Enclave and exclave

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Explicative diagram of territorial discontinuities: Enclaves and exclaves
  • A (red):
  • B (yellow):
    • contains 2 enclaves (A3 and D).
  • C (green):
    • continuous territory.
  • D (orange):
  • E (purple):
    • is an enclaved territory: it is encroached inside A;

An enclave is any portion of a state that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state.[1] An exclave is a portion of a state geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory.[2] Many enclaves are also exclaves.

Enclave is sometimes used improperly to denote a territory that is only partly surrounded by another state.[1] When such a territory additionally borders a body of water that is not enclosed by a different state, it is termed a pene-enclave or "practical" enclave. Coastal examples include Gibraltar, Ceuta, Alaska, Kaliningrad Oblast, Musandam and Cabinda.

For illustration, in the figure (right), A1 is a pene-enclave (attached to C but also bounded by water). Although A2 is an exclave of A, it cannot be classed as an enclave because it shares borders with B and C. The territory A3 is both an exclave of A and an enclave from the viewpoint of B.

Origin and usage[edit]

The word enclave is French and first appeared in the mid-15th century as a derivative of the verb enclaver (1283), from the colloquial Latin inclavare (to close with a key).[3] Originally, it was a term of property law that denoted the situation of a land or parcel of land surrounded by land owned by a different owner, and that could not be reached for its exploitation in a practical and sufficient manner without crossing the surrounding land.[4] In law, this created a servitude[5] of passage for the benefit of the owner of the surrounded land.

Later, the term enclave began to be used also to refer to parcels of countries, counties, fiefs, communes, towns, parishes, etc. that were surrounded by alien territory. This French word eventually entered the English and other languages to denote the same concept although local terms have continued to be used. In India, the word "pocket" is often used as a synonym for enclave (such as "the pockets of Puducherry district").[6] In British administrative history, subnational enclaves were usually called detachments or detached parts, and national enclaves as detached districts or detached dominions.[7] In English ecclesiastic history, subnational enclaves were known as peculiars (see also Royal Peculiar).

The word exclave, modeled on enclave,[8] is a logical extension of the concept of enclave.


Enclaves may have been created for a variety of historical, political or geographical reasons. Some areas have been left as enclaves by changes in the course of a river.

In the feudal system, the ownership of feudal domains was often transferred or partitioned, either through purchase and sale or through inheritance, and often such domains were or came to be surrounded by other domains. In particular, this state of affairs persisted until the 19th century in the Holy Roman Empire, and these domains (principalities etc.) came to have many of the characteristics of sovereign states.

Since living in a national enclave can be very inconvenient and many agreements have to be made by both countries about mail addresses, power supply or passage rights, enclaves tend to be eliminated and many cases that existed before have now been removed. The governments of India and Bangladesh have been pressed to resolve the complex system of enclaves along their border – persons in these enclaves have complained of being effectively stateless.[9] In 2011, India and Bangladesh signed a leasehold agreement regarding the Tin Bigha Corridor.

True enclaves[edit]

Further information: List of enclaves and exclaves

A true enclave is a territory over which a nation is sovereign, but which cannot be reached without passing through territory of the single foreign nation that surrounds it. Two examples are Büsingen, a true exclave of Germany, and Campione d'Italia, a true exclave of Italy, both surrounded by Switzerland.

A historical example was West Berlin before the reunification of Germany, which was a de facto West German exclave, being enclaved by East Germany. (Also, 12 small exclaves of West Berlin, such as Steinstücken, were separated from the city, some by only a few meters.) All of Berlin was ruled de jure by the four Allied powers; however, the East German government and the Soviet Union treated East Berlin as an integral part of East Germany.

Most of the true national-level enclaves now existing are in Asia and Europe. While subnational enclaves are numerous the world over, there are only a few national-level enclaves in Africa, Australia and the Americas (each such enclave being surrounded by the territorial waters of another country).

Enclaved countries[edit]

Position of Lesotho within South Africa

Some countries in their own right, completely surrounded by another country, are said to be enclaves. They are not enclaves as such, as according to the definition, an enclave is a portion of a country, and not an entire state. Three such enclaved countries are:

The principality of Monaco is not an enclave, although it only borders France, because it also possesses a coastline and territorial waters; thus, it is not completely surrounded by another country. Similarly, The Gambia is not an enclave.

Historically, four of the Black homelands or Bantustans of South Africa were granted nominal independence, unrecognized internationally, by the Nationalist government from 1976 until their reabsorption in 1994. Others remained under government rule from 1948 to 1994. Being heavily partitioned, various parts of these Bantustans were true enclaves.


Temporary enclaves[edit]


Related constructs and terms[edit]

Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic
Kentucky Bend and surrounding area
  Missouri (MO)
  Tennessee (TN)
  Kentucky (KY)


In the figure above, A3 is both an enclave and an exclave. A2 is an exclave of A, but it is not an enclave, because it borders both B and C. The singular territory D, although an enclave, is not an exclave.

Subnational enclaves and exclaves[edit]


Enclaves within enclaves[edit]



  • The complex of enclaves at Cooch Behar district includes 24 second-order enclaves and one small third-order enclave called Dahala Khagrabari #51: a piece of India within Bangladesh, within India, within Bangladesh.

Ethnic enclaves[edit]


  • There are several Serb enclaves in Kosovo where the institutions of Kosovo aren't fully operational due to disputes.

