The Republic of Cyprus and the mostly unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (by Turkey of course, de facto a separate country). North Cyprus now actually wants to unify, but RoC wants to get closer to Greece.
A lot of these have historical reasons, mainly on how one state wanted to GTFO the USSR, and the other wanted to stay. (I may not get all the casus belli)
Abkhazia (Georgia; Abkhaz people, minor religious differences but I’m not sure it’s a big deal)
South Ossetia (Georgia; Ossetians)
Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan; ethnic Armenians/Christians vs. Muslim Azerbaijani, I think religion is a bigger deal for the Armenians)
Transnistria (Moldova; ethnicity is diverse and Transnistrian isn’t really an ethnicity, closeness to Ukraine)
Moldova and Romania are separate for some reason, but AFAIK they were never completely united country (territorial changes ok).
I think most of the states in Somalia want more autonomy (e.g. Puntland), but Somaliland is the only one that explicitly wants to secede (or they already did in their book).
Polite, polite, and bloody, respectively.
Norway and Sweden. Norway split from Denmark earlier in 1814, and joined with Sweden the same year (so 1814-1905).
Fun fact: the first King of modern Norway was the son of the then King of Denmark, and brother of the next one. Being Danish didn’t hurt his popularity at all though.
That much is true. I’m just not so sure it was enough to inspire a revolution.
To be sure, the earlier colonists had come from England, and had grown up in England, and saw England as their home. To them, the colonies were a distant and wild land. Many had come to make their fortunes in tobacco, or were government employees of the Crown, or whatever, and didn’t view themselves as permanent residents in the colonies.
That began to change when the first children began to be born in the colonies. As my history prof emphasized, that was a milestone. As the first generation of native-born colonists grew up, you now had a generation of colonists for whom the colonies were their homeland, the place they knew, and England seemed to be the far-off distant land.
By the time of the Revolution, there had been several full generations of native-born colonists come and gone. The colonies were about 170 years old (starting with Jamestown, 1607) until the Revolution.
So all this pretty much supports Dr. Drake’s thesis. But England had a mercantile colonial policy, which basically meant that the colonies, world over, existed mainly for the economic exploitation that could be wrung out of them. I think that, which was also closely connected to all colonists’ desire for self-government, was the greater factor that led to the Revolution, as well as most other colonial breakaways all around the Empire.
Puntland has unilaterally declared itself to be an autonomous region, which may be a first, historically. Usually autonomous regions want independence but settle for the lesser status. Or if a region does want autonomous status, they don’t get it until the central government agrees. In this case, there was no central government, so they just declared it.
AIUI, recognition for Somaliland was blocked by Egypt. Countries in other areas want the region to accept its independence first, but the Mubarak government didn’t want it. Something to do with Ethiopia and trade, although I don’t know the exact details. Egypt now has a different government, but they probably have other, more pressing issues to deal with.
Namibia was never part of South Africa; it was originally a German colony that was placed under South African control after WWI. South Africa never formally made South West Africa part of its territory and, legally, it never was.
Unlike most French colonies, Algeria (or the northern part of it anyway) after 1848 was considered to be an integral part of France. That’s one reason they fought so hard to hold onto it, but Algeria finally gained its independence in 1962.
though. IIRC, white Namibians (mostly Germans and Afrikaners) were allowed to vote in South African elections, as a way to boost the power of the pro-Apartheid vote.