Showing posts from: March 2019
A ‘Republic’ within the Republic: Turning a ‘Grass Roots’ Grievance into an Imagined Separatist Movement
❝ Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour’s at the stake. ❞
~ Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IV.
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Some time ago I added a post on the capricious nature of international micronations (From Marginalised Malcontents to Micronation Monarchs: The Australian Experience, Nov. 2017) which focused on self-identified micro-states like Lithuania‘s whimsical Republic of Užupis (RoU) and the much-satirised, pseudo-royalty of the Hutt River Principality (HRP) in the state of WA, Australia.
This blog will concentrate on yet another creatively imagined entity, the Conch Republic (CR), a peculiarly American enclave sharing some of the traits of especially RoU (for the latter’s avant-garde artists’ collective substitute “retiree paradise” lifestyle). CR emerged from a speck of US geography to unilaterally declare itself independent of the mainland United States of America.
⇧ Key West AKA the Conch Republic (source: Worldatlas.com)
The island of Key West at the very tip of the Florida Keys archipelago, as pleasant a haven of relaxed beach lifestyle as can be imagined, is perhaps a surprising locale for a defiant act of “go it alone” separatism. Key West (Sp: Cayo Hueso), one time the home of Hemingway on his various peregrinations, is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States, a 15 square kilometre haven of golden sands, verdant palms and a balmy tropical climate with a relaxed Bahamian ambience.
How the Conch Republic was born
A chance occurrence was responsible for Key West assuming the countenance of a ‘micronation’. The seemingly prosaic but far-reaching event took place in 1982…at the time it appeared to be just a fairly hum humdrum, run-of-the-mill, everyday operation of the Federal bureaucracy. The US Border Control (BC) had imposed a roadblock and checkpoint into Key West, it was stated that Border Control’s action was intended to intercept narcotics and illegal immigrants coming into the US.
The problem for the local authority was the ongoing traffic jams and inconvenience it caused for both residents and tourists. The tipping point for the Key West City Council was that their protests went ignored and unanswered by BC and the federal authorities.
“Republic sideshow”
As things transpired, BC lifted the roadblock and removed the inspection station after a few days. For those thinking the matter would end there, the City Council has other ideas. Mayor Dennis Wardlaw took the opportunity to up the ante and under his leadership the protest continued. Key West Council initiated its own (microscopic) version of ‘1776’. The island was now the “Conch Republic” with Wardlaw retitling himself as “prime minister” of the new secessionist state. At this point an air of theatricality took over events and the whole thing turned farcical…CR “declared war” on the United States✲, it then immediately surrendered after 60 seconds and topped off the absurdity of the stunt by requesting $1bn of foreign aid from Washington!⌖
Niche marketing: Milking the ‘novelty’ for all it’s worth
Taking a leaf from the Hutt River Province et al’s book, CR launched a host of paraphernalia promoting it’s supposed autonomous status vis-a-vís the US government, eg, it designed its own flag, ‘national’ motto❂, it issued sovereign passports◘ and renamed the legal tender “Sand dollars” (while still maintaining the everyday usage of USD currency).
The “Republic of Fun”
The jocular, even flippant, nature of pronouncements by CR are reminiscent of the tone adopted by Lithuania’s Republic of Užupis (RoU). Just as RoU’s content-lite ‘constitution’ meanders into the wacky realm of vague, contradictory and meaningless absolutes, CR describes its essence as “exist(ing) as a sovereign state of mind”, a clue to the “tongue-in-cheek” nature of its stance [‘Defending the Conch Republic – From Key to Shining Key’, [www.conchrepublicmilitaryforces.com]. The goodwill ‘vibes’ and the high-spirited jokiness of the Užupis enclave has a soulmate in the Conch Republic. In CR’s info blurbs it lists its values as “Humor, Warmth and Respect”.
Matryoshka dolls syndrome: Emergence of a breakaway group
The minuscule Conch Republic plunged deeper into “comic opera” territory in 2008 when the Northern Keys area (Key Largo) splintered from CR to form the even more minute Independent Northernmost Territories of Conch Republic (INTCR).
PostScript: Benign micronations
The central authorities that CR, HRP and RoU ‘seceded’ from, have taken a pragmatic and largely laissez-faire attitude to the separatist enclaves. Recognising that the self-styled micronations have fashioned a contributory role for themselves as a “tourism booster” for their communities, and that they continue to pay their due taxes and don’t pose a threat to the centre, the provincial and federal authorities have by and large adopted a “softly-softly” approach to them – as in the Latin: Non nocere, relinqui solus (“No harm, leave alone”).
Footnote: 37th anniversary celebrations
Next month (April) CR will hold a celebration of its ‘independence’ from the US – seven days of festivities, food, music and drinking – within a recounting of the 37 years of CR’s history thrown in. Those attending the event include the Republic’s militaristic-sounding ‘High Command’, it’s ‘Founding Fathers’ and other VIPs. On the itinerary are events such as conch shell-blowing and a re-enactment of the fanciful “Great Sea Battle of 1982”, with an emphasis on…you guessed it – fun!
⇧ The shell of the humble Florida conch
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✲ consciously or coincidentally, the Conch Republic’s actions partly mimics the plot of the 1950s movie satire, The Mouse that Roared…a tiny “cream puff” of a country (Duchy of Fenwick) faces bankruptcy when a Californian winery produces a successful “knock-off” of the Duchy’s Pinot wine, the staple of its economy. Fenwick responds by declaring war on the USA, knowing that it’s own Medieval weaponry is no match for the American superpower and it will be totally routed. Fenwick’s rulers thus bank on becoming the beneficiaries of US aid given to a defeated enemy, à la the postwar Marshall Plan 🐁
⌖ the mock state of war scenario was briefly revisited in 1995 when the US Army Reserve held training exercises on Key West simulating the invasion of a foreign island. Unfortunately, the Army didn’t inform CR of its plans beforehand – so the Republic announced that it was engaging in ‘hostilities’ with the US ‘aggressors’
❂ “We seceded where others failed!”
◘ with the risk of unforeseen serious outcomes – the exploitation of the sense held by some that a CR passport was a legitimate travel and ID document. The FBI investigated the possibility that some of the 9/11 terrorists had purchased a CR passport [‘Conch Republic’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
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A Hospitable Park on the Point: From Canonbury to McKell
To the east of Farm Cove the contours of Sydney Harbour’s south shore pass several peninsulas that traverse through the scenic and exclusive Eastern Suburbs. The most affluent of these small peninsula suburbs are probably Point Piper (home of the most recent Australian prime minister to be deposed by his party) and Darling Point. Personifying Point Piper’s claim to suburban exclusivity is Wolseley Road, envied by realty obsessives for being the most expensive street or road for residential property in Australia, its status stands to those who care about such things as “the nation’s ultimate address” (sixteen of Sydney’s top 100 most expensive houses are located on this road) [‘Point Piper’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Darling Point (McKell’s) occasional wharf ⇓
Neighbouring Darling Point✲ rates almost as highly as ‘PP’ in the affluential stakes and has a history that is even more illustrious! The suburb retains many fine mansions from the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it is a mansion that is no more, that is the focus of this blog. The serene little, two-tiered park at the northern tip of Yarranabbe Point✤, McKell Park (named after a former state premier and governor-general) is the picturesque site that once housed Canonbury, a well-presented Gothic style mansion.
Canonbury (above), built in 1904 on the site of an earlier residence, Lansdowne, is a short 9-iron from another celebrated mansion, Lindesay – a villa in the Gothic Revival style named after a little known acting governor of the early colony and still standing. Lansdowne and (subsequently) Canonbury passed through many hands after the original grant of 6.9 hectare of land to James Holt in 1833.
Among the notable resident/owners of the properties at Yarranabbe Point have been Thomas Mitchell (explorer, colonial surveyor-general, 1820s-1830s), Charles Nicholson (statesman and early provost of Sydney University) and Harry Rickards (Vaudevillian theatre entrepreneur). Rickards gave the mansion the name ‘Canonbury’ after the suburb in North London where he had lived before emigrating to Sydney.
One of the many heritage-listed Yarranabbe gateposts ⇓
In 1919 Canonbury was purchased by the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) which charitably turned the property into a convalescent hospital for returning servicemen from the Great War. This theme continued during WWII when it was used as a naval hospital. After the war Canonbury was acquired by the NSW Government and became an annexe of the Crown Street Women’s Hospital in Surry Hills.
By the end of the Seventies, with the annexe now surplus to Crown Street’s needs, the government decided to sell the site for redevelopment. The decision met with strong opposition from locals and after an earnest debate over its fate, custodianship of Canonbury was transferred to the Woollahra Municipal Council in 1983. Canonbury was demolished❂ and in 1985 the site remade as a public park with neat, box-shaped hedges and terraced lawns falling away to the shoreline [Jacobsen, Patricia, ‘McKell Park’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2016, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/mckell_park, viewed 28 Feb 2019]
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✲ named to honour the wife of the NSW colony’s 7th governor Ralph Darling…in the 19th century it was tagged as the “Mayfair of Australia”, [Anne-Maree Whitaker, ‘Darling Point: The Mayfair of Australia’ (unpublished MA Thesis, University of Sydney, 1983), 50, 51]
✤ pre-European settlement, the traditional owners of the peninsula were the Birrabirrgal people
❂ the small, on-site historic cottage (formerly the caretaker’s quarters) was preserved, along with archaeological remnants of Canonbury’s and Lansdowne’s foundations