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The assertion by the government of a country that a minority living across the border in a neighbouring country belongs to it historically and culturally, and the mounting of a propaganda campaign, or even a declaration of war, to effect that claim.
Some of the most violent irredentist conflicts of recent times in Europe flared up as a consequence of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia Herzogovina were largely about creating a new political framework of states, each of which would be ethnically and politically homogeneous. The conflict erupted further south with the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo seeking to switch allegiance to the adjoining state of Albania. (MB)
Suggested Reading Chazan, N., ed., 1991: Irredentism and international politics. Twickenham: Adamantine. |
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