Fernand Braudel points out that an expanding Europe should also be juxtaposed with biological and demographic circumstances of equal historical significance. Famines, overpopulation, falls in real earnings, popular uprisings, and grim periods of slump were characteristic of early European civilization. Epidemics and biological disasters such as the Black Death and the epidemics that followed, which occurred in the second half of the fourteenth century, produced major contractions in populations.

The concept of nation states became a natural part of Western political thinking as commerce, industry, and trade intensified around the globe. The expansion in the mid-eighteenth-century, from about 1733 onward, was also a period of setbacks such as those experienced on the eve of the French Revolution, but overall economic growth continued throughout this transformative period. Material gain and growing and more concentrated populations provided the context for the intellectual development of the Enlightenment.

European Romanticism coincided with a long economic downturn between 1817 and 1852. But apart from the effects of economic change, the development of nation states and their demographic history are inextricably linked to the cultural, political, and intellectual canvas involving real and perceived notions of collective identity and unity. The medieval image was one of reasonably stable feudal states ruled by monarchs who held authority over populations divided into classes or estates, from nobility to peasant. As Europe expanded this image gradually disappeared. As the civilizing forces of modern state formation progressed, a new consciousness about borders and new conceptions of national differences emerged. But this was not a simple transition from medieval geography into neatly divided territories replete with nationalist fervor. In what resembles the ebb and flow of sentiment in the world at the start of the twenty-first century, early forms of national identity involved a struggle between nationalism and universalism.

The Italian patriot and revolutionist Giuseppe Mazzini proclaimed the nineteenth century as the age of the arrival of the nations. The nation was a confraternity, a sharing of the same destiny. Its appearance signified the arrival of the masses, the decline of privilege, the emergence of political and religious freedom, and equality before the law, while providing a meaningful counter to excessive self-indulgence and rabid individualism. For Mazzini, the nation was the essence of morality although not a law unto itself. Germany stood in contrast to this model: For a long time it celebrated disunity with the claim that the destiny of the Germans was that of the Greeks of the modern world–a nation composed of many states, but a single flourishing civilization. Indeed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Germans took pride in being free of any feelings of nationalism. Later, of course, forms of German nationalism were to take on a pathological dimension concerned with domination and racial purity, though this development can be linked to the concept of universal empire building that transcended territorial Germany.

The history of states is thus inescapably bound to the political and cultural aspirations of people–often encapsulated in heroic myths about the past. Demography was an essential ingredient of such mythmaking. Natural shifts in population size and density became the basis of contested claims over territory and tradition. Some nationalist movements seek to regain "authenticity"–reacquiring what was taken from them through colonization or conquest by neighboring states. Viewed from this perspective the geographical borders of nation states are quite arbitrary; they can be altered or indeed created where none existed previously, as was the case for much of the African continent, in Europe, through the Treaties that followed the two World Wars, and, more recently, in the break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia into component nations.

States, Nations, and Globalization

Some commentators claim that the forces of globalization are reshaping the world of nation states, possibly creating a postnationalist order. The combined influence of transnational trade, economic relations, and the virtual fields of telecommunications and finance are said to be creating a world without borders. A new system of global politics, one that is not nation-state-centered, is supposedly emerging. Other observers take the opposite view, suggesting a new era of balkanization and instability, wherein nations will become even more important.

Demographic change is an important consideration in any debate over the salience and permanence of state borders. Population shifts, brought about particularly by migration and refugee flows, are altering the demographic composition of nations. Optimistic visions of transnational democracy and, more generally, of the end of the nation state, need to be balanced against the rise of aggressive nationalism based on xenophobic sentiment concerning the protection of borders. Globalization does not necessarily produce a stable world polity and reduction in nation state conflict. The new worlds of communications and economics may be globalized but all indications suggest that the politics of this transformation is thoroughly grounded in an old-world territorial geography. Concepts and terms like sovereignty and citizenship that have previously been taken for granted by scholars of international politics are being placed under scrutiny by shifts in migration patterns.

The demographic history of nation states is associated with a dynamic geography. The global system of states at the beginning of the nineteenth century does not resemble the mosaic of nation states at the beginning of the twenty-first century. New states have emerged; old states have disappeared. The nation state system has evolved through the ravages of war, the demise of colonialism, and the creation of new states as communities gained or regained collective identities and sought to establish territorial homes. Regional groupings of nations explore arrangements that relinquish some elements of sovereignty to a supranational entity–most notably, as in the European Union. And international organizations with global reach, if little sway, proliferate under the United Nations system. Contemporary problems of border surveillance and migration control, the growing movement of refugees, and the increasing demands by populations for national autonomy suggest that the system of states will remain a dominant feature of the global political system for some considerable time. That notwithstanding, emerging global issues such as how to deal with ominous environmental trends, and the transnational impact of anti-globalization social movements, indicate that the charmed life of state sovereignty may be entering unsettling times.

See also: Geopolitics.