Balkanize Me / Real Life

• The term stems from the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire's territories in the Balkans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Ottomans actually had been losing European territories since the 17th century, following the failure of the Siege of Vienna, but the Balkan fragmentation was notable because, rather than joining fellow Christian European empires (as was the norm before then), the seceded territories formed their own countries and started to fight among each other.
  • After the Greek war of independence, which lasted nearly a decade, the country gained full independence in 1830. It claimed more territories from its former colonizer in 1881 and 1912 (the First Balkan War)
  • The Treaty of Berlin in 1878 severely decimated the Balkan possessions, with Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro, all previously being Ottoman vassals (at least nominally), severing ties with the Ottomans for good.
  • 1908 saw the loss of Bulgaria, which declared independence, and Bosnia, which was formally annexed by the Austro-Hungarians (they had been de facto controlling Bosnia since 1878).
  • Finally, the Ottomans lost nearly all of its European possessions in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, which saw Macedonia, Albania, and Western Thrace being gobbled up by the so-called Balkan League. The League soon clashed over the newly-acquired possessions, something that further ignited World War I just a year later. In the end, the territories were mostly split up and annexed by Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia, while Albania was declared independent at Italy's insistence.
• This also happened to the Ottomans' archrival, the Habsburg Empire, in mostly the same region.
  • Austria lost Lombardy-Venetia to Italy during its crusade to unite the Italian people.
  • Nationalist pressures forced Austria to grant autonomy to Hungary, creating the Austro-Hungarian Empire and dividing the realm between Cisleithania (Austria) and Transleithania (Hungary).
  • Then after World War I, Croatia, Bosnia, and Slovenia seceded and joined up with Montenegro and Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia).
  • The German territories became part of Austria.
  • Bohemia and Moravia left with Slovakia to form Czechoslovakia.
  • Hungary became independent, but lost territories to neighboring countries.
  • Also, Krakiv and Lviv joined the rest of newly-independent Poland (though the latter would become part of Ukraine after WWII) and Transylvania joined with Romania (which at the time also included most of modern-day Moldova and the small bit of Ukraine to its south).
• After Josip Broz Tito's death, ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia brought a more modern meaning to the term (as in through ethnic lines). Eventually, during Hole in Flag, Yugoslavia broke up in an extremely messy manner. As of 2006, there are six different countries which formally rose from its ashes: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. In 2008, another balkanization occurred in Serbia: Kosovo, though half of the world has yet to recognize it.^note After the breakup, the country called Macedonia had a messy dispute with Greece for nearly 30 years over its name (thankfully, no war resulted from it); Greece has a historic region of the same name, and didn't like another country claiming that name. The two countries finally settled the dispute in 2019. The Slavic republic renounced any potential territorial claims against Greece (not that it seriously made them anyway), and Greece signed off on the new name of North Macedonia.
  • The Daily Show publication America (The Book) suggests that "today, each resident [of former Yugoslavia] lives in the Independent Republic of Himself".
• Then there was the breakup of the Spanish colonial empire:
  • The Viceroyalty of New Spain, which encompassed Mexico, Central America, The Caribbean, and the Philippines, broke up in 1821 when Mexico declared independence, leaving the West and East Indies in Spain's hands. Afterwards:
    • The Mexican Empire endured for two years before fragmenting. It was much larger than Mexico today; barring the territories that were annexed by the United States after the Mexican-American War, it also included most of Central America except for Panama. After the monarchy was abolished, the Central American territories split off to form the Federal Republic of Central America. This new state, in turn, lasted until 1841 before breaking up again into the five modern countries: Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
    • Meanwhile, in the Spanish West Indies, the Dominican Republic declared independence in 1821, got re-annexed by Spain in 1861, and finally achieved full sovereignty in 1865. The rest of the colony, Cuba and Puerto Rico, were lost to The United States after the Spanish-American War in 1898. The former became independent in 1902, while Puerto Rico is still a US territory.
    • The Spanish East Indies was also annexed by the United States after the Spanish-American War. The Philippines achieved independence in 1946, while the rest (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) remain US territories.
