EXCLAVE encyclopedia topics

Origin and usage

The word enclave crept into the jargon of diplomacy rather late in English, in 1868, coming from French, the lingua franca of diplomacy, with a sense inherited from late Latin inclavatus meaning 'shut in, locked up" (with a key, late Latin clavis). The word exclave is a logical extension created three decades later.

Although the meanings of both words are close, an exclave may not necessarily be an enclave or vice versa. For example, Kaliningrad, an exclave of Russia, is not an enclave because it is surrounded not by one state, but by two: Lithuania and Poland; it also borders the Baltic Sea. On the other hand, Lesotho is an enclave in South Africa, but it is not politically attached to anything else, meaning that it is not an exclave.

In British administrative history, subnational enclaves were usually called detachments. In English ecclesiastic history, subnational enclaves were known as peculiars (see also Royal Peculiar).

A country almost surrounded by another but having access to the sea is not considered to be an enclave. For this reason, The Gambia is not an enclave of Senegal.

Usage in other fields

In medicine, an exclave is a detached part of an organ, as of the pancreas, thyroid, or other gland.

Characteristics

Enclaves may be created for a variety of historical, political or geographical reasons. Some areas have been left as enclaves by changes in the course of a river.

Since living in an enclave can be very inconvenient and many agreements have to be found by both countries over mail addresses, power supply or passage rights, enclaves tend to be eliminated and many cases that existed before have now been removed.

Many exclaves today have an independence movement, especially if the exclave is far away from the mainland.

True enclaves

See List of enclaves and exclaves.

This refers to those territories where a country is sovereign, but which cannot be reached without entering one particular other country. One example was West Berlin, before the reunification of Germany, which was de facto a West German exclave within East Germany, and thus an East German enclave (many small West Berlin land areas, such as Steinstücken, were in turn separated from the main one, some by only a few meters). De jure all of Berlin was ruled by the four Allied powers; this meant that West Berlin could not send voting members to the German Parliament, and that its citizens were exempt from conscription.

Most of the enclaves now existing are to be found in Asia, with a handful in Africa and Europe. While administrative enclaves are found frequently elsewhere, there are no nation-level enclaves in Australia or the Americas.

Enclaved countries

Some enclaves are countries in their own right, completely surrounded by another one, and therefore not exclaves. Three such sovereign countries exist:

The republic of San Marino, an enclave in Italy
Vatican City, an enclave in the city of Rome, Italy
The Kingdom of Lesotho, an enclave in South Africa.

Related constructs and terms

"Practical" enclaves and exclaves and inaccessible districts

Some territories, attached to the motherland by a thin slice of land or territorial water, are more easily accessible by traveling through a foreign country. These territories may be called "practical exclaves" or "pene-exclaves" (example: Angle Inlet between US and Canada.)

Areas that are not geographically separated from the rest of the mother country, but do not have adequate transportation links between the territory and its mother country without going through a foreign country are called inaccessible districts.

Conversely, a territory that is an exclave but does not function as one (instead functioning as a contiguous part of the main nation) is deemed a "quasi-exclave".

Subnational enclaves and exclaves

Sometimes, administrative divisions of a country, for historical or practical reasons, caused some areas to belong to a division while being attached to another one.

Jervis Bay Territory in Australia is in some but not all administrative respects an exclave of the Australian Capital Territory.

Ethnic enclaves

Ethnic enclaves are communities of an ethnic group inside an area where another ethnic group predominates. Jewish ghetti and shtetlekh, barrios and Chinatowns are examples. These areas may have a separate language, culture and economic system.

Extraterritoriality

Embassies and military bases are usually exempted from the jurisdiction of the host country, i.e., the laws of the host nation in which an embassy is located do not typically apply to the land of the embassy or base itself. This exemption from the jurisdiction of the host country is defined as extraterritoriality. Areas of extraterritoriality are not true enclaves as they are still part of the host country. In addition to embassies some other areas have extraterritoriality.

Examples of this include:

Pavillon de Breteuil in France, used by the General Conference on Weights and Measures.
United Nations headquarters in the United States of America, used by the United Nations.
NATO (political) headquarters near Evere in Haren, a part of the City of Brussels, Belgium.
Headquarters Allied Command Operations (NATO) at the area designated as Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), North of Mons, Belgium
Palazzo Malta, the headquarters of Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta in Rome.
Properties of the Holy See.
Moldauhafen, a lot in the harbour of Hamburg leased for a period of 99 years to the Czech Republic

Land ceded to a foreign country

Some areas of land in a country are owned by another country and in some cases it has special privileges, such as being exempt from taxes. These lands are not enclaves and do not have extraterritoriality.

