Irredentism
Topic: Nationalism and National Self-determination · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Irredentism is a claim by a state or a movement to land that another state now rules. The claim rests on one of two grounds: "our" people live there, or the land once belonged to us. The word comes from the 19th-century Italian claim to "unredeemed" lands, meaning Italian-speaking areas still outside Italy. It matters because such claims often lead to border disputes and wars.
Example
Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine (2014) is an irredentist claim, since Russia pointed to the Russian-speaking people there. The idea of a "Greater Somalia", joining all Somali-inhabited lands, is another example.
Don't confuse with
- Separatism: irredentism tries to add land from another state to one's own state. Separatism tries to break a region away from its current state to form a new, independent state.