Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
Carl,

Big difference for two of those countries--US and Canada-is that the majority of their citizens are not natives--they are descendants of relatively recent immigrants (except for the Native Americans, Aleuts, etc.) The peoples of Georgia are descendants of ethnic groups that have been there for millennia. If you want to compare Georgians, Abkhazians and Ossetians to Sioux, Algonquin and Cherokee, I'll accept that point.
Rome is another case all together. The original Romans were part of the tribe of Latins. So, if you want to make the comparison to say, Italy--you might be right in terms of comparing them with Samnites, Sabines, Etruscans, Campanians, etc. If you mean Rome after, say the, Samnite Wars, then the comparison is not really valid,even though some of the inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula later revolted. This revolt was the Social War (90-88 BC), a fight between Rome and the Socii, Latin for allies. The Soci lost that war and hence were unable to restore their "right" of self-determination. BTW, some of the battles/wars that Rome later fought were R2P type wars to protect other kingdoms from Parthia, Persia, etc. But once Roman armies showed up, it was usually likely a visit from the Borg--those being assisted were soon "assimilated." Of course the Persians and Parthians , even Pyrrhus of Epirus and Phillip V of Macedon, used R2P type arguments to try to curb Rome or expand their own land.

I'm not sure about the allusion to Switzerland, AKA the Swiss Confederation. Could you say a little more by way of explanation. Seems to me the folks living there have been in place at least as long as the Franks, Lombards and Burgundians in Italy and France
A country is a people and a people a country if they figure they are and are willing to fight to back up the point. That's all. If you throw in natives vs recent immigrants you are throwing in an infinitely variable factor which depends solely on personal opinion, eg. my native is your recent immigrant which is somebody else's returned rightful owner.

One of the main causes of the Social War was the Italian allies were offered Roman citizenship and then the offer was withdrawn. One of the ways the Romans ended that war was by giving the allies Roman citizenship. So the allies fought the Romans for the right to be Roman and lost the war but became Romans. All those different peoples fighting to become part of Rome.

And Roman citizenship was conferred upon most of the residents of Roman territories in 212 AD. So you had very many different peoples becoming Romans, from Syria to the Atlantic to Sahara to the North Sea. The empire lasted rather a long time after that.

As far as the Swiss go, they figure they are a nation or a people or whatever and they will fight to back it up. Since there are three languages spoken there which I am guessing represent three different cultures, sort of, and histories but they decided they are Swiss, live in Switzerland and will shoot you in the heart if you mess with that arrangement.