Westerners, and Americans in particular, are very bad at understanding nationalism. This prevents them from understanding the failure of post-colonialism.
Throughout Africa and the Middle East we see countries with straight borders that used to be colonies of Western powers. These powers left and left behind democratic governments. These governments are plagued by the fact that the countries they rule over are not nations.
A country is a political entity - a set of borders enforced by an army. A nation is a psycho-social entity. It is a group that people identify with, normally composed based on ethnic, linguistic, or religious similarity. Nationhood marks an in-group. Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology, so their brains reject this reality to the detriment of the places their armies occupy.
In most post-colonial countries, there are many different nations within an arbitrary border. Democracy does not work because the citizens don't see themselves as the same people. When a person gets power in the government, of course he turns into a "kleptocrat" instead of working for the common good because he doesn't value the "common good". He values the good of his people.
These post-colonial countries are also prone to civil war. If one ethno-religious group gets the majority over another, the losing group doesn't see the government as legitimate. So there is war and genocide. The post-colonial idealists in the West have done more damage to the world than the colonialists ever did through the proxy of civil war.
Democracy in the Congo led to decades of Civil War and now we even see Bantus eating Pygmies[1] - rape, disfigurement, and even cannibalism have become weapons in a brutal civil war. Likewise, if American troops leave Afghanistan, we will see a recap of the 90's civil war between the northern and southern ethnic groups.
There is no "Afghan" people - there are Pashtun and Tajik and Uzbek[2]. And they were on the tail-end of a civil war before the USA invaded, and now the USA wants them to vote together. What insanity. In an ominous sign, no Pashtun will join the "national" Afghan army. Putting people within the same borders and putting a single army in control over them doesn't magically make them care about each other.
This is leaving behind the absurdity of trying to impose Western norms on an African continent lacking thousands of years of western history with literature, law, and democracy. You don't get to Tom Paine without Cato - and there was a 1700 year process connecting the two. Western thinking about the rest of the world is full of unicorns and pixie dust.
I lived in Zambia for a year around 2005, and my impression was that this 'nation-building' is one thing that Kaunda did really quite well. There is a strong sense of identity of being Zambian in parallel to the tribal identity. One way of achieving this was stationing secondary school students(almost all secondary schools are boarding schools) and young public employees (and in 70s quasi-socialist Zambia almost everyone with a job was a public employee) in regions other that their original tribal region. As a result, very many people married into different tribes, and very many people now have several tribal identites, which as a result aren't very strong.
Also they are indoctrinated that 'tribalism' is a bad thing, and they learn a lot about Bismarck in school. There is also a bantu language that isn't really associated with one of the major tribes but is a kind of lingua franca beside english in the urban centres.
Yes I believe that is the reason. Not a perfect analogy but I guess the point is that a nation can be united from what used to be a collection of fiefdoms.
I guess Italy would be a better comparison, because that didn't used to be a nation. Germany was united by culture and language for a while. (Only 1 in 40 people spoke what later became standard Italian upon unification.)
But I guess Germany is the more aspiring role model.
The issue of diversity is overblown. The most failed state in Africa is the most homegenous one: Somalia. But then again, Botswana is very homogenous and does pretty well.
Rwanda, Lesotho, Burundi and Swaziland are countries that actually fit precolonial states. You got civil wars and coups and a crazy monarch out of this but also some nice stories later.
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The part that should be discussed more often is neither democracy nor nation part of the nation-state but the state part.
Post colonialism failed because it is colonialism with different rulers and may be more confusion.
The needs for a state, an army, a capitol and a bureaucracy was taken for granted and never actually discussed. So is the role of the traditional chiefs (in some places they're on goverment payroll).
At the same time, expectations have always been high for what the government is supposed to provide.
Places that never had an industrial revolution are trying to somehow do it with generous pension funds and environmental rules. That's way more nuts than the idea of having elections or whatever people think about when they say democracy.
Rwanda, Lesotho, Burundi and Swaziland are also four of the five smallest countries in Africa (excluding the little island nations). It's a whole lot easier to get 30,000 km^2 to agree (Burundi) than 75,000,000 km^2 (DR Congo).
So please, enlighten us, what should we be telling poor nations in Africa or the Middle East to be striving towards, if not economic growth, democracy and respect for human rights?
