Greenland, Scotland, Wales, Aruba, Sint Maarten.
What do these lands all have in common?
Well, not much, except for one thing: they are all countries, except not really, they
are some of the world’s few constituent countries.
So, are they countries, or are they territories?
Or are they something else entirely that will only take about 30 seconds to explain, but
which I will also forcibly stretch out into a 4-5 minute video?
There are numerous definitions to the term “constituent countries”, for example,
the European Union uses the term to refer to its member nations, and it is also the
term used for individual countries when talking about bilateral meetings and negotiations.
However, that’s boring, and you probably already have an image in your mind when you
think of constituent states, like what I mentioned in the intro.
There are three main entities with these such constituent states: the United Kingdom with
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (yes, Northern Ireland is a country, not a
province); the Kingdom of the Netherlands with the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao and
Sint Maarten; and the Kingdom of Denmark with Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
In a sense, each of these “countries” make up their whole nations as a whole, so
“the Netherlands” or “Denmark” can refer to either the constituent countries,
or the whole overarching authority ruling these lands.
This guarantees the other states some kind of autonomy, as these states don’t necessarily
have to listen to London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen about everything, and can run a lot of their
own affairs.
This is probably most strongly seen in how the Netherlands, the UK (for now), and the
Denmark are in the EU, but some of their constituent countries (like Greenland) are not, despite
being kind of in the same country, but also kind of not.
Okay, so are these places countries or not?
Well, yes… and no, it really depends on how you look at it.
You see, Aruba is its own country, but is also part of the Netherlands, but is also
in the middle of the Caribbean, but is also in the EU, but also doesn’t use Euros, even
though the Netherlands is a Eurozone country.
Well that probably wasn’t too helpful, so let’s look at another example, New Zealand.
The Realm of New Zealand also contains three constituent countries, New Zealand, the Cook
Islands and Niue, but this whole kizspazzle works a bit differently to what’s going
on on the exact opposite side of the world.
You see, the Cook Islands and Niue are kind of their own countries, but have a free association
with New Zealand, where New Zealand leaves them self governing, but administers foreign
relations on their behalf, and also grants their citizens New Zealand citizenship.
All these territories are also governed by the Queen of New Zealand (who also just so
happens to be the Queen of the United Kingdom).
Similar to what we talked about last week, many countries (notably Russia) have partially
independent nations and republics within their borders (some even with their own anthems
[anthem of the Tuva Republic]).
However, these are not independent nations, but small ethnic enclaves deemed too distinct
to be fully under Moscow’s control, so some leeway is granted for them to kind of just
do their own thing.
On the other end of the spectrum, Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands are all completely
independent nations, with UN seats and everything.
However, they have signed a Compact of Free Association with the United States, when they
got their independence from the US.
This means that the countries can be fully independent, but their citizens can freely
live and work in the US, but in exchange, the US can build military bases on these islands
(which could be pretty important in the near future) and US citizens can live and work
in these countries as long as they want without a visa (well, there’s a 1-year limit in
Palau, but still).
There are numerous other examples of partially independent areas that still fall under a
country’s total control, and ultimately lose this video’s original questions in
a churning stew of questions about sovereignty.
Like, if Greenland isn’t independent, what about places like Hong Kong and Macau, or
the individual Emirates of the United Arab Emirates?
And don’t even get me started on all the various independence movements out there.
Ultimately, this proves once again that the answer to the question “what the hell even
is a country, anyway?” is little more than… hell if I know.
Thanks for watching this video, and if you enjoyed it, be sure to give it a like and
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Okay, bye.