In politics, a partition is a change of political borders cutting through at least one territory considered a homeland by some community. That change is done primarily by diplomatic means, and use of military force is negligible.
Common arguments for partitions include:
- historicist â€" that partition is inevitable, or already in progress
- last resort â€" that partition should be pursued to avoid the worst outcomes (genocide or large-scale ethnic expulsion), if all other means fail
- cost-benefit â€" that partition offers a better prospect of conflict reduction than the if existing borders are not changed
- better tomorrow â€" that partition will reduce current violence and conflict, and that the new more homogenized states will be more stable
- rigorous end â€" heterogeneity leads to problems, hence homogeneous states should be the goal of any policy
Common arguments against include:
- It disrupts functioning and traditional state entities
- It creates enormous human suffering
- It creates new grievances that could eventually lead to more deadly violence, such as the Korean and Vietnamese wars.
- It prioritizes race and ethnicity to a level acceptable only to an apartheid regime
- The international system is very reluctant to accept the idea of partition in deeply divided societies
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 creating Royal Prussia, and Duchy of Prussia in 1525
- 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
- Partition of the United States during the American Civil War.
- Partition of Prussia in 1919
- German occupation of Czechoslovakia and Munich Agreement of 1938
- Partition of East Prussia among People's Republic of Poland and Soviet Union
- Three Partitions of Luxembourg, the last of which in 1839, that divided Luxembourg between France, Prussia, Belgium, and the independent Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
- Three Partitions of Poland and Poland-Lithuania in the 18th, with the fourth one sometimes referring to events of 19th and 20th centuries
- 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 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 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
- Possible Partition of Kosovo after disputed independence in 2008.
- Partitions of China (See ç"œåˆ†ä¸åœ‹)
