The Russian Far East: Russia’s Far Flung Territory in North-East Asia 2

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, National politics, Political geography, Regional History

For most outside observers, the Russian Far East as a geographical region is pretty much indistinguishable from the vast Siberian landscape. This is hardly surprising when you consider that until 2000 the Russian Far East was lacking in officially defined boundaries❋. Historically, the Russian state in its various forms has tended to ignore the RFE region, commonly seen as a neglected outpost of empire, populated by hardy Cossack settlers, impoverished peasants and those detained there against their will. The population, at its highest point not reaching much beyond eight million, has dwindled since the end of the communist system◘.

(Map image: www.eurogeologists.eu)

In the early to mid 1990s there was some optimism shown by Russia’s rulers that much needed development could be injected into the country’s Far Eastern region. There was a belief or at least a hope in Moscow that the Russian Far East (RFE) could create a viable niche for itself, that it’s vast repository of natural resources could be utilised to target the growing Asian markets whose own raw materials had a finite life and would soon be running low. Some even touted RFE as potentially the “next Asian Tiger” [‘The Next Asian Tiger? Promoting Prosperity in the RFE’, (Lawrence DiRita), The Heritage Foundation, 18-Aug-1994, www.heritage.org].

Russia’s principal city in the east, Vladivostok, became the Free Port of Vladivostok, the host of a Russian-sponsored event, the Eastern Economic Forum, which it was hoped would provide a platform to attract foreign investment to the region. Rhetoric from Vladimir Putin, assuming the reins of the post-Soviet federation at the end of the Nineties, proclaimed that the development of RFE would be “a national priority for the 21st century”, [‘Accelerated Development of the RFE’, (Igor A Makarov), Russia in Global Affairs, 29-Oct-2018, www.eng.globalaffairs.ru].

Russia’s vulnerable eastern flank ~ Russia, with one eye on the geopolitical implications of an underpopulated eastern flank of the country and its underperforming economy, certainly had the motivation to develop the region. The hitch in the early 21st century has been, as ever, the pitfalls of implementation…a myriad of problems confronted Putin. RFE lacks for infrastructure and labour (#resource rich but people poor). Moreover the country was experiencing an economic slowdown. Russia’s only option if it was achieve any meaningful development was external investment, it needed new partners to propel it. Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea however led to the imposition of economic sanctions by the West, which along with falling oil prices further harmed the nation’s economic situation [Dhananjay Sahai, “Russian Far East and Central Asia: Impediments to Sino-Russian Partnership”, ORF Issue Brief No. 280, February 2019, Observer Research Foundation, http://www.orfonline.org].

The People’s Republic of China, Russia’s new best “enemy-friend” ~ Russia’s unpropitious economic realities have steered its approach to the development of RFE. To get China on board Russia had to provide economic incentives to the Chinese to invest in RFE. Chinese businesses and migrants initially flooded into the region, at its peak in the 1990s there were over 200,000 Chinese living and working in the region. Chinese suppliers and retailers were also thick on the ground in RFE. A Chinese market trader in Vladivostok (Photo: AFP)

Russia’s opening up to China was not without misgivings from Moscow, it had reasons to be wary of opening the door too far to China. The IMF calculates that the Chinese economy is 78 times bigger than Russia’s…Moscow is aware of the risks to its economic sovereignty of becoming over-dependent on its dynamic, powerful neighbour. Accordingly Russia has tried to balance China’s weighty imprint on RFE and Siberia by wooing South Korean and Japanese investment, and from India as well [ibid.; ‘Russia seeks to balance China in Far East; woos Indian investment’, (DR Chaudhury), Economic Times, 24-Jul-2019, www.economictimes.com].

The new Sino-Russian rapprochement has greatly enhanced the trade ties binding the two heavyweight Asian countries – Moscow now sells its natural gas and advanced weaponry to the Chinese and Beijing reciprocates mainly with manufactured goods. With the common enmity/rivalry towards the US a further bond, Russia in the present decade has unequivocally pivoted towards China✧.

