I was wondering about this when reading a book on the languages of Europe, Lingo, by Gaston Dorren.  He is a Dutchman, writing about the common and very obscure languages of Europe.  One paragraph says, "Is there any country in Europe where the political boundaries and the linguistic boundaries are identical?  Well, yes there is: Iceland.  Iceland is the only language of Iceland, and its inhabitants are the only people in the world for whom Icelandic is their mother tongue.  And in all of Europe, there is no other country that has a language that's unique to that country, and is spoken by all its citizens."

That wasn't what made me think of the question above, but it did make me wonder if Iceland might be the answer to it.  I can't think of any other country, certainly not in the Pacific region and I don't think in the Asia one, or Europe; I am not sure about South America, but I think the Spanish, Portuguese and English would have ensured there had been some form of warfare in all the countries there.  I think Thailand has never been the subject of an invasion by another country but I think it has had warfare within its borders.  I stand to be corrected on this.  

Is there any?

Since it broke from the German Confederation in the 1860s Lichtenstein has managed to avoid engaging in any war or being invaded during someone else's conflict. However before this break they were obliged to provide military support during the Austro-Prussian War and duly obliged with 80 soldiers. Not only did they not incur a single casualty during this war but when the troops arrived home their number was now 81 - having acquired an Italian en route who switched allegiance and decided to settle there once the fighting was over. Lichtenstein may have been the only country therefore who had more troops return from a war than had initially set out.

Regarding the language thing, I'm not sure how Dorren distinguishes one from the other. If, for example, he reckons the Icelandic language is unique in that it is spoken only in Iceland and by all the population, then surely Norwegian, Danish and Swedish also qualify by the same token? Icelandic is in fact very close to Norwegian, it being simply a continual use of a 1,000 year old version of Nordic as spoken by its largely Norwegian founders - in much the same way that English use "ossified" to an extent when spoken by colonists settling in the Americas and elsewhere, though admittedly to a much more pronounced degree in dialect terms when it came to Iceland.

The Scandinavian languages can in fact be said to be dialectic variants of a common tongue and hardly separate languages at all, depending on how one defines the term. If such is the case then Icelandic also can be included within that Nordic group. Mind you, this view is not at all popular within Scandinavia where language is an important expression of distinct national identity, despite the large similarities between those designated as such.

Since its formation in 1278 Andorra has never been invaded nor has it invaded anyone else, and its borders remain exactly as they were in the 13th century when its joint heads of state were declared to be the King of France (later the President of the French Republic) as co-prince with the Bishop of Urgell. Andorra was annexed a couple of times by the Kingdom of Aragon, but these were really just formalities: no military action ever resulted and each time Andorran sovereignty was soon restored. Andorra steadfastly maintained its neutrality throughout all the Franco-Spanish Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the French Revolution the new French government actually dropped its suzerainty leaving just the Bishop of Urgell as sole head of state, but the co-prince arrangement was restored in 1806 by Napoleon at the request of the Andorrans themselves. The French Empire then tried to assert its sole rule over Andorra with a formal annexation in 1812, but again this didn't involve any military occupation and complete Andorran sovereignty was restored the following year.

Andorra did declare war on Germany in 1914 but as it didn't have an army it conducted no military action at all and no soldiers or even police ever left the territory. However in 1939, when Andorra again opted for neutrality, it was discovered that, as they had never done anything in WW1 and accordingly hadn't been represented for the peace negociations at Versailles, they were actually still formally at war with the German Empire. So just as WW2 kicked off Andorra hastily concluded a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, before declaring neutrality. Although having never actually participated in WW1 they were therefore strictly the longest-active belligerant against Imperial Germany.

