THE LARGEST AND SMALLEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD

what is the largest and smallest country of the world. How many countries in the world.

BIGGEST COUNTRIES

Russia is the largest country in the world according to the width of the earth is 16.376.870 km² and equivalent (6323142 mil²), China is the second, United States is the third and Canada is the fourth biggest countries. Based on all the continents in the world, the total ground width is 148.940.000 km² (57.510.000 square kilometers) and accordingly, Russia occupies 11% of the world total.

Countries like Russia, China, USA and Mongolia, which have the largest surface area of ​​the world, have very large deserts or arid lands with polar climate. The total number of desert areas in China is around 712,000 km2, which is 8% of the total Chinese territory. The area known as Siberia, the northern part of Russia, is a troubled region for agriculture and shelter with its harsh climatic conditions. On the other hand many rich mine reserves, petrolium and naturel gas reserves found in these area.

Value of Soil: Mines and Energy Resources

The regions, where agriculture was not possible and the harsh climate conditions, which were not suitable for human, animal and vegetation life conditions, was not mean any value of much to the world countries in the past. Normally countries doesnt interested with these kind of areas when some trouble happen between each other or any country demand something for these lands. 

For Russia, which sold Alaska to the US in 1867, the gold mines in the region were important, but it was not possible to protect the British-threatened area and these mines not enough economic capacity to finance of any war. Today, Alaska has proved that it is an important piece of land with its 1.2 billion barrels of oil reserves discovered in 2016 aside from its underground and surface resources.

In the last 150 years, many mineral resources found in different part of the world. Also many oil reserves found at different lands in the last 100 years. Finally natural gas resources found in the last 20 years have made each soil valuable. Russia declarated, northern ice sea is in their territory area, while it is estimated to have around 100 million tons of oil and natural gas reserves in the region.

In the light of this information, we can say that every piece of land could be an economic value in the future even if it is not today. Approximately 80% of Russia's annual export revenues come from oil and natural gas exports. 85% of Saudi Arabia's annual total exports are supplied by oil and oil based-products. Oil and natural gas are the main source of automotive, transportation, heating and energy sectors. So hundreds of countries have import-dependent economy cause they have lack of these sources

World's Largest 20 Countries by Area

	Country List	Area  (Km²)	Area  (mil²)	World  %
1	Russia	16376870	6323142	% 11,0
2	China	9388211	3624807	% 6,3
3	USA	9147420	3531837	% 6.1
4	Canada	9093510	3511022	% 6.1
5	Brasil	8358140	3227095	% 5,6
6	Australia	7682300	2966151	% 5.2
7	India	2973190	1147955	% 2,0
8	Argentina	2736690	1056641	% 1,8
9	Kazakhstan	2699700	1042360	% 1,8
10	Algeria	2381740	919595	% 1,6
11	Congo	2267050	875313	% 1,5
12	Saudi Arabia	2149690	830,000	% 1,4
13	Mexico	1943950	750563	% 1.3
14	Indonesia	1811570	699451	% 1,2
15	Sudan	1765048	681489	% 1,2
16	Libya	1759540	679362	% 1,2
17	İran	1628550	628786	% 1,1
18	Mongolia	1553560	599833	% 1,0
19	Peru	1280000	494211	% 0,9
20	Nijer	1266700	489075	% 0,9

World's Smallest 10 Countries by Area

There are 195 independent countries in the world, when we add the autonomous states the totall number increase 224. The smallest 10 countries on the Earth are listed below between 216th and 224th. All of these countries are smaller than 100km2. The Vatican is a symbolic center that is not a state, but it is connected with the religious institutions in the Christian world.

	Countries	Area (Km²)	Area (mil²)	World  %
216	Anguilla	90	35	0.000 %
217	San Marino	60	23	0.000 %
218	Bermuda	50	19	0.000 %
219	Sint Maarten	34	13	0.000 %
220	China, Macao SAR	30	12	0.000 %
220	Tuvalu	30	12	0.000 %
221	Nauru	20	8	0.000 %
222	Gibraltar	10	4	0.000 %
222	Tokelau	10	4	0.000 %
223	Monaco	1	0,38	0.000 %
224	Vatican	0,44	0,16	0.000 %

Number of Countries in the World

Today there are 195 countries in the world. 193 country is the member of the United Nations, and two non-member countries: the Vatican and the Palestinian. Here is some details listed below:

195 countries separated by continents is as follows:

• There are 54 countries in Africa
• There are 48 countries in Asia
• There are 44 countries in Europe
• There are 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean
• There are 14 countries in Oceania
• There are 2 countries in North America