6 Micronations You Should Know

Micronations are small groups of people or territories that claim to be sovereign states despite not being recognized as being so by most other states or organizations. Depending on who is counting, there may be up to 130 such states. This article will focus on six micronations: the Principality of Sealand, Freetown Christiania, Empire of Atlantium, Other Worlds Kingdom, Kingdom of Molossia, and the Conch Republic. There will be an overview of each of these micronation’s origin, characteristics, and other points of interest.

Micronations are aspirant states. They are self-proclaimed sovereign political entities that tend to have a small number of citizens and small amounts of territory. Unlike unrecognized states such as Western Sahara or Palestine, where some major organizations recognize them but others don’t, there is a general consensus among most major international organizations and states that the territory micronations claim to control is, in fact, an unambiguous part of another state. Their activities are generally trivial and superficial enough to be ignored rather than challenged by the major states they claim to be a breakaway region of.

The fact they are not recognized as genuine states (mainly because micronations tend to lack effective political control) does not genuinely deter them from engaging in the pomp and circumstance characteristic of states, such as issuing coins, postage stamps, passports, designing flags, and engaging in diplomacy with other micronations.

Given their lack of genuine power, their claims to territorial sovereignty function more as a form of artistic and libertarian political protest, personal entertainment, or tourist-attracting gimmick rather than as genuine attempts to become a sovereign government. Being generally symbolic, micronations are freed of the daily grind of governing, allowing them to pursue such wildly impractical projects as adopting a different calendar that divides the year into ten months (in the case of the Empire of Atlantium, Australia) or valuing one’s poker-chip currency against raw cookie dough (in the case of the Republic of Molossia, Nevada).

1. Principality of Sealand 

Built on the abandoned HM Fort Roughs (an offshore platform in the North Sea, off the coast of Suffolk, built during WWII), the Principality of Sealand was first declared an independent state in 1967 by Paddy Roy Bates. Originally in international waters, the platform came into British territorial waters in 1987 after the UK government extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles.

Bates initially used the seafort as a base for his pirate radio station, Radio Essex. An ex-Major in the British Army, Roy Bates was involved in several fire-arms incidents defending his territory from the British army, other commercial vessels, and a coup against his reign by a German citizen of Sealand. Although none of these cases resulted in injury, they did cause diplomatic tensions with Germany and the UK.

Since Roy’s death (and the closing of the pirate radio), Sealand has focused mainly on selling trinkets (passports, aristocratic titles, t-shirts, copies of their constitution, and identity cards) and soft-diplomacy through their football and American football teams.

Located in the Christianshavn neighborhood in Copenhagen, Freetown, Christiania is best known for its drug dealing. Encompassing around 1000 residents and covering a meager 19 acres, the neighborhood and intentional community is built on the site of abandoned former military barracks.

Generally lawless, Danish police encounter fierce resistance when entering Christiana and leave the commune to self-govern. It is now a major Danish tourist attraction home to dealers and squatters. Unlike the Principality of Sealand, Christiana doesn’t engage in the symbolic creation of statehood. They issue no passports, coins, or stamps. They grant no noble titles. In this sense, it is more anarchical, run by the community through a system of direct democracy.

In June 2011, however, the community voted to establish a Christiana Foundation, which would purchase land from the government for the squatters, effectively turning them all into landowners and normalizing their relations with the state.

3. Empire of Atlantium

The Empire of Atlantium was founded by three teenage friends–George Francis Cruickshank, Geoffrey John Duggan, and Claire Marie Coulter–in the Sydney suburbs in 1981. Cruickshank was declared emperor George II, and Duggan was declared prime minister. Since being founded in 1981, the Empire of Atlantium has moved capital twice, first to the Sydney apartment Cruickshank purchased in 1999 (known as the Imperium Proper), and then in 2008 to a small plot of land 350km southwest of Sydney, known as Concordia. The Empire of Atlantium has a total population of around 3000, all living outside of the country due to the capital’s tiny size.

