The Formation of Ethnic Groups

Abstract

I shall now try to put some flesh on the bare bones of this story by examining the most significant events in the formation of ethnicity in the region. Where the process was unproblematic I shall be brief; a more extended discussion will be needed in cases where there are doubts about the character and extent of particular ethnic groups and nations. The purpose here is to provide the elements of a historical explanation for the presence or absence of serious ethnic conflict in a given locality in recent times. Implicit in all this is the belief that some examination of the historical background is relevant, and that the history of each ethnic group or situation is not a purely arbitrary construction by national myth-makers. It would, however, be pointless to enter here into the many controversies over territorial priority which began in the mid-nineteenth century and show no sign of dying down at the start of the twenty-first century. The whole subject has been distorted by the deliberate use of the search for origins to bolster the territorial claims of one or the other ethnic group in the region.