In 1933 the French army occupied Andorra at the request of the Andorran government as a result of social unrest before elections, and in 1934 an 'adventurer' named Boris Skossyreff (a White Russian emigré, who had a Dutch passport as well as recently acquired Andorran citizenship) issued a proclamation in Urgell, declaring himself Boris I, sovereign prince of Andorra, and demanding an uprising of Andorran citizens against the Andorran co-prince, the Bishop of Urgell. Skossyreff was promptly arrested by Spanish authorities and deported to Portugal. From 1936 to 1940 a French detachment was garrisoned in Andorra, again at the request of the Andorran government, to protect the state against influences of the Spanish Civil War, but their primary role was in managing refugees fleeing Spain for France. Even today Andorra maintains no army or military personel of any sort, although it does have a small unit of the police who provide the 'military' parade, honour guard and brass band for the opening of the Andorran parliament, and other ceremonial functions.

nordmann wrote:

Since it broke from the German Confederation in the 1860s Lichtenstein has managed to avoid engaging in any war or being invaded during someone else's conflict. However before this break they were obliged to provide military support during the Austro-Prussian War and duly obliged with 80 soldiers. Not only did they not incur a single casualty during this war but when the troops arrived home their number was now 81 - having acquired an Italian en route who switched allegiance and decided to settle there once the fighting was over. Lichtenstein may have been the only country therefore who had more troops return from a war than had initially set out.

Regarding the language thing, I'm not sure how Dorren distinguishes one from the other. If, for example, he reckons the Icelandic language is unique in that it is spoken only in Iceland and by all the population, then surely Norwegian, Danish and Swedish also qualify by the same token? Icelandic is in fact very close to Norwegian, it being simply a continual use of a 1,000 year old version of Nordic as spoken by its largely Norwegian founders - in much the same way that English use "ossified" to an extent when spoken by colonists settling in the Americas and elsewhere, though admittedly to a much more pronounced degree in dialect terms when it came to Iceland.

The Scandinavian languages can in fact be said to be dialectic variants of a common tongue and hardly separate languages at all, depending on how one defines the term. If such is the case then Icelandic also can be included within that Nordic group. Mind you, this view is not at all popular within Scandinavia where language is an important expression of distinct national identity, despite the large similarities between those designated as such.

nordmann,

Liechtenstein, yes, I learned a bit about it, recently, because the granddaughter is working there now.
For LiR...it is the region for all kind of conspiracies, including Nazi gold and it came also in the BBC documentary that I have mentioned here for Dirk Marinus about the right wing massacres as in Italy, and yes Belgium with "les tueurs de Brabant" very actual again in Belgium for the moment...


"The Scandinavian languages can in fact be said to be dialectic variants of a common tongue and hardly separate languages at all, depending on how one defines the term. If such is the case then Icelandic also can be included within that Nordic group. Mind you, this view is not at all popular within Scandinavia where language is an important expression of distinct national identity, despite the large similarities between those designated as such."
"in much the same way that English use "ossified" to an extent when spoken by colonists settling in the Americas and elsewhere, though admittedly to a much more pronounced degree in dialect terms when it came to Iceland"

Yes I can understand that.


"The Scandinavian languages can in fact be said to be dialectic variants of a common tongue and hardly separate languages at all, depending on how one defines the term. If such is the case then Icelandic also can be included within that Nordic group. Mind you, this view is not at all popular within Scandinavia where language is an important expression of distinct national identity, despite the large similarities between those designated as such."

There too you are right, there are dialect continua around one core original language...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum
But those dialect continua decrease as:
"Since the early 20th century, the increasing dominance of nation-states and their standard languages has been steadily eliminating the nonstandard dialects that comprise dialect continua, making the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined."
That's right and at the end a Dutch dialect speaker or a German dialect speaker will have an abrupt language border at the Belgian-German border between standard Dutch and Hochdeutsch...although in my humble opinion that will not for the next year , next century? Even with the standard Dutch at the Dutch Belgian border for an insider and although the continuus trials to merge the Belgian South-Dutch with the Hollandic North Dutch, if one say on one side of the Belgian-Dutch border one word the other one says he is from the other border...500 years of language separation along a border acquired by fighting, you don't erase in one decade. And also a difference in education to come from the several dialects to the standard language in Belgium and The Netherlands (I mean referring to the BBC radio 4 mentioned by Vizzer, the nowadays Netherlands and not the historical Netherlands, the Low Countries.
And yes speaking about your Scandinavian languages, you have also the example of Serbo-Croatian:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/yoursay/language_and_identity/serbiancroatianbosnian/one_language_three_egos.shtml


And Meles meles will agree with me that only in the 19th century the French nation state was able to gradually decrease the several languages in France and to have one standard French language by all besides their local dialect, language, and still between the North and the South.... MM?

