I considered a quad-tree representation, but the vector based approach
is easier which makes up for any loss in speed. Speed isnt even a real
issue for me anyways. The problem was finding the data though and I
did actually find it. It is called the Digital Chart of the World and
Penn State offers political boundaries in ASCII text files derived from
it. It is a little dated (e.g. Yugoslavia handt broken up yet), but
good enough. So I'm set. Thanks.