North India and South India share a country, but they speak unrelated languages and grew up on very different land. Today the south holds a disproportionate share of India’s wealth while the north holds a growing share of its people, and India’s first census in sixteen years could shift the balance of power between them. So how did these two Indias form, and what does the tension between them mean for India’s place in the world?
Read MoreThe Hungarian language is more closely related to languages spoken in Western Siberia than to any other language in Europe, including its distant cousins Finnish and Estonian. Hungarians are culturally distinct too. But why is Hungary so different from its neighbors, and what impact does it have on geopolitics?
Read MoreAbout 72k people in Ireland speak the Irish language daily outside a classroom. In Wales, a country with half the population, the number speaking Welsh daily runs into the hundreds of thousands, and in Gwynedd it is still the majority language. Both languages have been shrinking for a century, but only one of them still has places where it is simply what people speak. So why did Welsh hold onto its communities when Irish didn't, and what does that have to do with geopolitics?
Read MoreEstonia and Latvia are home to hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking non-citizens, and since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has worked hard to turn them into leverage. But why are all of these people in the Baltic States to begin with, and what impact do they actually have on Europe's security?
Read MoreCameroon is often described as a former French colony with a substantial English-speaking minority. But that’s not completely true. It was a German colony before being split between France and Britain. And while the Anglophone divide has produced real conflict, it is a misconception that the fight between English and French speakers is the source of the country's problems. In fact, Cameroon is a country full of misconceptions. So how are Cameroon’s geopolitical dynamics misunderstood?
Read MoreThere’s a good chance you’re familiar with the Chinese government’s oppressive treatment of ethnic minorities in places like Tibet and Xinjiang. But if we look far to the south we’ll find the Guangxi Autonomous Region, which hosts the country’s largest ethnic minority and is actively showcased by the Chinese government to exemplify what successful minority integration looks like. So why is Guangxi’s fate different from places like Tibet and Xinjiang, and what does China consider to be successful integration to begin with?
Read MoreThis Southeast Asian country has two names, and using either of them means that you are taking a side. Myanmar is the name most people use for it, but most maps also call it Burma in parentheses. This country is the site of one of the longest and most fragmented civil wars on the planet, and the fight over what to call it is really a part of that war itself. So why does Myanmar, or Burma, have two names, and what can this dynamic tell us about the country’s role in geopolitics?
Read MoreThe Basque Country of Spain is best known for being incredibly distinct from the rest of the country. Its language is the only living language in its family, its culture is very different, and its people are genetically descended from those who lived on the Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age, despite having intermingled with other groups for thousands of years. The natural question is how does a region that’s so different from the rest of its own country play into Spain’s broader geopolitical dynamics?
Read MoreIn many ways, there are two Canadas, and they interact with the world in very different ways. There’s the Canada led out of Ottawa, the one most people are familiar with, and then there’s Quebec, which has 35 government offices in 20 countries, signs international treaties on its own, and has a population roughly the same size as Belarus or Switzerland. So just how different is Quebec from the rest of Canada, and what impact does this have on the country’s geopolitical dynamics?
Read More