One of the unlikeliest complexes of enclaves and exclaves in the world is to be found on the Belgian-Dutch border, and is centred on Baarle. This town, while surrounded entirely by Dutch territory, consists of two separate administrative units, one of which is the Dutch commune of Baarle-Nassau, the other being the Belgian commune of Baarle-Hertog.For an exhaustive history, please visit this page of the Buffalo Ontology Site.
That same story, more succinctly: here…
The Belgian-Dutch border was established in the Maastricht Treaty of 1843, which mostly confirmed boundaries which were a few centuries old (as the separation of Belgium and the Netherlands has its origin in the religious wars of the 16th century). In the area around Baarle, it proved impossible to reach a definitive agreement. Instead, both governments opted to allocate nationality separately to each of the 5.732 parcels of land in the 50 km between border posts 214 and 215.
These parcels ‘coagulated’ into a veritable archipelago of 20-odd Belgian exclaves in and around Baarle. In turn, some of these Belgian exclaves completely surround pieces of Dutch territory. Deliciously complicating this picture is a small enclave of Baarle-Nassau situated entirely within Belgium proper – and there’s even a Belgian parcel within a Dutch parcel within a Belgian enclave, which in turn is surrounded entirely by Dutch territory…
Numerous attempts have been made throughout the centuries to (literally) rectify the situation, but they have obviously all failed – leaving the double entity of Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog with some absurd folklore.
- As each house is deemed to pay taxes in the country where its front door is located, it is an old tradition in Baarle to move the front door some meters if that is profitable for the taxes, especially for shops.
- The valley of the river Merkske is divided between both villages/kingdoms. This made it impossible for the re-allotment and land-improvement people to do there a lot of harm, as happened elsewhere. So this is now one of the ecologically richest areas in the whole region.
- The village Baarle attracts a lot of tourists. To make the enclaves visible for the visitor, the little plates with the house numbers are made to look different: ovals with the Belgian colours and rectangles with Dutch colours.
This map taken from this page of previously mentioned website. Belgian territory marked red. Dutch territory is white.
Enclaves! Nice. Enclaves inside enclaves! Nicer.
:-)
Maybe you could also look into these tiny neutral zones / enclaves around Kuwait as well as that small area (name eludes me) disputed among Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan… Chunks of oil-rich desert.
What about irredentist maps of the Balkans? Some can be found in the Perry-Castaneda collection, too.
(Great blog, I have used a post to link to it, and so on!)
:-)
Comment by Loxias — December 12, 2006 @ 9:18 pm
Dear strangemaps,
I recently discovered your site and I love it…
I’m Belgian and although history is not my cup of tea, strangemaps thought me very interesting things about my own country. Thank you for that!
Is there a link between the strangemaps atuthor(s) and Belgium?
Comment by Maarten — December 13, 2006 @ 3:23 am
Presumably this hasn’t been sorted out because Belgium and the Netherlands have such a close relationship that Baarle can still be administered without too much difficulty, and this bizarre border is now valuable enough as a piece of history/tourist attraction to be worth preserving.
However, on a similar theme:
http://geosite.jankrogh.com/enklaver/CoochBehar_Annotated.jpg
East Pakistan has since become Bangladesh, but apparently the shape of the border is unchanged. Given the relevant countries’ legendary reputation for bureaucratic complexity and inefficiency, and the fact that this border is policed on both sides, such a border can’t be good for local residents.
Lovely blog, by the way.
Comment by Colin Reid — December 13, 2006 @ 10:27 pm
Awesome website! I’m a cultural geographer and will link this to my site and refer to it in classes. Regarding enclaves, the Bangladesh-India border attains the highest level of complexity for enclaves. A strange anomaly I haven’t found anywhere but in a recent (good quality) travel book, the name of which I can’t remember, is a French cemetery in Antioch, Turkey,that is still sovereign French territory. I’m wondering if such little patches of land have true sovereignty, and how one finds more about them. Nano-enclaves?
Also, you might consider featuring “The Pentagon’s New Map”, which is apparently guiding at least some of US foreign policy. Also, a famous map called something like “The view from New York” which presents the rest of the US from a Manhattanite’s geographically-challenged viewpoint.
Comment by Mark Bonta — December 14, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
@everyone
thank you for your kind comments!
@loxias, colin reid & mark bonta
thanks for your suggestions, which i value greatly as i do all other strange maps pointed out by people commenting on this blog. i will include as many of them as possible at some point, but i don’t know when, as i enjoy scouring the net for maps myself too much…
@maarten
i’m quite familiar with belgium, which is an interesting country for several reasons, one of which is that it has an interesting border history, being the crossroads of several cultures. and then there’s the beer, of course.
@mark bonta
the last time i was mentioned in class, i was in it and i got detention. so i definitely consider your mentioning me a promotion. thanks!
Comment by strangemaps — December 14, 2006 @ 9:28 pm
Wikipedia: list of enclaves and exclaves
Comment by Anton Sherwood — December 15, 2006 @ 7:47 pm
Wow. Nice blog.
Funny to mention is that the Belgian part of Baarle-Nassau had stores that advertised that they were open on Sundays – which was allowed in Belgium, but not in the Netherlands.
If you visit the town today, you can see the borders marked on the streets.
