“There’s a strangely consistent psychological profile that fits Guys Who Set Up Countries. Dead dad, raised by a doting mum, serially unfaithful, stint in the army or navy, writer or journalist, can’t be trusted with money, fantasist.”
Have you ever wished you could visit a country that’s no longer on the map? Perhaps a nation that only existed for a short period of time, or even only a matter of days? Well, you can visit the nation in its current form, or you can read a brief history of it in Gideon Defoe’s An Atlas of Extinct Countries.
A collection of 48 stories, An Atlas of Extinct Countries provides an entertaining analysis of how these countries came to exist and falter. Some of the nations will be familiar to readers, such as the Republic of Texas and Yugoslavia, while others may be a surprising introduction, like The Free State of Bottleneck. Either way, Defoe gives readers a humorous glimpse of these countries to inspire intrigue.
The introduction succinctly sets this book up: “These are the obituaries of the nations that fell off the map. The polite way of writing an obituary is: dwell on the good bits, gloss over the embarrassing stuff. A book about dead nations can’t really do that, because it’s impossible to skip the embarrassing stuff.” And from there, Gideon continues to unload wonderful tidbits of stupidity from rulers of the failed nations.
The countries are separated into sections relating to their founding and downfall. There’s Chancers & Crackpots, many of which were nations that existed for a while but then had really stupid rulers, like Bavaria and Ludwig II and “his big hair”, though he did appreciate funding artistic performances (even if he was the only audience member). There’s Mistakes & Micronations, some of which only existed because of really bad maps like the Free State of Bottleneck that lasted for four years after WWI because drawing circles on a map doesn’t cover all the land being divided. Others in this section were poorly planned and full of impossible promises of a new home, like New Caledonia and its swampy land and malaria (a large quantity of whisky for the new inhabitants probably didn’t help).
Then there’s Lies & Lost Kingdoms, which includes the Great Republic of Rough and Ready, a goldmining town in California that didn’t like taxes but folded when residents couldn’t buy alcohol to celebrate the Fourth of July because the US territory refused to sell goods to “foreigners.” The section also includes countries that were created through deception — swindlers like Gregor MacGregor, who made up a country in Central America and convinced people to invest and move to the land that he did not have any right to. Following the lies are tales of the lost kingdoms like Sikkim, which disappeared after centuries because it was stuck with India as its neighbor as the latter gained independence. In the Puppets & Political Footballs section, readers find more recent extinct nations, many of which were created from treaties and invasions likes Formosa and Manchukuo under Japanese rule, or land grabs like the 10 years of the Republic of Texas.
The story of each nation begins with a fact sheet of years of existence, approximate population, language(s), currency, and cause of death. There’s also an approximate historical map and a quick paragraph summary leading into the slightly longer story. There’s also a what3words geocoding for each country rather than sets of coordinates (the three words can also be entertaining, as it is with The Great Republic of Rough and Ready located at SITUATED.DISPLAYING.INDECISION.
I have to admit that I only knew of a handful of these countries before opening the book. And the details included about those nations were new to me. During my time in China, I recall learning a bit about the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace and its founding based on a self-proclaimed prophet of God; I did not, however, learn that so many millions of people died as a result of the ensuing war. There’s also a bit about the outrageous customs of Formosa (Taiwan) that never existed — it was a great way for early 18th-century travel writers to sell books based on travels that never happened, long before AI bots.
While there are some laugh-out-loud tales of incompetent rulers and their downfalls, there are also depressing stories of slavery and murder, usually at the hands of European colonizers, as was the case in Dahomey. More despicable was Leopold’s rule of the Congo Free State, which offended even the British. Obviously, not everything about a failed nation can be entertaining.
An Atlas of Extinct Countries is a quick read — I was halfway through it by the time I arrived in Cuba. Each story is about 500 words, which is great for readers who can’t fully focus on larger works for literature while seated in economy.
