Do you consider Scotland to be a country?

[MiddleRoad]

Scotland is a country and a nation currently suffering under foreign colonialism, yes.

It’s not colonialism; Scotland become one with England after a Scottish Monarch was invited to take the English throne after Elizabeth I had no heirs. This union was at first unofficial; it became legal under a later Monarch of that same dynasty.

Which was then disregarded for a bunch of Germans.

Wasnt exactly disregarded…

Charles I had differing ideas from Parliament as to the role of the Monarchy; he was executed.

His son, Charles II, was brought back and had a successful reign,

His brother James II succeeded him. He had these wild ideas that Britain should have religious tolerance, and also, he was a Catholic. So Parliament deposed him in favor of his Protestant daughter. She and her husband died childless,

The Throne than passed to her sister, Anne, who also died childless

Not wanting to allow another Catholic on the Throne, Parliament gave it to Anne’s German relatives

[Statilius the Epicurean]

It's obviously not a state and it's doubtful it could even be called a nation, though.

Now Sark runs o'er Solway sands
And Tweed runs to the ocean
To mark where England's province stands

[Aurelius]

No. The fact that Britain calls its subdivisions countries does not make it a country in the sense of the word people use 99% of the time. And in response to some of the comments in this thread, it's worth pointing out that Scotland was an eager and active partner in Empire, not an oppressed victim. The Highland Scots were brutally oppressed, yes. But IIRC the Lowland Scots played just as much a role in that as the English did.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

x

O would or I had seen the day that treason thus could sell us
My auld gray heid had lain in clay wi Bruce and loyal Wallace

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Atlas is doing what I literally thought was impossible: turning me into a cybernat. Or maybe I've drank too much.

[MiddleRoad]

No. The fact that Britain calls its subdivisions countries does not make it a country in the sense of the word people use 99% of the time. And in response to some of the comments in this thread, it's worth pointing out that Scotland was an eager and active partner in Empire, not an oppressed victim. The Highland Scots were brutally oppressed, yes. But IIRC the Lowland Scots played just as much a role in that as the English did.

No, no Man, literally every country prior to 1995 was created cause of colonialism and need to be dismantled. 

[F. Joe Haydn]

No. The fact that Britain calls its subdivisions countries does not make it a country in the sense of the word people use 99% of the time. And in response to some of the comments in this thread, it's worth pointing out that Scotland was an eager and active partner in Empire, not an oppressed victim. The Highland Scots were brutally oppressed, yes. But IIRC the Lowland Scots played just as much a role in that as the English did.

They were both oppressed, but at different times. The Civil Wars began, after all, because Charles I tried to impose religious uniformity on Presbyterian (Lowland) Scotland. And during the Restoration the Covenanters were subjected to extremely violent persecution, with conventicle preaching punishable by death. Only after the Glorious Revolution did the oppression shift to the mostly Episcopalian Highlands due to the region's Jacobitism, culminating in the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth century which were very brutal indeed.

[Sol]

Yeah, as Tony said, the problem is that while State and Nation have pretty well established meanings, quite what a "country" is a lot less well defined beyond having the core meaning of being a geographical entity of some sort.

I do think that while there are other senses to country, like "The Black Country" or "Amish Country," the semantic prototype, at least in American English, is fairly close to the usually given definition of "state"-- i.e. if asked "Is Amish Country a country?" people would generally answer no.

I think that maybe is the origin of the disconnect here; the common use of the term conflicts with the specific use of the term in the British political context.

[parochial boy]

Yeah, as Tony said, the problem is that while State and Nation have pretty well established meanings, quite what a "country" is a lot less well defined beyond having the core meaning of being a geographical entity of some sort.

I do think that while there are other senses to country, like "The Black Country" or "Amish Country," the semantic prototype, at least in American English, is fairly close to the usually given definition of "state"-- i.e. if asked "Is Amish Country a country?" people would generally answer no.

I think that maybe is the origin of the disconnect here; the common use of the term conflicts with the specific use of the term in the British political context.

The thing is, even if you stick the idea of a country being a sovereign political entity, then there are still so many cases where the term is ambiguous enough to be confusing. In a way that terms State and Nation aren't. As a basic example, if someone asks you what countries you have been to - and you have visited Guam or the Bermuda, would you, off the back of this, say that you have been to the USA or the UK? I don't know, correct me if I am wrong but I'd still be minded to say that claiming the UK as a country you have visited on the basis that you once went to Bermuda would not be particularly convincing to most people.

On that basis, there are still a whole host of different types of political entity that fall into this ambiguous territory and that aren't limited to the UK's constituent countries. Be it the highly autonomous UK dependencies, the US or New Zealand's overseas territories, the integrated French DROM-COM model or the numerous territories around the world that benefit from limited or no international recognition despite claiming to be independent states. Is Taiwan a country? What about Palestine? Those are very politically sensitive questions and I don’t think « well in American English country means… » would necessarily be accepted as an answer.

I don't know, if you tell me that in American English it is very definite that only a independent, sovereign state would be identified as a country then clearly you know better than me. But I would still be inclined to say that there are enough places that you could call a country, and to which this status doesn't apply, for country to still wind up as a deeply ambiguous term in the way that the much better terms that are "nation" and "state" aren't. Which is generally why political science and law generally opt for the latter two terms over the former.