Countries of the IGY

Since my last post showed IGY stamps from 19 different countries, I thought I'd take a look at what countries participated in the IGY.

Of course, the countries of the world were different during the IGY era than now. This map (you can zoom in on it) shows countries of the world in 1957, and divides them into four blocs: western alliances; communist states; Arab-Muslim lands; and other lands.

 John Bartholomew, World Powers 1957, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1958

According to the Annals of the IGY, volume IX, 67 of these countries had national committees for the IGY, hence were official participants. I have tabulated these countries in a spreadsheet that you can find here. 

Today, this world political map (also zoomable) contains a somewhat different constellation of countries. (My criterion for being up to date is that the map shows South Sudan.) 

I've also compiled all 195 countries in today's geopolitical world in the spreadsheet above, from this source. Then, through the magic of spreadsheet commands, I searched for countries that participated in the IGY which have either changed names since then, or don't exist any more as such. They are as follows:

The spreadsheet also shows which present-day countries participated (or not) in the IGY, so you can look at the spreadsheet to check that out. My fault if I got any of the geopolitics wrong.

My current count for countries of the world I have visited is at 33, I think. I'm hoping to see some of England's cricket tour of the West Indies early next year, so maybe I'll add a couple of new ones then.

Map wall in the library of my house