Balkanize Me: Difference between revisions
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** [[The Daily Show]] publication "America: The Book" suggests that "today, each resident [of former Yugoslavia] lives in the Independent Republic of Himself".
* Since [[Alexander the Great]] left no heir and no instructions for a regency (and his only son Alexander IV born after his death), his Macedonian Empire fractured after his death in 323 BCE. 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), the Seleucid Empire (Seleucis I Nicator / modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel), and the Kingdom of Pergamon (Lysimachus / modern-day Bulgaria, eastern Greece and European Turkey).
* It's a major historical pattern that the fall of a [[Space-Filling Empire]] often results in its balkanization, with states declaring independence and people taking advantage of the fall for themselves. The Persian Empire, [[The Roman Empire]], the [[Holy Roman Empire]], the Byzantine Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, [[The British Empire]], the Austro-Hungarian
* China deserves special mention. This has happened so often between Chinese dynasties that it was considered the "Will of Heaven" for a kingdom with a corrupt dynasty to break down into warring states, only to be reunited some time later under the banner of one of them.
** Summed up in the opening line to [[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]: "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."
** In modern times China remains divided between the People's Republic of China (mainland) and the Republic of China (Taiwan), while there are separatist movements within the mainland in both Tibet and Xinjiang, provinces which are Autonomous Regions only in name.
* In a somewhat logical conclusion of the events of [[Mikhail Gorbachev]]'s reign, USSR balkanized itself rather peacefully in 1991, thus creating [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]. Ever since, the USSR's breakaway states balkanized even more. Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia; Transnistria from Moldova; Crimea from Ukraine (although later re-conquered and given status as an Autonomous Republic), Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan, etc. As the 2008 South Ossetian war has shown, a large number of these separations have been violent.
** Ironically enough, most of these further balkanizations has been under the auspices of Russia in order to weaken the states that broke away from the USSR, but also with a plausible
** In 1993 Czechoslovakia followed USSR's example.
** Famously inverted by the two German states in 1990.
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*** YMMV on whether it has never been taken as seriously as in Quebec. The idea of joining Canada was put to a vote for Newfoundlanders and they joined the confederation because that side won by 1%.
** 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 also 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 [[wikipedia:
** Some figures point out that, if Belgium were to split, it could split into up to 4 different
* One recent example is [[wikipedia:South Sudan|South Sudan]], which broke off from the rest of Sudan to become its own internationally-recognized nation in 2011.
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