Page 40 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

nation-state 1341

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out. • Robert Frost (1874–1963)

The Nation-State System tribes, or feudal lords) and in which authority extended
The nation-state is believed to have evolved from the sys- over people but not necessarily over territory.
tem of states in Europe traceable to the Treaty of West- Although in theory a nation-state acknowledged the
phalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years’ War. The sovereignty and autonomy of other nation-states, the
treaty came to inaugurate a system in which, by the nine- states were engaged in a competition for resources that
teenth century, each state was defined by territorial boun- entailed not only military conquest and colonization, but
daries and ruled by one sovereign. But the system of also annexation or domination of one another’s territo-
nation-states is more appropriately dated to its explicit ries. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
articulation by the philosopher Emmerich de Vattel these states became increasingly involved in creating the
(1714–1767) in the late eighteenth century, which as- conditions for capitalist competition and wealth accu-
sumed that states respected the territorial integrity of mulation within Europe as well as overseas.Through the
other similarly constituted states.The Westphalian-Vatellian nineteenth century, they standardized and regulated their
nation-state was distinguishable from other polities (such economic, judicial, and political systems while competing
as empires or kingdoms), which had several, often com- for colonies in Asia,Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific.
peting, sources and levels of authority (such as the church, Colonization or semicolonization (such as informal

A key element of state-building is an effective system of communciation and transportation.
This photo from South Central Namibia shows men working on the Aus to Luderitz railway
line.