But it was never really conquered, there were no American soldiers everywhere in Japan, it just decided to give up the war.

Japan hadde overgitt seg formelt til de allierte maktene den 2.september 1945, men det tok altså nesten syv år før det offisielt ble fred mellom landene som hadde vært i krig med landet og Japan.

Etter den andre verdenskrig ble landet okkupert av de allierte styrkene, ledet av USA sammen med British Commonwealth Occupation Force (soldater fra Australia, Storbritannia, Canada, India og New Zealand). Historisk er det eneste gangen at en fremmed makt har styrt de japanske øyene. http://www.side3.no/article3359398.ece

Japan had formally surrendered to the Allied Powers on September 2nd, 1945, but it took the almost seven years before it officially was peace between the countries that had been at war with that country and Japan.

After the second world war the country was occupied by Allied forces, led by the United States with British Commonwealth Occupation Force (soldiers from Australia, Britain, Canada, India and New Zealand). Historically, the only time that a foreign power has controlled the Japanese islands. Google translate

Santa Sede Stato della Città del Vaticano

Is never taken over, but it has only been a state since 1929.

And Ethiopia? I thought it was never colonized.

I think you are right on Ethiopia:)

i zoomed in on n.k. It was as blank as untouched snow.

I don't think Ethiopia was colonised except for the short period when Italy occupied it under Mussolini.

Ne·groid (ngroid) Anthropology
adj.
Of or being a major human racial classification traditionally distinguished by physical characteristics such as brown to black pigmentation and often tightly curled hair and including peoples indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. See Usage Note at race.


Negro is short for Negroid, which is a scientific classification for physical characteristics of a race, not derogatory...
Mongoloid and Caucasoid are also not derogatory in original nature.

Tacticus, with my limited knowledge of those situations.. Greek and Indian/African or whatever country title is appropiate... Anyone defined as otherwise would generally be considered revolutionaries of some sort..

x, they were small indians.. like from that movie *indian in a cupboard* or w/e it was called..

Perrin, what're you [Paula Smith's](http://newsone.com/nation/newsonestaff9/yeah-right-creator-of-re-nig-bumber-sticker-says-its-not-racist/) PR rep or something?

I didn't know who that was til you mentioned it..
'Nig' is in reference to an outdated racist slave term, which has been embraced and kept alive by popular modern artists
Negro is in reference to Negroid, which has no direct relation to racism.

like comparing Honkey to Caucasoid.. just because they are more similar sounding, does not make the comparison any more accurate...
I support people getting themselves educated on the terms they use.

Perrin3088
|> I find that Native Americans, are living in the past... we don't have Native Carthaginians, do we...? Native Byzantinians..? Native Czechoslovakians..?

Subtle difference: "American" refers to a piece of land, it's a geographical reference; Carthagia, Byzantium and Czechoslovakia all refer to countries, they're national references. (And, I'm quite sure there's a lot of Native Czechoslovakians left, after all, they only split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.)

On a semi-related note, I have a lot of international friends; comparing passports is always funny. If felt a little weird to see a Slovenian passport for the first time: "Country of birth: Yugoslavia". Of course it makes sense when you think about it. I was caught off-guard (should've known better) the first time looking at a Russian passport: "Country of birth: Soviet Union". None of my Turkish friends are old enough for their passport to say "Country of birth: Byzantine Empire" though. :p

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Moros
|> Does anyone know any country that was never colonized/conquered?
Depends on how you define things. For instance, during the time of the Kalmar Union, the current countries of Denmark, Norway (including Iceland and Greenland) and Sweden (including Finland) where not actually "colonised", yet they were not independant either:

[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_union):
|> The countries had not technically given up their sovereignty or even their independence, but in practice, they were not autonomous, the common monarch holding sovereignty and, in practice, leading foreign policy (..)

Also, where do you begin to count? Do the Roman Empire and Alexander the Great's empire count for instance? If you only look at the last few centuries, you could go with the USA (probably, they did have some issues with Mexico, I'm not sure if Mexican soldiers were ever on the USA side of the current border), Canada, Australia (I think they lost some small parts of territory during WWII) and probably Great Britain (maybe some issues with (North) Ireland and some islands close to France were lost during WWII) and the countries who's WWII-neutrality was respected (Switzerland and the Vatican).

It's probably cheating, but if you only look at "not being conquered since the birth of the country", there's a lot of "new" countries which would qualify. In Europe that would be Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, even Kosovo if you're "flexible" enough with your definitions. In Asia most countries that were (officially) formed after the end of WWII (such as Indonesia). Of course, most of those were independent territories before, but (I think) not really in the modern sense of a "country".

