I was reading a news story today in which Obama said, “We are a young country.” It got me thinking about how young the US really is. Sure, countries like France have had their name for longer–but France’s government has been violently overthrown by revolution more recently than ours.
Assuming that a government can be called continuous only since the most recent violent transition of power (I’d count a bloodless coup as violent), what are the oldest governments around? I’m thinking Vatican City is older (although they may not qualify, depending on how they achieved their current level of sovereignty). My wife pointed out that England’s last violent transition was in the 1600s.
I wouldn’t count the US Civil War: that would count as a failed revolution, I think.
It’s really hard to say, since most old countries are former Monarchies. And since you count blodless coups as change, the change from monarchy to parliamentarism would disqualify all of them.
San Marino has been a continuous republic since 301 AD, although its current constitution is only about 400 years old. A microstate, its fortunes have depended on the whims of Rome/Italy’s rulers and conquerors over the centuries; Garibaldi and Napoleon were both sentimentally fond of the place and it may well have escaped Attilla the Hun’s notice. Since everybody pretty much knows everybody else and their “army” consists of 80 medieval re-enactors with crossbows, coups d’etat have never been much of an issue. They get my vote.
Indeed. A poster mentioned France, and in this case, you can precisely point at dates when radical changes took place, like revolutions, new constitutions, etc… On the other hand, someone else mentioned the UK and in this case, despite massive change having taken place, you can’t really pinpoint a date because it has been a progressive evolution over the course of several centuries.
Well, as I’m defining it, if your sovereign nation’s prevailing national government changes due to violent action (for which purposes I’m including bloodless coups in which it’s the explicit threat of violence from the new party that forces the old one to step down), your clock restarts.
Iceland is interesting. It sounds as if in 1262, the Parliament fell apart, and later Norway took over. I guess maybe that’s another way to restart the clock (sorry if this is moving the goalposts, but it seems legit to me): if another nation takes over your nation, that restarts the clock, or, rather, puts you on that other nation’s clock. Iceland wasn’t recogized by Denmark as a sovereign nation until 1918–and arguably their occupation by British forces during WWII reset the clock again, since the Brits were the prevailing authority in Iceland then.
The Isle of Man ceded control to various other nations (Scotland and England). In the 19th century, they became more independent, but they’re still a Crown Dependency, which means they’re not a sovereign nation. I don’t think I’d say their clock has started yet: they’re on England’s clock.
San Marino seems pretty close–but in 1739, a military force occupied them and imposed a new constitution, and in 1944, the Nazis occupied the country for a few weeks, which it borderline on resetting their clock (since I assume that during the occupation, the prevailing governmental authority was the Nazis, and they took control through violent means).
I dunno–the UK is still looking like the winner to me. Yeah, there have been major changes, but if those transitions have all been peacefully enacted, if the central governing authority of the sovereign nation hasn’t been changed through violent means since the 1600s, that’s longer than any of the other suggestions so far.
Just to clarify: Are you dating the United States from the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? The Constitutional Convention wasn’t exactly a coup, bloody or otherwise, but one can make the case that the United States under the Articles of Confederation was an organization of thirteen separate nations, rather than one single nation. In some ways, modern Europe is more united than the states from 1776-1789.
And I appreciate that, but the comment to which you responded, though poorly explained, was not at all an unreasonable argument. The classic, snarky “Cite?” was rather more cutting than the situation called for.
Oh, please. It was a one word request for a citation. If that’s cutting, then the level of sensitivity of the members needs review. The resident sawbones’ request for the origin of the reference was legit. Now- get back to work.
As you say it depends on how you want to define things, but you have to bear in mind that the UK/Great Britain as we know it has only existed since 1703, before that it was just England, Scotland and Ireland as separate sovereign nations who happened to have the same monarch (and in fact calling Ireland sovereign at that point is a bit of a stretch as it was effectively a conquered territory). England as one country has existed with a stable system of government since 1066 when the Normans took charge, but then does England count as a sovereign nation given that it became part of the UK in 1703?
And whilst we Brits are considered by foreigners to be ever so polite we have in fact had two civil wars and there was a (fairly bloodless but still existent) revolution all in one century, so to say evolution of our governmental system has been entirely bloodless/peaceful is just plain wrong. By the standards that seem sensible to me (clock reset by occupation by a foreign power or a revolution/government coup of some kind) I’d say our present system of government, when the monarchy in actual reality if not name became constitutional through parliamentary rebellion (1688), would be the point from which I’d count continuous government.