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
Famous quotes containing the word nation:
“Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots’ and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)
“Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a “sense” of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait, yet rejects humor as a contaminating element wherever found. America is a nation of comics and comedians; nevertheless, humor has no stature and is accepted only after the death of the perpetrator.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“I have been spending my first night in an American “summer hotel,” and I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining callow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!... What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)