An Atlas of Extinct Countries

by Gideon Defoe

  Today: Iran, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, roughly

  ///slippers.sponge.porridge

  Passports are important. Some people will go to insane, nation-crippling lengths just to ensure they’re the correct colour. Genghis Khan took them even more seriously. One surviving example of a Mongol passport, a small metal disc, reads: ‘I am the emissary of the Khan. If you defy me you die.’ Another is even more succinct – ‘LET PASS OR DIE!’ If you were ruling a country back in the thirteenth century and a guy turned up carrying one of these, then you would have to be a colossal idiot to ignore that warning.

  Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad was that colossal idiot.

  Of all the deceased countries in this book, it’s hard not to feel Khwarezmia had it coming. Covering a large chunk of Asia, the shah’s empire rivalled Genghis’s in size, if not in organisational nous. Relations between the two were frosty from the start. But in an out-of-character move, Genghis came looking for peace and trade, having had his fill of pillaging absolutely everything he could see. He sent Muhammad a friendly note: ‘I am the sovereign of the sunrise and you are the sovereign of the sunset.’ While geographically accurate, this could also be read as a not-very-subtle insult and didn’t go down well.

  Muhammad sent Genghis a slightly crap present of some silk – the equivalent of the time Obama awkwardly gifted Gordon Brown a box of DVDs. Privately, Genghis was sniffy – ‘Does the man imagine we’ve never seen stuff like this?’ – but he didn’t let on. He dispatched an envoy, Mahmud Yalavech, with a huge gold nugget, and an oral message that this time referred to the shah as ‘my son’. This also failed to go down well. The shah accused Yalavech of being a spy, but Yalavech fast-talked his way out of it, flattering him with tales of how tiny and useless the Mongol army was compared to the forces of Khwarezmia. Muhammad let the envoy go but continued to secretly seethe.

  Then a huge Mongol trading caravan turned up in the city of Otrar. Over 400 merchants with 500 camels and another 100 cavalry. The caravan sought to get Khwarezmia to lift an embargo on cloth (Mongolia had a cloth shortage, which is serious when your entire civilisation is tent-based).

  Muhammad didn’t lift the embargo. In fact, he went slightly further than that: he ordered every last one of the merchants killed, once again accusing them of being spies.* One man, who happened to be taking a bath at the time, managed to escape the massacre. He fled back home to report it. Unbelievably Genghis Khan, not a man famous for his ‘live and let live’ attitude, took the news in his stride and offered the shah a diplomatic get-out. He dispatched a party of three to explain his proposal: declare it was all ‘a demented mistake’ on the part of the city’s governor, hand him over and everything would be fine. The shah responded … by killing the head of the mission on the spot and sending the other two back with their beards burned off. At about this point, an ambassador turned up to let the shah know his research suggested that actually this Genghis man and his Mongols were absolutely not to be messed with. The shah presumably pulled a ‘whoops’ face. Genghis’s next message was to the point: ‘You kill my men and my merchants and you take from them my property. Prepare for war, I am coming against you with a host you cannot withstand.’†

  * In addition to the ludicrous ‘spies’ claim, the shah also moaned that he had been addressed by the wrong title, which hints at what a touchy brat he was.

  † The shah proved no better at war than he was at diplomacy. He hid at the back of badly controlled troops because he’d been spooked by the predictions of his astrologer. Unlike most astrologers, this one was right on the money: Khwarezmia was toast.

  Puppets & Political Footballs

  The Republic of Formosa

  May–October 1895

  Population: <3 million

  Capital: Taipei

  Languages: Taiwanese, Formosan, Hakka

  Currency: Qing dynasty coinage

  Cause of death: hopeless presidents, Japan

  Today: now Taiwan, officially part of the Republic of China

  ///searcher.defectors.misnamed

  Some nation states – even massive ones like China – are so weirdly insecure that they get anxious if, say, your contents list happens to contain the name of a country they don’t officially recognise as ever having existed. To the extent that they’ll refuse to print your book and you’ll have to go and get it done in Slovenia instead.*

  The irony here is that we’re not talking about the perennial hot potato of Tibet, but about a republic whose sole aim was to remain a part of China – the exact opposite of the island’s political struggles today.

