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Q&A: All the nations of the world since 1945.

Submitted by eheath@stanford.edu on Wed, 05/13/2009 - 07:36.

Question:
I wish to get a detailed, year by year view of what were and are the nations of the world from 1945 until the present. This would include their changing status internationally and their borders.

Answer: 

There is no one resource that will do all that you wish. Their is a good general overview which has gone through several editions titled World Of Nations: The International Order Since 1945. This is an excellent overview of the evolution of nationhood worldwide since 1945. However, it has a limited number of maps and doesn't trace changes year by year.

For the year by year changes in national status, you should use the three best diplomatic guide series. The one that's been around the longest is the Statesman's Yearbook, which goes back to 1864. The most detailed is the Europa World Year Book, which began 1959. Another good one is the International Year Book and Statesmen's Who's Who, which started in 1953. The major weakness of all of these handbooks, however, is that they seldom include maps.

For mapping the borders of nations, you will need to browse the world atlases in the library stacks. We have a large number of such general atlases, published throughout the 20th Century. Their general call number location is G1019. Within Searchworks, you can Browse Call Number, to see if particular publication dates of the various world atlases are in storage or shelved in open stacks within Green Library.

If you are interested in some of the scholarship regarding national boundaries, there are a couple of good web sites. They won't answer your specific question, but are valuable in and of themselves. The International Boundaries Research Unit of Durham University maintains a site of Boundary Resources. This is more a recording of current scholarship and news regarding boundaries and is not really an historical resource. The same description applies to the site maintained by Paul Hensel, called Borders and Territory. One of its features is a very good list of links to maps and atlases.


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Obama's Inaugural Address

Submitted by Chris Bourg on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 10:27.

To relive the inaugural experience:


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