Sparta is a very poor example of a working city state, though.
Also, it’s a very strange position because there is a good reason why there aren’t more city states: they get steamrolled when a better organised neighbour wants to take their stuff.
Also, it’s a very strange position because there is a good reason why there aren’t more city states: they get steamrolled when a better organised neighbour wants to take their stuff.
Indeed. Bret Devereaux makes a good case that Sparta was actually bad at being a city state, and that their restrictive citizenship laws meant it was constantly shrinking.
Singapore maybe? I don't think they would survive on their own if a determined enemy launched an assault on them.
I wasn't talking about "continued existence" in general, but about defense against an invasion ("being conquered", I defaulted to "by military invasion"). The Republic of Ireland doesn't have an army that could defend it, it would have to rely on more powerful allies. (I'm discounting guerrilla resistance by civilians, etc).
> Is there a example of a modern city state being conquered?
I think there are no modern city states in the same sense that ancient Athens, Rome, Carthage, Sparta, or Renaissance Florence and Milan were.
There's Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican. All are basically client states of their larger neighbour.
Like you say, these are client states of a larger and more powerful neighbor.
I'm aware they are listed in Wikipedia as "can be considered" city-states, but I don't think that's in the sense we mean here.
This matters because my main objection is that city-states in the same sense as Sparta, Athens, etc, no longer exist in the modern world, and as such, the question "is there a example of a modern city state being conquered?" is moot.
Also Monaco and San Marino where occupied for some time during WW2. Not sure if they count as modern city states in your view ;-)
City states just do not have enough strategic depth to be defensible in modern warfare.
That being said, Singapore is a good example for a modern city state that maintains quite a strong deterrence against being conquered.
Obvious exceptions are Vatican City and Singapore, which benefit from different kinds of safety. But there is no region that remains in the world like medieval Italy or the Holy Roman Empire, or classical Greece. All of them got swallowed.