  The name ‘Formosa’ dates from the mid-sixteenth century, when a Portuguese trading vessel, blown off course by a typhoon, sailed past the island’s eastern coast. One of the crew, struck by the impressive landscape, referred to it as Ilha Formosa (‘beautiful island’) and the name stuck. Later it became a Dutch colony, and then a part of the Chinese Empire. In the West it briefly hit the headlines when the Frenchman George Psalmanazar published An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704), detailing the island’s bizarre customs. London society lapped up his lurid descriptions of how Formosans, who spent all their time naked, lived off a diet of serpents, and of how the men would eat their wives if they were unfaithful, all while priests sacrificed 18,000 young boys every year. Plus, everyone lived underground in huge circular houses. It is important to note that every single thing in Psalmanazar’s book is bullshit.†

  In real life, by the late nineteenth century Formosa was struggling. A backwater of the Chinese Empire, it attracted the calibre of administrator who today you’d find running a privatised train company. Corruption and inefficiency were endemic. And the mainland wasn’t doing so well itself. China and Japan had gone to war over Korea, and China had lost badly. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was the humiliating peace Japan forced upon them – demanding, among other things, Formosa.

  The leader of the Chinese delegation tried to persuade Japan that it didn’t really want it, arguing the island was riddled with malaria and opium addiction. Japan saw through this brilliant ploy and stuck to its guns. A date was set for handing the territory over. Predictably, a lot of the Formosans felt badly sold out by the motherland, and the local elites rebelled. The reluctant governor, T’ang, issued a declaration of independence: ‘the literati and people of Formosa are determined to resist subjection by Japan. Hence they have declared themselves an independent island republic, at the same time recognising the suzerainty of the sacred Tsing [Qing] dynasty.’ There was a misplaced hope that the British would step in to protect this plucky new nation against the Japanese invaders. Again, who knows where anyone got that idea, because this is not, very obviously, how the British tend to operate.

  When the first contingent of Japanese troops turned up, the self-proclaimed government instantly fled, leaving an angry mob to set fire to their offices. T’ang himself visited a port on the pretext of conducting a military inspection, and then simply hopped onto a departing German boat. This led to his nickname, ‘the Ten-Day President’.

  A small Japanese army unit took the capital in one day, but the south of the island put up a slightly tougher resistance. A successful general called ‘Black Flag’ Liu was (again reluctantly) named the new president. He tried to start up negotiations with the Japanese, but they were in no mood to talk. Before long, president number two was also making his escape to the mainland, this time dressed in rags and disguised as a refugee. After 500 people were killed in two days of anarchic mayhem, most of the merchants and shop owners were ready to welcome the Japanese takeover – because, they reasoned, it couldn’t go much worse than the last two guys’ efforts.

  The legacy of the short-lived republic is an odd one. Despite being an attempt to remain a part of China, the flag is now a rallying point for those seeking independence (mainly because it’s such a great flag, a happy lion who looks like a very good boy). And the
experience seems to have left the Taiwanese wise to the fact that, when push comes to shove, neither China nor anyone else is looking out for them.

  * Slovenia, being part of the Balkans, inevitably has a slightly more adult level of acceptance about the confusing nature of existence than the One Indivisible China.

  † Psalmanazar tried the same trick when he first turned up in England by recounting equally unlikely stories of his travels in Ireland, but he found a few too many people already knew what Ireland was like. Perhaps most impressively, he even managed to teach a totally made-up Formosan language at Oxford University.

