Country Vst
Brett Mcgalliard
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, states with limited recognition, constituent country, or a dependent territory.[1][2][3][4] Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the United Nations.[5] There is no universal agreement on the number of "countries" in the world since several states have disputed sovereignty status, limited recognition and a number of non-sovereign entities are commonly called countries.[6][5] "Country" can also be a region that sovereign states here jointly claim sovereignty over, eg Korea.[7]
The definition and usage of the word "country" are 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."[8]
Areas much smaller than a political entity may be referred to as a "country", such as the West Country in England, "big sky country" (used in various contexts of the American West), "coal country" (used to describe coal-mining regions), or simply "the country" (used to describe a rural area).[9][10] The term "country" is also used as a qualifier descriptively, such as country music or country living.[11]
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), "coal country" (used to describe coal-mining regions in several sovereign states) and many other terms.[9] 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.[14] The term "country" in English may also be wielded to describe rural areas, or used in the form "countryside." Raymond Williams, a Welsh scholar, wrote in 1975:[15]
'Country' and 'city' are very powerful words, and this is not surprising when we remember how much they seem to stand for in the experience of human communities. In English, 'country' is both a nation and a part of a 'land'; 'the country' can be the whole society or its rural area. In the long history of human settlements, this connection between the land from which directly or indirectly we all get our living and the achievements of human society has been deeply known.
Often, a country is presumed to be identical with a collection of citizens. Sometimes, people say that a country is a project, or an idea, or an ideal. Occasionally, philosophers entertain more metaphysically ambitious pictures, suggesting that a country is an organic entity with its own independent life and character, or that a country is an autonomous agent, just like you or me. Such claims are rarely explained or defended, however, and it is not clear how they should be assessed. We attribute so many different kinds of properties to countries, speaking as though a country can feature wheat fields waving or be girt by sea, can have a founding date and be democratic and free, can be English speaking, culturally diverse, war torn or Islamic.
When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, states with limited recognition, constituent country, or a dependent territory.[1][2][3] A sovereign state is a political entity that has supreme legitimate authority over a part of the world.[18] 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.[5][6] No definition is binding on all the members of the community of nations on the criteria for statehood.[19][6] State practice relating to the recognition of a country typically falls somewhere between the declaratory and constitutive approaches.[20][21][22][23][24] International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined territory, a government not under another, and the capacity to interact with other states.[25]
The Montevideo Convention in Article 3 implies that a sovereign state can still be a sovereign state even if no other countries recognise that it exists.[26][28] As a restatement of customary international law, the Montevideo Convention merely codified existing legal norms and its principles,[29] and therefore does not apply merely to the signatories of international organizations (such as the United Nations),[6][30][27] but to all subjects of international law as a whole.[31][32] A similar opinion has been expressed by the European Economic Community,[33] reiterated by the European Union, in the principal statement of its Badinter Committee,[34] and by Judge Challis Professor, James Crawford.[30]
According to the constitutive theory a state is a legal entity of international law if, and only if, it is recognised as sovereign by at least one other country.[35] Because of this, new states could not immediately become part of the international community or be bound by international law, and recognised nations did not have to respect international law in their dealings with them.[36] In 1912, L. F. L. Oppenheim said the following, regarding constitutive theory:
International Law does not say that a State is not in existence as long as it is not recognised, but it takes no notice of it before its recognition. Through recognition only and exclusively a State becomes an International Person and a subject of International Law.[37]
..the recognition of an independent and sovereign state is an act of sovereignty pertaining each member of the international community, an act to be taken individually, and it is, therefore, up to member states and each OAU power [to decide] whether to recognise or not the newly independent state.
Some countries, such as Taiwan, Sahrawi Republic and Kosovo have disputed sovereignty and/or limited recognition among some countries.[39][40] 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.[41] The Kingdom of the Netherlands consists of the Netherlands proper, Aruba, Curaao, and Sint Maarten.[42] The United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.[43]
Dependent territories are the territories of a sovereign state that are outside of its proper territory. These include the overseas territories of New Zealand, the dependencies of Norway, the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, the territories of the United States, the external territories of Australia, the special administrative regions of China, the autonomous regions of the Danish Realm, land, Overseas France, and the Caribbean Netherlands. Some dependent territories are treated as a separate "country of origin" in international trade,[44][45] such as Hong Kong,[46][47][48] Greenland,[49] and Macau.[50]
Most countries have a long name and a short name.[52] 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.[53][54][55][56] 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.[57] 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 for years due to a conflict with the similarly named Macedonia region in Greece.[58] The ISO 3166-1 standard currently comprises 249 countries, 193 of which are sovereign states that are members of the United Nations.[59]
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.[60] However, these were still mostly used in the context of marine identification.[61]
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 called for people to begin thinking of themselves as citizens 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.[62][63] With nationalism becoming common across Europe in the 19th century, national flags came to represent most of the states of Europe.[62] 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 or later Pan-Arab colors.[64]
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 process.[65] 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.[66] 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.[67]
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