One unifying biographical factor in the lives of Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler is what some historians have termed “borderland syndrome”—they were born and raised on the outer fringes of the nation they ultimately ruled. France’s Napoleon was Italian, Russia’s Stalin was Georgian, and Germany’s Hitler was Austrian. Yet something about their childhood experiences living on the borders of greater empires, and becoming non-native sons of these greater empires, turned them into driven men. And ultimately, each was taken by a fanatical and irrational patriotism which drove them to conquer and dominate other nations and peoples.

Consider:

• Napoleone di Buonaparte was born in Corsica the year after rule of the island was transferred from Genoa to France. Although his family was Italian (he was named after an uncle killed fighting the French) his family quickly adapted to the new order and his father was named Corsica’s representative to the court of Louis XVI in 1777. As a teenager Napoleon enrolled at a religious school in mainland France to learn French, attended a French military academy, but never became a native speaker and spoke with a Corsican accent for his entire life. This notwithstanding, he wanted to be French and identified with the institutions of France and pushed to assimilate through the meritocracy that was the 19th century military. Most telling, he changed his name from the Italian Napoleone di Buonaparte to Napoléon Bonaparte.

• Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili was born to a cobbler in the violent and lawless town of Gori in a Georgia that was under the rule of the Russian Czar. At age 10 he began attending a church school where the Georgian children were forced to speak Russian. He attended Orthodox seminary, from where he was expelled, and then became a Marxist revolutionary after reading the works of Lenin. He later took the name Joseph Stalin, and distinguished himself as a full-blown outlaw in the Caucasus, robbing banks and organizing the various peoples of the Caucasus, including Azeris and Persians, in violent Bolshevik activities.

• Adolf Hitler was born in western Austria at Braunau, the river that separates Germany from Austria. His father was a customs inspector who commuted back and forth across the riverine border every day. His family soon moved to Bavaria, and Lower Bavarian became his lifelong native dialect. But his family originated from, and he later returned to, an “ancestral homeland” (as the local Nazis later proudly called it) two hundred miles east of Braunau in the Waldviertel, a place for centuries the disputed borderland between Austria and Czechoslovakia. And the name Hitler is not a typical German name and may be Slavic in origin (and less likely, but still possible, Jewish in origin).

Something about living in the borderland for each of these men was that it gave them a kind of charismatic political genius. They came from outside, or at least the edges, of the nation that they led. All three men rose to power through the military or through a political party organ. And all inspired their countrymen with a fiery vision that, while idealistic in some ways and perverse in others, resulted in undisputed authority to lead the nation. Once installed as rulers, all ordered military campaigns to expand their territory and spheres of influence.

These three men are the most frequently cited examples of “Borderlands Syndrome,” but there are others, and from all spectrums of human history—Alexander the Great, Theodor Herzl, and Sun Yat Sen, among others.

See previous posts regarding fun facts about the coldest inhabited regions of the world, such as France’s Icelands, Iceland’s bankruptcy, banks of seeds, and seeding arctic populations.

Tribalization and nationalism in the arctic continues! Following on the push for independence from Denmark by the Faroe Islands, Greenland this week voted with a supermajority of more than 75% to receive greater autonomy from Denmark. This may even lead to independence for this enormous island of just 56,000 people. With the approval of more than 3/4 voters, Greenland now has the sovereign right to take control of its security, system of justice, and police force.

Greenland scenery.

What is so bad about Denmark? Greenlanders elect two representatives who sit in the Danish parliament, so the region receives due political representation. The current primary export is fish, but Denmark provides a whopping half billion dollar grant for public services such as education and health care, so there is plenty of economic assistance. Locals may believe that independence promises a greater shares of profits from possible exports of oil, rubies, gold and diamonds—if they can ever convince anyone to invest the money to exploit these possible resources. But that’s a long way off. And who only knows how it would defend itself. (SIDENOTE: does anyone know if Greenland is within the US defense perimeter along with Iceland?)

Ultimately, this referendum comes down to tribalism and the phenomenon of arctic nationalism, the same factor that plays into Faroese identity, as noted previously. Greenland may be the sovereign territory of Denmark, but it shares little history with that nation. Up to 88% of the population is Inuit or mixed Danish and Inuit in ethnicy. Only 12% are of European descent. And Greenland explicitly chose to leave the European Community in 1985, just as the Faroese chose to opt out of EU membership.

[Part I]

Last week, I argued that Kosovo did not actually set a legal precedent for other breakaway regions but instead finally officially asked a question that has been asked for decades but never answered, namely, who gets to become a state?

From Non-Existent to Status Quo

Although the idea of a nation-state is taken by most to be axiomatic, it wasn’t always. In fact, nationalism itself only arose in the late 1800s. Indeed, one of the reasons attributed to World War I was the rise of nationalism which set off a series of small conflicts in, ironically, the Balkans. As we discussed in the last post, nationalism is a political ideology stating that a nation of people has the right to constitute an independent or autonomous political community based on a shared history and common destiny. Most nationalists believe the borders of the state should be congruent with the borders of the nation.

