Coverage and known gaps
What the atlas currently publishes, how it counts, and what is still being researched.
What is published
These counts are generated from the published database, not typed by hand. They count published case hubs by each case’s declared primary collection.
| Collection | Published case hubs |
|---|---|
| Independence movements | 6 |
| Political status and decolonisation | 1 |
| Autonomy and Indigenous self-government | 0 |
| Historical independence | 1 |
| Unification and territorial transfer | 0 |
| Total | 8 |
A page count is not a movement count: one case can have many pages. An umbrella case and its branches are counted once (1 published branch pages are not counted separately). Historical and related cases are counted in their own collections and are never used to inflate the independence count.
What is being researched
There is no neutral, universally accepted list of “all independence movements”, so the atlas maintains a private research registry. It currently holds 221 research candidates. A candidate is a topic to investigate — not a finding that a movement exists, is active, or is supported by the people it names.
| Decision | Candidates |
|---|---|
| Unreviewed | 221 |
| Region group | Candidates |
|---|---|
| Africa | 28 |
| Caucasus, Russia and neighbouring disputed-status cases | 21 |
| Central Asia | 2 |
| East and Southeast Asia | 22 |
| Europe | 25 |
| Historical independence library — separate collection | 40 |
| Latin America, Caribbean and South Atlantic | 17 |
| North America, Arctic and selected Caribbean cases | 18 |
| Oceania and Pacific constitutional histories | 18 |
| South Asia | 20 |
| West Asia and cross-border Kurdish cases | 10 |
Known gaps
Coverage is expanded in geographically balanced batches. Cases with little English-language coverage are not treated as insignificant; they need local-language research, which takes longer. The historical collection is a representative starting programme, not a complete list of every state’s independence history.