The first phase of the project focused on data collection and integration covering state and ethnic boundaries, conflict patterns and railroads (see Work Package 4). The main innovation in this respect is the reliance on historical maps that were scanned, processed and integrated into analyzable datasets used in Work Packages 1-3. As regards Work Package 1, a new article confirms Charles Tilly’s dictum that “war made the state, and the state made war” in early modern Europe.
In connection with Work Package 2, two new papers study the size and shape respectively of states after the French Revolution. The papers offer evidence in line with the idea that nationalism has influenced the external dimensions of states. Further contributing to Work Package 2 but also to Work Package 3, our main research efforts concern the link between ethno-nationalist configurations and the outbreak of conflict. While the existing literature on nationalism has relatively little to say about the precise conditions under which nationalist politics trigger internal and interstate conflict, these articles show that specific ethno-nationalist configurations, especially irredentist ones can be linked to a higher risk of political violence.
Moreover, we have found evidence pointing to interaction between internal and interstate conflicts. We have also been able to establish that those ethnic groups that were subjected to a loss of political power and/or unity are over-represented in our conflict statistics. Without questioning the fundamental modernity of contemporary nations, these findings rely on data that go back as far back as 1100 AD.
Finally, using railroad data as a measure of the European states’ penetration of their territories, analysis also indicate that such modernization forays tend to trigger separatism rather than merely integrating them. This analysis focuses primarily on Europe, but as suggested by the third objective, some of them extend the scope of the entire world based on more recent samples. Generally, the findings suggest that the more aligned state borders are with ethnic ones, the less likely conflict becomes. However, this does not imply that border change, for instance through partition is the best way to reduce conflict.
Indeed, as a part of Work Package 3, a separate study shows that partition of states can bring peace by eliminating alien rule, but that power sharing arrangements also help to pacify potentially causing less geopolitical side-effects. So far, we have been able to publish nine articles, and have one more paper under review. In addition, building on these papers, a book is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press with the title “Nationalism and the Transformation of the State: Border Change and Political Violence in the Modern World.”
