History
At one time, Jus sanguinis was the sole means of determining nationality in Europe (where it is still widespread in Central and Eastern Europe) and Asia. An individual belonged to a family, a tribe or a people, not to a territory. It was a basic tenet of Roman law.
An early form of partial jus soli dates from the Cleisthenes' reforms, and developed further in the Roman world where citizenship was extended to all free inhabitants of the Empire, especially with the Constitutio Antoniniana (Edict of Caracalla).
But it was much later, when the independence of the English colonies in America, and the French Revolution, laid the foundations for jus soli. With the social and economic development of the 19th and 20th centuries, and above all, the massive migrations to the Americas and Western Europe, that jus soli was established in a greater and greater number of countries.
The geographer Jared Diamond has calculated that if the application of jus soli since 1850 were abolished, 60% of Americans and 80% of Argentinians would lose their citizenship, and 25% of British and French.
Read more about this topic: Jus Soli
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“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)