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{{More citations needed|date=August 2023}}
{{Use American English|date=August 2021}}
▲A county seat is usually an incorporated [[municipality]]. The exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as [[Arlington County, Virginia]], where the county seat is the entire county.<ref>{{cite web|title=Counties in Virginia and the Location of Their Seats of Government|url=http://www.dhcd.virginia.gov/CommissiononLocalGovernment/PDFs/county.seats.pdf|publisher=Virginia Commission on Local Government|access-date=10 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181113040156/http://www.dhcd.virginia.gov/CommissiononLocalGovernment/PDFs/county.seats.pdf|archive-date=13 November 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Ellicott City, Maryland|Ellicott City]], the county seat of [[Howard County, Maryland]], is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by [[Towson, Maryland|Towson]], the county seat of [[Baltimore County, Maryland]]. Likewise, some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example, [[Cape May Court House, New Jersey]], though unincorporated, is a section of [[Middle Township, New Jersey|Middle Township]], an incorporated municipality. In some states, often those that were among the original [[Thirteen Colonies]], county seats include or formerly included "Court House" as part of their name, such as [[Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia]].
▲''Xian'' have existed since the [[Warring States period]] and were set up nationwide by the [[Qin dynasty]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Hsu |first=Cho-yun |translator-last1=Baker |translator-first1=Timothy D. Jr. |translator-last2=Duke |translator-first2=Michael S. |year=2012 |orig-year=2006 |title=China: A New Cultural History |publisher=Columbia University Press |page=102 |isbn=9780231159203}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Goodman |editor-first=David S.G. |year=2015 |title=Handbook of the Politics of China |publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing Limited |page=159 |isbn=9781782544364}}</ref> The number of counties in [[China proper]] gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty. As [[Qin Shi Huang]] reorganized the counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the Eastern [[Han dynasty]], the number of counties increased to above 1,000. About 1400 existed when the [[Sui dynasty]] abolished the [[Commandery (China)|commandery]] level (郡 jùn), which was the level just above counties, and demoted some commanderies to counties.
In Imperial China, the county was a significant administrative unit because it marked the lowest level of the imperial bureaucratic structure;<ref>{{cite book |last1=Zarrow |first1=Peter |title=China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 |date=2006 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-21976-6 |page=58 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ijaAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA58 |language=en}}</ref> in other words, it was the lowest level that the government reached. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, varying between dynasties. The head of a county was the [[county magistrate|magistrate]], who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases.
The current number of counties mostly resembled that of the later years of the [[Qing dynasty]]. Changes of location and names of counties in [[History of China|Chinese history]] have been a major field of research in Chinese historical geography,
===Lists of county seats===
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[[File:Allentown.jpg|thumb|[[Allentown, Pennsylvania]], the third-largest city in [[Pennsylvania]] and county seat of [[Lehigh County, Pennsylvania|Lehigh County]]]]
[[File:Renville County Courthouse MN.jpg|thumb|Many county seats in the United States feature a historic courthouse, such as this one in [[Renville County, Minnesota]].]]
In the [[United States]], a [[County (United States)|county]] is an [[Administrative division|administrative]] or political subdivision of a [[U.S. state|state]] that consists of a geographic area with specific [[Border|boundaries]] and usually some level of governmental authority.<ref name=NACO>{{cite web |url = http://www.naco.org/Counties/Pages/Overview.aspx |
* [[St. Clair County, Alabama]]
* [[Arkansas County, Arkansas]]
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* [[Clay County, Arkansas]]
* [[Craighead County, Arkansas]]
* [[Franklin
* [[Essex County, Massachusetts]]
* [[Middlesex County, Massachusetts]]
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===Other variations===
====Alaska====
[[Alaska]] is divided into [[List of boroughs and census areas in Alaska|boroughs]] rather than counties; the county seat in these case is referred to as the "borough seat"; this includes six consolidated city-
====South Dakota====
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