What is a country? Who cares aside from some pompous students of international politics? At least the Tibetans and Taiwanese do. And those who are tedious enough to make it their life project to travel to as many countries as possible. Now that's when the question really begins to have personal relevance - the Tibetans and the students probably don't care so much about the definition, what they want is recognition, the former of their country and the latter of their argumentation skills.
Here are some criteria that I found at Country Bagging (this blog is brilliant. The author, who roars 89 countries deep, has finished a project of traveling countries alphabetically from Andorra to Qatar. In my opinion he's a bit too liberal though, he counts Jersey as a country for example.)
"A country could be defined (at least in my world) by one of the following
- issues its own stamps/currency
- has its own Parliament
- is recognised by the UN
- has its own border crossing
- issues its own passports
- if enough peop
le want to belong to that country?"
The trouble begins, as usual, with history as there are countries which have ceased to exist and consequently been replaced by others. These can be categorized in three groups.
1. Countries, which split up.
Most notably the former Eastern block countries: Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Soviet Union became 15 different countries, Czechoslovakia two whereas the Yugos are still in the process of multiplying.
2. Countries, which united. Most notably East and West Germany. (Munich Indian in the pic on the left.)
3. Countries, which have changed names. Most notably African republics such as Congo which, simply put, has gone from Congo to Zaire and back to Congo.
How do these countries rate in country count?
1. I've chosen to count the new republics as separate countries even though I visited them in Soviet times. Thus I discount Soviet Union. You can't have both. The same goes for the Yugo states and Czech and Slovakia.
2. This one's a bit hazy. I'd count this as two countries, as in the end East Germany joined West Germany but was very much a different country for nearly 50 years. But if you travel to Dresden and Munich now you obviously don't get two country points. That would be cheap. Now I know that this contradicts number 1, but it's my count, so I get choose.
3. I'd count this as one. I doubt that the average Luba who has never had the chance to leave his home village, cares to join the luxury of country folly by claiming that he has been to at least three different Congos. And if he does, he's more than welcome.
Then there are the diplomatically challenging "countries" as my friends Dara, Reijo and Toxic Waste man have pointed out. Dara wrote: "There are plenty of places in the world which are not part of any sovereign country, and at the same time are not themselves an independent country. Not as many as there used to be, but still plenty. Gibraltar is a good example; Greenland is another. Then you have the Palestinian territories: the only place on earth (outside Antarctica) that are neither part of any country nor belong to any sovereign country."
This one really is a matter of opinion, or of life and death if you ask Hamas. I choose life and after serious reasoning, discounting Greenland. Go Denmark!
The same goes for Gibraltrar, Hong Kong, and Tibet. As to Taiwan I'd be willing to give it thumbs up as it's definitely governed by its own political regime.
I assume using the United Nations list of countries would be the simplest way of keeping track. I kind of like the idea though, that if the country is listed in Wikipedia list of countries, it stands for a flag.
