The History of Citizenship

Podcast Transcript

Almost everyone listening to the sound of my voice is a citizen of some country.

Citizenship seems very simple and straightforward, but it is anything but. For most of human history, almost everyone was not a citizen of anything.

Today, it is entirely possible to change citizenship, become a citizen of multiple countries, or possibly even be a citizen of no country at all.

In some countries, the issue of who can become a citizen and how are some of the biggest issues they face.

Learn more about citizenship, how it developed, and what it means in the world today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The impetus for this episode came from several different topics that I had been researching. They were interesting but weren’t necessarily something I felt could make a full episode.

However, I realized that several of these topics all shared a common theme, and that theme was citizenship.

I’m not referring to citizenship in any one particular country but rather to citizenship as an abstract idea.

You might be thinking that this really isn’t that interesting of a subject. If you live in a country, you are a citizen of that country. End of the story.

However, there is more to it than that.

There are several different theories as to when the modern-day concept of citizenship began.

If we go back far enough, about 2500 years ago, there was no concept of citizenship. If you lived in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Sumeria, or China, you would have been a subject, not a citizen.

Historically, a subject is someone who owes allegiance to a sovereign or governing power but does not necessarily have reciprocal rights from the sovereign. The status of a subject often implies limited political rights and a more hierarchical relationship between the individual and the state. This concept was more common in monarchies and empires.

The first thing that could be thought of as citizenship was established in the city-states of ancient Greece. City-states such as Athens and Sparta had defined systems of citizenship by around 500 BCE. Citizenship was tied to individual rights, responsibilities, and participation in civic life. For instance, in Athens, citizens could participate in the Assembly, vote, and own land, but these rights were reserved for a narrow class of free-born men.

Citizenship arose alongside the rise of republics. If you remember back to my episode on the topic, republics are just political entities without a monarch or an emperor.

The Roman Republic and later the Empire further developed the concept of citizenship. Roman citizenship included legal protections, the right to vote, and the ability to hold office. It was initially restricted to people in the city of Rome but expanded over time. It eventually included those who lived in the Italian peninsula, and under the Edict of Caracalla in 212, it extended citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire.

This ancient origin in Greece and Rome is the first theory of when citizenship was created.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, the concept of citizenship declined as feudal systems dominated, but it persisted in some form in Italian city-states like Venice and Florence. Here, citizenship was linked to social status and guild membership. Once again, citizenship was tied to republics, not monarchies.

The big change came with the Age of Enlightenment. Key thinkers during this period developed theories that emphasized the role of the individual in relation to the state, the importance of rights, and the foundations of governmental authority.

John Locke, often considered the father of liberal democracy, had a significant influence on the concept of citizenship. In his “Two Treatises of Government,” he argued that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke proposed that governments are created by a social contract where individuals consent to obey in exchange for the protection of their rights. Citizenship, in Locke’s view, involves the active participation of individuals in a democratic society to ensure that the government does not infringe on these natural rights.

Other Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant all contributed to this theory as well.

It should also be noted that all of these philosophers came after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established the international order that we know today.

Events in the late 18th century were pivotal in redefining citizenship. The American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen emphasized rights such as liberty, property, and resistance to oppression.

The other theory of citizenship claims that this was the period when the modern concept of citizenship was developed.

Very slowly, the idea of citizenship began to apply to people who were once subjects in monarchies. The process in Britain, for example, began with the Magna Carta and evolved through the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and a series of reforms in the 19th and early 20th centuries that expanded the vote.

In the 20th century, as nation-states emerged and empires dissolved, laws about citizenship became more structured across countries. Citizenship began to be codified in national constitutions and legislation, emphasizing the legal and formal status of individuals within nation-states.

For the most part, the distinction between citizen and subject dissolved in the 20th century. Even if you live in an absolute monarchy such as Saudi Arabia, you are still considered a citizen.

What rights and obligations a citizen has will differ by country. Some countries have mandatory military service. Some countries have compulsory voting. Some countries have extensive welfare benefits, and others have firmly codified rights and liberties.

In some countries like North Korea, you pretty much have nothing.

For the rest of the episode, I want to talk about some of the quirks that surround international notions of citizenship today.

For starters, most of you listening to this, but not all of you are citizens of the country you were born in and live in. You had no choice in the matter. It was just bestowed upon you at birth.

However, I’m also sure there are some of you who did choose your citizenship. You moved somewhere permanently and then decided to adopt citizenship in your new country.

