Irredentism (from Italian irredento, "unredeemed") is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged. It is often advocated by pan-nationalist movements and a feature of identity politics, cultural and political geography. Because most borders have been moved and redrawn over time, a great many countries could theoretically present irredentist claims to their neighbors. Germany's Anschluss of Austria and annexation of German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938 and a return of territory from Czechoslovakia to Hungary as a result of the First Vienna Award are perhaps historical examples of this idea in practice.
However, some states are the subject of potential irredentism from their inception. Post–World War I Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Near East had borders carved out by the Allies that left many of the new states in that region unsatisfied due to minority populations and conflicting historical claims. Many of Africa's borders were artificially imposed by European colonial powers. The result split ethnic groups between different countries, such as the Yoruba who are divided between Nigeria and Benin. In some cases, the irredentist argumentation continued well past the Second World War and on to the present day.
An area that may be subjected to a potential claim is therefore sometimes called an irredenta. Not all irredentas are involved in actual irredentism.[1]
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The word was coined in Italy from the phrase Italia irredenta ("unredeemed Italy"). This originally referred to Austro-Hungarian rule over mostly or partly Italian-inhabited territories such as Trentino, Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia during the 19th and early 20th century.
A common way to express a claim to adjacent territories on the grounds of historical or ethnic association is by using the epithet "Greater" before the country name. This conveys the image of national territory at its maximum conceivable extent with the country "proper" at its core. It must be noted that the use of "Greater" does not always convey an irredentistic meaning.
During the unification of Germany, the term Großdeutschland (or greater Germany) referred to a possible German nation consisting of the states that later comprised the Second German Empire and Austria; the term lesser Germany, or small Germany, or Kleindeutschland, referred to a possible German state without Austria. The term was also used by Germans referring to Greater Germany, a state consisting of pre World War I Germany, actual Austria and the Sudetenland.
Some states formalize their irredentist claims by including them in their constitutional documents.
The Afghan border with Pakistan, known as the Durand Line, was arbitrarily drawn by colonial officials of the British Empire in 1893 following the Second Afghan War. Accordingly, the Pashtun tribes inhabiting the border areas were arbitrarily divided; the tribes have never accepted the still-porous border. The Durand Line was not intended as a permanent border, and clashes broke out in the 1950s and 1960s between Afghanistan and Pakistan over the issue. All Afghan governments of the past century have declared, with varying intensity, a long-term goal of re-uniting all Pashtun-dominated areas under Afghan rule.[2][3]
The Argentine government has maintained a claim over the Falkland Islands since 1833, and renewed it as recently as June 2009.[4] It considers the archipelago part of the Tierra del Fuego Province, along with South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
The Argentine claim is included in the transitional provisions of the Constitution of Argentina as amended in 1994:[5][6]
The Argentine Nation ratifies its legitimate and non-prescribing sovereignty over the Malvinas, Georgias del Sur and Sandwich del Sur Islands and over the corresponding maritime and insular zones, as they are an integral part of the National territory. The recovery of these territories and the full exercise of sovereignty, respecting the way of life for its inhabitants and according to the principles of international law, constitute a permanent and unwavering goal of the Argentine people.
The 2009 constitution of Bolivia states that the country has an unrenounceable right over the territory that gives it access to the Pacific Ocean and its maritime space. This is understood as Chilean territory that Bolivia ceded in the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1904 between Chile and Bolivia after the War of the Pacific which left Bolivia a landlocked country.[7]
The preamble to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China states "Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People's Republic of China. It is the lofty duty of the entire Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan, to accomplish the great task of reunifying the motherland." The PRC claim to sovereignty over Taiwan is generally based on the successor state theory, with the PRC claiming that it is the successor state to the Republic of China.[8]
Article 4 of the Constitution of the Republic of China originally stated that "[t]he territory of the Republic of China within its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by a resolution of the National Assembly", although recent constitutional changes have moved this power to that of a national referendum. The PRC's influence in international organizations prevents Taiwan from participating in many such organizations. In some organizations the Republic of China is able to participate as Chinese Taipei. The PRC has an extensive missile build-up near Taiwan and passed an Anti-Secession Law in 2005 threatening to use force.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the ROC government on Taiwan maintained itself to be the legitimate ruler of Mainland China. As part of its current policy of 'status quo', the ROC has not renounced claims over the territories currently controlled by the People's Republic of China, Mongolia, and Tuvan Republic in Russia, Northern Burma and some Central Asian states bordering areas. However, the ROC does not actively pursue these claims in practice; the remaining claims that the ROC are actively seeking are the Diaoyu Islands, whose sovereignty is also asserted by Japan and the PRC; and the Spratly Islands in South China Sea, with multiple claimants.
