Put One Foot Wrong in Baarle and You’ve Left the Country | Hacker News Reader

Put One Foot Wrong in Baarle and You’ve Left the Country

nytimes.com

109 pointse15ctr0n33 comments

Another interesting piece of Enclave-Exclave history recently came to an end when Bangladesh and India exchanged some territory to "simplify" a part of their border [1]. It also featured the worlds only 3rd order enclave, i.e. a piece of Indian land in a Bangladeshi enclave, in an Indian enclave.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Bangladesh_encla...

> It also featured the worlds only 3rd order enclave, i.e. a piece of Indian land in a Bangladeshi enclave, in an Indian enclave.

If you read the article, there are a few such places in Baarre too. So that enclave from Bangladesh couldn't be the "worlds only 3rd order enclave".

Baarre has second-order enclaves: Dutch-inside-Belgian-inside-Dutch. Dahala Khagrabari (#51) was Indian-inside-Bangladeshi-inside-Indian-inside-Bangladeshi.

Luckily, the borders in this case are porous enough that it doesn't seem like a big issue. In one case in North America [1] it lead to some property owners being essentially under house arrest during the hours that the border crossings are closed, and at least one real arrest.

1: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-complica...

It's hard to understand in these sorts of situations why an exchange of land isn't made. Especially in the case of Estcourt Station, where there are zero year-round residents, and the cost of maintaining this is a staffed border station, postal service, and potential police service.

I know countries generally get iffy about giving up borders, but why would the US want to keep this? Are they obligated to because someone owns land there? It feels like at least some sort of agreement to place that small parcel of land under the management of the Canadian authorities or something would save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.

The problem isn't completely innocuous stuff like this: the problem is setting a precedent when it comes to other international disputes, something the other country can point at once they go to the appropriate supra-national court. Establishing precedents in international scenarios can be pretty risky.

So you establish a treaty in which the parcel of land in question is sold for some nominal figure. That wouldn't be establishing a new precedent, such purchases have happened already.

Pretty much. The US and Canada aren't going to go to war over Machias Seal Island [1] for example although there are some (relatively minor) competing interests related to lobstering. But if one side or the other backs down on this, someday there will be an important dispute with a fact pattern that looks a lot like the unimportant one.

Keeping a border patrol station and post office open is pretty cheap insurance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machias_Seal_Island

I don't understand how me giving you a gift establishes a precedent for you to unilaterally take my stuff.

How is this a court-relevant precedent? And for what court exactly? We're talking about giving up land voluntarily because it costs too much. There's plenty of precedent for countries giving up land in various ways.

I wonder what it feels like to know that your job is 100% completely useless, especially for police/security people who probably had some notion, at some point, of protecting people. Do you get depressed? Fatalistic? Just say "eh, it's a living"? Or do you construct elaborate justifications for why stopping people crossing the street after 5pm actually matters?

I suspect it's the latter, given that someone was apparently imprisoned for a month for the crime of going to the gas station after hours. Someone with a badge and a gun actually, consciously decided that that was vital to the security of the United States. That's depressing in itself.

Reminds me of "The City and the City" in which the two countries occupy the same space but are bound by law to pretend the other doesn't exist. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4703581-the-city-the-city

West Germany had the official stance that only one Germany existed, and it was them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_mandate

This resulted in all kinds of awkwardness, because of course both German states had to interact in practice (just think of public utilities of split Berlin), but somehow didn't want to set a precendent proving the other a) existed and b) was legitimate.

Fabulous book.

I saw it as a metaphor for those things in our cities we choose not to see, e.g. poverty and homelessness.

I saw that as the metaphor as well, but I wished he developed it more in that direction. Considering how amazing it could be as a political message, it feels incomplete that he didn't deal with that explicitly at all. It's almost like he was trying too hard to avoid putting anything political in it.

Overall, I loved the theme, setting, language, but didn't get much out of the plot. That's mostly how I've felt about all the Mieville books I've read so far. (With the exception of The Scar which was delicious in every aspect.) I keep reading them because I love every sentence, page, chapter, but I don't expect the whole to ultimately satisfy.

