# Old World Countries where the biggest city isn't the capital **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 9, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161 "2012-10-09T01:53:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/41 "2012-10-10T05:26:37Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > What’s the story behind the Ottawa compromise? Toronto & Montreal both wanted to be the capital of the _Province_ of Canada, for awhile the legistlature alternated between both cities, and finally Queen Victoria said enought and stuck her hatpin halfway between both cities on a map. Okay that’s not quite what happened, Her Majesty acted on the advice of her ministers, who took several factors (including geography, military defencibily, & several factors including geography, military defencibily & population size into account. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/42 "2012-10-10T09:54:25Z")
It is worth pointing out that, from 1949 until 1990, Bonn (320.000 people), not Berlin (3.500.000 people), was the German capital, for obvious historic reasons. The period between WWI and 1933 is named, after the capital at the time, the Weimar Republic. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/43 "2012-10-10T11:53:54Z")
> [@Pitchmeister](#): > > It is worth pointing out that, from 1949 until 1990, Bonn (320.000 people), not Berlin (3.500.000 people), was the German capital, for obvious historic reasons. The period between WWI and 1933 is named, after the capital at the time, the Weimar Republic. No, Berlin was also the German capital from 1919 to 1933 (“Weimar Republic”). The name is derived from the German National Assembly which drafted the constitution. Weimar was chosen because in the winter of 1918/19, Berlin was still a dangerous place with fighting in the streets. After things had cooled down, Berlin was the seat of government as well as for the regular German parliament (the Reichstag). ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/44 "2012-10-10T12:07:58Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > No, Berlin was also the German capital from 1919 to 1933 (“Weimar Republic”). The name is derived from the German National Assembly which drafted the constitution. Weimar was chosen because in the winter of 1918/19, Berlin was still a dangerous place with fighting in the streets. > > After things had cooled down, Berlin was the seat of government as well as for the regular German parliament (the Reichstag). Also, Berlin never ceased being the capital of _ **A** _ Germany (namely, East Germany), just not that of _ **West** _ Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/45 "2012-10-10T12:18:37Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > No, Berlin was also the German capital from 1919 to 1933 (“Weimar Republic”). The name is derived from the German National Assembly which drafted the constitution. Weimar was chosen because in the winter of 1918/19, Berlin was still a dangerous place with fighting in the streets. > > After things had cooled down, Berlin was the seat of government as well as for the regular German parliament (the Reichstag). Oops. That’s a pretty major history fail. I’ll just quietly let myself out… ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/46 "2012-10-10T12:23:56Z")
> [@Noone\_Special](#): > > Also, Berlin never ceased being the capital of _ **A** _ Germany (namely, East Germany), just not that of _ **West** _ Germany. However, the whole city of Berlin was, until 1990, officially under military rule by the allied powers of World War II, the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France. The Western powers never officially recognized East-Berlin as the capital of East Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/47 "2012-10-10T12:27:56Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > However, the whole city of Berlin was, until 1990, officially under military rule by the allied powers of World War II, the US, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France. The Western powers never officially recognized East-Berlin as the capital of East Germany. As an Israeli I have little to no sympathy for “You don’t get to decide what your capital city is” politics, even when it’s coming from The West and targeted at a (former) entity like E. Germany. Or in other words, if they _said_ their capital was Berlin, their capital was Berlin… ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/48 "2012-10-10T12:39:37Z")
> [@Noone\_Special](#): > > As an Israeli I have little to no sympathy for “You don’t get to decide what your capital city is” politics, even when it’s coming from The West and targeted at a (former) entity like E. Germany. > > Or in other words, if they _said_ their capital was Berlin, their capital was Berlin… _De facto_ this is what it boils down to. East Germany could get away with this because it had the protection of the USSR. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/49 "2012-10-10T13:49:46Z")
What, if they hadn’t, Rand McNally would have send over a team of behelmeted cartographers to ensure they “complied”? ---
**Author:** ![mkecane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mkecane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mkecane)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/50 "2012-10-10T16:18:36Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > Here are all the US states for which the capital IS the largest city: > > Arizona (Phoenix) > Arkansas (Little Rock) > Connecticut (Hartford) > Georgia (Atlanta) > Hawaii (Honolulu) > Idaho (Boise) > Indiana (Indianapolis) > Iowa (Des Moines) > Massachusetts (Boston) > Mississippi (Jackson) > Ohio (Columbus – yes, it’s bigger than Cincinnati or Cleveland) > Oklahoma (Oklahoma City) > Rhode Island (Providence) > South Carolina (Columbia – yes, it’s bigger than Charleston) > Utah (Salt Lake City) > West Virgina (Charleston) > Wyoming (Cheyenne) > > That makes 17 states, or 34%. Not the majority, but not all that rare, either. Taking into account your later addition of Denver, I’m curious how many of these largest cities were designated the capital _because_ it was the largest city, and how many simply grew to become the largest city. My guess is that a city like Columbus has grown to become the largest, but Cleveland (and Cincinnati?) were both bigger at the time C’bus was named capital. On the flip side, I would guess St. Paul was originally bigger than Minneapolis, but Minneapolis just grew at a faster rate in the 20th century. How many capitals have regressed from being the largest city? ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/51 "2012-10-10T16:41:45Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > What, if they hadn’t, Rand McNally would have send over a team of behelmeted cartographers to ensure they “complied”? Considering that in 1990 **Rand McNally** was like 5 years old I doubt he would have done any such thing. Or are we talking about the atlas people not the doper **Rand McNally 😃** ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/52 "2012-10-10T17:15:16Z")
The map people, evidently. And, since they’re better typists than I am, they might have _sent_ a team of behelmeted cartographers, rather than “send”. ---
**Author:** ![swampbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampbear/32/467_2.png) [@swampbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampbear)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/53 "2012-10-10T17:23:45Z")
In Georgia the reason given for moving the capitol around so much is that it moved as the population grew. Georgia has had four state capitols, Augusta, Louisville, Milledgeville and finally Atlanta. Of the four, the most central to the state was Milledgeville. Not that I have any reason to go to the capitol very much but I wish it were still in Milledgeville because if I did, it’d be a hundred miles closer. After all, it should really be about _my_ convenience. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/54 "2012-10-10T17:33:29Z")
> [@Pitchmeister](#): > > Oops. That’s a pretty major history fail. I’ll just quietly let myself out… Maybe you were thinking of [Vichy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France) France? > [@](#): > > Vichy France was established after France surrendered to Germany on 22 June 1940, and took its name from the government’s administrative centre of Vichy, in central France. Paris remained the official capital, to which Pétain always intended to return the government when this became possible ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/55 "2012-10-10T17:36:54Z")
There also was the even shorter-lived [Salò Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Social_Republic). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2012, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/56 "2012-10-10T22:08:13Z")
Columbus is still smaller than Cleveland, in every way except officially. It ate all of its suburbs, but the historical boundaries before that happened leave it smaller than the city limits of Cleveland, and the Cleveland metropolitan area is likewise larger. With US states in general, one major factor is that most capitals were chosen to be relatively close to the center of the state, a location which often didn’t have much else going for it. In fact, the tendency is for major cities to be on the edges of their states, because cities tend to spring up on major bodies of water, which often form state borders. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/57 "2012-10-14T15:33:58Z")
> [@swampbear](#): > > In Georgia the reason given for moving the capitol around so much is that it moved as the population grew. Georgia has had four state capitols, Augusta, Louisville, Milledgeville and finally Atlanta. Of the four, the most central to the state was Milledgeville. Not that I have any reason to go to the capitol very much but I wish it were still in Milledgeville because if I did, it’d be a hundred miles closer. > > After all, it should really be about _my_ convenience. 😃 It occurs to me that I can’t think of any province that has changed capitals, unlike US states. There were a few shenanigans before Confederation, though. Upper Canada, the colony that would later become Ontario, had its first capital at Niagara-on-the-Lake before it was moved to York, later Toronto, because Niagara-on-the-Lake was too close to the US border. Also, the Colony of British Columbia had its first capital at New Westminster (now part of the greater Vancouver area), but when it merged with the Colony of Vancouver Island, the capital of the latter, Victoria, became the capital of the new colony. The Wikipedia article on [New Westminster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Westminster) has this to say: > [@](#): > > On the day of the vote one member of the assembly, William Cox (one of the colony’s Gold Commissioners and a Victoria supporter), shuffled the pages of the speech that William Franklyn from Nanaimo (a New Westminster supporter) intended to give, so that Franklyn lost his place and read the first paragraph three times. Cox then popped the lenses of Franklyn’s glasses from their frames so that the Nanaimo representative could see nothing at all of his speech. After a recess to settle the resulting uproar and allow the member from Nanaimo a chance to sort out his speaking notes and his spectacles, on the members’ return to the House of Assembly, the Speaker John Sebastian Helmcken (from Victoria) refused to allow Franklyn a “second” chance to speak. The subsequent vote was 13 to 8 against New Westminster.[9] Finally, the town of Qu’Appelle, now in Saskatchewan, was originally supposed to be the capital of the Northwest Territories (of which modern Saskatchewan was the most populous part). But governor Edwin Dewdney intervened to move the capital to the site of his landholdings at Pile o’Bones, which was duly renamed Regina – the present capital of Saskatchewan. Qu’Appelle has since dwindled away into a tiny village. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/58 "2012-10-14T16:37:03Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > I’d say our only real U.S.-style capital is Fredericton, which I never hear about in any capacity other than as provincial capital (and for its university). New Brunswick has not one but two larger cities – Saint John and Moncton. Edmonton’s population is smaller than Calgary’s, by a couple of hundred thousand, according to Wikipedia quoting 2011 stats on each of the city’s pages. > [@](#): > > FWIW, Quebec City is the oldest city in the country, and Regina (another one of the second biggests) was a capital (of the NWT) before there was a province there. Too bad; Saskatoon once was a Goldilocks city. Now boom times are turning it concrete-and-glass, car-flyover ugly. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/59 "2012-10-14T21:18:46Z")
> [@Kenm](#): > > Edmonton’s population is smaller than Calgary’s, by a couple of hundred thousand, according to Wikipedia quoting 2011 stats on each of the city’s pages. They’re still comparable in size, though. Edmonton is not “US-style capital.” Edmonton is a major city and is in the same general class as Calgary. It’s not like the weird mismatches of Albany vs. NYC, or Harrisburg vs. Philadelphia, or Springfield vs. Chicago. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161/60 "2012-10-14T22:00:32Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > … London is the biggest city in the UK by a mile. … It depends, of course, on what you mean by “city”, and it also depends on which city you regard as the capital of the UK. If by “London” you mean [Greater London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London), it is the largest “city”. However, Greater London is not called a “city”, and it contains two cities: the [City of London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London) (which is clearly not the capital of the UK) and the [City of Westminster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Westminster), which contains the official residence of the Queen, the Parliament, and the main government departments. If the City of Westminster is the capital, then it’s not the largest city in the UK: the [City of Birmingham](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham) is. (And you can apply a similar analysis to India: New Delhi is a relatively small city, but it’s part of the Delhi Metropolitan Area, which is the largest metropolitan area in India.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-world-countries-where-the-biggest-city-isnt-the-capital/637161.md?page=4)