Article 1 of the Constitution of the Union of the Comoros begins: "The Union of the Comoros is a republic, composed of the autonomous islands of Mohéli, Mayotte, Anjouan, and Grande Comore." Mayotte, geographically a part of the Comoro Islands, was the only island of the four to vote against independence from France (independence losing 37%-63%) in the referendum held December 22, 1974. The total vote was 94%-5% in favor of independence. Mayotte is currently a "departmental collectivity" of the French Republic.[9][10]
All of the European colonies on the Indian subcontinent which were not part of the British Raj have been annexed by the Republic of India since it gained its independence from the British Empire. An example of such territories was the Portuguese enclave of Goa.
From 1956, India and Pakistan have both claimed the entire area of Kashmir as part of their state's "national territory." Both currently administer large sections of the area, and the two countries have fought multiple wars over the area. India and Pakistan aspire to take Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Indian-administered Kashmir, respectively, so that Kashmir may be re-united under their respective rule.
Indonesia claimed all territories of the former Dutch East Indies, and previously viewed British plans to group the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, the Unfederated Malay States, Sarawak and British North Borneo into a new independent federation of Malaysia as a threat to its objective to create a united state called Greater Indonesia. The Indonesian opposition of Malaysian formation has led to Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation in early 1960s. It had also held Portuguese Timor from 1975 to 2002, based on irredentist claims.
The idea of uniting former British and Dutch colonial possessions in Southeast Asia actually have its roots in early 20th century, as the concept of Greater Malay (Melayu Raya) was coined in British Malaya espoused by students and graduates of Sultan Idris Training College for Malay Teachers in the late 1920s.[11] Some of political figures in Indonesia including Muhammad Yamin and Sukarno revived the idea in the 1950s and named the political union concept as Greater Indonesia.
From 1937 until 1998, Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland provided that "[t]he national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland". However, "[p]ending the re-integration of the national territory", the powers of the state were restricted to legislate only for the area that had ceded from the United Kingdom. Arising from the Northern Ireland peace process, the matter was mutually resolved in 1998. The Republic of Ireland's constitution was altered by referendum and its territorial claim to Northern Ireland was dropped. The amended constitution asserts that while it is the entitlement of "every person born in the island of Ireland … to be part of the Irish Nation" and to hold Irish citizenship, "a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island." Certain joint policy and executive bodies were created between Northern Ireland, the part of the island that remained in the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, and these were given executive authority. The advisory and consultative role of the government of Ireland in the government of Northern Ireland granted by the United Kingdom, that had begun with the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, was maintained. The two states also settled the long-running dispute concerning their respective names: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with both governments agreeing to use those names.
The entire area of the West Bank and Gaza, previously annexed by Jordan and occupied by Egypt respectively, was controlled by Israel from the 1967 war until August 2005, when Israel withdrew from Gaza. Israel never explicitly claimed any of the West Bank for its own state except the city of Jerusalem, which it unilaterally annexed in 1980. However, Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens in various Israeli controlled settlements in the West Bank, where Palestinians are denied permission to live, and has implied that it will never withdraw them.
Article 3 of the Basic Law of the Palestinian Authority, which was ratified in 2002 by the Palestinian National Authority and serves as an interim constitution, states that "Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine." The Israeli annexing instrument, the Jerusalem Law—one of the Basic Laws of Israel that "serve in the place of a constitution"—declares Jerusalem, "complete and united", to be the capital of Israel, creating a conflict with Palestinian claims. De facto, the Palestinian government administers the parts of the West Bank that Israel has granted it authority over from Ramallah, while the Gaza Strip is administered from Gaza.
According to United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, East Jerusalem is part of the occupied territories. The United States does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem and maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem, the United States maintains a Consulate General as a diplomatic representation to the city of Jerusalem alone, separate from the US's representation to the state of Israel. The Consulate General maintains two buildings in the city as they were established before the 1967 war, one building on what was the Israeli side and one on what was the Jordanian-annexed side of Jerusalem.