Comment by maarten — January 6, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
I regularly ride my racing bike over the bike path between Turnhout (Belgium) and Tilburg (Netherlands). It’s an old rail track, converted into a great bike path, called Bels Lijntje’ (Belgian Line).
Approxemately in the middle of the 33 km long trip you’re passing trhough both Baarles (Nassau and Hertog), where they’ve painted white lines on the bike path on every border crossing. I’ve lost count, but in a few kilometers you pass a lot of those enclave borders, marked either NL of BE on one side of the line.
One more thing: there’s a café in Baarle with a line drwan over the billiard table. Yep, another border!
Now go to my blog, click ‘MyGoogleMap’ on top and click the Bagy Maggy Marker. In oktober 1944 the B24 crashed in a long Dutch tongue of land stretched into Belgium, a few miles long, a couple of hundred meters wide.
Of course the German-Allies border in oktober ‘44 is another story, but when you move my GoogleMap a few miles east and set the map on ‘Hybrid you will see all the strange borders around the two Baarles.
http://krijnen.com/googlemaps.shtml
Enjoy, as I do enjoying StrangeMaps!
Comment by leon — January 18, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Apart from the enclaves of Baarle and the former Neutral Moresnet, about which StrangeMaps has published interesting contributions, there is a third cartographical anomaly concerning Belgium’s borders: the so-called Vennbahn, a – now no longer used – railway track over which Belgium has sovereignty but which runs through German territory. Would be interesting to find some maps about it!
Comment by Maarten — February 3, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
Which reminds me that one of the odder bit of history along the Dutch-Belgian border was armed bands of butter smugglers, using armoured cars.
Combined with this place, we seem to have all the elements of farce.
Comment by Dave Bell — March 4, 2007 @ 12:00 pm
Oh yes, butter smugglers were a staple of fifties Dutch boy’s adventure stories.
Comment by Martin Wisse — March 5, 2007 @ 11:09 am
In my rallying travels round Belgium in the 1980s I was told that a small area at the confluence of Belgium, Luxembourg and France belonged to neither country. Love to see a true map of that! And a main road bordered by Luxembourg on one side and Belgium on the other is lined with petrol stations and duty free shops on the Lux side while the Belgian side has rows of dark gloomy houses. Is this still the same now the EC has taken over?
Comment by Martin Jubb — March 8, 2007 @ 4:19 am
[...] Mai pe larg (în engleză): strange maps [...]
Pingback by Emigrarea cea mai simplă - Diaspora - Nicăieri nu-i ca acasă — March 8, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
Are house-numbers consistent in Baarle?
Comment by Anton Sherwood — September 13, 2007 @ 5:41 am
[...] Geografía, historia, mapas y fotos. Baarle Digital. Información sobre el pueblo. Más mapas. Strange maps – The enclaves of Baarle. Historia de Baarle, con mapas y fotografías. Más [...]
Pingback by Baarle, el pueblo de las mil fronteras « Fronteras — January 8, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
@12 Martin Jubb:
This town is called Martelange, at the border between Luxembourg and Belgium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martelange
Comment by ZZ Down — March 10, 2008 @ 7:03 am
Responding to a whole load of points here: I can’t imagine France has anything more than technical sovereignty over a cemetery in Turkey, but but the world’s smallest enclave must be an embassy somewhere, as embassies are technically considered to belong to the country they represent. Indeed, since some countries share embassies where their interests are not sufficient to justify a whole building to themselves, there may be some embassy-enclaves that consist of little more than a desk and a filing cabinet!
>9. There is a similar railway, still running, from one Polish town to another over Ukrainian (formerly Soviet) territory. It makes no stops on the Ukrainian side of the border, and during the ’80s when the Solidarity movement was active in Poland, armed Soviet guards rode on the train. They once halted it in the middle of nowhere – keeping it locked of course – when Solidarity pamphlets were flushed out of the carriage toilet!
>10.Pre-war, there was a similar trade in smuggled sacharine between Austria and Hungary.
Comment by Cudzoziemiec — March 11, 2008 @ 10:30 am
There was apparently a murder there recently with cross-border complications:
http://www.24oranges.nl/2008/02/26/murder-on-the-border/
Comment by Stevis — March 13, 2008 @ 2:31 am
[...] historia la encontré en 24 Oranges vía un comentario de Strange Maps, y se puede leer, en francés, en [...]
Pingback by Asesinato en la frontera « Fronteras — March 22, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
thanks.
Comment by hero — October 15, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
Does anyone know if there is one, or more, radio transmitter/s located in Baarle-Hertog and/or Baarle-Nassau?
Comment by Jansson Sweden — November 16, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
Nice article ! Some pictures of the border at Baarle can be found here:
http://www.bordermadness.org/content/baarle-nassau-baarle-hertog
Comment by Sven — January 5, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
Are these the only known cases of enclaves inside enclaves?
Comment by DP — April 1, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
thanks alot
Comment by Tony — May 4, 2009 @ 2:29 am
thanks for this map
good
luck
Comment by Solomon — May 11, 2009 @ 7:15 am
merci
Comment by aspicco . — May 17, 2009 @ 4:51 am
teşekkür ederim
Comment by yory — June 12, 2009 @ 8:14 pm
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 3:51 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 6:41 am