Nation and Nation-State

A nation is a group of people, more than one community, who have the same language, religions and historical experiences. A nation alone cannot have any states within it. For example, the Kurds in Northern Iraq are one of the largest nations that do not have a state within their nation. The Kurds mostly live in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. There are close to 25 million Kurds and they are Sunni Muslim. The Kurds have a culture that is unlike any of their neighbors. Because of this culture there has been conflicts about an independent Kurdish state with Turkish and Iraqis' in the areas where the Kurds live.

A state is a place that has boundaries that are recognized by the international, has people who are permanent residents, regulates foreign and domestic trade and issues money, has an education system, has a government and has been recognized by other countries or states as a state. An example of a state is Kosovo. Kosovo is the newest state and they declared independence from Serbia in 2008. The United States, United Kingdom, France and other countries recognized Kosovo as an independent country, this is one of the requirements to becoming a state.

A nation-state is when a nation of people have a state of their own. In a typical nation-state there is one ethnic group who speaks one language and share one language. This is the nation or “the people” and they all live inside a border which is the nation-state. Iceland is an example of this. Their national culture and language are only found in Iceland. On the other hand there are some nation-states that have more than one ethnic group and a few different languages such as Switzerland. In Switzerland you can find these different ethnic groups: Germanic, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romansh. The languages spoke there are German, French, Italian and some Romansh.

The United States is a modern nation-state. The reason is because it is a sovereign territory because we have people who want to have their own...