The Thousand Islands, located on the St. Lawrence, are principally governed by Canada (to the west) and New York (to the east). However, if I recall correctly, a few of the islands are privately owned.
What, if any, nation governs these private islands? Do they fall under the juristiction of national boundries? International laws, perhaps? If Joe Schmoe had a few bucks could he purchase an island and govern it himself? Legalize prostitution, drugs and underage drinking? Name himself dictator and rule with an iron fist? Outlaw the letter “Q” and blinking Christmas lights?
"Moslem or Christian, Mullah or Pope
Preacher or poet who was it wrote
Give any one species too much rope
And they’ll fuck it up "
Roger Waters
If I understand where you mean and remember my sorry geography teaching sufficiently, those islands are part of Canada. Privately owned only means that a single person owns the entire island, much as a single person might own 2 acres of land in Quebec. He still pays property tax on it, and is still part of some sort of municipality or county or whatever you call that sort of thing in Canada.
In order to be a sovereign country, you generally have to fight (and win) a war of some kind. All the land in the world is part of some sovereign country with the exception of Antartica - and you can’t secede just by buying some land.
Right, all the islands there are governed by exclusively either by the US (New York) or Canada (Québec), whether they are in state or provincial parks or are privately owned. Same with all the islands in that river. . .until you get out of the river, and outside, even, of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, into the open Atlantic Ocean south of Newfoundland, where France governs the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.
Thanks for ruining one of my lifelong dreams, fellows.
Seriously, though, I thought that if you are the first man to set foot on an undiscovered island it is yours to do with what you wish (unless someone with an army wishes otherwise, of course).
You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
How in the heck is a Swiss fish gonna kick Kilgore’s ass, they aint got legs. Wait, HE is a trout! maybe it is possible. There is even a war anthem for the taking, “And it’s one , two three, What are we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, Next stop is the Vatican.” Breach the walls! Take the Holy City! But only on FRIDAY!!!
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
Realisticaly, there is no way for a private individual to found their own country. Mao summed it up nicely: “Political power comes out the barrel of a gun.” The apparent exceptions- the Vatican, various island micro-states in the Pacific- are only “sovereign” because they wouldn’t be worth the bad press of conquering. The closest attempt in recent times was, IIRC, when some mercenaries tried to overthrow the government of Madagascar in the 70s and install themselves in power. They got their butts kicked.
Well, from a realist perspective this was almost never true. Look at how many times certain parts of north america have changed hands, and how, despite the fact that the first people to set foot on it had done so tens of thousands of years before. Also, to answer your real question there are no undiscovered islands, and haven’t been for a long time. Even new islands created by volcanic activity would be spotted pretty quickly since there are geologists looking at all these hotspots as part of some sort of research or thesis. I’m not sure what becomes of these islands (not like it happens every day anyway).
I’ve got Loompanic’s “How to Start Your Own Country” and “Unihabited Ocean Islands”. UOI is a pretty neat book. It lists most every unpopulated island in the world, says who owns it, and tell about the island itself and whatever history the place may have. HTSYOC is an interesting summary of what might be called ameteur attempts at nationhood. However, the author is a very scary man who seems to be promoting the spread of nuclear weapons into private hands as a means of ending war (I swear before God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit that I am not making this up!) That said, the guy’s a pretty decent historian, even if he is severely out of touch with reality.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
I’d better ammend my comment about the “How to Start Your Own Country” author. He’s got a pretty good handle on what it takes to start (and defend) your own country, but he has an almost unbelievably cavalier attitude towards the prolifferation of weapons of mass destruction. His theory of peace is that eventually so many people will have nuclear and biological bombs that nobody will dare to couse trouble. I’m not kidding you. He never seems to consider the inevitability that some of those weapons would get used. He appears to think of them like the magic war-stopping rays in “To Serve Man.”
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island