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How Old Is the Average Country?
Daniel_Stuckey writes with a snippet from his piece at Vice: "I did some calculations in Excel, using independence dates provided on About.com, and found the average age of a country is about 158.78 years old. Now, before anyone throws a tizzy about what makes a country a country, about nations, tribes, civilizations, ethnic categories, or about my makeshift methodology, keep in mind, I simply assessed 195 countries based on their political sovereignty. That is the occasion we're celebrating today, right?"
Excel and About.com
The G
The author gives the UK age as 306 in his map. (He did use about.com as a "source")
158.78 years old.
Next.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
What about standard deviation and median? At least give me a histogram.
The UK is a new fangled invention at 306 years old but England is 1086 years old, happy birthday America.
Given that this is America's 237'th birthday, which make us 78.22 years older than the average (49.26%), should they change the name of the magazine from "The New Republic" to "The Somewhat-Older-Than-Average Republic"?
A cursory look at the Wikipedia article indicates that Egypt has spent time under the rule of a few empires here and there over history, but it and Greece have both been their own societies for several thousand years in spite of this. I figure that both countries are closer to the age of China than they're listed...but that's just me.
Poland 95 years old? Germany 142 years? Italy 152? Greece 184? Come on, you can do better than that. Nice try. Next try.
So he's dating it from the Act of Union in 1707 that created the United Kingdom.
"England" may be 1000+ years old but 1) it's far from certain that it's the same "England" as today, and 2) it was a subsidiary of Normandy, Inc. for quite some time, pardon my Middle French.
Ezekiel 23:20
A count, I presume? (Although nowadays, from what people are telling me, it more like someone called a "countant" rules the land, or how this horrible notion is spelled.)
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm happy here in the UK, enjoying the thousands of years of history.
Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old (Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707). And you folks complain about Americans not understanding the difference between England/Scotland/Wales, Britain and the UK.
P.S. If you see the queen, say happy Independence Day for me.
Wouldn't that be 2013-1066 = 947?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Author assumed, that a country didn't exist before getting independence. That is not always true because a country may lost independence temporarily and regain it later. For example Poland exists since 966 (1047 years) but wasn't independent from 1975 to 1918 and during some other periods, like WW2 and communism. Author took year 1918 and concluded Poland is 95 years old which is not true.
This is (almost definitely) a completely incorrect method to calculate "the average age of a country". The statistic provided here is the average age of (a sample of) countries existing at present, not the average age of countries that have existed. The difference might seem pedantic, but it has an immense effect on the computed statistic, because it excludes countries which existed briefly, no matter how recently. Some geographical locations have been through many, many sovereignties during the 158.78 years quoted. (This could be called left-censored data, because everything is excluded if it is not current at the moment of observation).
A better statistic might be the mean duration of countries that have existed over the last few centuries, which will slightly underestimate due to countries that will continue to exist (which could be called right-censored data).
A further improvement would be to take the median, because country life-spans are likely to have a strongly skewed distribution, perhaps approximating Pareto distribution, with a long, thin tail of a small number of very long lifespans.
I'm pretty sure* the distribution is not Gaussian, so the mean is a misleading statistic. At least add the median as well.
Also, as others have pointed out, there seems to be some rather problematic methodological issues with the way age is defined and used in the data set.
* This is Slashdot; you didn't think I would go and actually check, do you?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
They will be getting their bonfires ready to burn an effigy of a member of that hacker's group, Anonymous.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
A quick couple of searches doesn't seem to immediately turn up a definition for "countant", but a Count is in charge of a County.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
The Norman invasion didn't create England. England was created through the uniting of the Saxon kingdoms by Aethelstan in 927.
Yeah. If a country merged with some other country, or was temporaly invaded by another, then for these guys its as if this country did not exist beforehand. I mean just look at the Iberian Peninsula or France. The borders have been mostly stable for yonks and look at the claimed age. Just pathetic.
So dear US readers... Please explain to me why the UK is as old as the Act of Union while you did not measure the age of your country starting with the annexation of Texas or some other quaint date like that.
Interesting I though I would try this:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=average+age+of+all+the+countries.
What about former countries? Yugoslavia? How old is Serbia? It wasn't a country while it was part of Yugoslavia.
The list goes on and on.
Wasn't fully sovereign until 1982. So there is more than political sovereignty in this map.
It created the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The current composition of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is less than a century old.
It was a pun.
if you're looking for average lifespan of a country, you have to actually look at countries that are no longer around. since ones that are alive you have no idea of how long they will continue to be alive. maybe one day, maybe a thousand years. if all the countries you sampled are still around then your sample size - as far as survival time is concerned - is effectively zero. you could assume an exponential probability distribution and try to compose a maximum likelihood estimate based on they all will live longer than they have been around, or on average their expectation is twice as long as they've been around, but still... why make such extrapolations when you can use actual samples from countries that are no longer around?
We didn't gain that until some time later. We're celebrating the declaration of intention to gain sovereignty.
He's using political dates for all countries.
If you ask a Pole when his country became independent he will tell that it was when the last King of Congress Poland (aka: the Czar) fell in 1918. If you ask a Swede when his country became independent he'll give you 1523, when the Danes were thrown out. The Chinese, Japanese, and French all claim direct lineage to states founded a long time before that.
You can argue that the French and Chinese are full of shit, or that the "age of a country" like Poland can't accurately be calculated by it's independence day. You cannot argue that the author used a double-standard.
You may call it Independence Day, but over here it's just the anniversary of when we finally got shot of those troublesome colonies started by religious fanatics.
Rationalize all you want - we beat you. As for those religious fanatics, you should have known better than to go up against them They were the same variety that beheaded your king in 1649.
You missed the joke.
The Norman invasion didn't create England. England was created through the uniting of the Saxon kingdoms by Aethelstan in 927.
You consider it the same country even after the Normans trounced you, completely changed the government and aristocracy, and even started to change the language almost beyond recognition. Yeah, right.
Please explain to me why the UK is as old as the Act of Union while you did not measure the age of your country starting with the annexation of Texas or some other quaint date like that.
Mentioning Texas is hitting below the belt.
On the other hand, this site lists Austria as 1037 years old, Hungary as 1012. Please remind me, what country did that guy named Franz Joseph rule?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I do not see that people are primarily defined by what government they're under. Human relationships are less bounded, more amorphous, more interwoven than the neat lines and branches nationalism would imply.
Come on! The Assyrian people didn't go away because their empire ended; there's an identifiable group of them living today. The local past didn't disappear when nations like modern Germany and Italy united out of their former parts. People don't sever their family relationships and traditions at the border. That's just a tribal us/them line of thought convenient mostly for authoritarians and warmongers.
This is why we need to quit reading history books that define our past by nations and wars. Biology, culture and philosophy and technology are not so bounded.
Yep. England is older than the UK. But it's the UK that's on the map. The Acts of Union created a new entity. This is not an Edward Longshanks style of conquest. And it happened just a couple of decades after England had been conquered by the Netherlands.
Frankly that guy armed with Wikipedia and Excel either had a lot of balls or was blissfully unaware into what kind of mess he just stepped. Just wait until the French wake up in the morning.