It also may appear to some, that those people lacking a 5000 year old written history seem to be increasingly intolerant towards dictators...
-How many shrinks does it take to change a lightbulb?
-One. But the lightbulb must want to be changed.
That's the problem with most of efforts to imporve the world—people get told, or pushed, or forced to accept the change they do not understand.
I doubt anyone argues that the change is needed, but I am not sure that active involvment does much good. I am also not sure what the right path would be. Show by example? Don't "accept at the table" until the are "mature enough to behave"?
Culture is fractal. For the first division, Northern Africa and subsaharan Africa are very different entities with very different histories. Northern Africa has been part of the great Roman and Muslim empires and has long traditions of law, trade, and government on a large scale. This does not mean it is necessarily western or compatible with westernism. But the first step to wisdom is to recognize the quality of the clay we work with (perhaps the second step is to leave the goddamn clay alone).
If the Western powers wanted to make a difference in many of these countries, they could try to broker deals to decentralize the governments and give ethnic regions large amounts of autonomy, much like the Americans have done for the Kurds in Iraq. Afghanistan should be at least two states, not one, and Americans might have to recognize that the Taliban is the popular representative of the national will of the Pashtun people in the south. The problem with SS Africa vs. the Middle East is that the African countries, having no history of large-scale states before the Europeans came, have so many national divisions that it becomes impractical. So I don't have answers to everything. Perhaps city-states?
I would note that the popular revolutions in North Africa don't appear to be doing so good by the welfare of the people. I enjoyed this article in the Telegraph - "The Arab Spring has failed because constitutional democracy needs nation-states"[1]
> "what should we be telling poor nations in Africa or the Middle East to be striving towards, if not economic growth, democracy and respect for human rights?"
Yes you are a good American that believes in the American ideals. So much destruction is done trying to impose them on others, though. At some point we need to make peace with the fact that not every country can become an America within a decade. And what happens when the people we are trying to bring to the American way of life don't want to be American?
What shines through is that you believe in segregating ethnicities because they just can't live peacefully together.
Which is bullshit, looking at almost any country that is not currently embroiled in a civil war. Many of them combine tons of ethnicities... USA, Canada, Australia, India, even countries like Germany just aren't that "ethnically pure" as they are sometimes stylized...
>What shines through is that you believe in segregating ethnicities because they just can't live peacefully together.
And what also shines through, is that from an ivory tower of ignorance some people advocate forcing people to "live peacefully together" through their social engineering, enforced borders and when that doesn't work violence.
Because, those outsiders know what is proper for those "savages" that "can't live peacefully together" better than they do themselves, right?
>Which is bullshit, looking at almost any country that is not currently embroiled in a civil war. Many of them combine tons of ethnicities... USA, Canada, Australia, India, even countries like Germany just aren't that "ethnically pure" as they are sometimes stylized...
USA decimated and confined the natives into "reservations", then had the blacks as slaves or second rate citizens up until the sixties. Oh, and they had a big nasty civil war, because two groups had different views on such issues. Blacks still have a huge over-representation in prison sentenses and poverty and still live pretty much seggregated. As for the rest: Australia killed the natives and closed them in concentration camps and has had rampant racism against non-anglosaxon immigrants. In Canada there is the francophone and anglophone divide and tension, which is even worse for Belgium and it's two national cultures. The same goes for Catalonia and Basque country in Spain. USSR and Yugoslavia, examples of getting "different nations to live peacefully" all blew up in consisting nations after 1989, with civil wars and tension. Same for Chechoslovakia. Heck, even Italy has tension between the North and South parts.
As for Germany, it might not be ethnically pure, but it's not all fun and games either. Germans are still quite racist with immigrants, even those that live there for many decades (tons of hate crimes, neo-nazi groups, casual racism and such). Oh, and they have eliminated some million jews back in the 40s.
But it's putting up India as an example that really shows up the total lack of understanding of the issues and a bad command of history. India, if anything is the perfect counter-example: national, ethnic and religious tensions there broke the country into Bagladesh and Pakistan, and they still ran rampant in each of the new countries between sub-groups.
I agree with some of what you're saying but some parts seem to contradict with others.
