Completing a trilogy of geographical-related posts is a topic I’ve had on my mind since posting about Texas not being that big, four and half years ago: the largest country subdivisions in the world. These go by different names in different countries. The most common in English-speaking countries are state, province and territory.
Drawing mostly on Wikipedia’s list of the largest country subdivisions by area, the top 10 are:
|Name||Capital (largest city)||Area km2||Comparison (world country, x Texas)||Population (percentage of country’s total)||Comparison (world country, USA city proper)|
|Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russia||Yakutsk||3,083,523||India 4.4||964,330 (0.6%)||Djibouti |
|State of Western Australia, Australia||Perth||2,645,615||Kazakhstan 3.8||2,615,794 (10%)||Lithuania Chicago IL|
|Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia||Krasnoyarsk||2,339,700||Democratic Republic of the Congo 3.4||2,876,497 (2%)||Albania Chicago IL|
|Greenland, Denmark||Nuuk||2,166,086||Saudi Arabia 3.1||55,877 (1%)||American Samoa (Wikipedia’s list stops at 100,000, the last being Roanoke VA)|
|Territory of Nunavut, Canada||Iqaluit||2,038,722||Mexico 2.9||38,780 (0.1%)||Monaco |
|State of Queensland, Australia||Brisbane||1,851,856||Sudan 2.7||5,076,512 (20%)||Costa Rica Chicago IL + Houston TX|
|State of Alaska, USA||Juneau (Anchorage)||1,717,854||Iran 2.5||737,438 (0.2%)||Bhutan |
|Xingjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China||Ürümqi||1,664,897||Iran 2.4||24,867,600 (1.77%)||Australia |
PA + IL
|State of Amazonas, Brazil||Manaus||1,570,745||Mongolia 2.3||4,080,611 (1.9%)||Moldova |
Los Angeles CA
|Province of Quebec, Canada||Quebec City (Montreal)||1,542,056||Mongolia, 2.2||8,484,965 (22%)||Israel |
New York NY
A few common factors are noticeable in most cases:
1) They are some combination of very hot, very cold, very wet or very dry
2) They have natural resources which are often too far away and/or in wilderness areas
3) They are located in the 6 biggest countries in the world, with the anomalous exception of Greenland. Even the next 25 biggest country subdivisions add only Mali, Algeria, Niger, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (which lie contiguously across North Africa and the Middle East), and Kazakhstan. Even so, 41 of the 50 belong to those 6 biggest countries.
4) They lie at or toward the periphery of their country (Quebec less so now than at the time of federation).
5) They have low populations, and a small percentage of their country’s total, and most of what population they have is clustered in a very small area, leaving the rest of the land very sparsely populated. Even Xinjiang’s 25 million is less than 2% of China’s total. Quebec and Queensland have the highest percentages, and, not surprisingly, those two have some clout economically/politically. (Also, their most populated clusters lie within the population heartland of their countries.)
6) They have population profiles rather distinct from their country’s overall, especially with Indigenous peoples or ethnic minorities. But these have been or are being overwhelmed by incomers from other parts of the country.
7) They were late and/or reluctant joiners of their country, have a degree of autonomy, or have active or semi-active autonomy or secession movements.
Why am I interested in all this? I don’t know.