The Countries

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the southern countries | the mid-eastern countries | the eastern countries

Imagined communities

How do people organize themselves? Families, of course. Groups of families are tribes. They share first, a language, and then the benefits and burdens of living together. They also share geography. In a real community, everyone knows everyone else.

What's the next largest unit of organization? What happens when the community gets so geographically large that it is impossible for everyone to know everyone else, even though they share a language?

At that point, we have what are called imagined communities. For most of human history, they were held together by either religion ("God says so") or a person ("The King says so") and often the person -- and his/her direct descendants -- claimed to have his/her authority from God, aka the "divine right" of a monarchy or empire. Some of the largest and most famous:

Persian Empire in the Mideast
Mongol Empire in Asia
Holy Roman Empire in Europe
Inca Empire in S. America
Ming Dynasty in China
today's Emperor Akihito of Japan. Just like every Japanese emperor for the last 2,500 years, all all of them his grandfathers, Akihito claims to be a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. For first 90% of that time, the United States did not exist.

When we speak of history, we are often speaking of the grand conflicts between mighty empires for territory and resources. When we look at the rise and fall of these empires, we see the dependence on the personality and character of the ruler. In that world, wisdom and virtue didn't help much.

Today, what we call the modern world is organized by countries. So let's look at that more closely.

Countries

Until 1648, sovereign nations and political boundaries were based on war, religion or ethnicity. The Peace of Westphalia introduced a new concept, the nation-state. As the awkward hyphen suggests, this new entity, what we commonly call a country, balances two unequal imagined communities:

a political and geopolitical state

a cultural and/or ethnic nation

"Nation-state" implies that the two geographically coincide, but in every one of our countries, we will see that the state is trying, often unsuccessfully, to contain several nations. Both, however, are imagined communities.

The just over two hundred countries in the United Nations are almost all collections of disparate groups of people who happen to live in one of 200+ geographical entities, often with highly arbitrary borders. These two hundred contain, all together, thousands of ethnic groups and languages, which means thousands of different cultures. This course is titled the Arts in Society, and the arts come from a culture, not from a country.

For example, in the late 1800's, rather than have wars about it, some of the European nations (France, Germany, England, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Belgium) carved up Africa according to spheres of influence, noted on the map above by colors: blue for France, purple for Portuguese

The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914. ... The last 59 years of the 19th century saw transition from 'informal imperialism' of control through military influence and economic dominance to that of direct rule.

You are each studying one country, one state, but several cultural nations, and you need to keep them straight. They also provide helpful search terms. For example, the country of Ghana is named after an ancient empire that was in another part of Africa. Geographically, they share no territory, the ancient empire and the modern country by the same name. The current physical territory called Ghana was for centuries part of the Ashanti Empire. If you want to know more about the traditional arts in Ghana, using the search term "ashanti" will get you interesting results that using "ghana" would not get.

Then there's the undiscovered country of Zomia, the transnational highlands of Southeast Asia that have never been controlled by the nations within whose border they lie.

Required reading

Three web pages for you to read about your country:

The Wikipedia entry for your country. For most of our countries, the Wikipedia has supplementary articles focusing on aspects of the country, for example, the music of South Korea.

At EveryCulture.com, the entry about your country will have some overlap with the Wikipedia entry, but it will cover many other aspects.

At Freedom House, you can learn more about the politics of your country, especially the recent events that may help with your timeline assignment.

Our countries - Spring 2012

The information on about the countries below came from the Wikipedia entry for each country as well as the web sites linked from the table about the Netherlands. I have provided the info about the U.S. as a point of reference.

