In line with contemporary scientific racism theories, Freudenthal believed that Finland had two races, one speaking Swedish and the other Finnish.
Since its independence from the Netherlands in 1830, language has been an important but divisive political force in Belgium between the Dutch and Germanic Flemings and Franco-Celtic Walloons.
An indication of this disposition is the Athenians' speech to their allies in 480 BC, mentioning that all Hellenes are bound with the homaimon ("same blood"), homoglosson ("same language"), and common religious practices.
[16] American society evolved into a two-caste system, with two broad classes: white and non-white, citizen and non-citizen (or semi-citizen).
[24] This racialized identity has created the common misconception that African Americans are virtually a mono-racial African-descendant ethnic group in the United States.
[25] This is consistent with the history of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans intermixing during the transatlantic slave trade and race being a social construct created in the United States.
The immigrant's roots are in their specific African nation, while Black Americans' ethnicity stems from the unique US experiences of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, shaping a distinct culture with its own music, food, and traditions.
Through forced enslavement and admixing, the African American ethnicity, race, lineage, culture, and identity are indigenous to the United States of America.
[37][citation needed] Herwig Wolfram offers "a radically new explanation of the circumstances under which the Goths were settled in Gaul, Spain and Italy".
[38] Since "they dissolved at their downfall into a myth accessible to everyone" at the head of a long history of attempts to lay claim to a "Gothic" tradition, the ethnogenesis by which disparate bands came to self-identify as "Goths" is of wide interest and application.
Clayton Anderson observed that with the arrival of the Spanish in southwestern North America, the Native Americans of the Jumano cultural sphere underwent social changes partly as a reaction, which spurred their ethnogenesis.
Nancy Hickerson argued that the disintegration of 17th-century Jumano, caused in part by the widespread deaths from introduced diseases, was followed by their reintegration as Kiowa.
Frustrated with not finding gold or silver in the areas suspected to contain such valuable materials, they destroyed villages and decimated native populations.
The population collapse forced natives to relocate from their cities into the countryside, where smaller villages and new political structures developed, replacing the older chiefdom models of tribal governance.
From that blending of many tribes, ethnogenesis led to the emergence of new ethnic groups and identities for the consolidated natives who had managed to survive the incursion of European people, animals, and diseases.
After 1700, most North American Indian "tribes" were relatively new composite groups formed by these remnant peoples who were trying to cope with epidemic illnesses brought by and clashes with the Europeans who were exploring the area.
[41] European encroachment caused significant demographic shifts in the size and geographic distribution of the indigenous communities, leading to a rise in mortality rates due to conflict and disease.
[42] During the Middle Ages in Italy, the Italo-Dalmatian languages differentiated from Latin, leading to the distinction of Italians from neighboring ethnic groups within the former Roman Empire.
Mountainous terrain allowed the development of relatively isolated communities and numerous dialects and languages before Italian unification in the 19th century.
Scholar Charles King concluded[44] that this action was partly support for Soviet propaganda and help for a potential communist revolution in Romania.
Initially, people of Moldovan ethnicity supported territorial claims to the regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which were part of Romania at the time.
[45] Prior to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the term "Palestinian" referred to any resident of the region of Palestine, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or religious affiliation.
Following the foundation of the State of Israel, the Jews of the former Mandatory Palestine and the Arabs who received Israeli citizenship developed a distinct national identity.
Singapore's cultural norms, psyche, and traditions have led to the classification of "Singaporean" as a unique ethnocultural and socio-ethnic group that is distinct from its neighboring countries.
"[48] Within the historical profession, the term "ethnogenesis" has been borrowed as a neologism to explain the origins and evolution of so-called barbarian ethnic cultures,[49] stripped of its metaphoric connotations drawn from biology, of "natural" birth and growth.
That view is closely associated with the Austrian historian Herwig Wolfram and his followers, who argued that such ethnicity was not a matter of genuine genetic descent ("tribes").
Proponents of ethnogenesis may claim it is the only alternative to the sort of ethnocentric and nationalist scholarship that is commonly seen in disputes over the origins of many ancient peoples such as the Franks, Goths, and Huns.
[51] It has also been used as an alternative to the Near East's "race history" that had supported Phoenicianism and claims to the antiquity of the Assyrian people, including their various names.