20 minutes into the future
A thousand years ago England was French so ooh la la rosbif.
Actually it was Norman, which isn't quite the same thing. The Normans spoke French but were Norsemen who'd settled in Normandy only a century or two before the Norman Conquest. Even the name "Norman" derives from "Norse".
...and got conquered again by William in 1689 who ousted the legitimate sovereign. And after the Stuart line finally died out was ruled by Germans.
England/the UK doesn't have a linear history. It's a squiggly line that breaches several dimensions and branches all over Europe. As history tends to do. A jolly mess it is. If you want to properly fuxor your brain do the same for the same time frame for Germany.
20 minutes into the future
That's a rather simplistic view on the Commonwealth. You'd just as well might say that WW1 was had to keep the imperialistic German huns at bay.
20 minutes into the future
European here living in the States.
And I truly find the saying "the English think 100
miles is a long distance and the Americans think 100 years is a long time" to be really accurate!
And we returned the favour by owning more of France than the French for over 300 years. Not content with that we then had the largest empire the world had ever seen. Not bad for a little island of drizzle.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
you mean "some guys who lived here beat some other guys that were sent over here by people who used to live where you live". There's a difference.
We change presidents every 4-8 years. Not governments. And the language we're changing is yours (assuming you're a Brit AC). ;)
By that logic, the Roman Empire ceased to exist when they conquered Naples.
Obligatory: New Cuyama
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In terms of the current "regime" in England, it could be best called the form of the government following Oliver Cromwell's republic. That was 1660, thus only 353 years even if you count just England and not the whole UK.
That is still a pretty good run under the current "constitution" which exists in that part of the world. Most other countries have a much shorter period of time, and even America went through a couple major government changes in that same length of time.
On the US side it really under-states things.
Americans will accept a daily commute of 100 miles (50 miles a way), and won't understand why you didn't drive 150 miles out of your way to see them on the holidays. After all it's only two-and-a-half hours.
OTOH things that happened even 50 years ago (like the Civil Rights Movement) are ancient history.
Cut 'em some slack. It isn't a pun in the language of Wooshdom.
Franz Joseph didn't rule a country, he ruled several, Austria and Hungary among them.
That would be the Austro-Hungarian EMPIRE.
In case you hadn't heard, an EMPIRE is a group of countries with a common ruler.
In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria and Hungary were countries that were PART of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Along with pieces of Germany and Italy and bits of various Balkan places...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'd reply if I could parse that sentence.
Huh? America changes "adminstrations" about every eight years (with the potential to have them change every four.... or more frequently due to "other events"), but that isn't changing governments except in the sense like the British get a new "government" each time they get a new Prime Minister. It is even less so, as often Speakers of the House (the most equivalent of the House of Commons in the USA) survive past individual presidents and have their own rotation of power. Add to that changes in the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court (which is usually how eras are noted in that body) which happen on the range of decades or longer, and then dealing with the "President pro tempore of the Senate" adding more nuances, it definitely isn't every four years and not even close to what happens in a typical parliamentary system much less whole new constitutions.
Countries like Brazil and Turkey, on the other hand, do have a tradition of changing governments on a much more regular basis... usually by military coup that either arrests or even executes the respective president and drastically re-writes the constitution each time. Clearly different governments with even different government philosophies have arisen from each change of government, and most of the "laws" were even rewritten from scratch (for the most part). That is exactly what is happening right now in Egypt.
On the other hand, the change from the Articles of Confederation to the current U.S. Constitution did represent a major and sweeping change of government more akin to what normally happens after a coup.
2) it was a subsidiary of Normandy, Inc. for quite some time, pardon my Middle French.
Not quite. You could say that they had the same CEO, and Normandy had priority in certain matters, but saying England was a subsidiary of Normandy would be fairly wrong. England was still a kingdom while Normandy was just a duchy.
That's a rather simplistic view on the Commonwealth.
Anybody around here familiar with something called "humor"?
Did you assess the US based on the beginning of the Civil War, or today's current date? Because legally, it was a different country - a different government rulers, different governmental rules, and with different laws - enforced upon the losers of the war by those who won.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...and all those Yankee Doodle Dandies.
Apparently you're the one not familiar with humor... Seeing as none of your posts on this matter are found funny.
Judging that is really tricky. The Swedes, for example, haven't really had a revolution since the Napoleonic Wars, which wasn't so much a change in form of government as a change in who ran the government. Since then they haven't replaced the Constitution because in 1810 there was no Constitution to replace, but they have passed no less then three major new documents which make a four-document Constitution. It's really hard to pick a date for their Constitution?
That said most of Europe has had Communists rise and fall since 1789, unification wars, Civil Wars, been France, etc. I'd guess the Danes, Swedes, Brits, and European microstates may have a claim to older Constitutional orders then us. San Marino actually has a six-document Constitution from 1600 that's still in force.
No, it derives from Norris. Which explains why they were so badass.
Depends what definition of the word "country" you use. Indeed, it can mean both "sovereign state" and merely a "political entity". Other than for the United Kingdom, though, the latter usually bears other names, like "state" or "land".
So, we have three levels here:
* a fully independent, sovereign state (USA, Germany, United Kingdom, in the past the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)
* a division with its own laws and parliament: California, Texas, Bavaria, Scotland
* a voivodship/province/etc
You can place the cut-off either at level one or level two. My complaint here is that this page uses inconsistent criteria.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Even though the German empire existed since 1870, Bavaria had a King up through World War I. Bavaria existed long before Germany. Different countries have different rules.
In case you hadn't heard, an EMPIRE is a group of countries with a common ruler.
In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria and Hungary were countries that were PART of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Along with pieces of Germany and Italy and bits of various Balkan places...
Which is exactly the definition of the United Kingdom: a group of countries with a common ruler. They even participate as separate countries in various sporting events ...
You consider it the same country even after the Normans trounced you, completely changed the government and aristocracy, and even started to change the language almost beyond recognition. Yeah, right.
Technically, yes, historians do consider it to be the same country. William, Duke of Normandy was persuing a claim to the English throne as a relative of Edward the Confessor.
A couple of hundred years ago, people were reminiscing about the timeframe you are talking about (1688-1815).
Yep. England is older than the UK. But it's the UK that's on the map. The Acts of Union created a new entity. This is not an Edward Longshanks style of conquest. And it happened just a couple of decades after England had been conquered by the Netherlands.
England was not `conquered' by the Netherlands, an essentially bloodless coup was orchestrated by the Stadtholder William of Orange and protestants in the English Parliament to oust James II and replace him with William and his wife Mary (James II;'s daughter and therefore heir) as co-ruler. Both countries remained independent, with only personal union of the monarch (William) linking them.
Humor is a medical term. You might be thinking of humour.
The date is a bit arbitrary, but I guess this cannot be resolved. One could prefer the french revolution of 1789, but indeed France existed as a kingdom for centuries before that. And it existed again as a kingdom after that, in 1815-1830.
He's using political dates for all countries.
If you ask a Pole when his country became independent he will tell that it was when the last King of Congress Poland (aka: the Czar) fell in 1918.
