Ethnicity

Generally used to describe the characteristics that connect a particular group or groups of people to each other beyond a simple racial similarity, Ethnicity is a term also used to justify a real or imagined historic tie as well. Ethnicity goes far beyond the modern ties of a person to a particular nation (e.g., citizenship), and focuses more upon the connextion to a shared past and culture. Over the past two centuries, the cases where a focus on ethnic ties to the exclusion of history or historical context has arguably resulted in an almost fanatical self-justifying nationalist and or imperialist goal. Better examples of this would be the expansion of the German Empire and the Third Reich, where much of the argument was based on the theory that these governments were only re-possessing lands that had "always" been German, and the current struggle in the Balkans.