How many dependencies are there in the world

This list was used to assign peaks to countries, come up with country high point lists, and so on. Since this list is used quite a bit, I thought it important to explain and justify how it came about and where the magic number comes from. Most independent nation-states are members of the United Nations, whose membership stands at since the admission of South Sudan in The only independent nation-state that is not a U.

Therefore, there is little argument that there are independent nation-states in the world. Figuring the number of dependencies is a much more difficult task. While the old colonial empires have been greatly reduced, there are still a large number of dependencies scattered about the globe, many of them small islands or island groups.

Most of these are formally organized into official dependent territories, but there are many small islands offshore from an independent nation-state whose status is unclear. Any enumeration of dependencies must include some judgment calls. The political status of a place is the most important factor--if the administration of a political entity is special in some significant way, such as limited self-government, then that is a clear sign that it is a dependency.

The other important factor is how far offshore from the controlling country the dependency is--any place that is a whole ocean away from the home country or more is usually a dependency and not part of the home country. A list of the world's dependencies could have anywhere from 40 to 70 members, depending on how you decide to classify places.

I went through and made a bunch of judgment calls and came up with a list of 55 dependencies that I am pretty happy with. Below is a list of the nine "controlling countries" that politically control dependencies, with the number of dependencies controlled and a list of them.

To see a list of all the individual judgment calls I made in coming up with this list, you can look at my List of Dependencies with Commentary. Another issue is Antarctica. Seven nations Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom have pie-shaped territorial claims in the continent, but by general international agreement Antarctica is considered international territory and not part of any country. The claims are not recognized by most other countries, and in my list I am including Antarctica as its own entity, neither an independent nation-state nor a dependency.

For the purposes of this classification, the British and French territories are deemed to exist, but only include these northern islands South Georgia and the South Sandwiches for the British dependency, the Kerguelen group and others for the French. The Antarctic territories of the other five Antarctic claimants are considered non-existent. There are several areas that fall into the gray area between an independent nation-state and dependency. Again, the number of such places could be as large as 15 or 20 depending on the judgments made.

I have decided to minimize the number of these areas and have come up with a list of only four:. In addition, there are many areas that are in dispute between two or more nations, including some that no one nation really controls. Somalia spectacularly fails to meet this criterion, yet still counts as a sovereign state. However its northern bit, Somaliland, has met this standard with increasing impressiveness since it declared independence in It has a currency, car registrations and even biometric passports.

But only private firms such as DHL, a courier company, link it to the outside world. International postal service requires membership of the Universal Postal Union, which for non-members of the UN need approval by at least two-thirds of that body's members.

The African Union refuses to recognise Somaliland's independence because it dislikes changing any African borders Get your bearings Here's a good brain-teaser Answers on the back of a postcard. If you fancy taking a quiz, here's a good quick one.

It is interesting to think that on the eve of the First World War, imperialism had reduced the number of independent countries in the world to just The advent of decolonisation was the leading cause to the dramatic increase in this number. In the number of independent countries was In , And today , with the biggest increases coming in the s mainly in Africa where 25 new states were formed in alone and in in Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union fell apart.

Today many of the new countries are tiny. Czech Republic Czechia. United Arab Emirates. Papua New Guinea. Sierra Leone. El Salvador. State of Palestine. Costa Rica. Central African Republic. New Zealand. Bosnia and Herzegovina. North Macedonia. Equatorial Guinea. Trinidad and Tobago. Solomon Islands. Cabo Verde. Saint Lucia. Antigua and Barbuda. Marshall Islands. San Marino.