No, he will say that is when Poland regained independence, having already been independent before; no Pole would ever agree that Poland did not exist at any time prior to 1918 (unlike the US, which most definately did not exist prior to 1776) and the current state of Poland just like France claims direct lineage to a state ("Poland") founded many hundreds of years before.
You can argue that the French and Chinese are full of shit, or that the "age of a country" like Poland can't accurately be calculated by it's independence day. You cannot argue that the author used a double-standard.
Yes, he did. He calculates the age of France from the founding of France in the 9th century, ignoring a bunch of revolutions and upheavals, but the age of Poland from 1918 not the founding of Poland in the 10th century. That is a double standard (for other countries also, France and Poland are just the example here).
Yeah, I was taking the mikey out of you. Even if they were invited the line between conquest and liberation are quite blurry. William of Orange wasn't very popular. His wife(the only quasi-legitimate link to his kingship being the daughter of the former king) died. When he snuffed it his sister in law was immediately dubbed Good Queen Anne.
William the Bastard(aka Teh Conqueror) claimed that his cousin Edward the Bloody Idiot(aka Teh Confessor) had promised the English throne to him and that Harold Godwinson had sworn fealty to him. So conquest? Or liberation?
20 minutes into the future
For the same reasons there are 16 different countries in Germany. They do have common government and external policy. But each one has its different parliament, education system and so on. It is not far from how U.S is set-up, as U.S is made up of several countries it self under one government, parliament and external relations. There are differences between U.S and Germany, but they can be considered a minor ones.
I live in Denmark, that was created as a state in the 8th century. I also live in a place that was once part of the country Schleswig-Holstein, but is now part of Denmark due to border changes in the year 1920. It has existed since around the year 800 or 900 (not sure). So it is old country with a lot of history.
Denmark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark
Schleswig-Holstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig-Holstein
Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany
If I remember by ancient Greek history correctly, Armenia was called Armenia in the time Alexander was building his empire. Does moving the borders here and there change the meaning of "country"?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
William the Bastard(aka Teh Conqueror) claimed that his cousin Edward the Bloody Idiot(aka Teh Confessor) had promised the English throne to him and that Harold Godwinson had sworn fealty to him. So conquest? Or liberation?
For the Saxons, conquest, an it's called the Norman Conquest even in Britain today. But on the other hand England never became a fief of Normandy, instead William was crowned King of England - i.e. the country remained an independent entity. Make of that what you will.
Aren't they forgetting the Anschluss in 1938? Do we the independence date for France to 1944, when the Germans were kicked out and they got control of their coutnry back? When do you set a date for Italy? Unification in 1870, or with the establishment of the Roman Empire 2000 years earlier? How old is China? Was it established in 1949, 1919, 216BC or 2100 BC? How old is Egypt? 3 days, two years or 5000 years?
What is left of The Roman Empire is now called Liechtenstein. This is not a simple history, in fact it is complex and based on many old treaties that have full legal status even today, some are more then 500 years old. For instant, the country of Prussia existed from the year 1525 to the year 1947. I live in the part of Denmark that was once a part of Prussia, it did go under control of Denmark in the year 1920.
Prussia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia
Liechtenstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein
This map is simple at best and only minor part of this history when it comes to countries existence over time.
If latest unification is a criterion, the modern United States of America is only 54 years old, and should we really be counting Great Britain, since it's an EU country and the EU added a new country this week.
He's using political dates for all countries.
If you ask a Pole when his country became independent he will tell that it was when the last King of Congress Poland (aka: the Czar) fell in 1918.
No, he will say that is when Poland regained independence, having already been independent before; no Pole would ever agree that Poland did not exist at any time prior to 1918 (unlike the US, which most definately did not exist prior to 1776) and the current state of Poland just like France claims direct lineage to a state ("Poland") founded many hundreds of years before.
That's a mighty fine distinction to expect an internet list of almost 200 countries to include. It's pretty arrogant to assume that obviously the non-Polish 99.4% of the human race will automatically know that off the top their heads, and will immediately un-do the entire job just because the Polish 0.6% has a case.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm not saying that the list's entirely fair to Poland. I really don't care one way or the other. This is a list on the internet, not a scientific paper. It's based on history. That means there will be judgement calls. That also means that it's going to be unfair to somebody. The way you get around that on this lists is strict standards, which leads me to:
You can argue that the French and Chinese are full of shit, or that the "age of a country" like Poland can't accurately be calculated by it's independence day. You cannot argue that the author used a double-standard.
Yes, he did. He calculates the age of France from the founding of France in the 9th century, ignoring a bunch of revolutions and upheavals, but the age of Poland from 1918 not the founding of Poland in the 10th century. That is a double standard (for other countries also, France and Poland are just the example here).
The standard he uses in all cases is "What will an average citizen say if I ask when his country became independent?" You don't have to like this particular standard, but you do have to admit he applies it rigorously. OTOH the French refuse to admit they were conquered in the 40s, therefore if you ask a Frenchmen when his country gained it's independence he'll give you a very early date.
No, Norris is so badass because his name is a contraction of Norse. Everybody fears the Norse.
Honestly, France beat the British. Not America.
You know how the Korean War, although ostensibly a war between North and South Korea, was basically a war between the US and China? Yeah. The American Revolution was that, with Britain and France. Of course, our "AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!" school system and remnants of Manifest Destiny keep most people from thinking of it in those terms, but yeah, that's how it was. A small American rebellion persisted long enough to sap the British strength until some heavy aid from France was enough to shove them out of a war they no longer really cared for.
The standard he uses in all cases is "What will an average citizen say if I ask when his country became independent?" You don't have to like this particular standard, but you do have to admit he applies it rigorously. OTOH the French refuse to admit they were conquered in the 40s, therefore if you ask a Frenchmen when his country gained it's independence he'll give you a very early date.
Well if that's the standard then anyone living in England will say 927 or 1066, someone in Scotland 843 or perhaps 1037, and so on, the Act of Union is essentially ignored by average citizens (and indeed had almost negligible impact on them). I also very much doubt the Chinese would say 1949, or the Russians 1991. The ridiculousness of this notion is underscored by the fact that people in other countries referred to the both the largest component of the Soviet Union and often to the Soviet Union itself as Russia all through the 20th Century, and the same with China, Poland, France, Austria etc etc etc.
That's a mighty fine distinction to expect an internet list of almost 200 countries to include. It's pretty arrogant to assume that obviously the non-Polish 99.4% of the human race will automatically know that off the top their heads, and will immediately un-do the entire job just because the Polish 0.6% has a case.
And yet "what the average citizen [of that country] will say", not the other 99% of people, is the criterion you give a few lines later ...
This isn't about Poland as such, it's about the fact that the author applies his own rule arbitrarily and frequently at odds with what the inhabitants of that country would say.
an essentially bloodless coup was orchestrated by the Stadtholder William of Orange
Bloodless? There's a bunch of corpses buried in Reading that might well dispute that claim. Aye, and not to mention, me laddie, there's a whole lot o' Scots and Irish who will happily kick you in the nadgers for suggesting it was bloodless.
In any case, the fact that the people of England supported the invader doesn't mean it wasn't a foreign invasion, unless you're hopelessly devoted to the myth that England hasn't been invaded since William.
He lost me at "That is the occasion we're celebrating today, right?", wrong. Today is Higgs Day - one year since the announcement of the Higgs!
You may call it Independence Day, but over here it's just the anniversary of when we finally got shot of those troublesome colonies started by religious fanatics.
Rationalize all you want - we beat you. As for those religious fanatics, you should have known better than to go up against them They were the same variety that beheaded your king in 1649.
No, we didn't beat them, as you so childishly state. We were born a couple hundred years after a war to which we have no personal connection.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
When the Romans ran the show there, it was called Brittany. Emperor Hadrian's wall is still there, as are all the Roman Architecture at Bath, England (Roman SPA). Yes, Roman columns, statues, etc. They had gladiators in London and everything. The Romans didn't conquer all of the present United Kingdom, but they had a lot of it. The Angles had it exclusively, then the Saxons came over from Normandy and ran it for a while (why you don't eat Pig, but Pork, Not Cow but beef, why Chickens are poultry, and other names of food at court have French sounding names (porc, boeuf, poulet, etc.), yet the old English had names like the old German. When the people who ran the show changed hands over there (1066), the names changed. There have been a lot of changes since then. The history of the place is old. Arthur ran the show just after the Romans left (around AD 400-500). Its hard to even say exactly who was running what, when. Before the Romans got there, Celts were running the place, and others before them, back to the last ice age (about 11,000 BC).
FUCK YEAH! that's a simplistic explanation.
our "AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!" school system and remnants of Manifest Destiny keep most people from thinking of it in those terms
Where did you go to school? I learned about the importance of the alliance with France when I was in grade school. My 9 y.o. daughter knows about it so it seems they're still teaching it. How could any American student graduate from high school (more likely middle school) without knowing about Lafayette, French material aid to the US, Franklin as ambassador to France, the importance of the French navy, or the French forces at Yorktown? While you were either attending the worst school in America or not paying attention, you should also have learned about the Spanish and Dutch contributions.
- Anybody around here familiar with something called "humor"?
- Is it like wit?
P.S. Bonus internet points if you get the reference, the joke and the relevance to this discussion, which so far is a brawl between Brits, Americans, French and Dutch.
BTW, this study is weird. Warm greetings from the oldest country in Europe that still exists under its original name despite many years of struggle and occupation - Bulgaria ;) 681 AD, and that was the year of signing some piece contract with the East Roman empire; in fact, we were there before that...however, if the person who made this calculation can explain to me why Hungary is listed as 1000 years old and Bulgaria as 100...if he took the Ottoman occupation into consideration, then the Hungarians were also occupied....
You consider it the same country even after the Normans trounced you, completely changed the government and aristocracy, and even started to change the language almost beyond recognition. Yeah, right.
Technically, yes, historians do consider it to be the same country. William, Duke of Normandy was persuing a claim to the English throne as a relative of Edward the Confessor.
Most historians I know consider the nation-state idea to be quite recent, essentially an invention of the 19th century.
While I could perhaps understand an argument for the 18th century in the case of the United Kingdom, I'd like to see some evidence if you're suggesting serfs yelled at each other in Saxon to "keep calm and carry on."
For Iran it is mentioned to be just 510 years! (I guess it is based on the date it was renamed from Persia to Iran!). I just don't understand the base of this map.
Iran had its kings from more than 3000 years ago.
There appear to be a lot of other glaring errors as well. For example, France is listed as 1170, which begs questions such as "who is the current king of France?", or "was the Declaration of the Fifth Republic of 1789 a figment of the imagination"? Also China stands out as being problematic at 2234 years old, which would seemingly ignore the governing constitutions passed since 1954 by Mao Zedong and his supporters.
Just because a country changes its name or political regime it doesn't become a different country.
No. Not true. That would suggest the Roman Empire shrank until just Liechtenstein was left. But it was a part of the Holy Roman Empire (motto: not Holy, not Roman, not an Empire). It was like one of the many small cities and feudal fiefdoms that turned into Germany and Austria in the 19th century, only it didn't turn into German and Austria.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
And to Germans, the Nazi regime is "ancient history" too, while a handful of 18th and 19th century writers and composers supposedly demonstrate the enormous superiority of German culture.
People's historical memory is rather selective and nonlinear.
your sig is pretty appropriate.
if we're going by the standard used in the articles sources.. it's silly that usa isn't counted from the end of the civil war. heck, many countries have ruler lineages going further than the supposed age of the country..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"England" may be 1000+ years old but 1) it's far from certain that it's the same "England" as today, and 2) it was a subsidiary of Normandy, Inc. for quite some time, pardon my Middle French.
If you're talking about the political establishment, the current monarchy is ultimately derived from William the Conqueror who took over the country in 1066, as this is the beginning of the Norman kings in England. If you're talking about its Establishment as a nation with geopolitical boundaries, we're talking several thousand years earlier under Celtic, Roman and Anglo-Saxon rulers.
1066 was also the last time England was successfully invaded by a foreign military.
Historians consider it to be the same country despite the change in monarch. So it really depends if you're talking about geopolitical boundaries or political establishments.
I.E. my country of Australia was settled in 1788, but it wasn't a nation until 1901 making us 113 this year despite being settled for 200+ years. The reason was, prior to 26 Jan 1901 we were separate British colonies (6 colonies to be exact).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I think the point is to commemorate the founding of the US government. That happened after the revolutionary war and has been uninterrupted since despite the country's borders changing a number of times. If you were to measure France by the same method, from what I can tell (my knowledge of French history isn't very thorough), their government would begin with the one that displaced the Vichy government after the war. I don't know my British history well enough to say when the monarchy was stripped of most of its power, but that would be the date that you'd give to the UK.
the civil war doesn't count? how come russia is newer than Finland despite Finland gaining independence from Russia? revolution resets the time? what fucking kind of logic is that. the map is just there to make usa more older on average than the rest.
how about Nixon resigning? how about a reset on that date?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm happy here in the UK, enjoying the thousands of years of history.
Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old (Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707). And you folks complain about Americans not understanding the difference between England/Scotland/Wales, Britain and the UK.
You also didn't pay attention in that class. The UK is not a country rather it's an amalgamation of individual countries. The name is not the "United Kingdom" it's the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". It consists of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland whom each have their own parliaments. It's like saying the US is only as old as NATO because it's a member of NATO.
I would have pointed this out nicely, but you acted like such an pompous arse (yes, propper spelling, there is an R in there, an ass is a donkey) I couldn't help myself.
P.S. The Queen, her majesty Elizabeth the second, being a polite, proper and fair person would wish you and you nation well on this day of celebration, despite your ignorance and disrespectful attitude.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Honestly, France beat the British. Not America.
Ultimately, this war the British won because the French monarch went bankrupt which lead to the revolution in France and the rise of Napoleon.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You consider it the same country even after the Normans trounced you, completely changed the government and aristocracy, and even started to change the language almost beyond recognition. Yeah, right.
