Tired Of Your Country?

Had enough of taxes? Tired of the bureaucracy? Want a chance to make your own rules? Want to declare yourself emperor? Form your very own micronation! You might even make it into a guidebook some day!

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.

It's a pretty funny article. They discuss three micronations, Sealand, Hutt River Province and Molossia. Sealand experienced a devastating fire in June, however. Molossia has a space program, by the way. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are, of course, offended that the author of the new book never contacted us about our new home.