"Practical" enclaves, exclaves and inaccessible districts[edit]

Pene-enclaves and pene-exclaves are regions that are not conterminous with the main land region, border only one alien territory, and are not entirely surrounded by alien land or alien territorial waters. Hence, they are enclaves or exclaves for practical purposes, without meeting the strict definition.

Many pene-exclaves partially border the sea or another body of water, which comprises their own territorial waters (i.e., they are not surrounded by other nations' territorial waters). Alaska is the largest pene-exclave in the world. Because they border their own territorial waters in addition to a land border with another country, they are not true exclaves. Still, one cannot travel to them on land without going through another country.

  • Kaliningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), a pene-exclave situated on the Baltic coast.
  • Cabinda (also spelled Kabinda, formerly Portuguese Congo) is a pene-exclave and a province of Angola on the Atlantic coast of southwestern Africa.
  • Oecusse, a district on the northwestern side of the island of Timor, is a pene-exclave of East Timor.
  • Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish pene-exclaves on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.
  • Temburong is a Bruneian pene-exclave surrounded by Malaysia.
  • The Northwest Angle in Minnesota is geographically separated from the rest of the state (and United States) by Lake of the Woods and is only accessible on land through Canada.
  • Point Roberts, Washington, is an unincorporated community in Whatcom County—located on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, south of Delta, British Columbia, Canada—that can be reached by land from the rest of the United States only by traveling through Canada.
  • Ambergris Caye is a Belizean pene-exclave—south of Xcalak, Quintana Roo. It can be only accessible by travelling through the rest of Mexico.
  • Vermont has two pene-exclaves with Canada. Province Point, a few kilometres to the northeast of the town of East Alburgh, Vermont, is the southernmost tip of a small promontory approximately 2 acres (1 ha) in size 45.013351°N 73.193257°W.[38] The promontory is cut through by the US-Canadian border; as such the area is a practical exclave of the United States contiguous with Canada. Similarly, the southern point of Province Island, 45°0'15"N 72°13'52"W, a small island mostly in the Canadian province of Quebec, crosses into the American state of Vermont. It is situated in Lake Memphremagog, near Newport, Vermont.
  • Northern Ireland, one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom, is bounded by the Republic of Ireland, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Inaccessible districts are regions that are conterminous with the main land region but that are only easily accessible by going through a second country.

  • The Spanish village of Os de Civís can only be accessed through the independent Principality of Andorra, as it is virtually isolated from the rest of Spain by mountains.
  • The Kleinwalsertal Alpine valley in Vorarlberg, Austria can only be accessed by road from Germany, being separated from the rest of Austria by inaccessible high mountains traversed by no roads.
  • Jungholz is a village, also in Austria (in Tyrol), which is surrounded by German territory except for one single point on the summit of Sorgschrofen, where it touches the rest of Austria. As with Kleinwalsertal, road access is only through Germany.

Conversely, a territory that is an exclave but does not function as one (instead functioning as an adjacent part of the main nation) is deemed a "quasi-exclave".(Robinson 1959)




Examples of this include:

Land owned by a foreign country[edit]


Examples of this include:


Unusual cross-border transport channels[edit]

National railway passing through another state's territory[edit]


Examples include:

  • Trains from Görlitz to Zittau, Germany, pass the border river Neisse several times (see Oder–Neisse line); the train station for Ostritz, Germany, lies in Krzewina Zgorzelecka, Poland.
  • The former Soviet Central Asian Republics have numerous examples.[clarification needed]

Highway of one state passing through another state's territory[edit]


Subnational highway passing through other internal territory[edit]

Border transport infrastructure[edit]


See also[edit]



  1. ^ a b Raton, Pierre (1958). "Les enclaves". Annuaire français de droit international 4. p. 186. 
  3. ^ Le Grand Robert, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 2001, vol.III, p. 946.
  4. ^ Le Grand Robert, p. 946.
  8. ^ Exclave. Webster's, p. 497.
  9. ^ "Hope for Indo-Bangladesh enclaves". NDTV. 12 September 2011. Retrieved 12 September 2011. 
  12. ^ Instituto Geográfico do Exército: Territory of Santa Maria (Estremoz)
  13. ^ "Can thaw unstick frozen conflict?". BBC News. 2009-05-06. Retrieved 2009-08-26. 
  17. ^ Arocha, Magaly (First Consul of the General Consulate of Venezuela in Naples) (May 1999). "La Orden de Malta y su Naturaleza Jurídica (The Order of Malta and Its Legal Nature) – English translation". Retrieved October 1, 2012. 
  18. ^ "Czech leased areas in Hamburg". Retrieved 2013-10-26. 
  20. ^ Jürgen Siebeck (23 October 2002). "Is Bohemia the sea?". Retrieved 2013-10-26. 
  21. ^ Zdeněk Vališ (28 April 2005). "Czech harbor in Hamburg, waiting for resurrection". Retrieved 2013-10-26. 
  31. ^ "British Cemeteries". Retrieved 2013-02-24. 
  33. ^ Erickson, Lt Clayton, RCN (2012). "Captain Cook Monument at Kealakekua Cleaned and Repaired". Cook's Log 35 (4). p. 38. Retrieved 2013-02-23. 
  35. ^ Harris, Francis (22 Jul 2006). "Don't mention the murder – how Hawaii forgot Capt. Cook". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2013-02-23. 
  41. ^ a b Railway Gazette International April 2008 p 240
  42. ^ [Railways Africa 2014 issue 5, p29]
  43. ^ 2006 Road Atlas Ireland, AA, pp. 36–37
  48. ^ Railway Gazette: Border bridges rebuilt[dead link]


External links[edit]