  The Republic of West Florida

  September–December 1810

  Capital: St Francisville

  Currencies: Spanish colonial real, US dollar

  Cause of death: swallowed by the United States

  Today: part of Louisiana

  ///deliver.trendy.penniless

  The gate of Fort San Carlos had been left open, so the band of 50 revolutionaries who had assembled outside it that morning simply wandered in. One minute later, after a half-hearted exchange of gunfire with the Spanish soldiers inside, their unexpectedly easy revolution was over. They seized the fort and unfurled a flag to announce the birth of the Lone Star State. No, not that one, the proper one: the Republic of West Florida.

  It’s important to point out that while the original Lone Star State wasn’t Texas like everyone thinks, it wasn’t Florida either. This is because, confusingly, the Republic of West Florida was in what is now Louisiana.* One of the reasons it’s confusing is because everything in America was confusing at the start of the nineteenth century. In 1803, across the Atlantic, Napoleon had a cash-flow problem. Trying to take over Europe is expensive. He offered the fledgling United States a deal: the Louisiana Purchase. In the bargain of the century, the States paid 50 million francs and got a chunk of French territory that stretched from the south in New Orleans to as far north as Canada, and from Wyoming in the west to Iowa in the east.

  Fly in the ointment: it wasn’t totally clear whether France owned everything it was selling. Spain claimed that, back when it had first ceded the region to the French, one small area hadn’t been included – a strip of land between Baton Rouge and just east of Pensacola. The United States disagreed, but they weren’t keen to provoke a war. So, the disputed area, despite an influx of Americans, continued on under the rule of Spain. That was okay for a while, but the West Floridians, or at least some of them, found the Spanish administration increasingly corrupt.

  This group of would-be revolutionaries began to plot. Melissa Johnson (the wife of the cavalry officer tasked with leading the revolt) designed a flag of independence: a single white star on a blue background.† They marched on the fort. After their slightly anticlimactic 60-second victory, the republic lasted another 78 days under the leadership of the excellently named Fulwar Skipwith. Then the United States quietly swallowed it up, all without having to lift a finger. But West Florida didn’t die before the inhabitants came up with an anthem that referred to the country as ‘Floriday’ just so there was something to rhyme with ‘Tyranny’, which is poor lyric writing however you cut it.

  * Extra confusingly, there was also something called the Republic of the Floridas, declared a few years later. Which also began with a group of soldiers seizing a Fort San Carlos, though a different Fort San Carlos, over on Amelia Island on the east coast. This republic didn’t come to anything, because the man behind it was the future Cazique of Poyais, Gregor MacGregor, up to his usual tricks.

  † The legacy: the republic didn’t only bequeath a flag to the independent Texas, it also helped kick off the whole ‘Manifest Destiny’ fad.

  Manchukuo

  1932–45

  Population: 35 million

  Capital: Hsinking, Tonghua

  Languages: Japanese, Manchu, Mandarin

  Currency: Manchukuo yuan

  Cause of death: World War II

  Today: part of China

  ///bicker.crew.powder

  In the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan woke up from a self-imposed slumber, blearily rubbed its eyes, looked around at all the appalling things the Europeans were getting away with and said: ‘Think you guys are bad? Hold my Asahi, you colonialist bastards, we’ll show you how it’s done.’*

  Within fifty years the Japanese had already fought a war in Korea and grabbed Formosa from China, but that didn’t sate their new expansionist thirst. Further opportunity came in the form of a train. In the late 1800s, the Russian tsar had travelled across his vast empire and decided he fancied being able to do it in a bit more style, ideally something with a dining car and a personal chef – so he resolved to complete the Trans-Siberian Railway. Impatient to get the job done, the engineers took the most direct route, which involved a shortcut across China.†

  Before long, it was Russia and Japan’s turn to come to blows. The brief war and subsequent peace treaty saw Japan take over this Chinese portion of the Russian railway. Officially, it had only won control of the narrow South Manchuria Railway Zone, as it was known, but it was soon building settlements along the route. This creeping expansion of its territory didn’t creep fast enough as far the Japanese government was concerned. It needed an excuse to speed things up.

