Most people have an understanding of what a country is. But is there an actual definition? Counting countries is not as easy as you may think.

Travelling is about new experiences and not necessarily about crossing theoretical borders. But let’s be honest: Crossing off another country on the list of visited places feels good!

As we’ve travelled to new places crossing off countries has been getting harder and harder. Not necessarily because there are fewer countries left to cross off the list, but because defining what a country is, is getting harder and harder. Is there even a clear definition of what a country is?

The short answer is “no”, there is no universal definition of what a country is. And when we say country we are talking about independent countries.

A fairly conservative definition is that a country is a member state in the UN. At the time of writing there are 193 member states. This definition can be expanded to include UN observer states, namely the State of Palestine and Vatican City (represented by the Holy See to be correct). Gunnar Garfors, a Norwegian that has visited every single country in the world twice has also chosen to count countries that at least 10 % of the above countries recognise as independent countries. We think that is a good definition, bringing the total count to 198 countries (including Kosovo, West Sahara and Taiwan).

Recognition from other countries may perhaps be the most important, because if no other countries recognises a nation as independent, then in reality it isn’t either.

There are numerous self-proclaimed countries. Sealand may be one of the most well established, a small platform from World War II in the English Channel claiming they are not a part of the United Kingdom. Sealand is still far from the only micronation, and Wikipedia lists close to 70 self-proclaimed micronations. However, most micronations are more of a tourist attraction than actual countries, like The Republic of Užupis that we visited in 2016.

Other definitions

In addition to counting borders some count areas with political, cultural or geographical differences. The starting point for most lists is the 193 UN nations, but with broader definitions counting Greenland, Svalbard and other geographically isolated areas as separate places (without necessarily defining them as countries). The difference between the US midwest and east coast is in many ways greater than the difference between Switzerland and Austria. The Travelers’ Century Club is perhaps one of the most recognised organisations for people counting countries and define 326 unique territories. Most Traveled People has expanded their list to 890 territories, although this list appears to be heavily influenced by political borders. In other words, there are many ways of counting areas, and even though MTP’s definition of a territory is far from what people associate with a country it shows that there is no clear definition.

It may then be natural to ask why we choose to count all the way to 198 and don’t stop at 193, since the UN member list seems to be the only clear definition. The reason is quite simple: To become a UN member the other nations must accept it, and five UN members have veto power. This power is used politically and the list is therefore shorter than what we think is sensible to define as a country. Taiwan (The Republic of China) has diplomatic relations with numerous countries, but as long as China (The People’s Republic of China) has veto power in the UN Taiwan will never be allowed UN membership (unless the relationship between the two countries change drastically). For us it would therefore be wrong to limit the list to only UN members.

198, forever?

Although the definition is quite straight forward and is likely to remain as our way of counting countries the number of countries can quickly change. The youngest country in the world is South Sudan, founded in 2011. Not too long ago there were big headlines in the newspapers about a potential independence of Catalonia in Spain and Kurdistan in Iraq. Scotland voted for independence not too long ago and the current situation in Korea may lead to changes as well. Abkhazia is yet another place with a noticeable probability of independence in the near future.

The country that possibly has the biggest probability of changing is Papua New Guinea. In 2019 a referendum was held where more than 98 % voted for independence. However, the vote was non-binding and indications have been given that the process of making Bougainville independent can tale several years.

What about the United Kingdom?

Ahh, what a mess… The United Kingdom is a country. There we go, problem solved! Although England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are often counted as countries they are not independent countries, therefore we count the United Kingdom as one, just like the UN does.

If you want to be more confused, check out this hilarious video:

Overseas territories

Colonisation has made it rather complicated to decide what a country is. An example of this is St. Maarten in the Caribbean. This (half of the) island belongs to the Kingdom of the Netherlands and isn’t an independent country. But because most people associate the Kingdom of the Netherlands with the Netherlands, which is located so far from St. Maarten, it is natural to assume that St. Maarten must be a separate country. That is the case for many other places too, like Bermuda, Aruba and Curaçao.

Puerto Rico is another example, which is a part of the USA, despite 46 % of Americans not being aware of this.

The video below goes through some areas and how we got to where we are today.

Overview

Finally, here is the list of which places we define as independent countries:

Africa (55 countries):

America (35 countries):

Asia (45 countries):

Europe (49 countries):

Oceania (14 countries):

Some may have noticed that our own menu with “countries” we have visited on the top of the webpage doesn’t match the list above. That is simply for practical reasons. People wouldn’t look under Europe to find Netherlands and then St. Maarten. Because every now and then we must be a bit practical. 🙂

How many countries have you visited? Do you agree to our definition of an independent country?