Bulgarian Declares Mass of Floating Pumice off New Zealand “Principality of New Atlantis”

It’s being reported this week that a 59-year-old businessman from Bulgaria has declared what he hopes will be the world’s newest independent country: the Principality of New Atlantis (Нова Атлантида).  The businessman, Vladimir Yordanov Balanov, has chosen as New Atlantis’s location a giant mass of floating volcanic pumice in the South Pacific measuring about 26,800 square kilometers—a bit smaller than Haiti or Belgium.  (See the nation’s website here.)

This rocky mass, generated by an underwater volcanic eruption, was first reported in 2012 by New Zealand’s navy, but it is not in that country’s territorial waters.  It is at approximately 168ºW and 38ºS, due east of the country’s large North Island and due south of the self-governing overseas New Zealand territory of Niue.  It even lies significantly outside New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone.

The approximate location of “New Atlantis” in relation to New Zealand’s marine boundaries.

Balanov originally tried to convince his native Republic of Bulgaria to annex it—there are even indications he travelled there to plant a flag—but he got no expressions of interest either from Sofia or from the European Union (E.U.), of which Bulgaria is a member.  (Bulgaria has never had any overseas territories.  The E.U. does not have overseas territories itself other than overseas territories of specific member states.  Some overseas territories of E.U. member states, such as French Guiana and the Canary Islands, are part of the E.U., while others, like Greenland, the Falkland Islands, Curaçao, and French Polynesia, lie outside the union while still being tethered to their mother countries.  Nor has any Eastern European country had overseas colonies, except for one: the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, a part of modern Latvia which enjoyed quasi-independence from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries and briefly established colonies on Tobago in the Caribbean—now half of independent Trinidad and Tobago—and on St. Andrews Island off the coast of what is now the Republic of the Gambia.  (St. Andrews has been renamed Kunta Kinteh Island, named for a fictional ancestor of African-Americans in Alex Haley’s 1976 novel Roots, later played on television by LeVar Burton.))

The flag of Liberland

Other citizens of New Atlantis include, in addition to Balanov himself (who, the published constitution implies, will be New Atlantis’s founding hereditary prince), Balanov’s wife Galina, as well as Hristo Radkov, vice-president of the Bulgarian chapter of Mensa, the international organization for high-I.Q. individuals.  Balanov said that he was partly inspired by the establishment in April (reported at the time in this blog) of the tiny libertarian micronation of Liberland, on the border between Serbia and Croatia—a project headed by a Czech but largely, it seems, funded and staffed via Switzerland.

In this map of disputed and unclaimed areas along the Serbian-Croatian border, the green area (“Siga”) is “Liberland,” while “Pocket 1” is the proclaimed territory of the Kingdom of Enclava (see below).

Liberland is situated in a 3-square-mile area consituting one of several no-man’s-lands along the disputed border.  The Liberland project had already inspired one other micronation: a group of tourists from Poland later that month declared a Kingdom of Enclava along the border between Croatia and Slovenia.  But the Slovenian foreign ministry quickly pointed out that “Enclava” was not terra nullius but was actually undisputed Slovenian territory, even though admittedly the two states have not finalized the demarcation of their border.  Enclava’s founder, Kamil Wrona, calling himself King Enclav I, then relocated his 134-citizen project to one of the true no-man’s-lands on the Danube River near Liberland (see map above).  But Croatian and Serbian police have consistently done everything they can to shut down Liberland’s publicity stunts and flag-raisings.

The U.K.’s Sun tabloid has covered the Enclava story, since Britain, which has a large Polish population, is home to some who are connected the project.

The Bulgarian founders of “New Atlantis” may yet prove to be making the same mistake that Liberlanders, Enclavans, and many other micronationalists have made—assuming that because a scrap of land is technically unclaimed, no state will interfere with the founding of an independent entity there.  A libertarian Lithuanian-American real estate mogul named Michael Oliver made this mistake in the early 1970s, when he barged tons of sand from Australia to the Minerva Reefs, a set of low seamounts between Fiji and Tonga which did not poke above water for enough of the tidal cycle to be classified under international law as “territory.”  But as soon as the reef was built up enough to pass legal muster, Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, Tonga’s king, claimed it, and sent a naval vessel to eject Oliver and his nascent Republic of Minerva.  (Today, the reefs have eroded away once again to nothingness, but rival claims are still being made by Tonga, Fiji, and one “Prince Calvin,” an American who says he is the “island’s” monarch.)  Oliver’s similar “seasteading” project in Palmyra Atoll, a United States territory near Hawai‘i, got even less far.

