How and why do tiny countries like Singapore and Monaco exist? Why aren’t they just a part of the larger country surrounding them?
In: 342
It depends on the states around it. Monaco is independent because it managed to switch loyalties just right to avoid being conquered for long enough for it to become a bad look to unilaterally annex another state. Singapore is independent because it had too many Chinese people in it, so Malaysia kicked them out of the country. Not the Chinese, they kicked out Singapore.
History Matters has great videos explaining this topic for both [Monaco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPkZefBA7v8) and [Singapore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSI0WSCVHnU).
I’d love to explain any other territorial anomalies you might wonder about. The answer to “Why is this microstate still independent?” is usually “Circumstance and a lot of luck”.
How they came to exist is a historical question that’s unique to each country and can’t really be simplified here because, well, it’s unique to each country. Ultimately, they’re independent either because they didn’t want to be annexed, no other country wanted to annex them, or both.
Singaporean here. We were previously part of another bigger country, Malaysia. But due to political and racial differences (oversimplifying a lot here) Singapore got expelled from the Malaysian Federation and became independent by ourselves.
There wasn’t any real impetus to merge with another country. We’re an island that isn’t contiguous with anywhere else. And the next nearest neighbour, Indonesia, pretty much fought an undeclared war/state-sponsored terrorism in the past few years, so no we weren’t joining them.
Singapore just focused on surviving as a microstate, and somehow we did. It definitely helped that being small and having only a couple of million people isn’t too hard to govern
Alright, so what about Andorra, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Lesotho?
Depends on the history.
Sometimes it used to be part of a larger empire that collapsed. Other times it used to be a colony. They could also be the result of civil wars, land deals, etc.
In Monaco’s case, it was a gift from some French monarch to Genoa. It used to be French, then they gave it away for some reason. It became a colony, and that colony later became independent.
In Singapore’s case, the British wanted a trade port in the area, so they purchased the area and operated it as a colony. Then Singapore got independence.