	The Netherlands Nederland (official, Dutch) Holland (common)	United States
Meet Laura Dekker "Today is the last time that my days start in an endless valley of waves and end in an endless valley of waves" - from Laura's blog January 21	Laura, sixteen, became the youngest person to sail around the world alone when she landed on St. Maarten's (the Dutch island in the Caribbean) on January 21, 2012, in her 38-foot Guppy. Her wall on Facebook. Feature film to follow. Schoolgirl sailor triumphs after battle with authorities
population	16,600,000	310,000,000
% speaks English as first or second language	87	95
land area (sq mi)	16,000	3,700,000
capital largest city (pop)	Den Haag Amsterdam 1,000,000	Washington New York 20,000,000
gov't type	Parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy	Federal presidential constitutional republic
head of state	Queen Beatrix	Barack Obama
head of gov't	Mark Rutte	Barack Obama
groups	Dutch 80%, EU 5%, Indonesian, Turkish, Surinamese, Moroccan 10%	white 80%, black 13%, Asian 5%
languages spoken at home	Dutch	English 80%, Spanish 12%
religions	secular 57%, Christian 37%, Muslim 6%	Christian 78%, secular 16%,  Jewish 2%
currency - Xrate	1 US dollar = .78 euro
lowest price for round-trip plane ticket  to capital Jan 17 - May 7, 2012 (US$) at CheapTickets.com	1,500 Brussels is 850
I'net TLD links	.nl wikipedia google translate & news map the Netherlands & The Hague images night life & video hip hop trance music is very popular in Western Europe Meet Armin van Buuren, from Leiden, the Netherlands. Voted number one in DJ Magazine's annual list of the world's most popular DJs in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2011, he took second place.

	The Southern Countries
	Argentina República Argentina (Spanish)	Brazil República Federativa do Brasil  (Portuguese)	Nigeria Jamhuriyar Taraiyar Nijeriya  (Hausa) Ȯha nke Ohaneze Naíjíríà (Igbo) Àpapọ̀ Olómìnira ilẹ̀ Nàìjíríà  (Yoruba)	South Africa Republiek van Suid-Afrika (Afrikaans) iRiphabliki yeSewula Afrika (S. Ndebele) iRiphabliki yomZantsi Afrika (Xhosa)
Welcome to my country!
population	40,000,000	192,000,000	152,000,000	51,000,000
% speaks English	< 1	< 1	53	29
area (sqmi)	1,100,000	3,300,000	350,000	470,000
capital largest city	Buenos Aires 13,100,000	Brasilia Sao Paulo 20,400,000	Abuja Lagos 10,900,000	Pretoria, Cape Town Johannesburg 7,600,000
gov't type	Republic	Presidential Federal Republic	Presidential Federal Republic	Constitutional parliamentary republic
head of state	Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner	Dilma Rousseff	Goodluck Jonathan	Jacob Zuma
head of gov't	Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner	Dilma Rousseff	Goodluck Jonathan	Jacob Zuma
groups	European (Spanish, Italian) 97%, Mestizo 3%	White 54%, Brown 39%, Black 6%	Fulani/Hausa 29%, Yoruba 21%, Igbo 18%	Black 80%, White 9%, Coloured 9%, Asian 2%
languages	Spanish	Portuguese	Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba	gov't, media: English; home: Zulu 24%, Xhosa 18%, Afrikaans 13%
religions	Christian 92%	Christian 89%	Muslim 50%, Christian 48%	Christian 80% (African Indigenous Churches)
currency to 1 US$	4.31 ARS Argentine Peso	1.7 BRL Brazilian Real	162 NGN Nigerian Naira	8 ZAR S. African Rand
plane (US$)	1,500	1,150	1,200 via NYC and Paris	1,300 via Atlanta (15 hours!)
I'net TLD links	.ar wikipedia google translate & news map Argentina & Buenos Aires images night life & video hip hop	.br wikipedia google translate & news map Brazil & Brazilia images night life & video hip hop	.ng wikipedia google translate & news map Nigeria & Abuja images night life & video hip hop	.za wikipedia google translate & news map South Africa & Cape Town images night life & video hip hop

