Ethnographic principle
The ethnographic principle is a statistical method for determining the approximate course of the imaginary geographical dividing line between two population groups, whose settlement areas are adjacent, which can be distinguished on the basis of ethnic characteristics. When finding the fictitious dividing line, the majority of the mother tongue is generally used as the decision criterion . If the two mother tongues on this side and on the other side of the dividing line are completely different, then it is a language boundary .
After the emergence of the nation states in the 19th century, the ethnographic principle was often used in the western world to establish or redefine state borders . According to international law, the application of the method in such a case requires the majority agreement within each of the two settlement groups involved, who want to clarify their border issues or are politically forced to do so. In most cases, the procedure does not lead straight away to an exactly predeterminable and exactly reproducible borderline at any time, but generally requires improvements that require precise knowledge of the local historical-sociological developments in the border region.
The method has in the past tried to separatist political efforts to give some semblance of legitimacy, so in areas such as separation of the majority of Anglo-American populated northern region of Mexico , later Southwest USA, from the motherland Mexico during the American-Mexican War to the middle of the 19th century or when Kosovo broke away from Serbia in the recent past.
After the First World War , the western victorious powers brought the ethnographic principle to the fore when redefining the state borders in Central Europe . In connection with the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , it was promoted in particular by the American President from the southern states and former history teacher Woodrow Wilson . The ethnographic principle is therefore often associated with his name, but Wilson is not its inventor.
The ethnographic principle is generally not applied consistently when redefining state borders. After the First World War, for example, the definition of the German-Polish and the Italian-Austrian state borders were violated. When resolving border issues, politicians generally do not rely on the ethnographic principle alone, but are also guided by other motives. For example, the nationalist Polish politician Roman Dmowski , who was close to Pan-Slavism , agreed in 1915 to redefine Poland's eastern border with Russia using the ethnographic principle, while at the same time refusing to apply the same procedure to the western border. In the long run, borders that were once established with the help of the ethnographic principle have historically proven to be more politically stable than arbitrarily imposed borders according to the standards of power politics. For example, today's eastern border of Poland largely coincides with the so-called Curzon Line announced by the Western Allies in 1919 .