[dotancohen]

That is an extreme liberal viewpoint, which often flourishes on Wikipedia. Not everything authoritatively stated on Wikipedia is fact, even if there is a link in the footer to someone who says so.

Nation-states were by far the dominant political entities up until the age of exploration, around the 15th century. Name any ancient society, with the stark exception of the Romans they are all nations or nation-states. The Egyptians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Greeks, all nations or nation-states.

Today, it is fashionable to pretend that race doesn't exist as an effort to remove racial barriers. The goal is noble, but the rewriting of history is profane.

[ilayn]

You are confusing tribes with nations. None of those examples you gave had any nation-states especially greeks, persians and you can add ottomans, ming, mogul so on, they all had empires with tribal ruling with a dynasty and tribes, with extremely diverse ethnicity impossible to form a coherent nation with a common denomination. There is hardly ever a turkish grand-vizier in Ottoman catalogue to give a trivial example contrary to what you would expect from a "national" point of view.

Race exists but not nearly relevant as you claim and has nothing to do with nation-states. I don't claim to side with the parent but you are not nearly correct either. IF there is a footnote to a source, you better read it next time. Wiki is not authoritative but not complete junk either.

[kragen]

Your point about the Ottoman grand viziers is well taken.

However, I don't agree with some of the distinctions you're making. Tribes are nations. Like, literally, "nation" is the Latin word for tribes that weren't one of the the three tribes of Rome. "Race" is another synonym; Webster defines "nation" as "A part, or division, of the people of the earth, distinguished from the rest by common descent, language, or institutions; a race; a stock." If a tribe or a race is roughly coextensive with a state, that state is a nation-state. So race has everything to do with nation-states; this is one of the main reasons I think it's important to point out that countries like the United States are not nation-states, despite the efforts of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and that nation-states are something we can do away with.

Consider ancient Greece. Classical Athens was considered to consist of four tribes, and the state of Athens only governed a tiny minority of Greeks, so the political division into states just didn't coincide with a division by common descent, language, or institutions even very roughly; and Greece remained divided into such city-states until being conquered by the Romans. Mycenaean Greece was far more politically unified, but much more diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, and institutions; archaeological evidence confirms Homer's hearsay on this count. Biblical Israel was classically divided into twelve tribes, and the myths of Abraham and the Exodus was used to falsely claim a common descent for what archaeological evidence tells us were Canaanite people who spoke the same Semitic language as their neighbors but began to distinguish themselves by the cult of Yahweh; and we have both documentary and archaeological evidence of their subsequent divisions and reunions, continuing through the intertestamental period.

[CRConrad]

Was going to say exactly that (only perhaps a little shorter). My example would have been the North American indigenous nations, aka "Indian tribes".

[dotancohen]

  > You are confusing tribes with nations.

I'm not confusing them: they're the same thing.

  > Nation: ...directly from Latin nationem "... race of people, tribe,"
  > - https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation

[Koshkin]

The meaning in Latin is almost irrelevant here. I know it’s confusing, but in American usage, the meaning of the word “nation” has largely shifted to mean the (entire) state or the country - as opposed to the “state” which is part of a “union.” So, the US and by extension Britain, Germany, France, Albania, etc. are all “nations” whether they consist of “states” or not.

[kragen]

It is counterproductive to try to apply that local vernacular meaning of the word "nation" to understand the term "nation state", which describes a particular kind of state that is different from other kinds of states. It will only confuse you. It would be like trying to understand the term "laser cooling", which describes a refrigeration process, by using the vernacular meaning of the word "cool" that is "in fashion". Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state.

[Koshkin]

But that particular "vernacular" is important, and not only because American audience has a large presence here on HN, but also because it is influential and is imported into other world languages - one example being the term "national park" which has nothing to do with a nation-state (or a park, for that matter) but simply means what should be easily expressed in any language as "a state nature preserve."

[kragen]

The "in fashion" meaning of the word "cool" is also important and influential (and imported into other world languages!) but it is not the relevant meaning in the phrase "laser cooling". At best you can say that the American audience has a propensity to be confused about the term "nation state", compounded by its general historical illiteracy.

[dotancohen]

  > in American usage, the meaning of the word “nation” has largely
  > shifted to mean the (entire) state or the country

So in American usage nation-state means what exactly?

In any case, no matter how Americans call their political entities, the word "nation" in the term "nation-state" has a clear, unambiguous meaning, referring to a race/tribe/nation.

[ilayn]

Nope see my reply above. It has no relation. Nation has a very politically precise modern definition that is independent from race/tribe.

[kragen]

Although I do not agree with your comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30457930, I am appalled that it has been [dead]ed.

[s3tz]

Don't want to sound mean or anything, but you should read more in depth on these "nation" states before taking that position.

[dotancohen]

You don't sound mean, rather, I would appreciate enlightenment. I'm familiar with some of them, such as the Hebrews (I'm a Hebrew), Greeks (studied a bit, but not in an academic setting), Ahmans (which I call Persians for a modern audience), but I don't pretend to be an expert.