Trounced ME? What have I got to do with two sets of my ancestors having a barney 1000 years ago? Are you confusing world history with a football match, where we're all wearing a specific colour of scarf?
Modern English is Anglo Saxon + Norman (give or take some Latin, Welsh and Legal French). Linguistically, I'm every bit as Norman as I am Anglo Saxon. Genetically, who the hell knows- for all I know I'm descended from immigrant stock from a couple of generations ago. I've never actually checked...
Well, I often hear that William Shakespeare bloke lauded as one of the most important writers, or American authors I never heard of as some of the best writers in history -- every country/culture tends to put a lot of emphasis on their own cultural achievements.
It's a bit weird dating the UK from 1707. That's the date when England, Scotland & Wales were united. So why not 1801, when the Ireland was united into the mix? Why not 1922, when the southern 4/5 of Ireland became independent? And can we apply the same rules to, say, every time the US added a State? Was the United States created in 1959 when Hawaii ascended? Or 1946, when the Philippine Commonwealth gained its independence?
It's a fool's game, anyway. Trying to define "when is a country a country" is ahistorical navel gazing. Nationalism as a concept only really dates from the 18th century; before that, countries were an awful lot more...fluid.
When the Romans ran the show there, it was called Brittany.
Started as "Insulae Britannicae" referring to the islands, then the part which became a Roman province was known as Britannia, and later divided into Britannia Superior and Britannia Inferior.
Except the list makes them a single country. It almost seems the choice has been made explicitly to keep the numbers as low as possible.
(Personally, I prefer the "sovereign entity" definition, so would include both UK and Austro-Hungarian Empire as countries, but a project like this really ought to apply some degree of consistency, so should have either both or neither.)
And don't even start the geeks on Guy Fawkes, him of the anonymous mask that they all wear made in Chinese state run factories, a Catholic royalist who was up for replacing one king who claimed his divine right with another just of a different religious flavour. Nothing in there about helping the poor/women's votes/ anarchism/open source data formats.
Give us a call after your first 500 years or so, I am sure you'll have some fun stories to tell the grandkids by then as well!
The stupidest thing I've seen this week.
Age of a country != Time since last occupation.
America changes "adminstrations" about every eight years (with the potential to have them change every four.... or more frequently due to "other events"), but that isn't changing governments except in the sense like the British get a new "government" each time they get a new Prime Minister.
Except for the fact that your government (two chambers + head of state) changes completely at this time, whereas only one of our legislative chambers does, and our head of state has the position for life. We have much greater continuity than you do.
(Personally, I prefer the "sovereign entity" definition, so would include both UK and Austro-Hungarian Empire as countries, but a project like this really ought to apply some degree of consistency, so should have either both or neither.)
Yes, exactly.
The Norman invasion didn't create England. England was created through the uniting of the Saxon kingdoms by Aethelstan in 927.
You consider it the same country even after the Normans trounced you, completely changed the government and aristocracy, and even started to change the language almost beyond recognition. Yeah, right.
As I understand it, although obviously the office-holders were changed, the Normans basically retained the old Anglo-saxon system of government, because they felt it was better than their own. Therefore, as far as I see it, this only differs from what happens in a republic when the governing party loses the election by the means of chosing who gets the power, which seems irrelevant from the point of view of determining whether the country is the same country or not. If the Normans had come in and imposed their own system of government, making England part of a Norman empire, I'd agree with you, but that's not what they did.
Rationalize all you want - we beat you. As for those religious fanatics, you should have known better than to go up against them]
So a bad idea to go against religious fanatics?
Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it
Ha ha, well said both.
When I was a junior postdoc I was renting a house built in 1729 with bits from the previous build still showing, early 1500s sections of wall and doorways. And our friends thought we were insane coming in to college 8 miles each day. Me and my mates thought it beat living in the modern Victorian rubbish (houses built in 1880s) which were closer.
Speaking of history, you obviously didn't pay attention in class. The UK is only 306 years old
Yes, but the government of the UK is continuous with the previous government of England & Wales, and the government of England before that.
"William the Conqueror who took over the country in 1066"
It took him another six years to actually secure his throne. :)
Trounced? It took him six years to secure his throne and the language change was for the ruling elite.
And I'm Scottish, just for the record. :)
Austria given as 1k+ years, which was probably the first time it became independent (or was it being mentioned in writing?). However I distinctly remember that not-so-long ago we were assimilated by Germany for some years, like the rest of Europe (arguably, we were stupid enough to say "yay" instead of putting up a fight).
So any country in middle Europe where the age is given as more than 70 years is provably wrong.
OT: My other half is a music/arty promoter type person and last year she was at Edinburgh Fringe chatting with someone who does a similar job in the US. She was telling this person about a recent gigs she'd put on in an Arts centre, a converted medieval church. ~Said person remarked words to the effect "Holy crap, your venue is older than my country!"
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
The Roman Empire indeed existed until 1453. What went bust in 476 AD was the Western part of the Roman Empire. But the Byzantinians called themselves "Romanoi" (Romans) for a reason, and they indeed had an unbroken legal and state line from the Roman Empire of the likes of Caesar and Augustus.
That's a very Anglocentric view of it. In fact the current monarchy is ultimately derived from either Kenneth I (841/3 - 858/9), usually considered to be the first king of Scotland, or Donald II (889 - 900), the first king to clearly bear that title. The English royal line died out when Queen Elizabeth of England died in 1603. The Scottish royal line's senior in every sense of the word.
The beginning of the Iran is here defined as the time when the empire of the Timurids (the descendents of Timur Lenk/Tamerlan) dissolved. Since then, there is indeed some continuity of a self governed Iran. The name "Iran" itself is much older, it means "(country of the) Aryans". (If you tell a member of the Aryan Nation, that there indeed is an Aryan Nation, and it's called Iran...)
Well my English friend, I know your English as no one from any of the other nations of the UK would think the way you are, England as well as Scotland ceased to exist as a state when the act of union was signed. A new state called the United Kingdom was formed, not an enlarged England. Just to make this clear England != United Kingdom. Anyway if your going to take the oldest nation that formed the UK Scotland was the elder nation.
There are older countries which still exist under their original name in Europe. San Marino (1712 years old, republic since 301 AD) comes to mind. And Spain got its name 3000 years ago, when the Phoenicians called the country "Ishapan"...)
On the other hand, the name France comes from the german tribe of the Frankonians... so the Normans and the French are related, the Normans just being 500 years late.
Which is why Richard the Third wanted one so badly at the end. If he'd had one at Bosworth then Henry would've been dust.
Instead the fools tried to bring him a slightly panicky pony.
The Saxons didn't come over from Normandy, the French did. Grand Bretagne was and mostly still is a French province.
The cornucopia of confusion evidenced above could easily be resolved by using the US definition of a country: that date when the First Settlers, having arrived at an unoccupied land (or having exterminated enough of the indigenous people to make it essentially unoccupied), spit in the face of the country that supported their colonization efforts and mount a PR campaign in the form of a document proclaiming themselves to be upholders of the most basic human rights.
You do realise that around a third of the words in the English language are French, right? Not some derivative of Norse, not some dead latinesque form but modern, currently in use French?
