Relations between states and nations

The term ‘international relations’ is relatively modern. A nation is a group of people with similar characteristics and aspirations. It is not the same thing as a state, and every Celt will tell us that. Many nations now have their own state. This was less true in the nineteenth century and hardly true at all in earlier periods. In the eighteenth century ‘international’ relations amounted to relations between princes; in the nineteenth century relations between patricians; in our century relations between plebeians. We have therefore a social evolution in addition to the change from the nonnational to the national state. There is an intellectual dimension as well. During the Enlightenment politics between princely states had a certain cool rationality that had been absent during the religious struggles in the early modern period and which became submerged after the onset of the French Revolution. The Romantic Movement affected not only literature, the visual arts and music, but politics as well. So too did the succeeding movements of realism and, at the end of our period, naturalism. Trends of thought and movements in art are not altogether out of step with politics. Finally, in the nineteenth century there was the emergence of an international industrial economy. This necessarily had a profound impact on relations between states and nations.