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. Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the United Nations. 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.
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."
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). The term "country" is also used as a qualifier descriptively, such as country music or country living. (Full article...)
Selected articles to understand countries - show another
A national coat of arms is a symbol which denotes an independent state in the form of a heraldic achievement. While a national flag is usually used by the population at large and is flown outside and on ships, a national coat of arms is normally considered a symbol of the government or (especially in monarchies) the head of state personally and tends to be used in print, on armorial ware, and as a wall decoration in official buildings. The royal arms of a monarchy, which may be identical to the national arms, are sometimes described as arms of dominion or arms of sovereignty.
An important use for national coats of arms is as the main symbol on the covers of passports, the document used internationally to prove the citizenship of a person. Another use for national coats of arms is as a symbol on coins of the associated state for general circulation. (Full article...)
Image 2Comparison map: Greenland, the Faroe Islands (enlarged) and Denmark differ significantly in size. The Danish Realm is spread across the North Atlantic Ocean and North Sea. (from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 4Percentage of women older than 14 who have experienced violence by an intimate partner (from Developing country)
Image 5A formation of human chain at India Gate by the women from different walks of life at the launch of a National Campaign on prevention of violence against women, in New Delhi on 2 October 2009 (from Developing country)
Image 13A map of World Bank high-income economies in 2019; high-income economies are indicated in blue, while former high-income economies are shown in teal.
Image 17Conventions used for the boundary between Asia and Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. The red line shows the most common modern convention, in use since c. 1850.
The Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, thus establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Because the Cape Verde islands were conveniently located to play a role in the Atlantic slave trade, Cape Verde became economically prosperous during the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants, privateers, and pirates. It declined economically in the 19th century after the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade by the British Empire, and many of its inhabitants emigrated during that period. However, Cape Verde gradually recovered economically by becoming an important commercial center and useful stopover point along major shipping routes. Cape Verde became independent in 1975. (Full article...)
Iran is one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the Elamites in the fourth millennium BC. It was first unified as a state by the Medes in the seventh century BC and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largest and most powerful empires in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC, subsequently dividing Iran into several Hellenistic states. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC, which was succeeded in the third century AD by the Sasanian Empire. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamization. Iran became a major centre of Islamic culture and learning, and its culture, language, and customs spread across the Muslim world. A series of native Iranian Muslim dynasties ruled the country until the Seljuk and the Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries. In the 16th century, the native Safavids re-established a unified Iranian state with TwelverShia Islam as the official religion, marking the beginning of modern Iranian history.
In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts. Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains, eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam. In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India. In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion. The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace, leaving a legacy of luminous architecture. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root. A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule. In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration. (Full article...)
One of the cradles of civilization, China has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era, with the earliest dynasties emerging in the Yellow River basin before the late second millennium BCE. The eighth to third centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature, philosophy, and historiography. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor for the first time. Appointed non-hereditary officials began ruling counties instead of the aristocracy, ushering in more than two millennia of imperial dynasties including the Qin, Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the building of the Great Wall, Chinese culture—including languages, traditions, architecture, philosophy and technology—flourished and has heavily influenced East Asia and beyond.
Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. Countries are sorted by nominal GDP estimates from financial and statistical institutions, which are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. Nominal GDP does not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, even though they often make little or no difference in the standard of living of its population.
Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made based on purchasing power parity (PPP), to adjust for differences in the cost of living in different countries. Other metrics, nominal GDP per capita and a corresponding GDP (PPP) per capita are used for comparing national standard of living. On the whole, PPP per capita figures are less spread than nominal GDP per capita figures.
The rankings of national economies over time have changed considerably; the United States surpassed the British Empire's output around 1916, which in turn had surpassed the Qing dynasty in aggregate output decades earlier. Since China's transition to a socialist market economy through controlled privatisation and deregulation, the country has seen its ranking increase from ninth in 1978, to second in 2010; China's economic growth accelerated during this period and its share of global nominal GDP surged from 2% in 1980 to 18% in 2021. Among others, India has also experienced an economic boom since the implementation of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. (Full article...)
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