  • The Viceroyalty of Peru, which encompassed South America and Panama, was reorganized in 1717 to form New Granada and again in 1776 to form Río de la Plata. From then on:
    • The Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata was the first to break away, with Paraguay seceding in 1811, followed by the rest in 1825, forming Bolivia and the United Provinces of Río de la Plata. The latter balkanized again in 1828 after a war with Brazil, forming Argentina and Uruguay.
    • Chile broke away from the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1818 after its war of independence. Peru itself achieved independence from Spain in 1824.
    • New Granada achieved independence in 1819 as a united country called Gran Colombia under the presidency of Simón Bolívar. Dissension immediately sprung up, however, and in 1831 (within Bolívar's time) the country broke up, forming Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada. The last of these later experienced balkanization of its own in 1903 to form Colombia and Panama.
• The Partition of India split The Raj along religious lines: a Hindu-majority country (India) and a Muslim-majority one (Pakistan). In 1971, Pakistan split off again, this time along ethnic lines: Bengali-majority (Bangladesh) and the rest (Pakistan).
• An inversion: after the World Wars, the European powers began decolonizing their possessions in Africa and The Middle East. Rather than splitting up their holdings by former tribal, ethnic, or religious lines, the new countries were mostly formed from the borders between holdings by different European powers, resulting in countries where different groups who spent most of their history fighting each other suddenly having to cooperate in governing a fledgling nation.
  • The division of the Middle East by the Allies after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire caused shockwaves which still resonate to this day. After the Ottoman Empire was officially dissolved at Versailles, the Treaty of Sevres split the Ottoman territories in the Middle East along the Sykes-Picot line, dividing the area into two zones (one being Iraq, Jordan, and Mandatory Palestine, and the other being Lebanon and Syria), which were to be under European colonial rule before being eventually granted independence. Syria was formed into one territory even though it contained significant Alawi and Druze minorities who feared persecution from the Muslim majority, Iraq was united even though a quarter of the population were non-Arabs, and return of the Jewish People from the diaspora led to tension and conflict in the Palestinian Mandate. Needless to say, it turned into a recipe for disaster. Even Lebanon, which was specially carved by the French to ensure that conflict at least didn't happen to its Catholic majority, eventually succumbed to spillover from its neighboring states.
• Since Alexander the Great left no heir and no instructions for a regency (and his only son Alexander IV born after his death was quickly assassinated), his Macedonian Empire fractured after his death in 323 BC. Once the dust cleared (after forty years), it was divided among his generals: Macedon (Cassander / Alexander's native Greece), the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Ptolemy I Soter / modern-day Egypt and southern Turkey), the Seleucid Empire (Seleucus I Nicator / modern-day Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and eastern Turkey), and the Kingdom of Pergamon (Lysimachus / modern-day Bulgaria, eastern Greece and western Turkey).
• The theme of a Space-Filling Empire's decay resulting into anarchy and division into fragmented interwarring states is one of the most recognizable patterns throughout history. The Persian Empire (several times from classical antiquity to early modern times), The Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, The Byzantine Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, The British Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire -– the list can go on......
• In China, it's considered the "Mandate of Heaven" that eventually a dynasty will become corrupt, break down into warring states, and be reunified into a new dynasty due to the cycle repeating itself for 4000 years. This was of course very convenient, as it both gave justification for imperial rule (Heaven favors this person to run the country) while also justifying revolt and rebellion through explaining the corruption that dynasties inevitably suffer over time. This historical pattern happened to them so frequently that it became constitutional. Summed up in the opening line to Romance of the Three Kingdoms: "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."
  • After the fall the Qing dynasty, China fell into a prolonged civil war that lasted until 1949. During these chaotic years, many states sprung up, some of them backed by foreign powers. These included Tibet and Mongolia (1912), Manchukuo (1932), and East Turkestan (1933 and 1944). By the time the war ended, the communists had taken over mainland China and reintegrated Manchukuo and East Turkestan, also re-annexing Tibet in 1951. However, thanks to US intervention, they were prevented from conquering Taiwan, where the previous government had fled, therefore de facto creating two Chinas: the People's Republic of China (mainland) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). On the other hand, Mongolia remained independent as a result of Soviet intervention and became a sovereign country after the Hole in Flag.
