Talk:List of sovereign states by date of formation

What is the point of this article?

The majority of dates given on this page are completely wrong. People seem to not understand what a country or sovereign state is CicolasMoon (talk) 20:27, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

That's a separate issue from the major problem. If you have specific dates to contest, correct unsourced ones with your own source or come here and explain what was wrong with the sourced date provided. — LlywelynII 08:57, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

How am I to correct these dates if I don't understand the purpose of this article? CicolasMoon (talk) 12:52, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

The purpose is set out in lead, below is a list of sovereign states with the dates of their formation (date of their independence or of their constitution) etc. Selfstudier (talk) 13:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

And what does "date of current form of government" mean? Half these sovereign states listed are not sovereign states. Take the ROC and PRC for example, "date of acquisition of sovereignty" said to be 1600 BC. Like, come on, what is that even supposed to mean. I wouldn't mind sorting this article out btw CicolasMoon (talk) 22:07, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I believe that this article is unclear and confusing. Meanings of a number of terms used in the table column headers are undefined and those terms appear to have been taken to have various meanings row-by-row in the tables. I suggest that there be discussion here about what terms are problematic, how clarifications should be presented and - possibly in term-by-term subsections here - about what those definitions are for purposes of this article. Once that is decided and documented, the article content should be auditedand edited to fit those clarifications. This is a non-trivial piece of work needing editorial consensus during its accomplishment. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 02:20, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I'll expand on this in a new topic (this is also related to the Israel discussion we had below). Vegan416 (talk) 11:39, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

UK: Date of current form of government should be 1707, not 1922

I don't think it's correct to say that the United Kingdom's current form of government was formed in 1922, with the independence of (most of the island of) Ireland. The government before and after 1922 was functionally the same, with the same constitution, practices, etc, just with a large chunk of territory lost. The Acts of Union between Scotland and England(+Wales) was what actually formed the current system of government. An argument could be made that the current form of government relies on a Prime Minister, so then the current form of government would be 1721.

The UK's situation is unclear, but regardless I don't think picking 1922 as the date of the current form of government makes much sense 143.167.240.144 (talk) 02:48, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Israel's first acquisition of sovereignty should be around 930 BC to match other ancient nations

I have noticed that for countries of ancient nations in this list the "date of acquisition of sovereignty" is the date of establishment of the earliest kingdoms even if that happened thousands of years ago, even if they are of a different nation and culture, and even if that sovereignty was disrupted since that time. For example: Iran is given the date 2600 BC, the time of the establishment of the Elamite kingdom in that area, even though the Elamites are a different nation from the Persians living there now (completely different language). India is given the date 2500 BC - the date of the Indus Valley Civilization, though no one knows if it had any cultural or genetic connection to modern-day Indians, and though it had lost its sovereignty several times in the interim period. Most recently to the British for 100 years. Japan got the date 660 BC although is mostly considered legendary. And there are more examples like this in the list. By the same logic, the "date of acquisition of sovereignty" of Israel should be set at the establishment of the first Jewish kingdoms in the holy land which was about 930 BC (according to latest estimates). This kingdoms were called Israel and Judea. Their historicity is undisputed. And their connection to modern Israel is obvious as well - same languages, same name, same religion, genetic descent etc. Vegan416 (talk) 12:08, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Wtmitchell Vegan416 (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Vegan416 -- I am traveling in the non-urban Philippines, my laptop died and is not easily replaceable. I am poor at editing WP by cellphone so i must defer comment even though I would like to opine on this here/now. 122.53.92.30 (talk) 22:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Wtmitchell

Can you opine now? It's been two months... Vegan416 (talk) 06:12, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

OK, but I'm not focused on Israel here. This article is not a big interest item for me, but it's on my watchlist because of the messy situation regarding declaration of independence and acquisition of sovereignty (examples: Philippines, and the U.S.). The former generally gets celebrated as if it were equivalent to the latter, and it is not -- particularly if a failed revolution is involved. I think, without being able to cite specifics, that this article has a number of problems relating unclear definition of terms as used here. I do not think it is clear, for purposes of this article, what a "sovereign state" is and how/when, for purposes of this article, it is considered to have been "formed". I haven't thought any of that out well enough to suggest improvements. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:28, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Absolute nonsense, Israel now != Israel then. Selfstudier (talk) 22:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll ignore your disrespectful tone for the time being. But obviously if "Iran in 2600 BC"="Iran now", and "India in 2500 BC"="India now", and "Japan in 660 BC"="Japan now" and "Algeria of 202 BC"="Algeria now" and "Armenia in 880 AD"="Armenia now" then all the more so "Israel in 930 BC"="Israel now". Vegan416 (talk) 10:48, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Zero continuity between the two. Selfstudier (talk) 10:49, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Selfstudier

1. On the contrary. There is more continuity between 930BC Israel and 2024 Israel than between 2600BC Iran and 2024 Iran and between 2500BC India and 2024 India and 202BC Algeria and 2024 Algeria. For the sake of brevity, I'll make here a detailed comparison between the Israeli and Iranian case only. If you wish I can make detailed comparisons in the other cases as well.

