The Turkish Empire presents, and has presented, numerous examples of the problem—Servia in 1876; Bulgaria in 1878; the Greek populations of the Ægean coast at the present day.
In South Africa Great Britain has been within the last year forced to solve the problem in the special phase in which it presented itself to her there.
To sum up, the circumstances which give rise to the ethnic problem are, stated briefly, of the following nature—
(1) The existence within but on the borders of a state of a race alien to the ruling race, but akin to the race beyond the frontier.
(2) The real or fancied inferiority in respect to liberty of the aliens within the state to their kinsmen outside it.
(3) The consequent setting up of two currents of feeling, one from the outside to the inside, and another from the inside to the outside of the state. These are usually coexistent, though in exceptional cases one may exist without the other.
(4) The dangers to the state arising from the existence of circumstance (3).
The various solutions which have been tried by different states at different periods of history have taken one of two main forms of policy—
Either (1) the pushing forward of the borders by conquest to the ethnic frontier;
Or (2) the denationalization of the alien race within the border.