Exclave
An exclave is a territory that belongs to a political entity but is not connected to it by land (islands are not counted) and is surrounded by other political entities. A good example is the region around the Russian city Kaliningrad. It belongs to the Russian Federation, but is separated from the rest of that country by territory belonging to Lithuania and Poland.
Although both meanings are close, an exclave may not necessarily be an enclave. Kaliningrad is surrounded not by one state only, but by two: Lithuania and Poland and it also borders the Baltic Sea. On the other hand, the Spanish exclave of Llívia is an enclave in France.
Many exclaves today have some sort of ideology to become independent, especially if the exclave is far away from the Mainland.
A much more obscure use means, in medical discussion, a detached part of an organ, as of the pancreas, thyroid, or other gland.
The lists below are of various types of Exclaves that are not Enclaves
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True Exclaves
- The cities of Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish exclaves on the north African Moroccan coast.
- Cabinda, an Angolan exclave and province between Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) and the Republic of Congo.
- The Dubrovnik region of Croatia.
- Nakhchivan, an exclave of Azerbaijan.
- Oecussi-Ambeno is an East Timorese exclave surrounded by Indonesian territory.
- Alaska, an exclave of the United States of America. (Hawaii is not counted because it is made up of islands.)
- In Massachusetts, Norfolk County is not fully contiguous; the towns of Brookline and Cohasset are part of Norfolk County but are surrounded on all sides by other counties.
- In Colorado, Arapahoe County has two exclaves entirely surrounded by Denver County.
- In California, the City and County of San Francisco has an exclave on Alameda Island, across San Francisco Bay and adjoining Alameda County. The exclave came into being as land on the border between the two counties was reclaimed from the Bay to build the Naval Air Station Alameda, now decommissioned. This small piece of open space can only be reached from San Francisco by crossing the Bay Bridge and passing through Oakland and Alameda.
- The westernmost fragment of Kentucky, a piece of land known as the Madrid Bend, is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River, with Missouri on the opposite shore. Road access to the rest of Kentucky is only available by initially going south into Tennessee.
- Carter Lake is a Pottawattamie County, Iowa, city entirely surrounded by Nebraska and the Missouri River and is separated from Pottawattamie County by the river.
- In Louisiana, St. Martin Parish has an exclave which is separated from the main part of the parish by Iberia Parish.
- The Omani territory of Madha is located in the United Arab Emirates, at the Strait of Hormuz. There is an exclave of UAE wholly within Madha called Nahwa, which belongs to Emirate of Sharjah. This is an example of an exclave inside an exclave as well as an enclave within an enclave.
- Temburong is a district in Brunei unconnected to the larger western part of the country, thus it is an exclave of Brunei. The district, like the whole of the country, is a coastal enclave in Malaysia.
- Kokkina is a tiny exclave of the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
"Practical" exclaves
Some territories, while not geographically detached from their motherland, are more easily reached by entering a foreign country, because of their location in a hilly area, or because the only road available enters that foreign place before coming back to the mother country. These territories may be called "practical exclaves," "pene-exclaves" or "quasi-exclaves" and can be found along many borders, particularly those that are not heavily defended. They will only be attached to the motherland via an extremely small or thin slice of land. Here are some examples:
- Point Roberts, Washington is attached by land to a Canadian peninsula of British Columbia; road access to the rest of the United States is only available through British Columbia.
- The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is attached by land to Wisconsin. It can be reached from the Lower Peninsula of Michigan by the 5 mile (8 km) long Mackinac Bridge.
- The Northwest Angle of Minnesota is attached by land to the Canadian province of Manitoba; road access to the rest of the United States is only available through Manitoba.
- The Eastern Shore of Virginia, comprising Accomack County and Northampton County, is located at the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. It can be reached by the Virginia mainland via the 23 mile (37 km) long Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
Historical Exclaves
- East Prussia, a German exclave during the Weimar Republic: it was separated from Germany after World War I, when Poland regained access to the sea. East Prussia later became part of Poland and Russia (see Kaliningrad above).
- Examples of exclaves in subnational units include the traditional counties of Flintshire in Wales and Cromartyshire in Scotland.
- During the division of Germany from 1949 until 1990, several exclaves of West Berlin existed on East German territory, the most problematic of which was the hamlet of Steinstücken.
External links
- Enclaves of the world
- Jan S. Krogh's Geosite
- Article 'Tangled Territories' on European exclaves by Nicky Gardner of hidden europe magazine
- exclave.infobr:Ezklozadur
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