query: When did nation states start existing in Europe?
passage: Nation state
The origins and early history of nation states are disputed. A major theoretical question is: "Which came first, the nation or the nation state?" Scholars such as Steven Weber, David Woodward, and Jeremy Black[9][10][11] have advanced the hypothesis that the nation state did not arise out of political ingenuity or an unknown undetermined source, nor was it an accident of history or political invention; but is an inadvertent byproduct of 15th-century intellectual discoveries in political economy, capitalism, mercantilism, political geography, and geography[12][13] combined together with cartography[14][15] and advances in map-making technologies.[16][17] It was with these intellectual discoveries and technological advances that the nation state arose. For others, the nation existed first, then nationalist movements arose for sovereignty, and the nation state was created to meet that demand. Some "modernization theories" of nationalism see it as a product of government policies to unify and modernize an already existing state. Most theories see the nation state as a 19th-century European phenomenon, facilitated by developments such as state-mandated education, mass literacy and mass media. However, historians also note the early emergence of a relatively unified state and identity in Portugal and the Dutch Republic.
passage: History of the euro
First ideas of an economic and monetary union in Europe were raised well before establishing the European Communities. For example, already in the League of Nations, Gustav Stresemann asked in 1929 for a European currency[1] against the background of an increased economic division due to a number of new nation states in Europe after World War I. At this time memories of the Latin Monetary Union[2] involving principally France, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland and which, for practical purposes, had disintegrated following the First World War, figured prominently in the minds of policy makers.