Backlash against the Chinese presence: Fears of Chinese irredentism ~ The presence of the Chinese in RFR has prompted a backlash from local Russian workers and a pushback from local Russian media and politicians. Workers and the communities complained that the burgeoning numbers of Chinese workers deprived locals of job opportunities (Chinese companies tend to employ their own countrymen and women on their Russian projects) [‘Why Russia’s Far East Struggles to Lure Investors (Op-Ed)’, (Richard Cornelius), The Moscow Times, 25-Jan-2018, www.the.moscowtimes.com; Sahai, loc.cit.] . Subsequently, the Russian government decreed that 80% of workers employed on Chinese projects must henceforth be local (ie, Russian) [Chaudhury, loc.cit.].

New ‘besties’ Xi and Putin toast one another (Photo: AP)

Bilateral relations between China and Russia have been talked up recently…this year Chinese premier Xi Jingpin told Russian media that Russo-Chinese relations were “at their best in history”. Notwithstanding this upbeat tone, concerns about the encroachment of the contiguous Chinese in RFE continue to be held by Russians, and such disquiet is fuelled by some Russian media outlets. A suspicion and a fear that lingers here is one of “being demographically (as well as economically) swamped by the giant next door”⌂ [‘The Chinese influx into Asian Russia’, (Alexander Kruglov), Asia Times, 13-Jun-2019, www.asiatimes.com]. The existence of unknown numbers of illegal Chinese immigrants in the region adds to the resentment of local Russian settlers in RFE. The influx is often interpreted as “an expression of a China de facto territorial expansion” (invasion fear-mongering) [‘Chinese in the Russian Far East: a geopolitical time bomb’, This Week in Asia, www.amp.scmp.com].

How many Chinese in RFE? ~ The official numbers contradict the basis of this concern. According to the 2010 Russian Census, the number of ethnic Chinese residing in Russia had fallen to just 29,000 (a mere 0.5% of RFE population). However some estimates put the actual total of Chinese at between 300 and 500 thousand [ibid.]. Any figures for the region it should be noted are very fluid and quite speculative. A significant proportion of the population comprises temporary migration and shuttle trade, Chinese merchants who travel back and forth across the border to ply their wares without ever settling permanently in RFE [‘Ethnic Chinese in Russia’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Conspicuous Chinese visitors now make up the largest sector of Russian tourism, especially to RFE and Irkutsk/Lake Baikal (only two hours from Beijing by plane). Local Russians are perturbed at the behaviour of Chinese tourists to Lake Baikal, patronising Chinese businesses only, their litterbug tendency to leave rubbish strewn around the lake…most worrying to the Russians about the Chinese influx is that it might presage Beijing’s designs on reclaiming the area lost to Tsarist Russia (see “Thorny issue” below). All this contributes to a growing strain of Russian ‘Sinophobia’ in the Far East region [Kruglov, loc.cit.].

Lake Baikal

What probably ‘spooks’ the Russians the most are the stark demographics at play: the Chinese provinces bordering Russia’s Far East contain 110 million people, dwarfing the approximately six million Russians across the border [ibid.]. Dissatisfaction with Putin’s RFE policies are reflected in the 2018 gubernatorial elections in the region – voters rejected the Kremlin’s candidates, sending a clear message of disapproval to their federation president [‘Putin is losing Russia’s Far East’, (Leonid Bershidsky), Bloomberg Opinion, 24-Sep-2018, www.bloomberg.com].

Some scholars have sought to debunk the theory of a Chinese takeover, arguing that the Chinese population in RFE was being checked by several factors current in effect (an upsurge of regulation by the Russian authorities with new controls on Chinese markets; the overall poor economic prospects of the Russian Far East and a resultant shrinking consumer base for Chinese commodities) [‘The Myth of a Chinese Takeover in RFE’, (Xiaochen Su), The Diplomat, 19-Jun-2019, www.thediplomat.com]. 〨 Heihe, Chinese boomtown in Dong-Bei region

Thorny issue on the Chinese side ~ The border areas surrounding RFE are a lingering cause for resentment from the Chinese perspective. Under the 1858 Treaty of Aigun Tsarist Russia coerced the Qing Dynasty into ceding more than 600,000 square kilometres of Chinese territory to it. This was followed in 1860 by the Convention of Beijing. The effect of both concessions was that the Russian Empire acquired territory on both sides of the Amur River, giving it control of the Primorye region. Known in China as the “Unequal Treaties”, the 19th century episode still engenders public resentment among the Chinese, sometimes fuelled by dissident groups such as Falun Gong (see also ‘Border clashes’ in FN) [Sahai, loc.cit.; ‘Chinese in the Russian Far East’, op.cit.]✠.

In the prevailing climate Russia and Putin’s commitment to the development of the Russian Far East remains hamstrung by the Russians’ inability to go it alone. Enlisting the help of China, though necessary, is deeply problematic for the Kremlin. It is in fact a delicate balancing game for Moscow, on the one hand it fears becoming economically subordinate to PRC, but it wants Chinese investment because it needs it to go forward. Yet the complexities of the RFE region doesn’t make for a seamless process, it doesn’t deliver the degree of Chinese investment required or desired [‘Russia struggles to attract Chinese capital to its Far East’, (Vita Spivac & Henry Foy), Financial Times, 05-May-2019, www.amp.ft.com]. In the meantime the shortcomings of Russian policy on RFE✪ are a hand-break retarding the region’s development.

Footnote: 1̳9̳6̳9̳ ̳B̳o̳r̳d̳e̳r̳ ̳c̳l̳a̳s̳h̳e̳s̳ ̳– i̳n̳c̳i̳d̳e̳n̳t̳s̳ ̳i̳n̳ ̳t̳h̳e̳ ̳S̳i̳n̳o̳-̳S̳o̳v̳i̳e̳t̳ ̳s̳p̳l̳i̳t̳ Chinese and Soviet troops engaged in a series of isolated military clashes on the eastern border during 1969 (beginning when Chinese platoons attacked Soviet soldiers stationed on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River (a reaction to long-standing grievances held by China over Russia’s 19th century acquisition of hitherto Chinese territory)❅. A ceasefire was negotiated by Beijing and Moscow late in 1969, but subsequent bilateral negotiations took until 2008 to settle the matter of who had territorial control of what in the region…as shown above however, the border issue continues to engender lingering grievances up to the present day.

Eastern border conflict (Image: History Forum)

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↝↜↝

❋ the catch-all descriptor “Siberia and the Far East” (Rus: Сибирь и Дальний Восток) had hitherto been used to refer to Russia’s territories east of the Urals, making no clear distinction between “Siberia” and the “Far East” [‘Russian Far East’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]

◘ under Putin’s Russia, Moscow enacted the Russian Homestead Act (2016) which was aimed at encouraging Russian and Ukrainian citizens to settle in the Far East okrugs with the incentive of obtaining 2.5 acres of free land

✧ in the process incurring a substantial loan debt to China

⌂ some of the Russian fears border on the irrational, such as the Siberian speculation that the Chinese want to annex Lake Baikal to monopolise all of its precise fresh water reserves exclusively for Chinese consumption (Kruglov)

✠ the dispute and custom leads some Chinese to continue to refer to the RFE capital Vladivostok by its old Chinese name ‘Hâisenhēnwâi’

✪ reforms affecting RFE have been only partially implemented; there is a paucity of enlightened new strategies to revive the region (eg, a genuine trade liberalisation is sadly lacking); and the planning round it is bereft of a clear, overriding vision for the region [Makarov, op.cit.]

❅ in the same year there was Sino-Soviet military clashes on the western border (Xinjiang/Soviet Central Asia) as well

A Near Miss in Tokyo: The Would-Be Assassination of a Hollywood Screen Icon

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Military history, National politics, Performing arts, Popular Culture

One of the many enduring urban myths that used to float around about celebrated Hollywood actor and director Charlie Chaplin was that he once entered a “Charlie Chaplin Look-alike Contest” – and lost! [‘Charlie Chaplin allegedly entered a Chaplin look-alike contest and lost’, (Domagoj Valjak), The Vintage News, 05-Jan-2017, www.thevintagenews.com].

