One of my definitions of luxury is, “the ability to take trivia seriously.”

Partly from teaching international law and also my lifelong ingterest in geography, I have developed a fascination with the political status of what I refer to technically as “tee tiny little countries.”

Does anybody else know anything about a country which exists called San Marino?

It sits there landlocked inside Italy. San Marino consists of about 12,000 acres.

It is not like one of the recent pieces of a colonial empire that gets a seat in the United Nations. San Marino has been an independent state since the fourth century.

VERY independent.

For years it had the only popularly elected Communist government on earth. When Mousolini’s ally Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941 San Marino declared war on Germany.

This left Il Duce in a bit of a quandary. He couldn’t just stomp on San Marino and San Marino hadn’t declared war on HIM. So he gave Germany the right to send troops across its territory and until the Americans got there they occupied the place, way the out inthe middle of Italy.

I wish I could find out more about that very strange occupation.

San Marino has turned its foreign relations over to Italy, so it has no UN seat.

But SMOM DOES a UN seat, and I’ll bet Elizabeth has information on that huge country.

The Sovereign and Military Order of Malta, though the origins of SMOM are disputed, is a worldwide Catholic organization that once ruled Malta, as the name indicates. Its size was reduced somewhat
after Rhodes was taken away from them.

SMOM now occupies no ground at all. It is located in an upper story of a bulding in Rome.

BUT…

SMOM has a seat inthe United Nations and has independent relations with 70 countries. It exchanges ambassadots with them!

Elizabeth, wherfe in the HELL do those ambassadors LIVE? Somehow I can’t picture seventy legations in the upper stories of an Italian office building.

Compared to SMOM Vatican City is a giant. It has 106 acres of actual ground.

I don’t understand why Vatican City is constantly referred to as the second smallest indepandent country on earth, next to Monaco, since the Vatican recognizes SMOM.

Compared to the three independent countries inside Italy, Leichtenstein is a sprawling giant. It is about the size of Washington, DC which is 40,000 acres, but Leichtenstein has long since turned all of its foreign relations over to Switzerland.

I have heard too much about Monaco to care about it. I have heard plenty about the Vatican, but precisely because it is so important religiously its political existence has been largely ignored.

Like SMOM what is now Vatican City once occupied a lot more territory. The Papal States covered some forty thousand square miles of central Italy for many centuries. Like SMOM, the Pope’s empire contracted a bit when its original area was conquered.

The smallest REAL country in Europe is Luxembourg. I say REAL because it did ALL the things a sovereign country does. It printed its own money, though Belgian currency was also an official currency there until the Euro. I believe that is the only example on earth of a country OFFICIALLY accepting another country’s money as official and yet printing its own at the same time.

Luxembourg actually had its own army and used it as a member of NATO, to which it contributed on regiment. Luxembourg was exactly 999 square miles in size, which always made me want them to take another square mile when I was nine years old and studying my little red ge0graphy book all the time.

I believe Andorra is the only country on earth whose main industry, officially, was smuggling.

Throughout the 1950s Andorra’s official, appropriated military budget was exactly twenty four dollars and sixty five cents per annum.

The Channel Islands Britain had their own sovereignty. They were the only English-speaking areas occupied by Germany during World War II.

When I said that Luxembourg was eh only country that OFFICIALLY recognized a foreign currency and yet printed its own, I forgot that Scotland printed its own currency and may still do so but mainly uses the British pound.

I think that Vatican City is the only tee tiny country that does not have the same official language as its bigger neighbor(s). The official language of that country is still Latin.

Oddly enough, all this seeming trivia can be very useful in an international law lecture, but I was fascinated by it long before I taught that.