.



In my opinion will for instance the French Flemish in Nord Pas de Calais only survive as a study object sponsored by the French state...as perhaps l'Alsacien although that seems more resistant....

Kind regards from Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

Since its formation in 1278 Andorra has never been invaded nor has it invaded anyone else, and its borders remain exactly as they were in the 13th century when its joint heads of state were declared to be the King of France (later the President of the French Republic) as co-prince with the Bishop of Urgell. Andorra was annexed a couple of times by the Kingdom of Aragon, but these were really just formalities: no military action ever resulted and each time Andorran sovereignty was soon restored. Andorra steadfastly maintained its neutrality throughout all the Franco-Spanish Wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the French Revolution the new French government actually dropped its suzerainty leaving just the Bishop of Urgell as sole head of state, but the co-prince arrangement was restored in 1806 by Napoleon at the request of the Andorrans themselves. The French Empire then tried to assert its sole rule over Andorra with a formal annexation in 1812, but again this didn't involve any military occupation and complete Andorran sovereignty was restored the following year.

Andorra did declare war on Germany in 1914 but as it didn't have an army it conducted no military action at all and no soldiers or even police ever left the territory. However in 1939, when Andorra again opted for neutrality, it was discovered that, as they had never done anything in WW1 and accordingly hadn't been represented for the peace negociations at Versailles, they were actually still formally at war with the German Empire. So just as WW2 kicked off Andorra hastily concluded a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, before declaring neutrality. Although having never actually participated in WW1 they were therefore strictly the longest-active belligerant against Imperial Germany.

In 1933 the French army occupied Andorra at the request of the Andorran government as a result of social unrest before elections, and in 1934 an 'adventurer' named Boris Skossyreff (a White Russian emigré, who had a Dutch passport as well as recently acquired Andorran citizenship) issued a proclamation in Urgell, declaring himself Boris I, sovereign prince of Andorra, and demanding an uprising of Andorran citizens against the Andorran co-prince, the Bishop of Urgell. Skossyreff was promptly arrested by Spanish authorities and deported to Portugal. From 1936 to 1940 a French detachment was garrisoned in Andorra, again at the request of the Andorran government, to protect the state against influences of the Spanish Civil War, but their primary role was in managing refugees fleeing Spain for France. Even today Andorra maintains no army or military personel of any sort, although it does have a small unit of the police who provide the 'military' parade, honour guard and brass band for the opening of the Andorran parliament, and other ceremonial functions.

Meles meles,

thanks for this history of Andorra that I didn't know about. Never been there, someone said in the time to me that it was so difficult to reach by car...so I didn't try...the same when driving along the Yugoslavian coast from Fiume/Rieka on, never been to the lakes of Plivitce because someone from Antwerp along that road said to me that he had tried and nearly run in the abbyss because of his backgeardriving? his wheels behind on rollstones and how more he tried how more his wheels slipped to the abbyss...bad state of the roads under Tito...now perhaps improved with the nationalistic Croatia...
But San Marino we did...

Kind regards from Paul.

Caro wrote:

I was wondering about this when reading a book on the languages of Europe, Lingo, by Gaston Dorren.  He is a Dutchman, writing about the common and very obscure languages of Europe.  One paragraph says, "Is there any country in Europe where the political boundaries and the linguistic boundaries are identical?  Well, yes there is: Iceland.  Iceland is the only language of Iceland, and its inhabitants are the only people in the world for whom Icelandic is their mother tongue.  And in all of Europe, there is no other country that has a language that's unique to that country, and is spoken by all its citizens."

That wasn't what made me think of the question above, but it did make me wonder if Iceland might be the answer to it.  I can't think of any other country, certainly not in the Pacific region and I don't think in the Asia one, or Europe; I am not sure about South America, but I think the Spanish, Portuguese and English would have ensured there had been some form of warfare in all the countries there.  I think Thailand has never been the subject of an invasion by another country but I think it has had warfare within its borders.  I stand to be corrected on this.  

