History sometimes produces some surprising coincidences. Thus, in 1707, Scotland voluntarily negotiated its union with England while Catalonia, at the same date, had the laws of Castile imposed upon it, ‘in the name of the just rights of conquest’; during this same period, Brittany endured harsh repression at the hands of Louis XIV's armies. Just as each state conducts a specific foreign policy, so too does it pursue a particular line of conduct domestically, in relation to national minorities. If one considers the policies followed by England, a weak state, in relation to Scotland, those of France, a strong state, with respect to Brittany, and finally those which Spain, a weak state that wished to be a strong one, pursued in relation to Catalonia, could one perhaps identify a political logic at work within the political system, and thereby explain the extreme diversity of the strategies adopted by nationality movements when confronted with different types of state?

Some writers, adopting a developmentalist perspective, have felt able to maintain that industrialisation ought to bring about a decline in ethnic tensions and further the homogenisation of society through the spread of modernising and universalist values. According to others, nationality movements fade into the background during the capitalist period when faced with the main conflict, which is that of social classes in perpetual struggle. Thus Rosa Luxemburg condemned the claims advanced by nationalities, on the grounds that they distracted from class conflict.