Hmm. Need to think about that one.
Usually the claim is the world's oldest democracy, where everyone else must pretend you can be a democracy and still treat slaves as not proper people and ignore the fact that many other countries had been making the hard yards towards democracy for hundreds of years.
But the oldest surviving constitutional republic?
Have to think about that. May be a stronger claim if constitutional means a written document sort of constitution.
A whole load of Italian city states were constitutional republics long before America, but they are now part of Italy and so don't survive. I think some of the little principalities claim to be much older republics than the US.
Maybe the US should add an extra condition to win a prize for being the oldest political entity of some sort. The oldest surviving republic with a written constitution and 50 states, perhaps. But I am not sure why these claims keep on being repeated. Why the need?
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