Landlocked Countries - History and Significance

History and Significance

Historically, being landlocked was regarded as a disadvantageous position. It cuts the country off from sea resources such as fishing, but more importantly cuts off direct access to seaborne trade which makes up a large percentage of international trade. Coastal regions tended to be wealthier and more heavily populated than inland ones. Paul Collier in his book The Bottom Billion argues that being landlocked in a poor geographic neighborhood is one of four major development "traps" by which a country can be held back. In general, he found that when a neighboring country experiences better growth, it tends to spill over into favorable development for the country itself. For landlocked countries, the effect is particularly strong, as they are limited in their trading activity with the rest of the world. He states, "If you are coastal, you serve the world; if you are landlocked, you serve your neighbors." Others have argued that being landlocked may actually be a blessing as it creates a 'natural tariff barrier' which protects the country from cheap imports. In some instances this has led to more robust local food systems.

Landlocked developing countries have significantly higher costs of international cargo transportation compared to coastal developing countries (in Asia the ratio is 3:1).

Countries thus have made particular efforts to avoid being landlocked:

• The International Congo Society, which owned the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, was awarded a narrow piece of land cutting through Angola to connect it to the sea by the Conference of Berlin in 1885.
• The Republic of Ragusa once gifted the town of Neum to the Ottoman Empire because it did not want to have a land border with Venice; this small municipality was inherited by Bosnia and Herzegovina and now provides limited sea access, splitting the Croatian part of the Adriatic coast in two. Since Bosnia and Herzegovina is a new country, railways and ports have not been built for its need. There is no freight port along its short coast line at Neum, making it effectively landlocked, although there are plans to change this. Instead the port of Ploče in Croatia is used.
• After World War I, in the Treaty of Versailles, a part of Germany, designated "the Polish corridor", was given to the new Second Polish Republic, for access to the Baltic Sea. This was also the pretext for making Danzig (now Gdańsk) with its harbour the Free City of Danzig. This gave Poland a short coastline, which was soon enlarged as the small fishing harbor of Gdynia grew into a large one. Until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austrians, Hungarians and that empire's other nationalities had served in that country's navy, but since then, Austria and Hungary have both been landlocked countries.
• The Treaty of Versailles also required Germany to offer Czechoslovakia a lease for 99 years of parts of the ports in Hamburg and Stettin, allowing Czechoslovakia sea trade via the Elbe and Oder rivers. While the former Stettin is now part of Poland after World War II, Hamburg still continued the contract so that the part of the port (now called Moldauhafen) may still be used for sea trade by a successor of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic.
• The Danube is an international waterway, thus landlocked Austria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia, and Slovakia have secure access to the Black Sea (the same access is given to southern parts of Germany, itself not landlocked, and eastern parts of Croatia, which is also not landlocked).
• The Mekong is an international waterway so that landlocked Laos has secure access to the South China Sea (since Laos became independent from French Indochina).
• It is possible that one of the causes of the Paraguayan War was Paraguay's lack of direct ocean access (although this is disputed, see the linked article)

Losing access to the sea is generally a great blow to a nation, politically, militarily, and particularly with respect to international trade and therefore economic security:

• The independence of Eritrea and Montenegro, brought about by successful separatist movements, have caused Ethiopia and Serbia respectively to become landlocked.
• Bolivia lost its short-lived coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific. The Bolivian Navy still trains in Lake Titicaca for an eventual recovery, and the Bolivian people annually celebrate a patriotic "Dia del Mar" (Day of the Sea) to remember its territorial loss, which included both the coastal city of Antofagasta and what has proven to be one of the most significant and lucrative copper deposits in the world. In the 21st century, the selection of the route of gas pipes from Bolivia to the sea fueled popular uprisings.
• Austria and Hungary also lost their access to the sea as a consequence of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919) and the Treaty of Trianon (1920) respectively. Previously, although Croatia had a limited constitutional autonomy within the Kingdom of Hungary, the City of Fiume/Rijeka on the Croatian coast was governed directly from Budapest by an appointed governor as a corpus separatum, to provide Hungary with its only international port in the periods 1779–1813, 1822–1848 and 1868–1918.
• When the Entente Powers divided the former Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Sèvres at the close of World War I, Armenia was promised part of the Trebizond vilayet (roughly corresponding to the modern Trabzon and Rize provinces in Turkey). This would have given Armenia access to the Black Sea. However, the Sèvres treaty collapsed with the Turkish War of Independence and was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne which firmly established Turkish rule over the area.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea now gives a landlocked country a right of access to and from the sea without taxation of traffic through transit states. The United Nations has a programme of action to assist landlocked developing countries, and the current responsible Undersecretary-General is Anwarul Karim Chowdhury.

Some countries have a long coastline, but much of it may not be readily usable for trade and commerce. For instance, in its early history, Russia's only ports were on the Arctic Ocean and frozen shut for much of the year. The wish to gain control of a warm water port was a major motivator of Russian expansion towards the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Pacific Ocean. On the other hand, some landlocked countries can have access to the ocean along wide navigable rivers. For instance, Paraguay (and Bolivia to a lesser extent) have access to the ocean by the Paraguay and Parana rivers.

Several countries have coastlines on landlocked seas, such as the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. Since these seas are in effect lakes, and do not allow access to wider seaborne trade, countries such as Kazakhstan are still considered to be landlocked. (The Caspian Sea, however, is connected to the Black Sea via a man-made canal between the Volga and Don rivers.)