In short, mankind has waged far too many wars already; with the utterly screwed up and shameful history our species has, it's highly unlikely you'll find any territory at all which has been peaceful and left alone by its neighbours since the dawn of time... :(

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|> Ok, I tried zooming in on North Korea it wasn't surprising, but funny anyway:)

You weren't surprised? I was astonished at the zoom level available. Sure, there's only one city labelled, but if you zoom in far enough, labels for rivers start appearing; it's not nearly as blank as you'd expect. Look at this [stadium](http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.049738,125.775505&z=19) for instance; I doubt imagery as detailed as this was available (outside of the USA and Russian intelligence agencies) even just a few years ago.

Anyway, the the first post is one of the stupidest i have ever read :|

How long after an empire/nation dies, do we consider it gone..?
How long after an empire/nation survives as a subset of another nation, do we still consider it of itself..?

some say history is formed in the collective memory after 50 years have passed. so, to answer perrin's questions, i'd guess two generations (roughly 50 years) are needed after the change in status/nature.

@Richelieu:
|> |> How long after an empire/nation dies, do we consider it gone..?
How long after an empire/nation survives as a subset of another nation, do we still consider it of itself..?
|>
|> some say history is formed in the collective memory after 50 years have passed. so, to answer perrin's questions, i'd guess two generations (roughly 50 years) are needed after the change in status/nature.

I'd love to hear your opinion on the reunification of Germany, approximately 50 years after it had been split into West Germany and East Germany.

if i were curious about german reunification, i'd rather hear from a german who experienced the changes, at least two generations (or 50 years) afterwards.

What I meant was that on both sides, people were *very* eager to restore one Germany, even though, according to "your" 50-year-theory the "old" (united) Germany should've been gone from the collective memory already.
My apologies if my post wasn't clear enough / assumed too much background-knowledge.

Well actually it fits quite neatly into the limit ('45-'89 is 44 years).
But that aside, German reunification is a fairly obvious exception to this rule (which ofc actually is more of a rule-of-thumb but Gui made that already pretty clear IMO) anyway. This is mainly because the cold war kept the German Division constantly on the public agenda. After all, Germany was a focal point of the conflict and both German states relied heavily on propaganda against each other, citing re-unification under their respective administration as a goal of their policy (though the DDR leaders more or less abandoned the idea later on).
Now take for example the current German-Polish border, which is (de-facto) of about equal age as the division. By the time this issue was finally officially settled (as late as 1991!), no one really made a big fuzz about it anymore except for a few right-wingers, whereas in the 50's and 60' there was still widespread sentiment against it ("Dreigeteilt niemals!"). Nowadays I'd say >=95% of Germans under 30 don't even know this had been quite an issue in the 15-25 years following WWII.

On a general note, I think the rule becomes more and more obsolete as oral tradition gradually fades in importance during the modern era. The invention of printing, a developing public education system leading to higher literacy rates and professional historiography and finally the rise and spreading of history as popular science through radio and television all contribute to our collective memory reaching farther and farther into the past. But as late as some 150-200 years ago, the vast majority of people really only were able to learn about those things from the past the eldest of their kin hadn't yet forgotten.

@RvW

first of all, Norway was if not colonized by sweden and denmark they where controled by sweden and denmark (belive me, I`am from Norway) you can think abaut it as a country, where norway was the lower part. As an exsaple norway didn`t have ur own constitution befor 1814...

I was really not surprised, ut i think that is kinda of topic;)

any way norway was once conquered by germany so ha

interesting, gnull.

rvw, maybe my shorter post wasn't clear enough to avoid your assumptions. i'll try again:

some categorize events as being 'historical' (ie, the methodological history learned in classes) or 'contemporary'.

at least a couple generations (or, at least 50 years) is needed for a 'contemporary' event to become a 'historical' event, bc (a) enough historical documents are needed to piece everything together in order to understand the event as best as possible (finding/organizing such documents takes time) and (b) a society's contemporary impressions are not always historically accurate or based on facts (it takes time for a society to be self-critical and to weed out false assumptions).

once an event transitions from 'contemporary' to 'historical', it could gain a special place in the collective memory (if a sufficient portion of a society deems it as being significant to their culture, in which case it would probably be taught in their schools' 'history' or 'social studies' classes).

it's a rule of thumb, as gnull noted.