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Micronation

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Revision as of 23:08, 4 July 2006 by Hmains (talk | contribs) (link control; copyedit)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) This article is about entities that are not recognized by any world governments or major international organizations. For information on countries that are generally recognized, but are geographically tiny such as Nauru, Vatican City, or San Marino, see microstate.

Micronations – sometimes also referred to as cybernations, fantasy countries, model countries, and new country projects – are entities that resemble independent nations or states, but which are unrecognized by them, and for the most part exist only on paper, on the Internet, or in the minds of their creators.

Micronations also differ from secession and self-determination movements in that they are largely viewed as being eccentric and ephemeral in nature, and are often created and maintained by a single person or family group.

Some micronations have managed to extend some of their operations into the physical world by issuing coins, flags, postage stamps, passports, medals and other items. Such trappings of "real" sovereign states are created as a way of seeking to legitimize the micronations that produce them.

The term "micronation" is a neologism originating in the 1990s to describe the many thousands of small, unrecognised state-like entities that have mostly arisen since that time. The term has since also come to be used retroactively to refer to earlier ephemeral unrecognised entities, some of which date as far back as the early 19th century.

The micronation of Sealand

Definition

Micronations generally have a number of common features:

  1. Micronations often assert that they wish to be widely recognised as sovereign states — but they are not so recognised by established states.
  2. Micronations are quite small, both geographically and in terms of membership. They rarely have more than a few hundred members — and the vast majority have no more than one or two active participants.
  3. Some micronations issue government instruments such as passports, stamps, and currency, and confer titles and awards — but these are rarely recognised outside of their own communities of interest.

These criteria distinguish micronations from imaginary countries, eco-villages, campuses, tribes, clans, sects, residential community associations or Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) which do not usually seek to be recognised as sovereign.

Micronations should be distinguished from various entities which exercise effective governmental and military control over a territory, despite not being recognised as a state by most or all other states. Examples of such entities would include South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria, or many parts of the world controlled by rebel guerilla groups. By contrast, micronations do not exercise effective military or governmental control of any more than a very small area (e.g. the private property of its founders), if that.

Micronations should also be distinguished from entities that have diplomatic relations with other recognized nation-states of the world without being formally recognized themselves by many nation-states or accepted by major international bodies (such as the UN), for example the Republic of China (Taiwan). By contrast, micronations do not generally have diplomatic relations with recognized nation-states of the world or major international bodies (such as the UN).

The neologism "micropatrology" is sometimes used to describe the study of both micronations and microstates by micronational hobbyists, who refer to other sovereign nation-states as "macronations".

Legitimacy

In international law, the two most common schools of thought for the creation of statehood are the constitutive and declaratory theories of state creation. The constitutive theory was the standard nineteenth century model of statehood, and the declaratory theory was developed in the twentieth century to address shortcomings of the constitutive theory. In the constitutive theory, a state exists exclusively via recognition by other states. The theory splits on whether this recognition requires "diplomatic recognition" or merely "recognition of existence." In the declaratory theory of statehood, an entity becomes a state as soon as it meets the minimal criteria for statehood.

As micronations do not meet either criterion, they cannot be considered sovereign states, and have no legitimacy in international law.

See also: constitutive theory of statehood, declarative theory of statehood

Early history and evolution

The micronation phenomenon is tied closely to the development of the nation-state concept in the 19th century, and the earliest recognisable micronations can be dated to that period. Most were founded by eccentric adventurers or business speculators, and several were remarkably successful. These include the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, ruled by the Clunies-Ross family, and Sarawak, ruled by the "White Rajahs" of the Brooke family; both were independent personal fiefdoms in all but name, and survived until well into the 20th century. Author Peter L. Wilson has suggested that so-called pirate utopias located on the Barbary Coast during the Sixteenth Century were also a type of early micronation.

Less successful micronations are the Long Republic (1819–1820), in what is now the U.S. state of Texas, the Republic of Indian Stream (1828–1835), which is now the town of Pittsburg, New Hampshire, the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia (1860–62) in southern Chile and Argentina, and the Kingdom of Sedang (1888–90) in French Indochina. The oldest extant micronation to arise in modern times is the Kingdom of Redonda, founded in 1865 in the Caribbean. It failed to establish itself as a real country, but has nonetheless managed to survive into the present day as a unique literary foundation with its own king and aristocracy — although it is not without its controversies: there are presently at least four competing claimants to the Redondan throne.

