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 "nation, nations":
... 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 at the University of Paris, who were all ... in 1349 the studium generale which consisted 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 provides for ...
... 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 ... 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 of government in the United States, in contrast to the failure of Iturbide ... The nation formally assumed sovereignty and was constituted by free, sovereign and independent states ...
... edition of the volleyball Olympic tournament, in 1964, was won by Japan, the host nation ... The American-led boycott of the 1980 Games left many strong volleyball nations like Japan and South Korea out of the games ... bloc was, in its turn, boycotting the games, and once more many strong volleyball nations like the USSR, East Germany and Cuba did not participate ...
... 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 ...
... 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 ... and charged it with the task of reconstructing the nation's air transport industry ...
Famous quotes containing the word nation:
“[W]e must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation that most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.”
—Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910)
“What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)