Which Countries Were Never Colonised?

At the height of European empire in 1914, colonial powers controlled roughly 84% of the planet's land surface. Working out which countries escaped entirely depends on how you define "colonised": formal annexation is one thing, a brief military occupation or an unequal treaty is another. The list below uses the strict sense — never governed as a colony or protectorate by a foreign power — and flags where that is contested.

The usual list

• Ethiopia — defeated an Italian invasion at Adwa in 1896, the most famous African victory over a colonial army. Italy did occupy the country from 1936 to 1941, so "never occupied" is wrong, but it was never a formal colony and the emperor was restored.
• Liberia — founded in 1822 as a settlement for freed African Americans and independent from 1847. It was never a European colony, though it was economically dominated by American interests.
• Japan — never colonised; instead it became a colonial power itself, taking Taiwan, Korea and much of the Pacific. It was occupied by the Allies from 1945 to 1952.
• Thailand (Siam) — the only South-East Asian state to stay independent, by playing British Burma and Malaya against French Indochina and ceding territory on its edges to both.
• Nepal — never colonised, though it lost a war to the British East India Company in 1816 and signed a treaty that constrained its foreign policy.
• Bhutan — never colonised; its external affairs were guided first by Britain and then by India under treaty, but it was never ruled from outside.

The strongly contested additions

Iran, Afghanistan, China, Turkey (as the Ottoman successor state), Saudi Arabia, Mongolia and Tonga are sometimes added. The arguments against them: Iran and China were carved into foreign spheres of influence with treaty ports and extraterritorial law; Afghanistan fought three wars with Britain and had its foreign policy controlled by treaty for decades; the Ottoman Empire lost most of its territory to European powers; Tonga was a British-protected state from 1900 to 1970. Whether any of these counts as "never colonised" is a matter of definition rather than fact.

Korea is not on the list

A common mistake is to include Korea. It was annexed and ruled by Japan from 1910 to 1945 — a full colonial period, not a protectorate. North and South Korea both date their independence from the end of that occupation.