Is there any?

Caro,

I don't know if this a summary?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/28/lingo-a-language-spotters-guide-to-europe-by-gaston-dorren-review-learned-and-pleasantly-ironic

"Is there any country in Europe where the political boundaries and the linguistic boundaries are identical?  Well, yes there is: Iceland.  Iceland is the only language of Iceland, and its inhabitants are the only people in the world for whom Icelandic is their mother tongue.  And in all of Europe, there is no other country that has a language that's unique to that country, and is spoken by all its citizens."

You can as easy say in my opinion that also the nowadays kingdom of The Netherlands have the political borders and linguistic borders identical. Of course you will say and the linguistic borders are much further as in the North of the nowadays Belgium and still a bit in the North of France in the Pas de Calais: The French Flemish...and even as mentioned to Meles meles some Flemish influenced French: the Ch'ti...but by the action of the nation-state especially Louis XIV...the standard French became spoken in every corner of la douce France...the same for Belgium the standard Dutch in Belgium is not the same as the Dutch in the Kingdom of the Netherlands...so you can call perhaps the Dutch Dutch of the kingdom of the Netherlands a language where the linguistic and political borders are identical. And perhaps will both the North-Dutch and the South-Dutch by cultural interchange become more identical? In the political bounderies of the future Benelux ?
And you could perhaps say the same of France, one language within the political borders, where all regional languages are dying out as the Brittonic and the Alsacien...

Kind regards from Paul.

Australia has been involved in wars, but apart from a couple of Japanese raids, air on Darwin and midget submarine on Sydney, hasn't had any warfare as such on its' own territory.

Yes - definition is everything.

Since its inception as the Free State, the Republic of Ireland has never been invaded, never started a war or joined in another's, and never invaded anyone else. Yet it has lost soldiers in conflicts, notably the Congo and the Lebanon, and has endured quite a bit of what could be termed guerilla warfare within its borders. So it has had its fair share of the same suffering as any community whose country is at war, without ever really having partaken in the exercise.

PaulRyckier wrote:

And Meles meles will agree with me that only in the 19th century the French nation state was able to gradually decrease the several languages in France and to have one standard French language by all besides their local dialect, language, and still between the North and the South.... MM?.

"Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis" is a very good film which pokes gentle fun at a whole range of French prejudices and stereotypes between the North and South, managers and workers, fonctionnaires etc (something there for your French conversation group perhaps LiR?) ... and in that clip there's even a nice 'cheerful' bit of a Jacques Brel song too! But note that the English translation in the above is not word-for-word, as the comedy relies on puns which are of course almost impossible to translate while maintaining the humour.

The whole point in that clip is about the pronunciation of "s", which in the north, close to the Flemish border, is pronounced like the English "sh" or French "ch", hence the term for such speakers as Ch'tis. So in that clip he says that the apartment is unfurnished because the previous manager took it all away with him. Why? "Parce que c'était le sien" - "because it was his own", but Dany Boon pronounces "sien" as "chien" so it sounds as if it was "because it was the dog's". Hence the comedic confusion. The English subtitles cleverly maintain the spirit of the wordplay by building the misunderstanding on the word "office" which Boon "pronounces" in the subtitles, as "offish" and which Merad's character hears as "of fish", and so he understands there's no furniture because of the fish! And so the original canine confusion is neatly replaced by fishiness, while still maintaining the particular peculiarity of the pronunciation.

For subtitles to what is basically a rather parochial French film, I think the English translation was very well done.

Thanks Meles meles for your explanation.

As I, as I normally do with subtitled films, listen to the sound and reading the subtitles I was a bit confused by the "offish" as in the French they said: parce que c'était le "chien", au lieu de le "sien", (its own). As I was in a hurry I haven't researched why that anomaly...

But now, thanks to you, I see it all. Excuses from a(n) "arme Belg/pauvre Belge"...they are not that clever say the Dutch...in their "Belgenmoppen" (jokes about the Belgians)...

