What or who determines if an area is a country

The land itself has to be founded, then it starts forming the way it wants to work, the way it does is it starts getting noticed and people start saying that we don't want to mess with them. Take the U.S.A for example. They for founded my Christopher Columbus then We had a war to be free from the king of Britain and then we formed are government and we fought for our freedom then we bought the land like the Louisiana purchase. Basically what I am saying is that a country gets formed by its founding fathers and when people start to notice it and it starts to form and
buy land everyone gets the news.