While last week’s majority vote by the inhabitants of Piddington in Oxfordshire to seek independence from Britain was a stunt – albeit one making a serious point about plans to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers in an army base near the village – further afield there are more concerted attempts to establish real micronations. Prominent among these is the self-proclaimed autonomous territory of Liberland, which lies on a stretch of land on the Danube separating Croatia and Serbia. Unlike microstates, such as Monaco or the Vatican City, which are recognised internationally, micronations aren’t. Perhaps the best-known of its type today is the majority Russian-speaking rogue nation of Transnistria, a sliver of land which broke away from Moldova in 1991.

Although Liberland, occupying a 6.5 square mile, densely wooded region officially known as Gornja Siga, is on the western side of........

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