Showing posts from category: Political geography
The Pan-American Highway: Part 1, the Western Hemisphere’s Long, Long Road Trip
The Pan-American Highway is a Goliath of roads in the Pantheon of world famous highways. The Guinness Book of Records calls it the world’s longest “motorable road”. The Pan-American Highway’s fame is such as to earn it the sobriquet of “Mother of all road trips”. This road running north/south spanning the two hemispheres of the continental Americas, stretches approximately 30,000 km from Prodhoe Bay in Alaska to its extremity at Ushuaia (Argentina) on the tip of Tierra del Fuego①. And yet its much more than a singular, linear road, it is a network of many (in some cases loosely linked) roads.
Nomenclature: although the network of roads that comprises Americas’ iconic highway is known generically as the Pan-American Highway (PAH), particular sections in different countries have their own local designations for the roadway. In Alaska it starts off as the Dalton Highway and extends south as the Alaskan Highway. When the PAH crosses the 49th Parallel you won’t find many signposts saying it but the whole US interstate highway system is designated as the “Pan-American Highway”②. In México and Central America it goes by the moniker “Inter-American Highway” (Carretera Interamericana), as well as by local network names, Federal Highway 45/190, etc. In the South American countries locals use the generic La Panamericana while the Highway is also identified by its domestic descriptor, eg, Columbia: Route 55/66, Peru: Peru Highway 1, Chile: Ruta 5, Argentina: National Route 3/7. As a general rule of thumb, according to UCF assistant professor Eric Rutkow, “the Pan-American Highway is just Highway 1 or 2 of the national system in most of South America” The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas .
𝐼𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓉𝑒 𝟤𝟧, 𝒩𝑒𝓌 𝑀𝑒𝓍𝒾𝒸𝑜, 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓊𝓃𝑜𝒻𝒻𝒾𝒸𝒾𝒶𝓁 𝒷𝓇𝒶𝓃𝒸𝒽𝑒𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒫𝒜𝐻° Unofficial routes If you look at a map of the Pan-American Highway, one of the first things that stands out is that there is no one route for much of its journey. At Edmonton, Canada, the PAH forks, giving travellers the choice of an eastern route to the US via Winnipeg, bisecting America and entering México via Texas, or following the straighter route south through the Rocky Mountain states to Mexico. In South America also there are various spurs branching off from the PAH, eg, from Bogotá, Columbia to Venezuela; from Montevideo, Uruguay, up the Brazilian coast as far as São Paulo and Rio. When the PAH reaches the Chilean port of Valparaiso, it turns east and joins with Buenos Aires, from where it runs parallel to the Atlantic down through Argentine Patagonia.
𝑅𝑒𝒹𝑒𝑒𝓂𝑒𝓇 𝒯𝓊𝓃𝓃𝑒𝓁 (𝐼𝓂𝒶𝑔𝑒: 𝒲𝒾𝓀𝒾𝓂𝒶𝓅𝒾𝒶)° Loftiest points of the PAH The PAH winds its way through wide diversities of terrain, including many mountainous regions, which prove to be some of the most challenging parts for motorists. The highest points reached by the PAH are in Costa Rica where it rises to a height of 3,335 metres (the so-called “Summit of Death“), in Quito, Eduador’s capital, where the PAH climbs to 2,850 metres, and at the Christ the Redeemer Tunnel, a mountain pass in the Andes (linking Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina), 3,200 metres.
Bifurcated highway Just as the Great Wall of China took millennias to construct, the PAH was far from a rapid build, rather it evolved slowly and haltingly, stage by stage. Laredo/Nuevo Laredo (US/Méxican border) to Mexico City was the first stage completed, followed later by sections connecting Mexico to Panama and Columbia to Argentina. Also like the Great Wall, PAH remains unfinished, the Highway in its “nether regions” is not contiguous. The missing piece in the jigsaw of the road’s infrastructure is a 60-70–mile long “no man’s land” linking the southern part of Panama to the top of Columbia. It’s Spanish name is Tapón del Darién (lit. “Darién Plug”) but is better known as the Darién Gap, a narrow strip of inhospitable terrain, the severity of which has defied all attempts to construct a road through it. The saga of the Darién Gap—the “Achilles Heel” of the Americas’ super-highway—will be taken up in Part 2 of this blog, along with the US’s historic driving (pun intended) role in the development of the PAH.
𝒮𝑜𝓊𝓇𝒸𝑒: 𝓇𝑒𝓈𝑒𝒶𝓇𝒸𝒽𝑔𝒶𝓉𝑒.𝓃𝑒𝓉______________________________ ① traversing 14 countries ② though Interstate 25 at Albuquerque, New Mexico, is signposted the ”Pan-American Freeway”
Manchurian “California” — the Zheltuga “Republic” of Adventurer-Bandit Prospectors
Amur/Heilong River basin (Photo: WWF–Russia/Y Darman)In 1883 in a remote region of Northeast China gold was discovered near a tributary of a tributary of the great Amur River by hunters from the local Orochen (or Oroqen) tribe➀. Once word got out, aspiring prospectors flocked to the location on the Zheltuga stream from far and near. The bulk came from Russia, peasants and workers from Siberia and beyond. Many chancers came from Blagoveschensk, by boat to the Cossack station at Ignashino, just across the river from the gold strike spot. Many of these were miners who had deserted from the Amur goldmining district (of which Blagoveschensk was the centre). The gold discovery also became a magnet for all sorts of criminal elements including escaped convicts and deportees from the Far East including Sakhalin Island.
