I’m serious. I don’t understand why humans draw imaginary bidders. I don’t understand why humans fight and lose their lives defending those borders. It’s not “cultural identity”. For example, people in either side of Punjab are more similar to each other than say people in the South of India. And further, i don’t understand how countries can be bought and sold like the “Louisiana purchase”. I mean who’s paying for what? It would be great if someone could recommend some books about the idea of nationhood.
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There have always been borders. A farmer had a bit of land and a border of some sort indicated where that was. A similar thing happens with villages, town, etc. Once you start getting someone that’s more than a few people, you are going to need someone in charge. That could be some tribal elders or a king or a democratically elected council, or whatever. Once you have a border, borders need defending, because if you don’t, someone is going to take it away or come onto your land to steal things or kill you. So we ended up with areas of various sizes, and eventually these formed countries. Sometimes you had two countries with very similar people and sometimes you will have countries with very different people. Over time countries joined together or split apart for various reasons. For example, Alaska was sold to the US from the Russians, the states of Yugoslavia became separate countries, and so on.
In some cases borders were formed by geographic features such as rivers, mountains, etc, and in some cases they were man made. An example are the countries around the Sahara. As it was all desert without anyone living there – except nomads, the borders were decided to be straight lines. So, countries are not a permanent thing. It is simply a convenient grouping for administration and government. But countries usually have long histories with people living in the same area for centuries. As such they have developed custom, religion, architecture, cuisine, etc that is particular to that region.
Finally, a country is usually described as sovereign. It runs it’s own affairs, it protects it’s citizens, it makes and enforces the laws, etc. But because of the history and common experience of it’s inhabitants it also gives it’s citizens a sense of identity and place in the world.
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