Talk:Lists of political entities by century

Length of Article

In my opinion this article is a structure which has no information to back it up therefore I suggest that the BC dates are deleted and then also dates below 1000AD as there are no links for those dates.

If no responce is made to contary of the changes by 16 December 2006 then I will go ahead with the edits descibed above.

Rvwedd 18:10 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I have completed the edits described above.

As a new page is created add its link to the article.

Rvwedd 18:23 16 December 2006 (UTC)

map

I guess this is where general discussion of this series should go. I am pretty sure there were no border changes visible on a world map between 1977 and 1990, so I will add Image:BlankMap-World-1985.png to all those pages which have requested maps --Astrokey44 00:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC) On second thought, there were states becoming independent in that time.. I'll wait till the maps highlighting the states independence can be produced --Astrokey44 00:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

A lot of these redirects don't make sense, particularly in the the first half of the twentieth century. They should be removed unless there were literally no changes in the number of countries in that year. Chet Fabulous 23:32, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Soviet Union/USSR

We should decide on one short form to use across the list so that it stays consistent, because right now it says "USSR" from 1956 to 1979 and "Soviet Union" everywhere else. Chet Fabulous 17:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Huge project

Seems to be that this will take a very long time to do for every year before 1900 & will be harder to find sources or references as one goes further back in time. It will need a big team of people to do this, including a lot of research on a purely voluntary basis. Would have been simpler (in my view) to have a list of nations, etc. & all the years they existed beside it. Unfortunately there is no program to then list it by clickable years on here to show them as a cross-reference. That-Vela-Fella 23:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Someone could always start a Wiki-Project. I'm not sure if there's enough people working on these articles to sustain one, though. Chet Fabulous 17:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

what exactly

is the point of this article? honestly, its a big ass list for every year that dosn't show much change once you get past the decolonization point--Jakezing (talk) 22:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

New Discussion

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 13:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire may not qualify as a sovereign state for the series up to 1806. Following the Peace of Westphalia all the states of the Empire were granted sovereignty. Since 1648, it can thus be argued that the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist as a sovereign states, and became purely a union of states, akin to the European Union. I would suggest that we should remove the Holy Roman Empire from any list post 1648. Any feedback from the specialists? Thank you. Johnny83m (talk) 16:28, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

This makes sense, although I think the HRE is too important to remove from the list altogether. Maybe we could include a superscript ^[HRE] or a small (State of the Holy Roman Empire) after every member state (like we have for UN members after 1945).

The lists before the 20th century in general are still works in progress, so feel free to fix any mistakes or omissions you come across. Orange Tuesday (talk) 17:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Decades?

If you look at this list, it remains almost the same from one year to another. I figured there should be a better way to organize the information, and I think it would be better merging it into a decade list. Does anyone have any problems with this merge? If not, I'll go ahead and start the merging process next week. Tavix |  Talk  18:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

sounds like a good idea, i would support that although its going to be alot of work going through each of these articles and you would need to put what year they became sovereign states, hope u have alot of spare time next week lol. Would you change the format of the articles, im not sure if a long list like that is the best way rather than a table or something which could be sortable by name or year. BritishWatcher (talk) 18:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't know. I can imagine it getting pretty cumbersome and difficult to understand for some decades. I've been working on adding dependent territories to the years between 1936 and 1950 and I shudder at the thought of List of sovereign states in the 1940s.

Here's a specific example of a country that'll be difficult to deal with: Cambodia in the '90s. Assuming you're keeping the current formatting conventions, it'll look something like this:

• Cambodia / Kampuchea (to February 3, 1990) (Disputed between two governments until March 15, 1992)
  • State of Cambodia (to March 15, 1992)
  • Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (to February 3, 1990)
  • National Government of Cambodia (from February 3, 1990 to March 15, 1992)
  • United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (from March 15, 1992 to September 24, 1993)
  • Kingdom of Cambodia (from September 24, 1993)

This isn't very clear, to say the least. You could tweak things, obviously, but I think it might turn out to be difficult to keep the amount of detail that exists in the lists right now and keep them useful for an average reader at the same time.