A multi-ethnic mix
As more and more miners joined the hunt for gold, a community given the name of Zheltuga grew up, by 1885 there was around 10,000 miners in residence. Russians were the dominant group but the Chinese (mainly Manchus but also some coolies from Shandong province) made up possibly as much as 10% of the population. Others who joined the diggings included Koreans, Orochens, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, Poles, Jews and Siberians. The population of the mining community was very fluid, the chancers would dig frenetically for the precious nuggets and if favoured by fortune, they wouldn’t hang around, no one stayed long at the goldmining caper in the Zheltuga camp, a couple of months being about the average➁…the mining community was in “a state of constant flux” [Gamsa, Mark. “California on the Amur, or the ‘Zheltuga Republic’ in Manchuria (1883-86).” The Slavonic and East European Review 81, no. 2 (2003): 236–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4213684].
Nine of the 10 headmen of Zheltuga (Photo: Earth Science Museum & Moscow State University)༓ ༓ ༓
Administration and rough-hewn code of civic duties Despite (or because of) the wildness of the camp and the dubious morality of many of its residents, Zheltuga didn’t function in an ungoverned, anarchical manner. To maintain order and keep Zheltuga’s rampant violence, murder and mayhem in check, a political structure was established with an elected leader and an executive of ten headmen or foremen. A code was promulgated with harsh penalties for breaches of the community’s law – execution for murder, flogging and banishment for lesser crimes. Major decisions affecting the community as a whole were made democratically, meetings of miners (Orlinoe poe) were held in the central field (Orlovo pole/“Eagle Field”) with the entire assembly voting on the matter at hand.
Colours of the Zheltuga republic’s flag༓ ༓ ༓
Leaders (rather grandly termed “presidents of the republic”) also tended to come and go in regular fashion…the first leader went by the name of Adolf Karlovich Fass, a man with a mysterious background, variously thought to be German, Italian (Karl Fassi?) or Jewish in origin. Fass’ short tenure in charge was terminated when he was arrested by Cossack forces and disappeared. Briefly filling the void apparently was an equally shady figure from the Cossack stations named Sakharov. One of the camp’s last leaders was the better known Russian lawyer Pavel Prokunin who led armed resistance against the Chinese assault on Zheltuga before being deposed as well (Gamsa).
Photo: Earth Science Museum & Moscow State University༓ ༓ ༓
Commerce in a frontier proto-state As the camp’s population swelled, a rudimentary township grew rapidly. To service the burgeoning numbers on the goldfield there were 160 shops by 1885 including 18 hotels and taverns, bath houses, a theatre, a church, a hospital, a billiards saloon and even a circus. A sex industry for the miners (Zheltuga was decreed a male-only community) was set up on the Russian side at Ignashino. Also popular on the goldfield were the spiritonosy (“alcohol carriers”) merchants—mainly Jews and and “Old Believers” from Transbaikalia—who sold vodka to the miners. Businesses in the Zheltuga ’republic’ were required to pay tax [‘ Zheltuga Republic’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org].
With the mining of gold Zheltuga’s raison d’être the camp was inevitably tagged with the nickname “California on the Amur” in reference to the more famous, earlier American gold rush. Another name it acquired was Novaia Kalifornia (“New California”). Similarly Ignashino’s proximity to the Manchurian prospecting epicentre earned it the sobriquet Ignashinskaiia Kalifornia.
Source: MAMM / MDF / russiainphoto.ru༓ ༓ ༓
Heightening political instability on the border The Zheltuga gold mine was located within the northern frontier of imperial China. The Qing authorities’ slowness to act on this trespass on sovereign Chinese land was due to Peking’s ignorance of the goldmining activity. Russia conversely was well aware of the situation and the local region command tended to usually turn a blind eye to it. When the veil dropped from Chinese eyes, the governor (amban) of Aigun (Dongbei China) protested to the new Russian governor-general of Priamur region Baron AN Korff about the illegal gold mine on Chinese territory. Finally forced to take some action, Korff in 1885 moved to bring the community under rein…supplies were cut off and a Cossack cordon was imposed to block Russians passing to the Chinese side and the miners were compelled to sell their gold to the Cossack commander Prince Wittgenstein at a set price. (Gamsa).
Curtains for the “Amur California” The Chinese Qing government issued warnings to the Zheltuga community to disband its operations on Chinese soil. Initially the miners retreated to the surrounding taiga (boreal forest), pretending to have vacated the camp, only to return to their diggings afterwards. Peking eventually got jack of the miners‘ refusal to heed its demand they vacate the camp, finally taking decisive military action. In early 1886 a detachment of 1,600 Chinese soldiers attacked the mining camp, dispersing the Russian miners who were allowed to skedaddle back over the Amur➂…the Chinese miners were not so fortunate, those caught while fleeing were summarily massacred by the troops. The camp was subsequently razed to the ground. The following year an officially-run Chinese gold mine was established nearby in the village of Mohe (today China’s northernmost city).
