On 5/21/07, Matthew Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/21/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote:
"(a) Georgia-the-state is significantly
older than Georgia-the-country,"
I'm awestruck. Awestruck.
Read the article and find out, KP. It should be obvious from context
that I do not mean that the land has been unoccupied or that there is
no history there. It is, however, the case that the modern
independent state has only existed since the division of the Soviet
Union. Prior to that, it was an administrative division of the USSR
with similar status to the state of Georgia within the United States;
approximately the same area was briefly independent 1918-1921 after
the collapse of the Russian Empire.
Thus, prior to 1991, the area was (except for three years) a division
of a larger nation during the previous 250 years or so, and thus of
similar status to the Georgia in the US.
-Matt
This doesn't really make me any less awestruck, as, again, it's all about
political identity from a Western, and primarily an American, cultural
perspective. Soviet Georgia didn't have similar status in the USSR to the
state of Georgia within the US, by the way, as the Soviet government under
communism was a very different government from that of the USA during the
same years.
Poland has only been a state for a brief amount of time, but few people
would argue against its longevity and importance.
There is nothing wrong with heirarchies, putting nations above states in
order of importance, as the latter are simply parts of the former. The
simplest solution is to make the primary the disambiguation page.
KP