Though this article may not be complete and totally up-to-date, the Wikipedia entry, yet loving tended for its apparent faults, on separatist and succession movements in Europe provides a pretty powerful illustration—with a map of the tensions and disputes—of how we regard outsiders and insiders even on the smallest regional levels.
Of course most
splotches of colour are not typically violent and many just want greater recognition, but surveying the land and finding large areas that don’t contain some sort of break-away politics makes one wonder if the people there are all completely agreeable, just naรฏve or too cowed to complain. Looking at this situation presented on this map, I am not sure what to think about it. While I am sure that motivations are genuine and not frivolous and people have the right to proportional representation—historic borders being far from infallible too, I suppose that this sort of fractocracy and devolution does fiddle a bit with not only the spirit of integration but also of equal-rights and minority-protection—and we’re all happily minorities in one way or another, and rather than making an honest-effort to try to get along with one’s neighbours (oppressors, by some estimates) simply compartmentise them with a new sovereignty.