Postscript: Hóng-húzi, an imagined “Red Beard” republic of proto-communist Chinese brigands A curious sidelight to the Zheltuga story is the mythical “Hóng-húzi republic”, the invention of two late 19th century French writers (Messieurs Ular and Mury) both of who travelled to the region and wrote separate accounts. Both concocted alternative versions of the Zheltuga episode as Chinese outlaw republics in northern Manchuria (Ular: ”Feltuga republic”| Mury: “Cheltuga republic”). The essentially “Russian enterprise with a proportionally limited, though nonetheless intriguing, Chinese participation” was recast as “an egalitarian republic of Chinese ‘red beards’” based on communist principles. The myth gained some traction at the time and persisted well into the 20th century. Mark Gamsa described the “Red Beard” saga as “a jumble of myth, rumour and unverified bits of factual information…(fuelled by) “an inventive spirit” [Gamsa, Mark. “How a Republic of Chinese Red Beards Was Invented in Paris.” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 993–1010. www.jstor.org/stable/3876481].
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ➀ a Manchu-Tungus linguistic ethnic minority of forest hunter-dwellers in Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia
➁ some got no further than the local (Chita) casino, set up to relieve them of their hard-earned moolah (‘How Russians secretly set up their own ‘California’ in China’, Boris Egorov, Russia Beyond, 03-Feb-2021, www.rbth.com/history/333347-russians-secretly-set-up-california)
➂ leniency was shown to the Russian miners as Peking didn’t want to antagonise Moscow and worsen relations with the Russian Bear
Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, a “Twin Cities” Odd Couple on the Sino-Russian Border
Image: Moscow Times
The greater part of the boundary separating Russia from China comprises a 2,824-kilometre river – known as the Amur to the Russians on the northern side and Heilongjiang (meaning “Black Dragon River”) to the Chinese on the southern side. At the river’s confluence with the Zeya River is a curious juxtaposition of urban settlements on the border of the two great Asian powers – Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, facing each other across the river, two small cities similar in size and separated physically by less than 600 metres of water.
Image: russiatrek.org
Heihe, a prefecture-level city within the province of Heilongjiang, only came into existence as recently as 1980 (an earlier town called Aihui or Aigun was located in the vicinity, some 30 km south of contemporary Heihe). Blagoveshchensk«𝓪» is the capital of the Amur (Amurskaya) Oblast in Russia’s Far East with a controversial back story. Cossacks built the first Russian outposts here (then called “Ust-Zeysky”) in the 1850s, on land that under the terms of the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk between the Russian tsar and the Qing Dynasty that Russians had been evicted from. Blagoveshchensk (or ‘Blago’ as it is often shortened to) came into being after an opportunist Russia forced China to acquiesce to the inequitable Treaty of Aigun in 1858…the Qings lost over 600,000 sq km of territory in Manchuria including the Amur River site of the future city of Blagoveshchensk. The resentment felt by the Chinese at the unjust 1858 Treaty was magnified in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion when the Russian authorities in Blagoveshchensk forcibly deported the city’s Chinese community resulting in around 5,000 of the fleeing refugees losing their lives in a mass killing. In modern times Heihe/Blagoveshchensk has been the scene of violent confrontation between Soviet and Chinese troops. In 1969 the two countries fought a battle close to the ”twin cities” over a disputed island in the Amur/Heilong river – at the cost of hundreds of casualties.
Amur/Heilong River (Source: worldatlas.com)
By 1989—the year in which the border between the USSR and China reopened after being closed for much of the century—Heihe was still a small village. During the following thirty years Heihe has witnessed the rapid growth and accelerated development associated with many Chinese cities (eg, Shenzhen), a flurry of commercial activity with mercantilist purpose, a flourishing of modern high-rise apartments and even some greening of the city. Conversely Blagoveshchensk, older and more settled, looks “sedate and almost stagnant” by comparison…seemingly resistant to the modernising example of its nearby neighbour. [Franck Billé, ‘Surface Modernities: Open-Air Markets, Containment and Vertilcality in Two Border Towns of Russia and China’, Economic Sociology, 15(2), March 2014, www.repository.cam.au.uk].
Blagoveshchensk tertiary institution
Heihe and Blagoveshchensk over contemporary times have evolved diametrically different urban landscapes. Blagoveshchensk’s taste in architecture tends toward a kind of “horizontal functionalism” (Franck Billé). It’s structures which includes some classical public buildings as well as surviving grey concrete remnants of the Soviet era adhere mostly to a flat, horizontal form«𝓫». Urban planning is faithful to a rigid grid format and retains a “Roman fort” quality. Heihe, on the other hand, in its modernisation projects the iconic vertical model of the Chinese mega cities to its south (high-rise on overdrive, modern shopping malls, etc). Structures like the large Heihe International Hotel sit jutting out prominently on the riverside promenade (Billé).
Heihe lightshow (Photo: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
Heihe’s vibrant exterior can be viewed as a pearl set against the beigeness of Blagoveshchensk’s static oyster. At night Heihe’s waterfront becomes a glittery cornucopia, a spectacular colour light show advertising itself to the other side. The stark contrast between the two towns is reminiscent of a similar chiaroscuroesque nocturnal effect observable with the northern Chinese city of Dandong and its barren ill-lit North Korean neighbour 500 metres across the Yalu, Sinuiju. While Heihe’s edge sparkles, Blagoveshchensk’s riverbank remains largely underdeveloped. Notwithstanding the drabness of Blagoveshchensk many of its citizens remain unimpressed by their showy twin’s persona. Blagoveshchensk skeptics describe Heihe as a “Potemkin village”, a flash exterior hiding a poor and dirty reality below the surface, and the evening light show a transparent bait to lure Russian visitors and their roubles from across the Amur [Joshua Kucera, ‘Don’t Call Call Them Twin cities’, Slate, 28-Dec-2009, www.slate.com].
