List of irredentist claims or disputes
This is a list of irredentist claims or disputes. Irredentism is any political or popular movement that seeks to claim or reclaim and occupy a land that the movement's members consider to be a "lost" (or "unredeemed") territory from their nation's past. Not all territorial disputes are irredentist, although they are often couched in irredentist rhetoric to justify and legitimise such claims both internationally and within the country.
Prominent irredentist disputes (by area)
Prominent irredentist disputes during the past century have included:
Europe
State | Claimed area | Notes |
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A desire to unify South Tyrol with Austria is held by nationalist groups in both Austria and South Tyrol, which became part of Italy following Austria's loss in World War One.[1][2][3] | ||
Parts of: |
Azeri-majority provinces of Iran: West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Ardabil and Zanjan are claimed by Azeri nationalists that seek to unite all Azeri-populated areas. | |
Parts of: | Internal dispute: Chechnya (currently part of the Russian Federation) has occasionally laid claims on a region called Akkia (roughly the Auhovskiy rayon, in Russian), part of neighbouring Dagestan (also in Russia). | |
Abkhaz–Georgian conflict Georgian–Ossetian conflict | ||
Parts of:
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Internal dispute: Both territories are part of Russia. | |
The claim was officially dropped in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement. | ||
Currently administered by Spain. Not actively pursued by Portugal since both countries joined the European Union in 1986. | ||
Currently, there is a movement calling for the unification of Republika Srpska with Serbia. The area is currently part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.[4] | ||
Status of Gibraltar | ||
Russian irredentism can be divided into three categories: broad, intermediate, and narrow.
- The broad sense includes all lands that historically made up the Russian Empire and/or the Soviet Union at their maximum extents. It may also extend to neighbouring countries or regions that are populated by peoples over which Russia ruled (e.g. Iranian Azerbaijan in Iran), or peoples which are closely related to them due to linguistic, ethnic or religious ties. Historically, Russia has pursued all of these avenues; examples include the Panslavism movement to put all of the Balkans (where there exists Slavic and Eastern Orthodox majorities) under Russian hegemony; the Third Rome philosophy, which focused on re-claiming the former Byzantine Empire regions (in particular the warm winter port of Constantinople, today Istanbul), and in addition establishing a hegemony over Greater Armenia and the Holy Land (Lebanon, Palestine etc.). Simultaneously, there were ambitions to continue expansion into Persia and even India (see The Great Game). The Russian Empire also planned to force Qing China to cede Xinjiang, Manchuria, Outer Mongolia, and Korea. While the Russo-Japanese War ended most of these prospects, the Soviet Union would eventually create a sphere of influence in this area in the form of the Mongolian People's Republic and the Tuvan People's Republic. Finally, in Russian America, Russia held claims extending from the Aleutian Islands to northern California, but these plans were cancelled after Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867.
- The intermediate sense includes some or all of the independent countries and/or territories that made up the historical Russian borders. These may include Moldova, Ukraine, eastern Poland, Belarus, the Baltic states, and Finland in Europe, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia in the Caucasus, and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Some narrower definitions include only the pro-Russian breakaway states of Abkhazia (Georgia), South Ossetia (Georgia), and Transnistria (Moldova), as well as Kars Oblast in Turkey and Batum Oblast partly in Turkey also (Ardahan Province) and Adjara in Georgia.
- The narrow sense of Russian irredentism focuses only on regions that are populated by ethnic Russians that are outside the Russian Federation, such as: Narva in Estonia; lands around Daugavpils and Riga in Latvia; Sloboda Ukraine, Novorossiya, and Crimea from Ukraine (the latter of which has de facto joined the Federation[5][6]); Gagra district in Georgia (also claimed by Abkhazia); and lands between the Russian border and the rivers of Ural and Irtysh in Kazakhstan, as well as parts of Semirechye.
Historical and fringe disputes
Many fringe and opposition groups in various countries maintain their own set of territorial claims, which are given below:
State | Claimed area | Notes |
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Kosovo
Parts of: |
Some claim the calls for a Greater Albania is irredentist. | |
Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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The English Democrats Party are irredentist in regards to Monmouthshire (since 1974 part of Wales).[7] | ||
Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
The Megali Idea became a political objective of the Greek government in the early 20th century. It envisioned a "Greater Greece" covering areas of earlier Greek empires where significant Greek settlements still existed. The idea ended with the devastating defeat of the Greek army in Asia Minor in 1922 and the following population exchange between Greece and Turkey.[8][9] | |
Parts of: |
Georgian irredentists claim Tao-Klarjeti | |
Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Italian claims to Istria and Dalmatia after World War I. | ||
Parts of: |
Irredentists from North Macedonia have expressed land claims to the entire historical region of Macedonia | |
Parts of: |
Theoretical claim to the Orkney and Shetland Islands due to a 15th century unpaid dowry to the king of Scotland.[10] | |
Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
- In the 1955 referendum, Saarland, a previous French protectorate territory, voted to reunite with Germany.
- French claimed Alsace-Lorraine before World War I, after which the territory was returned to them.
- Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro claimed various European parts of the Ottoman Empire and Albania (both of which the four divided among themselves) before the First Balkan War, where they took these claims to the battlefield, and won.
Asia
State | Claimed area | Notes |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Arunachal Pradesh ( |
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Part of - And
Part of- |
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Kuril Islands ( |
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Jammu and Kashmir
( |
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Parts of: |
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Middle East
State | Claimed area | Notes |
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( |
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Parts of: |
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( |
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Hatay
( |
South and Central America
State | Claimed area | Notes | |
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Argentina claims land in the South Atlantic and Antartica, including the Falkland Islands | |||
Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
Referred to the International Court of Justice since 2019. | ||
Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
North America
State | Claimed area | Notes |
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The Quebec government claims that the territory of Labrador belongs to the province of Quebec. Labrador is part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.[11] |
Africa
State | Claimed area | Notes |
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Parts of: |
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Parts of: |
See also
References
- Bell, Bethany (8 December 2012). "South Tyrol's identity crisis: Italian, German, Austrian...?". Bolzano, Italy: BBC News. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- "South Tyrol heading to unofficial independence referendum in autumn". nationalia.info. 3 July 2013. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- Marchetti, Silvia (31 May 2014). "The South Tyrol identity crisis: to live in Italy, but feel Austrian". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Refworld | Bosnia: Defying court ban, Republika Srpska goes ahead with 'Statehood Day'". Refworld. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
- Socor, Vladimir (25 March 2014). "Putin's Crimea Speech: A Manifesto of Greater-Russia Irredentism". Eurasia Daily Monitor. 11 (56). Archived from the original on 27 April 2016. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- Saideman, Stephen (18 March 2014). "Why Crimea is likely the limit of Greater Russia". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
- "Manifesto of the English Democrats: Putting England First" (PDF). bbc.co.uk. 2005. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
- Finefrock, Michael M. (March 1980). "Ataturk, Lloyd George and the Megali Idea: Cause and Consequence of the Greek Plan to Seize Constantinople from the Allies, June-August 1922". The Journal of Modern History. The University of Chicago Press Books. 52 (S1). Retrieved 26 October 2019.
- "The Greek Turkish Population Exchange" (PDF). Retrieved 26 October 2019.
- "Norwegians revive historic dispute over Western Isles". The Guardian. 20 February 2002. Retrieved 13 May 2020.
- "La question du Labrador" [The question Labrador]. Estrien Movement for French (in French). 2 May 2001. Archived from the original on 26 April 2005.