How and why do tiny countries like Singapore and Monaco exist? Why aren’t they just a part of the larger country surrounding them?
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Storytime: I live in Vancouver, which has a large metropolitan area surrounding the city proper. One of the outlying cities is named Surrey. Surrey is a very large city by area, it’s almost 3 times larger than Vancouver is. It stretches from the Fraser River on the North side almost to the ocean on the South side. I say “almost to the ocean” because there is a teeny tiny city no wider than 2 km (1.25 miles) between Surrey and the ocean in Surrey’s South side. It’s called White Rock and they have no other neighbor than Surrey. They’ve been separated for about 50 years. The reason for their separation from Surrey? They are at least 17 km (11 miles) from the hospital and they didn’t like that.
We also have a municipality in this area called Point Roberts. It belongs to Washington State. It has no city neighbors other than Tsawwassen, British Columbia. It’s 37 km (23 miles) from the rest of Washington State. That’s even where the hospitals and schools are. The only real reason it’s not part of Tsawwassen is that it was forgotten by the people setting the border in this area. But that happened with lots of little border towns across Canada. Even some farmers have land on both sides of the border.
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