Land borders: records, enclaves and curiosities
Two countries have fourteen neighbours. Two others are so landlocked that reaching the sea means crossing two borders. And somewhere between Belgium and the Netherlands, a village is cut into about thirty pieces.
Borders tell stories of wars, treaties, and meridians ruled onto maps by diplomats who had never seen the ground. They also produce the least likely situations in all of geography — and excellent quiz questions.
The countries with the most neighbours
Two countries are tied at the top, with fourteen land neighbours each: China and Russia.
China touches Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam. Russia borders Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea.
The detail that catches everyone out: Russia borders Poland and Lithuania with no territorial continuity, through Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave wedged on the Baltic since 1945.
Next come Brazil with ten neighbours — every South American country except Chile and Ecuador — then Germany with nine, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Austria, Serbia, Turkey and France around eight.
France has eight neighbours in Europe: Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Spain and Andorra. But counting its overseas territories it has three more — Brazil and Suriname via French Guiana, and the Netherlands on the island of Saint Martin. Its longest land border is not with Spain: it is with Brazil, roughly 730 km of Amazon rainforest.
Landlocked countries
A landlocked country has no direct access to the ocean. There are about forty-four in the world, the exact figure depending on which states you recognise.
Two regions account for most of them: Central Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Serbia…) and sub-Saharan Africa (Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Ethiopia, South Sudan…). South America has only two — Bolivia and Paraguay — and North America none at all.
Being landlocked carries a well-documented economic cost: dependence on neighbours' ports, transit fees, exposure to border closures. Bolivia lost its access to the sea in the War of the Pacific at the end of the nineteenth century, and still treats it as a national question — it maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca.
The two doubly landlocked countries
A country is doubly landlocked when all of its neighbours are landlocked too: reaching a coast means crossing at least two borders. Only two exist in the world.
- Liechtenstein, surrounded by Switzerland and Austria.
- Uzbekistan, surrounded by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
The Uzbek case is arguable: Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan border the Caspian Sea, which has no access to the world ocean. It is precisely because the Caspian is a closed lake that Uzbekistan keeps its status.
The countries entirely surrounded by one other
Three states are wholly enclosed within a single neighbour:
- Lesotho, surrounded by South Africa — the largest of the three, and a mountain country whose lowest point is above 1,400 metres.
- San Marino, surrounded by Italy, and claiming to be the oldest republic in the world.
- Vatican City, enclosed within the single city of Rome.
A near case: The Gambia, entirely surrounded by Senegal except for a narrow Atlantic frontage. The country follows the course of the Gambia River for a few hundred kilometres, in a finger shape that is one of the most recognisable colonial legacies in Africa.
The countries with only one neighbour
There are more than people think, and the question comes up constantly in quizzes: Portugal (Spain), Denmark (Germany), Ireland (United Kingdom), Canada (United States), South Korea (North Korea), Qatar (Saudi Arabia), Brunei (Malaysia), Timor-Leste (Indonesia), Papua New Guinea (Indonesia), The Gambia (Senegal), Haiti and the Dominican Republic (each other), Monaco (France), Lesotho, San Marino and Vatican City.
Canada is the most striking of the list: the second-largest country in the world, and a single neighbour — but with the longest land border on the planet, roughly 8,890 km counting Alaska.
The borders drawn with a ruler
A large share of the borders in Africa and North America are straight lines, drawn on maps at diplomatic conferences. The Canada–United States border follows the 49th parallel for nearly 2,000 km. The Egypt–Sudan border follows the 22nd parallel, with one twist: the Hala'ib Triangle, claimed by both countries, and Bir Tawil, claimed by neither — one of the very few terra nullius land territories on Earth.
The Caprivi Strip in Namibia is another monument to colonial absurdity: a corridor 450 km long and sometimes 30 km wide, obtained by Germany in 1890 to link its colony to the Zambezi — without knowing that the river was rendered unnavigable further down by Victoria Falls.
Baarle, the village in thirty pieces
On the Belgian-Dutch border, the municipality of Baarle is split between Baarle-Hertog (Belgium) and Baarle-Nassau (Netherlands) into some twenty Belgian enclaves inside Dutch territory, several of which themselves contain Dutch counter-enclaves.
The line, inherited from medieval feudal partitions, runs through houses and cafés. Front doors determine a building's nationality: some houses have two street numbers, and there have been restaurants where you had to change table to comply with different closing hours.
Europe has others: Llívia, a Spanish enclave surrounded by France in the Pyrenees, the result of a 1659 treaty that ceded villages but not towns; or Büsingen, a German municipality entirely surrounded by Switzerland, which uses the Swiss franc.
Link two countries border by border
GeoG's Borders mode asks you to connect two countries using land borders only. Once you have played it, the world map does not read the same way again.
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