Comments Elsewhere

“There are nations that are states such as Japan, Han China, Korea etc and then there are states comprised of nations such as the UK, Spain, Iraq, Pakistan and historically France.”

I don’t get the principle behind the proposed distinction here.

Is it supposed to be that the first group of states are relatively homogenous in terms of national composition whereas the second are multinational political amalgamations? If that’s the case, then I don’t understand how Han China—which has for millennia been one of the foremost multinational imperial entities in the world—goes in the group of “nations that are states.”

Is it supposed to be that the first group of states are states in which, if there is a multinational population, nevertheless one national group has historically had exclusive or overwhelmingly prevalent access to the instruments of state power? (I.E. that the state was ruled imperially rather than federally?) If so, Han China clearly belongs in the first group rather than the second, but so does Spain (at least, up until 1975), the “UK” for the overwhelming majority, and Iraq.

Or is the distinction supposed to mean some third thing which I am not grasping? If so, I look forward to being corrected.