[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave\_and\_exclave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave)
this is what wikipedia has to offer, but its so minimal and confusing. it only says that; An enclave is a territory (or a small territory as part of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity.\[1\] Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters.\[2\]: 60 Enclave is sometimes used improperly to denote a territory that is only partly surrounded by another state.\[1\] Vatican City and San Marino, both enclaved by Italy, and Lesotho, enclaved by South Africa, are completely enclaved sovereign states.
An exclave is a portion of a state or district geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory (of one or more states or districts etc).\[3\] Many exclaves are also enclaves, but not all: an exclave can be surrounded by the territory of more than one state.\[4\] The Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan is an example of an exclave that is not an enclave, as it borders Armenia, Turkey and Iran.
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An enclave is a bit of a foreign country inside your country.
An exclave is a bit of your country inside a foreign country.
So whether something counts as an enclave or exclave depends on from whose side you are looking at it (Similar to how people are both immigrants and emigrants from different perspectives).
This also works on level below country. States, counties and other subnational units can have enclaves and enclaves in each others territory.
There are a number of edge case where a enclave is only partially surrounded by another country and the rest is bordered by ocean or when two countries together surround bit of a third or when a piece of territory is technically connected to the rest of it, but that connection is not really something people can easily travel across, making it functionally an enclave because you have to go through another place to get to it.
Higher order enclaves are rare and happen when there are bits of one country inside bits of another country inside the first country and so one.
There is a famous place between Belgium and the Netherlands where this can get very extreme in places, but thanks to EU integration this doesn’t result in much besides lines on the ground.
In other parts of the world where borders are taken more seriously this can result in very real consequences as one country can cut of access of people in an enclave to he outside world.
World War III was nearly started when the soviets tried to prevent access of the allies to West Berlin, which was an Exclave of the allied controlled parts of German in the soviet controlled parts of Germany at that time. The city was ultimately supplied by air to get around this.
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