Given the gravity of the Hollywood silent star’s experiences on a 1932 visit to Japan – a close brush with mortality – the “Little Tramp’ may have wished in hindsight that he was similarly unrecognisable on that particular perilous occasion in Tokyo.

This bizarre as it sounds episode took place during a heightened period of political tensions in Depression-hit Japan. The incumbent Japanese prime minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, a fan of Chaplin, invited him to Japan. Unfortunately, this occurred at a time that certain far-right cells in the Japanese military were plotting to assassinate PM Inukai and cause an international incident.

⇣PM InukaiThe group of young reactionary officers from the Japanese Imperial Navy – including Kiyoshi Koga, one of the ringleaders – sensed an opportunity in Chaplin’s impending visit to double their intended impact (chaos, anxiety and upheaval within mainstream Nihonjin society). The conspirators’❈ purpose was straightforward – to weaken the fabric of Japanese democracy and the rule of law culminating in the supplanting of the status quo civilian national government by a military one [‘May 15 Incident’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Why Chaplin?

At his trial Koga, responding to the prosecutor’s question, explained why the plan was to include Chaplin in the ‘hit’: “Chaplin is a popular figure in the United States and the darling of the capitalist class. We believed that killing him would cause a war with America, and thus we could kill two birds with a single stone” [‘No laughing matter’, (Shibley Nabhan), The Japan Times, 15-May-2005, www.japantimes.co.jp].

Why Inukai?

The perpetrators’ intent was to railroad the civilian regime in Japan, but Inukai had especially earned the ire of the clique because of his opposition to the military interventions in Manchuria and elsewhere, and it’s manipulation of the decision-making functions in the kyabinetto (キャビネット) (Japanese cabinet). The centre-right politician was planning to negotiate the Manchurian situation with the Chinese government and halt all further Japanese military activities in China – all anathema to the ultra-right militarists [‘Inukai Tsuyoshi, Prime Minister of Japan’, Britannia, www.britannia.com].

The coup attempt

Eleven young naval officers were chosen to carry out the “double strike” (known as the May 15 Incident or the ‘5.15 Incident’). They were thwarted from completing their assignment of taking out the second of their targets, owing to Charlie Chaplin’s own sudden about-face…once in Tokyo the film star lost interest in attending the reception to be held in his honour at the Japanese PM’s official residence and skipped it, instead he went to a sumo wrestling match with Inukai’s son (known as ‘Inukai Ken’), a pastime much more to his liking – this 11th hour change of mind probably saved the Hollywood cinema icon’s life!

The assassins on arrival at the prime minister’s residence or Sōri Kōtei (総理公邸)◙ (which was alarmingly short on security) duly liquidated incumbent PM Inukai as planned. The cadre of ultra-right extremists rounded out the night of terror by attacking the residence of the head of the Rikken Seiyūkai Party and tossing grenades into the Mitsubishi Bank’s Tokyo headquarters.

Chaplin meeting with the mayor of Tokyo on his trip ⇣

The Aftermath

The ensuing trial of the perpetrators was marked by a wave of public sympathy for the accused✙. Many believed that the young assassins’ actions admirably embodied the nativist Yamato (大和) spirit of Japan [‘May 15 Incident’, loc.cit.]. In such a politically charged environment, the assassins were handed extremely light sentences. The incident and its feeble handling by the establishment served to encourage conservative elements of the military to further excesses, eg, the February 26 Incident (1936), a failed putsch by a radical faction of the army with the same aim of installing a military government in Japan.

The developments in Japan in the 1930s, the isolated violent incidents by maverick cadres within the military and the incursions into Manchuria and beyond, set Japan on a path to the eventual dissolution of all political parties and the establishment of a military junta in 1940, and thus on a path to war.

Footnote: Chaplin, much later, from the sanctity of his memoirs, wrote light-heartedly of the incident: “I can imagine the assassins having carried out their plan, then discovering that I was not an American, but an Englishman – ‘Oh, so sorry!'” [Nabhan, loc.cit.].

