Small nations, small consequences

What nations that disappeared during the 20th century would negligibly affect history if they had continued to exist? Not just world history, but regional history as well. I'm thinking mostly of states that appeared/disappeared around WWI and WWII. Just look on Wikipedia, there's dozens of these.

The ones I have in mind would be:

Tannu Tuva- Odd little isolated patch that the USSR keeps on as a satellite state, has negligible effect on history as we know it.

Newfoundland- Becomes Canada's New Zealand after it stops being a British crown possession, much as it has been for almost a century prior. Just have Verdun go slightly less bad and you don't kill off the crop of Newfie youth.

Sikkim- Same deal as Bhutan, or Nepal. Insular little Tibetan enclave that neither China or India bothers annexing.

Free City of Trieste- Microstates and city-states should apply. Though this case I'm not too sure of. Would Trieste have affected Balkan/Italian politics if it was independent?

Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen- North Yemen never joins South Yemen/South Arabia/Aden, remains backwater, big whoop?

Any others? Also please justify as I did so above.

Perhaps Hatay would fit the bill? Small country in the Near East that is today a cross between Lebanon (small size, some urban intellectual class) and Syria (no religious conflict)?

Acre: a backwater state maybe renowned as being the only country with worst standards of everything than Bolivia in South America.

Biafra: obviously important for Nigerians, but outside of Nigeria who would really care whether they got their oil from some African country with a name starting with "B" instead of "N"?

I forgot to include African nations because I don't even know what an Upper Volta is. That is, wasn't the Biafran Civil War a big deal back in its day? And Nigeria is a pretty important nation in Africa. Could have all sorts of repercussions.

Hatay is interesting, and Acre is as well (I guess it technically counts as 1900, not what I had in mind as it isn't a WWI/WWII-derived state but definitely good suggestion).

Strategos' Risk said:

I forgot to include African nations because I don't even know what an Upper Volta is.

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Tesla doing a Jewish stereotype impression?

Incidentally, Upper Volta would'nt fit the criteria for this thread, since it still exists, it just changed its name to Burkina Faso.

Would an independent Assam have a major impact on the world after 1950?

Also, how can we get more city-states to survive without majorly affecting the 20th century? A free Danzig post-WWII would have too much of an impact IMO, but what about an independent Kaliningrad after the fall of the USSR, or a surviving Trieste or Fiume? Would an independent Goa be possible?

wilcoxchar said:

Also, how can we get more city-states to survive without majorly affecting the 20th century?

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Ideally, all of these nations are minor enough to exist in a hypothetical timeline where all of them (except for overlapping territories) can exist at once and our timeline is barely affected except for more U.N. seats and Olympic teams. So we wouldn't need to "get" more city states to exist per se, we just need to identify which ones in OTL were likely enough to retained independence. The ones similar enough to the microstates that exist OTL.

but what about an independent Kaliningrad after the fall of the USSR, or a surviving Trieste or Fiume? Would an independent Goa be possible?

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Good ideas! I have no idea. Any experts wanna answer?

Monaco, San Marino, Andorra
if only they HAD ceased to exixt

East Turkestan would be fun

Also the Bogd Khanate of Mongolia, a khanate with western institutions and chinese-like administration, what if China never invades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Mongolia,_1911-1919

And could any of these Dutch puppet states in Indonesia stay alive?


In less than 5 years, peacefully all those puppet states moved allegiance back to Indonesia, Negara Indonesia Timur was the last one, their people had supported Indonesia, so their leader unwillingly accepts their return to Indonesia, though later on he led a small scale rebellion

Although it is post-WW2, I do believe that the Maldive-seperatist United Suvadive Republic would fit your criteria as a completely internationally unimportant state.

What about a Macau that gained indipendence right after WW2?

The Kingdom of Sarawak. Malaysia loses a bit of manpower and some oil revenue but I don't think that would really affect how they turned out, the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation becomes the Indonesia–Sarawak confrontation and finishes up pretty much as it did in our timeline, apart from an extra country in the region and various international organisations doesn't really change much of anything.

Could the Andaman and Nicobar Islands become independent, either as a single or multiple states? More random tiny island nations are fun.

orangnumpanglewat said:

East Turkestan would be fun

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But it would certainly interact with C. Asia countries a lot. Small consequences here, eh?
Plus, what fun?

Cornelius said:

What about a Macau that gained indipendence right after WW2?

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Hmm, I wonder how it's going to be self-sustainable.


And Tannu Tuva, instant HOI recollection

mailinutile2 said:

Monaco, San Marino, Andorra
if only they HAD ceased to exixt

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Well, if Monaco wasn't independent it would have an effect on motor racing, but in terms of things outside the worlds of sport, yes. And that's reminded me about my idea for an alternate motor racing 1930s-present TL.

Would it be feasible to have a timeline with all of these nations remaining independent, and have it end up being the same as basically the same as OTL?

Got any more?

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but what about Cabinda? Angola would lose most of its oil wealth and we'd probably get another Equatorial Guinea, but I don't think it'd affect much globally.

How about the various Yemeni Emirates, which could continue as some sort of loose federation a la the United Arab Emirates or fully independent without major changes. As the United Yemeni Emirates or South Arabian Federation or whatever they could even have a proxy war during the Cold War with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen as in ATL. Perhaps even with the sides reversed!

Also, the predecessors to Saudi Arabia - have Ha'il, 'Asir, Hejaz, Jizan and Nejd survive as independent entities.

The Emirate of Kano and Sokoto Caliphat could exist as African microstates.

Being in the middle of the Sahara and therefore uninteresting to the colonial powers Wadai could be a goer.

Tavolara could be San Marino-at-sea.

Sultunate of Sulu could be a Philippino microstate.

Danish West Indies could be a Caribbean Faroe Islands, and another autonomous province of the Kindom of Denmark - and the Caribbean's only Danish-speaking realm.

Pondicherry and Goa could be made independent but remain separate of India.

Moresnet could be independent and unimportant.

Instead of being part of Cameroon, British Cameroons could be made independent as its own country with little effect.

Tangier could have acheived independence and be a little city-state on Africa's north coast.

Zanzibar could remain separate.

How about that minority in Burma (the name escapes me) who were promised independance with decolonisation but Burma ended up just sitting on them?

Also, though the consequences would be huge on this one, Kashmir.

It is stretching just a bit, but what about the Republic of Hawaii?

Annexed by the US 1898?

A small cient state of the US, with a large military base. Leasing the base would probably be very lucrative during the Cold War.

Wonder if they would have a Philipino like relationship where their citizens would be elegiable to join US military forces?

Could attract KGB agitators duing Cold War.

But overall, impact should be minor.