desire to gain a greater share of the oil and gas deposits in the North Sea, located
off Scotland’s east coast. Even a single political issue may serve to generate strong
divisions in regional identity and loyalty, resulting in violent expression of cen-
trifugal tendency that may threaten the survival of the state. Such was the case
with the issue of slavery in the United States in the first half of the 19th century.
In some instances centrifugal force is generated because of friction generated by
an exaggeratedcore and peripheryrelationship.
Ifcultural identityin a country is not equivalent to a unitary national identity,
centripetal forces can then become so strong as to result in complete disintegration
of the state. Centrifugal forces have the ability to radically change the geography
of regions in a very short period of time. In the early 1990s, two large countries,
including the largest nation state in the world, collapsed due to a rising tide of cen-
trifugal forces within theirboundaries, indicating a trend towarddevolutionwith
the region of east-central Europe and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia, the largest
country in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, the largest country in the world,
fragmented along the lines of ethnolinguistic and religious distinctions, resulting
in a total of 20 new countries on the Eurasian landmass, almost all of which
appeared in the two years of 1991 and 1992. Strong centrifugal forces can exist
between groups which, from an outside perspective, should share a strong cultural
and political bond. A case in point is the animosity between the Croats and Serbs
in former Yugoslavia. Both groups are Christians, although they follow differing
branches of that faith, and ironically, both peoples share a common spoken lan-
guage. The language once universally called Serbo-Croatian is written using two
alphabets—the Croats write the tongue using the Latin alphabet, while the Serbs
utilize a modified Cyrillic script to write the language. The cultural differences
between the Croats and the Serbs seem minor to many outsiders, but each group
considers the distinctions to be significant. Historical conflicts between the two
peoples also contribute to a common hostility in many instances. And the Croats
and Serbs represent two groups with much in common, compared to the remaining
ethnic groups of former Yugoslavia! Yet, it should be pointed out that for half a
century, the centrifugal forces in Yugoslavia were held in check, and, at least for
some, a strong sense of Yugoslav identity was achieved.
The influence of centrifugal forces may be released upon the collapse or
removal of a central authority, the presence of which previously held such forces
in check. In the 20th century this led in many cases to catastrophic loss of life.
Numerous examples of this process may be found after decolonization of much
of the developing work in the wake of World War II. India, a colony under British
government rule for nearly a century, was rent into two states following indepen-
dence in 1947, due to the religious animosity and distrust between the Muslim
community and the Hindu majority. The subsequent split of colonial India into56 Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces