While the migration of Abraham Lincoln’s family to the Northwest has often been documented as a significant event of his youth, historians have neglected the powerful repercussions this family decision had on Lincoln’s assessment of the South and the secession crisis in 1860 and 1861. Lincoln’s years living and working in the Northwest from 1831 to 1861 exposed him to the anti–slave system ethos of that region’s southern-born migrants. Sensitive to the restraints they believed the social system of slavery placed upon their own liberties, these former southerners simultaneously despised the slave system, hated African Americans, and sympathized with white slaveholders and nonslaveholders who remained in the South. After building his initial sense of southern society from these migrants, Lincoln spent his years as a U.S. congressman learning the significance of the Northwest Ordinance in creating the free society in which they had thrived. Emphasizing Thomas Jefferson’s role in conceiving the Northwest Ordinance and utilizing statistical evidence to prove the superiority of free soil over slave, Lincoln’s colleagues further expanded Lincoln’s conception of the South. All these influences combined to produce Lincoln’s uniquely northwestern approach to slavery, the South, and the secession crisis. Believing that the self-interest of white nonslaveholding southerners naturally propelled them away from the South and toward free society, Lincoln perceived the slave South as a vastly unequal society controlled by a minority of aristocratic slaveholders who cajoled or chided their nonslaveholding neighbors into accepting a vision of the South’s proslavery, expansionist future. As president-elect, Lincoln therefore overestimated the Unionist sentiment of southerners before and during the secession crisis. He remained convinced that the majority of white nonslaveholders would not support a secessionist movement that he believed countered their own self-interest. With time, and through careful communications with the South, he remained convinced that he could settle secessionist passions and bring southerners to trust him and the Republican Party. This northwestern perception of the South therefore explains, in part, Lincoln’s silence and his refusal to compromise during the secession crisis.

<p>Rätten till självbestämmande har traditionellt sett inneburit att staters suveränitet respekterats. Konceptet har dock kommit att applicerats på andra plan i större utsträckning, då man har argumenterat för rätten till nationellt självbestämmande. En gemensam kultur, eller liknande, har på så vis fungerat som underlag för secessionsrörelser. Secession kan ha allvarliga konsekvenser för de involverade politiska enheterna. Det kan även vara ett koncept svårt att implementera i verkligheten då det berör territoriella aspekter såväl som ifrågasätter vilka som hör till den utbrytande rörelsen. En teoretisk ram användbar för utvärdering av secession har därför sammanställts i denna uppsats, baserad på tre typer av secessionsteorier som applicerats på och jämförts med fallet Montenegro. Ramen bygger på en teoretisk diskussion rörande definitioner av nationalism, nationer och identitet. Dessa definitioner grundas på en civil och medborgerlig förståelse av nationalism, där identitet beskrivs som en dynamisk företeelse. Secessionsramen har därefter applicerats på fallet Montenegro som nyligen blivit en självständig stat. En utvärdering av fallet har sedan bedrivits, baserad på en historisk översikt av landet. För att understryka komplexiteten med secession presenteras sedan argument mot secession som inte bör betraktas som en lösning på etniska konflikter. Alternativa lösningar på sådana presenteras därefter vilket ger en insikt i multiculturalism. Sådana lösningar innebär alla en risk för att etniska gränser etsas fast istället för löses upp. Montenegros secession kan dock betraktas som legitim då relativts stabila demokratiska och liberala institutioner gått att finna även innan secessionen. Folkomröstningen var även den legitim och influerad av medborgarskap snarare än etnicitet.</p> / <p>The principle of self-determination traditionally refers to respect for state sovereignty. It has been increasingly employed to lower level communities as they have argued their right to national self-determination. National groups have, based on a common culture or likewise, made claims to secession. Secession can have severe consequences for either one of the two political units. It can also be extremely difficult to implement as it involves territorial aspects and the fundamental question of who belongs to the national group wishing to secede. A framework for evaluating the legitimacy of secession is developed in this thesis, based on three general types of secession theories applied and compared to the case of Montenegro. The framework builds upon a theoretical background defining what is meant by nationalism, nations and identity. The language used in this essay is therefore that of constructivism, rooted in the civic idea of nationalism. The belief that human identities are dynamic and subject to change is a crucial assumption. With the aid of an historical presentation of Montenegro, an evaluation of the region’s independence is made. To underline why secession should be implemented with care, arguments against secession are then presented. Secession should not be confused with a solution to ethnical tensions. Alternatives to secession are thus demonstrated, showing the complexity of the multiculturalist field in general. Multicultural policies risk fixing ethnical lines rather than dissolving them. The secession of Montenegro is legitimate as relatively stable democratic and liberal tradition existed prior to independence. The referendum in Montenegro was, more over, determined by a well organised referendum where civil elements dominated over</p>

Thesis (M.S. in Defense Analysis)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009. / Thesis Advisor(s): Borer, Douglas A. Second Reader: Berger, Mark T. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 27, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Land ownership, migration and settlements, Muslim secessionist conflict, colonization. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-73). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2003. / Title from PDF (viewed Apr. 25, 2008). Thesis advisor(s): Gaye Christoffersen, H. Lyman Miller. Includes bibliographical references.

Why do some ethnic groups mobilize in violent ways whereas some others mobilize by using peaceful methods? And why do some ethnic groups seek integration while some others pursue separatist goals? This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework to answer these questions. It suggests that a state’s ethnic incorporation policies shape both why (centripetal or centrifugal aims) and how (peaceful or violent methods) ethnic groups mobilize. It argues that (1) consocitionalism recognizes ethnic groups and grants a degree of political autonomy to them, yet limits individuals’ political participation via non-ethnic channels of political participation; and, therefore, it leads to peaceful and moderately centrifugal ethnic mobilizations; (2) liberal multiculturalism recognizes ethnic groups, grants a degree of political autonomy to them, and allows individuals to participate in politics via non-ethnic channels; and, therefore, it leads to peaceful and moderately centripetal mobilizations; (3) civic assimilationism neither recognizes ethnic groups nor grants a degree of political autonomy to them, yet allows individuals to participate in politics via non-ethnic channels; and therefore it leads to peaceful and centripetal mobilizations of groups which lack pre-existing ethnic mobilization; but it leads to moderately violent and centrifugal mobilizations of groups which have strong pre-existing ethnic mobilizations; and (4) ethnocracies neither recognize ethnic groups nor grant a degree of political autonomy to them, and they also limit individuals’ political participation via non-ethnic channels. Therefore, they lead to centrifugal and violent ethnic mobilizations. The dissertation uses a mixed method research design. The hypotheses are tested based on the Minorities at Risk data as well as the case studies of ethnic Turks in Bulgaria and Cyprus, and Kurds and the Roma in Turkey. The case studies benefit from an extensive field research in Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Turkey using original interviews with former and current guerillas, guerilla families, political activists, and politicians from each ethnic group under scrutiny and archival research on newspapers and legal documents. The findings indicate that politics of ethnic accommodation are not only an explanation for the causes of different ethnic mobilization patterns, but also a feasible remedy for ethnic disputes spanning all over the world. / text

Despite its reputation for instability and weak states, the continent of Africa has seen very few attempts at secession. The 1960s saw the early attempts of Katanga and Biafra to split away from their host states, only for these attempts to be crushed in short order. Since then there have only been a handful of notable attempts at secession: the early attempts by the Southern Sudan to split from the North, the secessionist desires of Cabinda to separate from Angola, the Casamance separatists of Senegal, and finally the long and still unrecognized separation of Somaliland from the failed state of Somalia. What is notable is that none of these have borne permanent fruit despite the persistence of the separatist fronts (although the Southern Sudan may now finally be embarking on its own separate existence). In each case, from Katanga to Somaliland, the theoretical state has encountered resistance on the national, regional, and global scale to their existence and have never yet been recognized. However, despite these setbacks, there currently has been one successful secession in Africa: that of Eritrea. Eritrea faced the same political and military difficulties that all other secession attempts have faced in Africa. Their host state of Ethiopia was perhaps the most revered on the continent and throughout the thirty year conflict had the international support of alternatively the United States and the USSR. The Organization of African Unity and its members remained unrelentingly in favor of territorial integrity for all African States. The Eritreans could not even gain regional recognition for their struggle. Despite all of this, they prevailed in their thirty-year struggle for independence. Critical to their success were four interwoven factors that allowed them to overcome those barriers that had stopped their secessionist predecessors: the anomalous history of Eritrea and Ethiopia, the Eritreans' practice of the theories of protracted war, the simultaneous social revolution the Eritreans carried out, and finally the Eritreans' pragmatic relations with their surrounding dissident groups. This work argues that these four central factors were the keys to Eritrea's aberrant and so far unique victory in their struggle for secession. / text

