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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
The world is now undergoing a transformation as profound as that experienced with the rise of the territorial state system after the religious wars of Europe’s feudal period. Modern technology in defense and communications and “emerging trans-state patterns of commerce, politics, and cultural life” are rendering traditional notions of “frontier” obsolete. Dispersed transnational communities—Sikhs in Canada, Muslims in Britain, Germany, France, and the U.S.—sectarian and ethnic militias sustained by emigré and foreign funds, and transnational banking, commercial, religious, and intellectual links often opaque to state authorities may not threaten the existence of the nation-state everywhere, but they serve as a poignant reminder that nation-states are not the only significant political actors in the late twentieth century.
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