However, with the constant talk of tribes and ethnic and religious conflict today, most don’t stop to remember the days when the same was prevalent in Europe. Throughout most of history, most countries were in fact multiethnic empires. The great empires of history that we know, the Persian, Mongol, British, Austria-Hungary and Roman were comprised of many peoples and religions. In those days, the idea of a state having sovereignty over its own territory much less being ruled by the ethnic group that was the majority in it was unthinkable or even unimportant.

The Industrial Revolution

Some anthropologists argue that ethnicity is a constructed identity which arose out of contact with other groups of people and competition for resources. An isolated or remote village has no reason to think of itself as Apache, Persian, or Zulu. For ethnic identity to exist, there must be an “other” with which one can contrast himself. It is therefore natural that as the world became more connected, a new ethnic awareness arose among peoples all over the globe. Indeed, major countries like Germany and Italy were united very late in history (1871 and 1861) and were previously no more logically one nation than say Americans and Malaysians would seem to be. But the Industrial Revolution changed everything.

With the onset of the industrial revolution, two major changes occurred in societies around the world: the migration from rural to urban living and communications and transportation technology. Surviving on a farm and surviving in a city were two very different things. Being Armenian or Irish didn’t help you much in the country but it could give you a line on a job, the right neighborhood to live in, helpful neighbors and more in a city. In the vast impersonal new cities springing up, the same social and family networks no longer existed or functioned as in a rural setting. Even today, one finds Chinatown, little Italy, a Turkish quarter or Latino section of cities all over the world. In the impersonal and territorially neutral city, your people became your home.

It is therefore no surprise that ethnicity quickly became an issue in the late 1800s and early 1900s as Europe rapidly industrialized and urbanized. Indeed, as ethnic awareness grew, so too did idea of nationalism all over Europe and with it, violence and instability. What did it mean to be a German if you’d never met an Italian or Frenchman?

But before we continue, what exactly does ethnicity mean and what has the main organizing principle been for humans? After all, states are relatively new historically speaking. All this and more in the next post!

NOTE: Due to a high workload at the moment, posting will be somewhat sparse, but fear not the series will continue, albeit slowly.

While many people use the words state and nation-state interchangeably, there is an important difference between the two responsible for increasing tension and domestic turbulence all over the globe. Nationalism has been the source of countless conflicts around the world yet the current political makeup of the globe is fairly new, historically speaking. Despite the prejudices some have today, empires were actually the norm through much of history. Only since the Treaty of Westphalia 1648 have certain groups of people believed in their absolute right to a specific piece of land. As time went on, the idea caught on and ultimately led to the splintering of the great empires (English, Dutch, Spanish, Ottoman, German, Russian, French etc) into smaller states whose geographical borders closely represented the ethnic makeup of the territory.

From giant conglomerations of peoples to tiny states with just a few thousand people,today, people the world over find themselves facing another variation of this age old problem. With the ease and increase of international travel, communications and commerce, the peoples of the world have again began to mix while the borders of their states remain static. As many settle down, learn the local language and gain residence or citizenship, the question arises: Who is Swiss? Who is German? Who is Turkish?

Ironically, this is one major problem that both Europe and Turkey share. While Germans debate whether German-speaking Turks born and raised in Germany are really German, Turks debate what it means to be Turkish. According to the Turkish constitution for example, Turkey is a Turkish state whose language is Turkish. Where then, does this leave the Kurds, who’ve lived in the region thousands of years longer than the Turks?

An article in Today’s Zaman on Turkish and Kurdish nationalism notes:

The MHP needs to reevaluate these ideologies and principles and generate new ideas. Bahçeli referred to Oct. 29 1923 when explaining the basic rules of living under the roof of a united Turkish Republic and coexisting in a Turkish national identity. But the date is wrong, most of the sensitive concepts and descriptions we debate today date back to after 1923. Are we going to describe Turkishness according to the more enclosed description in the 1924 Constitution or, the more limiting description in the 1982 Constitution? Also Bahçeli needs to elaborate on what he means by “one state, one nation, one flag, one language,”? which he listed as the principles of “national unity and solidarity.”? How will we place the Kurds, whom it is believed to come from a different ethnic root, within this “one nation”? conception?

Nowadays, the most successful states are arguably those who born from settler colonies, specifically British ones. To be American, Australian or Canadian isn’t to be a certain race or religion. While white Anglo-Saxons are clearly the majority at the moment, everyone else has been and is just as welcome and not seen as less Canadian, American or Australian. Indeed, for countries based on an idea and where no group “owns” the land, the freedom to change, adapt and grow is far greater than in those based on ethnicity and religion with far older cultures and traditions. While some people advance the idea of so-called Market-States, one if the biggest and most overlooked questions of our century is that of identity. Will we see more melting together? More nationalist backlash?

I invite readers to share their views on the increasingly important role of identity on both the individual and state level and the effects thereof on states and their domestic and foreign policy.