Emergence Of Nation States Essay Research Paper

Emergence Of Nation States Essay, Research Paper

The emergence of the State system

The evolution of the state system has marked various significant events in the history of mankind. These episodes and years of war and battle for supremacy, freedom, religion and pride have caused many lives to be lost for the price of having realized the genuine type of a state. Nation and state are two concepts that are very confusing and sometimes both concepts are mistakenly perceived as having the same meaning. It is therefore necessary to provide a good definition on state and nation in order to draw a line or a distinction on both terms. “The term nation is an ethnic one, based upon culture, common heritage, language, and sense of identity. A state is a body of people politically organized under one government with sovereign rights. Sovereignty refers to the exclusive jurisdiction that a state possesses within its territory and to its freedom to act in international affairs without subjection to the legal control of another state organization. From a number of perspectives, a state may encompass, or less, than one nation; a nation may not posses statehood, but nations taken together make up the basic units and base of power in the international system in which we live in.” Base on our definition of state and nation, they can only be approximate and closely related, but not identical.

Now, another important terms that must be settled and defined are the concepts of nation state and city state. “A Nation state is an independent political unit based upon an ethnical unit or nation, which we think of as a group of people having the same background and usually a common language and culture.” A city state on the other hand is a state comprising a city such as Singapore and the Vatican. It is a city having the qualities and characteristics of a state, territorial, sovereign, and etc. historically, Greeks were the once to adopt this trend of forming city states. Each city state having their own form of government, independence, military strategy, and people. For example, Stern described Athens as being democratic, wealthy, and expansionist. While stern referred Sparta as authoritarian militarized and interested in preserving the status quo. This has been the trend that made Greece to be politically developed country at that time. The Greek states have also its interdependence especially on military alliance. As time goes on, both states have suffer from insecurity that one state might conquer, rule, and dominate the other state that had caused the Peloponnesian War. Sparta and Athens had fought for years on a battle for supremacy, security, and power. The ancient Greece showed and manifested that even though they are two independent countries they still both exercise interdependence but because of the insufficient system Greece city states collapsed.

The second ancient country to have developed a political state system is the Roman Empire. When Rome came into power at the eight century and third centuries BC, it had began to expand its territories by conquering nearby lands. Rome being the largest empire at that time had managed to keep all its territory intact and strong. Rome followed the same pattern of those Greeks’ city states but with a different approach and strategy. Rome had realized that due to the diverse culture and language people comprising the empire, Rome had established the city state format. However, it was not the same with the Greek city states, because this time it is not totally independent. The Roman city states have central government, the emperor being the head and the commander in chief of the empire. Governors were appointed by the senate of the Roman empire in order to governed each city states. The term “citizenship” has been introduced in this era that played a major role in strengthening the bond among city states composing the empire. Citizenship acted as the binding force of all people occupying the entire Roman empire territories.

In this case, insecurities among the city state have not been a problem because of the presence of the emperor and the central government. The Roman empire have been very much consistent for a long period of time that there was a point in time that no one had thought that it would come to an end. The problem of Rome was too much concentration of power in the central government. This had unveil a new political term called the-state centric model. As a result of death of Constantine and the state centric model, the great Roman empire was separated into two, the Latin western and the Greek eastern empires. Even worst on this occurrence was the growing misunderstandings between the pope and the emperor on the issue of who has the sole authority to govern both the religious and secular aspects of the Roman empire. These two main events in the history of Rome open up a new era that had further aggravated the problem on the Roman empire. These are the periods of reformation and renaissance.

The era of the medieval Europe marked two significant events and these are the reformation and the renaissance. “The religious reformation divides broadly into two parts. The first. Associated with the German Martin Luther who proclaimed his doctrines in 1517 favored moderate reform of the Church. The Lutherans accepted a breach with the unredeemable papacy; but they relied on Protestant bishops and on kings and oth