ANNOUNCING MY NEW PROJECT: THE NATION STATE

Due to my recent interest in political history and geography, I began to wonder about the current state of the world. Why is it that we have six continents carved up with defined borders that contain almost two hundred unique nations? How did we arrive at that number? According to the countries that are recognized by the UN, we have 193 states. But per the UN’s own recognition of additional states, we have 195 (Two UN dependency states: Vatican City and Palestine). Some countries recognize more. For instance, the United States recognizes 196 nations including Kosovo (Claimed by Serbia), Niue and the Cook Islands (Often claimed by New Zealand). Besides these nation states, there are either 58 according to WorldAtlas or 71 according to Visual Capitalist dependencies and territories that are part of larger, imperial nations scattered around the globe. Any of these dependencies could become a new nation state upon declaring independence. In all, these nation-state/dependencies total over 17,500 global ethnicities. Since I was brought onto this Earth in 1974, we have added 57 nations to this planet net total losing some massive countries and empires (Like the Soviet Union) and gaining many others like the remnants of the collapsed Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the end of the British Empire, along with the end of all colonization in Africa. Despite historical studies that often focus on famous empires like the Egyptians, Romans and Mongolians, the nation state is new to the human experience. The Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 that ended the dual THIRTY YEARS WAR (Often referred to by historians as the first actual world war) and EIGHTY YEARS WAR (The War for Dutch Independence that started their empire and began the decline of the Spanish) which caused approximately eight million deaths helped create a new geo-political reality called the Westphalian system. This new political system was based around the idea of respecting individual nation state sovereignty. The Peace of Westphalia, which is often taught as a historical afterthought, remains as important as any other era like the Renaissance or the Middle Ages due to the changes it created. The idea was formulated by the natural law theorist Hugo Grotius and the state theorist Jean Bodin and is still engrained into the UN Charter,

“Nothing shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”

This international system was practiced by civilized nations until the dual World Wars in the 20th Century where new ideologies revolving around class conflict and new financial ideas clashed for supremacy. Even though peace was temporarily created inside Europe, all the Westphalian nations continued fighting wars on a regular basis into the mid-19th Century, often expanding their borders to gain more territorial sovereignty over a larger chunk of the planet.

These essays will dive into each nation’s history, founding, and current political system practiced whether a Republic, a Kingdom, a Federation, etc. When a territory or exception to the rule is discussed based on the current global order, this will also get its own essay explaining its circumstances.
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 I hope you enjoy this project. Have a good 2026 everyone.