PS: In the Flemish dialects spoken near the French border (those of the former Flanders of the 15th century) they don't pronounce the "s" as "ch", hence: "vis" instead of "fish"...Have to search why in Bergues...

Kind regards from Paul.

I don't think the Australian Aborigines would agree there had been no warfare within Australia, Trike.  Perhaps not as official as that in NZ but nevertheless there were skirmishes between the new settlers and the very old residents, with the Aborigines very much marginalised as they still are.  NZers have some legitimacy in their claims that we are all immigrants here, the Maori only arriving in the 1300s (historians don't quite agree on the date and Maori tribal genealogies date it further back, I think).  But that is not the case with the Aborigines - they have been in Australia for at least 20,000 years.

I can't think of any country that hasn't had at least internal skirmishes. When I did my 23 month stint at the Natural History Museum I was able to get free into an exhibition at the British Museum about the times of Montezuma (who the exhibition informed should be referred to as Moctezuma). I recall that Monty (or should that be Mocty) demanded tributes from other tribes.  Now I'm not absolutely sure about this but some of the less powerful tribes may have partially at least seen the Spanish as an opportunity to liberate themselves (not that that happened).  But nobody has averred here that the Americas have not seen wars.

Looking at Paul's comment (when I hadn't read MM's yet) I thought of a (written) review of a film that one member of the French conversation group I go to had brought in a while ago and it was indeed Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (so good idea for a discussion topic MM, but unfortunately I've been pre-empted).  Nothing to do directly with this thread but more with northern France, I'd been thinking of an actress from (I think the second) Mummy film back in 1959.  Her name was Yvonne Furneaux who has been retired from acting for a good while (she's about 90).  Apparently she was born in Roubaix which is in the north (but whether far enough north to be "chez les Ch'tis I don't know).  Her father was English it seems and she studied languages at St Hilda's College, Oxford as "Tessa Scatcherd".  I suppose Furneaux does have more of a continental European sound than Scatcherd.  A bit of a co-incidence but before I entered the site today Forum Motion insisted I read their privacy policy and terms of use (I copied them and saved them as a Word document) and one of the addresses that Forum Motion gave was in Roubaix.

Caro wrote:

I don't think the Australian Aborigines would agree there had been no warfare within Australia, Trike.  Perhaps not as official as that in NZ but nevertheless there were skirmishes between the new settlers and the very old residents, with the Aborigines very much marginalised as they still are.  NZers have some legitimacy in their claims that we are all immigrants here, the Maori only arriving in the 1300s (historians don't quite agree on the date and Maori tribal genealogies date it further back, I think).  But that is not the case with the Aborigines - they have been in Australia for at least 20,000 years.

The last report I read had it (from archaeology) that Australia had been inhabited around 60,000 ago.

That said, there was war among indigenous Australian tribes, as indeed there was between all indigenous peoples on all continents before the arrival of Europeans. War was not peculiar to white Europeans only, nor does history begin with us. We were merely the latest and the most destructive.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Looking at Paul's comment (when I hadn't read MM's yet) I thought of a (written) review of a film that one member of the French conversation group I go to had brought in a while ago and it was indeed Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (so good idea for a discussion topic MM, but unfortunately I've been pre-empted).  Nothing to do directly with this thread but more with northern France, I'd been thinking of an actress from (I think the second) Mummy film back in 1959.  Her name was Yvonne Furneaux who has been retired from acting for a good while (she's about 90).  Apparently she was born in Roubaix which is in the north (but whether far enough north to be "chez les Ch'tis I don't know).  Her father was English it seems and she studied languages at St Hilda's College, Oxford as "Tessa Scatcherd".  I suppose Furneaux does have more of a continental European sound than Scatcherd.  A bit of a co-incidence but before I entered the site today Forum Motion insisted I read their privacy policy and terms of use (I copied them and saved them as a Word document) and one of the addresses that Forum Motion gave was in Roubaix.

