Now, we're all familiar, I think, with the United Nations organization, and we're very accustomed to a world divided into nations—but many of you may not realize how recent the idea of the "nation-state" really is. Most of the history of civilization’s been a history of much smaller units——from primitive tribes to Greek city-states——and later of the much larger units usually called "empires" . The concept of a political and cultural "nation", as we know it today, didn't appear until near the end of the 18th century, at the time of the French and American revolutions.

Let's look at a couple of terms first, just to make them clear. Strictly speaking, a "nation" is a cultural concept——a group of people in a particular area who are usually defined as sharing a common history, common traditions, the same language or ethnic origin, etcetera. A "state", on the other hand, is a political concept——it's a political unit, an administrative unit, a territory controlled by a government. So, what we're talking about here, "nation- states", what we often call "countries"，are those areas where these two concepts, "nation" and "state"，are roughly congruent, where they coincide in time and space. And this is the basic structure, the infrastructure of civilization, of the world we see, today——the basis upon which treaties are signed, on which wars are fought, and for which people often die.

One historian has said that a nation-state is an "imaginary community"，because the citizens of even the smallest nation-state will never meet all their fellow citizens, or even hear about them——yet in each citizen’s mind is some image of "oneness", of unity with his fellows. Some think that this image is the direct result of the development of printing and the popular press—which likewise expanded in the 18th century—and which, in its language and its audience, has helped define these national communities.

Well, imagined or not, nation-states are very real to us today. In fact, they seem hke the only natural form for society—in spite of their very recent origins—don’t they? But at the same time, they seem to be the cause of so much turmoil in our world——wars, nuclear standoffs, ideological conflicts, conflicts over resources and markets... the list seems endless! So maybe we'd better take a more careful look at the factors that seem to contribute to the idea of "nation-statehood".