• Russia has a few of this in its history:
  • The fall of the Russian Empire during World War I caused many peripheral states to split off, including the Baltic states, Finland, Moldova, Ukraine, the Southern Caucasus, and Central Asia. Many of these were quickly reintegrated by the Soviet Union, but the Baltic states remained independent and Moldova was subsumed by Romania during most of the interwar era (they finally fell to the USSR in 1940), while Finland flat-out escaped any annexation.
  • In a somewhat logical conclusion of the events of Mikhail Gorbachev's reign, the Soviet Union balkanized itself in 1991. Within the span of a few years, 15 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and of course Russia itself) rose from the ashes of the Soviet Union. By the time the Soviet Red Banner was lowered from the Kremlin on Christmas 1991, the only place where the Soviet Union still existed was within the building's own halls.
• Some of the post-Soviet states later balkanized on their own; Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia; Transnistria from Moldova; Crimea from Ukraine (formerly part of Russia, transferred to the Ukrainian SSR in The '50s, attempted to break away in 1993/1994, reintegrated into Ukraine and given status as an Autonomous Republic and then annexed by Russia after a referendum in 2014), and Artsakh from Azerbaijan. As the 2008 South Ossetian war has shown, a large number of these separations have been violent. Ironically enough, most of these further balkanizations have been under the auspices of Russia in order to weaken the states that broke away, but also with a plausible reason –- most such territories are populated by minority ethnic groups and were semi-autonomous regions during the Soviet era, but lost the privilege once assimilated into the new republics. As is the case with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, their local populations were willing to fight to retain autonomy. Russia's autonomous oblasts retain their status, perhaps a lesson learned from the infighting within the breakaway states.
• Czechoslovakia followed the USSR's and Yugoslavia's example, splitting into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Thankfully, this split was nonviolent, being dubbed the "Velvet Divorce" (a shout-out to the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia's phase of "Hole in Flag").
• Germany, to varying degrees in history. It spent several centuries as at least 300 states under one theoretical state, which decreased to around 20, both legally and in practice (though bound in an alliance), followed by a shrinking number until there were two left (as far as Germans of the time saw it). After a short period of unification (75 years), it was split in two during the Cold War, then reunified in 1990 (though Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Austria, and German speaking parts of Switzerland, France, Italy, Belgium and Denmark remain outside Germany).
  • A certain secessionist sentiment remains, however, in modern Germany as well. Bavaria, which was historically an autonomous kingdom until the rise of Weimar Germany, currently enjoys political semi-autonomy inside the German Federation as the "Bavarian Free State" (having, among other things, its own constitution), which (moderately) popularised the idea of an independent Bavarian Republic outside the federation and the EU (whereas others would even get back the monarchy too); at least one political party has been pushing this agenda for the better half of a century.
• Austria nearly experienced German-style balkanization in the aftermath of World War II. Like Germany, it was fractured into four zones occupied by the Allied Powers (France got Vorarlberg and most of Tyrol; Britain got Carinthia, Styria, and the remaining parts of Tyrol; the US got Salzburg and most of Upper Austria; and the Soviet Union got the rest of Upper Austria plus Burgenland and Lower Austria, which surrounds Vienna, a city that, like Berlin, was itself carved into four separate zones controlled by the Allies). Unlike Germany, however, the arrangements only lasted until 1955, when the Soviets agreed to grant Austria independence as a unified country on the condition that it will never ever join NATO, a status quo that remains to this day.
• In contrast to Germany, the United States categorically refused to do this to Japan following World War II. It can even be construed that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were partly done to make Japan surrender as swiftly as possible before the Soviets could step in and partition the country like they did to Germany. Which turned out to be a good idea, as the Soviets did have plans to claim more Japanese territory beyond the previous-agreed treaty to only occupy North Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.
