Belgium and the Netherlands Swap Land, and Remain Friends
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Norway was considering an unlikely birthday present for neighboring Finland: an Arctic mountain peak on Mount Halti, the highest mountain in Finland, whose 4,478-foot summit is in Norway.
> To mark the 100th anniversary of Finland’s declaration of independence from Russia, a group of Norwegians was urging the government to move a point on its border with Finland about 490 feet to the north and 650 feet to the east.
> But that ran afoul of an article of the Norwegian Constitution that states unequivocally that the Kingdom of Norway is “indivisible and inalienable,” and the friendly gesture was called off, at least for now.
The constitution is available online, and has other interesting bits in it, especially as a contrast to the US Constitution: https://www.stortinget.no/globalassets/pdf/english/constitut...
> The King shall at all times profess the Evangelical-Lutheran religion.
There's also a repealed Article 10, but the English-language Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about it.
https://lovdata.no/dokument/HIST/lov/1814-05-17-18140517
I don't quite see why that was repealed, though. Some Norwegian might tell.
As a Finn I sort of appreciate the gesture of proposing moving border to bring the hilltop of Halti to Finland, but I don't really think it is that significant.
The main issue I know about is an old confusion in schoolbooks. The highest point in Finland is 1324 meters above sea level, on the Norwegian border, on the slope of Halti near the top. The top is on Norwegian side and its height is 1328 meters. Someone writing a schoolbook long ago found out that Halti is 1328 meters high and put that as the elevation of highest hill in Finland, without considering that this highest point is actually in Norway.
[edit: typos]
[1]: https://www.stortinget.no/en/Grunnlovsjubileet/In-English/Th...
[2]: http://www.royalcourt.no/artikkel.html?tid=35248&sek=35247
I wonder if the Norwegians could make the same gesture by dynamiting their four meters of peak off of their side, thereby moving the peak without moving the territory.
(There's probably something symbolic in using explosives to get around the Constitution.)
It's not really clear whether making an amendment saying that as an exception it is allowed to give Mount Halti away to Finland would violate the spirit of that article. I'm thinking that it probably wasn't clear to stortinget either and they didn't want to waste the time of the supreme court for something that was essentially a symbolic gesture.
Also I'm actually a bit surprised that there is no way of making essential changes to articles in the constitution, even if a large majority of the population would vote for it.
The same in Sweden.
Additionally, the heir apparent must not travel abroad without the monarch's consent.
Maybe because kings feared their sons might return with a foreign army?
But I cannot help but imagine crown princess Victoria going shopping in New York and -- having forgotten to ask father -- being ineligible all of a sudden. :-)
As an example, plenty of people in the UK don't much like Prince Charles, but there's nothing we can do other than campaign for the end of the monarchy.
The global community encourages this kind of status quo because many countries worry their ethnic minority will be next.
The only way sadly still seems to be decades of bloodshed before the host population gets fed up enough to let them go.
I don't only mean developing countries like Sudan either. It took until 1998 for the Belfast agreement to be signed over Northern Ireland for example.
There are certainly places like Spain which have been beating the drum of 'No Catalan Independence', but there are modern states that do recognize some uncodified right to self determination.
Some resistance is natural though, and in some cases good -- tribal divisions can happen on any line. If California seceded, the Jefferson region would want to secede from that, and no doubt there would be even smaller fractures.
In the end, I think every state has its own gravity and own structural strength. Grow too big, and you suffer from your own weight, risk fractures.
I think that's an oversimplification; the intent was there to give Ireland self-governance from the 1880s (initially as a single, unified area). Notably, the Government of Ireland Act 1914, better known as the Third Home Rule Bill (the prior two had failed to pass through Parliament) would've led to a unitary Ireland, though this led to the Home Rule Crisis (though there had been some rioting going back to the 1880s) and was ultimately never implemented due to the outbreak of war.
The real fatal errors in the case of Ireland were the handling of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the coupling of implementation of Home Rule with conscription in Ireland, along with many more errors during the guerrilla war that followed.
Had WW1 not happened when it did, who knows what would have happened in Ireland.
The 19th century saw England enact a policy of near genocide, mass deportation and political/economic oppression.
Ireland was little different than any other third world colony.
The question is whether bloodshed was inevitable in the path to independence, and I don't think it's reasonable to call the actions of the state bloodshed on that path except when it was in direct suppression of it (and I don't think there was any of that prior to the Easter Rising, unless one considers the rebellion of 1798 when Ireland was still legally a separate country, though had had the same ruler as England since the 12th century, albeit with a separate political structure).