On the one hand, you say 'Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology, so their brains reject this reality to the detriment of the places their armies occupy' (an opinion) and on the other hand 'USA decimated and confined the natives into "reservations", then had the blacks as slaves or second rate citizens up until the sixties' (a fact). How do you reconcile these two?
Apart from that, you have the "buy American" movement, and you have this situation where US Americans identify themselves with (often fictitious) ethnic identities: Irish American, Italian American, African American, etc. Why call them "fictitious"? People say Barack Obama is African American!
> Germans are still quite racist with immigrants
Though I have come across cases where Arab immigrants were given nasty stares by old people when they moved to villages, I'd say that Germany is not at all racist with immigrants. I have many colleagues who have Slavic-sounding surnames, whose parents moved to Germany before my colleagues were born. Socially, they're treated as proper Germans. After WW2, Germans were largely disillusioned by nationalism, and now look upon it with disdain. Now, Spaniards and Greeks are moving into Germany by the thousands. Have you come across news reports of any ethnic clashes? It's all fun and games. The Neo-Nazis are a problem, but they are a small minority. When they break the law, they are dealt with properly.
> India, if anything is the perfect counter-example: national ... still ran rampant in each of the new countries between sub-groups.
India has a law and order problem. The constitution was written by a man who probably understood human rights, but this concept has not sunk into the heads of either the masses or the well-educated. There are separatist movements in Kashmir, and the Northeast, and there was one in Punjab. If you think the people in the rest of India have doubts about the integrity of the concept of India, you're dead wrong. Yes, I include SIMI sympathizers too.
I agree with Ma8ee. In North-western Europe, flags mostly come out for whatever sports the people are interested in.
As for USA, "buy american" movements come up every once in a while. Apple and Motorola's new ads display "Made in USA" as if it's a feature. "Freedom fries", happened recently, though it seems to be dead now. You have Fox News that's always clamouring about American this or American that. I don't believe that Fox News represents general American beliefs (though I don't rule it out), but the chunk of Americans that Fox News represents is too huge to sweep under the rug.
One thing that hit me when I moved to the US was the amount of _huge_ American flags everywhere. Outside buildings and on cars and on pins. That is a bit surprising for a not particularly nationalistic nation.
It's easier to live peacefully with people who are different than you when you are all relatively prosperous. Look at the rioting in France a couple years ago, or the rise of far-right politicians in many European countries that have become more ethnically diverse in recent decades. Additionally, race and ethnicity are still strong factors in the US. People don't kill one another as often in wealthy countries because the rule of law is stronger and there is more to lose, but the divisions exist.
Regarding India, my understanding is that Indian states have a great deal of autonomy, but I'm certainly no expert.
> Regarding India, my understanding is that Indian states have a great deal of autonomy, but I'm certainly no expert.
So by and large Indian states have lesser autonomy than US states. Central govt. controls large chunk of Income Tax and redistributes it. Unlike US, State govts can't enact their own laws and all of India is ruled by one law.
"Unlike US, State govts can't enact their own laws and all of India is ruled by one law"
Mmmm... what? States may have less powers in India than in the US but they do have their own legislature and do have their own legal system. Here's an example (state of Maharashtra):
India's bureaucracy is dysfunctional for many of the many of the same reasons as the author mentioned. Everybody wants part of the pie so the bureaucratic overlap is total.
The issue of ethnicity will still rear its ugly head from time to time. Take Mali as the latest example. The Tuareg rebellion didn't come from nowhere.
The US went through some real nasty war to live together. Regarding India, check out Pakistan. Australia has some really dark history. For Germany, check out the holocaust.
Holocaust? That almost sounds as if it was the jews' fault for living in a country where they weren't the ethnic majority. Otherwise "ethnic tensions" had nothing to do with it. The tension if at all was pretty one-sided, and the genocide on this scale and sophistication can't easily be compared to multi-ethnic nation-states.
I am just pointing out your great examples of ethnic harmony went through some terrible stuff. To discount the effect of ethnic tension in the holocaust is disingenuous. Antisemitism is largely ethnic based hatred.
My point is simply the issue ethnicity is a complex one. There are societies where largely mono culture works quite well and it is not a deficiency. My country, Indonesia, is pretty diverse (300 ethnics plus) but it had to go to some fire as well to get some resemblance of harmony.
