There is around 200 sovereign states [193-206] currently. Is this the highest ever number, or have we had a higher number of ““countires”” ?
I think it probably is, but there are definitional problems, especially looking back at a pre-UN era. I’m thinking that the presence of pre-unification European (Germany, Spain, Italy) and South Asian principalities will be balanced by the absence of organized states in Africa or (earlier) South America.
If you count the Indian princely states as countries then I think somewhere around 1920 would win.
In 1920 the SSR’s had not yet merged into the USSR. There was several hundred Indian Princely states, Europe was still individual nations, colonial Nations were established by then in Africa and South America. There was also lots of oddities, like the Free City of Danzig, Free State of Fiume etc etc that seemed to exist for only a few years around that time.
See here:
By any useful definition of country, today’s the day.
However, a broader definition of state could give you thousands at about 1500 BC
Sovereignty has a fairly clear definition in the 20th century, and the British empire recognized the 120 Salute states as being Sovereign entities, so I’m going to claim that with the modern definition of Sovereignty, 1920 is it. Someone else can actually work out the total.
There’s too much ambiguity in definitions to get a clear answer.
For example, what of the Holy Roman Empire? It is written that “The Treaty of Westphalia, signed October 24, 1648, allowed the fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire into more than three hundred sovereign states.” Is this a reasonable claim? I don’t know: count the states listed in the Treaty of Westphalia yourself! 