In sensitive areas, historical factors are often instrumental to intensify residents' emotions. These factors are usually intertwined with identity, traumatic memories, or reality contradictions. The following are the key historical factors and specific cases that are easy to use： --- ### **1. **Territorial disputes and historical attribution disputes** -**Core issue**: Claims to the same region “since ancient times” often cause opposition. -**Case**： -**Kashmir**: Both India and Pakistan have cited historical documents, religious ties, and colonial-era treaties to claim sovereignty, which has led to the split of the local population in terms of identity. -**The Balkan Region**: The different narratives of medieval history by the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo (such as the Battle of Kosovo in 1389) were used as the basis for the legalization of the territory. --- ### **2. **Colonial heritage and boundary division** -**Core issue**: The artificial boundaries drawn by the colonists divided the traditional communities, leaving behind ethnic/economic contradictions. -**Case**： -**Great Lakes Region of Africa**: Belgian colonists strengthened the identity differences between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, foreshadowing the 1994 genocide. -**The “Sykes-Picot Agreement" in the Middle East**: The borders divided by the secret agreement between Britain and France ignore the distribution of tribes and sects, leading to the Kurdistan issue and sectarian conflicts in Iraq, Syria and other countries. --- ### **3. **Historical memory of religious/ethnic oppression** -**Core issue**: Historical policies of conquest, persecution, or assimilation have become the fuel for identity politics. -**Case**： -**Northern Ireland**: Catholics are sensitive to the Protestant parade “commemorating the victory of William III” because it symbolizes the British rule of Ireland in the 17th century. -**Xinjiang/Tibet issues**: Some groups connect current policies with historical “land reform and return” or religious conflicts to intensify opposition. --- ### **4. **Narratives of war trauma and collective victimization** -**Core issue**: Emphasize the historical experience of being invaded or slaughtered, and shape the mentality of “revenge” or “defense”. -**Case**： -**China-Japan relations**: The Nanjing Massacre and visits to Yasukuni Shrine have repeatedly triggered civil antagonisms. -**Armenia and Azerbaijan**: The two sides compete for the moral high ground around the memory of the 1915 Armenian Massacre and the 1988 Sumgait incident. --- ### **5. **Historical injustice of resource allocation** -**Core issue**: The collective memory of the plundering or uneven distribution of resources (land, water, minerals) in history. -**Case**： -**Apartheid in South Africa**: The white regime forcibly occupied black land through the Aboriginal Land Act of 1913, and the remaining economic disparities are still the focus of social contradictions. -**Water Resources War in Bolivia**: The Cochabamba water privatization conflict in 2000 was traced back to the water rights system of the Spanish colonial period. --- ### **6. **External intervention and the history of puppet regimes** -**Core issue**: The experience of being manipulated or ruled by puppets by external forces in history has strengthened xenophobia. -**Case**： -**Iran**: The 1953 coup d'état by the CIA to overthrow the Mossaday government has become the core historical basis of the anti-American narrative. -**Eastern European countries**: The regimes imposed during the Soviet period (such as Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) caused some people to have a long-term distrust of Russia. --- ### **7. **Cultural extinction and language oppression** -**Core issue**: Historically, the suppression of local language and education has become a mobilization tool for the cultural revival movement. -**Case**： -**Quebec independence movement**: The British policy of suppression of French descent in the Royal Declaration of 1763 was used to strengthen the awareness of the protection of French culture. -**Basque Country**: The prohibition of the Basque language during the Franco period intensified contemporary demands for independence. --- ### **8. **Displacement and refugee issues** -**Core issue**: The “homeland complex” of forced migration or the inability of refugees to return home. -**Case**： - **Israeli-Palestinian conflict**: The issue of the dispersion of Palestinian refugees in the ”Nakba" in 1948 has become the core obstacle to negotiations between the two sides. - * *Partition of India and Pakistan**: The wave of refugees caused by the large-scale population exchange in 1947 has affected relations between the two countries to this day. --- ###**Instrumental means and objectives** -**Selective narrative**: Strengthen historical memory from a single perspective through anniversaries, textbooks, monuments, etc. -**Symbolic politics**: Use flags, geographical names (such as the Russian/Ukrainian name of Crimea), statues of heroes, etc. To visualize contradictions. -**Intergenerational transmission**: Oral history and family trauma stories enable the younger generation to inherit hatred. --- ###**Summary** The essence of the intensification of historical factors is to simplify complex history into a “victimization-harm” duality, and mobilize groups by strengthening the humiliation or glory in the collective memory. The key to the solution lies in promoting fact-based and diverse historical education, establishing a mechanism for cross-ethnic dialogue, and curbing hate incitement through laws and international supervision.