Well to be honest I think that the jury is still kind of out in that regard, at least somewhat. I mean in the case of 3 of the countries that you listed, Canada, the US, and Australia, are still very much majority European descent white. And even with this majority you can still see what happens when other ethnic groups become large enough. In Canada, the francophone minority has repeatedly tried to separate and form their own nation, and in the 70s created disruption to such a degree that the government declared essentially martial law in the province of Quebec. In the US the treatment of the African-American ethnic group has been terrible to say the least. And we'll see what happens as the latino ethnic group continues to increase in size, there is already some reactionism in the form of laws passed in Arizona, etc. The fourth nation you listed, India, had to separate into two separate nations that have been repeatedly on the brink of war on basis of religious groups!
So I think it is easy to say that western nations have been able to work and experience peace, but in most cases there is either one ethnic group that is a clear majority and all other groups bend to its will, or there actually is a bunch of friction and conflict when those minorities become sizable enough. Obviously not to the point of civil war, but I don't think we can say that things are just "working" elsewhere.
> "What shines through is that you believe in segregating ethnicities because they just can't live peacefully together."
Some can, some can't. I do think that Democracy is more sensitive to national separatism than other forms of government. The great multiethnic empires of history weren't democratic. The Chinese have held together a multiethnic society for 3,000 years without holding a vote.
The Northern coalition in the Afghanistan civil war was composed of many ethnic groups fighting together against the Pashtun south. There is enough common ground between the groups of the north that a two state solution may suffice.
Nationalism is a powerful force that has great appeal to human psychology. Every successful multi-ethnic, multi-religious, or multi-lingual empire has to address it. Even the Canadians have struck an uneasy balance between the French speaking Quebecois and the rest of the country. Separation was a close thing.
And nationalism doesn't skip Europe. Try to find Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia on a map. And soon Spain might be joining them in the historical deadpool if the Catalan independence movement gets its way.
Well, look at the centuries of violent war that preceded most modern, stable nation-states. Europe was pretty much in a constant state of conflict from the fall of the Roman Empire until WWI.
Nationalism is also an interesting phenomenon, in that over time it tends to transcend ethnic groups, but only once the thread of common identity has established itself. Take a look, for instance, at the post WWI Middle East, where the imposition of arbitrary zones of influence (the origins of many modern states) disrupted a budding pan-Arab nationalism in favor of keeping a balance of influence between the colonial powers.
The United States is a completely different case in that the nationalism that took root here was based on a shared identity among immigrants of (relatively speaking) diverse ethnic groups-- but even so, our early history had no shortage of atrocities committed agains native populations, as well as conflict among the constituent religious and ethnic groups that comprised the nation.
That being said, nation states seem to be a very stable and agreeable governance paradigm once they become established, but a shared identity amongst diverse groups (ethnic or otherwise) takes time to develop, and as history has demonstrated, it certainly can't be imposed from the outside.
>The problem with SS Africa vs. the Middle East is that the African countries, having no history of large-scale states before the Europeans came, have so many national divisions that it becomes impractical
Large scale political entities have existed in SS Africa.
And in large scale states are quite recent in the Middle East.
It's a nice theory if this was the way nationalism functions, but nationalism is exclusive. It excludes all other identities for One True Idenitity.
And as for the politicants, they will use nationalism to pull people by the nose whether they are in multi-ethnic or single ethnic surrounding. Only thing that nationalism will change will be the rhetoric.
- "We don't have money... It's not because we embezzled it, it is the Other nation, we must expel them from the country.",
- "Our roads are bad, it's not because we did something wrong, those pesky foreigners are destroying them with their cars"
Nationalism is like opium for the masses, it's very effective, but highly addictive, so I'd be careful to recommend it. Asking for nationalism in time of crisis is akin to waving the Black Sun flag (not the Nazi one, but mirror one). Nationalism + crisis often leads to horrific solutions. See Greece for example of such problems.
He's not asking for nationalism - he's pointing out that it is still present, but it does not coincide with the borders of the countries. Consider e.g. Nigeria. It is "somewhat functioning" but there are still major tensions between the various regions along tribal and religious lines.
E.g. my ex is from Nigera, and her dad was from the Igbo tribe. One of the thing she saw all around was her family, and her Igbo friends families, who were fairly successful and many of whom worked well paid jobs in Abuja (the capital) or Lagos, who would opt to rent in Abuja and Lagos while funnelling all their money into building houses in their birth villages that they rarely used.
