The thread topic is "countries," not "nations." Nothing in the definition of "country" implies "political independence." I say the Pitcarin Islands count.
Archeological evidence shows clearly that New Zealand was first settled in the 13th century CE. The same is true of Madagascar in the 4th century BCE. The question isn't about discovery, but settlement. I think that gives the title to New Zealand, at least among the countries that have been suggested on this thread. Actually both the dictionary definition and the legal defintion of "country" require either sovereignty or occupation by another sovereign state. Even Scotland isn't a country by this rigorous definition. The Pitcairn Islands are officially a territory, which is a subdivision or possession (and not an occupied possession) of a country. So they don't count. There is some evidence that they were inhabited by Polynesians before 1500CE. But no one was living there when a Portuguese sailor employed by Spain and his crew of Europeans and Tahitians rediscovered the place in 1606. It wasn't recolonized until much later, by the castoffs of the HMS Bounty.
Not that I've seen, they don't. The one I'm familiar with goes something like "a country is a distinct entity in political geography." Well, then, since Scotland is obviously a country, your rigorous definition is obviously incorrect. That was easy. Do you consider Guam and Greenland to be countries, or not? Sure, but "some evidence" isn't the same thing as "history." I read the topic as implying actual recorded history.
Quad: The OP does say 'history' but in the forms I have colored in blue above. As for your distinction between history and evidence, which makes no sense - it doesn't matter anyway because the question addresses the lack of 'historical evidence', if you will. So Pitcairn does not count if Fraggle Rocker's information 'there is some evidence that they were inhabited by Polynesians before 1500CE' is correct. Pitcairn also does not count in that an overseas territory is not a country/nation. Guam and Greenland are nations in that one meaning of 'nation' is a group of people, most likely an ethnic group. Guam and Greenland have both had indigenous 'prehistoric' populations (respectively the Chamorros and various Arctic peoples via Canada for 4,500–5,000 years). So neither of these islands is the one the OP is looking for. Scotland then is an ethnic 'nation', but not an independent country. In any case, the Original Poster answered his own question earlier: So there you go. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Dictionary.com says: 1. a state or nation (i.e., a sovereign entity), 2. the territory of a nation (i.e., the land upon which that sovereign entity is located). Wikipedia says: "A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated peoples with distinct political characteristics. Regardless of the physical geography, in the modern internationally accepted legal definition as defined by the League of Nations in 1937 and reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, a resident of a country is subject to the independent exercise of legal jurisdiction." Sovereignty is the common denominator here, even in the breach, a formerly sovereign nation that has been conquered and occupied. Okay. Scotland is described as a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Leave it to the Brits to muddle their own language. A kingdom is one type of country, with a monarch as its sovereign. So how can several countries comprise one kingdom??? The definition of a country is an independent sovereign state, so how can Scotland, whose independence and sovereignty were ceded to England (oh excuse me, the "United Kingdom") a few centuries ago, be considered a country??? And they think we're ruining their language! Huh??? Guam is a friggin' territory of the United States. It's not a country, it's a tiny piece of our country like Hawaii or Puerto Rico. It may have been counted as a country at one time, having been settled by Polynesians in 2000BCE. But it's been colonized and recolonized so many times in the last 500 years that it can't even be considered "occupied" any more. Guam was captured by Japan a few hours after the Pearl Harbor attack and occupied by the Japanese for more than two years, who treated the local population with exceptional cruelty. Ironically, today its largest source of income is Japanese tourism. As for Greenland, apparently the same oxymoron applies: it's called a "country" within the "kingdom" of Denmark. It is also neither sovereign nor independent, so once again, how does it qualify as a "country"? I guess we can't blame the Brits for that one. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! My comment was informational, not meant to have any bearing on the discussion. Any way you look at them, the Pitcairn Islands are not a country.
I think this "in the breach" exception renders this definition far more muddled than you aknowledge. I.e.: You just explicitly said that formerly-sovereign nations count as countries, immediately above. Also, I'd very much like to see you tell a Scotsman that Scotland isn't a country, in person :] I know what the political status of Guam is. You'd be comfortable insisting to a Guamanian, to his face, that Guam is not a country? I don't read the Wiki definition as insisting on formal occupation. There's all that stuff about "or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated peoples with distinct political characteristics" Looks to me like the people in question don't respect your definition of "country." You can insist that they are wrong about the status of their own territory, but it's also possible that you're wrong about the definition of "country." It is, actually, possible that they possess the authority to render your definition there incorrect. If they say that they're a country, and everyone accepts this, then who are you to come along and beat them over the head with a dictionary? Unless I look at them as a country, you mean? I can agree with the statement that they are not an independent sovereign state. But I haven't signed up for the contention that such is required to be a "country." I think that an honest descriptivist appraisal of the word "country" would tell you that it's not really the same thing as an independent sovereign state, but nothing more or less than some geographical entity regarded as, somehow, "distinct" in political geography. Obviously, outright independent sovereignty meets that bar. But if you have a geographically-compact territory associated with a distinct population that has its own means of self-governance, splitting hairs about technicalities of their relationship with some imperial powers seems to somewhat miss the point. All of the territories in question here more-or-less govern themselves as distinct entities, even if they are also part of larger sovereigns. And, yeah, I realize that the above argument, taken too literally, would seem to insist that, say, individual US states are "countries." But the point is that political geography is as much about identity politics as it is jurisdictional boundaries and legalistic relationships. So Scotland is a country, and California is not - and the difference does basically come down to the fact that the Scots say as much (and everyone agrees), while the Californians do not (and everyone agrees), and not to details about who gets recognized by the UN. I dunno. I'm not married to this position, I just find the strict, legalistic definition to kind of miss the point in a lot of ways. I.e., if the Pitcairn Islands were to gain independence tomorrow, we'd all be in perfect agreement that they'd be the country with the shortest history, yes? If so, why are we hung up on the fact that they currently have some particular political relationship to an empire based on the far side of the world? Should we just agree that the OP ought to have written "geographically distinct political entity" or something in place of "country?"