Sculpture of a kiprichi (Source: Indian Defence Forum)
༄࿓༄ The proximity between the Russian and Chinese towns has led to patterns of interaction, especially after the 1989 border opening when Blagoveshchensk day-trippers began making shopping expeditions to Heihe to buy cheap consumer goods, clothing, the latest electronics, etc. Some Russians segued this into a nice little earner, commuting to the Chinese side, buying in bulk and transporting the goods back to Blagoveshchensk in suitcases to resell at a profit. They were known as kiprichi, also acquiring the less flattering nicknames of “suitcase traders” and ”bricks”. The bottom fell out of this two-way trade however in 2014 when the value of the Russian rouble disintegrated against the yuan. The suitcase trade was no longer profitable for Russians, finding their main source of trade with Heihe had disappeared down the gurgler. The devaluation also had a deleterious effect on many Chinese traders who had set up business in Blagoveshchensk (Kucera).
Russian dolls in Heihe (Photo: Zhang Wenfang/chinadaily.com.cn)
Mutual development?
༄࿓༄ The potential for larger scale cross-border exchange between the two cities has been slow to take root, not for lack of commitment or effort on the side of Heihe. Blagoveshchensk has repeatedly dragged its feet on initiates for joint commercial and industrial projects proposed by the Chinese, this is despite China being the Amur region’s largest trading partner! A case in point is the highway bridge connecting Heihe and Blagoveshchensk, essential to expand north Asian trade by integrating the two sides’ road networks. First mooted in 1988, the Russians procrastinated and procrastinated regarding committing to the project which it was envisaged would increase the flow of goods and people between the two towns exponentially…work only commenced in 2016 and construction finalised in late 2019 (still not opened in 2022 due to the ongoing pandemic). Heihe city became a free trade zone in 1992 and boosted by funding from Beijing as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has strived to forge local (Dongbei/RFE) economic integration with it’s Russian twin town (even tying it to Moscow’s Siberian gas pipeline plans) [Gaye Christoffersen, ‘Sino-Russian Local Relations: Heihe and Blagoveshchensk’, The Asian Forum, 10-Dec-2019, www.theasianforum.org ].
Russian Far East demographic vulnerability ༄࿓༄
Blagoveshchensk’s reluctance to wholly engage with Heihe as partners in joint developments tap into prevailing Russian fears and anxieties about its giant southern neighbour, with whom it shares a porous 4,200-km border. With the Russian Far East being population poor and resource rich, Russian concerns about the possibility of future Chinese future designs on the vast, sparsely-populated territory—including the perceived threat of ‘Sinicisation’«𝓬» (being culturally overwhelmed by the far more numerous Chinese), Chinese expansionism and the balkanisation of the RFE—are never far from the surface. Concerns which are made sharper by awareness of the persisting sense of injustice felt by China at the 1858 Treaty (Billé).
Image: http://gioffe.asp.radford.edu/
Postscript: Siberian exports, casino tourism ༄࿓༄
Over the last several years there have a few optimistic signs that Blagoveshchensk is tentatively opening itself up to more trade with Heihe. In the last decade Amur Oblast’s exports (mainly soy, timber, gold, coal and electricity) to China have risen by 16% , and in the same period Chinese visitors to Blagoveshchensk increased tenfold aided by the hosts putting more effort into creating a more attractive environment for tourists, eg, the introduction of casinos in Blagoveshchensk to cater for Chinese gambling aficiandos. Of course, as with the new cross-border bridge, COVID-19 has stopped all of these positive developments dead in their tracks for now [D Simes Jr & T Simes, ‘Russian gateway to China eyes ‘friendship’ dividends after COVID’, Nikkei Asia, www.asia.nikkei.com ].
——————————————————————-———-—
«𝓪» = “Annunciation”, literally meaning in Russian, “city of good news”. The traditional Chinese name for Blagoveshchensk is Hailanbao
«𝓫» with some exceptions such as the 65-metre tall, hyper-modern Asia Hotel
«𝓬» Kitaizatsia in Russian
The Passport in History: Travel Papers to Regulate Mobility, Identity and Control
We live in an age fraught with concerns about security in the wider world, a symptom of which is the ongoing demand for more secure passports enhanced by ever smarter applications of technology – biometric data (eg, photographs, fingerprints and iris patterns), ePassports (embedded microprocessor chips), etc. The international passport today is a much valued and for some a lucrative commodity𝔸, but when did people first start to use passports as we understand the concept? 
Passports or their document antecedents were known to exist in ancient civilisations – artwork from the Old Kingdom (ca.1,600 BC) depict Egyptian magistrates issuing identity tablets to guest workers; in the (Hebrew) Bible Judaean governor Nehemiah furnishes a subject permission to travel to the Persian Empire; Ancient Chinese bureaucrats in the Han Dynasty (fl. after 206BC) issued a form of passport (zhuan) for internal travel within the empire, necessary to move through the various counties and points of control.
