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Micronations - which are sometimes also referred to as cybernations, fantasy countries, model countries, new country projects, and online nations - are entities that resemble independent states, but for the most part exist only on paper, on the Internet, or in the minds of their creators; a small number have also managed to extend some of their operations into the real world. When they do touch on the real world, they converge to some degree with other organizing paradigms that offer, or seem to offer, political or infrastructural independence of some sort.
The term micronation, which literally means "small nation", is a neologism originating in the 1990s to describe the many thousands of small unrecognized statelike entities that have mostly arisen since that time. The term has since also come to be used retrospectively to refer to earlier unrecognized entities, some of which date to as far back as the 19th century. Supporters of micronations use the term "Macronation" for any "real" sovereign nation-state.
Micronations generally have a number of common features:
These criteria distinguish micronations from imaginary countries, eco-villages, campuses, tribes, clans, sects, and residential community associations, which do not usually seek to be recognized as sovereign.
The micronation phenomenon is tied closely to the rise to prominence of the nation-state concept in the 19th century, and the earliest recognizable 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 SarawakEast Malaysia Sarawak is one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Situated on the north-west of the island, Sarawak is the largest state of Malaysia, the second largest being its sister state, Sabah. The administrative capital is Kuching (, 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.
Less successful were the Long RepublicThe Long Republic (formal name: Republic of Texas lasted from June 23, 1819 to October 8, 1820. It was never recognized. The first city under its control was Nacogdoches, and the last to fall was La Bahia. James Long, a doctor, merchant, and accused crimi ( 1819Events January 17 Simon Bolivar proclaims the Republic of Colombia January 29 Sir Stamford Raffles lands on the island of Singapore February 6 Formal treaty between Sultan Hussein of Johor and the British Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles originates Singapore F– 1820Events January 1 Constitutionalist military insurrection at Cadiz leads to summoning of Spanish parliament ( March 7) and restoration of 1812 Constitution ( March 8) by king Ferdinand VII. January 29 George the Prince Regent becomes king George IV of the), in what is now the US state of TexasTexas joined the United States of America as its 28th member state in 1845. It has the postal abbreviation TX . The state name derives from a word in a Caddoan language of the Hasinai, tejas meaning friends or allies Spanish explorers mistakenly applied t, the Kingdom of Araucania and PatagoniaThe Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia was founded by a French lawyer and adventurer named Orelie-Antoine de Tounens in southern South America in the mid 19th century. At the time the local indigenous Mapuche population were engaged in a desperate armed s (1860–62) in southern Chile and Argentina, and the Kingdom of SedangThe Kingdom of Sedang (sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of the Sedang and even Kingdom of all the Sedang was an ephemeral political entity established in the latter part of the 19th Century by a French adventurer Charles-Marie David de Mayrena in part (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.
M. C. Harman, owner of the UK island of Lundy in the early decades of the 20th century, 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.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a micronational renaissance, with the foundation of a number of territorial micronations. The first of these, Sealand, was founded in 1967 on an abandoned World War II gun platform in the North Sea, and has survived into the present day. Others were based on schemes requiring the construction of artificial islands, but only two are known to have risen above sea level.
Rose Island was a 400-sq-metre platform built in international waters off the Italian town of Rimini, in the Adriatic Sea in 1968. It is reported to have issued stamps, minted currency and declared Esperanto to be its official language. Shortly after completion, however, it was destroyed by the Italian Navy.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 Booth declared the UK town of Hay-on-Wye an "independent republic" with himself as its king. 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.
Micronational activities were disproportionately common throughout Australia in the final three decades of the 20th century. The Hutt River Province Principality was the first manifestation of the phenomenon; it was founded in 1970, when Prince Leonard (born Leonard George Casley ) declared his farming 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 named Alex Brackstone , while a German immigrant named Robert Neuman created the Sovereign State of Aeterna Lucina in 1978 in a hamlet on the New South Wales north coast, before later relocating to a large rural property near Cooma. At around the same time an eccentric anti-taxation campaigner named John Charlton Rudge 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 the state's northeast by Tom Barnes in 1979, and mortgage foreclosure dispute led George and Stephanie Muirhead of Rockhampton, Queensland, to secede as the Principality of Marlborough in 1993.
Another Australian secessionist state came into existence on 1 May 2003, when Peter Gillies declared the independence of his 66-hectare northern New South Wales farm as the Principality of United Oceania after an unresolved year-long dispute with Port Stephens Council over Gillies's plans to construct a private residence on the property Ref United Oceania.
Micronationalist activity shed much of its traditional eccentric anti-establishment mantle and took on a distinctly hobbyist perspective from 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. Many thousands of ephemeral micronations are thought to have been created in this manner.