Even though the German empire existed since 1870, Bavaria had a King up through World War I. Bavaria existed long before Germany. Different countries have different rules.
So, does that mean we have 50+ (remember Guam, Virgin Islands, Samoa, Purto Rico & Mariana Islands) "countries"? They all have different rules too.
Just another day in Paradise
The Chinese, Japanese, and French all claim direct lineage to states founded a long time before that.
Yes, and they're all quite wrong.
...
Nations developed in reaction to the socio-cultural pressures of 19th century imperialism.
If you had the opportunity to ask a person living in 18th century Japan what "nation" they were living in, it's probably they wouldn't understand the basis for your question.
Nations are a recent invention.
The modern meaning of nation encompassing certain cultural and ethnic aspects is a recent invention, but to say that (say) "France" as a country or state with a definable identity and people who self-identified as "French" did not exist until the "socio-cultural pressures of 19th century imperialism" is patently absurd. It is probably also absurd for pre-19th century Japan and China, which existed as coherent states in the same location with centralised control for many centuries, even if they did not know the word "nation" or understand the modern concept of "nationality".
Depends on your point of view. If you're arguing that there wasn't a U.S., that would just be incorrect. If you're arguing that the south broke off, even though still claimed by the US, and reunited, well, does that matter? Somewhat different, but how about when various states were added. Should we start from when we added Hawaii? By your Sig, none of them existed prior to 5 seconds ago anyway.
Just another day in Paradise
The inconsistent criteria are really rather obnoxious, I agree. Some examples that cought my eye while looking at the map and data:
I think that 976 for Austria is correct, as that's the first mention of Ostarrichi, although not as independent country. For Hungary as well, the dates are the ones that should be taken into account, as this was the time when the magyars moved into the territory of what is now Hungary.
To give 1871 as "birthdate" for Germany is of course ridiculous, that should be 843 as in the case of France.
Therefore, if we already use dates like 976 for Austria, we can only stare in disbelief at the fact that Croatia should be only 22 years old and Serbia only 7.
Turkey will certainly be interested why only the modern state after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the following war with Greece has been given credit. I think we can safely assume at least 1453 (conquest of Constantinople), or even an older date, if we take into account that most of Anatolia had been undeer turkish rule far before that.
At last, not to get too eurocentric (I'm austrian, so Europe's what I'm most familiar with), Rwanda was a kingdom (or several closely related kingdoms) with a distinct culture and language long before becoming a (german, then belgian) colony and gaining independence in 1962.
">It took him another six years to actually secure his throne. :)
Nails being in short supply.
Not in the least, in fact, with the way the UK doesn't recognize the right to free speech, and likes putting gobs and gobs of cameras everywhere, it isn't really a place I even want to visit.
Course, these days our government seems to be gaining some of those tendancies too. Hopefully our government wont last as long. It needs a refresh as it is, and its nowhere near as old and crusty as yours.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You're speaking only of the top leadership. The vast majority of our government is managed by career employees, who don't change from election to election.
Just another day in Paradise
There's just a bit of a difference between being overrun, and a peaceful election.
As for language changing all the time...yours isn't?...BS.
Just another day in Paradise
The Scottish royal line's senior in every sense of the word.
Not for some time I'm afraid - the current monarchy family is the House of Windsor, which was originally part of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. So the current royals are in fact German in lineage :)
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Most historians I know consider the nation-state idea to be quite recent, essentially an invention of the 19th century.
While I could perhaps understand an argument for the 18th century in the case of the United Kingdom, I'd like to see some evidence if you're suggesting serfs yelled at each other in Saxon to "keep calm and carry on."
They probably did, when the Norman sheriff came round to collect taxes :) though what a 21st century meme based on a 20th century propaganda poster has anything to do with this is anyone's guess.
The modern concept of "nation-state" and "nationality" is as you say recent, but that does not mean definable states and countries did not exist previously, only to magically pop into existence in the 19th century. Nor does it mean that countries magically ceased to exist and then reappeared in another form with no continuity between the two. The United Kingdom as you allude has formally existed since the early 18th century, but existed as a de facto union (a personal union with one monarch ruling two countries) for almost exactly a century before that. The fact that the formal name changed does not invalidate that fact. And for somebody living in England their sense of being English and part of the English state did not change either in 1601 when personal union between England and Scotland began with James I and VI or when it was formalised under Anne in 1707. In neither case did they suddenly cease to be "English" in any meaningful way. Shakespeare refers to the English and England. Nelson said "England expects ..." not "The United Kingdom expects". Etc. (obviously the same holds if you replace "England" with "Scotland". Well, except for Nelson.)
The political, social, and economic structures have evolved vastly during the almost 1000 years since the Norman Conquest, but it was for the most part a slow evolution. Even the Magna Carta and the Commonwealth (Civil War) happened within the contemporary structures (feudal monarchy, parliamentary democracy respectively). Legal principles defined by the Normans are still in operation today, including much legal terminology, and as Patch86 commented below the language is equal parts Norman (beef, mutton) and Saxon (cow, sheep).
Another example is the numbering of Kings and Queens. The current Queen of the United Kingdom is Elizabeth II, even though the first Elizabeth was Queen of England (supposedly a "different country" according to this list). Her uncle, King Edward VII (he of Mrs Simpson fame) was the 7th of his name even though the previous Edward, the son of Henry VIII, died in 1553. Edward itself is a Saxon name, the most famous being Edward the Confessor.
One of the main reasons Shakespeare is considered so important is the way he seemed to coin or at least popularise dozens of turns of phrases that are still used today, as well as more than a few words.
http://www.pathguy.com/shakeswo.htm
The other main reason Shakespeare is considered important is all the smutty jokes ;)
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The Holy Roman Empire was a complex political union of territories in Central Europe existing from 962 to 1806 and should not be confused with the Roman Empire!
It's certainly arguable that the Scottish line is just as broken as the one between William the Conqueror and Queen Elizabeth of England; probably most clearly at William of Orange, but it would be easy to pick other places. My main point was to contest the nearly universal assumptions that only England and England's royal line matter within the UK, and that they have the longest history; when in fact neither's true.
Which is exactly the definition of the United Kingdom: a group of countries with a common ruler. They even participate as separate countries in various sporting events ...
I'm sure the various parts of the UK have only recently been branded countries for political reasons. Wales used to be a principality not a country and northern Ireland was an occupied territory. Scotland is an exception to this as it really was a country that was brought by the English with a sale condition being that it maintained its independent legal system.
the current monarchy is ultimately derived from William the Conqueror
If that's the basis of your calculations, you fail at the very start. The linage from William the Conqueror ceased with Elizabeth I. It's Scotland that has the longer lineage of royalty, and that's what should form the basis of any calculation if we're going that way.
More than that, the French spent so much money on the war with Britain that it essentially bankrupted the monarchy. This fairly directly led to the French Revolution.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Bloodless? There's a bunch of corpses buried in Reading that might well dispute that claim.
essentially bloodless (from the point of view of England, anyway - more below). Compared to the Norman Conquest or the Wars of the Roses or the Civil War casualties were very few.
