Divided we stand: what if South Carolina were independent?

You don't get to be one of the largest nations on earth without a few people wanting to leave along the way and the US has seen its fair share of independent republics and secessionist movements. But what if there really had been a Republic of Vandalia, or the wonderfully-named Forgottonia? Or if South Carolina, scene of the crucial primary this weekend, was an independent state? That's the intriguing vista explored by Urban Mapping , a company specialising in geospatial analysis. The map - which is explained in the video below - looks at 30 or so historic and recent US secessionist movements and examines what would happen if each had become an independent state. • LINK: the map What would their GDP be or their literacy rate, life expectancy or teen pregnancy figures? Interestingly, the map also compares them to other actual countries. So, the Third Palmetto Republic , which calls for the independence of South Carolina would see a country which has a lower voter turnout than the Democratic Republic of Congo (although to be fair, higher than Washington DC); lower adult literacy than Kenya, Libya, Swaziland or Saudi Arabia; and a GDP per head of $32,505 - compared to the UK's $36,099. Then there's the area of Nicajack - a proposed neutral state in Eastern Tennessee and Northern Alabama during the US Civil War - which now has a lower life expectancy for men than Albania (but just beats Vietnam and Uruguay). Ian White of Urban mapping asks , in an election which is dividing the country, are there lessons to be learned from the divisions of the past? The ideal of any political movement is to gain independence, so we thought further: what if each secessionist movement was its own country, and how would it stack up with other countries across general measures of health, economy, education, environment and more More open data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world's government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world's global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Contact us at [email protected] • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter • Like us on Facebook