• Following the death of Prince Bolesław III in 1138, Poland was divided among his sons and over the next two centuries fractured into smaller princedoms. It was not until 1320 that the major regions were reunited under a single ruler. Later on, the entire Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would be divided up between Prussia, Austria and Russia during the three Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795. Poland and Lithuania would not be sovereign nations again until after World War I, 123 years later. Some of the affected regions would not become part of Poland again until after World War II, and some parts are still owned by other nations (for instance, the southeast portion of the former Commonwealth is now part of independent Ukraine).
• After Genghis Khan's death, the Mongol Empire split into the Chagatai Khanate (Central Asia), the Khanate of the Golden Horde (Russia and Kazakhstan), the Ilkhanate (Persia westward to Turkey), and the Yuan (China and modern Mongolia).
• Early in the 20th century, Ireland successfully gained independence in a bloody but brief war, only for it to be divided in 1922 between the Catholic-dominated 26-county Southern Ireland (later the Irish Free State, and then simply Ireland) and the Protestant-dominated six-county Northern Ireland.^note  Only two of Northern Ireland's traditional counties — Down and Antrim — have Protestant majorities today. The other four — Armagh, Derry/Londonderry, Fermanagh, and Tyrone — have Catholic majorities (and the latter two had Catholic majorities even in 1922). On the other hand, Counties Antrim and Down are by far the most populous in Northern Ireland (together holding about 63.5% of the entire population of the region), and Protestants retain a bare plurality in Northern Ireland as a whole (possibly slightly larger when persons refusing to identify have to choose). The messy nature of the split eventually led to The Troubles, a 30-year low-level civil war in Northern Ireland over the matter of whether or not to reunite the two Irelands. The latter's situation looks to be slowly inverting with recent power-sharing agreements, though the 2016 Brexit vote might complicate matters.^note Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU by a sizeable margin, whereas England leaned towards leaving the EU.
• Korea, which had been a united country for over a millennia, experienced this trope due to Western intervention. After World War II, the peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel north, with the northern and southern zones falling into the spheres of Soviet and American influence, respectively. After five years, the north decided to reunify the peninsula and invaded the south, beginning The Korean War, which ended in a stalemate and an unofficial armistice. The two are still divided today, as the communist, totalitarian Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the capitalist, democratic Republic of Korea. Unlike many examples though, they have a common language, culture, and heritage; the divide is solely political.
• When Vietnam achieved independence in 1955, it went through the Korea path, being divided into a northern Soviet-influenced communist North Vietnam and southern American-influenced capitalist South Vietnam. Unlike Korea, the north went to the guerrilla path immediately after, commencing the horror that was the Vietnam War. After 20 years, Vietnam became one again under communist rule, defying Korea's fate.
• Sentiment for the secession of majority Francophone Quebec from Canada ebbs and wanes, culminating in a referendum in 1995 where secession lost by a small margin.
  • One possibility suggested during the 1995 referendum was that parts of Quebec that were against secession^note  For reference, these areas include parts of the province France never controlled before 1763 -– the far north and West (where First Nations are far more likely to speak English than French) and the Loyalist-settled (but now majority Francophone) towns of the far southeast near the US border; also the Anglophone enclaves within Montreal and Hull, could split off from an independent Quebec and either form their own nations or more likely merge back into Canada.
    • The First Nations of Quebec have said that they hold their lands under treaty with the Queen, and know nothing of any "Republic of Quebec", and thus if Quebec secedes from Canada, they'll secede from Quebec.
  • Quebec wasn't the first to attempt secession. Nova Scotia seemed to move to that direction in the first provincial election right after Confederation even occurred. British Columbia and western Alberta also mulled secession at the same time as Quebec. Newfoundland, the last province brought into the fold, has had a recent Premier who made overtures of secession. Even provinces came close to this at different times, such as creating a Province out of northern Ontario and dividing the Northwest Territories (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Nunavut were all carved out of the Northwest Territories).
  • Saskatchewan and Alberta went through a phase of this in the early 1980s, with several secessionist parties, such as the Unionist party (Who wanted to join the US) and the Western Canada Concept (who wanted to make a new country from the western provinces and the territories.). The latter recently got semi-revived with the creation of the Western Bloc Party, but they're getting very little traction, coming in 3rd from last in the most recent election.
