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The Largest Country Subdivisions in the World
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Apr 22, 2025
In this episode of General Knowledge I talk about a few of the largest country subdivisions in the world: Greenland, Western Australia, Sakha / Yakutia and British Columbia. Understanding why they are so big and why they belong to the also gigantic countries they are a part of. We then understand whether or not they want to, or could, become independent; ultimately learning why they are not countries themselves. Claudia Ayuso's video that mentions Cascadia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7qAqP3050 Become a member on Patreon & get your name in the credits + exclusive content! https://www.patreon.com/generalknowledge ▶ A special thank you to my Patrons: Richard Hartze, Yasin Chaykh, Stuart Tunstead, The Wanton Dogfish, Cesar Lopez II, Steve the Goat, Yeti , KR, Edward Pucci, Jan Krause, Jeffrey F., Juan Rodriguez, Kalvin Saccal, Kris Rizakis, Lastmatix, Rogaine Ablar, Ryan Keith, Ryan McMurry, Sandro, Sebastian Karlo, Señor Valasco, Kyle Doctor, Joe Sports Stay up to date on more content from me: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@general.knowledge.yt Twitter: https://twitter.com/GKonYoutube Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/genknowledge/ ▶ Join the Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/f4neAVWZfF ▶ Business Contact: [email protected] #GeneralKnowledge
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So the other day I tried painting and I did the channel icon and it ended up looking not too bad
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a little deformed. It's pretty bad. But I'm giving it away on my Patreon so if you want a chance to
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maybe win this amazing piece of artwork you can just join through the link in the description
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Have you ever looked at a map of a country and thought, hey, that looks pretty big
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Probably yes, and probably when you have looked at the biggest countries in the world, like
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Canada, Brazil, or Australia. In these countries, even their internal regions or subdivisions end up
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being very, very big, and sometimes as big as other countries that exist in the world
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leading us to think about how they could maybe be their own countries. This is even more the case
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when those subdivisions are bigger than the rest of the country or when they are separated by water
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from the rest of the country. So in this video I'm going to handpick a few of those largest
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subdivisions across the world and learn why they exist, why they are so big and attempt to understand
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why they aren't their own country, if they want to be and if that would even be a possibility
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And I think to adequately understand this topic we need at least a little bit of a handful of
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examples. And the best way to go about it is to select them from those biggest countries. So in
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North America, in Canada, maybe we can take a look at British Columbia. In Europe, although I guess
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the subdivision is kind of in North America, we can look at Greenland, which is an autonomous
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territory of Denmark, which is in Europe. In Asia, we can look at the Saka Republic of Russia. And in
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Oceania, we can look at Western Australia. That is four, so I guess not a handful unless I cut off
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one of my fingers, but I think those will be enough to get a good idea of this topic. So let's start
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with the ones on the thumbnail. First, Greenland. Greenland is actually the world's largest islands
2:03
not Australia because Australia isn't an island, it's like a continental platform or something
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and despite being super big, it's not a country, it's actually a part of Denmark. But even being a
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part of the kingdom of Denmark, it's very different from the rest of it when it comes to size and
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population. It's about 50 times larger than continental Denmark. Maybe calling Denmark
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continental is a little wrong because most of it is islands, but you know what I mean, the part that
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is in Europe. And while it looks absolutely gigantic in some maps, it isn't that big. What
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happens a lot of times is that we see maps with the Mercator projection, which distorts the size
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of a landmass as it moves away from the equator, so things look a little bigger than they actually
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are. You can get some maps where Greenland is like half the size of Africa and it is pretty big
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it's just not that big. But still, if it were independent, it would be the 12th largest country
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in the world at a size of around 2.16 million square kilometers. However, despite the size
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difference, we also need to think about population because Denmark in Europe has around 5.8 million
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people and Greenland with this gigantic size only has 56,000. Close to 90% of those 56,000 are of
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Inuit origin meaning that they are natives or descendants of natives from Greenland itself Only about 7 are Danish and then you have 2 that are from other Nordic countries The vast territory is mostly covered by ice and it is
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included in the Arctic Circle, at least part of it. Being pretty far away from Denmark. But still
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it became their colony in around the 18th century, lasting as a colony until 1953
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after which it became more integrated officially within Denmark. There was actually an interruption
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between 1941 and 45 when it was occupied by the US because it was World War II and Germany had
3:55
just invaded Denmark. They didn't want them to take over Greenland and Iceland because it would
4:00
be a hopping point to invade the continental United States and so they sort of took it