It took her a while to understand why: Her parents generation all remember the Biafra war all to well, either from direct experience, or from growing up in the aftermath with parents who instilled the ghost of Biafra in them very effectively. Biafra was largely Igbo, and the war saw large amounts of Igbo have properties elsewhere in Nigeria confiscated, and many Igbos were deported from places like Lagos.
Many Igbo as a result to this day consider themselves outsiders, or see it as unsafe to put down ties elsewhere in Nigeria. This includes even people like my ex's dad, who was a high ranking lawyer, who e.g. counted the previous president - Obasanjo - (who was one of the military commanders on the Nigerian side against the secessionist Biafra) as a friend, and the then Vice President as his lawyer, and who split most of his time between Abuja, Lagos and London and certainly had all the connections to be in a position where he should be able to feel safe outside of the Igbo core areas.
You will find other groups who similarly see their primary identity as separate from the country of Nigeria. And that is a story that is repeated in a large number of the African countries.
I agree with you that nationalism can be a terrifying force. But in many cases it will fester even more when it divides countries into groups that see themselves as competing for power of a single country.
I'm not sure what the point of separating alongside nationalistic lines would achieve? Nationalism isn't an objective quality, but a quality that's perceived subjectively by number of people.
You'll never be able to divide on nationalistic lines because they aren't real lines, people can always fall into either a no true Scotsman fallacy, and even if that is settled you'll probably have outliers that might have a mother of nationality A and father of nationality B. Which nation does the child go? Not to mention two nations will probably want to contest same resources, so that leads to further strife.
The issue facing this society is lack of social cohesion, not the issue of nation.
The American ideology sees itself as a template for how the rest of the world should be, so in that respect it is universalist. It contrasts with philosophies like Hinduism or Confuscianism, which are specific creeds for a specific people. In its quest for world domination, American liberal universalism is similar to its chief 20th century rival, international communism.
Communism was also a universalist faith, one that believed it was right for everyone. We note that both creeds are recklessly imperial.
South Ossetia or Kashmir or the Basque region might claim independence, then small pockets within those might want independence in turn.
You can't draw a border distinctly around every unified group of people, certainly not to demand it permanently reflect those people forever. Both the natural movement of people and the tendency of groups towards cultural change (both fracturing and collusion) over time slowly erode our best efforts to put everyone in separate pens and label them as distinct groups.
Pan-nationalism doesn't magically solve these issues, but a rigid adherence to self-determination isn't the panacea it's sometimes made out to be either.
Patriotism is a force that opposes fragmentation. A wise governor carefully considers his people's self-identity. Self-identity can be managed. Do they view themselves as Americans first, and Irish second? That is good. It is a recipe for stability. The opposite is not.
The balance of these forces is tricky to get right. I believe the Western democratic model may turn out to be the creed of a short-lived, highly chaotic period of history.
The countries that were decolonialized in the postwar period were, ipso facto, decolonialized at a time when communism was a popular political ideology. Not Nordic model welfare states, not Keynesian countercyclic fiscal policy, but hard-line dictatorship-of-the-proletariat communism, the ideal of East Germany and North Korea. Zambia was a one-party state that reinvested copper profits through the disastrous program of import substitution:
ISI is literally anti-economics. Rather than maximizing differential value (the production possibility frontier), ISI discourages trade and in doing so discourages exploiting the production possibility frontier. The standard example in economics of import substitution is Latin America from 1930 to 1980. The standard example in economics of failed policy is Latin America from 1930 to 1980.