Lady, I wasn't aware of the film: perhaps the film was shown in Ostend too in the Fifties. But now that I did research about it, it can be that I saw the film accompagned by my mother. My father didn't like all such stuff, and as we went many times twice a week to the cinema, the normal scenario was then in such cases that I went with my mother and my sister with my father to two different films...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mummy_(1959_film)

And yes the "fameuse" Yvonne Furneaux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Furneaux
And that as an aside, but your question about the "Picard" is here pertinent about the language borders and the countries and I will add it to my former message and yes as you will see Roubaix is also in the Picard area...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Caro wrote:

I was wondering about this when reading a book on the languages of Europe, Lingo, by Gaston Dorren.  He is a Dutchman, writing about the common and very obscure languages of Europe.  One paragraph says, "Is there any country in Europe where the political boundaries and the linguistic boundaries are identical?  Well, yes there is: Iceland.  Iceland is the only language of Iceland, and its inhabitants are the only people in the world for whom Icelandic is their mother tongue.  And in all of Europe, there is no other country that has a language that's unique to that country, and is spoken by all its citizens."

That wasn't what made me think of the question above, but it did make me wonder if Iceland might be the answer to it.  I can't think of any other country, certainly not in the Pacific region and I don't think in the Asia one, or Europe; I am not sure about South America, but I think the Spanish, Portuguese and English would have ensured there had been some form of warfare in all the countries there.  I think Thailand has never been the subject of an invasion by another country but I think it has had warfare within its borders.  I stand to be corrected on this.  

Is there any?

Caro,

I don't know if this a summary?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/28/lingo-a-language-spotters-guide-to-europe-by-gaston-dorren-review-learned-and-pleasantly-ironic

"Is there any country in Europe where the political boundaries and the linguistic boundaries are identical?  Well, yes there is: Iceland.  Iceland is the only language of Iceland, and its inhabitants are the only people in the world for whom Icelandic is their mother tongue.  And in all of Europe, there is no other country that has a language that's unique to that country, and is spoken by all its citizens."

You can as easy say in my opinion that also the nowadays kingdom of The Netherlands have the political borders and linguistic borders identical. Of course you will say and the linguistic borders are much further as in the North of the nowadays Belgium and still a bit in the North of France in the Pas de Calais: The French Flemish...and even as mentioned to Meles meles some Flemish influenced French: the Ch'ti...but by the action of the nation-state especially Louis XIV...the standard French became spoken in every corner of la douce France...the same for Belgium the standard Dutch in Belgium is not the same as the Dutch in the Kingdom of the Netherlands...so you can call perhaps the Dutch Dutch of the kingdom of the Netherlands a language where the linguistic and political borders are identical. And perhaps will both the North-Dutch and the South-Dutch by cultural interchange become more identical? In the political bounderies of the future Benelux ?
And you could perhaps say the same of France, one language within the political borders, where all regional languages are dying out as the Brittonic and the Alsacien...

Kind regards from Paul.

Addendum sparked by the question of LiR about the regional language Picard in the North of France and in Belgium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picard_language

Kind regards, Paul.

" A bit of a co-incidence but before I entered the site today Forum Motion insisted I read their privacy policy and terms of use (I copied them and saved them as a Word document) and one of the addresses that Forum Motion gave was in Roubaix."

LiR I had the same this morning...

Regards from Paul.

Meles meles wrote:

Andorra did declare war on Germany in 1914 but as it didn't have an army it conducted no military action at all and no soldiers or even police ever left the territory. However in 1939, when Andorra again opted for neutrality, it was discovered that, as they had never done anything in WW1 and accordingly hadn't been represented for the peace negociations at Versailles, they were actually still formally at war with the German Empire. So just as WW2 kicked off Andorra hastily concluded a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, before declaring neutrality. Although having never actually participated in WW1 they were therefore strictly the longest-active belligerant against Imperial Germany.

Similar to the Andorran case, is the popular story of Berwick-upon-Tweed having been at war with Russia for many years by dint of having been included in the declaration of war by Britain but omitted in the text of the peace treaty. This is said to have lasted until the 1960s when a Soviet diplomat visited the town and concluded a peace treaty with the local council upon the conclusion of which the mayor said to the diplomat – “Please tell the Russian people that they can now sleep peacefully in their beds”.

