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PassportStamp - the site where you can create your personalized travel maps and see who has visited each of the world's countries
scotland, wales etc.
The ISO doesn't recognise them as being countries ... i found this description of how they decide what to list [this particular page relates to domain names, but the origin is the ISO list] ...
The Agency allows two methods for gaining admission to the prized ISO 3166-1 list. Under the first method, an entry for that country in the UN Bulletin "Country Names" and in the UN list of "Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use" is considered an "authoritative input" for ISO 3166-1. The second method is more complicated, consisting of a request for consists of a request to the ISO 3166 MA that must satisfy the following criteria; to quote those requirements in full:
I. The area name for which the inclusion in ISO 3166-1 is requested represents an area which is physically separated from its parent country. Dependent areas directly bordering on the parent country cannot be included in ISO 3166-1.
II. An interchange requirement exists between the area for which a code element is requested and other physical locations. For the purposes of ISO 3166-1 the term interchange requirement includes a stated and proven necessity to move physical objects (e.g. goods) or non-physical objects (e.g. electronic messages) from one physical location to another.
III. A request for the inclusion of a country name (or the name of a dependent area) in ISO 3166-1 must originate from the national government of the country or from the national standards body of that country. The ISO 3166/MA rejects any request which is not accompanied by a written statement from the national government explicitly agreeing to and supporting the request.
http://blj.ucdavis.edu/article/503/
countries vs states
Although I disagree with the notion of Scotland having a sovereign parliament (it's no different to a city council as it was created by a legislation in the Westminster parliament and can be dismantled by a repeal of said legislation), I do think Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have enough of a cultural distinction from England and each other to be considered seperate countries, albeit not sovereign states.
It appears to me that
It appears to me that passportstamp.com has merely borrowed all of its countries and country facts and flags and country maps straight from the CIA factbook website - https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
This CIA website does not distinguish between the countries inside the United Kingdom, so therefore it seems passportstamp.com has taken itself to do the same.
Personally I don't agree with Scotland & Wales & Northern Ireland being excluded as countries while Jersey and Isle Of Man are included when I could've sworn these were part of the UK.
I just want to be able to put down my entry and exit dates for England & Scotland & Wales rather than the UK as a whole. It also doesn't allow me to say that I haven't been to Northern Ireland.
Whilst lots of the content
Whilst lots of the content does seem to have been taken from the CIA [at least they are good for something], the actual list of countries is from the internationally agreed standard ISO something ...
I agree that it would be good to be able to enter the travel to England/Scotland/Wales - make the site could have regions, which wouldn't be listed as separate countries, but enable users to enter travel details ...
Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland etc
Apologies for coming so late to this thread.
The UK is 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. There are four constituent parts each with some form of devolved government but additionally the inhabitants have representatives at the national parliament in London. That's why the four countries are part of the UK.
The inhabitants of Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney are NOT represented in the London Parliament so are not part of the UK. Their head of state is HM the Queen in a similar way that she is also head of state of Canada, New Zealnad and other Commonwealth countries.
The status of Scotland & NI is not that much different from Bavaria or Baden-Würtemburg in Germany - with their own Land governments. Many countries have interior divsions with semi-autonomous administrations.
USA - 50 states + WDC
India - 28 states +7 union territories
Canada - 12 provinces (I think)
Russia - 21 republics, 48 oblasts, 7 krais etc etc
Okay, so maybe I'm getting
Okay, so maybe I'm getting up on my patriotic high horse here, but to consider either Scotland or Wales not as countries per se is somewhat absurd.
The comparison of the Scottish parliament to a local council is flawed on a number of levels. Granted, the legislation establishing the Scottish parliament is - as with any piece of legislation - easily repealed, but so could that which established the present UK parliament (i.e. the Act of Union 1707). One might apply, somewhat fantastically, such a process of thinking to former colonial states: to say, therefore, that Scotland cannot be considered an independant country because legislation giving it devolution could be repealed is akin to arguing that Rhodesia, beifore its independence, was not an independent country on account of the British government's former ability to repeal local decision making powers held by the state (the seminal case of 'Madzimbamuto' illustrates this point).
Such pernickity argumentation, however, seems somewhat irrelevant. Historically, and arguably in the present context of the SNP's 2007 election win, Scotland has proven itself sufficiently seperate culturally, politically, even religiously to be considered a seperate country. Any comparison with the U.S.A, therefore, seems in this regard somewhat tenuous. Take as an analogy the Scot asked of his/her nationality: they will invariably reply that they are Scotish (i.e. not British, not English etc.). In turn take an individual from any given state in the U.S.A and they will usually reply that they are American (with the usually addendum of the state that they hail from). Moreover, the groupings 'Great Birtain and North Ireland' and the 'United Kingdom' do not represent one country: they represent a collection. To think any other way would amount to arguing that England is not even a seperate state.
So again apologies if this post appears to be a patriotic rant but too often the Scots and the Welsh are marginalised as not being of relevance in the context in question. Not only is this insensitive on myriad levels, it also reflects an anglo-centric opinion of those from outwith these countries themselves.
I visited England and
I visited England and Scotland, and I wish it was possible to mark them on my map seperately. Of course they are both parts of the United Kingdome with Wales and Northern Ireland, but the heritage and cultural experience that I came across in Scotland somewhat differed from that I had in England, and therfore i would have liked to mark them seperately.
Country lists
I looked into it: There are 246 Countries AND Territories, defined by ISO3166, which assigns country codes. Of these the best definition of a "country" seems to be whether it is a UN member (192) PLUS Vatican and Taiwan, which are generally considered to be countries - they do not answer to any other government as do, say, Wales (neither a country or territory, but a "Principality" ), Hong Kong, Cook Is or Antarctica (all Territories).
