The creation of new states out of old empires was conditioned on the one
hand by the demands of ethnic nationalism. Although ethnicity is difficult to
define precisely, the existence of coherent ethnic groups has appeared so intuitively
obvious that for instance the United Nations could decide in 1952 that
self-determination was the right of all peoples without feeling any need to define
what a people might be. On the other hand, the creation of new states was conditioned by a sense of instrumentality