Until McCarthy completed his work, Siamese provinces were not geographically well-described. A province existed in a particular place but the place did not define it. The land itself was almost coincidental. What mattered were the people. And where a boundary did exist, it was seldom a continuous line. It wasn’t even a zone. In fact it only occurred where it was needed, such as along a track or pass used by travellers. In other places, where people seldom set foot, there was no point in deciding a boundary. Further, borders between adjacent kingdoms did not necessarily touch, often leaving large unclaimed regions of forest, jungle or mountains. And in practice it was quite possible for towns to have multiple hierarchical relations of authority with more than one ruler and hence – disturbingly for Mr McCarthy – to be part of more than one state.
The conventional political world map we know today has been created thanks to the endeavours of people such as James McCarthy. It is the product of improvements in cartography and surveying and the historical desire of European countries to carve up the world’s land surface into colonies. The magnificent cakes they found in Africa and elsewhere.
Borders are important to contemporary countries. They represent the ‘skin of the state’, the edge of a country’s territorial control. In a physical sense they effectively define a modern country, and thus play an important symbolic role in constructing the identity of the state. This is a central reason why many international borders are heavily fortified and closely guarded.
However, depiction of national borders on the world map portrays only a selected version of reality. The confident lines separating fully fledged nation states indicate that there is one universally recognized country that rules over every square centimetre of land. But that isn’t quite the case, even without our countries that don’t exist.
Many recognized countries have borders that have never been precisely defined and agreed by treaty, a process known as ‘delimitation’. And a large number of those that have been delimited have never been actually marked on the ground, or ‘demarcated’ to use the official term. The lack of delimitation and demarcation frequently spirals into disputes between countries. A classic example occurs in Jammu and Kashmir, where Pakistan, India and China have disagreed for over sixty years on what territory belongs to which country. These and other borders in this Atlas have been drawn with what appears to be a definitive line, but in reality many of these boundaries are far from conclusive.
This is why every United Nations publication containing maps always comes with the somewhat perverse health warning that the maps do not ‘imply the expression of an opinion concerning the delimitation of frontiers or boundaries’. The same lack of agreement can also play into the hands of would-be nation states.
Such hazy frontiers also highlight another facet of countries, recognized and otherwise, that remains a given: nothing is set in stone. History is littered with the corpses of would-be states that never made it, empires that dissolved and recognized countries that disappeared into the embraces of more powerful neighbours. Circumstances change. In more recent times there is certainly a tendency for states to endure. In the last fifty years or so, many more new states have been created than have disappeared. Given that knowledge, it seems quite likely that at least some of today’s ‘countries that don’t exist’ may one day emerge into the bright light of fully fledged nationhood.
ISLE OF MAN
Also known as Ellan Vannin, Mannin
Self-governing dependency of the British Crown, but not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union.
This is the British Isles, but not as most British people know it. They make their own rules here, and have done for a long time. Their parliament, the Tynwald, is the world’s oldest continuous ruling body. It has governed the island since the arrival of the Vikings in the late eighth century. Tynwald means ‘assembly field’ in Old Norse and for over a thousand years the inhabitants of the Isle of Man have gathered in the same spot, at the summer solstice, to hear the laws of their land proclaimed and to air their grievances. Nowadays, the parliament convenes all year round inside a whitewashed building they call ‘the wedding cake’, but once a year they like to get outdoors and feel the sun on their faces, to connect with their roots.
They are ancient roots. Before the Norsemen, the island was inhabited by Celts, who left their language, Manx, a sister tongue of Irish and Scots Gaelic. The Vikings ruled the island for nearly five centuries before control passed briefly to the King of Scotland in 1266 and then permanently to the English Crown. The two crowns are now one and the same, and the British monarch is head of state. But being outside the United Kingdom, the island has long set its own taxes. In centuries past, this spawned an interest in smuggling, helped by its geographical position roughly midway between Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. Today the low taxes support a thriving global financial services industry.
But the island’s democratic credentials are second to none. It chalked up a world first in 1881, giving (propertied) women the vote in parliamentary elections. In 2006, it was the first Western European nation to lower its voting age to sixteen. Not bad for a country that doesn’t exist.
CIRCASSIA
State conquered by Russia in the late nineteenth century.
Tevik Esenç died a lonely death. He passed away in a village hut with a dirt floor in 1992, the last native speaker of a language called Ubykh. The most striking feature of Ubykh is its large number of consonants: eighty-two in total, with just three vowels - but only recordings remain of this dead tongue, ghostly reminders of its astonishing wealth of sounds.
Tevik Esenç died, as he was born, in exile from his homeland across the Black Sea. The Ubykh lived in Sochi, former Soviet ‘worker’s resort’ and host city of Russia’s first winter Olympic Games, but also a place of tragedy and sadness. The Ubykh are one of a patchwork of tribes inhabiting the rugged mountains of the Caucasus, a group of peoples known as the Circassians. Russia conquered Circassia as the Ottoman empire crumbled; vast numbers of Circassians died while many more fled the killing grounds in overcrowded leaking ships, only to end up in camps of misery among the declining Ottomans. The final Circassian warriors met defeat and massacre at Sochi in 1864, a century and a half before those Olympics. What followed is a darker chapter in the region’s history: a campaign to empty the territory of Circassians. Some describe it as migration and exile. Others use the word ‘genocide’. Perhaps a million Circassians perished.
