Home to more than seven hundred million people, Europe is made up of some 43 countries. It has been said that it was in Europe that the nation-state was born, which is to say the idea that an ethnicity should be identical with a country. Yet Europe is home to hundreds of ethnicities, many of which are distributed across national borders, such as the Sami (Lapps) of Scandinavia or the Rom (Gypsies) throughout much of Europe. Some countries are more conglomerations of different peoples than they are nations, while others have 'countries' within themselves.
Europe has over the past thousand years (and truly one must consider long spans of time to understand Europe) been divided and united in many different empires. Through war, dynastic succession, and trade, peoples have found themselves either separated from others of their culture or under the rule of outsiders. To a certain extent that was always the case; any region of any size contained a number of different groups with diverse manners and customs, distinct livelihoods and ways of worship.
In 1492, it is said, the first nation-state came into existence. Spain had accomplished the Reconquista, and forced the Muslims and Jews to either leave or to convert to Roman Catholicism . Eventually, the spread of printing standardized vernacular languages, so that it was possible to say there were such languages as English, German and French. However, the result of this was to make minorities out of some while others became members of the "majority" by virtue that it was their language by which others were judged as dialects. As the nation-state became more and more the standard of the various realms of Europe, distinctive groups were seen as a threat unless they were the whole group.
The ethnic situation of Europe has become further complicated by waves of foreign guest workers, nationals from former colonies, and refugees. These people force Europeans to address issues of race, ethnicity and histories of colonialism that they have tried to avoid for so long. In many cases, these new populations have come from less industrial nations and with the exception of overseas citizens don't speak the languages of their new landlords. A very serious problem that has been building recently has been the influx of refugees from war and famine torn Africa and the turmoil of the ethic cleansings in former Yugoslavia. Spain and England particularly have been inundated with people trying to escape the misery of Somalia. Few countries are willing to provide refuge for any more Bosnians than they are shamed into taking by public opinion.
Considering the importance that historical factors have played in producing the Europe that will be shortly entering the 21st century, I find that it is pertinent to elaborate on that history. It is a history of territory expansion, religious wars and uprisings of various sorts. For Western Europe most of the stage has been set for more than a hundred years. In Eastern Europe this century has been merely a continuation of this process.
In Western Europe the division is one mainly of language. For the most part, ethnic groups are wholly contained within one set of national borders, the problem being that minority groups' native languages are in danger of being overwhelmed by the official language(s).
In Belgium, there are Flemings and Walloons. The Walloons are French speakers who can be traced back to the Burgundian Era, when Belgium was ruled by a Francophone empire, while the Flemings speak a variety of Dutch particular to Belgium. While it seems that things are relatively stable and it is true that many Flemish Belgians also speak French, each of the major political parties have separate French and Flemish branches.(Cultural Survival, 1988, #2.) Similarly, Finland has a small (6%) portion of Swedish speakers 'left over' from when Sweden ruled Finland. Conversely, 50,000 ethnic Finns are natives of Sweden.
In Andorra, where the natives are Catalan speakers, they are outnumbered by speakers of Spanish three to one. In the United Kingdom, the Welsh group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society) has been at work returning the native tongue to public signs and school rooms.(Cultural Survival, 1988, #2.) Also Wales has a television station that broadcasts in Welsh. Meanwhile in Northern Ireland, the study of Irish has become a way for I.R.A. members in prison to keep part of the fight. Gaelic in Scotland survives as a living tongue only in the most isolated places, and English is making inroads there as well.
In Spain, the Basques, which also live on the other side of the French border, speak Euskera but the language has been in rapid decline since the 1950's.(Area Handbook, Spain.) There has been work to regain parity between Euskera with Castilian Spanish through television and education, but it is too early to determine the results of these efforts.
In Eastern Europe the situation is quite different. Two world wars have re-drawn their borders as have various other battles multiple times during this century. This on top of the various empires that the region has been divided amongst has resulted in groups being distributed and redistributed time and time again.
Austria retains 20,000 Slovenes and 24,000 Croatians from the days when it was the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Poland is probably the most homogeneous Eastern European country, as it is 99% Polish with small populations of Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Jews. This ethnic unity is mostly the result of W.W.II, when much of the Jewish population was killed by the Nazis and Poland lost the territories that contained non-Polish peoples. The non-Polish inhabitants are the few Jewish survivors that didn't emigrate to Israel, along with people who moved there during the Soviet era.