Aye, and not to mention, me laddie, there's a whole lot o' Scots and Irish who will happily kick you in the nadgers for suggesting it was bloodless.
Since the Act of Union had not yet been written, Scotland and Ireland remained (nominally, at least) independent kingdoms, and James was still legally king there immediately after the coup in London. How you define what happened next in Scotland depends on whether you agree that the Convention of 1689 which declared the throne of Scotland vacant was legal and representative - and thus whether William was suppressing a rebellion as the legal King of Scotland or invading Scotland as the King of England. In Ireland there was no Convention and it rather more clearly was an invasion. In either case, yes, it was bloody, and I don't deny that.
In any case, the fact that the people of England supported the invader doesn't mean it wasn't a foreign invasion, unless you're hopelessly devoted to the myth that England hasn't been invaded since William.
Of course it was an invasion (William brought an army), and of course England was invaded previously. By Henry Tudor, for example. What is was not, of England specifically, was a conquest (implying subjucation of the people by military force) by the Netherlands as stated by the OP. Of Scotland, arguably, of Ireland, certainly, but by that stage conquest by England not by the Netherlands.
Before 1871, the term "Germany" referred to a loose collection of principalities. They were in no way a consolidated political state before then.
(Personally, I prefer the "sovereign entity" definition, so would include both UK and Austro-Hungarian Empire as countries, but a project like this really ought to apply some degree of consistency, so should have either both or neither.)
The Austro-Hungarian Empire doesn't exist any more. The land it controlled is now a collection of different sovereign entities.
it's silly that usa isn't counted from the end of the civil war
The US now was the Union during the Civil War and was the US before the civil war and had a continuous government from before until after the civil war.
Political sovereignty is a crappy metric. Does anyone really think Egypt is only 150-70 years old? Conquering a country and then releasing it again does mean you "recreated" it. People still would have called themselves Egyptian, I'm pretty sure they didn't have as much rights of movement as a white British subject, had a different government hierachy (sure the queen is the queen but colonies generally get governors or military commanders with defacto soverign rights) etc. Similarly with Ethopia, geez both of these are mentioned in the bible and as far as I know were pretty well defined chunks of real estate back then.
I think culture, geography and to a lesser extent language are better metrics.Korea is still Korea whether it is currently (and probably temporarily over the long term hundreds of years you judge kingdoms/eras by) divided in 2 or not. Racist Koreans likely will still consider someone on the 5km on the other side of the NK SK border as "acceptable" were as 5km across any other border would be an abomination.
Lastly was July 4th really Americas sovereignty? I would argue that. The colonies declared independence but they still had to fight for it. Anyone in NK is free to declare the Koreas unified but until the other side agrees (or at least stops shooting you when you cross the bordrer) it doesn't matter.
Well said.
Except for the fact that your government (two chambers + head of state) changes completely at this time, whereas only one of our legislative chambers does, and our head of state has the position for life. We have much greater continuity than you do.
In theory it could. In practice it really doesn't. Furthermore, the legislative chambers change every two years... but on a rotating basis (only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for re-election every two years). That is hardly a real government change and is definitely not "changing completely". At worst (or best depending on your view) the "minority" and "majority" leaders swap positions. It isn't even like the "loyal opposition", as the minority leadership still retains some real governance roles.
As for the "head of state" in the UK.... that is an essentially meaningless position that mostly soaks up tax dollars and looks nice in cameras. I suppose it does offer a speed bump in the UK if somebody like Adolph Hitler was to come to power as PM, as the Queen (or King) could simply dissolve Parliament and use Royal prerogatives to protect the British citizens from an abusive government. That is of course assuming that the PM was a tyrant and the monarch was willing to stand up to that tyranny with the popular support of the British people. That would also be a constitutional crisis in the UK where the results of the British monarchy taking actual steps of governance would be completely unpredictable with a high likelihood of backfiring and ending up with the monarch in prison or executed.
The real authority to act, to do things, to cause ships to move in the oceans, to launch a nuclear strike against some random city in the world, to suppress a riot, and to perform other acts of real governance is vested in the Prime Minister. Heck, in the UK the Prime Minister often acts without even consulting the monarch, and even when notification of the monarch happens that is all which happens: the PM informs the monarch about actions and the monarch is helpless to do anything about that action if they disagree except through a strictly advisory role. There is a threat of a Royal veto (or declining assent to legislation), but that hasn't been exercised in over 200 years and is uncertain that under the current situation Parliament would even recognize such a veto. The only time I could possibly imagine the British monarchy exercising such authority is in a most extreme situation where their action would have popular support of the British people but for some reason the Parliament has gone "rogue" and doing things which are hugely unpopular. You would also need to see a popular demonstration at Buckingham Palace in support of the monarchy... essentially the British people rallying in support of their monarch in a very public manner against the elected government.
I suppose there is the other minor issue where the British military swears personal loyalty to the monarch, and the monarch could possibly order the military to act in a manner contrary to the intent and orders of the PM. Again, this would be essentially a coup, and another constitutional crises. The only time that any member of the Royal Family has any real authority is when they bother to get into the military hierarchy... like what Prince Harry is doing by taking on a commission in the military and taking command of actual units. Strangely, even there Prince Harry is acting under orders authorized by the PM, not his grandmother.
26 Jan 1788 or 1 Jan 1901 ... take your pick, but not 26 Jan 1901 !
We do know that England controlled and possessed the coastal areas of France for several hundred years. Later we see Normandy become a separate entity and invade England. One way to conceive of it would be to consider the Norman invasion as part of a civil war. The resolution of the long time conflict was England suffering loss of coastal Europe. Considering the modern history of Europe a loss of territory in coastal Europe might be considered a blessing.
Political: "We are a country, see, because we have a name and some documents, and we are united by our belief in capitalism (donuts) and equality (welfare). Anyone is welcome here who agrees with those."
Organic: "My people evolved in this land and have possessed it for centuries, improving it and themselves. We are inseparable from it. The only people welcome here are ourselves, and everyone else must find their own nation."
Futurist Traditionalism
The point is that the European view expressed by the GGP that Americans don't know history and are a "young country" is nonsense.
Europeans themselves have very selective memories when it comes to history, and much of what they consider "their long history" has little to do with today's culture. On the other hand, in my experience, most Europeans know little specifics of 19th and 20th century European history.
Here in the US a house built in the early 1900s is ancient, and over two hundred years old is a museum piece. Meanwhile, my German father in law is living in a house something like 600+ years old.
Of course, the real danger to having old structures in Europe is the various wars over the years. If they weren't burned to the ground in the 1300-1700s, they were bombed to bits in WWII.
I'd go with 1688 when the Bill of Rights formally subordinated the monarch to Parliament.
Tomorrow, I may eat another house plant
Interesting article on slate yesterday (Revolution Blues) talking about how even now newly published popular histories (by people who should know better) miss/ignore a lot of stuff.
He ruled the Star Fleet Technical Manual.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Indeed. When you buy a house in the UK that's pre-1940s and in an urban area you check to see if there's historical bomb damage: often places got patched up quickly with available materials and 70 years later the substandard fixes can be decaying, cracks opening etc.