2. Name: The name of Israel is the same as it was in 930 BC - Israel. On the other hand, the name of Iran today is different from Elam (which is the source of the 2600BC date in the table here).

3. Languages: The language in Israel now is basically the same as it was in 930BC - Hebrew. Children in elementary schools in Israel today can read and understand the Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, the Elamite language of the Elam kingdom is completely different from modern Persian and belongs to a completely different family of its own. Almost nobody in Iran today can read or understand Elamite (or even ancient Persian texts from BC times). You need to be a highly trained archeologist or linguist to do that.

4. Religions: The religion of Israel now is basically the same religion as it was in 930BC - Judaism. On the other hand, the religion of Iran today is completely different from the religion of Elam which was a polytheistic religion. Even the later religion of the Persian empires predating Islam - Zoroastrianism is completely different from Islam and its few thousand remaining believers are somewhat persecuted and just barely tolerated in today's Iran.

https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/14/opinion/choksy-iran-zoroastrian/index.html

5. Genetics: The Jews are genetic descendants of the ancient Israelites. This was proven by several genetic studies (see below). The modern-day Iranians may be genetically related genetically to the ancient Elamites. But maybe not. So far I haven't found any scientific research on this subject.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/dna-from-biblical-canaanites-lives-modern-arabs-jews

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30487-6

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072/

https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r7

https://www.science.org/content/article/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry Vegan416 (talk) 13:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Not doing this. Not interested in WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Selfstudier (talk) 13:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not talking here about OTHER articles. I'm talking here about the internal consistency of THIS article. If you don't want to discuss the internal consistency of this article then your opinion is biased and should be rejected. Vegan416 (talk) 14:17, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Needs organization

This article isn't very useful for establishing any kind of timeline or hierarchy because of how the tables are organized. By default, they sort alphabetically be country name -- which is fair enough, but it only gets worse from there.

You can't even sort the tables by date because they get organized alphabetically -- "10 April 1990," for example, would come before "30 October 1949." Formatting the dates YYYY-MM-DD would automatically fix this but it probably also violates some wiki style guide.

Is there anything that can be done to order these tables in some more useful way? The9thBit (talk) 03:19, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Major inconsistency in this article with regard to "Date of acquisition of sovereignty"

Following the @Wtmitchell comment above starting with the words "I believe that this article is unclear and confusing", and my discussion with @Selfstudier about "Israel's first acquisition of sovereignty", I want to point a major inconsistency in this article that needs to be resolved.

There is an inconsistency in the way ancient nations/states are treated in this article, with no apparent justification whatsoever.

1. On the one hand the we have a group of modern states whose "date of Acquisition of sovereignty" is given hundreds or even thousands of years ago, despite the fact that many aspects of these dates can be disputed, such as: whether the modern concept of sovereignty even existed that far in the past?; were these states sovereign under any definition in those dates?; did their alleged sovereignty continue uninterrupted from those dates till now?; is there even a continuation of any national identity in those cases from then till now?; Are those dates accepted by historians or considered legendary? In this list of states we can find for example the following states: Algeria, Ethiopia, Morocco, Afghanistan, Armenia, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Mongolia, Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, and maybe some others I missed.
2. On the other hand we have several modern states which have the same claim to have their "Acquisition of sovereignty" date to be hundreds or thousands years ago as the ones in the first group, and yet are given only a recent date in the 20th or 19th century. This list includes for example: Greece, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Yemen, Israel and maybe some others I missed.

Solving this inconsistency can go in one of two ways:

1. My preferred way would be to raise the second group to the same level of the first one. If there is enough support for this way I am willing to take the task on myself.
2. The other alternative is to move the first group to the status of the second one. That is, to decide that we don't want to get into all the controversies and disputes regarding ancient past, and just give the dates of the modern formal recognition of sovereignty which would mean something like the date of the establishment of the Liege of Nations or later, or something like that. This would effectively mean deleting the column of "date of Acquisition of sovereignty" and "Acquisition of sovereignty" from all the tables.

Your opinions? Vegan416 (talk) 13:42, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

The Israel thing is just national myth, that apart, some people are never going to be happy with a list like this because nuance cannot easily be reduced to a simple list. I would just AfD the article, with a possible outcome being a merge with List of national constitutions. Selfstudier (talk) 14:57, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

@Selfstudier The fact that there were independent Israelite/Jewish kingdoms in the land of Israel in the first millennium BC is established history and not a myth. That apart, an AfD is an extreme measure, and I'm not in favor of it at the moment (unless we try the other options first and they prove to be futile). Vegan416 (talk) 15:43, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

The OR tag has been up there since 2019, if "other options" involves yet more OR, pass. So ancient history, national myths and the rest all binworthy afaiac. Selfstudier (talk) 16:11, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

@Selfstudier

I have no idea what the OR tag refers to. It was put there years before I got involved in this article. However you can rest assured that I don't intend to do any OR on this article. There is absolutely no need for it from my POV, as everything I'm going to add to the article will be based and referenced to established historical research from existing reliable secondary sources. Vegan416 (talk) 16:27, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

@Selfstudier@Wtmitchell

As I said I moved some countries from the the second group to the first, and I plan to move some more. Any comments so far? Vegan416 (talk) 08:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)