Micronation
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.
Micronations generally have a number of common features:# Micronations often assert that they wish to be widely recognised as sovereign states — but they are not recognised as such by established states. # 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. # 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, and
Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs), 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, a micronation does 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".
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 statehoodThe 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.
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.
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-m
2 platform built in
1968 in Italian national waters in the
Adriatic Sea, 7 miles off the
Italian town of
Rimini. It is known to have issued stamps, and to have 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). (Ernest Hemingway's adopted hometown of
Key West would itself be part of another micronation, see
Conch Republic)
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.
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 [
1], which has "laid claim" to the Koronis family of
asteroids. Koronis minted several coins in 2006.
Micronationalism shed much of its traditionally eccentric anti-establishment mantle and took on a distinctly hobbyist perspective in 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, and Sealand, maintain websites that serve largely to promote their claims and sell merchandise.
In the present day, seven main types of micronations are prevalent:
# Social, economic, or political simulations.# Exercises in personal entertainment or self-aggrandisement. # Exercises in fantasy or creative fiction.# Vehicles for the promotion of an agenda.# Entities created for fraudulent purposes.# Historical anomalies and aspirant states.# 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 political simulation founded in 1979, with several dozen members and an invented culture and
language.
*
Holy Empire of Reunion (Sacro Imperio de Reuniao) â€" a Brazilian micronation founded in 1996 as an online constitutional monarchy simulation. It claims several dozen members around the world.
*
Nova Roma, a group claiming a worldwide membership of several thousand that has minted its own coins [
2], maintains its own Wiki [
3], 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:
* The
Aerican Empire, a
Monty Pythonesque micronation founded in 1987 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.[
4]
* 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 fictitious 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-year-old "republic" in the French
département of Doubs, bordering Switzerland.The republic is made of the 11 municipalities of Les Allies, Arcon, Bugny, La Chaux-de-Gilley, Gilley, Hauterive-la-Fresne, La Longeville, Montflovin, Maisons-du-Bois-Lievremont, Ville-du-Pont, and its capital
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:
* The "global state" of
Waveland, established on the North Atlantic island of
Rockall by
Greenpeace protesters in 1997.
* The
Conch Republic, which began in 1982 as a protest by residents and business owners in the
Florida Keys against a
United States Border Patrol roadblock. It has since been maintained as a tourism booster, though the group has engaged in other protests.
* The
Kingdom of Anse-Saint-Jean, started to promote tourism in a small
Quebec town.
* The
Republik Freies Wendland, founded 1980 as part of a campaign to prevent the construction of a nuclear waste disposal facility in
Gorleben, in the
Wendland (northern
Germany).
* The
Independent State of Aramoana, a secessionist state founded in 1980 to oppose the proposed construction of an aluminium smelter in an environmentally sensitive area of
New Zealand.
* The
Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, founded in June 2004 on the uninhabited
Coral Sea Islands off the coast of
Queensland, in response to the Australian government's refusal to recognize
same-sex marriage.
*The
Republic of New Africa, a controversial separatist group seeking the creation of an independent
black nationalist state across much of the southern USA.
*The "
conceptual country" of
Nutopia, declared by
John Lennon in 1973, a "state" designed to uphold Lennon's ideals such as those portrayed in "
Imagine". This declaration was done to advocate Lennon's philosophies, and is believed to also be intended partly to protest the trouble Lennon was having emigrating to the United States.
* The
Maritime Republic of Eastport, a part of the City of
Annapolis,
Maryland, that "seceded" from the rest of the city. It still exists as a charitable and publicity vehicle, and runs a unique fund-raiser in the form of a cross-bridge Tug of War.
* Proposed demolition and redevelopment of the Freston Road area in north
Kensington in 1977 prompted the local residents to declare independence as
Frestonia (see [
5] [
6]). This delayed the redevelopment scheme and forced the
Greater London Council to renegotiate.
*
Protesters against the
M11 motorway link road through
Wanstead in north-east London in 1994 proclaimed two areas of squatted homes to be the Republics of
Wanstonia and
Euphoria.
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 remains 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. [
7]
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. [
8] [
9] (also contains an image of the flag)[
10]
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 1832 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 claim to 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.
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.
*
List of micronationsGeneral entries
*
Simulation /
Simulation game*
Ocean colonization*
Space colonization*
Pirate utopias
*
Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ)
*
Imaginary country — "countries" created mostly by
artistamp producers.
Specific examples
*
List of fictional countries — places that are locations for fictional stories in literature and film.
*
Joshua A. Norton — San Francisco resident who proclaimed himself "Emperor of the
United States".
*
Partenia — a cyber-diocese with a real Roman Catholic bishop.
*
Passport to Pimlico — a film in which the London neighbourhood of
Pimlico proclaims itself independent.
*
Cascadia — A regional Pacific Northwest (North America) secession movement.
*
Fiume (now Rijeka), a seaport in
Croatia that was ruled for a short time by Italian nationalist poet
Gabriele D'Annunzio*
Christiania — a partially self-governing neighborhood in the city of
Copenhagen,
Denmark.
*
Hartola — a small
Finnish town with anomalous claim to being a royal parish of the Swedish monarchy.
*
Jones County, Mississippi — rebelled against the Confederacy.
*
Winston County, Alabama — rebelled against the Confederacy.
*
Winn Parish, Louisiana Union enclave in Confederate state.
*
Bantustan — quasi-independent homelands in
South Africa.
*
Akhzivland — a self-declared and officially tolerated "independent republic" established by Israeli hippy and former sailor Eli Avivi on the Mediterranean beach at Akhziv in
Israel[
11].
*
Ref United Oceania:
Australian Daily Telegraph, Thursday,
24 July 2003, page 20, "Prince finds if all else fails, secede".
* E. S. Strauss:
How to start your own country, ISBN 0915179016, ISBN 1893626156
*
It's Good to Be King Wired 8.
03 March 2000* Kochta/Kalleinen (Ed.):
Amorph!03 Summit of Micronations – Documents/Asiakirjoja, 2003, ISBN 3-936919-45-3
*
The Sydney Morning Herald — Good Weekend, "If at first you don't secede..." by Mark Dapin, ,
12 February 2005, pp 47-50
*
The Daily Telegraph (UK), "Mini-states Down Under are sure they can secede" by Nick Squires,
24 February 2005.
* iberkshires.com
"Bite-sized sovereignties offer worlds of fun", by Kathy Ceceri,
2 February 2005* *
Ref Republic of Saugeais:
Office du Tourisme du canton de Montbenoît, 25 November 2004.
*
Autopia, Saya de Malha Bank
* Nations Come Together at Sunderland - Sunderland, UK exhibition.
* Andrew Kreps Gallery - New York City exhibition.
*DIY Sovereignty and the Popular Right in Australia — University paper discussing the prevalence of right wing political ideologies among Australian micronations.
*Footnotes to History — list of failed secessionist states, alternative governments and other historical oddities
*Imperial Collection — Comprehensive online catalogue of stamps, coins, banknotes, awards and ephemera issued by various secessionist states and micronations.
*The Microfreedom Index On-line directory of micronation, independence and seditionist websites
*Micronations in the media - A selection of newspaper reports about micronations, scanned from the original publications.
*Micronations.net — Online micronational portal and resources
*The Micronations Page
*Micro-Net — Online micronational forum
*Microwiki — Wiki focused on online micronations
*The Micronations Wikicity
*Numismondo website with information about various micronation banknotes.
*Unrecognised States Numismatic Society — coin club specialising in coins and banknotes from micronations.
