Aterritory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal.[1]
Ininternational politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, i.e. an area that is under the jurisdiction of a sovereign state.
As a subdivision, a territory in most countries is an organized division of an area that is controlled by a country but is not formally developed into,[1] or incorporated into, a political unit of that country, which political units are of equal status to one another and are often referred to by words such as "provinces", "regions", or "states". In its narrower sense, it is "a geographic region, such as a colonial possession, that is dependent on an external government."[2]
The origins of the word "territory" begin with the Proto-Indo-European root ters ('to dry').[3] From this emerged the Latin word terra ('earth, land') and later the Latin word territorium ('land around a town').[4][5] Territory made its debut as a word in Middle English during the 14th century. At this point the suffix -orium, which denotes place, was replaced with -ory which also expresses place.[6]
Examples for different types of territory include the following:
Overseas territory is a broad designation for a territorial entity that is separated from the country that governs it by an ocean. An overseas territory may be either a constituent part of the governing state or a dependent territory.
Examples include:
