A nation of one's own

Travel Guidebook of the Month

Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations, by John Ryan, George Dunford, and Simon Sellars

Ever dreamed of starting your own country?  Apparently, you're not alone. 

In various spots around the world — from Nevada to Australia to the North Sea — a curious collection of "archdukes" and "queens" and "prime ministers" have declared sovereignty for their own ranches and oil platforms and apartment units, forming what have come to be known as "micronations." 

Sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes earnest to the point of being a bit scary, these privately motivated mini-states issue passports and postage stamps, fly self-designed flags, and blast self-written national anthems. 

John Ryan has documented the most flamboyant of these micronations in a book called Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations. Curious to know more about the micronation phenomenon, I posed him a few questions by email:

What exactly defines a micronation, as opposed to what we typically think of as a "nation?"

John Ryan: People define micronation in different ways. For some, it simply means small nations (either in area or population), such as Lichtenstein, the Vatican or Tuvalu. I'm interested in a more playful definition: nations that have been proclaimed as existing in the world, but not recognized as a real nation. Yet.

In 1933 a bunch of (real) nations signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. This convention proposes that a nation can exist if it adheres to certain requirements, including possession of a stable land area, a permanent population and the ability to form a government. If no other nation has any problem with this, then you've got yourself a country.

The reality, of course, is more random and complicated than that. To be really considered a nation, you need other nations (that have themselves been recognized) to recognize you. The United Nations is a club with no stipulated entry requirements!

The micronations covered in the book are homemade countries invented by small groups of people. And they're mostly pretty funny too.

Of all the micronations listed in the book, which do you consider the most legitimate, in terms of functioning like (or at least mimicking) a normal country?

JR: There are two questions here. There's the issue of legitimacy and the issue of mimicking normal countries. In terms of legitimacy, I'd say that Sealand (operating on an abandoned radar station about six miles off the coast of England) and the Hutt River Province (some 370 miles north of Perth in Western Australia) have the strongest claims.

In the late 1960s the English courts ruled that Sealand's citizens had the right to repel the British navy with small arms fire (which they did). Sealand was also visited by a diplomatic mission from West Germany who were negotiating the release of a "prisoner of war" being held on Sealand following a failed coup!

On the other side of the world, at the same time that Sealand was getting started, Australian farmer Len Casley (now Prince Leonard) seceded and later declared war on Australia over a change to wheat export policy. Prince Leonard has since built a nation that operates mostly independently of the Australian system. Tourism is now a major industry.

For detailed mimicry of real nations, you should look no further than the wonderful nation of Molossia, just outside Virginia City, Nevada. President Baugh has a wickedly funny sense of humor, and uses it to lampoon real countries while operating the most entertaining micronation in the book. He has a space program, a movie industry, a railway, the death penalty (for smoking), a national cuisine, and many other trappings of nationhood. To top it off, he dresses like a 1970s-era tin-pot dictator.

Are there many micronation tourists out there, who actively seek to visit these places?  And if so, which micronations are the most tourist-friendly?

JR: Tourism is an important ingredient for several of the micronations in the book, and can be the difference between financial survival and shutting up shop. We hope our book will be an indispensable companion to a new breed of traveler — the Micronational Visitor.

While tourism is not always possible, a few of the nations in the book (including Hutt River and Molossia previously mentioned) do welcome tourists. It's fun to have your passport stamped by the laconic Princess Shirley of Hutt River or visit the office of the Conch Republic on Key West, Florida. There are also, to borrow a phrase, a substantial number of accidental tourists who are visiting (or even living in) micronations without their knowledge. The Dominion of British West Florida, for example, (re)claims substantial chunks of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida on behalf of the Queen of England!

I noticed there's no chapter for the Falkland Islands in your book, no mention of Transdneistr or Åland or Basque Spain.  Why is this?  Is that another book?

JR: These places — and maybe a hundred more like them — have fascinating stories and serious claims to independence. We decided to exclude such genuinely serious candidates for nationhood in favor of something more quirky, light-hearted and ephemeral. "Micronations" is, paradoxically, a book about people rather that nations. Its focus is the little emperor in all of us who has always dreamed of absolute power (and the absolute corruption that hopefully comes with it).

In the real world, claims to sovereignty exist on a continuum, with the United States, East Timor and 190 others at one end (with offices in the U.N. building), and Sealand and Hutt River at the other.  Transdneistr, the Basque country, West Papua, Western Sahara, Somaliland, Palestine, Taiwan and heaps of others across a broad spectrum are in the middle. As I mentioned earlier, "legitimacy" for recognized nations is determined by politically driven committee rather than by transparent rules or precedence.

How does one go about starting his or her own micronation?  What essential steps and elements are necessary?

JR: Say it, and it is done!

Actually, the answer depends on how much you crave attention and recognition. Just like recognized nations, micronations regularly sign and break treaties, form alliances, share processes and occasionally even get together (the 2000 Intermicronational Olympic Games was a watershed event in micronational affairs). These days, much of the business of micronations occurs online: citizenship applications, policy creation and dissemination, treaty negotiations, elections and other aspects of standard nation building are taking place all around us every day. If you want to be in this club, it's worth spending some time looking at some of the existing micronations and determining which of them share your beliefs and attitudes.

If you're just looking for your own private retreat from a world that's constantly telling you what to do, draw a flag, stick it to your favorite raincoat and put it on, call your best coffee mug a ceremonial chalice, have a drop of wine and relax in the knowledge that YOU are the boss now.

As for getting a seat at the UN, well that's a much more complicated procedure. Just ask Taiwan.

For more information about Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations ($14.99), visit LonelyPlanet.com.