Michael:
> 168 the lowest answer given by anyone tho unexplained
> 170 number of currencies
> 172 countries recognized by russia
> 189 members of u n & thus upu
> 190 number given by info please kids almanac
> 191 recognized by uk
>
> 192 most popular refs as detailed above
>
> 194 recognized by switzerland
> 200 plus recognized by germany
> 239 iso diglyphs
> 266 or so the highest including all dependencies etc
I was surprised to see the UK (my native soil) credited with only 191
in this list. I checked out the link on the "Countries by Heart" site
you mention, and it does nothing to support this particular count.
The linked site is a Foreign and Commonwealth Office list of Overseas
Missions. As well as a few British Overseas Territories like the
Turks and Caicos, it lists 187 countries. Missing are Afghanistan,
Bhutan, Central African Republic, Iraq and North Korea. As far as I'm
aware the U.K. recognises all of these, we just don't happen to have
embassy staff on site, for various reasons.
Similarly, the 200+ German-recognised countries don't seem to be
borne out by the German site. The same old 192 countries are there,
plus a host of dependencies like Midway Island that I don't think
anyone would wish to promote as independent states!
So the debate still comes down to the well-recognised marginals like
Palestine, Tibet, North Cyprus and S.M.O.M., and the "pendings" like
Nagorno-Karabakh, Western Sahara and East Timor.
I wrote an article about the country-count once, and found the main
problem to be the dependencies. There are isolated territories like
the Azores and Canaries that are treated as integral parts of the
parent countries. And there are places like the French Overseas
Departments that could be considered part of the parent country, but
which also run a limited self-government in parallel with the
administrative structure of the parent country. At the other end of
the scale, do we count Jan Mayen as a dependency separate from
Svalbard? It is administered from Svalbard, but the practical day-to-
day administration is done by the local military commander. What
about territories with only rotating scientific and military staff,
like South Georgia? What about isolated spots of coral and guano with
no permanent habitation at all, like Howland Island or Clipperton
Island? What about territories south of 60 deg S, covered by the
Antarctic Treaty? What about territories that are half-covered by the
Antarctic Treaty, like the French Southern and Antarctic Territories?
At the time, after a hell of a lot of discussion, I came up with 42
inhabited dependencies (with a permanent civilian population) and
18 "uninhabited" dependencies (including those with only
military/scientific staff). Since then I've bumped the inhabited
total to 43, because the Finnish Aland islands seem to have as much
autonomy as many other places I'd listed.
(The original article appeared in the August/September 1999 edition
of "Wanderlust" magazine, if you're interested.)
Grant