On 5/21/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/21/07, K P kpbotany@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