Forty years after the expulsion of the Ubykh, in 1904, the man destined to be the last speaker of their language was born. Raised by his farmer grandparents, Tevik Esenç served a term as village mayor, rising to a civil service post in Istanbul. With Mr Esenç’s death, aged eighty-eight, went the last primary source not only of this Caucasian tongue, but also of Ubykh culture, mythology and customs. The death of an elderly man in Turkey was also the death of a people.
CHRISTIANIA
Communal self-governing society in Denmark.
It arose as a social experiment in 1971: illegal and anarchic, a paragon of alternative values. A group of hippies, imbued with the 1960s spirit of cultural revolution, began squatting on an abandoned government site. The operation started with perfect symbolism, in a former military barracks right in the heart of Denmark’s capital city, Copenhagen.
On 26 September, the squatters founded what they called the Freetown of Christiania. This was a community set up in opposition to Danish society, a self-governing collective where everyone took responsibility for the well-being of the entire community. Decisions were taken by ‘direct democracy’, a consensus in which everybody had to agree. Within a year, the defence ministry had granted Christiania’s citizens the collective rights to use the site, so long as they paid for their water and electricity.
Although inherently rebellious, Christiania subsequently went through what in other circumstances might be called a rebellious phase. Among the economic activities that flourished in the new society was a trade in hard dru
gs. Decked in psychedelic murals, Pusher Street became synonymous with heroin, cocaine and amphetamines. Eventually, a drugs-related murder and a series of overdoses led to Christiania banning the hard stuff, leaving only cannabis openly available for residents to enjoy. This was a carefree community, but with certain limits.
The government of Denmark has never been quite sure what to do about the hippy haven on its doorstep. Christiania openly defies laws that apply to the rest of Danish society and has been allowed to get away with it. Until 2012, when the government tested the community’s values, offering the land for sale to them at a big discount. Although a victory in one sense, this was also capitalism’s revenge. A self-owned Christiania would mean violating their basic principles around property ownership. The collective has until 2018 to buy its own future.
NORTHERN CYPRUS
North-eastern third of the island declared independent after invasion by Turkey.
Varosha is a forbidden zone. The signs by the barbed-wire fence say so in five different languages. This has been a no-go area since the first paratroopers drifted down out of the early morning sunshine in the summer of 1974.
As the Turkish soldiers approached, residents of this Greek-Cypriot seaside town fled in their bell-bottom trousers, hastily packed bags under their arms. A mother held a child still blissfully asleep in a blanket. An elderly lady, dressed entirely in black, hobbled slowly with her walking stick as sporadic gunshots punctuated the crackling of automatic fire.
They left behind a thriving Mediterranean resort, the best beach on Cyprus, a glitzy playground for the rich and famous. After years of feuding between the island’s two communities led to a coup d’état inspired by Greece’s ruling military junta, Turkish troops occupied the north-eastern part of the island. One side talked of the liberation by Turkey, the other called it an invasion.
The inhabitants of Varosha still have hopes of one day returning home. Over the passing decades, both sides of the Cypriot ethnic divide have haggled over many issues, not least the ownership of land. Title deeds say the land was originally owned by Ottoman Turkish charitable foundations, but when Cyprus became a British crown colony in 1925, the Brits began selling parcels of Varosha real estate. Most were bought by Greek entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, Varosha has become a ghost town, a time warp encased in dust. Through the fences, beyond the thicket of signs, abandoned hotels sit ragged and skeletal. Prickly pear bushes thrust through apartment walls and weeds rampage where the jet set once strolled. A car dealership still displays its grimy stock of 1974 models, while pockmarked mannequins dressed in outmoded fashions stare blankly from wrecked shop windows. But no one is sunbathing on Varosha’s golden sands.
MORESNET
Created in 1816 around a strategic zinc mine when Prussia, the Netherlands and later Belgium could not agree on sovereignty. Renamed Amikejo, it became a self-determining global haven for Esperantists before its disappearance after World War I with the Treaty of Versailles.
The settlers entered Moresnet from the north, at a spot not far from the railway track running between Aachen and Welkenraedt. Past the three granite columns marking the highest point in the Netherlands, they strode down through the thick forest into what was once one of Europe’s richest mining valleys.
In its nineteenth-century heyday, this was a thriving settlement: its schoolhouse resplendent, its workers well housed. Free of outside restrictions, the mining company organized health insurance and interest-bearing savings accounts. But by the dawn of the twentieth century the zinc was all but gone. Gone too was an attempt to transform Moresnet into a giant casino. In 1903, when roulette tables were outlawed in neighbouring Belgium, a businessman made an offer to the town’s burgomaster and councillors: a million francs a year to open their doors to gamblers. These golden, spinning-table dreams did not come to pass. Disaffected youths turned to crime and smuggling to make ends meet.