• Several political parties in Belgium want to split the country up between Dutch-speaking Flanders and Francophone Wallonia. Flemish nationalist party N-VA (the New Flemish Alliance) became the largest party in Parliament in the 2010 elections, leading to cabinet formation negotiations which dragged on for almost two years. Some figures point out that if Belgium were to split, it could become up to 4 different countries –- Flanders, Wallonia, formerly Prussian Eupen-Malmédy, and the multicultural city-state of Brussels, which also functions as the headquarters of The European Union.
• The newest country in the world, South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011. Many argued that this was for the best: the country is mostly non-Arab and non-Muslim and had endured abuse and neglect from the central government for decades. However, significant foreign involvement was definitely a factor, something helped by the Sudanese government's extremely bad PR with West, which happily painted the conflict as an ethnic and religious one. Regardless, independence is not a happy ending for the new country, which is currently embroiled in a civil war far worse than anything it had experienced under Sudan.
• In the latter half of the 19th century, several southern states in the United States seceded from the Union in order to ensure the continuation of slavery, forming the Confederate States of America. The division quickly spiraled into The American Civil War, which resulted in the CSA being reabsorbed into the USA after only four years.
  • While the Confederacy was short-lived, one bit of it did last. After Virginia seceded, the people in northwestern Virginia decided they'd like to still be part of the Union. Therefore, they seceded from Virginia, forming the new state of West Virginia. Even though Virginia was brought back into the Union by the end of the war, West Virginia remains a separate state to this day.
  • There's also a bit from the lead up: in 1820, as part of the Missouri compromise, Maine was added to the union as a free state to balance Missouri (a slave state). Before that is was part of Massachusetts.
  • Some native Hawaiians argue that the U.S. annexation of Hawaii was illegal and call for the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy. In 1993, Bill Clinton signed a bill which officially apologized for the not-nice way Hawaii was annexed back in the 1890s. In 2009, the Akaka Bill attempted to recognize native Hawaiians as a semi-sovereign "nation within a nation" (a legal status similar to that of mainland Native Americans, as well as Puerto Rico), but it failed to pass.
  • There also exists various movements to do this on the state level, though these would explicitly require the approval of both Congress and all states involved. Usually it's a case of one part of the state feeling shafted by the state government. Repeated instances that pop up on occasion (usually on slow news days) include California (either north/south or coastal/inland^note Despite popular perception, a lot of California away from the cities is really conservative), the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, New York between the city and upstate (the big argument is over who would get to keep "New York"), and Illinois between Chicago and downstate.
  • You can take it another level with counties and municipalities doing it. Procedures, motivations, and success rates vary by state. For instance, both Staten Island and the San Fernando Valley voted to secede and become their own municipalities in the last couple of decades. In Staten Island's case, their 1993 referendum was 65% in favor of secession, though they stayed within the City of New York due to the election of Rudy Giuliani who promised to address their two biggest grievances of making the Staten Island Ferry free of charge and closing the Fresh Kills Landfill. The Valley's push, on the other hand, had their proposal unanimously blocked by the city council even though their 2002 referendum was 55% in favor of secession within the Valley.
• This almost happened in the truest sense to the Roman Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century, when the empire was for decades overwhelmed with civil wars and military revolts. At its worst the empire split between the "real" Roman Empire centered around Italy, the Gallic Empire (mainly Gaul, Brittania, and Germania), and Queen Zenobia's Palmyrene Empire, which covered much of modern day Syria, Palestine/Israel, Egypt, and Turkey. All three "empires" were forcibly reunified by 274, but it is an interesting what-if to consider what would have happened long-term if they were not...
  • After this has happened repeatedly in Italy's history, which witnessed the creation and fall of dozens of independent states every couple of decades, modern Italy still isn't safe from the secessionist popularity. South Tyrol (at least) used to be a possible candidate for secession, as it was only obtained (relatively) recently from Austria-Hungary after WW1, and is thus ended up being German-speaking and Austrian-cultured. On top of it, it already enjoys semi-autonomy after a brief 'uprising' in 1961 (casualties: 37 electricity pylons). Veneto, the region surrounding Venice, is one notable example of a region that still sees active campaigns for sovereignty by right-wing and nationalistic groups, particularly since it ranks (unsurprisingly) amongst the wealthiest places in Italy.
