Citizenship, relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection. Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities. Citizens have certain rights, duties, and responsibilities that are denied or only partially extended to aliens and other non-citizens residing in a country. In general, full political rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office, are predicated upon citizenship. The usual responsibilities of citizenship are allegiance, taxation, and military service. Citizenship, relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection. Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities. Citizens have certain rights, duties, and responsibilities that are denied or only partially extended to aliens and other non-citizens residing in a country. In general, full political rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office, are predicated upon citizenship. The usual responsibilities of citizenship are allegiance, taxation, and military service. Citizenship is the most privileged form of nationality. This broader term denotes various relations between an individual and a state that do not necessarily confer political rights but do imply other privileges, particularly protection abroad. It is the term used in international law to denote all persons whom a state is entitled to protect. Nationality also serves to denote the relationship to a state of entities other than individuals; corporations, ships, and aircraft, for example, possess a nationality. The concept of citizenship first arose in towns and city-states of ancient Greece, where it generally applied to property owners but not to women, slaves, or the poorer members of the community. A citizen in a Greek city-state was entitled to vote and was liable to taxation and military service. The Romans first used citizenship as a device to distinguish the residents of the city of Rome from those peoples whose territories Rome had conquered and incorporated. As their empire continued to grow, the Romans granted citizenship to their allies throughout Italy proper and then to peoples in other Roman provinces, until in AD 212 citizenship was extended to all free inhabitants of the empire. Roman citizenship conferred important legal privileges within the empire. The concept of national citizenship virtually disappeared in Europe during the Middle Ages, replaced as it was by a system of feudal rights and obligations. In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the holding of citizenship in various cities and towns of Italy and Germany became a guarantee of immunity for merchants and other privileged persons from the claims and prerogatives of feudal overlords. Modern concepts of citizenship crystallized in the 18th century during the American and French Revolutions, when the term citizen came to suggest the possession of certain liberties in the face of the coercive powers of absolutist monarchs.