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preemptively. But after the war it was returned to Denmark. But still after the war as Europe was
4:10
losing its colonial empires, Denmark was able to keep Greenland which is odd considering the size
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and the distance that the island is from them. So as I usually ask on the channel, why? The main
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reason is that Greenland couldn't really afford to be independent from a financial point of view
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And the second is that Denmark didn't choose to ignore any claims for independence or
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denied giving it independence. They just chose to do it slowly. In 1979, Denmark was granted home
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rule, taking most control of their internal affairs. And in 2009, that went a step further
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And self-government was introduced, meaning that Greenland is pretty much in charge of its own
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affairs and Denmark only steps in when it comes to foreign relations or military topics
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There's not a set date for the next step of Greenland becoming fully independent, but
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as the Arctic becomes a topic of discussion, as new trading routes might be opened up there
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this might mean that Greenland will have a very big financial intake and this also might mean
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that they won't be as financially dependent on Denmark, which could push them towards independence
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So in this case, this huge country subdivision isn't independent yet, but it seems that it will
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be in the near future. So now let's move on to another example, which is Western Australia
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the biggest state in Australia, which covers about a third of the whole country's territory
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And if it was its own country, it would be in the top 10 biggest in the world. But again
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we need to look at the population. It only has around 2.7 million people, which is maybe 10% of
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Australia's total. Which makes us understand how sparsely populated it is. It contains a lot of
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desert and most people seem to live in the southwest around the city of Perth. Western
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Australia became a part of Australia when the country united as a federation in 1901. Before
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that it was just a British colony like all others. They joined the federation because, well, the
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British wanted them to join, they were in control of the territory and they organized it as such
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but there were also economic concerns and an economic benefit of joining something larger
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than just themselves. But the idea of leaving Australia being independent and seceding
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has been around for a long time. A secessionist movement began and around the early 20th century
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reached its peak at the time of the Great Depression, when locals thought that they were
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paying too many taxes and not getting that much in return from the central Australian government
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out in the east. In 1933, a referendum took place and the people actually voted to be independent
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and leave Australia and set off on their own establishing a new country However the law said that any sort of secessions needed to be approved by the British government and the British didn allow it to happen But oddly instead of revolting at their
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democratic will being ignored, the people kind of just moved on. Maybe because the problem at the
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root of their discontent was slowly solved. And since then, the secessionist movement kind of died
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out. There are some people that still claim that they should be independent, mostly because of the
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natural resources that they have that they think could support a country by themselves, mostly
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mining which takes place a lot in the region, but still it's very unlikely that it will gain any sort
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of traction in the near future and it's even less likely that it will happen again. So in this case
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this huge country subdivision is in a country even though it tried to be because the British and the
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Australians didn't allow them and because recently people lost the interest in doing that. So now
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we've covered the two on the thumbnail let's move to another one which is British Columbia in Canada
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British Columbia is the third largest province of Canada. It has a size of around 944,000 square
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kilometers which is equivalent to around 10% of the whole country. Just like the others if it was
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independent it would be pretty big and it would rank 31st in the worldwide ranking of country
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sizes which doesn't seem that much when the previous one was number 10 but still this is a
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region inside an existing country, so I think we can understand that it's still pretty big
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Canada does have bigger provinces than this, but they're mostly forest and ice, and British Columbia
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has a pretty relevant set of settlements and population, but it still is pretty low populated
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when you compare it to other provinces like Ontario or Quebec. In this case, it only has
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around 5 million people, but still enough for a decent sized country. It's part of Canada since
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it joined in 1871, mostly for the same reasons the British organized the territory like this
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but the locals also really wanted to join, mostly because the central government had promised
