Why were all the countries in the world not divided in size equally?

Answer 1

Because people fought over land.

Answer 2

Lets play with this unusual question and assume its a sensible one. No country has been divided in that fashion. Divided by whom? For whom? If every nationality had to have the same space then they'd have to have the same population. Could that be arranged? Probably. Then if one Nation dared to have a faster birth rate there could be a cull every two years, say. It would do away with wars over territory, wouldnt it? Not really. Who gets the oil rich bits? Who gets the arable land or the desert? There's a nice naive thinking behind your question but thats what it is: naive. Sorry!

Answer 3

There are many factors that determine how much land a country has and none of it was just divided. Over half of America was purchased from other countries. Other parts were just ceased from the native Americans in the name of expansion and progress. Also the land shapes help set boundaries. Such as oceans or mountain ranges.

Answer 4

You make it sound as though all countries were formed at the same time. As though the world population got together in a giant committee and carved up the world. Antarctica is a huge area but would you say that a slice of that is worth the same as a slice of the UK.

Answer 5

Natural boundaries such as rivers are not given to making country size the same.
Plus the strongest gained the most land during the many conflicts for territory

Answer 6

Perhaps because territorial tribes conquered neighboring tribes until natural landforms like rivers and mountains impeded their progress, so the population "fit" into its natural boundaries.

Countries and their boundaries are political demarcations made after formal governments were in place, so there was no single government that partitioned the land to each country.

Answer 7

Because people (similar to you) went to the bad estate agents who then fleeced them out of the ittybitty bits they knocked off at the edges and corners - resulting in countries Belgium, Estonia, Iceland, and so one.

For the full story, read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Answer 8

because people didn't sit down at a big table with a map and choose their countries, they fought over land and stopped at natural boundaries, mountains, rivers etc...

for the record if you look at a map of africa though you can see that for some reason nearly all the borders are straight lines, this is because in europe they did sit down with a big map and cut up africa.

Answer 9

there was not only the fight for sovereigncy of a country but the terrain too land you cant build or farm on isnt much use, its mainly all about politics as usual

how the land masses broke apart also plays a part in it.

Answer 10

BECAUSE THE LAND WAS TOO HEAVY TO MOVE, SO THEY JUST STUCK WITH THE OLD ARRANGEMENT GIVING US THE SAME MESSY UNEVEN MAP FOR THE LAST 10, 000 YEARS.

NEXT TIME (SOMETIME IN THE NANOTECHNOLOGICAL FUTURE) WHEN THEY LOOK AT THE PROBLEM AGAIN, HOPEFULLY THEY WILL HAVE MORE SUCCESS IN CUTTING THE LAND INTO EQUAL CHUNKS.

Answer 11

Coz the Sahara desert wouldn't fit into Belgium and the great wall of China is too long for Scotland, silly!!!