Unconnected Bits of Countries
Thanks to a blog named Tottyland (whose author is usually more interested in shirtless rugby players than in unusual facts from geography), I recently learned this fascinating fact:
Did you know that there are twenty two bits of Belgium inside Holland including bits of fields?
"What in the world could this mean?" was my first thought. How could there be bits of one country inside another? Here is a bit of clarification from the page linked above:
Baarle-Nassau / Baarle-Hertog is a complicated mixture of Dutch and Belgian enclaves and exclaves. In 1843 a Dutch-Belgian boundary-committee couldn't demarcate a clear borderline. So they decided to establish from each piece of land between bordermarker 214 (south of Tilburg) and 215 (south of Breda) its nationality.
Ever since the days of Nixon I've been fascinated by "enclaves" (although these days it seems that "compounds" are much more in fashion), but I'd never even heard of an "exclave". Cool!
These little parcels are apparently known as the "Baarle Enclaves". From the page above, here is the key history:
The municipality of Baarle-Hertog (748 ha) is Belgian and consists of the village Zondereigen in Belgium en 22 enclaves on Dutch territory. The municipality of Baarle-Nassau (7638 ha) is Dutch and consists of the village Baarle-Nassau with 7 exclaves in the center (enclaves within the Belgian enclaves), one enclave in Zondereigen and the villages Castelré and Ulicoten.
[…]
In 1843 the borderline between the Netherlands and Belgium was described in the Treaty of Maastricht. The border between bordermarkers 214 and 215 couldn't be established for a length of 50 kilometers. An agreement was made instead which stated the Dutch or Belgian nationality of 5732 pieces of ground.
On april 26th 1974 Belgium and the Netherlands signed an agreement in Turnhout to make the actual borderlines the official border between bordermarkers 214 and 215. Afterwards one field was discovered (south of the village of Ulicoten) being not assigned to either Belgium or the Netherlands. In 1995 this field became part of Belgium as the 22th enclave of Baarle-Hertog. The municipal borders were declared to be the official state boundaries.
There are pictures there of enclave H22 taken by the authors on a visit in 2003. They've conveniently marked the boundaries of the enclave on the photos, which is a good thing since the enclave itself looks just like a small, rectangular field. On this page is shown detailed maps of the 22 Belgian and 8 Dutch enclaves (or counter-enclaves, or exclaves).
What I can't figure out is why this example of piecewise-continuous countries seemed so novel and strange to me, since it's not at all uncommon. Think of West Berlin, for example. Or Malaysia, or Micronesia. Here in the US: Hawaii is not connected to the mainland, the Caribbean protectorates are not connected, nobody even nows where Guam is, Alaska has another country between it and the next closest state, there are independent Indian Nations, and various diplomatic reserves that belong (temporarily, at least) to other countries. So, it's nothing new.
Still: "Did you know there are 22 bits of Belgium inside Holland?"
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., The Art of Conversation