In the United States, the transition from aristocratic agriculturalism to liberal democratic industrialism was distinguished from instances of this transformation in other countries by a threat to the territorial integrity of the Union. In this dissertation, I provide novel insight into this unique challenge and its link to American political development. Drawing on recent works on the process of secession, I have developed an innovative framework for the analysis of secession in which the institutional design of the state plays a central role in facilitating this act of territorial and political withdrawal. This framework specifies five factors that contribute to the development, timing, and success of a movement for secession: grievance, the institutional design of the state, boundaries, leadership, and sequence. My framework is generalizable and can be used to illuminate the desire for secession in other regions of the world. / In order to provide a thorough analysis of this case of secession, I examine the historical background of the decision to secede, with an emphasis on the nullification crisis and the first secession crisis. Without the steps and missteps taken in these moments, secession would have been unlikely. In addition, I examine the actions of the other states of the South: the early-seceders of the Deep South, the late-seceders of the Upper South, and the non-seceders of the Border South. / I conclude that secession in South Carolina was the result of a number of dynamically interacting factors, beginning with the grievance experienced by the elites and the rest of the white, male population of South Carolina. This grievance was produced by demographic changes in the Union that allowed Republican Abraham Lincoln to be elected president without needing electoral support in the South. The grievance (fear) wrought by these changes animated the desire for secession, but secession was politically feasible because of the institutional design of the American state. Central to my argument is the notion that federal states are both easier to enter, because they facilitate the maintenance of local autonomy, and easier to exit (than other states), because the maintenance of state capacity and a high degree of autonomy at the state level makes withdrawal from the federal state possible with minimal disruption. / The very sequence by which secession was accomplished provides essential insight into the dynamics of secession. The South did not secede simultaneously, but sequentially---with South Carolina seceding unilaterally, and forcing the hand of the remaining states. Given the divisions present in the South, this strategy of seeking sequential exit through unilateral secession in South Carolina was the best possible strategy to realize the goal of a Southern Confederacy.

The aim of the analysis in this essay will be divided into two cases. In the first, I will study the formation of a new State and why a geographic area of a country decides to make an secession. The focus will be on the secession of Biafra from Nigeria in 1967 and how the causes and explanations behind this secession, get in the Swedish literature as well as the international literature. In Case 2, I will use a explanation games, as a means to give pupils more understanding and to make it more clear, why a geographical area chooses to make a secession, and where I will use the secession of the Biafra from Nigeria as my example (Case 1). To more easily understand and answer  the question, why the geographical area of Biafra in south-eastern Nigeria chose to do an secession, I have chosen to study my Case 1 from a social and political context. The broader aim of this essay is, during the use of theories to search which role the ethnicity and the ethnic pattern had in the decisions of the Biafra to do an secession and create a new state. But also to explore the didactic elements and methods in history teaching, we as teachers can use, in order to more clearly describe and explain why a geographical area decides to do an secession? Results from case 1 showed that ethnicity was a motivation for me to respond to the social and political events in Nigeria and to be able to explain why Biafra chose to break away. There are other reasons, but to me it was ethnicity and ethnic pattern the main causes and it became an ethnic breakaway from the Biafra. In case 2 the explanations games, need not be the only method for the teacher to more clearly explain for example why Biafra chose to break away from Nigeria but it can be a way to understand more.

Thesis (doctoral)--Göteborg University, 2003.

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2005. / Thesis Advisor(s): Aurel Croissant, Vali Nasr. Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-98). Also available online.