Atlantium exists to prove a philosophical point: determining nationality based on where one was born is arbitrary. It gives too much weight to an accident or circumstance. In place of ethnically homogenous, geographically fixed states, the Empire of Atlantium seeks to demonstrate the desirability of an eventual global social, political, and economic union based on secular, pluralistic, liberal, and social democratic values.

The Empire of Atlantium, as is typical with micronations, takes the fanfare of statehood seriously. They produce their own stamps, banknotes, and coins. Like the Principality of Sealand, the Empire of Atlantium has noble titles. However, these cannot be purchased and are granted for services to the community at the discretion of the Emperor. The Empire also issued a government newsletter, although publication ceased in 2007.

Founded in 1996, the Other Worlds Kingdom was a BDSM and femdom resort in the building and grounds of a 16th-century chateau in Cerna, Czech Republic. Taking up approximately three hectares, the kingdom includes various nightclubs, a library, a gym, and BDSM torture chambers. Although not recognized as a nation by any other major country, it engages in many symbolic performances of statehood. It has its own passports, currency, flag, police force, national anthem, and courts.

Other Worlds Kingdom styled itself as a matriarchal society. They aimed to “get as many male creatures under the unlimited rule of Superior Women on as much territory as possible.” Ruled over by Queen Patricia I, OWK’s citizens were all women who “owned” at least one male slave (in the BDSM sense of the term). Below the female citizens were subjects, male individuals who paid taxes to the Queen and obeyed the laws but were not slaves. Finally, the slaves are men who submit to the queen.

5. Kingdom of Molossia 

The Kingdom of Molossia is a micronation founded in 1998 and claims sovereignty over 11 acres of barren, arid land in Nevada. The Kingdom has not received formal recognition. Kevin Baughn leads them and peacefully co-exists with the USA. Baughn even pays taxes to the local government of Storey County, although he describes them as foreign aid.

The Kingdom of Molossia has a national anthem and symbols, including the Mustang horse and a flag. Molossia flies an upside-down flag of Sierra Leone to save on production costs. Unusual for micronations, the Kingdom of Molossia has its own national non-alcoholic cocktail: the Molossini (made of Sprite, grenadine, pineapple juice, cherries, banana, orange, and pineapple).

The Kingdom of Molossia engages in extensive diplomacy with other micronations, hosting the Intermicronational Olympic Games (not to be confused with the real Olympic Games), the Norton Award for Intermicronational Excellence, and the Intermicronational World Exposition (not to be confused with the real World Expositions). Despite being engaged in a “war” with East Germany (the DDR), which has continued despite the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of The Kingdom of Molossia’s activities are more peaceful. They produce stamps, coins, and banknotes, offer stock in the miniature railway on the property, and have their own measurement system. Mass is measured in relation to the weight of Pillsbury Cookie Dough packets, and volume is measured in reference to the cans of Diet Pepsi.

The Conch Republic was declared after the joke secession of Key West, Florida in 1982 following a dispute with the US Border Patrol over a roadblock and checkpoint on the only road in and out of the peninsula. Frustrated by the inconvenience the checkpoint caused tourists and residents, the town council declared its independence from the USA.

Maintained primarily as a tourism promotion gimmick, Key West hosts an Independence Day party on the 23rd of April. The party commemorates the Declaration of Independence, in which Mayor Dennis Wardlow declared war against the US, surrendered 1 minute later, and then applied for a billion dollars in foreign aid.

Like most other joke micronations, the Conch Republic issues souvenir passports. Unlike most other micronations, the Conch Republic maintains an army, navy, and air force made up of civilian boats and airplanes. However, their purpose is primarily to re-enact the Great Sea Battle of 1982, in which the Conch Republic attacked a US Coast Guard boat with water balloons and stale loaves of Cuban bread.

References: 

Hobbs, Harry and Williams, George. (2021) Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Hobbs, Harry and Williams, George. (2022) How to Rule your Own Country: The Weird and Wonderful World of Micronations. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney.

Strauss, Erwin S (1979) How to Start Your Own Country’ Paladin Press, Boulder Colorado.