What is a nation? In general, just answering this question is enough. A nation is a stable, historically established community of people. And that will be quite true. However, not enough. How, then, is it different from the people? After all, a people is also a historically stable community of people. Probably, the answer must be sought a little deeper. Therefore, first of all, we will nevertheless figure out what the people are.
What is a people?
This concept has been used by mankind for a long time. From ancient times, people are a stable, historically established community of people whose representatives are associated with living on the same territory, common origin, belonging to a single cultural environment. At different times, a very different tolerance existed in a particular nation. For example, in ancient Greece, the Hellenic people were opposed to barbarians. That is, the Greeks were all who spoke ancient Greek. In Europe of the Middle Ages, only privileged classes began to be considered as people, which had any significant weight in the feudal structure of society. The numerous peasantry was seen by the aristocrats with the same mob in all corners of the continent. Today, people are not only a stable community of people. This is what the inhabitants of one state are called in principle. Even if different categories of citizens belong to completely different cultures, races, have different roots. The first criterion today is citizenship.
But what is a nation?
This concept is very close to the concept of the people. And related to him. However, we perceive the nation as something more complex, a kind of higher education. Indeed, all modern scholars of this issue note that for the emergence of a nation there are few common characteristics that are inherent in all its representatives (as is the case with the people), a psychological component, a certain identity is extremely necessary here. The first nations arose in Europe during the New Age. This era was extremely important in terms of the reorganization of Old World societies. Capitalism broke the obsolete system of feudal relations, instead of local identifications, when the peasant associated himself only with his own village and master, new, more global identifications were created. Traditional communities were destroyed over several centuries, and new ones appeared in their place, in which the worker Lyon began to feel his solidarity with the clerk from Marseille, although they were not connected in any way, except for belonging to one single community - the French. One of the researchers of this phenomenon, Benedict Anderson, successfully characterized nations as imaginary (fictional) communities. And this is true in the sense that this stable, historically established community of people, in fact, exists only in the heads of its representatives. It is identification and awareness of the common historical fate and further interests that are its most important guarantee, since representatives of the nation remain them, if they speak different languages, have different roots, religious beliefs, and even if they migrate to other countries.
At the same time, it is important to note that today there are two versions of ideas about nations - ethnic and political. The first is a stable, historically established community of people based on one blood ethnic group. Classical examples are Germans and Poles, because in their worldview and collective representations, blood relationship is at the forefront. At the same time, globalization of the whole world and mass migrations gave rise to the need to integrate foreign elements into the community of nations. For example, in the mass consciousness of modern French, those whose ancestors came from the Maghreb countries may well be their own . Of course, for this they should share the historical aspirations of the French, and even consider themselves part of them.