Henry V
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In medieval Europe the prototype travel document emerged from a sort of gentleman’s agreement between rulers to facilitate peaceful cross-border exchanges (‘The Contentious History of the Passport’, Guilia Pines, National Geographic, 16-May-2017, www.api.nationalgeographic.com)…it provided sauf conduit, allowing an enemy safe and unobstructed ”passage in and out of a kingdom for the purpose of his negotiations”. This convention however was ad hoc, haphazard and capricious, the grantor’s ‘authority’ bestowed on the traveller might not be recognised at any point in his or her travels (Martin Lloyd, The Passport: The History of Man’s Most Travelled Document (2005)). The Middle Ages nonetheless did bring advances in the formulation of travel documents for extra-jurisdiction movements. Individual cities in Europe often had reciprocal arrangements where someone granted a passport-type paper in their home city could enter a city in another sovereignty for business without being required to pay its local fees (‘When were passports as we know them today first introduced?’, (Rupert Matthews), History Extra, 29-Sep-2021, www.historyextra.com). King Henry V, he of lasting Agincourt fame, authorised just such a early form of passport/visa as proof of identity for English travellers venturing to foreign lands, leading some to credit him with the introduction of the first true passport. The issuing of travelling papers sanctioned by the English Crown were enacted by parliament in the landmark Safe Conducts Act of 1414.
A ‘passport’ letter furnished by King Charles I to a overseas-bound private citizen of the crown, dating from 1636࿏࿏࿏
Before the rise of the nation-state system in 19th century Europe, large swathes of the populations of the multitudinous political entities—largely comprising serfs, slaves and indentured servants—routinely required “privately created passes or papers to legitimise their movement” (‘Papers, Please: The Invention of the Passport’, (Eric Schewe), JSTOR Daily, 17-Mar-2017, www.daily.jstor.org). Kings, lords and landowners all issued ad hoc laissez-passer of their own definition and design (Baudoin, Patsy. The American Archivist 68, no. 2 (2005): 343–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40294299). A systemic, standardised passport would not materialise until the 20th century.
It was only with the arrival of world war in 1914 that governments, motivated by security needs, turned their attention to tightening up entry requirements between the new nation-states, putting immigration quotas on the agenda (US legislators for example were eager to check the flow of immigrants into the country). Spearheaded by the newly created League of Nations (and aided by the availability of cheaper photography) a passport system began to evolve that was recognisably modern. The League in 1920 introduced a passport nicknamed “Old Blue”—specifying the size, layout and design of passports for 42 of its nations—thus establishing the first worldwide passport standards𝔹. Passports “became both standardized, mandatory travel documents and ritual tools reinforcing national identity” (Schewe).
Later the “Old Blue” passport was expanded into a 32-page booklet which included basic data about the holder such as facial characteristics, occupation and address. “Old Blue” had remarkable longevity, remaining the norm for passports until 1988 when it was superseded by a new, burgundy-coloured passport as the international standard (‘The World’s First Official Passport’, Passport Health, www.passporthealthusa.com).
(Source: WSJ Graphics)
Marc Chagall (self-portrait): one of a number of famous Nansen passport holders
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End-note: Married women travellers and the ‘stateless’ As the standardised international passport took shape, married women (unlike single women) were not admitted initially into the ranks of passport-holders in their own right, rather they were considered merely “as an anonymous add-on to their husbands’ official document”, eg, ”John Z and wife” (the wife’s public identity at the time still tied very much to that of their spouse‘s). In 1917 newly married American writer Ruth Hale’s request for a passport in her maiden name to cover the war in France was denied (‘The 1920s Women Who Fought For the Right to Travel Under Their Own Names’, (Sandra Knisely), Atlas Obscura, 27-Mar-2017, www.atlasobscura.com). Also bereft of passports in the modern-state system were those refugees who found themselves stateless in the turbulent aftermath of WWI. To address this crisis the League of Nations issued ”Nansen passports”ℂ from 1922 to 1938 to approximately 450,000 refugees. Originally intended for White Russians and Armenians (and later for Jews feeing persecution under the Nazis), the “Stateless passports” allowed their holders “to cross borders to find work, and protected them from deportation (‘The Little-Known Passport That Protected 450,000 Refugees’, (Cara Giaimo), Atlas Obscura, 07-Feb-2017, www.atlasobsura.com)𝔻.
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝
𝔸 like the small island-states Malta and Cyprus who happily sell their citizenship to anyone who can afford it (up to US$1,000,000)
𝔹 “Old Blue” was originally written in French, just like the origin of the word ‘passport’ itself — passeport, from passer (“to pass” or “to go”) and port, meaning ‘gate’ or ‘port’
ℂ named after their promoter, Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen
𝔻 the Stateless passports didn’t of course stop the numbers of stateless refugees from continuing to escalate alarmingly…the UNHCR estimates that the global number of stateless persons is now more than 10,000,000
Envisaging Canada as “51st State”: A Preoccupation with Invading and Annexing, an American Tradition North of the 49th Parallel
During the time of European settlement of North America there has been at least three attempts to invade Canada by Americans (or by British settlers in what was to become the United States of America). All three ended ignominiously. The first in 1690, part of the Anglo-French conflict known as King William’s War, was a naval expedition by the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Sir William Phips with the objective of seizing Québec City, the capital of New France. The English bombardment of Québec was an abject failure and Phips’ expedition was forced to return to Boston in smallpox-infested ships on which hundreds perished on the journey [‘King William’s War 1688-1697’, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, www.colonialsociety.org]<ᵃ>.
