national flag, anthem, heroic figures (both real and mythological), and even
elements of the popular culture (“as American as baseball and apple pie....”).
The institutions of the nation state therefore serve in an integrative capacity, attempt-
ing to craft a unitary identity among all members. If taken to extremes, this process
may result in national chauvinism,ethnocentrism,and racism, as was the case in
Germany under the National Socialist (Nazi) government in the 1930s. Some schol-
ars attempt to draw a clear distinction between national identity, seen as a positive
phenomenon, and nationalism, which they view as extremist and discriminatory.
Today there are slightly more than 200 independent states in the world, and
while scholars might not consider all of them to qualify as “nation-states” under
a strict academic definition, the fact is that most of the governmental officials of
these states would hold that they represent a unitary national identity, and thus
are indeed “nation-states.” This global system of nation-states greatly influences
the dynamics ofgeopolitics, as states tend to join together into alliances, either
formal or informal, when they believe doing so is in their national interest. This
“Westphalian system” of nations may be traced to the Peace of Westphalia, a col-
lection of treaty agreements promulgated in 1648 that ended both the Thirty Years’
War and the Eighty Years’ War in Europe. The Peace of Westphalia was instru-
mental in defining what came to be known as the “balance of power” concept, a
means of maintaining order among the diverse set of sovereign states in Europe
and regulating relations between the emerging nation-states there.
In the past two centuries the collapse ofimperialismhas invariably resulted in
the establishment of multiple nation-states. Spain lost most of its colonial holdings
in the New World in the first decades of the 19th century, and although the territory
stretching from Mexico to Uruguay shared a common language and religion, even-
tually 16 Spanish-speaking, Catholic nation-states appeared on themapof Central
and South America. The decline of the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of
World War I did not result in the appearance of nation-states in all of theregions
that the Sultan administered, as much of this territory was simply absorbed into
the British and French empires, but ironically it resulted in the emergence of a
strong Turkish national identity and the founding of the Republic of Turkey, cer-
tainly an example of a modern nation-state. The aftermath of World War II stimu-
lated the disintegration of all of the European empires, although the British and the
French were quicker to part with their colonies than the Dutch and Portuguese.
The British began jettisoning their empire as early as 1947 with the independence
of their colony of India, and the following quarter century witnessed an explosion
of nation-states across Africa and Asia. In 1960 alone 14 nation-states were estab-
lished in former French West Africa, and by the end of the decade, virtually the
entire continent was divided by the borders of more than 50 nation-states. Perhaps
the most remarkable facet of these states has been the resiliency of their borders,236 Nation-State