File:LundyOldLight.jpg
The Old Light, Lundy

Martin Coles Harman, owner of the U.K. island of Lundy in the early decades of the 20th century, declared himself King and issued private coinage and postage stamps for local use. Although the island was ruled as a virtual fiefdom, its owner never claimed to be independent of the United Kingdom, so Lundy can at best be described as a precursor to later territorial micronations. Another example is the Principality of Outer Baldonia, a 16 acre rocky island off the coast of Nova Scotia, founded by Russel Arundel, chairman of Pepsi, in 1945 and consisting of a population of 69 fishermen.

History during 1960 to 1980

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the foundation of a number of territorial micronations. The first of these, Sealand, was established in 1967 on an abandoned World War II gun platform in the North Sea just off the East Anglian coast of England, and has survived into the present day. Others were founded on libertarian principles and involved schemes to construct artificial islands, but only three are known to have had even limited success in realising that goal.

Republic of Rose Island was a 400 square-metre platform built in Italian national waters, 7 miles off the Italian town of Rimini, in the Adriatic Sea in 1968. It is known to have issued stamps and declared Esperanto to be its official language. Shortly after completion, however, it was seized and destroyed by the Italian Navy.

In the late 1960s, Leicester Hemingway (aka Lester Hemingway), brother of author Ernest, was involved in another such project — a small timber platform in international waters off the west coast of Jamaica. This territory, consisting of an 8 foot by 30 foot barge, he called "New Atlantis". Hemingway was an honorary citizen and President, however the structure was damaged by storms and finally pillaged by Mexican fishermen. In 1973, Hemingway was reported to have moved on from New Atlantis to promoting a 1,000-square-yard platform near the Bahamas. The new country was called "Tierra del Mar" (Sea Land). (Ironically, Ernest Hemingway's adopted hometown of Key West would itself be part of another micronation, see below.)

The Republic of Minerva was set up in 1972 as a libertarian new country project by Nevada businessman Michael Oliver. Oliver's group conducted dredging operations at the Minerva Reefs, a shoal located in the Pacific Ocean south of Fiji. They succeeded in creating a small artificial island, but their efforts at securing international recognition met with little success, and near-neighbour Tonga sent a military force to the area and annexed it.

On April 1 1977, bibliophile Richard George William Pitt Booth declared the United Kingdom town of Hay-on-Wye an independent kingdom with himself as its monarch. The town has subsequently developed a healthy tourism industry based on literary interests, and "King Richard" (whose sceptre consists of a recycled toilet plunger) continues to dole out Hay-on-Wye peerages and honours to anyone prepared to pay for them. Unlike some claimants to "microstatedom" Richard Booth does not pretend to take his claims seriously.

Australian developments

Micronational activities were disproportionately common throughout Australia in the final three decades of the 20th century.

  • The still-thriving Hutt River Province Principality was the first manifestation of the phenomenon; it was founded in 1970, when a farmer declared his property independent after a dispute over wheat quotas.
  • 1976 witnessed the creation of the Province of Bumbunga on a rural property near Snowtown, South Australia, by an eccentric British monarchist.
  • The Sovereign State of Aeterna Lucina was created in a hamlet on the New South Wales north coast in 1978.
  • At around the same time an anti-taxation campaigner founded the Duchy of Avram in western Tasmania; "His Grace the Duke of Avram" later went on to become an elected member of the Tasmanian Parliament.
  • In Victoria, a long-running dispute over flood damage to farm properties led to the creation of the Independent State of Rainbow Creek in 1979.
  • A mortgage foreclosure dispute led George and Stephanie Muirhead of Rockhampton, Queensland, to briefly and abortively secede as the Principality of Marlborough in 1993.
  • Another Australian farm tried to establish itself as secessionist micronation on 1 May 2003 as the Principality of United Oceania.
  • The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands is a micronation established in 2004 as a symbolic political protest by a group of gay rights activists based in southeast Queensland Australia.
  • Another active Australian-based micronation is the United Federation of Koronis , which has "laid claim" to the Koronis family of asteroids. Koronis minted several coins in 2006. Most of its citizens, who come from mainly South Australia and New South Wales appear to have an academic and scientific background .

Impact of Internet

Micronationalism shed much of its traditionally eccentric anti-establishment mantle and took on a distinctly hobbyist perspective from the mid-1990s when the emerging popularity of the Internet made it possible to create and promote statelike entities in an entirely electronic medium, with relative ease. As a result the number of exclusively online, fantasy or simulation-based micronations expanded dramatically.