Certainly the blood on the UK's hands led to many of the calls for independence, but if independence had been granted in, e.g., 1886 (i.e., the First Home Rule Bill) would it be freedom through bloodshed, or would it be freedom through wanting to do better yourselves? I'd definitely say the latter.
I imagine, though, that opinion on the two terms depends on what you think of 'colonisation' as.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stewart_Parnell)
I really don't think it's reasonable to say that the 1998 plebiscite was the culmination of a century long effort by the UK to grant Ireland her independence; the late 19th Century just marks the period where it began to be considered a fit subject for parliamentary debate.
Essentially what I'm contending is whether they ever had a genuine choice prior to 1998, and I'd strongly suggest that the Third Home Rule Bill was that—though, had WW1 not happened, whether it would've avoided most of the bloodshed is inherently unclear, especially given the 1886 Belfast riots and the unwillingness to compromise on what was really all three sides.
As for the political football, there's no denying it was—but that's true of many things in Westminster, both around the turn of the 19th/20th century and today.
> Northern Ireland _is_ an
> example of freedom through
> bloodshed
> the UK conceded to give them
> genuine choice
The idea that Great Britain were somehow wedded to the idea of keeping Northern Ireland welded to the rest of it against the will of the people is simply factually incorrect. Until recently there were a lot of armed people on both sides of that question with the majority in NI wanting to stay part of the UK.
Britain's treatment of Ireland was a car crash over the previous few centuries, but the narrative that it was resisting the popular will of the people by keeping it in the UK is simply wrong.
A subsequent referendum on devolution in 1997 yielded a "yes" majority, hence Scotland now having its own parliament.
But the Ukrainian govt has itself to blame, for being used as a pawn. Now Ukranians can only look wistfully in the direction of Crimea
The other special administrative region is Macau, and China has proposed that Taiwan become a special administrative region too.
Hah!
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_sovereignty_over...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_union_betwe...
It shared the same king as Denmark and later Sweden, but it was not considered part of the King's home country.
There are plenty of exclaves with country borders out there. For instance, here's a bit of Germany inside Switzerland:
https://goo.gl/maps/bw3PwD19JhR2
The village is called Büsingen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCsingen_am_Hochrhein
In United Arab Emirates there is an Omanian exclave called Madha, which in turn contains a UAE exclave called Nahwa:
https://goo.gl/maps/REXtsfb3gHs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahwa
And there's even one third-order enclave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahala_Khagrabari
Dahala Khagrabari is a piece of India, surrounded by Bangladesh, surreounded by India, surrounded by Bangladesh.
And things stay this way because it is quite awkward to change places where people live to belong to another nation - however impractical these exclaves may be.
It wouldn't be necessary really, as citizenship is more dependent on your parents. Both of them being EU member states also makes residence somewhat irrelevant too, except maybe with taxes.
Are you sure? There are plenty of second-generation immigrants here that have both the Dutch and parental (mostly Turkish/Moroccan) nationality.
https://www.google.fi/maps/place/Switzerland/@50.5972041,6.2...
Scroll a bit further south from the farm, and you'll see a Belgian trainline cutting off (much larger) bits of Germany.
Lots of people would be unhappy to suddenly live in a country where they're not a citizen and subject different laws, taxes, and health care. In fact, it's not hard to see why it would be pretty much a non-starter politically.
Between Finland and Sweden, the police forces on both sides of the border have an agreement so that they can move about, even in official business. A pursuit of a criminal can be extended across border, and e.g. ambulances are shared. The crew is bilingual or works in Finnish (the population in the border area is traditionally mostly Finnish-speaking even in the Swedish side).
The countries each have a nation-wide public safety digital radio network (TETRA) and while the networks are strictly distinct, the police cars or ambulances in each country may have a radio unit from the neighbour so that they can connect to the neighbour network when they need to, or their radios can be roamed to the neighbour network through ISI interface.
The examples you mention all involve cases where one cannot reasonably wait for permission to pass. Those are handled similar between Belgium and the Netherlands and, I guess/think (there may be exceptions for cases like Switzerland and Norway, who are in the Schengen area but not in the EU), everywhere in the Schengen area.
This case was different, though; the victim was clearly dead, so there wasn't much of an urgency. If there is no urgent need, would Sweden allow armed Finnish police officers to enter the country or vice versa? What if it were a few heavily armed SWAT teams in armed personnel carriers?