Spidermonkey Island, a floating island off the coast of Brazil invented by Hugh Lofting for the Doctor Dolittle novels, would not qualify as “territory” under international law because, like the New Atlantis pumice patch, it is not anchored to the ocean floor.  Here, some whales under Dolittle’s command help move Spidermonkey Island to a more convenient spot.

The “New Atlantis” mass of pumice stays above water throughout the tidal cycle, but it is not legally “land” either, since it is floating, not anchored.  Whether New Zealand, its nearest neighbor, will tolerate any state-building there remains to be seen.  Certainly, with no source of freshwater and no supply ports anywhere near by, it would be difficult to colonize.  Perhaps Balanov was also inspired by the recent Image Comics series titled Great Pacific, which envisions a do-it-yourself nation called New Texas founded atop an (actual existing, sadly) floating mass of plastic in the northern Pacific Ocean.  The comics series, however, remains silent on many of the insuperable logistical barriers to such a project.

Balanov and compatriots may also want to consider a new name for their principality.  The term New Atlantis may well derive from the use of the name Atlantis in Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel-format libertarian manifesto Atlas Shrugged, in which it, along with Galt’s Gulch, was a label for the hidden mountain refuge in Colorado where the world’s leading industrialists relocated themselves after dropping out of society so that they could live in peace and prosperity while the greedy, lazy “second-handers” bent on the redistribution of wealth suffered the utter implosion of the rest of the world’s now rudderless economy.  (Just to clarify: in Rand’s novel, these industrialists were supposed to be the good guys.)

Vladimir Balanov posing with the Bulgarian and New Atlantean flags

Also, this isn’t even the first use of the name New Atlantis.  In 1964, Ernest Hemingway’s brother Leicester Hemingway founded his Republic of New Atlantis on a bamboo raft lashed to an old Ford engine block floating off the coast of Jamaica.  And in 1624, Sir Francis Bacon published a description of a fictional utopian “New Atlantis” on an island called Bensalem off the coast of Peru.

The flag of Leicester Hemingway’s Republic of New Atlantis (1964)

But the oddest thing about the name is that New Atlantis is not in the Atlantic but in the Pacific.  Why don’t they call it New Lemuria?

The original, original New Atlantis, as envisioned by Sir Francis Bacon

Thanks to Peppino Galiardi of the Kingdom of Cavaleria for alerting me to some sources and information for this article.

[You can read more about the Republic of New Atlantis and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

South Ossetia War Jitters, 27 Killed in North Caucasus Insurgency, Dagestanis on Trial in Prague: Caucasus Update, 16-22 September 2012

TOP STORY:

SOUTH OSSETIA CLAIMS GEORGIA GEARING UP FOR WAR;

E.U. TEAM SAYS ONLY TROOP BUILD-UP IS RUSSIAN, ON OSSETIAN SIDE

European Union observers along the border between Georgia and South Ossetia

The president of the mostly-unrecognized Russian puppet state of the Republic of South Ossetia, Leonid Tibilov, said on September 18th that what he called a build-up of Georgian troops along their shared border meant that “Georgia is preparing seriously for a war” to retake what Tbilisi still considers a Georgian rebgion.  However, the European Union Monitoring Mission along the border claims that there is no Georgian military build-up, but that there is one on the South Ossetian side by Russian troops that have occupied South Ossetia since Russia invaded Georgia and solidified South Ossetia’s secession in 2008.  Other than Russia and a handful of minor countries, the world regards South Ossetia as part of the Republic of Georgia.

Leonid Tibilov is prepared for war.