Examples of this include:

Napoleon's original grave in Longwood, Saint Helena, ceded to France.
Victor Hugo's house in St Peter Port, Guernsey, ceded to the city of Paris.
The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France which contains the graves of 9,386 American military dead, most of whom gave their lives during the landings and ensuing operations of World War II, ceded to the United States of America.
About 24 m² of land that surrounds the Suvorov memorial near Göschenen in central Switzerland, ceded to Russia.
The Vimy Memorial in France, which commemorates the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The French government permanently ceded a land area of about 1 km² to Canada as a war memorial in 1922 in recognition of Canada's military contributions in World War I in general and at Vimy Ridge in particular.
Numerous Commonwealth WW I cemeteries in Belgium, of which the territory is ceded to the respective country.
The land under the John F. Kennedy memorial at Runnymede, United Kingdom. Land ceded to the United States of America by the John F. Kennedy Memorial Act, 1964.
Two cemeteries on North Carolina's Outer Banks ceded to the United Kingdom. Both contain the graves of British sailors killed in U-Boat attacks during World War II.
James Cook's grave on Hawaii, ceded to the United Kingdom.
Ernst Thälmann Island; a Cuban island ceded by Fidel Castro in perpetuity to the German Democratic Republic in 1972. Current status is unclear since the GDR's absorption into the reunited Germany.
The Jaber Castle also known as "Türk's Tomb" (Turkish: Türk Mezarı) in Syria is the grave of Suleyman Shah (Turkish: Süleyman Şah). He was father of Ertuğrul, who was in turn, the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. The land is ceded to Turkey by the Treaty of Ankara signed between it and France on 20 October 1921. Turkey has the right to have a squad/section of the army and to hoist the Turkish flag.
Tihuinza in Peru. Land ceded to Ecuador without sovereignty.
A portion of the CERN campus in France along the French-Swiss border, administered by Switzerland.

National railway passing through foreign territory

Changes in borders can make a railway that was previously located solely within a country criss-cross the new borders. Since railways are much more expensive than roads to rebuild to avoid this problem, the criss-cross arrangement tends to last a long time. With passenger trains this may mean that doors on carriages are locked and guarded to prevent illicit entry and exit while the train is momentarily in another country.

Examples include:

Salzburg to Innsbruck (Austria) (passes Rosenheim, Germany). A railway line within Austria exists as well, but trains take about 1.5 hours longer than across German territory.
Trains from Neugersdorf, Saxony to Zittau pass Czech territory at Varnsdorf, while Czech trains from Varnsdorf to Chrastava pass through German territory at Zittau, and then a small part of Polish territory near the village of Porajów.
Trains from Görlitz to Zittau, Germany, pass several times the border river Neisse (see Oder-Neisse line); the train station for Ostritz, Germany, lies in Krzewina Zgorzelecka, Poland.
Una railway (Unska pruga) connecting Zagreb and Split via Bihać crosses border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina many times.
Belgrade - Bar railway crosses into Bosnia and Herzegovina for 9 km, between stations Zlatibor and Priboj (both in Serbia). There is one station, Štrpci, but there are no border crossing facilities and trains do not call at the station.
During the era of the Iron Curtain, local trains between the north and south of Burgenland in Austria operated as "corridor trains" (Korridorzüge) along the border with Hungary – they had their doors locked as they traversed Hungarian territory (Győr-Sopron County [as it was then]).
The line from Ventimiglia Italy to Limone Piemonte Italy via Breil sur Roya France
Similarly, during the Cold War, underground lines in West Berlin ran under parts of East Berlin. Ghost stations (Geisterbahnhöfe) were stations on Berlin's U-Bahn and S-Bahn metro networks that were closed during this period of Berlin's division.
The Belgian Vennbahn lies on a narrow strip of Belgian territory running through Germany, creating 5 German exclaves.
The railway between France and Monaco briefly leaves France to enter Monaco before entering France once more. This takes place underground for around 150 metres.
The former Soviet Central Asian Republics have numerous examples.
- Semikhody - Chernihiv line of Ukraine passes through Belarus territory.
- Druzhba - Vorozhba line of Ukraine passes through Russian territory.
India and Bangladesh were formerly parts of a single country.

Also, borders have occasionally been shifted for the purpose of avoiding this sort of arrangement. The best-known example is the Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States bought land from Mexico on which it was planned to build a southern route for the transcontinental railroad. Owing to the topography of the area, acquisition of the new land by New Mexico and Arizona would have been the only feasible way to construct such a railroad in the South.

National highway passing through foreign territory

This arrangement is less common as highways are more easily re-aligned as noted above. Examples include:

Congo Pedicle road: built to provide access for Zambia's Luapula Province to the Copperbelt through 70 km of territory of the DR Congo, requiring a change in driving on the left to driving on the right.
Between 1963 and 2002 the N274 road from Roermond to Heerlen, part of Dutch territory, passed through the German Selfkant, which had been annexed by the Netherlands after the Second World War but returned to Germany in 1963.

Border infrastructure

Several bridges cross the frontier rivers separating Germany and Poland. They can share the cost of maintaining these bridges, but it would be foolish to share the work. So they have divided the bridges between them, making each country totally responsible for some of the bridges, even though one end of each bridge is on the other's territory.