  These days, nothing happens in the world without some bonkers part of the internet screaming ‘FALSE FLAG OPERATION!!’ Back in 1931, it was still a relatively novel trick. The Japanese blew up a small chunk of their own railway and blamed it on ‘Chinese terrorists’.‡ That was all the pretext they needed. The rest of the world instantly saw through the scheme because it was rubbish.§ The League of Nations got showily upset – and totally failed to act. The army moved in and the country of Manchukuo was unveiled.

  It started as a fake republic and then morphed into a fake kingdom. Japan tapped the last Emperor of China as a figurehead, lending it some spurious legitimacy. All countries are huge PR exercises to an extent and Manchukuo was no different, though the PR was so over the top, and so much the antithesis of what was happening, that today it comes across as a very dark joke. Posters of rosy-cheeked multicultural children popped up everywhere. One book designed to show ‘everyday life’ had a photograph of a family with the caption ‘a member of the Manchukuo intelligentsia voluntarily posing for a picture with his wife and two children’. Hint for future puppet regimes trying to seem legit: leave out the word ‘voluntarily’, it’s a bit of a giveaway.

  Beneath the cheery facade, unwanted ethnic minorities were being wiped out with chemical weapons. Unit 731 conducted human experimentation worse than anything even the Nazis managed, all under the sunny-sounding title of ‘the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department’. Japan’s new hyper-nationalism inevitably led to its puppet state getting into another tangle with the Russians. This time things didn’t work out so well: the Soviets invaded Manchukuo with precision timing, two days after Hiroshima.

  * To be fair, Japan rightly realised that it was now faced with a choice: get busy throwing its weight around or face the same unhappy fate as everyone else the Europeans had dealings with.

  † Russia was allowed to build the ‘Chinese Eastern Railway’ across Manchuria because of a concession granted by the faltering Qing dynasty, who weren’t in a position to say no to much of anything at this point.

  ‡ Prior to Manchukuo, the Japanese had already blown up a train to get rid of an irritating Chinese warlord, so it was something they’d had a bit of practice at.

  § Probably lies: the rumour that the Vatican was one of the countries that recognised Manchukuo, popularised by Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, is false, though it did send an envoy.

  The Riograndense Republic

  1836–45

  Population: circa 350,000

  Capitals: Piratini, Alegrete, Cacapava do sul, Bage, Sao Borja

  Language: Portuguese

  Currency: Brazi
lian real

  Cause of death: jerky prices

  Today: part of Brazil

  ///waltz.boggle.loudmouth

  A lot of would-be nations had, at their hearts, something that looks inconsequential. Rough and Ready objected to the Californian mining tax. The town of Menton declared independence after Monaco tried to squeeze them with a lemon tax (if you’re a lemon fan you can still visit their annual lemon festival, full of colossal sculptures made entirely out of lemons). For the gauchos of South America, the pet beef was beef jerky.

  Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil, came from one of those difficult families where Christmases are incredibly awkward. He’d already fought a successful war of independence against his own father, the King of Portugal. When his dad’s death resulted in Pedro becoming ruler of both countries, he abdicated the Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Maria so that he could concentrate on running Brazil. At which point his younger brother promptly usurped her. Pedro headed back to Europe to sort out this latest bit of domestic strife, abdicating the Brazilian throne in favour of his son.

  Pedro II was only five, and five-year-olds aren’t known for their diplomacy skills, so Brazil found itself in a delicate situation. Power vacuums tend to magnify existing grievances. The gauchos were a group with a grievance. Gauchos are basically the South American version of cowboys: tough and unruly and fond of a good horse. They controlled the huge sweeping grasslands of the Rio Grande do Sul province, almost half the size of France, where they made their living raising cattle and producing tons of beef jerky.* Cheaper jerky imports from the rest of South America had started to flood the market, leaving the gauchos unhappy with their lot. There was some unkind name-calling: the gauchos referred to the Brazilian royalist government as ‘camels’. The royalists referred to the gauchos as ‘ragamuffins’ (because of the raggedy nature of their outfits). And so began the Ragamuffin War.