NORTH CAUCASUS (CHECHNYA, DAGESTAN, INGUSHETIA, CIRCASSIA)

Czech Court Tries Dagestani Counterfeiters Linked to Caucasus Emirate.  In the Czech Republic, a court in Prague began on September 20th its trial of four men from southwestern Russia’s Republic of Dagestan, along with two from Bulgaria and one from Moldova, accused of manufacturing counterfeit identity cards in the service of Shariat Jamaat, which is the Dagestani branch of the Caucasus Emirate movement, which would like Russia’s predominantly-Muslim areas to split off and form an Islamic state.  None of the suspects, who include one woman, pleaded guilty, but some claimed that they did not know the counterfeiting operation was connected to terrorism.  This is the Czech Republic’s first terrorism trial.

24 Rebels, 3 Police Killed in Violence across North Caucasus.  In southwestern Russia’s North Caucasus region, the federal National Anti-Terrorist Committee announced that five Islamist rebels were killed in the Republic of Dagestan on September 15th in a skirmish with special forces.  The leader of the “Tsuntinsky gang,” Gamzat Magomedov, was among the dead.  Casualties on the Russian side were limited to a police sniper from the Republic of Adygea, in the western North Caucasus, who died, and three others injured.  However, the Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate group that operates in Dagestan claimed on its website that three “Russian invader policemen” were killed, quoting “a local puppet official,” though official sources all say only one policeman died.  A grocery store in Babayurt, Dagestan, was raked by gunfire on September 17th, followed by a bomb planted at the store’s entrance being defused by authorities.  There were no injuries.  Then, on September 18th, media reported the police killing, also in Dagestan, of two militants, including one leader, Rustam Alderov (nom de guerre: Abul Muhammad), who is suspected of having been in charge of over 30 people organized into about 10 cells.  The same day, local police and members of Russia’s Federal Security Service (F.S.B., successor to the K.G.B.) killed five rebels in the Republic of Ingushetia, in a gun battle resulting from a traffic stop.  Three of the dead men were on wanted lists and were wearing explosive belts.  Eight suspected militants were killed on September 20th in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, in the western North Caucasus.  Those rebels, including two women, had barricaded themselves in the republican capital, Nalchik.  Also on that day, a policeman was injured when gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint in Dagestan.  The same day, the Chechen Republic announced that skirmishes between security forces and militants in its territory had killed two officers and four rebels.  The often-unreliable website of the Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement put the figures in Chechnya for this week as 7 Chechen Republic (i.e. pro-Moscow) “minions” killed and 15 injured and two “mujahideen martyrs” (i.e., two rebels killed).

North Caucasus Republics’ Leaders Speak Out against Anti-Muslim Video.  The governments of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the Chechen Republic, and the Republic of Ingushetia demanded this week that Internet providers in their territories block access to Innocence of Muslims, the low-budget, Coptic-American-produced video parodying the Prophet Muhammad which has inspired anti-American rioting across the Muslim world.  Chechnya’s Moscow-appointed authoritarian president, Ramzan Kadyrov, used the occasion to blame the film for the assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya earlier this month and to praise Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for promoting religious tolerance [sic].

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Gagauzia Threatens to Secede from Moldova If Nationalists Push Reunification with Romania

The leader of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, a self-governing region of the Republic of Moldova’s Turkic-speaking minority, told media this week that increasing calls for the reunification of Moldova and Romania may push the Gagauz to declare independence.  In particular, the leader, Mikhail Formuzal, cited plans to hold a Unionist march in Chișinău, the Moldovan capital, on September 16th.  Previous such marches have resulted in violence between unionists and their opponents.

