Enclave

In human geography, an enclave is a piece of land which is totally surrounded by a foreign territory. If another country has sovereignty over it, it is also called an exclave of that other country.

Coastal fragments

Some territories cannot be reached from the country they belong to except by international waters. These are considered detached fragments of their motherland rather than enclaves, since they do not meet the criterion of being enclosed on all sides by foreign territory. Some examples:

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• The Spanish towns Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Morocco.
• The British colony of Gibraltar, on the south coast of Spain.
• Oecussi-Ambeno, a fragment of East Timor geographically within the Indonesian part of Timor (West Timor), but accessible from the sea.
• Cabinda, a territory north of its mainland of Angola, locked between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo.
• The Russian territory of Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania, which, before World War II, was the northern half of the German province of East Prussia, itself an exclave after World War I.
• The Croatian city of Dubrovnik is separated from mainland by Bosnian city of Neum, and has border with Bosnia and Montenegro.

Many countries have coastal fragments that can't be directly accessed from the mainland except by boat or aeroplane. An extreme example of this is Alaska, detached from the Lower 48 of the United States of America by Canada, but at least two other tiny parts of the USA can't be reached overland except by entering Canada: Point Roberts in northwestern Washington, and the Northwest Angle in Minnesota, a peninsula bordering Lake of the Woods. The far south coast of Croatia, part of the Dubrovnik-Neretva county, is separated from its mainland by a tiny corridor in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Related Topics:
Alaska - Lower 48 - United States of America - Canada - Point Roberts - Washington - Northwest Angle - Minnesota - Lake of the Woods - Croatia - Dubrovnik-Neretva county - Bosnia and Herzegovina

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See also: List of international enclaves, and the list in the Exclave article.

Related Topics:
List of international enclaves - Exclave

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