Google gave me a few different answers when I googled “is the UK a country”. It said that the UK is:
1. A country
2. An island country
3. A unique country
4. A sovereign state
When I googled if England was a country, most answers said yes, but some said no because it fails to meet all the criteria of an independent country. One source said, “*Although England operates as a semi-autonomous region, it is not officially an independent country and instead is part of the **country** known as the United Kingdom*”
If England isn’t a country, then what is it?
If the UK isn’t a country, then what is it?
If they are both countries, how is it possible to have a country of countries?
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I think people expect that terms like “country” and “nation” will be neatly defined. They aren’t. We have broad criteria for things we generally consider to be countries but those don’t encapsulate every situation given the variety across the globe and through time of what constitutes these things.
England is a country in the sense it has a nation which occupies a particular territory and a government that enforces laws within its borders. That’s not the neatest definition, but the more tightly you attempt to find it the more you’ll find places we’d consider countries but don’t quite fit the bill.
Say a country breaks out into civil war and there’s no clear ruling government. Is it not a country during that period? Is it two countries? Certainly, countries that have had civil wars have ended up as two countries.
Or let’s say a country is invaded and controlled by a foreign government. Is it a country possessed by another one, or is it now part of the ruling country?
There aren’t clear answers to these questions. There’s general concepts of what we think a “country” is and we broadly apply.
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