This part of the former Soviet empire is a region of slivers.  Moldova (formerly the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) is really just a sliver of Romania.  It is the eastern portion, known traditionally as Bessarabia (though much of true Bessarabia is in modern Ukraine) of Moldavia, which was one of the three regions—Transylvania and Wallachia are the others—which made up the Kingdom of Romania that broke free of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s. But this Christian chunk of a Muslim empire had its rough edges: its western reaches were and are ethnically Hungarian (as discussed in detail in a recent blog posting about Romania’s Magyars), while at its eastern edge there were minorities of both Slavs (Romanians speak a Romance language) and Gagauz.  The Gagauz are Eastern Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkic language and are either Seljuq Turks or Turkified Bulgars who migrated to Bessarabia from what is today Bulgaria perhaps as long ago as the 13th century. The Gagauz staged a brief, disastrous, five-day-long uprising against the Russian Empire in 1906 as the Republic of Comrat, after which they nursed their grievances for generations until reasserting themselves in the late 1980s as Communism’s grip began to loosen.  They have never felt Romanian.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Lenin still looks out over the main square in Comrat, capital of Gagauzia.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Moldavian S.S.R. declared independence as the Republic of Moldova, Romania became Moldova’s first and warmest ally; Moldovans and Romanians tend to consider themselves one nation.  One would think that this would be the time to realize the dream of a united Romania.  But any talk of eventual reunification is dampened by a separatist movement in Moldova that has proved intractable for twenty years: the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, also called Transnistria.  This is the eastern sliver of Moldova whose ethnic population is about a third Ukrainian, a third Russian, and a third Moldovan (i.e. Romanian).  The Slavic (Russian-plus-Ukrainian) majority declared this ridiculously slender shard of land a sovereign state in 1990 when the U.S.S.R. imploded, and its independence, though unrecognized by any except other Russian (or Armenian) puppet states (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia), is maintained by the presence of thousands of Russian troops.

This ad targeting foreign investors shows Gagauzia’s current flag in front of the Moldovan one.
(The Moldovan flag is simply the Romanian tricolor with the Moldovan national seal in the center.)

Currently, as discussed earlier in this blog, Transnistria is a frozen conflict, and thus Romanian–Moldovan reunification is stalled as well.  Romania does not want to absorb Moldova if this means that it would suddenly have uninvited Russian troops on its territory; in fact, under the rules of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Romania joined in 2004, that would put NATO on an immediate and automatic war footing with Russia, which no one in the world wants.  Meanwhile, if Moldova tried to retake Moldova militarily, it would test Russia’s commitment to defending it—and, because of the NATO issue, Romania would stay out of the fight at all costs.  That would mean that Transnistria would likely absorb Moldova, while the world looked on helplessly.  Thus the standoff.

The traditional Gagauzian flag.  Now this is the one they should use if they declare independence, right?  Though that wolf looks not quite fierce enough, and a bit like the fox from The Little Prince or something.

So most talk of Romanian–Moldovan unification is merely nationalist bluster.  Or is it?  Romania is in the midst of an ugly constitutional crisis, the sort where jingoism finds its voice.  Popular Romanian populist nationalism could spur Slavic anger and vice versa, ad bellum—and, indeed, Gagauzia could be part of this cycle too.  Gagauz in the early years of Moldovan independence first had their unilateral declaration of an autonomous republic annulled, and did not fight that.  Then they saw their support for a three-way Moldovan–Transnistrian–Gagauz federation sidelined.  Finally, they benefitted when Moldova came around to granting them autonomy—without republic status, however, and with a territory that is a cluster of slivers of territory in the country’s far south (see map, above).  But nationalist feelings have never gone away in Gagauz communities.  Just last month, a diplomatic visit to Moldova by Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, was disrupted by a Gagauz who threw a Molotov cocktail at her motorcade.

Angela Merkel arrives in Moldova.
Flowers and folk tapestries now; cocktails will be thrown later.

The Gagauz would have everything to lose from Romanian–Moldovan unification, since Romania’s hypernationalists would not countenance the high degree of autonomy the Gagauz have in Moldova today, and the Gagauz would be a far smaller share of the population.  They may be too isolated, put-upon, and paranoid at this point to realize that the unification talk is talk only.  But if they react with true secessionist spirit, it could push Moldova to repress them to the point where separation looks genuinely appealing.  And Transnistria, after all, has survived the decades since the Cold War, without apparently feeling that they would be better off Moldovan.  True, Gagauzia would need Russian military and economic military support to follow a similar path, but with the right diplomacy Russia may just be willing to offer that—whether through Gagauzian unification with Transnistria as an expanded sliver of Moldova, or as its own state.

Gagauzia’s coat of arms

Far stranger things have happened in post-Communist eastern Europe.  This is one situation to keep an eye on.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]