Both Albania and Bulgaria were long-term possessions of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, Albania was 70% Muslim before the country was declared an atheist nation in 1967(Background Notes,Albania), and Bulgaria had some 900,000 ethnic Turks (Cultural Survival, 1989, #2.). While Albania is 96% Albanian (with minorities including Greeks, Vlachs, Bulgars, Serbs and Rom)(Background Notes,Albania.), more than 1.8 million ethnic Albanians live in Yugoslavia1, and there are small populations in Greece and Italy.
While Hungary is 92.4% Magyar, around 600,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Czechoslovakia, 7.9% of the population of Romania is Magyar, and nearly 44,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Yugoslavia.2 One of the results of these outsider-drawn borders is the recent redrawing of Eastern Europe.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have only recently regained sovereignty after being swallowed by the Soviets after W.W.II. Czechoslovakia, which was 64% Czech and 31% Slovak (along with some Poles, ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Rom, and Jews) is in process of spliting apart in the winter of 1992. Yugoslavia is no longer a country but instead a battlefield; an artificial construct created after W.W.II, made up of 36.2% Serbs, 19.7% Croats, 8.9% Bosnian Muslims, 7.7% Albanians, 7.8% Slovenes, 5.9% Macedonians, and yet smaller populations of Montenegrins, Hungarians, Rom, Turks, Slovaks, Romanians, and Ruthenians/Ukrainians; it split apart violently after being forcibly held together for so long.
If these weren't enough ethnic questions for the various European nations to deal with, there remains the situation of guest workers/resident foreign nationals, citizens from former colonies and refugees.
The Netherlands, while predominantly Dutch, has minority communities of Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese, and Indonesians. (Background Notes, Netherlands.) Germany is well known for its large numbers of guest workers, largely from North Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East, and equally well-known for its desire for these long-term foreigners not to become part of German life. It is hard to say what the ramifications of German unification will be for the guest workers; now that Germany has to contend with finding employment for the East Germans. It is however to be noted that during the fall of 1992 Germany started deporting Rom (Gypsies) from the country, and with winter came neo-Nazi attacks on Turkish guest-workers.
Liechtenstein's foreign workers are mostly from Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy.3 Similarly, Luxembourg's guest workers are from Portugal, Italy and other European nations. Norway has some 148,000 foreign nationals living there, drawn from Denmark, the UK, Sweden, the US, Pakistan, Vietnam, Germany, Turkey (Background Notes,Norway.), and most recently some displaced Bosnians.(Newsweek, Nov. 9,1992.)
Portugal has a small black African minority, numbering probably less than 100,000, having moved from African countries once colonies of Portugal.(Background Notes, Portugal.) Sweden has 400,000 residing aliens, including 130,000 Finns (distinct from the native ethnic Finns), 39,000 Yugoslavs, 27,000 Norwegians, 25,000 Danes, 22,000 Turks, 20,000 Iranians, and 15,000 Poles.(Background Notes, Sweden.) 19% of the population of Switzerland is one sort of foreigner or another.
The United Kingdom beside its various native ethnicities also has significant West Indian and South Asian populations.(Background Notes, United Kingdom.) Recently, there have been incidents of black on black crime, as Somalian refugees are placed in poverty districts.4
There are three other groups that are neither countries onto themselves, nor mostly within one set of national borders. One is the Sami (Lapps) who are a non-European group with strong ties to reindeer herding who live in several Scandinavian lands. Another are the Rom (Gypsies) who are found throughout much of Europe, though in varying numbers. Finally, there are remnants of the pre-W.W.II Jewish populations living in Eastern Europe.
The Sami are found in Norway, Sweden and Finland. Once transhumant reindeer herders, most now are settled, but retain ties with the active herders. 20,000 live in Norway, and Sweden counts 17,000 Sami. There were no figures available for Finland.(Background Notes, Norway, Sweden, Finland.) As a result of the Chernobyl meltdown, the Sami who do still depend on their herds have been drawn more into the orbit of national governments.(Cultural Survival, 1989 #2, 1987,#2.) Because reindeer forage on lichen during part of the year, and lichen is a sponge for air-borne pollutants, their meat is more likely to be seriously contaminated.
