The countries with the most powerful ethnicity in the world are obviously those western powers and certainly some very ancient African countries with historical pride on their wonderful actions and relationships with the rest of the world.
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, race, language, history, society, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area.
There has been constant debate over the classification of ethnic groups. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be associated with shared ancestry, history, homeland, language or dialect and cultural heritage.
The term ethnicity is often used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism. Most of the world is not composed of nation states. And how do you define ethnic group vis-à-vis subethnic group is also a big question.
Countries with the Most Powerful Ethnicity in the World
Here are the list of countries with the most powerful ethnicity in the world and then we will have to know why these countries are recorded to be so:
France
In France, besides the obvious cases of the Bretons and the Basques, there are also Savoyards, Occitans and Alsatians who do not have their nation states. True, overwhelming majority of them consider themselves French but they can be considered ethnic groups.
Spain
The struggle for the Catalan independence in Spain is notorious but what about Valencians or Galicians? And Bavarians in Germany? And Sardinians in Italy? They used to have their Kingdom of Sardinia and they have their own, very specific language – but alas, no nation state of their own.
Papua New Guinea
This country has hundreds of ethnic groups and 839 spoken languages, many of which are completely unrelated to the others. Not bad for a population of 9.5 million.
Poland
The Rusyns, scattered over five different countries, call themselves “Kurds of Eastern Europe”. Poland is considered to be one of the most monoethnic countries in the world but Silesians want to be recognized as a national minority which would reduce the number of Poles in Poland to just over 80%.
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Liberia
This country, with a population of only 4.5 million, is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, with 28 different ethnic groups.
Indonesia
The Javanese, the largest ethnic group in Indonesia, do not have their own nation, they live in Indonesia which is not their nation state.
India
As for Bengalis, for instance, they do have their own nation state but only 163 million out of 300 million live there: about 83 million Bengalis live in India and do not feel like leaving for “their nation state”.
Tanzania
With a population of more than 55 million people, Tanzania has more than one hundred ethnic groups.
Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo has 81.6 million people who comprise 200 ethnic groups that speak 242 languages.
Saudi Arabia
It could even be argued that Arabs do not have their state: true, they do have Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Syrian Arab Republic but there is no nation state that could be home for all Arabs of the world.
Kenya
One can survive without a nation state based on ethnicity. Kenya is not the richest country in the world but it is not in war and its prosperity grows. On the contrary, when Igbo of Nigeria decided to have their own nation state, it did not end well.
The idea that every ethnic group should have its own nation state comes from Europe and is responsible for lots of bloodshed during the last 120 years. One can see what happened in the former Ottoman Empire when various ethnic groups decided to implement this idea.
The only countries that take their names from ethnic groups in Africa are Somalia, Uganda, Lesotho and Swaziland. No African ethnic group except Somalis, Baganda, Basotho and Swazis, has “their own nation”. For instance, Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, makes about 16.9% of Kenyan population.