In August 1908, people gathered in the pavilion of the shooting association, beneath the grimy smokestacks, to join in a new beginning. Their spiritual leader was Dr Wilhelm Molly, a Moresnet general practitioner and founder of the local postal service. Spirits were high, stirring speeches were delivered and the miners’ brass band struck up during the intervals. Dr Molly’s dream of an independent Esperanto city-state was proclaimed. They renamed Moresnet in the vernacular, henceforth to be known as Amikejo, the ‘place of friendship’. This territory would be a global haven, a sanctuary from ‘all that is absurd and unworthy in convention, all that the ignorant centuries have imposed upon us’.
A coat of arms was solemnly unveiled. The band played the Amikejo March, composed for the ceremony and sung to the tune of ‘O Tannenbaum’, the Christmas tree song. It was to be their national anthem.
FORVIK
Also known as Forewick Holm
Shetland island state created by an English yachtsman.
Stuart Hill spent his first night in the North Sea archipelago of Shetland in hospital suffering from hypothermia. He had been rescued by coastguards after capsizing in his converted rowing boat, MAXIMUM EXPOSURE, during an ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the British Isles. It was the eighth and final time he was rescued in the four months since leaving Kent in England, and his maritime mishaps had earned him a nickname in the British media. They called him Captain Calamity.
But he liked Shetland, so Hill decided to stay. By 2008 he had taken up residence on the windswept islet of Forvik, and began a campaign for self-determination based on Shetland’s cultural affinity with Scandinavia, a facet of its Viking heritage. The islands, he argued, technically remained part of the Norse empire that had passed into history. Hoping to be the vanguard of a wider Shetland autonomy, Mr Hill posed a query: could the UK government explain the basis for their perceived authority in Shetland? The answer was a deafening silence.
Nobody took much notice until Hill was sued by a debt agency. At last he saw an opportunity to test his legal argument that Scotland had no jurisdiction over Shetland. Standing in the dock, his exchange with Sheriff Philip Mann was genial but ultimately fruitless. The sheriff said he could not agree with Mr Hill’s position. ‘If you’re correct I might as well just fold up my papers and walk out now,’ he told him. ‘I don’t see how I can competently make a ruling that I’m sitting here incompetently.’
When asked for his position on the case itself, Mr Hill offered no defence and said he would appeal to a higher court. Sheriff Mann made him bankrupt but wished Captain Calamity the best of luck.
ABKHAZIA
Breakaway enclave of Georgia supported by Russia.
They came to burn down the National Library one balmy afternoon in August 1992. Local residents helped the librarians douse the flames, carrying buckets of seawater from the beach. Two months later, when skirmishes were routine on the streets of Sukhumi, they tried again, at the Abkhaz Research Institute of History, Language and Literature. This time the Georgian paramilitaries were more thorough. They used kerosene and kept civilians back at gunpoint. A fire engine arrived and was turned away. In the morning, when the academicians arrived for work, most of what they found was ashes.
The Abkhaz and the Georgians have different ethnic roots, although they shared this stretch of coast for centuries. After two brief attempts at independence, Abkhazia was sucked into Georgia and became part of the Soviet Union. The situation deteriorated under Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, an ethnic Georgian himself. Abkhazia’s status was downgraded, Abkhaz schools were closed and their language banned. Georgian peasants were resettled in Abkhazia and the Abkhaz became a minority in their own homeland.
The city of Sukhumi was transformed into a favourite holiday spot for Stalin’s elite. Government sanatoria and guesthouses for the KGB – the Soviet security service – sprang up along the subtropical coastline. Stalin kept his own personal dacha, perched on a hilltop with spectacular views across tangerine groves to the sparkling Black Sea. Peacocks strutted the grounds of the municipal spa. Communist Party bigwi
gs and senior KGB officers strolled the palm-lined boulevards and supped the finest Georgian brandy.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, an ethnic time-bomb was detonated. Afraid of being completely swamped, the Abkhaz declared their own republic. Georgian troops occupied Sukhumi and books were burned. So began a bloody, year-long war of secession that ended with Russian troops keeping the peace and propping up a barely autonomous Abkhazia.
CATALONIA
A corner of Spain that seeks full statehood.
More than two million people turned out to vote in Catalonia in what was billed as a ‘consultation of citizens’. In the Spanish capital, Madrid, they saw it differently. Spain’s highest court, the Tribunal Constitucional, ruled the whole thing unlawful. Not only was the non-binding referendum on independence illegal but also the law passed by the Catalan regional government allowing it to arrange such votes.
Even within Catalonia the situation was not clear-cut. Certainly over two million people had voted in 2014, and a majority of them had said yes to independence. But fewer than half of those eligible to cast a ballot had done so. The head of the Catalan regional government called the referendum a ‘total success’. In Madrid, the Spanish justice minister dismissed the exercise as ‘sterile and useless’.
An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist Page 2
