Creation of Identities. Let's start from Nationalism.

As Wikipedia states, Nationalism involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms. I think that the identification of a group of individuals could also be with religion, ideology and even football teams, but the point is always the same. Every kind of identification presupposes the exitance of something "other", something that permits a comparison and which could be fearful or just unknown. The "other" is the first necessary element for the creation of an identity. Once there is something to counteract, a bond among individuals can be created.

Nationalism doesn't differ from other kinds of identity creation: it was born with the idea of modern state or nation state after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. As the world started being organized in entities called states or nation states, nationalism had the basis to rise and to develop his course.

The rise of Nationalism as a phenomenon of mass identification and mobilization has really precise historical causes, as, for example, also the current organization of the world has. The present political world atlas is an historical/political product, that means that there are also many reason for the dominant eurocentric view of history, geography and so on.

For these reasons I think that we should always look at things from a critic point of view and nothing should be taken for granted, even if of course we need some kind of assumptions as starting points to begin an understanding process.

Question. Since history/ geography are strongly correlated with politics, is it likely to use them to "create" some kinds of identities? Definitely, yes.