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A country is a distinct part of the
world, such as a
state,
nation, or other
political entity
A polity is an identifiable political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of institutionalized social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any other group of p ...
. It may be a
sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
is an independent, sovereign state, while the country of
Wales is a component of a multi-part sovereign state, the
United Kingdom. A country may be a
historically sovereign area (such as
Korea), a currently sovereign territory with a unified
government (such as
Senegal), or a non-sovereign geographic region associated with certain distinct political, ethnic, or cultural characteristics (such as the
Basque Country
Basque Country may refer to:
* Basque Country (autonomous community), as used in Spain ( es, País Vasco, link=no), also called , an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain (shown in pink on the map)
* French Basque Country o ...
).
The definition and usage of the word "country" is flexible and has changed over time. ''
The Economist'' wrote in 2010 that "any attempt to find a clear definition of a country soon runs into a thicket of exceptions and anomalies." Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the
United Nations.
The largest country by area is
Russia, while the smallest is the
microstate
A microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a very small population or very small land area, usually both. However, the meanings of "state" and "very small" are not well-defined in international law.Warrington, E. (1994). "Lilliputs ...
Vatican City. The most populous is
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, while the
Pitcairn Islands
The Pitcairn Islands (; Pitkern: '), officially the Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, is a group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean that form the sole British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean. The four isl ...
are the least populous.
Etymology
The word ''country'' comes from
Old French , which derives from
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
() ("(land) lying opposite"; "(land) spread before"), derived from ("against, opposite"). It most likely entered the English language after the
Franco-Norman invasion during the 11th century.
Definition of a country
In English
In English the word has increasingly become associated with political divisions, so that one sense, associated with the
indefinite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
– "a country" – is now frequently applied as a synonym for a state or a former sovereign state. It may also be used as a synonym for "nation". Taking as examples
Canada,
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, and
Yugoslavia, cultural anthropologist
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades. ...
wrote in 1997 that "it is clear that the relationships between 'country' and 'nation' are so different from one
laceto the next as to be impossible to fold into a dichotomous opposition as they are into a promiscuous fusion."
Areas much smaller than a political state may be referred to as countries, such as the
West Country in England, "big sky country" (used in various contexts of the
American West
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...
), "coal country" (used to describe
coal-mining regions in several sovereign states) and many other terms.
The word "country" is also used for the sense of
native sovereign territory, such as the widespread use of
Indian country in the United States. The term "country" in English may also be wielded to describe
rural areas, or used in the form "countryside."
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
, a Welsh scholar, wrote in 1975:
The unclear definition of "country" in modern English was further commented upon by philosopher Simon Keller:
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian writer of adult literary fiction and literary non-fiction, who has also written novels for teenagers.
In 2013 at The Walkley Awards, she won the "Feature Writing Long (over 4000 words) Award" for ...
, an
Aboriginal Australian writer, expressed the difficulty of defining "country" in a 2005 essay, "Unsettlement":
In other languages
The equivalent terms in various
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
s (e.g. the French ) have not carried the process of being identified with sovereign political states as far as the English ''country''. These terms are derived from the Roman term , which continued to be used in the Middle Ages for small geographical areas similar to the size of English counties. In many
European countries, the words are used for sub-divisions of the national territory, as in the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
, as well as a less formal term for a sovereign state. France has very many "" that are officially recognized at some level and are either
natural regions, like the
Pays de Bray, or reflect old political or economic entities, like the
Pays de la Loire
Pays de la Loire (; ; br, Broioù al Liger) is one of the 18 regions of France, in the west of the mainland. It was created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital, Nantes, one of a handful of "balancing metropolises" ().
...
.
A version of "country" can be found in modern French as , derived from the Old French word ,
that is used similarly to the word to define non-state regions, but can also be used to describe a political state in some particular cases. The modern Italian is a word with its meaning varying locally, but usually meaning a
ward or similar small division of a town, or a village or hamlet in the countryside.
Identification
Symbols of a country may incorporate
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
,
religious or
political symbols of any nation that the country includes. Many categories of symbols can be seen in flags, coats of arms, or seals.
Name
![Oceania without Asian country codes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Oceania_without_Asian_country_codes.jpg)
Most countries have a long name and a short name. The long name is typically used in formal contexts and often describes the country's form of government. The short name is the country's common name by which it is typically identified. The names of most countries are derived from a feature of the land, the name of a historical tribe or person, or a directional description. The
International Organization for Standardization maintains a
list of country codes as part of
ISO 3166 to designate each country with a two-letter
country code.