1690 assault on Québec City from Massachusetts Bay colonists
The second invasion attempt was in 1775, during the early days of the American Revolutionary War. The idea to invade came from American army colonel (and later defector to the British side) Benedict Arnold, the rationale being to try to induce French Canadians to join the war for independence against their British rulers. The assault on Québec led by Arnold was easily repulsed by a reinforced British garrison and the American patriots reduced to 100 men were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs back to the American side [‘Battle of Québec: When Benedict Arnold Tried to Invade Canada’, Patrick J. Kiger, History, Upd. 29-Sep-2021, www.history.com].
The third occurrence was during the War of 1812, when the Americans invaded Canada, urged on by the “war hawks” in Congress who predicted it would an easy victory (in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a mere matter of marching”)<ᵇ>.Despite making several invasion attempts, via both Upper and Lower Canada, the Americans again emerged empty-handed from their efforts (due to a combination of factors including inept US military leadership and woeful preparedness, and fierce resistance from the allied forces of British ‘Redcoats’ and First Nation warriors). In early 1813 the Vermont newspaper Green-Mountain Farmer lamented that the Canadian campaign had produced nothing but “disaster, defeat, disgrace, and ruin and death” [‘How U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago’, Jesse Greenspan, History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com].
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In addition there have been other unsanctioned invasions from the US, such as the Patriot War of 1837-38, a series of disjointed raids from the US borderlands in support of the Canadian rebels (Rebellions of 1837). The Americans who participated, many from the Hunters’ Lodges, were motivated both by antagonisms against what they saw as British tyranny and by a sense of adventurism (Washington under Van Buren maintained a policy of neutrality during this episode to safeguard its trade interests with Britain).
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After the American Civil War Irish-American Republicans from the Fenian Brotherhood crossed the border, raiding British military strongholds in both the west and east of Canada as part of a stratagem to force the British into negotiation for Irish independence…the most notable of these engagements was the Battle of Ridgeway (1866) in which the Fenians were victorious over inexperienced Canadian volunteers. For the Fenian militia it was a pyrrhic victory, serving only to a spur for the realisation of Canadian confederation rather than to advance the cause of Irish independence<ᶜ> . [‘An Irishman’s Diary on the Battle of Ridgeway, the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866’, Brendan Ô Cathaoir, The Irish Times, 01-Jun-2016, www.irishtimes.com].
And when Americans weren’t engaged in the process of actually invading Canada, they were often scheming and planning to annex their northern neighbour. One of the more bizarre instances of this was “War Plan Red”, this 1930 US plan to invade Canada was, unlike earlier ones, supposedly a scheme to get in first! The US military’s predessors to the Pentagon feared that Britain in the years following WWI might launch an invasion of the US from Canada. Canadians in fact had already preempted the US with the military coming up with its own “Defender Scheme No. 1”, a five-pronged attack plan to invade the US (the idea was that Canada would make the initial (surprise) strike on key American cities and then rely on Britain and it’s other dominions to follow up the invasion). Fortunately, nothing came of either of these plans and they were quietly shelved by the time North Americans managed to crystallise in their minds who the real enemy was (Nazi Germany) [‘The Time the U.S. Almost Went to War With Canada’, Kevin Lippert, Politico Magazine, 21-Jun-2018, www.politico.com].
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Another odd manifestation of the tendency toward annexation came from north of the 49th Parallel in the 1840s. In 1846 Britain repealed the Corn Laws<ᵈ> ending preferential colonial trade which provoked a merchant revolt in Canada. Conservative Anglophone businessmen were fearful that without protection for their produce the Canadian economy might plummet into recession, some of them rioted, burning down the new parliament building in Montreal. 325 of the Tory businessmen, convinced that republican system of the United States would be more profitable to them, signed a document known as the Montreal Annexation Manifesto (1849), calling for the US to annex Canada. This of course never came to reality but the movement’s primary objective, reciprocal free trade with the US and access to its market, was ultimately realised with the Elgin-Marcy (Reciprocity) Treaty in 1854…by which Canadian lumber and wheat entered the US duty-free, in exchange the Americans were given fishing rights off Canada’s Atlantic coast.
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<ᵃ> an unexpected consequence of Phips’ disastrous Québec adventure was Massachusetts’ introduction of the first government-backed paper currency in the American colonies, necessary to pay the near-mutinous troops, promised a share of the loot from Québec’s capture [Goldberg, Dror. “The Massachusetts Paper Money of 1690.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 1092–1106. http://www.jstororg/stable/25654034.]
<ᵇ> once again the American invaders made the error of thinking they would be received as liberators in Canada
<ᶜ> curiously, in this same year (1866) a bill—designed to appeal to American Fenians—was introduced into the US Congress to formally annex “British North America”, but it never passed the House of Reps
<ᵈ> the ‘corn’ laws in the UK encompassed all cereal grain crops
A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part II
See also the preceding blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part I’
After the UN negotiated a cease-fire in Cyprus in 1974, following the Turkish army’s military incursion, the ‘Green Line’ from 1964 was reestablished…a new buffer zone cut right through Nicosia, separating the northern and southern sections of the city. The divided island was left in a highly militarised state – UN estimates put the Turkey presence in the north at around 30,000 soldiers whereas the Republic of Cyprus maintains a force of 12,000 plus up to 2,000 troops from Greece. The fallout from what the Turkish regime called Kibris Baris Harekâti (“Cyprus Peace Operation”) left 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced (A Borowiec, Cyprus: A Troubled Island (2000); A Smit, The Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution (2012)).