	The Mid-Eastern Countries
	Egypt Arab Republic of Egypt جمهورية مصر العربية Ǧumhūriyyat Maṣr al-ʿArabiyyah	Morocco Kingdom of Morocco المملكة المغربية	Iran Islamic Republic of Iran جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān	Turkey Türkiye Cumhuriyeti
Welcome to my country!
population	81,000,000	32,000,000	75,000,000	77,000,000
% speaks English	< 1	< 1	< 1	17
land area (sq mi)	380,000	170,000	630,000	300,000
capital largest city	Cairo 17,500,000	Rabat Casablanca 3,300,000	Tehran 7,300,000	Ankara Istanbul 13,300,000
gov't type	military junta	Unitary parliamentary democracy and Constitutional Monarchy	Unitary state, Islamic republic	Parliamentary republic
head of state	Mohamed Hussein Tantawi	Mohammed VI	Mahmoud Ahmadinejad	Abdullah Gul
head of gov't	Kamal Ganzouri	Abdelillah Benkirane	Ali Larijani	Recep Tayyip Erdogan
groups	Egyptian 99.6%	Berber 99.1%	Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Kurd 7%	Turkish 80%, Kurdish 20%
languages	Arabic	Arabic	Persian, Kurdish	Turkish 75%, Kurdish 18%
religions	Muslim	Muslim	Muslim (Shi'a)	Muslim
currency to 1 US$	6 EGP Egyptian Pound	8.7 MAD Moroccan Dirham	11,280 IRR Iranian Rial	1.8 TRY Turkish Lira
plane (US$)	3,500	3,500 via Chicago and Paris	1,100 via Istanbul	1,000
I'net TLD links	.eg .misr wikipedia google translate & news | map Egypt & Cairo images night life & video hip hop	.ma wikipedia google translate & news map Morocco & Rabat images night life & video hip hop	.ir wikipedia google translate & news map Iran & Tehran images for night life & video hip hop	.tr wikipedia google translate & news map Turkey & Ankara images night life & video hip hop

	The Eastern Countries
	India Bhārat (official name in Hindi) Hindustan (unofficial name in Hindi/Urdu)	Pakistan Islamic Republic of Pakistan اسلامی جمہوریۂ پاکستان Islāmī Jumhūrī-ye Pākistān	China People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国 Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó	Korea Republic of Korea 대한민국 大韓民國 Daehanminguk
Welcome to my country!
population	1,200,000,000	180,000,000	1,300,000,000	49,000,000
% speaks English	11	11	< 1	< 1
land area (sq mi)	1,200,000	300,000	3,700,000	38,000
capital largest city	New Delhi Mumbai 21,200,000	Islamabad Karachi 13,500,000	Beijing Shanghai 18,700,000	Seoul 20,500,000
gov't type	Federal parliamentary constitutional republic	Federal Parliamentary republic	Single party-led state	Presidential republic
head of state	Pratibha Patil	Asif Zardari	Hu Jintao	Lee Myung-bak
head of gov't	Manmohan Singh	Yousaf Gillani	Wen Jiabao	Kim Hwang-sik
groups	Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%	Punjabis 45%, Pashtuns 16%, Sindhis 14%	Han Chinese 92%	Korean 99.9%
languages	Hindi, English	Urdu, English	Mandarin	Korean
religions	Hindu 80%, Muslim 13%, Christian 3%, Sikh 2%	Muslim 97%, Christian 1.5%, Hindu 1.5%	Buddhist, Taoist, folk religions	secular 47%, Christian 29%, Buddhist 23%
currency to US$	50 INR Indian Rupee	90 PKR Pakistani Rupee	6.3 CNY Chinese Yuan Renminbi	1,142.50 KRW S. Korean Won
plane (US$)	1,400	1,350	1,400	1,450
I'net TLD links	.in wikipedia google translate & news map India & New Delhi images night life & video hip hop	.pk wikipedia google translate & news map Pakistan &  Karachi images night life & video hip hop	.cn wikipedia google translate & news map China & Beijing images night life & video hip hop	.kr wikipedia google translate & news map Korea & Seoul images night life & video hip hop