Eli5: What’s the difference, conceptually between ancient empires like Rome and modern nation states.

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In my world history class we just reached the development of the first “nation states” such as France, which so far don’t seem all that different from other, older, civilizations. I am mainly curious why historians refer to France as developing into a “nation state”, while earlier empires like Rome and Persia weren’t considered to be nation states.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A nation state is a state (political entity) that closely overlaps a nation (ethnocultural population).

An empire is a political entity that encompasses many states and/or nations.

The Frankish people organized the state of France, making it a nation state.

The Roman Empire started as a city-state and expanded outward to envelop a vast multicultural empire that integrated and/or replaced the preexisting political entities of the regions (states) it conquered.

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