The first constitution of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, included a provision in Article 11 for the absorption of Canada.
Until the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1998 the Irish Republic claimed the territory of six counties that form Northern Ireland. Spain claims the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, ceded to Britain in perpetuity in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht, and argues its case at the United Nations claiming its territorial integrity is affected. During World War II, the Spanish Falangist media agitated for irredentism claiming for Spain the French Navarre, French Basque Country and Roussillon (French Catalonia) as well. Morocco makes similar claims against Spain over the North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Portugal does not recognize as Spanish the territory of Olivenza conquered by Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. [4]
Some of the most violent irredentist conflicts of recent times in Europe flared up as a consequence of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were largely about creating a new political framework of states, each of which would be ethnically and politically homogeneous. The conflict erupted further south with the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo seeking to switch allegiance to the adjoining state of Albania.[12] Greece claims that the use of the name Republic of Macedonia by its northern neighbor signifies an irredentist claim on the northern province of Macedonia in Greece.
Southeast Asia too is another region in which armed irredentist movements have been active for almost a century, due to the Balkanization of North-East India, Burma and Bangladesh under British colonialism. Most prominent amongst them are the Naga fight for Greater Nagaland, the Chin struggle for a unified Chinland and other self-determinist movements by the ethnic indigenous peoples of the erstwhile Assam both under the British and post-British Assam under India.
Irredentism is acute in the Caucasus region, too. Karabakh movement’s original slogan of miatsum (‘union’) was explicitly oriented towards unification with Armenia, feeding an Azerbaijani understanding of the conflict as a bilateral one between itself and an irredentist Armenia.[13][14][15][16][17] According to Prof. Thomas Ambrosio, "Armenia's successful irredentist project in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan" and "From 1992 to the cease-fire in 1994, Armenia encountered a highly permissive or tolerant international environment that allowed its annexation of some 15 percent of Azerbaijani territory".[18] In the view of Nadia Milanova, Nagorno-Karabakh represents a combination of separatism and irredentism.[19]
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which operates in Lebanon and Syria, works for the unification of most modern states of the Levant and beyond in a single state referred to as Greater Syria. The proposed Syrian country includes Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait; and southern Turkey, northern Egypt, and southwestern Iran.
Japan claims the South Korean-administered Liancourt Rocks and the Russian-administered Kuril Islands, the four southernmost isles of the island chain north of Hokkaido, annexed by the Soviet Union following World War II.
Irredentism is commonplace in Africa due to the artificially declared political boundaries of former European colonial nation-states passing through tribal boundaries. The Ethiopian Great Imperium of Eastern Africa in some Ethiopian nationalist circles aims to extend the ancient Ethiopian empire into the former Ethiopian province of Eritrea, the Sudan including Christian Southern Sudan, Fachoda and the Darfur region, neighboring Djibouti, Somalia and parts of Egypt.
Irredentism is also expressed by some Chicano "nationalists" and Mexican-American activists in the Aztlán movement. They call for the return of formerly Mexican-dominated lands in the Southwestern United States back to Mexico after the US annexed lands in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to become the present-day states of California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico; and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah.
A unique situation exists with that of Berwick. Part of the citizenry of the town support the transfer Berwick to Scotland. However, due to the nature of the political union between Scotland and England forming the UK the reunification of Berwick goes largely unpursued. Various debates have arisen surrounding the constitutional future of Berwick, or Berwick-upon-Tweed as it is known in England, but have been largely academic.
Venezuela keeps its claim over the Guayana Esequiba territory in nearby Guyana.
Irrendentism was also one of main reasons for the People's Republic of China to strike to assume sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macau. The two territories had been British for over a century and Portuguese for four centuries respectively, until the United Kingdom and Portugal relinquished the territories in 1997 and 1999. However, in the case of Hong Kong, irrendentism was incidental: The New Territories part of the British colony were only on a lease expiring in 1997 anyway and, with their surrender, it was thought the Crown territory of Hong Kong itself would be unviable as an entity independent of mainland China. Of course, irrendentism could be considered to have played a role in that the People's Republic of China had no intention of renewing the lease on the New Territories.
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