Isn't that what some political movements essentially want for the US anyway? For it to behave as a coalition of 52 Soverign nations with a single political presence at an international level?
Yeah. In fact, that view is pretty mainstream and goes right back to the founding. Although, I'm wondering where you got 52 from - are you counting some subset of US territories or something?
:Shrugs: Beats me. Either I remembered the wrong number (probably more likely) or I did something like lumping Puerto Rico and D.C in with the states.
If you're going to count Puerto Rico, you should also include the US Virgin Islands, Guam and a few other US territories. And maybe not include DC, depending on exactly how you define your terms...
Probably. As I said, it's more likely I just remembered the wrong number - American Geography isn't a required subject in New Zealand Schools :3 (and my interests are in different aspects of American geography).
There are fifty states. Puerto Rico holds referenda on statehood periodically, but apparently the Boricuas are happy with the way things are. They get to vote in presidential elections. And since they are U.S. citizens they can travel freely anywhere in the country. Almost all of them speak perfect American English in addition to New World Spanish. The District of Columbia will never be granted statehood no matter how charming the idea seems to some of the residents. So much of its land is owned by the U.S. government, that it cannot collect enough property taxes to merely operate as a city. It is heavily subsidized by the federal government. It would be a practical impossibility to turn it into a state with all the responsibilities that come with statehood. This was foreseen when it was created. The only reason there is a statehood movement is that the residents feel that they are not fairly administered by Congress, and it's not hard to sympathize with that feeling. They've only even had a mayor and a city council for a few decades. Congress has the right to overturn every law they pass, or simply to not provide the funds to enforce it. It is one of the most left-leaning jurisdictions in the nation (gay marriage and medical marijuana are both legal), since it's populated largely by federal employees and until almost yesterday its population was majority Afro-American. So whenever there's a conservative Republican majority in Congress, they treat the citizens of D.C. like the children of an unloved uncle. It used to be affectionately known as Chocolate City because of the demographics. But those demographics have been shaken and stirred since the Beltway (a circular freeway running just outside the city limits) and the Metro (an extensive subway system) were built, allowing people to commute from Maryland and Virginia. Now that wealthy Afro-Americans are moving out to the Maryland suburbs such as Prince George's County (the most affluent majority-black county in the country) and Euro-Americans are moving back in, as well as Latinos, Asian-Americans, and people from all over the planet, they're looking for a new nickname. The slogan on the city's license plates is "Taxation without Representation," a quote from American patriots during the Revolutionary War and a snarky comment on the District's singular political status. Several alternates are available and President Obama does not have those plates on his car.
Well... suffice it to say that they prefer the status quo over any of the other options that have been realistically put on the table. No, they get to vote in presidential primaries. They do not get a vote in any federal elections. And, moreover, reside and work freely anywhere in the country - and so vote, if they decide to move to one of the 50 states. Which can be really jarring, especially if you interact with them in regions where lots of Spanish words are in common usage in English (like California). It's not clear to me that they wouldn't just come to some arrangement wherein the Federal government has to pay the state of DC a steady stream of rent for all the land and stuff. If Rhode Island can subsit as a state, probably DC can too, it's just a matter of working out the details. But there's a much more fundamental reason it won't happen: DC was intentionally excluded from the state system at the outset, exactly so that the federal capitol wouldn't be subject to any of the states or their politics. I don't see where that logic has changed in the interim. African Americans aren't "left-leaning." They're Democrat-leaning. This is not a left-right issue, but rather a "GOP is the party of racists since the 1960's" issue. Time was, blacks were very reliable GOP voters (party of Lincoln and all, and meanwhile the Democrats were the party of Jim Crow in those days). No, those developments were actually drivers of the formerly heavily-black demographics. They allowed all of the wealthy white people to live outside the city and simply commute in for work - without showing up in the census rolls as residents. The recent trend in increasing white population is a much much newer phenomenon than the construction of the Beltway or Metro - it dates to only the last 10 years or so. While some of it is because of blacks moving to the suburbs, it's as much about them moving to other cities in the South (there's been a big "reverse Great Migration" in recent years, with black populations declining in evey region except the South, and growing there), and then whites moving in to regentrify formerly-black neighborhoods. Dave Chappelle was doing bits about this (as a current event) as recently as 2003.
First of, it's Myanmar, not Miramar. Miramar is (among other things) a suburb of the capital of New Zealand. Myanmar is a country in South East Asia. Miramar is also a place in India, Portugal, Valencia, one of several locations in Mexico, a neighbourhood in San Diego, a city in Florida, a Beach in California, one of two cities in Argentina, a suburb in a city in either South Africa or Angola, an entertainment park in Taipei, a Palace in Spain, and a college, univeristy or airforce base in San Diego. None of which are "Off northern great britain". Myanmar is here: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The British Isles are here: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Note that neither Miramar or Myanmar are countries off North Great Britain.
Miramar is a fairly common place name in Florida, southern California, the coastal regions of Mexico, the Caribbean islands, and other Spanish/Portuguese-speaking nations in both hemispheres. In Spanish and Portuguese it's a contraction for "look at the sea."
It's actually a Marine Corps Air Station, not an Air Force base. It was formerly a Naval Air Station, that being where the movie Top Gun was set.