A delightful story which, however, has been dismissed as being apocryphal in both of its elements. In other words, there was no war with Russia in which Berwick-upon-Tweed was omitted from the peace treaty and there was no subsequent visit by a Soviet diplomat to the town to conclude a peace treaty. It could be that the story was originally about Andorra or Liechtenstein or some other such place and has merely been transposed to Berwick. Or it could be that the great power which the little place in the story was a war with was not Russia but another. Or it could be a combination of these – e.g. Andorra being at war with Germany (Meles’ example being a strong contender in which case) or Berwick being at war with France or Liechtenstein being at war with Russia etc.  

But let’s stick with Berwick and Russia. Some suggest that the story stems from the Crimean War whereby Berwick was listed as one of Queen Victoria’s realms in the British declaration of war but was then inadvertently left off the terms of the Treaty of Paris which concluded that war. The problem with this suggestion, however, is that the text of the declaration of war issued to the press on 28 March 1854 merely refers to her as ‘Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’. It doesn’t mention her other realms or territories let alone listing them by name. That said – the Victorians were not always as precise in their usage as one might expect. For instance, 10 years before the Crimean War, and on the other side of the world, New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi of 1840 casually refers to Victoria as ‘Queen of England’. This despite the fact that it was written 40 years after the Acts Union of 1801 which created the united kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland and written more than 130 years after the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England which united the kingdom of Great Britain.  

Not to get too side-tracked though, basically the Crimean War doesn’t fit the bill. Another possibility would require going back 150 years earlier to the Great Northern War. This would refer to the short-lived and little-known alliance between William of Orange (William III of England) and Charles XII of Sweden which was agreed right at the beginning of the war. The alliance had almost nothing to do with William’s British realms or with Russia but was more concerned with William of Orange (as stadtholder of the Netherlands) securing the balance of power in Scandinavia and thwarting the ambitions of France’s Louis XIV in that direction.




(The bridge across the River Tweed linking Berwick to Tweedmouth. Although situated on the northern, Scottish bank of the river, the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed has been part of England since 1482 when it was annexed by Richard, duke of Gloucester. But was Berwick officially at war with Russia for many years?)  


The background to the conflict was that the king of Denmark-Norway was in dispute with the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp over Denmark’s southern border. The Duke of Holstein-Gottorp was the brother-in-law of Charles XII of Sweden (Denmark’s powerful neighbour and rival) and so Denmark sought French support to counterbalance this. William of Orange wanted to act as mediator and prevent conflict between Denmark and Sweden and thus deny France any chance of getting involved in that sphere and furthering its influence there. Because of Denmark’s pro-French inclination, however, William is said to have concluded a secret or unofficial verbal alliance with Sweden to act in Sweden’s favour if Denmark didn’t back down. The law of unintended consequences, however, saw this merely escalate matters. Having been denied French support by virtue of Louis being put off by William’s naval strength and his Dutch and English fleets, Denmark turned to Saxony, Poland-Lithuania and Russia as alternative allies against Sweden. Suddenly William found himself in danger of becoming embroiled in a much larger conflict and needed an exit strategy. As it turned out Sweden was more than capable of dealing with Denmark, Saxony, Poland-Lithuania and Russia without the help of William’s navies. Charles XII landed a force close to Copenhagen and forced Denmark to the negotiating table. William took this opportunity to get out of his Swedish alliance and the prospect of being dragged into a war in the Baltic Sea. The Peace of Travendal was concluded on 18 August 1700 and saw Denmark acquiesce and William was able to present himself as guarantor rather than as a party.

Something else, however, had occurred that day. Peter the Great of Russia had invaded the Swedish province of Ingria (east of Estonia) and thus a state of war existed between Russia and Sweden. The allies of Sweden included the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland and, of course, Berwick-upon-Tweed. The invasion of Ingria had occurred in the morning while the treaty at Travendal in Holstein was concluded 700 miles to the west that afternoon. So for those few hours, therefore, Berwick-upon-Tweed (along with William’s other realms) was indeed at war with Russia.

