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Old 04-16-2018, 09:40 AM   #10
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Žorkell View Post
Rwanda area 10,169 square miles, population 11 million.
Burundi area 10,747 square miles, population 10,5 million.

The countries mentioned as comparable in size to the fictional country in the opening post:

Andorra area 181 square miles, population 77 thousand.
Liechtenstein area 62 square miles, population 37 thousand.

So, how are they somewhat comparably small?
I hadn't looked up statistics. I was just going by "Rwanda and Burundi are a lot smaller than any of the countries around them" (they're right next to Congo/Zaire, which is really huge). There is something of a question of "what forces keep them independent?" because of that size discrepancy.

Though the prototypical "banana republics" are Guatemala, population around 17 million, and Honduras, population around 7.4 million; Rwanda and Burundi seem to fit that scale a lot better than those European postage stamp countries do. If you want a European country that's the size of a banana republic, you look at Denmark, not Iceland. Whatever forces keep Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, or San Marino independent are likely very different from those that keep Guatemala and Honduras so. Though it may be that the problem is not the choice of examples but the choice of a misleading label for those examples.
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