The IMF's response was the horrible despotic policy of structural adjustment. Structural adjustment only ever works if the country itself is already fed up with protectionism and wants to abandon it:
This is why, after the end of the Cold War, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have been growing, becoming more developed and less poor, and the past 20 years have been less tumultuous than the previous 40. Here's Hans Rosling with the data:
Look at Zambia. From 1950 to 1999 it wanders around in the left-bottom of the chart like a drunk fly. In 1999, the blue dot zooms up and to the right. When does this happen? Just eight years after Zambia's first free and fair presidential election:
The Western model works. It worked in East Asia, it's working in Latin America, and humanity willing it will work in sub-Saharan Africa. And it doesn't follow copper prices:
From 2002 to 2005, copper prices quadrupled, but there is no corresponding jump in Zambian fortunes. Rather, the Zambian economy developed at a steady pace, beginning before the rise in copper prices, influenced mainly by an improving political climate at home. Before that, Zambia hit a high-water mark in the 1960s, during the presidency of Kaunda, who began to implement socialism. It stagnated during the beginning of one-party rule and declined during (because of) the oil crisis. But mostly it was an inefficient planned economy and exhibited typical communist failure to thrive. Liberal and democratic reforms in the 90s were met with growth.
So democracy in Africa is just fine, thanks. Communism, however, sucks.
To make this point clear, I want to give more context on the price of copper and the effect it has on the Zambian economy. Zambia's economy does not move to the right any more after 1965. But copper prices increased for eleven years after 1965, until 1976, and Zambia was unable to exploit this in a way that led to national progress. The crash around 1976-1981 clearly hurt, but not taking advantage of favorable situations hurt more.
They don't believe in nations, they believe strongly in their own country as a "nation", but not in the common meaning of a nation which is ethinically based.
If they believed in nations (in the way other countries believe), irish-americans would identify more with being irish than with being americans for example (and the same for other ethnicities).
The colonial borders in Africa and Asia are not an accident. The political elite of US, UK, France, etc. understands all too well nationalism. You are very bad at understanding Divide and conquer ;-).
The Western powers have left behind chaotic anarchy over much of two continents. I don't think it is due to some sinister purpose. Rather, I see it as a side effect of naive do-gooderism.
So how do you think that compares to the situation in Balkans. In there Yugoslavia was similarly failed attempt to merge all sorts of ethnic groups under a single country. Now they are more split up, and the situation seems finally to be somewhat stable and palatable to the people living there. Or at least they aren't in the headlines anymore like they used to be.
I've long said, about areas of the world having certain kinds of problems like you describe is that those people don't have the 1-2 punch advantages of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. If you wonder at why some group of people are behaving in a way you don't understand, see if the way you understand is rooted in those two movements.
I do not believe Afghanistan can remain one country unless outsiders keep the balance of power through direct intervention or heavy arms subsidies. My reasoning is that they were still fighting a civil war when the USA invaded.
Throughout Africa and the Middle East we see countries with straight borders that used to be colonies of Western powers. These powers left and left behind democratic governments. These governments are plagued by the fact that the countries they rule over are not nations.
A country is a political entity - a set of borders enforced by an army. A nation is a psycho-social entity. It is a group that people identify with, normally composed based on ethnic, linguistic, or religious similarity. Nationhood marks an in-group. Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology, so their brains reject this reality to the detriment of the places their armies occupy.
In most post-colonial countries, there are many different nations within an arbitrary border. Democracy does not work because the citizens don't see themselves as the same people. When a person gets power in the government, of course he turns into a "kleptocrat" instead of working for the common good because he doesn't value the "common good". He values the good of his people.
These post-colonial countries are also prone to civil war. If one ethno-religious group gets the majority over another, the losing group doesn't see the government as legitimate. So there is war and genocide. The post-colonial idealists in the West have done more damage to the world than the colonialists ever did through the proxy of civil war.
Democracy in the Congo led to decades of Civil War and now we even see Bantus eating Pygmies[1] - rape, disfigurement, and even cannibalism have become weapons in a brutal civil war. Likewise, if American troops leave Afghanistan, we will see a recap of the 90's civil war between the northern and southern ethnic groups.
There is no "Afghan" people - there are Pashtun and Tajik and Uzbek[2]. And they were on the tail-end of a civil war before the USA invaded, and now the USA wants them to vote together. What insanity. In an ominous sign, no Pashtun will join the "national" Afghan army. Putting people within the same borders and putting a single army in control over them doesn't magically make them care about each other.
This is leaving behind the absurdity of trying to impose Western norms on an African continent lacking thousands of years of western history with literature, law, and democracy. You don't get to Tom Paine without Cato - and there was a 1700 year process connecting the two. Western thinking about the rest of the world is full of unicorns and pixie dust.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/09/congo.jamesasti...
[2] http://origins.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2-12-map586.jpg