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a railway connection that would, for lack of a better word, connect them with the rest of the
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Canadian provinces out east. A fun fact, before becoming a part of Canada, it was a part of a
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shared colonial territory, sort of, called Old Organ, which was administrated together between
9:00
the United Kingdom and the United States. The idea of British Columbia being independent never really
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caught on and despite the fact that it is kind of disconnected from the rest of Canada, most of it is
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out east in the Atlantic coast and they're all by themselves in the west pacific coast
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But even though local independence movements don't really exist, there is the Cascadia movement
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which suggests that parts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon could come together along
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their bio region and form a new country called Cascadia. Claudia Ayuso did a great video on this
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focusing on the topic of natural borders versus human-made ones. You should watch it if you're
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interested. This idea is connected to the cultural, environmental, and economical connections between
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these regions. It never really caught on that much but it did have some supporters, namely Thomas
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Jefferson, the third US president, who wrote some letters to the local administrators stating his
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his support for a new independent country to be created there. While some still support the idea of an independent cascadia, it's very unlikely that British Columbia
10:00
at least by itself, will become independent given its strong ties to Canada, even though it is kind of
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disconnected from the rest of the country and the fact that it would be a pretty big challenge to leave a country that is reasonably stable and even prosperous In this case this subdivision isn a country because it just doesn want to be even though that was a possibility at one point
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in history. And next, let me just mention one more example for this video, the Saka Republic
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The Saka Republic, also known as Yakutia, is this huge region inside of Russia. It's the largest
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sub-national region in the world and it takes up around 20% of the territory of Russia, which is
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also pretty big, as you know. Covering about 3 million square kilometers, it would also be the
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10th largest country in the world if it were to become independent. However, its population is
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very, very small, only about 1 million people. Again, it's very sparsely populated and most of
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the people live in a few cities, namely in the capital of Yakutsk. The rest is, well, forest and
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ice, I guess. The population there is a mix of various ethnic groups and the largest one is the
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Yakutsk or the Saka people who are indigenous to the region. The next largest group are the
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Russians themselves who arrived as they colonized the territory. I actually think a video covering
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and explaining how Russia expanded into Siberia, sort of how they conquer the wild east would be
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interesting, so let me know in the comments if you want to see that. Saka is an important part
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of Russia, namely for its natural resources. Apparently there's a lot of diamonds there
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but also other stuff which contributes importantly to the Russian economy. The idea of more autonomy has been mentioned but full independence is very very unlikely
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Like almost all regions in Russia, they are pretty strongly connected economically to the central
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government meaning that they are financially dependent and the federal structure of Russia
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keeps a pretty close grip on all of its territories. While there is a strong ethnic
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and cultural pride feeling amongst the Yakutsk people, that hasn't materialized into an independence
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movement, at least not yet. In short, this absolutely gigantic country subdivision isn't
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its own country because it was conquered by the Tsarist forces centuries ago, it underwent a
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process of Russification and it is financially dependent on the Central Russian administration
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which obviously doesn't want to let it go. So those are some of the biggest country subdivisions
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in the world. Understanding why they are so big, how they work and ultimately why they aren't
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countries themselves. Despite the fact that some of them once were, some of them want to be
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and some of them are fine as they are. But what do you think? Do you think that these subdivisions
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should be independent or any others that I didn't mention in this video? Or do you think they should
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stay inside the countries that they belong to today? In that case, do you think they should be
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maybe territorially reorganized into smaller units? Let me know in the comments. As always
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thank you so much to my patrons for supporting me directly and thank you to all of you just for
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remember to join through the link in the description. But either way I will see
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you next time for more general knowledge. Today I have another Moomin cup that I was about to break. It looks... wait I need
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hold it the other way. Looks like this. They're just all hanging out and having a
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having a little gathering. I think this is my favorite. It's very cool
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