States or Territories

The first-level administrative divisions within a country this atlas documents: the states, provinces, regions, prefectures, counties and other units each country's own constitution or official usage designates, grouped into nineteen sub categories by that designation itself rather than by geography, since a division's type (State, Province, Oblast, Canton and so on) cuts across the continental map. This band is where a reader browses geography at the scale between a whole country and a single city, from a US state to a Japanese prefecture to a French department.