PostScript: Japan, a dangerous environment for politicians

Assassination has been a constant in Japanese politics, a recurring feature in the nation’s political landscape. In the same year as Inukai was shot, there were two other political assassinations in Japan perpetrated by the League of Blood (the casualties a former finance minister and the head of the Mitsui Group corporation). The victims of extremist fringe violence in Japan include prime ministers or former prime ministers Prince Itō, Hara Takashi and Viscounts Saitō Makoto and Takahashi Korekiyo (these last two assassinated in the February 26 Incident). The pattern continued into the postwar era…two Japanese politicians were killed in 1960, and again in the 2000s some provincial politicians have been assassinated (these most recent killings have however tended to be the work of yakuza crime organisations).

┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳┳

❈ comprising the naval officers’ cell, some cadets of the Japanese Imperial Army and civilian members of the ultra-nationalist League of Blood

◙ in 2013 Shinzō Abe after regaining the prime ministership refused to move into the same presidential residence that Inukai was assassinated in, though he denied he was motivated by superstition [‘Japanese prime minister fails to move back into ‘haunted’ residence’, (Justin McCurry), The Guardian, 19-Aug-2013, www.theguardian.com]

✙ 350,000 signatures in blood were received, petitioning the court for lenient sentences for the eleven

Mengjiang: The Empire of Japan’s Other East Asian Puppet State in Inner Mongolia

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Political geography, Regional History, Travel

The creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo out of a huge chunk of China’s northeastern territory in 1932 was a springboard for Japan’s nationalists and militarists to expand territorially deep into China and other parts of Eastern Asia [see preceding blog: http://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/06/27/manchukuo-an-instrument-of-imperial-expansion-for-the-puppet-masters-of-japan/].

(note how close Mengjiang’s eastern boundary came to China’s principal city Peking)

The Japanese military used Manchukuo as a base to gradually move piece by piece into Chinese Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Siberia and elsewhere in China. Or as one Western observer of the day put it: “Automatically, by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan became committed to the invasion of Mongolia”, [Lattimore, Owen. “The Phantom of Mengkukuo.” Pacific Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4, 1937, pp. 420–427. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2750626].

Demchugdongrub and his Japanese advisors ⇣

▫️▫️▫️

Demchugdongrub, Pan-Mongolism to vassal state
In Inner Mongolia, a member of the Royal House of Chahar, Prince Demchugdongrub (Te Wang 德王), was agitating in the 1930s for Mongolian autonomy from Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Republic of China. Demchugdongrub and other Mongolian nationalists harboured irredentist desires for a Pan-Mongolia (the reuniting of Inner and Outer Mongolia) [‘5. Another Manchu-kuo, the dream of the “Inner Mongolian Independence”‘, TAKESHITA, Yoshirō 1997, http://teikoku-denmo.jp/ cited in Global Security, GlobalSecurity.org)].

Mengjiang flag⇣

▫️▫️▫️

Enforced mergers and shifting nomenclature
The opportunity arose with the aggressive expansion of the Japanese military into the country. Chahar and Suiyuan provinces in Inner Mongolia were taken by Japan’s Kwantung Army and its allies. With the muscle of the occupying Japanese military behind him, Demchugdongrub in 1936 was installed as the leader of a new puppet-state regime✳️, the Mongol Military Government (sometimes also called the “Mongolian Border Land”).

In 1939 South Chahar and North Shanxi provinces (both predominately Han Chinese in population✥) were added to the ‘Mongolian’ regime, now renamed the Mengjiang✼ (or Mongol) United Autonomous Government (蒙疆聯合自治政府) (Měngjiāng Liánhé Zìzhì Zhèngfǔ Mōkyō Rengō Jichi Seifu) with its capital in Kalgan (Zhāngjiākǒu) [ibid.]. On paper Prince Demchugdongrub remained Mengjiang head of state (until 1945), his main function seems to have been to give the territorial entity the countenance of legitimacy. One manifestation of Mengjiang’s Mongolian roots was Demchugdongrub’s adoption of the historic Mongolian calendar…1936, Mengjiang’s creation year, became the year 781 to associate the regime with Genghis Khan (below) and the height of power of the Mongol Empire [John Man, The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China, (2015)]✧.

