Partition (politics)

The island of Ireland after partition between the primarily Irish nationalist Southern Ireland (today the Republic of Ireland) and the Irish unionist-majority Northern Ireland (today part of United Kingdom).

In politics, a partition is a change of political borders cutting through at least one territory considered a homeland by some community.^[1]

Common arguments for partitions include:

• historicist – that partition is inevitable, or already in progress^[1]
• last resort – that partition should be pursued to avoid the worst outcomes (genocide or large-scale ethnic expulsion), if all other means fail^[1]
• cost–benefit – that partition offers a better prospect of conflict reduction than the if existing borders are not changed^[1]
• better tomorrow – that partition will reduce current violence and conflict, and that the new more homogenized states will be more stable^[1]
• rigorous end – heterogeneity leads to problems, hence homogeneous states should be the goal of any policy^[1]

Examples

Notable examples are: (See Category:Partition)

• Partition of Africa (Scramble for Africa), between 1881 and 1914.
• Partition, multiple times, of the Roman Empire into the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire, following the Crisis of the Third Century.
• Partition of Prussia by the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466^[2][3] creating Royal Prussia, and Duchy of Prussia in 1525^[4]
• Partition of Catalonia by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659: Northern Catalan territories (Roussillon) was given to France by Spain.
• In the 1757 Second Treaty of Versailles, France agreed upon the partition of Prussia^[5]
• Partition of the United States during the American Civil War.
• German occupation of Czechoslovakia^[6] and Munich Agreement of 1938
• Three Partitions of Luxembourg, the last of which in 1839, that divided Luxembourg between France, Prussia, Belgium, and the independent Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
• Partitions of Polish–Lithuanian_Commonwealth in the 18th century.
• 1905 Partition of Bengal and 1947 Partition of Bengal
• Partition of Tyrol by the London Pact of 1915
• Partition of the German Empire in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles
  • Partition of Prussia in 1919^[7]
• Partition of the Ottoman Empire
• Partition of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1919 by the Treaty of St. Germain
• Partition of Ireland in 1920 into the independent Irish Free State and (British) Northern Ireland
• Treaty of Kars of 1921, which partitioned Ottoman Armenia between the republic of Turkey and the then Soviet Union (Western and Eastern Armenia)
• Partition of Germany and Berlin after World War II, annexation of former eastern territories of Germany
  • Partition^[8] of East Prussia^[9] between the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union^[10]
• Partition of Korea in 1945
• 1947 UN Partition Plan for British Mandate of Palestine; this partition was abortive, resulting only in Jewish independent state, while the proposed Arab state was never formed.
• Partition of India (colonial British India) in 1947 into the independent dominions (later republics) of India and Pakistan (which included modern-day Bangladesh)
• Partition of Korea in 1953
• Partition of Punjab in 1966 into the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh
• Partition of Pakistan in 1971, when East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War
• Partition of Vietnam in 1954
• The hypothetical partition of the Canadian province of Quebec
• Partition of Yugoslavia in the 1990s
• Partition of Cyprus in 1974 (de facto), into Cyprus and Northern Cyprus
• Possible Partition of Kosovo after disputed independence in 2008.
• Partitions of China (See 瓜分中國)

See also

• Separatism
• Secession

References