What unprecedented countries could have been created in the 20th century?

The other components of the French Mandate of Syria (Damascus, Aleppo, Druze, and Alawite) could have stayed independent.

I think an independent Alsace-Lorraine could have happened in a slightly different world.
 

nbcman

Donor
The State of Somaliland (former British Somaliland) could have stayed a separate country instead of merging with the Trust Territory of Somaliland (former Italian Somaliland) to create Somalia.
 
Independent Ruthenia 1939-44

There was actually a book on the 1939 single-day existence of "independent Carpatho-Ukraine" (before it was occupied by Hungarian troops) called Republic for a Day. http://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/14069/file.pdf

Alternatively, "Stalin lets Czechoslovakia keep Carpatho-Rus. Eventually the federalization of Czecholslovakia leads to it consisting of three republics--Czech, Slovak, and Carpatho-Rus--all of which become independent with the Velvet Divorce." https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/more-rusyn-speekers.445517/#post-17142565
 
Any number of short-lived states in post-Czarist Russia come to mind.

I would be interested in which?

Armenia and Georgia and Azerbaijan have very long histories. even if Georgia was in more recent times split into different kingdoms

Even the N Caucasus state was, I thought, based on the Circassians, though it included other ethnicities

Ukraine had an 18th century proto-history

The Tatar state in the Crimea obviously went back to the Giray, and the Soviet Tauridia just built upon that

Belarus I guess historically seems to come out of nowhere as an independent state - it had a cultural identity, but not an independent political one
 
Belarus I guess historically seems to come out of nowhere as an independent state - it had a cultural identity, but not an independent political one

Some Belarusian nationalist intellectuals argued that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had really been a proto-Belarusian state...
 
Ukraine had an 18th century proto-history

Unless (like Hrushevsky) you see Kievan Rus' as a proto-Ukrainian state, there was really no pre-20th century precedent for an independent Ukrainian state.

"To the modern mind, which views national sovereignty as a natural condition (although the concept did not gain wide currency until after the French Revolution of 1789), the question arises of why Khmelnytsky did not declare independence for Ukraine. During the uprising there were, in fact, rumors to the effect that he wished to reestablish the "old Rus' principality," and even that he planned to form a separate "Cossack principality." Although such ideas may have been considered, it would have been impossible under the circumstances to realize them. As the interminable wars demonstrated, the Cossacks, although able to administer severe defeats to the Poles, were incapable of permanently preventing the szlachta from launching repeated efforts to regain Ukraine. To assure themselves of a lasting victory over the Poles, Khmelnytsky needed the continuing and reliable support of a major foreign power. The usual price of such aid was acceptance of the overlordship of the ruler who provided it. In the view of the masses, the main thrust of the uprising was to redress socioeconomic ills, and to many in Ukraine the question of whether these problems were to be resolved under their own or under foreign rule was of secondary importance. Finally, in 17th-century Eastern Europe, sovereignty rested not in the people, but in the person of a legitimate (that is, generally recognized) monarch. Because Khmelnytsky, despite his popularity and power, did not possess such legitimacy, he had to find for Ukraine an overlord who did. At issue was not self-rule for Ukraine, for Ukrainians already had gained it. Their goal was to find a monarch who could provide their newly formed autonomous society with legitimacy and protection..." https://books.google.com/books?id=ktyM07I9HXwC&pg=PT130

Basically, for the Ukrainian Cossacks of the seventeenth century, it was a question of getting maximum self-rule under Polish, Russian, or Ottoman overlordship, but complete independence was never really an option. And as for the eighteenth century, the Cossacks gradually lost their struggle to retain maximum autonomy under the Russian tsar, but I don't think independence was ever possible except perhaps as a Swedish vassal state if the Swedes had won the Great Northern War.
 
Sort of out of left field, as a reply, but I remember when the internet was younger and you could search for stuff without modern crap clogging up the search results, I read that somewhere in the 18th century Ukraine (as in someone acting as agent for) lodged money with the Bank of England, and when Ukraine got independence from the USSR they quite fancied getting their hands on this money...
 
Sort of out of left field, as a reply, but I remember when the internet was younger and you could search for stuff without modern crap clogging up the search results, I read that somewhere in the 18th century Ukraine (as in someone acting as agent for) lodged money with the Bank of England, and when Ukraine got independence from the USSR they quite fancied getting their hands on this money...

You're thinking of this: http://shron1.chtyvo.org.ua/Yekelch..._in_the_Age_of_Post-Soviet_Transition__en.pdf "In July 1990, a Ukrainian legislator gained worldwide notoriety by claiming that the Bank of England owed Ukraine sixteen trillion pounds sterling.1 This sum was the interest that had presumably accumulated over 270 years on a barrel of gold allegedly sent to England by an eighteenth-century Ukrainian Cossack leader, Pavlo Polubotok. "Ukraine claims its barrel of gold," read a front-page headline of the Financial Times. The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, Hennadii Udovenko, announced at a press conference in Geneva that "this [was] not a legend" and that Ukraine was serious about reclaiming its gold..." (Note that Ukraine was not even independent yet in 1990, but of course was a charter member of the UN...)
 
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I would be interested in which?

Armenia and Georgia and Azerbaijan have very long histories. even if Georgia was in more recent times split into different kingdoms

Even the N Caucasus state was, I thought, based on the Circassians, though it included other ethnicities

Ukraine had an 18th century proto-history

The Tatar state in the Crimea obviously went back to the Giray, and the Soviet Tauridia just built upon that

Belarus I guess historically seems to come out of nowhere as an independent state - it had a cultural identity, but not an independent political one

I had in mind things more like the Far Eastern Republic and Priamur. There's a long list of them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Post–Russian_Empire_states
 
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