• After the shock of the Fourth Crusade, where invaders from Catholic Europe on the way to wrest Jerusalem from Muslim rule (again) instead invaded Constantinople (short version: the Byzantine Emperor had recently been deposed, he appealed to the Crusaders for help in exchange for financially supporting them, got restored to the throne, then failed to pay up — though not for lack of trying), the Byzantine Empire balkanized as a result of there being not only multiple rival Orthodox Christian claimants to the imperial throne but also squabbling Latin Crusaders who wanted to carve out their own independent territories. You had Epirus (northwestern Greece), the duchy of Athens, Naxos, Rhodes, the kingdom of Thessalonica, the principality of Achaea (southern Greece), the Empire of Nikaea (Asia Minor), and the Empire of Trebizond (which despite calling itself an empire at its peak consisted of the southernmost tip of the Crimean peninsula and...well, Trebizond itself and its surrounding areas). Some were reincorporated into the Byzantine Empire under the ruler of Nikaea in 1261, but a few like Trebizond would hold out for a while even after the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
• Balkan countries such as Bulgaria and Serbia underwent this in the Middle Ages, too. The Second Bulgarian Empire had various nobles secede since its (re)creation, culminating in what a visiting German chronist called "a thousand Bulgarias": the main kingdom (based in Târnovo, the traditional capital) given to the heir apparent, a province with a long history of secession (Vidin) given as a consolation prize to his disinherited older half-brother, and a despot seceding the Eastern province (Dobruja). The Serbian Empire fragmented into about ten fiefdoms shortly after the death of the ruler who carved it out, Stefan Dušan. All this fragmentation and infighting made the Balkans easy targets for the Ottoman conquest.
• Happened quite a bit in Australia's history. Originally, it was divided between two separate colonies: Western Australia (formerly the Swan River Colony) and New South Wales. Over the years, New South Wales would fragment into Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, Northern Territory, the state it is today, and New Zealand (The newly-independent Australia offered both New Zealand and Fiji to join in. They refused, but they're still regarded as states on the Constitution). South Australia itself used to occupy Northern Territory, and short-lived states such as North Australia and Central Australia were also established. Later on, the Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory also made themselves independent from New South Wales. As the Constitution of Australia allows for new states to be formed, regions such as Riverina (along the NSW-Victoria border), New England (northern NSW) and Capricornia (northern Queensland) have all lobbied for statehood. Just to add to the chaos, Western Australia has been threatening to secede from the rest of the nation ever since Federation became an idea (though their mood changes depending on how well their economy's doing).
• A big issue in modern Spain is the increasing secessionist will of Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, the Basque Country, especially since the economic crisis started. Nationalists are in power in both of those regions and the central government's refusal to organize a referendum about Catalonia only fuels resentment. The Basque issue is more complex, as the northern part of historical Euskadi is in France, which is a much more centralized country and where the Basque Country is a historical region but not an administrative entity.
  • Similarly, the political turmoil of Brexit (the decision of the United Kingdom to leave membership of the European Union) has threatened to cause this in the UK. While the overall result was a 52-48 decision in favour of Leaving, Scotland and Northern Ireland overwhelmingly voted to stay in the EU, but were outweighed by the much higher English population. Electoral analysis even revealed that Wales would have narrowly voted to Remain, if not for the electoral influence of the numerous English retirees. Scottish nationalists therefore argue that this vote as ignoring the will of Scotland, and support for Scottish independence is growing, fuelled by the Conservative government of the UK outright refusing to let such a referendum happen, on the grounds that the 2014 referendum was supposed to be a generational thing (the Scots argue that the landscape has now changed — a lot of pro-Union arguments invoked EU membership). Northern Ireland also feel like their concerns over customs barriers with the Republic of Ireland are being ignored, and Welsh nationalists have suggested that, if Scotland becomes independent, there will be precedent for Welsh independence. And then there's the semi-serious suggestions that London (which voted heavily to Remain) would become an independent city-state. To top it all off, polls showed that many Leave voters feel Scottish independence from the UK is an acceptable price to pay for getting UK (or, at least, English) independence from the EU. It's not an impossible outcome that Brexit could cause the eventual fracturing of the United Kingdom.