This idea might be worth considering for pages before the 20th century, though. Especially seeing as how no one's working on anything before 1800 right now anyway. List of sovereign states in the 7th century probably makes more sense than having pages for individual years does. Orange Tuesday (talk) 21:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I am actually of the thought that changing this list by decade is a very bad idea. The good thing with the current set up is that the list is an ideal research tool, particularly on specific events. The granularity per year does make a historian's job much easier to track what was the precise world set up at a particular point in time. To change by decade, the list will be unmanageable, but above all, unusable. Think of the 1910s... The variations that happened between 1917-1919 were so significant that one can't easily assume that there was a stable world for the whole decade. The 1920s, are almost as bad, with indpendence movements rising and dying within short periods of time. The 1930s, 1940s, even the 1950s, and most definitely 1980s, 1990s, are as unstable, due to key events that triggered a whole new world order (i.e. 1937-1939 - German expansion and colonialism, 1940-1949 - WW2, 1950-1955 - numerous independent movements lasting till late 1960s, 1989 - collapse of USSR, 1990s - new independent movements). Johnny83m (talk) 23:50, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Dependencies

There are not mentioned dependencies in the lists from 1815 to 1929. To check (I've found some errors) and to make additions (as dependencies) I suggest to use the "World Statesmen" website ( http://www.worldstatesmen.org/ ): is a very complete website for this kind of research. Stanza13 (talk) 01:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"World Statesmen" website

To check (I've found some errors) and to make additions (as dependencies) I suggest to use the "World Statesmen" website ( http://www.worldstatesmen.org/ ): is a very complete website for this kind of research. Stanza13 (talk) 01:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Dai Nam

It is first included in 1880 and doesn't have a "(from ####)". Anyone have an idea when it began for the purposes of these lists? Star Garnet (talk) 16:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The same goes for Jimma, first listed in 1857. Star Garnet (talk) 17:47, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

And Easter Island, first listed in 1875. Star Garnet (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Native American Nations

The lists that this article redirects to severely lacks sovereign Native American nations up until 1492. I'll add as many as I can but you guys, help too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.3.65.75 (talk) 19:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

What to do with this?

THis is apparently an approach of creating a WP:LIST article, presenting a standalone, hand-made, list of sovereign states for each year(!)

Clearly, this is neither encyclopedic, nor is it maintainable in any way. A trivia question like "what were the sovereign states in the year 1837" might come up, and Wikipedia should be able to answer it somehow, but this is a classic case of something that should be solved by categorization, and smart searches of categories, not be handmade lists.

Maintaining this is a disaster. If you find a mistake that crept into these lists, say a flag that has been mistakenly associated with a state for a period of 406 years, you will need to edit 406 individual list articles to fix this. Then say you figure out what the correct flag looked. Again, have fun editing 406 articles. Then perhaps somebody disagrees and wants to revert you. Again, have fun doing your 406 edits. Then perhaps you reach a consensus, and again have to go off on the quest of implementing it in 406 articles. And so on with the next thing that crops up.

This has nothing left to do with creating encyclopedic lists as part of the Wikipedia project... --dab (𒁳) 09:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is a proposal: Do one list per century. Then use complex template syntax to call these lists with a year parameter. You end up having to maintain ten instead of a thousand articles. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Ideally it would be possible to have a central list of the years in which states existed, and the lists could be automatically generated for any given year (but this is semantic wiki territory...) --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 14:24, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Specific years

From 1800 to 1949, is it really necessary to have each year, can't it just be every ten years like from the 1950s onwards? PCH17 (talk) 13:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Started summarizing the 1940s into a single decade update

I could use any help the community is able to offer. The article is named List of sovereign states in the 1940s Benuminister (talk) 05:50, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

When did the Massina Empire start? 1810 or before 1800?

'Sup people! I've been trying to make the pages in the early 1800s consistent, so I was wondering: It was a tad inconsistent in the start date of the Massina Empire. When did it start? Before 1800, or around 1810? Excuse my lack of knowledge, just trying to get a confirmation. Paintspot Infez (talk) 15:14, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Sikkim lingered as a nominally recognized state into the 2000s

Hi, Sikkim remained a 'partly recognized' state up into the 2000s, despite its actually incorporation into India. Sikkim remained officially recognized by the People's Republic of China up into the 2000s. It would be interesting to research exactly to what extent China maintained this symbolic fiction--the PRC might have even funded a sort of Sikkim government-in-exile (or honorary embassy-in-exile). If you look at PRC foreign affairs website archives from the 2000s, Sikkim is always listed alongside all the other countries of the world. Presumably as a playing piece vis-a-vis India's support of the Central Tibetan Administration in exile.

The year when Sikkim was quietly removed could be pinpointed. It was around the time China and India made a joint announcement in regard to Sikkim. Sikkim should be included (at least as a footnote) on these "lists of sovereign states" up to that point. Of course it wasn't actually sovereign anymore, but a sovereign UN member state still recognized it as being sovereign. And that is worth noting.

(Note: even today, the technicalities of the PRC position are vague and murky--PRC might 'technically' still recognize Sikkim even now, even though it's no longer listed on their foreign affairs website.) Traversetravis (talk) 18:39, 3 June 2020‎ (UTC)