The different races lived together but did not share a common identity.
Consider for a start the ragged history of India's regional neighbourhood: though populated by smaller and more homogenous states, their desire to impose a common identity has broken them down.
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain's inter-faith relations committee, said the first step in building a common identity was to identify what it was to be British.
The most important post-conflict step towards the further development of a common national identity would be the instigation of a constitution-drafting process that involved all Iraq's different communities.
The hope of forging a common European identity has given way to greater national assertiveness, even chauvinism.
Some governments argue that building a common brand identity threatens to detract from their island's individuality, a view that exasperates Jean Holder, secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, the local trade body.
Kiswahili is spoken most noticeably here on the coast, reflecting a strong sense of common identity.
Although the papers collected here are wide ranging, they reveal the emergence of the concept of a common heritage and plural identity.
Many French politicians and businessmen, however, want to create not just a defence identity for the European Union but also a common front against the English-speaking world.
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Identity theft is becoming more common as we become a cashless society.
ACCESS, a huge social-services agency, which reinforce their sense of common identity.
Series like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Resident Evil and Dead Space have gone through identity crises in an attempt to appeal to a lower common denominator of gamers.
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While disagreements among political leaders on the direction of an economic unification are common in any part of the world, disagreements among EU-leaders confirm that Europeans have yet to nurture a common consciousness, overcome their national pride, and develop a European identity.
With the REAL ID Act of 2005, they instituted a de facto national identity system by mandating that records be centralized and state-issued IDs be brought up to a common standard.
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