Center on a country by name in Google Maps API v3

You could use Geocoding to lookup the Lat/Lng of the country. Take a look at this sample from Google.

Basically you need to do something like this:

var country = "Germany";
var geocoder;

geocoder.geocode( {'address' : country}, function(results, status) {
    if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
        map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location);
    }
});

In your initialize function you'll need to set the value of the geocoder object, like this:

geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();

You'd need to workout what an appropriate zoom level would be, and then set that after you have centered the map.

This code working for me:

      let geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
      let location = "England";
      geocoder.geocode({ 'address': location }, function(results, status){
          if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
              map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location);
          } else {
              alert("Could not find location: " + location);
          }
      });