Inter-ethnic

Ethno-national conflict

The 19th century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Johann Gottfried Herder. Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties, arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context, have resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Periods frequently cited as examples of this are the 19th-century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire, and 20th-century Nazi Germany. Each promoted the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were acquiring only lands that had always been inhabited by ethnic Germans. The history of latecomers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-east Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the Soviet Union, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts. Such conflicts usually occur within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, as in other regions of the world. Thus, the conflicts are often misleadingly labelled and characterised as civil wars when they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic state.