Source: The EconomistSince the Turkish invasion and the subsequent unilateral declaration of an autonomous Turkish Cypriot entity (in 1983 consolidated into the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”), there have many attempts to settle the Cyprus impasse, all of which have floundered. Among the would-be fixers have been a succession of UN secretary-generals including Perez de Cueller, Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, all advancing plans in a vain attempt to end the decades-long stalemate.
Annan Plan
Kofi Annan’s plan proposed a restructure of the island into a federation comprising two states – the “United Republic of Cyprus”. Put to a referendum in 2004 it was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots, a disparity which demonstrates how far apart the two sides are and how difficult getting a consensus on the issue will be. The context of the Greek Cypriots’ hardline stance—adopting a view that acceptance of the plan would in fact “legalise the island’s de facto partition”—should be viewed in light of the fact that Cyprus had already been guaranteed membership of the European Union (EU) (‘The Peace Processes: 2004 Annan Plan’, Michael Theodoulou, Cyprus Mail, 29-Dec-2016, www. cyprus-mail.com).
Kofi Annan (Source: The Guardian)Changing the paradigm: Reunification The international community as a whole, the UN, the EU, tend to favour a unification resolution of the island country. Barriers to reunification however are myriad – including where to draw the boundaries between the two communities; the issue of demilitarisation of the island⊗; the question of displaced Cypriots which opens the can of worms of property rights; the repatriation of Turkish settlers from North☮ (Chan).
Putting Cyprus first An additional underlying factor is the future role of the three guarantor powers, Turkey, Greece and Britain. A future unified Cyprus needs security against new interventions by Turkey and Greece (‘Cyprus Stalemate’, (Fiona Mullen), Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, broadcast 05-May-2021). Added to the destabilisation, the two hostile Aegean littoral states have continually interfered with Cyprus’ internal politics for their own political advantage. The outside meddling complicates the island’s dilemma, forming a barrier to serious negotiation between the Greek and Turkish communities. When the government in Athens or Ankara is in domestic difficulties they have a habit of reverting to a hardline on the Cyprus issue to deflect attention from their woes at home (Kaloudis, George. “CYPRUS: THE ENDURING CONFLICT.” International Journal on World Peace, vol. 16, no. 1, 1999, pp. 3–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20753188. Accessed 10 May 2021).
A deficit of patriotism Such is the polarised nature of life in divided Cyprus that both the Turkish and the Greek communities are more loyal to the “mother country” than they are to their own country. This diminished or even absent sense of patriotism by Cypriots works against the misson of securing a solution for Cyprus (Kaloudis).
Image: www.dw.comMistrust and baggage
The simple fact that Greece and Turkey are weighed down by so much historical baggage intensifies the difficulty of finding a viable solution for Cyprus. Ancient rivalries, colonial relationships and wars, have contributed to an atmosphere of mutual distrust which extends to contemporary Cyprus. Greek mistrust of more powerful neighbour Turkey fuels hawkish Greek Cypriot perspectives, seeing in the Turkish Cypriots’ two-state solution a Turkish hidden agenda – the first step by Ankara in securing control over the entire country (‘Cyprus: Turkey is heading for a two-state solution’, Costas Venizelos, Greek City Times, Dec 2020, www.greekcitytimes.com). Conversely, the Turkish community (18% of population) fear domination by the numerically much greater Greek community (78%), add to this differences in ethnicity, language and religion, doesn’t make finding common ground between the two communities any easier to accomplish (Kaloudis).
If tensions rise between Turkey and Greece, there is the chance of a knock-on effect on the Cyprus situation. When is more likely the reality as new sources of potential Greek-Turkey conflict abound – control of air space in the Aegean Sea, Greece’s desire to fortify its islands in the eastern Mediterranean, claims on each others’ continental shelf, etc.
Photo: www.in-cyprus.philenews.comOil catalyst
The dispute over continental shelves is linked to the most worrying Aegean issue, Turkey’s recent oil and natural gas ventures, exploring and drilling in territorial waters contested by Greece and Cyprus§. The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) backs Greek territorial claims in the region, however with Turkey not a signatory of UNCLOS, it’s probable that Ankara will not feel itself bound by its law and thus raising the prospect of an escalation of conflict (‘Greece calls on Turkey to stop renewed gas exploration activities in East Med’, Diego Cupolo, Al-Monitor, 10-Aug-2020, www.al-monitor.com).
Deserted Varosha (Photo: www.the-sun.com)Famagusta ghost town Another simmering trigger-point for Greek-Turkey tensions over Cyprus is the “no-go” Famagusta province in the island’s north. Deserted by Greek Cypriot residents in 1974, it was seized by the Turkish military and fenced off with barbed wire. Famagusta’s holiday beach resort of Varosha, has come to attention recently because the TRNC are in the process of reopening this “ghost town” to commercial activity and human habitation…this has prompted protests from the republic of Cyprus who declared the move illegal (‘Cyprus asks UN to step in as beach in north is opened after 46 years’, Helena Smith, The Guardian, 09-Oct-2020, www.theguardian.com).