The name of a country can hold cultural and diplomatic significance.
Upper Volta changed its name to
Burkina Faso to reflect the end of French colonization, and the name of
North Macedonia was
disputed
Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...
for years due to a conflict with the similarly named
Macedonia
Macedonia most commonly refers to:
* North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia
* Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity
* Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic reg ...
region in
Greece.
Flags
Originally, flags representing a country would generally be the personal flag of its rulers; however, over time, the practice of using personal banners as flags of places was abandoned in favor of flags that had some significance to the nation, often its patron saint. Early examples of these were the
maritime republics such as
Genoa which could be said to have a national flag as early as the 12th century. However, these were still mostly used in the context of marine identification.
Although some flags date back earlier, widespread use of flags outside of military or naval context begins only with the rise of the idea of the
nation state at the end of the 18th century and particularly are a product of the
Age of Revolution. Revolutions such as those in
France and
America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
called for people to begin thinking of themselves as
citizens
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
as opposed to
subjects under a king, and thus necessitated flags that represented the collective citizenry, not just the power and right of a ruling family. With
nationalism becoming common across Europe in the 19th century, national flags came to represent most of the states of Europe. Flags also began fostering a sense of unity between different peoples, such as the
Union Jack representing a union between
England and
Scotland, or began to represent unity between nations in a perceived shared struggle, for example, the
Pan-Slavic colors
The pan-Slavic colours (or colors) — red, blue and white — were defined by the Prague Slavic Congress, 1848, based on the flag of Russia, which was introduced in the late 17th century. The tricolor flag of Russia was itself inspired by the ...
or later
Pan-Arab colors.
As Europeans
colonized significant portions of the world, they exported ideas of nationhood and national symbols, including flags, with the adoption of a flag becoming seen as integral to the
nation-building
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to ...
process. Political change, social reform, and revolutions combined with a growing sense of nationhood among ordinary people in the 19th and 20th centuries led to the birth of new nations and flags around the globe. With so many flags being created, interest in these designs began to develop and the study of flags,
vexillology, at both professional and amateur levels, emerged. After World War II, Western vexillology went through a phase of rapid development, with many research facilities and publications being established.
National anthems
A national anthem is a
patriotic musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...
symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. Though the custom of an officially adopted national anthem became popular only in the 19th century, some national anthems predate this period, often existing as patriotic songs long before designation as national anthem. Several countries remain without an official national anthem. In these cases, there are established ''de facto'' anthems played at sporting events or diplomatic receptions. These include the United Kingdom ("
God Save the Queen") and Sweden (). Some sovereign states that are made up of multiple countries or constituencies have associated musical compositions for each of them (such as with the
United Kingdom,
Russia, and the former
Soviet Union). These are sometimes referred to as national anthems even though they are not sovereign states (for example, "
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau" is used for Wales, part of the United Kingdom).
Other symbols
*
Coats of arms
A coat of arms is a heraldic visual design on an escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the full heraldic achievement, which in its wh ...
or
national emblems
*
Seals or stamps
*
National mottos
*
National colors
National colours are frequently part of a country's set of national symbols. Many states and nations have formally adopted a set of colours as their official "national colours" while others have ''de facto'' national colours that have become well ...
Sovereignty and recognition
![World Map (political)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/World_Map_%28political%29.svg)
When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, a constituent country, or a
dependent territory
A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency (sometimes referred as an external territory) is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state, yet remains politically outside the controlli ...
. A sovereign state is a
political entity
A polity is an identifiable political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of institutionalized social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any other group of p ...
that has supreme legitimate authority over a part of the world. There is no universal agreement on the number of "countries" in the world since several states have disputed sovereignty status, and a number of non-sovereign entities are commonly called countries.
By one application of the
declarative theory of statehood and
constitutive theory of statehood
Constitutive may refer to:
* In physics, a constitutive equation is a relation between two physical quantities
* In ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical envir ...
, there are
206 sovereign states; of which 193 are members of the UN, two have observer status at the
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) (the
Holy See and
Palestine
__NOTOC__
Palestine may refer to:
* State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia
* Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia
* Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
), and 11 others are neither a member nor observer at the UNGA.
Some countries, such as
Taiwan and
Sahrawi, have disputed sovereignty status. Some sovereign states are unions of separate polities, each of which may also be considered a country in its own right, called constituent countries. The
Danish Realm consists of
Denmark proper, the
Faroe Islands, and
Greenland. The
Kingdom of the Netherlands consists of the
Netherlands proper,
Aruba
Aruba ( , , ), officially the Country of Aruba ( nl, Land Aruba; pap, Pais Aruba) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands physically located in the mid-south of the Caribbean Sea, about north of the Venezuela peninsula of ...