I often wonder if this is one of the reasons people in the USA seem so much more enthusiastic about going to war than Europeans - we can still see the evidence around us in the architecture and people are still alive who have frightening memories of how it affected them at home. Next time you're in London check the front of the Victoria and Albert museum, you can still see the shrapnel damage to the stone work.
19th century housing here is just standard for lots of people.It's waht you rent when you're a student. I prefer it to modern places: the latter are mainly wood built and thrown up quickly. I know the place I bought (late C19th, typical urban red bricker starter home) has been through two wars and hasn't moved in 130 years so it's likely to outlive me :-)
He's pointing out your strange use of the word "we" when you had nothing to do with it. Please do grow up.
If you stopped generalising, you might have a point. But you didn't, so you don't.
What is interesting is the fact they overlap in both territory and time. The overlaps is only about 500 to 800 years depending on area.
Western Roman Empire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Roman_Empire
Byzantine Empire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire
One can assumed that territories where lost to the Holy Roman Empire in wars (as border have always moved this way in Europe). The Holy Roman Empire comes from East Francia that only lasted around 200 years.
East Francia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Francia
This is not a simple history, so getting things wrong is easy.
About.com has the independence day of Estonia as February 24, 1918. However, Estonia lost its independence in the beginning of WWII and got it back only when Soviet Union ceased to exist. So, how old is Estonia?
Probably because modern Russia came to be after the end of the Soviet Union, while Finland broke away from a previous iteration of Russia...
The American system can be dated to either 1790 when the last state under the Articles of Confederation ratified the new Constitution, or can be dated to 1777 or 1781 when the Articles were completed and gave legitimacy to the fledgling nation or when they were fully ratified. Since the Articles were supplanted by the Constitution through means that the Articles required, ie, unanimous vote by the constituent states, the establishment of the Articles makes sense.
One can argue that the American system does not reset at the civil war because the system antebellum remained intact through and subsequent to the civil war, reasserting itself over the rebelling territories and continuing to follow its own procedures.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
WTF?
France is already listed as one of the oldest countries. And Spain is a rather young country, just 500 years ago, the north of Spain was divided into multiple kingdoms such as Leon, Castille and Aragon, and the south was Muslim... What borders is it you consider stable?
EU is not a country and has no soveign land.
Is it just me or is there a certain arbitrariness to all of this?
Can't we all just call ourselves the Earthling Humanoids, get along, and start working to save the polar bears and ourselves?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Methodology is bogus. Ethiopia, as an example, was only occupied for a short period of time during the 20th century. It was a long standing kingdom before that. It is registered as young state, due to the date of its latest independence. China on the other hand is marked as 3k years old. Fair enough. But it was similarly chopped in pieces, colonized and occupied during a good share of the 20th century. India is as old a country, and Iran could be 600 years old (or even 4k years old, depending on how you count). Taking independence dates and making a graph is plain stupid. It takes knowledge of history, and relevant events on each cultures and people to make such a graph.
It was part of the Roman empire at the time and was created out from it. It has since then gone through some territorial changes as happens in Europe. This is all on the internet here,
History of Liechtenstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein
In history it is close to impossible to find continuous line of succession. Since it always get broken for one reason or other.
No countries have ever actually existed. They were all (and still are) figments of some over zealous bureaucrats imagination. National boundaries are usually completely arbitrary lines drawn on map, with little thought given to the people that are actually on the ground. Nationality is nothing more than a coincidence of birth. Neither I nor anybody else chose to a citizen of the locale in which we were born. At best, nationality is just another excuse for vested interests to restrict our travel movements and to curtail our freedoms. In many cases it is also a very profitable source of revenue. It is especially interesting that corporations can become multinational relatively easily, but individuals are subject to more and more restrictions in terms of security and visas every year. At worst, the curse of nationality is the cause of more conflict than any other, including religion. And yet nationality cannot even be strictly defined. A Chinese for example, does not have to be born in China to be Chinese. And it is highly unlikely that a Caucasian born in China could ever be considered Chinese. Nationality is simply a myth, sometimes it is more to do with appearance and culture than anything else. The sooner we dump these backward concepts the better for all of us. I would highly recommend Leopold Kohr's "Breakdown of Nations" as some interesting background reading on this subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kohr
A nation cannot efficiently govern no more than 2 million citizens.
I believe every nation should be decentralized into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_switzerland
Casteism
northern Ireland was an occupied territory
What do you mean "was"?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Further, why pick 1776 as the birth of the US? Since 37 of the 50 states were founded and joined the union after this date, one could pick the day the last state joined (Hawaii - August 21, 1959) as the date when the United States was fully formed. Or conversely, one could look to the date that the earliest colony which eventually became a state was founded - May 24, 1607 under the current calendar is when James Fort, was founded by the Virginia Company of London. I'ts 1609 royal charter extended from "sea to sea," and on the south its border was roughly at the present day border on North & South Carolina, and the northern border was a 45 degree angle that started about where Atlantic City New Jersey is today, heading north-west through the middle of the great lakes, north of Michigan. (despite the fact that no one from Virginia got more than a few miles west of the Atlantic Ocean) and hence this colony did "own" a fair bit of the area of what is now the US of A.
northern Ireland was an occupied territory
What do you mean "was"?
Fair point.
What I meant was before it got branded a country by the UK political powers it was a territory, AFAIK it never was a country in it's own right but a part of someone else's country.
Northern Ireland encompasses a large part of the Irish province of Ulster. I'm not sure about the details, but I do believe the provinces of Ireland were once separate nations, each with their own king. But that certainly was a really long time ago.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
The different nations of the British Islands had of course a long history dating back not thousands but tens of thousands of years, but the same can be said of almost any European country: Spain, founded officially in 1492 (521 years) or France... that's a tricky one, let's say 1792 which is then 221 years (the First Republic) although the Kingdom of France dates back to 843, 1.200 years thus, but hey, who cares about the French anyway.
You are certainly correct in that our nations can look back at tens of thousands of years of uninterrupted history: There's Stonehenge, Glastonbury... just an hour ago I was running among the funeral mounds of a proto-celtic bronze age culture called "Hilversum Culture" (I happen to live here in Hilversum, North Holland) which even had contact with the bronze age British. We had the Romans, the Gauls, the Celts, the Germans, the Goths, the Vikings, the Merovingian, the Sacred Roman Catholic Empire... it's mind bogging.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Actually ... an empire is a region where the command of one person (the "imperium") is accepted in military matters, and generally in "statecraft" as well (war being, as always, the continuation of diplomacy by non-diplomatic means). So, the military command (imperium) of Attila over the various tribes and groups of the semi-nomadic "Huns" would be as good an example of an empire as the Romans with all their marble and fora. Ghenghiz Khan might be an even better example. If I were a bastard setting questions for a politics exam, I might ask students to discuss the assertion that "in 1991, Norman Schwartzkopf was Emperor of the nations Crusading against Iraq" (noting that "discuss" means that the quality of your argument is under assessment, not whether you agree or disagree with the statement).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"