I’m not entirely sure what’s with the tone of your post, I never posited anything about the future of Scotland in relation to the United Kingdom, and it’s blatantly insulting to suggest that you are elucidating something to me by telling me that Scotland and Wales existence predates my own.
As for what I actually said, other States do not treat with Scotland as a sovereign state. That is what “external legitimacy” means, that other sovereign entities recognize your sovereignty. If the United States felt Scotland was a true sovereign State we would have a Scottish embassy, an ambassador to Scotland, they would have an embassy in the United States and an ambassador to the United States.
I posit that Scotland even lacks internal legitimacy (meaning its own people do not view it as a sovereign State.) If Scots actually felt they were living in an independent State I’d wonder why they are electing MPs to the British Parliament in London.
Scotland is obviously it’s own people with it’s own language and culture and history. For the time being they’ll continue to try to keep getting that English money and power and influence but exercise as much independence as they can. They’re like the Puerto Rico of Great Britain.
Trying to establish the legitimacy of Scotland by examining whether/how the United States recognizes it as a State or not is kindof silly. Scotland was around way before the United States of American and before any conventional view of “State” existed. It’s a Nation. Similar in many ways to an American Indian tribe.
The UK isn’t even the only ‘country made of countries.’ The UAE, for example, is a sovereign state made of several different countries.
You don’t go through customs to get to France, either, and you don’t, strictly speaking, need a passport, but you do need ID, and only a British passport is acceptable if you’re British - French people can use ID cards.
No, but then again neither does a Frenchman go through customs, or need a passport, to travel to Germany or Belgium, say.
Edit: simulpost… but it’s worth pointing out that the UK isn’t part of the Schengen area, so there are (in theory at least) border controls between the UK and France. Once you’re in France, though, you can go all the way to Poland (or even the Baltic states) with no further border controls.
Here’s a diagram which shows what several people have been saying, but I’ll post it anyway because I like it!
And it uses the term, ‘constituent countries’ to describe the parts of the UK.
No, we’re not. Not unless England is too, and you wouldn’t describe England thusly, would you? Hawaii, or Alaska, or - as stated above - Texas are much better analogies for Scotland’s political position in the UK (though they’re not countries and never were, so not a perfect analogy).
They are good analogues, but US states are arguably more autonomous than the UK’s countries. Also, the UK is moving towards a system of asymmetrical federalism, while US states are supposed to all have the same powers.
And what do you mean, they aren’t countries and never were? They may not have the status of countries (they’re “states” instead), but that’s merely a choice of nomenclature. (Canada’s federal subjects are called “provinces”, which is a holdover from colonial times, but otherwise means the same thing.) And Texas, of course, was in fact for a time an independent country.
No, strictly speaking “Great Britain” is a geographical term referring to the large island. The various terms are often used informally, though, so that the political state whose full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is often referred to as “Britain” or “Great Britain”. Or “England”, by foreigners ;). [edit] I should add that some people refer to the UK as “England” not out of ignorance, but pointedly, in reference to the historically dominant role of England within the UK.
I agree with Ximenean that “nation” traditionally refers to a group of people with a shared identity. A “nation-state” is a state that is made up of a group of people with a shared identity.
Geographically speaking “Great Britain” and “Britain” refer to the same thing. However, colloquially speaking, “Britain” is often used to mean the United Kingdom as a whole.
Requiring a passport or other document for travel is not a reliable indicator of when you’ve crossed an internal or external border. Some external borders (such as the countries of the Schengen Zone in Europe) you can cross without a passport. Some other countries (such as Russia and Denmark) require a passport for some or all travel entirely within their borders.
But only the Kingdom of Hawaii was a nation-state that had any reasonable history as an independent country with its own ethnic identity. The Republic of Texas thing was just a momentary blip in an ongoing struggle between Americans and Mexicans.