My Interest in Micropatrology
The International Micropatrological Society
I was one of the twelve members of the International Micropatrological Society (IMS), a group formed in the mid-1970s by Frederick Lehmann of St. Louis, USA, and Christopher Martin of London, England. The Society coined the term "micropatrology" and defined it as the study of very small countries and would-be countries.
The Society grew partly out of an interest in cinderella stamps, or postage labels not issued by any postal service and sometimes printed by very small unrecognized countries. The Cinderella Stamp Club in the United Kingdom has long been a source of information on these.
I learned about the IMS from an article by Roy Bongartz, "Nations Off the Beaten Track," in The New York Times, March 28, 1976 (Section 10). After joining, I reported on Navassa Island and followed the affairs of a number of other islands. The Society had twelve members and has been dormant since about 1980.
The Society's founders gathered information from many sources on a large number of small nations and would-be nations and classified them into five categories: Traditional, Fictional, Extinct, Bogus, and Other. Traditional micronations were real places with recognized standing as sovereign states. Examples included Monaco and Liechtenstein in Europe and Tonga in the Pacific. Fictional nations existed in literature and included places like Liliput in Gulliver's Travels.
Extinct micronations only existed in the past. An example was the would-be nation of Counani in the 1880s, whose self-appointed leaders claimed a region in Brazil along the border with Venezuela and the Guiana colonies. It seems to have ended c. 1912.
Bogus nations were claimed by their founders to exist in the present but were often invented for humor. A bookseller in Hay-on-Wye, along the border of Wales and England, declared himself King of Hay on April Fool's Day, 1977. The new "kingdom" helped the village reverse its economic decline and attract people to an annual book festival.
The vast majority of micronations were in the Other category and included most of the would-be nations studied by the Society. The ones studied were very small and rarely had more than a handful of proponents. Many were efforts by individualists to declare places they could rule as kings, queens, or presidents.
Erwin Strauss published a book, How to Start Your Own Country (1984), which described methods for doing just that. He illustrated the book with examples of would-be countries drawn from IMS files. The most well-known of these perhaps was the Principality of Sealand, established on an abandoned World War II anti-aircraft platform just outside of British territorial waters.
Micronationalism Today
The Economist magazine of London published an article on micronations on December 24, 2005, pp. 84-85. A colorful survey, Micro Nations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations (2006), also responded to public interest, although it could not cover all examples that deserved attention.
A large number of micronational efforts have begun as student projects on the internet, and a clearinghouse for many of these is the Micro Wiki site, an offshoot of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. A number of younger and older micronational leaders have held international gatherings in the 21st century, such as the PoliNation conferences convened in Australia (2010) and then in England (2012) and Italy (2015). Another recurring conference, MicroCon, has been meeting since 2015, mainly in North America. For a video of MicroCon 2019, visit here.
Micronationalism is a form of entrepreneurial activity that has been largely overlooked on account of the limited prospects that most would-be nations have for official recognition. These prospects should not prevent would-be micronations from setting examples on a small scale of good government and public service that are the aims of recognized nation-states. There is and should be room for both groups.
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