A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up. The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.
According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people"; "a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation"; "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation"; "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation"; "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation"; "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation"; "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.
An alternative view, expressed by Otto Bauer, author of Social Democracy and the Nationalities Question (1907), that "A nation is an aggregate of people bound into a community of character by a common destiny." would include Jews. R. Springer, author of The National Problem (1909), also cited by Stalin in his discussion of this matter, held similar views.
Read more about Nation: Etymology, Medieval nationes
Other articles related to "nations, nation":
... transport as a matter of national importance (as did the governments of other geographically large nations, such as the Soviet Union and the United States) ... In the words of Director General of Civil Aviation AB Corbett, A nation which refuses to use flying in its national life must necessarily today be a backward and ... National Airways Commission (ANAC) and charged it with the task of reconstructing the nation's air transport industry ...
... A significant early use of the term nation, as natio, occurred at mediaeval universities to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all ... of Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Polish nations ... from which they took their name "where foreigners eat and have their places of meeting, each nation apart from the others, and a Knight has charge of each one of these hostels, and ...
... A nation is a unified social community ... Nation or The Nation may also refer to A country, a division of a geographical territory marked by boundaries ...
... states, considering that this would weaken the nation, which needed unity to counter any attempted reconquest by Spain, which would be supported by other European nations ... who defended the federalist ideology argued that it was the desire and will of the nation to be formed in this way, and cited the prosperity established under this form ... The nation formally assumed sovereignty and was constituted by free, sovereign and independent states ...
... Olympic tournament, in 1964, was won by Japan, the host nation ... boycott of the 1980 Games left many strong volleyball nations like Japan and South Korea out of the games ... the games, and once more many strong volleyball nations like the USSR, East Germany and Cuba did not participate ...
Famous quotes containing the word nation:
“In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the Good Neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator’s power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“This nation is founded on blood like a city on swamps
yet its dream has been beautiful and sometimes just
that now grows brutal and heavy as a burned out star.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)