The activities of these types of micronations are almost exclusively limited to simulations of diplomatic activity (including the signing of "treaties" and participation in "supra-micronational" forums such as the League of Micronations and the Micronational News Network), the conduct and operation of simulated elections and parliaments, and participation in simulated wars — all of which are carried out through online bulletin boards, mailing lists and blogs. Some micronations also make use of online wikis.

A number of older style territorial micronations, including the Hutt River Province, Seborga, Sealand, maintain websites that serve largely to promote their claims and sell merchandise.

Categories

In the present day seven main types of micronations are prevalent:

  1. Social, economic, or political simulations.
  2. Exercises in personal entertainment or self-aggrandisement.
  3. Exercises in fantasy or creative fiction.
  4. Vehicles for the promotion of an agenda.
  5. Entities created for fraudulent purposes.
  6. Historical anomalies and aspirant states.
  7. New country projects.

Social, economic, or political simulations

These micronations tend to have a reasonably serious intent, and often involve significant numbers of people interested in recreating the past or simulating political or social processes. Examples include:

  • "Kingdom of Talossa", a quarter century old political simulation with eleven members and an invented culture and language founded in 1979.
  • Nova Roma, a group claiming a worldwide membership of several thousand that has minted its own coins , maintains its own Wiki , and which engages in real life Roman-themed re-enactments.

Exercises in personal entertainment or self-aggrandisement

With literally thousands in existence, micronations of the second type are by far the most common. They exist "for fun", have few participants, are ephemeral, Internet-based, and rarely survive more than a few months — although there are notable exceptions. They are usually concerned solely with arrogating to their founders the outward symbols of statehood. The use of grand-sounding titles, awards, honours, and heraldic symbols derived from European feudal traditions, the conduct of "wars" and "diplomacy" with other micronations, and claims of being located on fantasy continents or planets are common manifestations of their activities. Examples include:

Flag of Aerica
  • The Aerican Empire, a Monty Pythonesque micronation founded in 1987 by Eric Lis and known for its tongue-in-cheek interplanetary land claims, smiley faced flag and a range of national holidays that includes "Topin Wagglegammon" amongst others.
  • Tarsicia, a project that has undergone a mind-boggling series of reinventions by its teenage creator, including claims to be a proto-undersea kingdom.

Exercises in fantasy or creative fiction

Micronations of the third type include stand-alone artistic projects, deliberate exercises in creative online fiction and artistamp creations. Examples include:

  • Lizbekistan, a popular Internet-based project created by Australian artist Liz Stirling.
  • Upper Yafa and Oecussi-Ambeno, two micronations using the names of real territories within Yemen and East Timor repectively. Part of an extraordinarily diverse and entertaining array of micronations invented by prolific New Zealand-based artistamp producer Bruce Henderson since the early 1970s.
  • The Republic of Howland, Baker and Jarvis, a highly developed web-based alternative reality project developed by Stephen Abbott named for three uninhabited US minor outlying islands.
  • The nation of NSK - Neue Slowenische Kunst, a nation created by a number of Slovene artists who satirically claim to be part of a voluntary totalitarian collective, among them Laibach.
  • Aristasia, the Feminine Empire, is an all-female State in which the two legal 'sexes' are Blonde and Brunette. Aristasia exists both as a virtual reality and in physical households in Britain, America and elsewhere. It has both virtual and physical embassies.
  • In the 1948 Margaret Rutherford / Stanley Holloway movie Passport to Pimlico, the then London Borough of Pimlico supposedly declares independence from Britain and becomes a micronation.
  • The Republic of Kugelmugel, founded by an Austrian artist and based in a ball-shaped house in Vienna, which quickly became a tourist attraction.
  • The Copeman Empire, run from a caravan park in Norfolk, England, by its founder Nick Copeman, who changed his name by deed poll to HM King Nicholas I. He and his empire are the subject of a book (ISBN 0091899206) and a website.
  • Petoria, a ficticious micronation in the episode E. Peterbus Unum of Family Guy
  • La Republique de Rêves, a combined exercise in fiction and art by G. Garfield Crimmins.
  • San Serriffe, an April Fool's Day hoax created by the British newspaper The Guardian, in its April 1, 1977 edition. The fictional island nation was described in an elaborate seven-page supplement and has been revisited by the newspaper several times.
  • Republic of Saugeais (République du Saugeais), a fifty-years old "republic" in the French département of Doubs, bordering Switzerland. Its capital was Montbenoit. It had a "president" - Georgette Bertin-Pourchet, elected in 2006 - a "prime minister" and numerous "citizens". It was born from a joke between a Sauget resident and the local Préfet.

Vehicles for agenda promotion

These types of micronation are typically associated with a political or social reform agenda. Some are maintained as media and public relations exercises, and examples of this type include:

Entities created for allegedly fraudulent purposes

A number of micronations have been established for fraudulent purposes, by seeking to link questionable or illegal financial actions with seemingly legitimate nations.

By far the most successful of these was the Territory of Poyais, invented by Scottish adventurer and South American independence hero Gregor MacGregor in the early 19th century. On the basis of a land grant made to him by the Anglophile native King of the Mosquito people in what is present-day Honduras, MacGregor wove one of history's most elaborate hoaxes, managing to charm the highest levels of London's political and financial establishment with tales of the bucolic, resource-rich country he claimed to rule as a benevolent sovereign prince, or "Cazique", when he arrived in the UK in 1822. MacGregor's appointed diplomatic representatives were even received at the Court of St. James's, and thousands of investors subsequently parted with hundreds of thousands of pounds (equivalent to many millions today) in exchange for Poyaisian bonds, land grants, and official government appointments and commissions. The hoax was exposed when several shiploads of immigrants arrived at "Poyais" to find a fetid, uninhabited swamp instead of the thriving European-style metropolis that MacGregor's guidebooks and maps had led them to expect. Hundreds died of disease, and the remainder relocated to Belize - yet amazingly, MacGregor escaped prosecution, lived out his days in Venezuela, and was honoured with a state funeral upon his demise.

The best known modern example is the Dominion of Melchizedek, which has been widely condemned for promoting fraudulent banking activities and other financial scams, and for the involvement by one of its founders in the attempted secession of the Fijian island of Rotuma.

Another micronation called New Utopia, operated by an Oklahoma City longevity promoter named Prince Lazarus R. Long (b. Howard Turney; the "Long" name clearly drawn from the character "Lazarus Long" from several stories by Robert A. Heinlein, most notably Time Enough For Love) - and ostensibly a libertarian new country project - was stopped by a United States federal court temporary restraining order from selling bonds and bank licenses. New Utopia has claimed for a number of years to be on the verge of commencing construction of an artificial island territory located approximately midway between Honduras and Cuba, however the selected location continues to remain resolutely submerged by the waters of the Caribbean.

The Kingdom of EnenKio, which claims Wake Atoll in the Marshall Islands belonging to the US minor outlying islands, has been deemed a scam for selling passports and diplomatic papers by the governments of the Marshall Islands and of the United States.

Another micronation associated with fraudulent activities was the United Kingdom of Atlantis, which operated a website that ceased to function in 2005, and which claimed to be located in the Pacific Ocean near Australia. The "kingdom" published maps of its alleged location, however the islands shown did not exist. Atlantis' leader, the self styled Sheikh Yakub Al-Sheikh Ibrahim, was wanted in the US for various crimes including fraud and money laundering. At one point, Atlantis sent a delegation to Palau to offer a low interest loan of $100 million. (also contains an image of the flag)

Historical anomalies and aspirant states

A small number of micronations are founded on historical anomalies or eccentric interpretations of law. This category includes:

  • Seborga, a town in the Italian region of Liguria, near the southern end of the border with France, which traces its history back to the middle ages.
  • the Hutt River Province, a farm in Western Australia which claims to have seceded from Australia to become an independent principality with a worldwide population numbered in the tens of thousands.
  • Sealand, a World War II-era anti-aircraft platform built in the North Sea beyond Britain's then territorial limit, seized by a pirate radio group in 1967 as a base for their operations, and currently used as the site of a secure web-hosting facility. Sealand has continued to promote its independence by issuing stamps, money, and appointing an official national athlete.
  • Llanrwst, a town in North Wales declared a "free borough" by a Welsh "prince" which unsuccessfully applied to the United Nations in 1947 and has the motto "Cymru, Lloegr a Llanrwst" (English: Wales, England and Llanrwst) as testament to its apparent independence.
  • Republic of Indian Stream, now the town of Pittsburg, New Hampshire - a geographic anomaly left unresolved by Treaty of Paris that ended the U.S. Revolutionary War, and claimed by both the U.S. and Canada. Between 1828 and 1835 the area's residents refused to acknowledge either claimant.
  • The splinter group Republic of Texas claims that the original Republic of Texas was never properly annexed by the United States.

