No Treaty, No Country: The Creation of States by Agreement and the Case for Private Initiative

Can a treaty bring a country into being, and may a private actor lawfully set such a process in motion? This monograph examines the creation of states by international agreement from the Napoleonic settlements and the Congress of Vienna to the Republic of Cyprus in 1960, and sets out what a contemporary project would require.

It defends three findings. First, existing states, alone or acting together, have by international agreement constituted new polities, and on occasion new states, out of territory under their authority: Vatican City, the Free City of Cracow, Eastern Rumelia, Libya, and the Republic of Cyprus among them. Second, no identified case shows a state granting its own territory, by constitutive instrument, at the initiative of a private actor; private power has come close, most of all in the Congo Free State, but in none of these cases did a state grant territory it held. Third, no rule of international law treats the private origin of a proposal as a ground of invalidity for the state act that follows it, while recognition of any resulting state remains a separate political act.

The evidence is arranged on a ladder of constitutive power (conjured, codified, transformed, restored, recognised), with independence, operation, and durability assessed separately. The practical proposal, a design built from these findings rather than proved by them, rests on parent state permission and on the separation of dominium from imperium: a consenting state keeps ownership of uninhabited, undisputed land as landlord, while a new state receives governmental authority by treaty, after referendums, with no cession of title and no secession.

The monograph draws on treaties, United Nations resolutions, and judgments of international courts quoted from primary texts, and includes illustrative instrument suites, a model template, and a table of authorities. It is a work of independent research, not legal advice or a legal opinion.