810-Uncester Farming, Saturday, October 11,1986
WASHINGTON - Believe it or
not, there is a file at the State
Department filled with all kinds of
curious documents about the rise
and fall of countries that never
existed.
It is kept in official-looking legal
size folders, and a few of its pages
are even stamped Classified.
“I call it the ‘Mythical
Kingdoms, Kooky Kings, and
Pretending Princes’ file,” says
George J. Demko, director of the
Office of the Geographer, which
has maintained this wonderful file
for 40 years. More seriously, it has
been labeled “Ephemeral States.”
Represents
Coralland
The newest entry is a letter
dated Aug. 29,1986, from a citizen
of the United Kingdom of
Coralland seeking to register as a
foreign agent in the United States.
Others have come from the King of
the Mosquito Shore and Nation (on
the east coast of Central America)
and the Secretary of State of the
Republic of Minerva Land of the
Rising Atoll (on coral reefs in the
South Pacific).
The file is very real even if the
kingdoms are not. It contains
letters of credentials, declarations,
affidavits, and maps from persons
claiming to have started their own
countries. And it includes memos
from a variety of U.S. government
agencies inquiring about their
legitimacy: Is there such a place?
In most cases, these would-be
rulers have declared dominion
over land that actually exists,
usually tiny, isolated islands,
sometimes under several feet of
water.
Like real countries, some of
these kingdoms have proclaimed
declarations of independence,
adopted constitutions, sought
diplomatic recognition, sent out
special envoys, displayed coats-of
arms, minted coins, and issued
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Mythical Kingdom Fill State Department File
stamps, passports, and visas.
The geographer’s office of
ficially maintains a file on them
because it is responsible for
keeping track of the sovereignty
status of all natrons. “We have to
know what and where everything
is in the world,” Demko says.
“The only problem with this file
is that once you open it, you get
fascinated by it,” he says, opening
it. “This is fun.”
Inside, for instance, there’s a
lengthy lawsuit filed in the Court of
Special Cases of the Republic of
Morac-Songhrati-Meads in 1985
against an array of prominent U.S.
officials, government agencies,
and companies. It seeks at least
$25 billion in damages for in
fringement, unfair competition,
harrassment,and sabotage.
A Whiff
of Competition
Morac-Songhrati-Meads, which
formerly called itself the Kingdom
of Humanity, has claimed islands
- and oil rights - in the
strategically situated Spratly
chain in the South China Sea. But
so have China, Vietnam, and the
Philippines.
Morton F. Meads, an American
businessman, has contended his
claim is the legitimate one because
he is a descendant of the sea
captain who discovered the islands
in the 1870 s while sailing under the
British flag. Meads established his
constitutional monarchy more
than 30 years ago, locating its
capital on Meads Island and
choosing Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony as its national anthem.
When Australia imposed a wheat
quota that Leonard George Casley
couldn’t live with, he turned his
18,500-acre Western Australia
farm into the Hutt River Province
(later Kingdom) and proclaimed
himself Prince. Hutt River for
mally seceded on April 21,1970, a
day that became its “national”
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holiday. A stone secession
monument permanently marks the
event. The kingdom, population 35,
published a 52-page color booklet
about itself titled “The Birth of a
Principality.” Australia refuses to
recogmze its independent status.
To give Maori people, “a race
that is speeding to oblivion,” a
place “to call their own, their
rightful place in the sun,” King and
Absolute Ruler Mitchara Heatara
signed a declaration of in
dependence in 1985 establishing the
Maori Kingdom of Tetiti Islands in
the South Pacific. His special
envoy offered the United States a
long-term lease on one island,
situated about 500 miles off the
New Zealand coast.
“We regret to inform you that we
cannot locate Furstentum
Castellania,” a 1984 State
Department letter in the file
states. “We can assure you that the
United States government does not
have diplomatic relations with this
ephemeral state.” The Prin
cipality of Castellania had been
created by a group of disenchanted
Austrians in 1974. Its location,
somewhere in the South Pacific,
was kept secret. According to one
of its leaders, “Castellania is more
a state of mind.”
Thinking globally, two self
styled rulers served notice on
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
in 1975 of their rights as “sole
owners of all of the ocean floor and
sealand.” Others, such as the
Admiral of Oceanus, have made
similar sweeping claims.
A British couple created their
own half-acre “island nation” in
the North Sea by taking over a
World War II radar-and-gun
platform in 1966. They christened it
Sealand.
One or two new mythical
Kingdoms pop up each year,
Demko says. The one that
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originally created the file was
Atlantis, born on a group of islands
off Ecuador in 1933. An old entry
notes that one of its citizens was
once stopped at El Paso, Texas,
when he tried to enter the United
States using an Atlantis passport.
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The file still cental
documents on Atlantis
other mythical kingdom.
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mentions a True Hu|
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where or what it is.
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