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List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 27, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

This is a list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia. It includes fully recognized states, states with limited but substantial international recognition, de facto states with little or no international recognition, and dependencies of both Asian and non-Asian states. In particular, it lists (i) 49 generally recognized sovereign states, all of which are members of the United Nations; (ii) two states with substantial but not general international recognition, one of which is a United Nations General Assembly non-member observer state; (iii) three largely unrecognized de facto states; and (iv) six dependent and other territories.

Editorial summary

“List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what List, sovereign and states can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 96-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around List, sovereign and states.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, List, sovereign and states provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2026.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia primary sources, List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Asia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.