So that's 194 Countries, leaving 52 Territories and if you look them up you can find the Statii of each of these Territories - "French Collectivity", "Overseas Territory of UK", "Part of the Kingdom of Netherlands" etc. Bottom-line the numbers and definitions add up, so:
194 Countries
52 Territories
----
264 Countries & Territories.
It seems completely logical to me that you can't have "countries within countries" as that would be a nonsense. So Wales, Scotland (sadly) and Northern Ireland (controversely) are NOT countries.
You're welcome, I'll pick up my anorak at the door.
/PJ
Great Idea, badly implemented
This site is a good idea but the country list is just not useful to me.
I want to be able to record visits to places like Scotland, Ulster, Madeira, Minorca, Wales, Corfu, Rhodesia (NOT Southern Rhodesia). Your country list is arbitrary, insensitive and not useful at all.
I'll be back when you fix it.
I think the idea is rather
I think the idea is rather than to have a cobbled together list of all the "countries" people would like to see included (which would undoubtedly be missing certain places and would therefore offend lots of people) the site has chosen to use an internationally recognised "standard" list of countries.
If you want the above places added, why not tell the ISO people that they should be recognised as such?
As soon as places like Minorca, Wales and Ulster are added to the list on here, there will invariably be a whole host of people demanding that other places are added - who decides whether a place is worthy of being added to the list?
I want to know how many "official" countries I have visited and I see that as the purpose of this site. As soon as places like Scotland are added, this is undermined. Perhaps a suggestion would be to include an option whereby people can add comments to their visits, so for example if you visit the United Kingdom, you could add a note to say that you visited Scotland, or Wales etc? Would that keep everyone happy?
Probably not...
Great site by the way!
Michelle
Country list
Seems to me the same arguments for separate recognition apply to bits of Spain (Catalonia & Basques with with their own distinct languages for example). And we could probably carry on carving out newer divisions in former USSR or Yugoslavia. And then there's a bunch of distinct cultural and regional identities in India. Plus Lord knows how many different African nearly-states. And don't forget there's beacoup du monde in Quebec that really don't want to be Canadian. You do know Tibet isn't on the list I suppose? Think I'd better stop there.
No, stick to the official list or you'll regret it. Not even the Dalai Lama could solve this one without a punch up ;)
Alaska anyone ?
Country LISTS (Plural) - Good News
Fascinating thread and lively debate on the "What counts as a 'Country'? question; I love it (no irony intended). It's the 'clarification point' , reply-question, that follows the opener, "Which countries have you visited?". The answer will depend on the frame of reference, or definition, that the questioner had in mind (if indeed the questioner had one, 9 times out of 10 they hadn't thought about it!).
Sites / forums such as this do have to have some basis, external to themselves, for their definitive list; and that's the key to this issue. If it is "inaccurate", it is at least definitively so (thanks to Douglas Adams for that concept!). Personally, I 'recognise' 3 lists, in decreasing order of 'seriousness' these are:
1. List of sovereign nations, as recognised by UN (about 194 last time I looked) - wherein (say) Greenland is NOT recognised, as it's 'part' of Denmark; the implication for UK is that it also does not recognise separately the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Falklands, etc.
(It's the one I think of as the more authoritiative list when I answer the Big Question, and I'm at 58 on this list)
2. The one used by this site, i.e. about 240 (of which I've got 62); and finally,
3. The one used by http://www.travelerscenturyclub.org, which has about 317; the good news is that this one DOES recognise Wales etc. separately from England. And Alaska separately from the rest of the USA. And 7 different 'countries' in Antarctica. And so on - it's a cracking read.
So there you have it - a very wide framework which does separately recognise Wales etc, a very narrow one which doesn't, and this site's one in between. Perfectly reasonable, "you pays your money and you takes your choice"!
Country lists
There is no definitive list of Countries / territories in the World.
I use various lists,
PASSPORTSTAMP 123
UNITED NATIONS 105
TRAVELERS CENTURY CLUB 148
I've got another 19 countries booked up to visit in the next 9 months.
Its the later that I quote when people ask how many Countries I've visited.
As a football fan you could quote members of FIFA. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland get a tick, as with US Samoa.
Keep on visiting.
Ok, so US has states, France
Ok, so US has states, France has departments... but it's not the same thing as Scotland and Wales. Every country has some sort of regional division with less or more power but non of them are countries. Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are countries and should be counted as such. Just because they in a union doesn't mean we shouldn't count them. We could as well count all visits to EU as trips to one country just because there's a common parliament above local parliaments.
"If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else!" Yogi Bear
This all is so very
This all is so very confusing.
When I studied we didn't really care if it was state, county, departments, whatever.
But I have to say that for me, my personal opinion and I think from lots of Map books around the world, Wales, Scotland and England are completely different countries and I surely hope it will continue to be this way because they are so different and each with such wonderful and personal magic that I can't ever put them all under the same name.
Being around my own world.
Crazy Venn Diagram
From http://qntm.org/?uk
Buvet Island vs Scotland, Wales & Northern Island
Many of the observations preceding discussion seem quite plausible in theory. But when we get back to a reality check, we suddenly discover that Bouvet Island, a freezing inaccessible place with a population of zero humans is considered a "country" and that Scotland, Wales and Northern Island (and a number of other places that are defacto a county with there own government, police, army, corps diplomatic etc. but are regarded politically “difficult”) are not. It seems, using a just little common sense, very apparent that there are evidently some flaws in the ISO list.