Anthropologists, historians and political observers often comment on "tribal" divisions in modern and historical Africa, the Middle East, India, and the Americas but rarely outside of antiquity is this same talk of "tribes" applied to Europe (and to some extent, China Korea and Japan).

Was there a real shift in European and East Asian society that reduced tribalism and led people to identify themselves with broader cultural, national, or political identities? If so, when and why did this occur?

Or is the designation of African/Indian/American/Middle-eastern societies as "tribal" wholly a product of a colonial mindset attempting to disparage those societies, and they're not and never were any more "tribal" than Europe?