▫️▫️▫️

MUAG becomes MAF
In 1941 Mengjiang was rebranded once more, this time as the Mongolian Autonomous Federation (蒙古自治邦). At the same time the Japanese sponsored the elevation of Wang Zhao-ming. Wang, better known by his pen-name of Wang Jingwei, was put in charge of the Reorganised National Government of the Republic of China (中華民國國民政府) (RNGRC)❦. Wang had previously lost out to Chiang Kai-shek in a leadership struggle for control of both the KMT and the Chinese government.

Wang Jingwei, RNGRC president⇣

Wang’s defection to the Japanese was motivated by this and he envisioned his alternate government, RNGRC, would provide him with the power base within China he was seeking▣. With Wang’s appointment as “Chinese president”, Demchugdongrub’s MAF was subsumed under the Wang regime, but in practical terms the MAF was still autonomous of it, if not of the Japanese [‘Mengjiang’, (Military Wiki), www.military.wikia.org].

Mengjiang one yuan note⇣

▫️▫️▫️

RNGRC a ‘toothless’ regime
The RNGRC under Wang was a one-party totalitarian dictatorship, but the reality of Wang Jingwei’s regime was that it was only afforded very limited powers by it’s Japanese masters. Wang, befitting the function of a pliable puppet, was basically no more than a convenient pawn for the Japanese military to negotiate with Chiang’s government [‘Wang Jianwei regime’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. In 1944 Wang died in Japan…his successor as president mayor of Shanghai Chen Gongbo played an equally subservient role for the Kwantung (Chen in 1946 was tried as a war criminal by the Chiang government and executed).

Mongolian flag 1945⇣▫️▫️▫️

At the end of WWII, both the Mengjiang regime of Demchugdongrub and the ‘Reorganised’ Republic of China were effortlessly swept away by the invading Soviet and Mongolian armies. The Inner Mongolian territories were returned to China (along with Chinese Manchuria) and the Soviet satellite Outer Mongolia gained independence after a national plebiscite (100% yes vote!) in late 1945 (which the USSR immediately and China later recognised).

PRTT crest⇣

PostScript: Tannu Tuva, a regional curio Mengjiang (or Mengkukuo) and Manchukuo were not the only contemporary puppet states in that region of Northeastern China/Mongolia. Nestled in between Outer Mongolia and Russian Siberia, is the tiny enclave of Tannu Tuva (1944: 170,500 sq km, Pop. 95,400)…historically this land was part of Mongolia and therefore part of a client state of the Chinese Empire. The People’s Republic of Tannu Tuva (Tьʙа Arat Respuʙlik) (1921-44) was recognised only by the USSR and Mongolia. Nominally independent but in reality another satellite state of the Soviets, in late 1944 it was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Tuvan Autonomous Oblast. Today, it is the Tyva Republic, a constituent member of the post-communist Russian Federation.

(map source: www.globalsecurity.org)

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

✳️ Demchugdongrub, despite his vaulting ambitions, was only ever nominally in charge of what was always transparently a Japanese-controlled puppet state

✥ exacerbating pre-existing tensions between the Mongolian and Chinese sections of the state (Lattimore, op.cit.)

✼ Mengjiang 蒙 (literally ‘fierce’ or in compound form ‘dream to act’). The entity is sometimes styled Mengkukuo 蒙古國 because of its parallels with Manchukuo

✧ the Mongolian prince’s supposed autonomy was always surface deep at best…”an autonomy administered by the Japanese for the Japanese”, (ibid.)

❦ colloquially known as the “Wang Jingwei regime“

▣ Wang’s would-be government was based in the former capital Nánjīng, however the de facto capital was Shanghai

.

France versus Monaco – a “Road hump” in Bilateral Relations of the Early 1960s

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Commerce & Business, National politics, Popular Culture, Regional History
Monaco 🇲🇨 millionaires’ playground on the western Mediterranean

The tiny hereditary principality of Monaco on the French Riviera/Côte d’Azur has long-held a reputation for being a playground of the rich and famous (thanks to its high cost of living and its tax laws)✱, in addition to being a micro-state with a high-profile royal family (The Grimaldis) whose capacity to attract publicity is grotesquely way out of proportion to the entity’s minuscule size and insignificant political importance. Monaco is also famous for its industries – gambling⊞ , banking and tax avoidance. It is this last area of finance that was the crux of a brief 1960s confrontational episode in the country’s historical relations with its larger regional neighbours.

