I still remember the week I annexed my sister’s stamp collection. I did it mainly because hers had a Penny Red and mine didn’t. Also, mine was smaller. The annexation was enacted formally and properly: the stamps had a vote in the parliament of my seven-year-old brain, and unanimously decided they wanted to be mine.
Nonetheless it didn’t turn out so well – not when my father interviewed me and drilled down to the basic motivation of my philatelic Anschluss: “I deserve them because I’m me.” As a result, I lost access to outside football after six, and three months later I decided stamps were stupid and girlish anyway.
That, in miniature, is the problem with annexations, whether they are executed by global despots or a Dorset bungalow owner trying to force a fence 12 inches (30cm) into the neighbour’s garden (in a case recently heard in Bournemouth courts, which led to a six-figure legal bill).
The annexation feels glorious in the moment – you get a shiny new possession, you have a Penny Red in the stamp book, and you congratulate yourself on having acted decisively. But when someone objects, or simply asks “Why?” the issue often collapses into sulky self-justification, or even self-destruction. History is littered with leaders who annexed first and repented at leisure.
Take the Partition of Poland in the late 18th-century. Russia, Prussia and Austria kept carving it up like a particularly tasty tiramisu at a hen party. By 1795, Poland had vanished entirely from the map. When Woodrow Wilson came to draw up his famous 14 Points after the First World War, “resurrect Poland” was literally on the list. The Poles came back angrier than ever, yet in 1939 they were being carved up again, then they were annexed again, then they came back again. Lesson: annexations never die. Also, don’t underestimate Poland. Looking at you, Vlad.
Or consider Alsace-Lorraine, the cosy middle of the European duvet constantly fought over by France and Germany. In 1871, Bismarck nicked it after the Franco-Prussian War. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles handed it back. In 1940, Hitler swiped it again. In 1945, the French reclaimed it.
The poor Alsatians were annexed so often that the Museum of Alsace in Strasbourg actually annexed a part of the Museum of Choucroute so they could open an annexe dedicated to the annexations called the Annexe of Annexations (spoiler: this isn’t true). Annexation in this case meant a permanent state of cultural and linguistic whiplash. To be annexed once may be misfortune; to be annexed four times begins to look like identitarian miscreancy.
Fast-forward to 1990, when Saddam Hussein rolled his tanks into Kuwait and announced that his small rich neighbour was now the 19th province of Iraq. Saddam thought it was a masterstroke – instant oil reserves, a shiny warm coastline, a chance to humiliate the Gulf monarchies.
Five months later, after a US-led coalition had flattened his army and booted him back, Saddam discovered that annexations can sometimes invite the entire planet to rearrange your furniture. He ended up subsisting in a “spiderhole” before being hanged live on TV.
These are only a few of the choicer examples. You could throw in Mussolini’s annexation of Ethiopia in 1936, which concluded with Italian troops fleeing, or the Soviets absorbing the Baltic states in 1940, only to lose them spectacularly in 1991. The point is the same: annexations always look good on Tuesday and catastrophic by Friday. They never end cleanly: they always return to haunt you, like a really bad one-night stand.
Part of the problem is that annexations are motivated not by strategy but by appetite. Just as my seven-year-old self thought “I want it, therefore it should be mine,” so too do leaders wrap naked greed in the language of destiny, security and historical justice. The excuses vary – “They speak a similar language,” “Crimea loves us” – but the underlying argument is always infantile. It boils down to “It’s mine because I’m me.”
Therefore if the history of self-righteous larceny teaches us anything, it’s this: don’t do it. Resist the urge to acquire stamp collections, vast tracts of steppe, or 12 inches of your neighbour’s garden. You will probably end up banned from the biscuit tin, £100,000 poorer, or dead.
I still remember the week I annexed my sister’s stamp collection. I did it mainly because hers had a Penny Red and mine didn’t. Also, mine was smaller. The annexation was enacted formally and properly: the stamps had a vote in the parliament of my seven-year-old brain, and unanimously decided they wanted to be mine.
Nonetheless it didn’t turn out so well – not when my father interviewed me and drilled down to the basic motivation of my philatelic Anschluss: “I deserve them because I’m me.” As a result, I lost access to outside football after six, and three months later I decided stamps were stupid and girlish anyway.
That, in miniature, is the problem with annexations, whether they are executed by global despots or a Dorset bungalow owner trying to force a fence 12 inches (30cm) into the neighbour’s garden (in a case recently heard in Bournemouth courts, which led to a six-figure legal bill).
The annexation feels glorious in the moment – you get a shiny new possession, you have a Penny Red in the stamp book, and you congratulate yourself on having acted decisively. But when someone objects, or simply asks “Why?” the issue often collapses into sulky self-justification, or even self-destruction. History is littered with leaders who annexed first and repented at leisure.
Take the Partition of Poland in the late 18th-century. Russia, Prussia and Austria kept carving it up like a particularly tasty tiramisu at a hen party. By 1795, Poland had vanished entirely from the map. When Woodrow Wilson came to draw up his famous 14 Points after the First World War, “resurrect Poland” was literally on the list. The Poles came back angrier than ever, yet in 1939 they were being carved up again, then they were annexed again, then they came back again. Lesson: annexations never die. Also, don’t underestimate Poland. Looking at you, Vlad.
Or consider Alsace-Lorraine, the cosy middle of the European duvet constantly fought over by France and Germany. In 1871, Bismarck nicked it after the Franco-Prussian War. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles handed it back. In 1940, Hitler swiped it again. In 1945, the French reclaimed it.
The poor Alsatians were annexed so often that the Museum of Alsace in Strasbourg actually annexed a part of the Museum of Choucroute so they could open an annexe dedicated to the annexations called the Annexe of Annexations (spoiler: this isn’t true). Annexation in this case meant a permanent state of cultural and linguistic whiplash. To be annexed once may be misfortune; to be annexed four times begins to look like identitarian miscreancy.
Fast-forward to 1990, when Saddam Hussein rolled his tanks into Kuwait and announced that his small rich neighbour was now the 19th province of Iraq. Saddam thought it was a masterstroke – instant oil reserves, a shiny warm coastline, a chance to humiliate the Gulf monarchies.
Five months later, after a US-led coalition had flattened his army and booted him back, Saddam discovered that annexations can sometimes invite the entire planet to rearrange your furniture. He ended up subsisting in a “spiderhole” before being hanged live on TV.
These are only a few of the choicer examples. You could throw in Mussolini’s annexation of Ethiopia in 1936, which concluded with Italian troops fleeing, or the Soviets absorbing the Baltic states in 1940, only to lose them spectacularly in 1991. The point is the same: annexations always look good on Tuesday and catastrophic by Friday. They never end cleanly: they always return to haunt you, like a really bad one-night stand.
Part of the problem is that annexations are motivated not by strategy but by appetite. Just as my seven-year-old self thought “I want it, therefore it should be mine,” so too do leaders wrap naked greed in the language of destiny, security and historical justice. The excuses vary – “They speak a similar language,” “Crimea loves us” – but the underlying argument is always infantile. It boils down to “It’s mine because I’m me.”
Therefore if the history of self-righteous larceny teaches us anything, it’s this: don’t do it. Resist the urge to acquire stamp collections, vast tracts of steppe, or 12 inches of your neighbour’s garden. You will probably end up banned from the biscuit tin, £100,000 poorer, or dead.