After WW II, when Finnish Lapland's roads were largely destroyed by retreating Germans, Finns used the roads on the Swedish side of the river to get up north. Today it is perhaps the other way round; the Finnish side has more population and the roads up river are bigger so it might be feasible for the Swedish to use Finnish roads even if the destination is again across river on Swedish side.
SWAT teams no, not without urgent need and/or official request, and people would rise eyebrows also for SWAT teams driving around in their own country for no reason.
http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/armed_norwegian_police_cro...
The Putin troll column of course tried to make out a "NATO occupying force" thing out of it but then again, that's empty barrels making noise.
As to why that part is Belgian: at the end of the "Belgian Revolution" (or "Belgian Uprising", depending on who you ask) the border was drawn at the location that each party occupied at the time. Since there was an Orange-minded general stationed in Maastricht during that period, he had kept the Belgian 'army' at bay quite easily with the cannons on the walls. So the border is at the distance that a cannon could shoot at the time. If you go up the ruins of the city walls in Maastricht (next to the statue of d'Artagnan, the fourth musketeer, who died there during another siege of Maastricht), there is still a cannon like that standing there.
Also, 'Meuse' is the name of the river in English; which of course is like that because the French name is 'la Meuse'.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Louisiana/@32.2167684,-91....
(Update: my uncle argued before the Supreme Court regarding the Indiana/Kentucky border. Trying to find transcripts to no avail, but he lost.)
The river changes a little bit as it erodes its banks, and the border is officially moved accordingly. This naturally results in minuscule changes in the land area of both countries, though in this case the changes cancel each other out in the long run. It's a friendly border.
One well known dispute was between new jersey and new york, over ellis and liberty islands; the supreme court had to intevene on that one and I think currently both states have jurisdiction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/supco...
I suspect this is because it involved official government business and police activity. For example, I don't know if Belgian police carry weapons. But if they do, I assume they don't have jurisdiction to carry in the Netherlands (and vice versa).
Folks downvoting @vacri's question: why? It's a legitimate question.
(And aside: for the Belgian-Dutch border, that has been the case for decades; border controls in the Benelux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux) were abolished in 1970)
Grateful to hear from anyone with insight!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Bangladesh_encla...
I don't think claiming Bir Tawil would inherently concede anything, it's just that both sides prefer to base their claims on historical boundaries to make them seem more justified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria
Here's a photo:
http://journeyofkhan.us/photo/transnistria-across-the-nistru...
Basically, it starts in the Middle Ages when there are 2 small states under Ottoman (Turkish) influence: Wallachia and Moldavia. As it happens for all small states, they get bullied around by their bigger neighbors, primarily the Ottomans, Russia and Austria. For our story only the Ottomans and Russia are important.
So the Ottomans and Russia keep fighting over the region and they keep trading territories here, completely disregarding the history of the region or the ethnic groups present there. Imperialism at its finest.
Wallachia is left more or less unscathed, but around 1812 Moldova is basically split in two, Russia taking the less developed Eastern part, called Bessarabia.
After all this abuse, Wallachia and Moldova decide to unite and form modern Romania, around 1860. So Moldova basically disappears as a state.
Fast forward to the end of WW1, Romania is getting bigger by incorporating all the lands around it that are majority Romanian, so Bessarabia becomes a part of Romania.
Meanwhile, Russia becomes the USSR. It's not hard to guess that Romania and the USSR are not the best of friends. The Soviets never recognize the Romanian takeover/reclaiming of Bessarabia, but can't really attack Romania (yet). So they form a sort of "Moldovan Soviet Republic" outside of the historical territory of Moldova. Basically "Moldova in exile". I like to compare it to Mexico creating a "New Texas" state after being kicked out of Texas.
Then, before WW2, as part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviets are allowed to attack Romania. They don't attack, instead they send an ultimatum and Romania is forced to give up Bessarabia, which is incorporated into the Moldovan Soviet Republic.
So now the new Moldova has both Bessarabia and that extra part that was never Moldovan. That part is across the river Dniester, ergo "Trans" (across) "nistr" (Dniester is "Nistru" in Romanian) "-ia" (particle for "land of" in Romania).
The USSR falls, Moldova becomes independent. Transnistria has Russia armies on its territory, so it declares its independence. Russia signs an agreement to pull back its army. 20 years after the agreement, the army is still there...