Reading Blog: July Sovereignty Edition
In recognition of the Fourth of July and my multi-border visit to Cyprus, it’s a special sovereignty edition of the reading blog!
These are academic reports on international law, so not great for gifting or filling a bookshelf? But good niche maps content.
European Exclaves in the Process of De-bordering and Re-bordering (Jaroslaw Janczak and Przemyslaw Osiewicz, 2013)
Political science professors Janczak and Osiewicz publish a collection of chapters about exclaves and enclaves across Europe.
Articles compare the functioning of German and Italian enclaves within Switzerland, or provide an in-depth account into practicalities of living in Baarle where each block could be a different country.
The most famous former enclave state was the Republic of Venice.
I also appreciated an enclave history section including Steinstücken, an isolated home to 200 Berliners and a US military post until a walled roadway reattached them to West Berlin in 1972.
I’m struck by the number of European enclaves which faced a make-or-break point in the 1800s, WW1, and post-WW2, with referendums and diplomacy processes failing to filter them out. When Baarle-Hertog ended local conflict-resolution and hardened borders during WW1, yet bounced back after the war, did other enclaves die out?
The chapter on Cypriot enclaves within the UK Sovereign Base Area included most of what I’d heard about these enclaves. Unfortunately this section was poorly written (“Cyprus remains one of the biggest islands in the Mediterranean Sea to this day.”). And despite emphasis that the Dhekelia Power Station is uninhabited, there is a triangle-shaped neighborhood (which I’ve just learned from another Wiki page is the Electrical Authority of Cyprus Refugee Settlement).
On Armenia/Azerbaijan, the background on Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic is really illuminating — I always thought it was called a republic for convenience due to its exclave situation or conflicts with Armenia. Instead it its independence goes back further, with a separate recognition by Lenin. It holds special status in the main part of Azerbaijan from its valuable border crossing with Turkey, and the ruling family having been rooted there.
Another chapter delves into the years-long process of resettled Armenians using international courts to try and reinstate control of Artsvashen. Interestingly Google Maps still displays the Artsvashen enclave border, while OpenStreetMap users have erased it.
The reader might think former Yugoslavia would have many ethnic enclaves, but there are only two de jure exclaves with international borders. One is Dubrovnik, Croatia (which is accessible by boat, a small stretch of Bosnia-Herzegovina highway, or a future bridge). The other is Međurečje, a part of Bosnia-Herzegovina which is 1.5km inside Serbia, and had almost all Bosnian Muslims leave in 1992. The territory has a majority-Serbian population using Serbian government services, yet due to historical ties and disagreements about a corridor or land swap, it remains.
Games of Life and Land: A Comparative Analysis of the Origins of True Enclaves in South and Central Asia, Their Impacts on Public Policy, and Factors Prolonging Their Existence (Glen R. Hamburg, 2014)
In 2015, India and Bangladesh swapped several enclaves from within each other’s territory. This 60-page report and its citations appears to come out of the discussion before that agreement.
I found this to be readable, with plenty of detail and access to sources on the ground at the India-Bangladesh border.
The first obstacle is finding accurate information about the borders, populations, origins, and even count of enclaves. When embassies refuse to give a definitive answer, and local officials recycle apocryphal stories about gambling princes and bumbling Brits, it’s up to the researcher to make their own assessment (the historical explanation for the borders being: a war between two kingdoms, settled with each side keeping their holdings at that moment).
The author finds about 100 enclaves within India and 100 within Bangladesh, not all populated, some less than an acre, totaling 50,000–100,000 residents. Only one large enclave (Dahagram–Angarpota) has a patrolled border; the others were not formally marked and suffered a lack of education, police, IDs, and other services from either government. Over time they had become under-developed areas where criminals could hide out. Though Bangladesh ratified an agreement in 1974 to exchange enclaves, this book describes several factors for why India was stalling on a resolution (bureaucratic indifference, fears that Chinese territorial claims would get strengthened, reluctance to accept new citizens).
The author to a lesser extent includes enclaves within Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan). These 7–9 larger enclaves have institutional connections to their home government and more defined borders, with one only recently being de-mined. Hamburg covers the myths about how they came about (Stalin) and obstacles to development and diplomacy which have made the enclaves inconvenient for all three countries.
A travel YouTuber has visited a few of the Central Asian enclaves:
The Making of Informal States: Statebuilding in Northern Cyprus and Transdniestria (Daria Isachenko, 2012)
A political science researcher writes 180 pages on what it means to be an informal state. As a Russian speaker, Isachenko was interested in improving the international relations research around Transdniestria, but also was on the ground getting quality interviews in Northern Cyprus. These governments are not widely recognized, and the European Court of Human Rights has found that other countries (Russia and Turkey) control them.
We start out with some definitions of a nation and why these nations in particular need qualifiers. There’s some solid, possibly anarchist agitation around Treaty of Westphalia here (“State sovereignty is quite a problematic idea, which became a dominant fiction and still remains a powerful construct.”) which I’ll try to unpack in a future post. In both places, there are textbooks and pageants cementing the country’s history in education. Economic difficulties stem from overstaffed and over-pensioned public sectors over small countries, and a widespread failure to collect taxes.
In Transdniestria (Transnistria on Wikipedia, Pridnestrovie locally), Isachenko’s sources point out that it and related mini-states are not a weakness of sovereignty but instead show that Russia can extend its borders with force and a refusal to compromise. I knew nothing about Moldova and Transdniestria’s history. There’s a description of how the USSR’s changing border with Romania separated out this area, which then had an influx of Russian and Ukrainian Soviet loyalists, who viewed the collapse of the USSR and return to a Latin script very differently from other Moldovans (different too from the new Moscow government, which did little to direct their military forces and armaments’ use in the 1992 war). Though Russia has intervened since, one city (Bender) continues to be patrolled by both sides and peacekeepers. Though Transdniestria’s statelessness has been portrayed as a haven for arms dealers, trade monitors have found that importing and then smuggling chicken into neighboring countries is more lucrative (I see articles on this cluster around 2006 but fade off… I have questions).
In North Cyprus, there is some exasperation about the international peacekeeping mission and status of the island becoming its own industry. Isachenko starts with a balanced history of the division of Cyprus, with details about military administration of Turkish enclaves, the first constitution of an independent Cypriot republic, and the early days of division, eventually leading to today’s North Cyprus. Initially the national identity was almost synonymous with Turkey, but over time (possibly due to Turkish immigrants working in agricultural and other lower-wage jobs), personal identity shifted to being Turkish Cypriots, with political effects (approving the Annan Plan, and taking control of the police away from the Turkish military).
One interesting difference between the two would-be nations is the economic response to being a small isolated state. Transdniestria successfully negotiated access to the Moldovan customs system and can trade with the EU. Greece and Cyprus do not want an EU trade agreement which would favor the North. The government has experimented with casinos, tourism, and for-profit universities for economic growth.
Meanwhile
I finished only one long-form book (Making of Informal States) and struggled to make real progress on others. Practising Self-Government, a 490-page survey on autonomous regions, would have fit nicely into this post.
As I went through some bookmarks in last month’s Churchill, I looked up an aside about the first NATO Secretary-General having started his career with the colonial army in Somaliland:
