Challenge: Landlock your country
- Thread starter Atterdag
- Start date
For France it would be hard but let's try :
Let's say that France was the epicenter of a Nazi-like ideology, got defeated during a WW2 where it tried some utterly bonkers Latin Alliance with Italy and Spain, and then :
Brittany and Occitania and made independent, despite the will of its inhabitants to remain part of France.
Coastal Poitou is used as a naval base by the US, with La Rochelle as its capital.
Normandy is incoporated in the Anglo-Normand Islands, turning into the Viceroyalty of Normandy.
Belgium is granted Picardy and Nord-Pas de Calais as repayment.
The overseas are either granted independence or split between different countries.
Let's say that France was the epicenter of a Nazi-like ideology, got defeated during a WW2 where it tried some utterly bonkers Latin Alliance with Italy and Spain, and then :
Brittany and Occitania and made independent, despite the will of its inhabitants to remain part of France.
Coastal Poitou is used as a naval base by the US, with La Rochelle as its capital.
Normandy is incoporated in the Anglo-Normand Islands, turning into the Viceroyalty of Normandy.
Belgium is granted Picardy and Nord-Pas de Calais as repayment.
The overseas are either granted independence or split between different countries.
For Italy, it would have to be reduced to an oversized Lombardy. All of the maritime republics would need to be independent, with Pisa possibly controlling the coast of Tuscany.
Not exactly "landlocked" as in "no coastline", but Japan seized all medium to large ports.
I'll interpret this as "landlock a part of your country", because as a Londoner landlocking the part of my country that I live in would make me... either dead or a ridiculous historical implausibility. The only conceivable way with Britain would be a city-state, I think, and the most likely city-states would not be economic centres but ecclesiastical ones - so maybe an independent York, Durham, or tiny microstate of Canterbury? It would take some fiddling with Westphalian sovereignty, but maybe changing up the medieval-to-modern political transition could allow for "independent" bishoprics in Catholic countries.
How about "Every country a coastline" for the landlocked countries as well? (Although do inland seas count for those?)
Could a country be landlocked if it has a coastline on an inland sea (ex. the Aral and Caspian seas?)
Could a country be landlocked if it has a coastline on an inland sea (ex. the Aral and Caspian seas?)
You can landlock an island by having an external entity conquer the coast, but fail to penetrate inland, creating a 17-18th century Sri-Lanka like situation (where, afaik, the Kingdom of Kandy controlled the inland, and Euro colonizers controlled the coasts). Later, the coastal part may declare independence, refusing to join the inland part.
As a chalenge, try landlocking Chile.
That country is basically all coastline and some mountains.
Balkanization, I guess? Tocantins, Amazonas, Acre, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, Minas Gerais, Rondônia, Roraima and the Federal District would become landlocked countries.
I forgot that this should be about our own countries:
The Kalmar Union and Burgundy both somehow survive with a PoD before or during the Hundred Years War, the Kalmar Union gobbles up Holstein, Stade and Pomerania for its goal of a Dominium Maris Baltici, while the Anglo-Burgundian alliance thrives and is eager to weaken the HRE by extending its sphere of influence and actual control into East Frisia. After some decades and centuries, these areas are assimilated, rendering Pomerania and East Frisia as either Danish or Dutch respectively. Thus, we have a landlocked HRE and therefore Germany. Assuming Germany even unites ITTL.
If you live in an already landlocked country, you could try to delandlock it.
My example would be the Rhineland. William the Rich of Berg actually gets the promised French support against Charles V and unites Berg, Jülich, Mark, Cleves, Guelders into a centralized grand duchy or even kingdom of the Rhineland. Over Guelders this nation enjoys some access to the North Sea.
This wasn't fair...!
The Kalmar Union and Burgundy both somehow survive with a PoD before or during the Hundred Years War, the Kalmar Union gobbles up Holstein, Stade and Pomerania for its goal of a Dominium Maris Baltici, while the Anglo-Burgundian alliance thrives and is eager to weaken the HRE by extending its sphere of influence and actual control into East Frisia. After some decades and centuries, these areas are assimilated, rendering Pomerania and East Frisia as either Danish or Dutch respectively. Thus, we have a landlocked HRE and therefore Germany. Assuming Germany even unites ITTL.
If you live in an already landlocked country, you could try to delandlock it.
My example would be the Rhineland. William the Rich of Berg actually gets the promised French support against Charles V and unites Berg, Jülich, Mark, Cleves, Guelders into a centralized grand duchy or even kingdom of the Rhineland. Over Guelders this nation enjoys some access to the North Sea.
This wasn't fair...!
A surviving or restored kingdom of Kandy was indeed one of the first ways to accomplish the "landlocked island nation" sub-challenge I could think of.
A similar situation can be created in Madagascar if Imerina survives as a separate entity while the rest of the island is colonized and they keep going as separate polities in the decolonization period. A few other options are possible (surviving Mercia has been mentioned, and you can play with places like New Guinea o Borneo) but none seems particularly easy to work into the present day.
A slightly less unrealistic approach could be Nicosia as an autonomous city of sorts. When an equivalent of the OTL's Turkish invasion occurs and effectively ends up partitioning Cyprus, ihe Turks leave it alone, while the rest of the island joins Greece; Nicosia refuses to follow that and stays as an independent city state (still a longshot I know).
Madeleine Birchfield
Banned
An international treaty stipulates that all land one kilometre in from any oceans or seas are now part of the high sea. Thus all countries are landlocked by definition.
Let’s do the United States.
The initial American Revolution fails, but many of the Patriots decide to head out west, heavily settling the area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. A second rebellion, centered on this frontier region, eventually breaks out and wins some limited success. An independent American republic is formed in most of our timeline’s Midwest, Appalachia, and the interior South. While bound to the east and north by a still-British New England, Tidewater region and Canada, and to the south and west by Spanish Florida and Louisiana (though they are eventually inherited by some independent state or states), access to the Great Lakes (not oceans or seas, so this technically fits the stipulations of the OP) and favorable treaties allowing economic access to the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans means that the country escapes most of the drawbacks of being technically landlocked.
The initial American Revolution fails, but many of the Patriots decide to head out west, heavily settling the area between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. A second rebellion, centered on this frontier region, eventually breaks out and wins some limited success. An independent American republic is formed in most of our timeline’s Midwest, Appalachia, and the interior South. While bound to the east and north by a still-British New England, Tidewater region and Canada, and to the south and west by Spanish Florida and Louisiana (though they are eventually inherited by some independent state or states), access to the Great Lakes (not oceans or seas, so this technically fits the stipulations of the OP) and favorable treaties allowing economic access to the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans means that the country escapes most of the drawbacks of being technically landlocked.
South Africa could have a British-controlled coastal area and an independent Boer-controlled interior as the South African Republic.