From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe

Grant Hutchison

The following article was written by Grant Hutchison and first appeared in 'Wanderlust', in a slightly different form. It has been reproduced with the permission of both the author and the magazine.

So how many countries are there in the world?

Well, first let's define "country". A trawl through various dictionaries and encyclopaedias provides something like: "The territory that falls under the control of a single government." But of course governments rely on recognition from other governments if their territorial claims are to be respected. So, restricting ourselves to those governments that are widely recognised internationally, the total number of independent countries in the world comes to 193 - the absolute must-haves for all country-baggers. New additions include Eritrea (1993), Palau (1994) and East Timor (2002). A recent near-miss came in 1998, when a referendum on the Caribbean island of Nevis fell short of the majority required for secession from the federation of St Kitts and Nevis. Western Sahara, currently occupied by Morocco, has been anticipating an independence referendum since 1991, and the endless political manoeuvring over the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip continue.

To the core list, we might add other territories with varying claims to nationhood. Turkish North Cyprus hasn't been recognised internationally, but has maintained all the apparatus of government for more than 20 years. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (occupying two buildings in Rome) behaves like a tiny country, with its own head of state, currency and passports - and is recognised by more than forty governments world-wide. There are long-occupied territories that still claim nationhood, like Tibet, and there are breakaway states with their own de facto governments, like Bougainville and Abkhazia. In this grey area, we really end up having to make our own choices.

Several countries administer overseas territories. Some treat these as being no different from the rest of the country - Spain, for instance, administers the Canary Islands as if they're just another Spanish region; Portugal does the same with the Azores and Madeira. These islands are effectively part of the parent country, just like the Hawaiian Islands in the USA. More commonly, the overseas territories are treated as "dependencies" - they have a limited degree of self-government, but are subject to some of the laws and treaties of the parent state as well. Sometimes the idea of "self-government" gets stretched a little - some dependencies are populated by no-one but military personnel or scientists; others are completely uninhabited, and are "governed" from a desk somewhere in an administrative office on the mainland.

The UK has sixteen overseas territories, so the sun still doesn't set on the British Empire. In the Pacific, there's Pitcairn. In the Indian Ocean, there's the British Indian Ocean Territory - a naval base in the Chagos Archipelago. And then there's Gibraltar, the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, several mid-Atlantic islands, and a few archipelagos in the Caribbean. Some UK dependencies even have dependencies of their own - Saint Helena has responsibility for Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; Guernsey administers all the other Channel Islands except Jersey.

The United States claims fourteen dependencies, but the major population centres are in Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands. The rest are little more than isolated specks of guano and coral - Palmyra Atoll has the distinction of being the world's only privately owned dependency.

France administers an assortment of eleven overseas territories, collectivités territoriales and overseas departments, as well as a scatter of uninhabited islands in the Indian Ocean (administered from Réunion), and Clipperton Rock in the east Pacific. The overseas departments (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion) were effectively part of France until 1982, when they were granted their own locally-elected Assemblies.

Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands also have dependencies, while China administers Hong Kong and the previous Portuguese colony of Macao as Special Administrative Regions. The Åland Islands in Finland are considered an "autonomous commune". And finally, the tiny islands of Agalega and Saint Brandon (population 170) are a dependency of Mauritius.

By my count, there are 63 dependencies of various kinds, of which only 44 have a permanent civilian population. (All this ignores Antarctica, where territorial claims are in abeyance under the Antarctic Treaty.)

Can there ever be a definitive list of countries and dependencies? I don't think so. There are too many shades of meaning to the phrases "internationally recognised" and "self-government". And that's fine by me - at the end of the day, travel is about broadening horizons, not list-ticking.

                               ("Uninhabited" dependencies include those with only a military/scientific purpose.)

                                                                                                                                                By Grant Hutchison