Hercule Harbour, Monaco

In October 1962 the French government of Charles De Gaulle imposed a blockage of Monaco’s main port. The prospect of an advanced Western European power threatening a tiny territorial enclave – possessing a microscopic gendarmerie and no army or navy – with force must have struck outsiders as a farcical situation…in reality the blockade stayed in place ever so briefly although it was not officially lifted until Easter 1963. The Franco-Monégaseque ‘Crisis’ was completely in the shadow of the terrifyingly real crisis occurring in Cuba at the same time, the international missile crisis standoff between the global Cold Warriors, USA and the Soviet Union [Fabien Hassan, ‘Lessons from history – The Monaco crisis from 1962-1963 and the emancipation of tax havens’Finance Watch, 27-Apr-2015, www.finance-watch.org].

The royal palace on “The Rock”

The nub of the conflict
Monaco’s historical practice of not imposing any direct income tax on its residents (including those migrating to the Principality from France) and having minimal taxes on business had a deleterious outcome for France – a significant loss of revenue for the French coffers. In this regard De Gaulle had a legitimate gripe against Monaco for letting wealthy French persons evade their tax obligations to the Tricolore Republic…this was especially galling to the French President as it was France that footed the entire bill for tiny Monaco’s national defence (plus forking out some other financial outlays as part of the two nations’ special relationship). At the time the French media was stridently doing its utmost to drum up national disaffection with the Monaco situation⊛.

⍍ Grace Kelly’s 1955 Hitchcock film made on location in the French Riviera that led to that momentous meeting between America’s “patrician pure-bred” star actress and Monaco’s bachelor monarch – and a subsequent change of careers and destinies!

Too much American influence in a French ‘pond’?
De Gaulle was also apparently concerned about the growing influence of Americans over Prince Rainier’s governance of Monaco…in so doing they were stepping on the toes of France, Monaco being clearly within the French sphere of influence (it also reflected De Gaulle’s wider antipathy to the ‘Americanisation’ of Europe!), a concern he harboured even before Rainier’s marriage to US film star Grace Kelly! Prior to that, Rainier had already engaged Americans as some of his closest advisers to assist him in his day-to-day duties and personal affairs✥. The 1962 political tensions between the two countries can be traced back to events in 1959, namely the Prince’s decision to suspend the Constitution (interpreted by France as a Monégaseque move towards securing US support) [Hassan, ibid.].

1950s Sister ‘coup’: Usurping Rainier
Apparently not long after Rainier ascended the throne (1949), his older sister, the Paris-born Princess Antoinette, tried to exploit a Monégaseque economic crisis at the time due to a series of reckless state loans…the Princess’ intrigues involved trying, unsuccessfully, to convince Monaco’s oligarchs that they should replace her (then) unmarried and childless brother with her legitimated son Christian as prince (with herself as regent until he came of age) [‘Monaco’s Machiavellian Princesses’, 27-Apr-2013, www.royalfoibels.com]. In the 2014 film, Grace of Monaco, to heighten the dramatic narrative of the movie, the episode of Antoinette’s attempted coup d’être (1950) is clumsily and inaccurately interwoven into the story of the 1962-63 crisis [Alex Von Tunzelmann, ‘Grace of Monaco – historically accurate? you’ve got some de Gaulle’, The Guardian, 4-Jun-2014, www.theguardian.com].

The tourist-friendly Grimaldi palace

Crisis averted…through compromise
In the end a compromise was negotiated with France so that French citizens living in Monaco for less than five years were now to be taxed – at French rates, and Monegasque businesses doing more than 25% of their business outside the Principality had to pay corporate taxes for the first time, with all the revenues going back to the Treasury in Paris. The Franco-Monégaseque compromise, with some revisions from time to time, is still in effect today [Hassan, op.cit.]