For those who receive their citizenship by birth, there are roughly two ways that countries determine citizenship.

The first is known as Jus soli, which is Latin for “the right of the soil,” and the second is known as Jus sanguinis, which means “the right of blood.”

Jus sanguinis is a principle of nationality law where citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state. This principle can also extend further to include grandparents and sometimes even great-grandparents, depending on the country’s specific nationality laws. Jus sanguinis emphasizes a blood relationship between the country and the individual.

For example, many European countries allow you to get citizenship if your grandparents, or sometimes even greatgrandparents came from that country.

I looked into it and I’m actually one generation too removed from getting a passport for the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Jus soli, in contrast, is a principle where citizenship is granted to individuals born on the territory of the state, regardless of the nationality of their parents.

What is amazing is which countries practice Jus sanguinis vs Jus soli. Almost the entire New World, that being every country in North and South America allow for Jus soli citizenship. The only exception is Colombia.

On the other hand, almost every country in the Old World, that is all of Europe, Africa, and Asia, practice Jus sanguinis. The only Old World exceptions are Namibia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Lesotho, Chad, Equatorial Guines, and Pakistan.

Jus sanguinis and Jus soli are not mutually exclusive. If, for example, you are born outside the United States and your parents are both citizens, then you would be a ciitizen as well.

This of course raises the issue of dual citizenship.

Most countries allow dual citizenship, but many countries do not. What countries do and do not can be rather arbitrary. Germany allows it, for example, but the Netherlands generally does not, but there are exceptions.

Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom allow it, but Japan and India do not.

This can sometimes lead to very strange situations.

For example, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was born in New York to British parents and left when he was just five years old. He had never lived in the US after that, but because he was born there, he was technically a US citizen.

The United States also happens to be one of the few countries that will tax you based on income earned anywhere. Johnson was subject to US taxes, even though he didn’t live there or receive any services.

Before he became Prime Minister, he renounced his US citizenship, because it would be sort of odd for to be the leader on one country and still a citizen of another.

There are more and more countries now that will sell you citizenship if you have enough money. These are usually very small countries that do it as a source of revenue. Such countries include Caribbean nations like Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Grenada.

Renouncing citizenship can be very easy or very difficult depending on the country. For most countries it is just a matter of making a deceleration and filling out a form.

Perhaps the hardest citizenship to renounce is actually the United States. The US charges a $2,350 fee to renounce your citizenship.

While the number of people who renounce their US Citizenship is pretty small, it has increased significantly over the last decade.

In addition to having one or multiple citizenships, there are some people who have none. These are known as stateless people.

Stateless people lack legal nationality, which often deprives them of basic rights and access to essential services such as healthcare, education, employment, and freedom of movement. Statelessness can result from a variety of factors, including discrimination against minority groups, the dissolution of nations, redrawing of borders, and gaps in nationality laws.

Some examples of stateless people are the Rohingya people in Myanmar, ethnic Russians in Latvia, Bidoon bedouins in Kuwait, Haitians in the Dominican Republic, the Roma in Europe, and Nubians in Kenya.

It is estimated that there are about 10 million stateless people in the world today.

The issue of stateless people is one that has been addressed many times over the last century.

One of the biggest efforts was made by the League of Nations in 1922.

Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian explorer and humanitarian who served as the first High Commissioner for Refugees appointed by the League of Nations, created a new type of passport to assist the large number of stateless refugees resulting from World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution.

Nansen passports were designed to allow stateless persons to legally cross borders, seek employment, and live in a foreign country. This was crucial during a time when many people had no nationality or lost their citizenship due to political upheavals. The documents provided a form of legal status to refugees who were otherwise unable to obtain travel documents from any national government.

The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness was adopted to prevent and reduce statelessness around the world. This international treaty, established under the auspices of the United Nations, sets out standards and regulations by which nationality should be granted in order to avoid statelessness, particularly in cases where individuals would otherwise not have a nationality. It mandates that states grant nationality to persons born on their territory if they would not acquire another nationality automatically.

The problem with the treaty is that most countries in the world have not signed it.

Today, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees leads the #IBelong campaign to end statelessness, focusing on resolving existing cases and preventing new instances through improved nationality laws and administrative practices.

Most people probably don’t really think about citizenship, yet it can be a very complex topic. For the vast majority of people, citizenship is just something they were born with.

However, for some, it is something you can renounce, gain, have more than one of, or even none at all.

All of it stems back to a system developed in Ancient Greece almost 2500 years ago.