• And speaking of France, nationalists have recently won the regional elections in Corsica (although only by a relative majority) and the new president of the region went as far as to pronounce his inaugural speech in Corsican, not in French − notably saying that "Corsica is a nation of its own, not a piece of another country" and making a clear distinction between the "Corsican people" and French people from the continent. The population is very divided on the question, though, not helped by the fact that armed terrorism was a thing on the island until not so long ago (a prefect was assassinated in 1998, for example).
  • Brittany also has a history of nationalism due in part to its Celtic cultural roots, although most modern Bretons aren't really in favor of secession that much (the fact that some parts of the nationalist movement had ties to Nazi Germany and promoted a similar ideology probably doesn't help).
• After the Battle of Austerlitz in 1806, the Holy Roman Empire collapsed in to two halves: Prussia and the "Confederation of the Rhine"; after WW2, when the former Allies failed to agree on the nature of a re-unified Germany, the Western Allies (Britain, France and the US) created the German Federal Republic from their half, prompting Soviet premier Krushchev to remark "So, all we have to show for 150 years of history is the re-creation of the Confederation of the Rhine".
• Oslo, the Norwegian capital, suffers under a perpetual threat of becoming this — for political reasons. When the city has a right-wing leadership, the eastern part of the city suffers, and over the last decade, numerous threats were made on seceding the eastern parts of the city. Then, a more left-wing city council was elected, and then the western part of the city threatened to secede.
• The Congo Crisis in the former Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) has been caused by tensions between regions and the Léopoldville central authority and saw the following states created in 1960:
  • A State of Katanga bed by Moise Tschombé and backed by powerful Belgian economical interests and foreign mercenaries until they were crushed by the United Nations in 1963.
  • A Mining State of South Kasai led by Albert Kalondji and ordered like Katanga above, yet with a lesser foreign support, created briefly both in 1960 and 1962-1963.
  • A lumumbist People's Republic of Congo in Stanleyville, led by Antoine Gizenga shortly after Patrice Lumumba was arrested on December 1960 and was dissolved in 1961.
  • In the troubles of July and August 1960, yet other secessionist projects were attempted, such as the secession of the Equateur province by Bolikongo and, even more weirder, the secession of the Bas-Congo region, where was situated the capital Léopoldville!
• Cyprus has been divided in two since 1974. Although the island is mainly populated by Greeks, there is a significant (18% of the population) Turkish minority who felt that they were being politically marginalized since the country gained independence from Britain in 1960. The final straw was a rumor that the Cypriot government at the time planned for the country to join Greece, causing Turkey to invade the country. The Turks then set up an internationally-unrecognized government encompassing the northern half of the island, leading to a massive migration as Greek Cypriots in the north scrambled to head south while Turkish Cypriots in the south headed north. The capital city, Nicosia, is also split in half, with each Cyprus basing their seat of government in their respective side of the city. Reunification talks have been repeatedly hindered because the Greek Cypriots want a unitary country, whereas the Turkish Cypriots want a federation.
• As Somalia descended to civil war in the 1990s, the northern region of Somaliland unilaterally broke away to govern itself. Somaliland was formerly occupied by Britain, unlike the rest of Somalia which was occupied by Italy, so it did have a precedent for this decision. However, no one has yet to recognize it, with the UN citing fear that it will create a precedent for other regions in Africa to secede from their mother countries if they are embroiled in civil war.
• Eritrea split off from Ethiopia in 1993, following a war of independence that spanned three decades.
• Namibia declared independence from South Africa in 1990. Formerly South West Africa, it was a German colony that was taken over by South Africa as part of a League of Nations mandate in the aftermath of World War I. The mandate expired in 1966, but South Africa continued to illegally control the territory until the fall of Apartheid.

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