Fuck you

[Obev]

I'm drunk.

[Kiarax]

Stop that. You're better than this.

[Obev]

Oh, okay. Fine. Shall I deconstruct postcolonial notions of nationhood instead?

[Titanss]

Chase the alcohol with a bottle of pills

[Kiarax]

Oh, okay. Fine. Shall I deconstruct postcolonial notions of nationhood instead?

Acceptable.

[quannum]

fuck you, pay me

[Obev]

Nationhood has never been comprehensively defined by any international law. The paradox is that only nations can recognise other nations as such: examples such as Somaliland, which enjoys representative and effective governments as opposed to the "nation" of Somalia which is a complete and utter hellhole of piracy and civil war, would indicate the strangeness of the self-defining nature of nations. Somaliland is recognized by zero nations. Somalia is recognized by the UN and all its member states.

Why post-colonial? Blame Woodrow Wilson. His Fourteen Points of 1918 emphasised the nebulous concept of "national self-determination." But how do you define a nation? Britain ruled south Asia from 1858 to 1947. South Asia has a myriad cultures, languages, and religions. According to Britain, it was two nations. Similar arbitrary borders can be observed in Burma (which wasn't even a nation until colonial officials drew lines on maps), in much of Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East.

Oh, the Middle East. Nowhere on Earth is the concept of "nation" more problematic. At the end of the First World War, the victorious (mainly) European powers (France, England, Italy, the US, and Japan) took it upon themselves to act on Wilson's points and divide the territories of the conquered Ottoman Empire in the Middle East into Protectorates with the eventual aim of having them govern themselves. Problem was, five nation-states do not necessarily have the interests of the conquered populace at heart. The jockeying for power essentially resulted in the borders of the present Middle East, and with it the Sunni-Shi'a, Arab-Kurdish struggles that are part-and-parcel of Europe's great fuckup.

The concept of a "nation" has great intellectual weight however, and the creation of these proto-nations from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire has created monumental difficulties in the attaining of peace in the region. As an example of the powerful weight which people put behind nations, think of China. Technically, Genghis Khan incorporated Tibet into his empire in the 13th century. This later became part of the Yuan Empire in 1271 about 44 years after Genghis' death. China today uses the ancient claim of an alien empire to justify its occupation of the Tibetan Plateau. The conception of "nation" can lead to excesses of the nation's worst creation: nationalism.

Colonialism was essentially a terrible idea, that's hard to argue with. However, its influences spread into the present. The impact of the simple lines on a map of borders and boundaries create cultural weight in peoples' minds, which is often counter to the objective interests of the ethnic groups that make up these territories. Essentially it's all the British Empire's fault, but the Chinese, Roman, Russian and even American empires still exert influence on the borders of the artificially classified states at their peripheries.

[Kiarax]

That was swift.

[Obev]

Also cocks.

[Kuya]

Obev is quite educational

[Kuya]

His post can be summed up as, Nations are subjective.

[Knyghtmayre]

how is this nsfw guys

[Qalbert]

His post can be summed up as, Nations are subjective.

also, cocks