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Honestly (lemmy.today)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Define country, because the American government is actually one of the oldest continuous governmental systems in the world. Certainly the oldest republic that isn't a micro-state.

Now if you want argue that France, for example, is an older country than America because there's been a fairly stable region largely called France for several centuries you can, you'd just be wrong.

Now if you want to start talking about nations that's different, but also a much, much blurrier subject in general.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I'm using the term to mean more or less the collectively agreed upon "identity" of a state. Not merely a single contiguous government (for the same reason you just bring up, people still consider France to be France even though the government has changed fundamentally many times over the years), but I'm not using it to just mean "nation" either, since were France to be completely conquered and annexed by a foreign power, the French nation, as in the group of people, would still exist, but the country would not, at least until such time as it could be recreated, or for a different reason, that one can have a national identity split between different states, or a state involving different such groups.