I suspect its part of the conceit that it's unclear whether its allegorical about any particular thing. Similarly, in a scene or two it gets very close to being a fantasy novel, but never settles the question. Mieville seems like the kind of author more pleased with that kind of idea-trickery than making a mundane worldly point explicit.

Sounds like a certain US ally in the Middle East!

This reminds me of a fantastic book, "The City & the City," by China Mieville. The setting is something like this, where a city that should be whole is split by two countries. Here, it is illegal to look across the border, even if you are looking at a car driving down what would normally be the same street.

I never considered that something similar (albeit simpler) existed in real life. Very cool, thanks for sharing!

There are still a few towns divided between Portugal and Spain, including one which has the smallest international bridge in the world[1] - made of wood and just 6 meters (20ft) in length!

And there's an extra catch: unlike the Netherlands and Belgium, the countries in this case have different timezones, so you're not just out of the country, you're also one hour later/earlier.

[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_(El_Marco)#/media/File:M...

Tom Scott has a great short little video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE93J33SfHY

It was interesting him saying the idea of national boundaries with sovereignty was kind of invented in the Peace of Westphalia. That seems to be fading a bit with transnational organisations like the EU. I'm wondering what will happen to the UK Eire border now we're supposed to be Brexiting.

This article on the history and future of nation-states from New Scientist is from 2014, so it doesn't cover Brexit, but you may find it interesting: "End of nations: Is there an alternative to countries?"[1]

[1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329850-600-end-of-n...

This is not so weird, actually. The border between France and Germany goes through a roundabout between German Saarbrücken and French Forbach[0]. The French city of Strasbourg has a German suburb called Kehl. The German city of Görlitz and the Polish one of Zgorzelec are effectively one[2]. Their names are actually identical, just spelled using German and Polish rules, respectively. You might think that only provincial cities are like this, but Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, borders both Austria and Hungary[3]. Driving from Bratislava to Vienna takes less than an hour.

0: https://www.google.no/maps/@49.2043979,6.9562696,17.39z?hl=e... 1: https://www.google.no/maps/@48.574774,7.7601104,10719m/data=... 2: https://www.google.no/maps/@51.1451572,14.9916637,6742m/data... 3: https://www.google.no/maps/@47.9059776,17.2954767,7.98z?hl=e...

Berlin before unification, before the wall went up.

That almost sounds like Tamarian! ;)

Another enclave complex in Europe was created when a German railway line was handed over to Belgium after World War I[1]. Parts of Germany ended up on the wrong side of the tracks[2]..

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vennbahn

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6037104,6.2261342,12.25z

This is a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC52l4Jdn-I

Archive link for folks who don't have cookies enabled. http://archive.is/U1gxk

This is a good reminder of how a ridiculous and outdated concept borders are.

How exactly are they outdated? It's two different physical powers going "Instead of battle to the death, how about we reach a deal covering who controls what?". That sounds better than the alternative to me.

I should learn that one needs to expand thoughts before posting on HN: shortcuts are not allowed and will get fingertwitch-downvoted instantly.

Borders are outdated, because a) fundamentally we are all the same and in the grand scheme of things (think global warming, alien civilizations, space) who "controls" what piece of dirt doesn't matter at all, and b) the days of territorial invasions are over: these days it simply doesn't make economic sense to invade and "control" territory — with the inevitable resistance you can't possibly pull out more value out of it than you invested into invading it.

Borders are a concept that, like countries, is very attractive to people who profit from it. Politicians want to have something they can rule, hence borders. But as the article nicely shows, this concept makes no practical sense whatsoever these days.

When were borders not outdated?

Well, they did make sense back until (and including) the industrial age, when it made economic sense to invade territory, and either start using local factories or just loot machinery and bring it back to the home country.

But that time is gone, there is nothing you could loot right now that could justify the cost of an invasion.

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