Footnote: historical roots and etymological nomenclature curio
The name ‘Monaco’ derives from monos (single, alone) and oikos (house), conveying the meaning, a people “living apart” or in a “single habitation”. Monaco’s origins were as a Greek colony founded in 6th century BCE although the first inhabitants were Ligurians, an ancient Indo-European tribe – Monaco was absorbed into the Roman Empire, later invading Saracens gained control of the territory. Eventually it fell under the control of the seafaring Genoese. After one of these, François Grimaldi, disguised as a Franciscan monk, established a hold over “The Rock” in 1297, the independent status of Monaco has been periodically punctuated by the intervention of outside forces – viz. taken by France for a period in the 14th century and then retaken from 1789-1814, under Spanish protection briefly in the 16th century, and then under French protection for most other intervals of time since the Middle Ages.

∿∿∿∿∿∿

Monaco Palace ‘sideshow?’

PostScript: Personal impressions … less than overwhelming
When I visited Monaco in 2009 I was taken with just how French it was…hardly surprising given that the French Republic surrounds the tiny monarchy and French residents heavily outnumber the Monégaseque!❂ We were touring the south of France in summer and staying at Cannes, just a short drive down the road from the pocket-sized Principality. We had an early dinner at a great spot overlooking the harbour before popping into Monte Carlo to do the obligatory tourist thing of visiting the Casino (boring, bereft of atmosphere…major anticlimactic letdown that turned out to be!). Then on to the Grimaldi royal palace on “The Rock”. The take-away message I took from the royal seat of power was that it was rather akin to visiting the palatial residence of a comic-opera royal family, something along the lines of the fictional Ruritania or the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. I think the Lilliputian nature of Monaco, the sheer lack of size of the Principality adds to this notion. Monaco is less than two square kilometres, which is on the slim side for an average Sydney suburb, infinitesimally minute for a national entity – only Vatican City is smaller! One other thing that struck me on arrival at the Palace entrance and whilst strolling around its grounds, was the relative lack of security in existence (like there just wasn’t anything that important to safeguard!). The incongruous presence of odd vehicles and vessels from some sort of expeditionary enterprise within the grounds, suggesting a museum-like setting, did not reinforce an impression of a serious regal residence, say, as at Buckingham Palace. But the dubious significance of the Monégasque Principality aside, aesthetically, Palais du Prince, whilst not exactly Versailles in scale or opulence, nonetheless comprised several fine, stately buildings. The big chunk of rock the Palace sits on is a good place to take in wide views of the harbour, La Condamine with its flotilla of moored millionaires’ yachts, and of Monte Carlo across the Hericule. Tour over, we headed out of the grounds, through the tunnel to the coach taking us back to our Cannes hotel, feeling as if we hadn’t really ever left France, but had just visited a uniquely peculiar part with a slightly ‘Fantasyland’ feel about it!

The Mouse That Roared – a 1959 British satire about a fictional speck of a micro-state called ‘Grand Fenwick’ which declares war on the USA

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✱ a 2014 study revealed that 30% of Monaco’s population (around 38,000) were millionaires [‘One in a Three in a Millionaire in a Monaco: Study’, www.ndtv.com]
⊞ associated with Monte Carlo Casino, a fame reinforced by James Bond movies, but Monacoan gambling was long controlled by Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis before his eviction by Rainier
⊛ the French press, going somewhat overboard, even called for the AS Monaco football club to be kicked out of the French championship [Hassan, op.cit].
✥ An American clerical oblate, one Father Tucker, was front and centre in the body of royal advisers at the palace…one of his very specialised roles reportedly was to select suitable, available Catholic girls for the very eligible bachelor prince, ‘Who is Father Francis Tucker in “Grace of Monaco”? This Priest Played an Interesting Role in History, Bustle, 26-May-2015, www.bustle.com
❂ only around 22% of the Principality’s population are native Monégaseques, about 47% are French or of French descent and 18%, give or take, are Italian, [‘Countries and their Cultures Forum – Monaco, www.everyculture.com/Ma-Ni/Monaco.html]