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The people of a state
The people of a state is a community of people living within an organisational unit, a state. The people of a state is one of the three elements that constitute a state. It differs from an ethnic group, which consists of a group of people sharing a common culture, language or history. International law grants every people, through the right of self-determination, the right to form their own state, and thus also to form an independent nation.
A state people is a necessary prerequisite for a state to exist. However, a community of people forming a political unit may also be organised within a federal state, an autonomous region or a city. It may also be the case that such a group does not form a political unit at all.
In the past, the people of a state was regarded as comprising all persons living within a state who were subject to its laws. This also included foreigners, stateless persons and, in some definitions, even those merely passing through. Today, however, the population of a state is regarded as comprising only the members of that state, i.e. its citizens.
Ethnic groups and difficulties in defining peoples
A nation differs from an ethnic group. An ethnic group is a group of people sharing a common culture, language or history. For example, the Tuareg ethnic group forms part of the national populations of Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. In contrast, the national population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo comprises the ethnic groups of the Bakongo, the Baluba, the Mongo, the Banjaruanda and many others. This classification is, however, arbitrary, as ethnic groups cannot be clearly demarcated. The four peoples mentioned are all Bantu peoples. The Bantu speak languages belonging to a common language family. However, they do not regard themselves as a single people. On the other hand, the Banjaruanda people mentioned above, for example, consist of the Hutu, Tutsi, Banyamulenge and Twa ethnic groups. For this reason, any definition of a people can always be called into question.
The way these ethnic groups view themselves is also of limited use. For instance, the Hutu, Tutsi, Banyamulenge and Twa all speak Kinyarwanda, share cultural rituals and, even before Christianisation, had a common religion centred on the Ryangombe cult and the god Imana. However, the genocide committed by the Hutu against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 has, however, shown that the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa certainly also regard themselves as distinct ethnic groups.
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| A common depiction of the Tutsi (left), Hutu (centre) and Twa (right) ethnic groups. Coloured photograph, probably by Hans Meyer, 1911, in the German colony of German East Africa, in what is now Rwanda, intended to show the different ethnic groups |
The Hutu lived mainly from agriculture and made up the bulk of the population. The Twa lived as hunter-gatherers, whilst the Tutsi were cattle herders and had historically formed the upper class in Rwanda. There was a kind of feudal system in which the Tutsi lent cattle to the Hutu, who in turn were able to use the milk and calves in return for various services. The Hutu, Tutsi and Twa essentially only married amongst themselves. A wealthy Hutu could rise to the status of a Tutsi, but a poor Tutsi could also fall to the status of a Hutu. This is comparable to the relationship between nobles and peasants in other regions. However, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa can also be distinguished by their physical appearance. It is possible that the Tutsi migrated from the north-east and the Hutu from the west. However, differences in diet and lifestyle may also have played a role. Marriage exclusively within one’s own group also played a part in this.
Difficulties in defining the nation’s peoples
The difficulties in defining ethnic groups can be applied to the peoples of a state. Here, too, it is open to debate whether a group of people who form an organisational unit can constitute the people of a state, a federal state, a district or a city. For example, around 70% of the population of the Indian state of Maharashtra belong to the Maratha ethnic group. Around 90% of the population of the state of Tamil Nadu are Tamils. Thus, through a shared language, culture and history, the populations of these two states form a communal unit within themselves, whilst distinguishing themselves from other states, thereby fulfilling the prerequisites for the formation of a national people. However, both populations are part of the Indian population. Should either of the two states wish to establish an independent state, the necessary population would, in principle, be in place.
Within the European Union, most Europeans form a kind of nation-state as the people of this political entity. However, within this entity, the French also belong to the nation-state of France, the Germans to the nation-state of Germany, and the Poles to the nation-state of Poland. The German nation, in turn, consists of the peoples of the federal states of Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Brandenburg and others. The German people, in turn, distinguish themselves from the Bavarians, Swabians, Franconians, Angles, Saxons, Thuringians or Sorbs. Depending on one’s perspective, a Franconian might see themselves as a Franconian, a Bavarian, a German or a European.
The difficulties in defining nation-states, in turn, lead to critical discussions regarding the extent to which the Basques in Spain and France, the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, the Ndebele in Zimbabwe or the Kabyles in Algeria can form their own nation-state, and to what extent the right of peoples to self-determination under international law applies here.