I called them nations because they were a people of a common race. For instance, the ancient Greeks have described the features of the Perisans whom they fought at Marathon - and from this description it is clear that a Greek could identify another person as Greek or Persian. Hence, they are different nations. And even today the Ethiopians retain very distinct features. My country (Israel) has many Ethiopians, I believe that we are the only Western nation to welcome African immigrants as equals. And would any Westerner argue that the Chinese have physical features distinct from those with European heritage? Does that not qualify - for you - as a different race?

If you are referring to the Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestors, then I counter that their descendants have diverged.

If you meant something else, I am always grateful for corrections or enlightenment.

[kragen]

I'm no expert on the time in question, so I may have some things wrong, but here's how I understand the situation.

I agree that the Greeks who fought at Marathon were a nation, but they were not a state; they came from Athens and Plataia, which were different states, allied with the Lakedaimonians, another state, also of the Greek nation but missing in action that day. The Persians, by contrast, were a state but, as you surely know, they included many nations: Datis was Median, Artaphernes ruled the Lydians (though he himself was also Median), and Hippias was actually Greek; the Persian forces also included Thracians, Mysians, Phrygians, Hebrews (!), Macedonians, and so on, though I don't know if they were present at Marathon. You can surely forgive Herodotus for not dwelling on the internal ethnic divisions among the Persian troops his interviewees were facing. (However, he did mention the Sakai alongside the "Persians" (Persai), Simonides called the Persian force the "army of the Medes" (Medon), and Aiskhylos also spoke in his epitaph of facing the Medes (Medos) at Marathon rather than the "Persians".)

So that's the sense in which neither Greece nor Persia was a nation-state at the time: Greece was a nation but not a state, while Persia was a state but not a nation. Or, rather, there was a Persian nation, but the plurinational Persian state was immensely larger than the Persian nation to which its rulers belonged.

If we consider Homeric Greece instead, the Greeks look more like the Persia that fought at Marathon: Homer's Akhaioi are, perhaps, all ruled from Mykenai by Agamemnon, but they worship different gods, speak different (but related) languages, and have different descent. And, although we know many things in Homer are historically wrong, modern archaeology does back up this plurinational picture of the Akhaioi. So Mycenaean Greece, like the Persian empire of Darius, was a state but not a nation.

As I understand the situation, we can make similar arguments about most of the ancient history of the Hebrews: beginning with ethnic and religious unity with neighboring Canaanite peoples subjugated by Egypt (despite the later invention of myths like Abraham and the Exodus, which are not supported by the archaeological evidence) and proceeding through many historical political divisions --- not just the division between Israel and Judea of which the Torah makes so much, but also, at various times, Samaria, various city-states in Palestine, the Maccabee state, and the Phoenician cities, as well as subjugation by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, and finally Romans. The Torah narrative of 117 years of a united monarchy preceding the Israel/Judah split is generally not accepted by modern scholars, though the debate is certainly open, but even in the Torah most of the historically plausible action happens at times when the Hebrew nation was either divided into separate kingdoms or suffering under the yoke of foreign powers.

So I don't think it's accurate to describe any of the ancient Israelite states as nation-states.

[dotancohen]

Thank you. I've got some material to read and digest now.

[kragen]

I'm interested to hear what you think!

[dotancohen]

After a day digesting the ancient and modern situation, I've come to a conclusion that might be comfortable.

I don't know how diverged e.g. the Scythians were from the Amyrgians (of whom I'd never heard of until yesterday), but it is clear that they distinguished one from another. However, would an Athenian distinguish between them? Would a Scythian distinguish between a Spartan and an Athenian?

It seems to me that there are no clear boundaries between "peoples" or "nations". For me a Han and a Manchu are both Chinese, but they might see a Polish Jew as no different than a Lithuanian Jew. And yet the Polish Jew from Loz will see his identity distinct from the Jew from Warsaw.

So back to the conflict at hand, from the perspective of Slavic history there is merit to considering the Ukrainian and Russian peoples as the same people or nation. From the perspective of wishing to live under different systems of values and authority, there is also merit to considering them as distinct. Note that the gift of Crim to Ukraine during the 1950s was "a gift from the Russian people to the Ukrainian people" so at that time the Russians were making a distinction between the two.

As usual when considering human relationships, it's complicated )). There's an old joke about the Irishmen talking about how close they are - until the end. You've probably heard it.

[kragen]

Of your list, the ones I know about (the Hebrews, the Persians, the Chinese, and the Greeks) were plurinational (and frequently not states), though sometimes not in exactly the same way as the Romans.

It's true that I'm an extreme liberal! But I think the Wikipedia article gives a neutral point of view.

[CRConrad]

> It's true that I'm an extreme liberal! But I think the Wikipedia article gives a neutral point of view.

Shouldn't this opinion be a hint that maybe the article is liberal too? ;-)