There’s a further problem with this hypothesis however. In the text of the treaty of Travendal, William is referred to as ‘ihre koniglichen magistat von Grosbritannien und der Herrn General Staaten der vereinigte Niederlanden’ (his royal majesty of Great Britain and Lord States General of the united Netherlands). No mention of Berwick-upon-Tweed there. And neither is there mention of Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales. William’s self-styling as ‘king of Great Britain’ (i.e. even before the union of Scotland and England in 1707) was in keeping with the practice of so many monarchs in the 17th century. This casts further doubt on whether the supposed secret or unofficial verbal treaty mentioned Berwick-upon-Tweed at all. In short, if Berwick was still at war with Russia post-Travendal, then so too were the other British realms. Mm.

But the plot thickens. Despite the desire of Scottish and English monarchs in the 17th century to be referred to as kings of ‘Great Britain’, the status of Berwick-upon-Tweed as a distinct entity was, however, recognised by the English parliament in its deliberations up to and including the Union with Scotland Act 1706. That act would see the English parliament subsume itself in the new British parliament the following year. The Act refers to ‘the Kingdoms of England and Ireland, the Dominion of Wales, and (the)* Town of Berwick upon Tweed, and the Territories thereunto belonging.’

Furthermore, 40 years later in the wake of the Jacobite ’45, the status of Berwick within Great Britain was still ambiguous enough to warrant parliament passing the Wales and Berwick Act of 1746 to clarify and confirm the status of those territories:

It is hereby further declared and enacted by the authority aforesaid, that in all cases where the kingdom of England, or that part of Great Britain called England, hath been or shall be mentioned in any act of parliament, the same has been and shall from henceforth be deemed and taken to comprehend and include the dominion of Wales, and town of Berwick upon Tweed.

The possibility of Berwick-upon-Tweed (and Wales) being overlooked or omitted from bills of law or international treaties etc was obviously a real and pressing issue which parliament felt needed to be nailed down.

Let’s look at the second part of the story regarding the supposed visit of the Soviet diplomat to Berwick in the 1960s. Again, there is (as far as I know) no record of any such visit. However, during the 1966 FIFA World Cup hosted in England, the team of the Soviet Union was based in Durham. This was at the Durham University Sports Centre on Stockton Road which was vacated by students during the summer holidays. (The Italian squad was based across the road at the Durham Agricultural & Horticultural College.)**

Those teams were based in the North-East of England because their Group D matches would be played at Ayresome Park in Middlesbrough and at Roker Park in Sunderland. It’s more than likely, therefore, that with the Soviet squad in Durham, officials from the Soviet ministry of sport and/or the embassy in London would have travelled with them to organise public relations exercises in the North-East as part of a goodwill charm offensive. It’s also not inconceivable that (if not a visit to Berwick-upon-Tweed) then an exchange of pleasantries at a civic reception in Durham or Middlesbrough or Sunderland, was interpreted as being the ‘conclusion of a peace treaty’ followed by the witty remark by a mayor or other official. Such civic receptions were indeed held for the world cup squads. For example, on one such occasion, the Mayor Alderman of Middlesbrough Jack Boothby said to the North Korean team, that with their red shirts, white shorts and red socks - “You wear the same colour as Middlesbrough, we will shout for you.”

Overall, the story of Berwick being at war with Russia for many years and the subsequent ‘peace treaty’ does indeed seem to be apocryphal. There is, however, enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that at the heart of both of its elements there is, perhaps, the possibility of a kernel of truth.      




(Lev Yashin, goalkeeper and captain of the Soviet football team in 1966. A Muscovite born and bred, he played for Dynamo Moscow and was admired by football fans and others in his home city, throughout Russia, across the Soviet Union and around the world. A true ambassador for his sport and his country and the antithesis of the current representatives of Russia in the Kremlin.)    


*On the handwritten original document Public Act, 6 Anne, c. 11 the word ‘the’ is smudged.
 
**Both teams (the Soviet Union and Italy) would have memorable world cups in 1966 but for different reasons. The Soviet Union would have their best ever world cup and reach the Semi-Finals, while Italy would have a calamitous world cup being beaten 1-0 by North Korea and make a First Round exit.