One of the core stumbling blocks to productive negotiation on the Cyprus stalemate is the fundamental question of who owns Cyprus? A large element of the Greek Cypriot community in particular take a partisan view of the question – insisting that its population majority on the island justifies overall ownership, whereas the Turkish community just as avowedly insists on its right to an “equal partnership” (Mullen).
Failure of political leadership The Cypriot politicians fronting up to the merry-go-round of fruitless negotiations have abjectly failed in their task to find a resolution…their own entrenched interests and a disinclination to compromise means they come up empty every time. As the progressive-thinking Cyprus Mail summed up the parlous state of Cypriot leadership currently being dished up: “We have returned to the good old days of the Cyprus problem, when every statement issued by one side had to be answered by the other and the blame game was never switched off” (‘Our View: ‘Anastasiades has led the Cyprob to a dead end’ Cyprus Mail 09-May-2021).
With the appointed leaders being part of the problem, some believe it’s time to dump the barren leader-led process and try a markedly new approach to negotiation. One pathway worth pursuing might be to devolve the responsibility to the civic assemblies level, as has been tried with success in Ireland (Mullen).
Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades (www.dailysabah.com)There’s a perception by some observers that the Greek side doesn’t especially want to reach a settlement. The periodical summits and meetings come round and they go through the motions, paying lip service to the process. This view of a political lack of will has been articulated even among Greek Cypriots, the person in the street (‘Rationality and the Cyprus Issue’, Hugh Pope, International Crisis Group, 08-Mar-2011, www.internationalcrisisgroup.org). In contrast to the hypocritical politicians on both sides, a December 2010 Interpeace poll revealed that two-thirds of Greek and Turkish Cypriots wanted a resolution (Cyprus Mail).
Behind such cynicism is a complacency on the Greek Cypriot side, many of the politicians may be happy with the status quo…Greek Cypriots in the south are comparatively wealthy cf. the economically weak northern entity. The south has all the privileges of EU membership denied to the north. This diminishes some of the impetus, at least domestically, to seek change. All this doesn’t absolve the motives of Turkish politicians from scrutiny. The North Turkey regime is dependent on Turkey for protection, the situation suits Ankara, also giving it a location to offload surplus population. Turkey is in a position to use Cyprus as a bargaining chip in the Mediterranean (‘Opinion: The never-ending Cyprus conflict’, Spiro Moskovou, DW, 22-Nov-2016, www.dw.com). Ankara seems reasonably comfortable with the state of things too, as long as it has a military presence in control of the north.
TRNC President Tatar (www.dailysabah.com)TRNC president’s pitch The Northern Cyprus leader Ersin Tatar used the April summit in Geneva to push his two-state solution (2SS)… its merits in the TRNC president’s eyes were that it represented a fairer proposal than the Greek Cypriot one, allowing for what he calls “political equality” between the two communities, adding that 2SS would make possible an opening up of the economy in the north.
Turkish Cypriots justify the establishment of TRNC as a right of self-determination, but it’s hold on Northern Cyprus has been rejected by the international community as an illegal occupation of an EU member state (the Republic of Cyprus). As a result the body of EU law has been suspended in the northern section of the island (Mullen).
The seemingly insurmountable hurdle remains the yawning gulf between what each communities wants. A 2009 survey found that 78% of Greek Cypriots supported a unitary state solution, while 71% of Turkish Cypriots backed the two-state solution (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). While both sides with blinkered vision cling to such an absolute position, its hard to envision any breakthrough to one of the world’s most Intractable regional conflicts happening in the foreseeable future.
Kípros/Kıbrıs (Image: www.britannia.com)Footnote: The Enosis question The Greek Cypriot quest for Enosis (‘Unioned’) with Greece received a boost from the activism of ultra-right paramilitary organisation EOKA-B in the early Seventies. EOKA-B was involved in plots to assassinate Cypriot leader Makarios III (unsuccessful)—when he turned against the goal of Enosis—and in the assassination of US ambassador to Cyprus Rodger Paul Davies (successful), a protest against Washington’s failure to take action on Turkey’s 1974 invasion✼. The Greek Colonels, behind the 1974 coup which unseated Archbishop Makarios, also espoused Union with Greece in its efforts to created a “Hellenic State of Cyprus’. This was perhaps the high-water mark for Enosis in Cyprus. Polls in recent years have indicated that support for union with the ‘motherland’ has dissipated (‘Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).
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✼ notwithstanding the US supported the Greek Colonels’ overthrow of the Greek government and monarchy in 1967
⊗ Turkey and Greece’s heavy military commitment in Cyprus imposes a massive burden on the economies of Greece and Turkey, a resolution would free up finances which are much needed elsewhere in their countries
☮ Ankara embarked on a expansive settlement program after invasion – by 1980 between 35 and 40 thousand Turkish settlers had migrated to Turkish-controlled areas (Helge (2017) ‘Filling the void’: Turkish settlement in Northern Cyprus, 1974–1980, Settler Colonial Studies, 7:3, 354-371, DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2016.1196031)
§ over the last decade the (Turkish) ‘Barbaros’ research vessel has repeatedly infiltrated Cyprus’ EEZ, a clear violation of UNCLOS