,
Curaçao
Curaçao ( ; ; pap, Kòrsou, ), officially the Country of Curaçao ( nl, Land Curaçao; pap, Pais Kòrsou), is a Lesser Antilles island country in the southern Caribbean Sea and the Dutch Caribbean region, about north of the Venezuela coast ...
, and
Sint Maarten.. The
United Kingdom consists of
England,
Scotland,
Wales, and
Northern Ireland.
Dependent territories are the territories of a sovereign state that are outside of its proper territory. These include the
Realm of New Zealand, the
dependencies of Norway, the
British Overseas Territories
The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remna ...
and
Crown Dependencies, the
territories of the United States, the
territories of Australia, the
special administrative regions of China
The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provinces of China, provincial-level administrative divisions of the China, People's Republic of China directly under the control of its State Counc ...
, the Danish Realm,
Åland,
Overseas France, and the
Caribbean Netherlands. Most dependent territories have ISO country codes.
In total there are 249 ISO country codes, including all 193 UN members and a number of other countries. Some dependent territories are treated as a separate "
country of origin" in international trade, such as
Hong Kong,
Greenland, and
Macau.
Patriotism
A positive emotional connection to a country a person belongs to is called
patriotism
Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, language relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or histor ...
. Patriotism is a sense of love for, devotion to, and sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, and language relating to one's homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political, or historical aspects. It encompasses a set of concepts closely related to
nationalism, mostly
civic nationalism
Civic nationalism, also known as liberal nationalism, is a form of nationalism identified by political philosophers who believe in an inclusive form of nationalism that adheres to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, in ...
and sometimes
cultural nationalism.
Economy
Several organizations seek to identify trends to produce economy country classifications. Countries are often distinguished as
developing countries or
developed countries.
The
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs annually produces the ''World Economic Situation and Prospects Report'' classifies states as developed countries, economies in transition, or developing countries. The report classifies country development based on per capita
gross national income (GNI). The UN identifies subgroups within broad categories based on geographical location or ad hoc criteria. The UN outlines the geographical regions for developing economies like Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The 2019 report recognizes only developed countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. The majority of economies in transition and developing countries are found in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
The UN additionally recognizes multiple trends that impact the developmental status of countries in the ''World Economic Situation and Prospects''. The report highlights fuel-exporting and fuel-importing countries, small island developing states, and landlocked developing countries. It also identifies heavily indebted developing countries.
The
World Bank also classifies countries based on GNI per capita. The ''World Bank Atlas method'' classifies countries as low-income economies, lower-middle-income economies, upper-middle-income economies, or high-income economies. For the 2020 fiscal year, the World Bank defines low-income economies as countries with a GNI per capita of $1,025 or less in 2018; lower-middle-income economies as countries with a GNI per capita between $1,026 and $3,995; upper-middle-income economies as countries with a GNI per capita between $3,996 and $12,375; high-income economies as countries with a GNI per capita of $12,376 or more.
It also identifies regional trends. The World Bank defines its regions as East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, the World Bank distinguishes countries based on its operational policies. The three categories include
International Development Association
The International Development Association (IDA) (french: link=no, Association internationale de développement) is an international financial institution which offers concessional loans and grants to the world's poorest developing countries. Th ...
(IDA) countries,
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) is an international financial institution, established in 1944 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, that is the lending arm of World Bank Group. The IBRD offers l ...
(IBRD) countries, and Blend countries.
See also
*
City network
*
Country (identity)
*
Lists of countries and territories
*
List of former sovereign states
*
List of sovereign states and dependent territories by continent
*
List of states with limited recognition
*
List of transcontinental countries
This is a list of countries with territory that straddles more than one continent, known as transcontinental states or intercontinental states.
Contiguous transcontinental countries are states that have one continuous or immediately-adjacen ...
*
Micronation
*
Princely state
A princely state (also called native state or Indian state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Raj, British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, ...
*
Quasi-state
A quasi-state (some times referred to as state-like entity or proto-state) is a political entity that does not represent a fully institutionalised or autonomous sovereign state.
The precise definition of ''quasi-state'' in political literature f ...
Notes
References
Works cited
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
Defining what makes a country''The Economist''
External links
The CIA World FactbookCountry Studiesfrom the
United States Library of Congress
Foreign Information by Countryan
from GovPubs at UCB Libraries
United Nations statistics division
{{Authority control
Human geography