Comment by tick_tock_tick
15 hours ago
Isn't the USA older then pretty much every country in Europe? Maybe the UK could be considered older depending on how you count it and San Marino is there but all the other major ones like Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc aren't even 100.
How in the world can you claim that France is not even 100? The German empire was established in 1857, which is definitely more than 100 years ago; it's also not unreasonable to say that the HRE could be equated to the German state, that Spain is the continuation of Castille, and that the Roman empire can be considered the direct precursor to Italy
There's a cultural through line for all these countries, often stretching back thousands of years, which means that they reach further back than the definition of the modern state
Perhaps they referenced a source that only considers the French Fifth Republic as “France”? That would give it an age of 68.
Perhaps, but that would by all accounts still be a pretty silly thing to do. It's not like another group of people with a different cultural background invaded France and displaced/killed everyone already living there
A person with a French citizenship from the fourth republic was still a French citizen when the fifth republic was established
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If you're gonna give them credit for stuff like that, then you need to at least give credit to the United States as far back as the Pilgrims in the 1600s.
By your metric Canada is older than the USA, first colony (Champlain was founding permanent trading posts in 1608 some of those settlements turned into cities that exist today)
Perhaps, they were certainly foundational in establishing traditions that are now part of American culture, but even 1600 is young compared to many, if not most, European countries
The Franks made Paris their capital in the 5th century, so that still ~1100 years earlier
The Germanic people exists in records from the 1st century
Whether you can consider Spain as originating from Hispania of the Roman Empire, which would place it in the BCs, or you are more conservative and say that it doesn't count until after the reconquista from the Umayyad, we're still around the 10th or 11th century
As for Italy, we're again in BCs with the Roman empire
So yes, in comparison to many European countries, the US is a very young country
Sweden would like a word...
My Dad has a vacuum cleaner that is older than USA
It's interesting how arrogant Europeans can be towards the U.S. when they themselves seeded the U.S.!