On the Metaphysics of Nations -- Chapter 3, Section II
The Nation -- Types of States and Types of People
The Agricultural Revolution meant the stratification of inequalities and a move away from the traditional kin-based clan structure of ethnic groups to the formation of the first states. However, ethnicity was still an important constitutive element of the first states. The new aristocracy and state superseded old tribal affiliations but the state's foundation in kinship bonds made state formation much easier.
Patriotism associated with the city-state derived directly from its people's sense of common kin and cultural identity. While city-states were not wholly homogeneous, they were ethnically constituted. Ethnicity was political and significant; city-states conflicted with one another despite being closely related but when a foreign enemy came they would coalesce into large alliances.
In the Athenian polis, tribal affiliations eroded away but Athenian citizenship remained based on the population of Attica which shared kin and culture attributes. Athens attracted many immigrants but most were Greeks and were assimilated into Athenian culture. Only autochthonous Athenians, those descended from two Athenian parents, qualified for citizenship.
States refer to the political apparatus of a people and can be organized into different systems.
First, we have the nation state which is synonymous with the term ethnostate. Nation states are relatively rare situations in which a nation has its own state with an extremely homogenous population (like Iceland, Poland, and Japan).
Much more common are multination states.
Unihomelands — A state in which the ethnic diversity of the state is due to immigration. The homeland people consider the entire state to bee their historic homeland (examples included modern France and modern Germany)
Multihomelands — The largest category of states which vary tremendously in the number of homelands they contain (examples include Nigeria and Russia)
Nonhomelands — States whose population (1) is overwhelmingly the product of migration and (2) consists of at least two significant groups, each of which is vitally aware of its ethnic difference from the other(s) and is determined to maintain that distinctiveness. The greater Caribbean offers a number of examples like Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad & Tobago.
Immigrant states — By definition, immigrant states are nonhomeland states but with a highly variegated population in terms of ancestry and characterized by a good deal of acculturation and assimilation. This is a made-up concept created by modernists who often attempt to apply the definition to the United States for political reasons. In reality, there is no example of this type of state.
Mestizo states — Mestizo states are limited to Latin America and are characterized by a population in which those of joint European-Amerindian ancestry are dominant. While mestizo states merit a separate category for analytical purposes, they more resemble multination states than nation states. Examples include Mexico and Ecuador.
States are made up on people, and so we can classify people by their context:
Prenational Nations — (related to the concept of tribes, nomads, hunter-gatherers, barbarians, and savages). These are people for whom national identity is still in its potential stage and has not been activated yet. For such people, meaningful identity is still limited to locale, clan, tribe, and the like. They are still an anthropological group but did not self-identify as a nation. Note that, as the nationalism process is not reversible, it is impossible for a group to leave this stage and return. Rather, national identity may simply become latent.
Nations — This is the largest human grouping characterized by a myth of common ancestry and membership in a nation (see earlier chapters).
Offshoot Nations — These nations formed when a significant segment of a nation has been geographically separated from the parent group for a period of time sufficient for it to develop a strong sense of separate consciousness. Members retain an awareness that they derive from the parent stock, but they believe that the characteristics they have in common are less significant than those that make them unique. (Quebecoi, Afrikaaners)
Diasporas — People living outside of their homeland who have not assimilated to the host's identity (maintaining a sense of identity with their original homeland)
Members of immigrant societies — Those whose primary sense of loyalty is not to the ethnonation(s) of their ancestors but to the immigrant society that they are born in — i.e., when a diaspora after many generations develops its unique identity, no longer connected to the folkways and culture of its ethnic homeland but also not assimilated to the host nation.