In international relations, a partition is a division of a previously unified territory into two or more parts.
Brendan O'Leary distinguishes partition, a change of political borders cutting through at least one territory considered a homeland by some community, from secession, which takes place within existing recognized political units. For Arie Dubnov and Laura Robson, partition is the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states.
Contents
History
Dubnov and Robson locate partition in the context of post-World War I peacebuilding and the "new conversations surrounding ethnicity, nationhood, and citizenship" that emerged from it. The post-war agreements, such as the League of Nations mandate system, promoted "a new political language of ethnic separatism as a central aspect of national self-determination, while protecting and disguising continuities and even expansions of French and, especially, British imperial powers. After World War II, they argue, partition transformed from "an imperial tactic into an organizing principle" of world diplomacy".
Ranabir Samaddar agrees that partition gained prominence following World War I, particularly with the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the Dissolution of Austria-Hungary, resulting from competing national ambitions. By this point, he argues, ethnicity had become the primary justification of border proposals.
Scholarship has closely linked partition to violence. Tracing the precedent for the Partition of Ireland in population resettlements across former Ottoman Empire territories and the making of national 'majorities' and 'minorities', Dubnov and Robson emphasise how partitions after Ireland contained proposals to transfer "inconvenient populations in addition to forcible territorial division into separate states," which they note had violent consequences for local actors who were devolved the task of "carving out physically separate political entities on the ground and making them ethnically homogenous".
T.G. Fraser notes that Britain proposed partition in both Ireland and Palestine as a method of resolving conflict between competing national groups, but in neither case did it end communal violence. Rather, Fraser argues, partition merely gave these conflicts a "new dimension".
Similarly, A. Dirk Moses asserts partition does not "so much solve minority issues as deposit them into different containers as minority issues reappear in partitioned units", rejecting what he calls "divine cartographies" that seek to "neatly map peoples as naturally emplaced in their homelands" for disregarding the heterogeneous reality of identity in the real world.
Arguments for
historicist – that partition is inevitable, or already in progress
last resort – that partition should be pursued to avoid the worst outcomes (genocide or large-scale ethnic expulsion), if all other means fail
cost–benefit – that partition offers a better prospect of conflict reduction than if the existing borders are not changed
better tomorrow – that partition will reduce current violence and conflict, and that the new more homogenized states will be more stable
rigorous end – heterogeneity leads to problems, hence homogeneous states should be the goal of any policy
Arguments against
national territorial unity will be lost
bi-nationalism and multi-nationalism are not undesirable
the impossibility of a just partition
difficult in deciding how the new border(s) will be drawn
the likelihood of disorder and violence
partitioning alone does not lead to the desired homogenization
security issues arising within the borders of the new states
Daniel Posner has argued that partitions of diverse communities into homogenous communities is unlikely to solve problems of communal conflict, as the boundary changes will alter the actors' incentives and give rise to new cleavages. For example, while the Muslim and Hindu cleavages might have been the most salient amid the Indian independence movement, the creation of a religiously homogenous Hindu state (India) and a religiously homogeneous Muslim state (Pakistan) created new social cleavages on lines other than religion in both of those states. Posner writes that relatively homogenous countries can be more violence-prone than countries with a large number of evenly matched ethnic groups.
Examples
Europe and the Middle East
Partition, multiple times, of the Roman Empire into the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, following the Crisis of the Third Century.
Partition of Prussia by the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466. creating Royal Prussia, and Duchy of Prussia in 1525
Partition of Catalonia by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659: Northern Catalan territories (Roussillon) were given to France by Spain.
In the Treaty of Versailles (1757), France and Austria agreed upon the partition of Prussia
German occupation of Czechoslovakia: The Sudetenland was ceded to Nazi Germany under the Munich Agreement of 1938, and the country was later divided into the German-administered Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the nominally independent Slovak Republic; later reunified at the end of World War II.
Three Partitions of Luxembourg, the last of which in 1839, divided Luxembourg between France, Prussia, Belgium, and the independent Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
Three Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, which led to the complete annihilation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 partitioned the region of Macedonia between Serbia (now North Macedonia), Greece and Bulgaria.
Partition of Tyrol by the London Pact of 1915 ratified during World War I.
Partition of the German Empire in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles.
Partition of Prussia in 1919.
Partition of the Ottoman Empire.
Everywhere else
Partition of Africa (Scramble for Africa), between 1881 and 1914 under the General Act of the Berlin Conference.
Partition of the U.S. state of Virginia in 1863 after Virginia joined the Confederacy in the American Civil War, 50 northwestern counties rejoined the Union as the State of West Virginia.
1947 Partition of Punjab into East Punjab and West Punjab.
1905 Partition of Bengal and 1947 Partition of Bengal into East Bengal and West Bengal.
Partition of Korea in 1945 into American and Soviet zones of occupation.
Division of Korea in 1953 between North Korea and South Korea after the Korean War.
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 China after the Chinese Civil War in 1946–1950 separated the original territory of the Republic of China into the People's Republic of China in Mainland China and the Republic of China on Taiwan and other island groups.
Partition of Punjab in 1966 into the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
Partition of Vietnam in 1954 between North Vietnam and South Vietnam under the Geneva Accord after the First Indochina War. Later reunified in 1975 after the Vietnam War.
The hypothetical partition of the Canadian province of Quebec.
Partition of Sudan into two entities in 2011, the Muslim-majority Sudan and the Christian-majority South Sudan.