These types of micronations are usually located on small (usually disputed) territorial enclaves, generate limited economic activity founded on tourism and philatelic and numismatic sales, and are at best tolerated or at worst ignored by the nations from which they have seceded.

New country projects

New country projects are attempts to found completely new nation-states. They typically involve plans to construct artificial islands (few of which are ever realized), and a large percentage have embraced or purported to embrace libertarian or democratic principles. Examples include:

  • Operation Atlantis, an early 1970s New York-based libertarian group that built a concrete-hulled ship called Freedom, which they sailed to the Caribbean, intending to anchor it permanently there as their "territory". The ship sank in a hurricane and the project foundered with it.
  • Republic of Minerva, another libertarian project that succeeded in building a small man-made island on the Minerva Reefs south of Fiji in 1972 before being ejected by troops from Tonga, who later formally annexed it.
  • Principality of Freedonia, a libertarian project that tried to lease territory from the Sultan of Awdal in Somaliland in 2001. Resulting public dissatisfaction led to rioting, and the deaths of several Somalis.
  • Oceania (also known as "The Atlantis Project", but unrelated to the 1970s project of the same name), another libertarian artificial island project that raised US $400,000 before going bankrupt in 1994.
  • The Seasteading Project, aims to build sovereign, self-sufficient floating platforms, thus creating new territory on the oceans.

Academic, literary and media attention

There has been a small but growing amount of attention paid to the micronation phenomenon in recent years. Most interest in academic circles has been concerned with studying the apparently anomalous legal situations affecting such entities as Sealand and the Hutt River Province, in exploring how some micronations represent grassroots political ideas, and in the creation of role-playing entities for instructional purposes.

In his 1996 book, Peter Lamborn Wilson analysed 16th to 19th century pirate utopias located on the Barbary Coast, suggesting that they shared some characteristics of micronations.

In 2000, Professor Fabrice O'Driscoll, of the Aix-Marseille University, published a book about micronations: "Ils ne siègent pas à l'ONU" ("They are not in the United Nations"), with more than 300 pages dedicated to the subject.

In May 2000, an article in the New York Times entitled "Utopian Rulers, and Spoofs, Stake Out Territory Online" brought the phenomenon to a wider audience for the first time. Similar articles were published by newspapers such as the French "La Liberation", Italian La Repubblica, Greek "Ta Nea", O Estado de São Paulo in Brazil and Portugal's Visão at around the same time.

Several recent publications have dealt with the subject of particular historic micronations, including Republic of Indian Stream (University Press), by Dartmouth College geographer Daniel Doan, and The Land that Never Was, about Gregor MacGregor and the Principality of Poyais, by David Sinclair (Review, 2003, ISBN 0755310802).

In August 2003, a summit of micronations took place in Helsinki at Finlandia Hall, the site of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). The summit was attended by delegations of the Principality of Sealand, the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, NSK-State in Time, Ladonia, the "Transnational Republic", the State of Sabotage and by scholars from various academic institutions.

From 7 November through 17 December 2004, the Reg Vardy Gallery at the University of Sunderland (UK) hosted an exhibition on the subject of micronational group identity and symbolism. The exhibition focused on numismatic, philatelic and vexillological artifacts, as well as other symbols and instruments created and used by a number of micronations from the 1950s through to the present day. A summit of micronations conducted as part of this exhibtion was attended by representatives of Sealand, Elgaland-Vargaland, New Utopia, Atlantium, Frestonia and Fusa. The exhibition was reprised at the Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York City from 24 June - 29 July of the following year.

The Sunderland summit was later featured in a 5-part BBC light entertainment television series called How to Start Your Own Country presented by Danny Wallace. The series told the story of Wallace's experience of founding a micronation, Lovely, located in his London flat. It screened in the UK in August 2005.

In 2000, the TV show Family Guy featured an episode called E. Peterbus Unum, in which the main charater Peter Griffin declared his house to be the new nation of "Petoria", as his house was absent from all maps of Quahog. He annexed his neighbor Joe Swanson's pool and spent a night violating numerous laws in Quahog, exploiting his diplomatic immunity. The USA, provoked by the invasion of Joe's pool, then shut off Petoria's water and electricity and established a military blockade. Peter surrendered when the army threatened to blow up his house with a missile.

See also

General entries

Specific examples

References

External links

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