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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Geography. Go take over Costa Rica. I dare you. That’s only one port on one side of the country. There’s a mountain in the middle of it, and there’s no real infrastructure to get around. There’s no great way for a navy or army of any kind to take over, and the jungle is everywhere. It’s exactly why the people who founded it did so. They were mostly Spanish Navy and weren’t interested in military problems.
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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.
In part because since ww2 there has been a prohibition on wars of conquest which has largely stuck along with the general end of colonialism.
100 years ago someone would have snatched Singapore up if Britian let them go. Either a local power or another European colonial power.
But both options are now essentially illegal.
“Size doesn’t matter”. I mean, Canada is massive and full to the brim with resources and has less people than California. But it’s still it’s own country.
How they come to exist is really dependent on the unique history and geography of each country.
Why they continue to exist, in most cases, is because the wealthy elites of the world use them as tax havens.
Monaco is a case where it has a positive relationship with France, so it doesn’t get annexed, but not too positive, so it doesn’t just become a part.
Singapore was in Malaysia, but had multiple cultural and economical differences – like the high ethnically Chinese population. Back then, it was probably poorer than Malaysia or around the same, and it’s only because it developed that it got richer.
Political will and in many cases economic prosperity. Especially in Singapore’s case, modern Singapore was founded by Malaysian Chinese who wanted to escape the persecution they experienced in Malaysia so they decided as a people, “fuck this, we can run our own country anyway” and once they all settled into their new country the government made it a point to enable their people to work hard and build an economy that’s strong enough that they don’t need to rely on a larger country anymore. Basically it doesn’t matter how small you are. If you as a nation want independence and prosperity enough you will work hard to get there
As a general rule .. because people don’t want to be ruled by someone with a completely different ethnic background than them. A lot of the comments are explaining that Singapore and Monaco gained independence but I think the bigger question is why seek independence? Because what Moroccan person would want to be ruled by an empire who had no ethnic similarities to them, and no reason to prioritize their needs over others of the same ethnic group?
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