In order to assure safety, the Swedish government has established slaughterhouses where radioactivity levels can be judged. There have also been programs in Norway and Sweden to compensate Sami for the value of deer meat and other subsistence foods that have been contaminated by the radioactive dust from Chernobyl. However, these programs don't fully compensate all people affected, as many Sami are normally recipients of these items though they are no longer totally subsistence people. Nor do they take into account some of the goods the Sami normally get from reindeer besides meat: sinew thread, horn and antler for carving, blood and organs for certain traditional recipes. Finally there are cultural costs.
"Sami who cannot slaughter and prepare food from his own reindeer feels culturally impoverished. Herding parents fear that their children will miss the opportunity to learn these customs."(Cultural Survival, 1989 #2.)In the words of Gerd Persson, South Sami mother and reindeer man's wife (who became a member on the Reindeer Radioactivity Commission) "Chernobyl is not the only difficulty Sami people have had to face. We have had colonization, forced Christianity, the taking of our children by boarding schools. But we can draw our strength to fight- from our grounding in our place, to our deer, in our families and our connections to one another. Anything that breaks these apart is what we have to fight against."(Cultural Survival, 1987.)
The Rom (Gypsies) are thought to have come to Europe from India nearly a thousand years ago. Living through out Europe, there are several groups into which they break themselves, but outsiders tend to lump them all together. In some areas they have been sedentarized while in others they continue in their traditional nomadic lifestyle. Among the countries they can be found are Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (about 250,000), Finland, Germany(which is trying to get rid of them), Hungary (3.3% of population is Rom), Italy, Romania (2.4% of the population and probably growing as Germany sends Rom back), and Yugoslavia (.7% of pre-war population).(Background Notes, respective countries.) It is probably safe to say that other countries also have Rom, either not in large quantities or just not widely admitted. In Romania, they are trying to make peasants out of urban nomadic Rom.
The last group are only mentioned separately in the information about Eastern European countries, and that group is Jews. Presumably, this is because in Western Europe it is thought that religion is not as important to cultural identity. Needless to say, the Jewish populations are much smaller than was true before the Holocaust and the subsequent flight of many survivors to Israel.
Italy has a Ladino5 community of ancient origin, Bulgaria has a small population of Jews6. Czechoslovakia which had 360,000 Jews before W.W.II now has only about ten thousand. Hungary has a 0.7% Jewish minority, and Poland lost nearly all of its pre-W.W.II Jewish community during the war and through post-war emigration to Israel. Romania's Jewish community in 19887 numbered less than 25,000.(Background Notes, respective countries.)
In case this all seems too dry and inevitable, it may prove useful to see an interesting case of 'nation' formation. Prior to the 19th century there was no such nation as Scotland, but instead a land divided between Lowlander and Highlander Scots8. The Highlanders considered the Lowlanders to be pant-wearing, soft-living, money-grubbing, heartless, English-speakers, while the Lowlanders considered the Highlanders to be barbaric, archaic, wild people with a bizarre manner of speech9. By the time of the Unification of Scotland and England, the Lowlanders were separated from Highlanders by language, religion, dress, and way of making a living.
In the years following the Uprising of 1745, it was thought that the Highlanders would be destroyed as a distinctive people; their language was banned, their native dress prohibited, the bagpipes proscribed and their general livelihood greatly endangered. Large numbers of Highlander lads were recruited into the British army, into distinct regiments to be used in the furthest reaches of the mighty British Empire.
Yet nearly a century later, 'Highlander ways' become the Scottish identity, so much so that Lowlander families went to cloth manufacturers to find 'their' sett10. In fact, the invention of 'bogus' tartan patterns became a profitable industry. The 180¡ change can be traced to Walter Scott, himself a Lowlander, and his Romantic portrayals of Highlanders as noble savages in several novels. Thus the Highlanders moved from a despised minority to a supposed culture identity. However, this did not mean that the actual Highlanders were able to return to their 'traditional' ways. The modern world had came to stay, and adaptation was the only option.11
Ironically, one force that preserved parts of Highlander culture during the days of proscription was the British military. For as an incentive to fight in distant lands, they were allowed to wear their native dress, and could after a certain time of service receive free bagpipe lessons. As a result of the latter, some villages could boast five or seven bagpipers.
All said, the question of ethnicity in Europe is a complicated one. It is one colored by historical forces and accidents. Europe, which long ago created the ideal of 'one nation, one nationality', now must face a multicultural future. The global village doesn't just mean the world is becoming smaller; it means we are going to be neighbors.
