Abstract
This chapter covers the topic of strangely drawn borders. It highlights some of the stranger borders in the world by describing some unusual examples: a bar in the former Yugoslavia that is split between two countries; enclaves, counter enclaves, the world’s only counter-counter enclave; and the Scottish Court of the Netherlands, among others. It concludes with an explanation of the US-Canada border that began with Benjamin Franklin’s poorly drawn map.
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Notes
- 1.
Renata Jambresic Kirin and Domagoj Racic. “Claiming and Crossing Borders: A View on the Slovene-Croatian Border Dispute/Teritorijalna Razgranicenja: Pogled Na Slovensko-Hrvatski Granicni Spor,” Drustvena Istrazivanja 25, no. 4 (2016): 436.
- 2.
Perhaps a coincidence, but these two microstates have some of the coolest formal names in the world today: The Holy See and the Most Serene Republic of San Marino. In my opinion, the only country with a more badass name is Montenegro, which means “Black Mountain.”
- 3.
By the way, they did not.
- 4.
In case you are wondering, Hawaii is not an exclave. It is just an island that is really far away. What makes Alaska an exclave and Hawaii not is the fact that the former abuts one foreign country while the latter borders nothing but international waters.
- 5.
For more details and a link to the sweet music, see “Small Border Traffic,” Economist, October 8, 2013, https://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/10/poland-and-kaliningrad.
- 6.
Strangely enough, there are other myths of origin based on nobles swapping territories though games of skill and chance.
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Mislan, D.B., Streich, P. (2019). Beers at the Border Bar: No Shirt? No Passport? No Service!. In: Weird IR. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75556-4_3
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