List of irredentist claims or disputes

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Irredentist disputes

Not all territorial disputes are irredentist, although they are often couched in irredentist rhetoric to justify and legitimize such claims both internationally and within the country.

Prominent irredentist disputes during the past century have included:

Gabriele D'Annunzio's occupation of Fiume (now Rijeka) from 1919–1921 — proclaimed as the Italian Regency of Carnaro, the original irredentist dispute (when the term was first popularized).
Mutual counterclaims between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China to territories currently controlled by the other:
* The People's Republic of China claims to the islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Matsu, Kinmen, and Orchid Island, collectively ruled by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan). South Tibet under Indian administration are also claimed by PRC as part of Tibet, although similar Chinese claims to Nepal and Bhutan have been dropped.
* The Republic of China's claims to Tannu Uriankhai, now a republic of Russia; Outer Mongolia (i.e. the independent country of Mongolia); mainland China, ruled by the People's Republic of China, and most of the PRC's territorial claims.
Claims among Mexicans to the Southwestern United States, purchased by the United States from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War for a sum of 15 million dollars, an amount equivalent today to 120 billion dollars (roughly 12 cents per m²).
French claims before World War I to Alsace-Lorraine.
Weimar Germany's claims after World War I to Alsace-Lorraine, areas of Poland, Lithuania, Austria and the Czech Sudetenland.
Israeli claims to the Gaza Strip (from 1967 until 2005), Golan Heights and the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem.
Palestinian claims after division of the land under the British Mandate of Palestine to Israel and East Jerusalem.
Syrian claims on the Golan Heights.
Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands.
Bolivian claims to coastal regions of Chile annexed after the War of the Pacific.
Guatemalan claims to Belize and parts of Mexico
Pakistani claims to the Kashmir valley territory, which is divided between Pakistan and India.
Hungarian claims to parts of the neighbouring countries inhabited by the ethnic Hungarians (including parts of Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, etc.). The claim is based on historic criteria for some regions (such as Transylvania, where Hungarians are a minority), and ethnic for other regions.
Romanian irredentists before World War 1 claimed the unification of areas where Romanians formed a majority into the national Romanian state. The goal was achieved in 1918, but Bessarabia was lost again in 1940, being transformed into the Soviet Republic of Moldova. More recently, the goal of Romanian irredentism is the unification of Romania with the Republic of Moldova.
Serbian claims to large areas of Bosnia and Croatia (on grounds of ethnic affiliation).
Bosniak claims to Sandzak.
Albanian claims to Kosovo and to parts of Macedonia and Greece (on grounds of ethnic affiliation).
The Soviet Union annexed parts of Finnish Karelia after World War II. This question of the status of ceded Karelia was revived in Finland after the end of Cold War.
Iraqi claims to Kuwait before the Gulf War
Morocco's claims, initiated in 1963 by King Hassan II, to a claimed "Greater Morocco" (an area comprising parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Mauritania, the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla. This led to a border war with Algeria and the annexation of Western Sahara in 1976.
Greece's claims on areas of the Ottoman Empire after independence, leading to annexation of Thessaly, a failed war against Turkey in 1897 and the Balkan Wars. After World War I Greece claimed what is now the Aegean coastline of Turkey, because of the predominence there of Greek speakers since antiquity and former rule by the Byzantine Empire. Other Greek irredentist claims under the "Greater Greece" policy called Megali Idea included south Albania (North Epirus) and Cyprus.
Japan's Kuril Islands Dispute with the former Soviet Union (now Russia), most recently over the loss of the southern four islands in the Kuril Islands chain in the closing days of World War II under the Treaty of San Francisco. The Ainu, a people indigenous to Japan, had been the sole inhabitants of the islands for thousands of years until ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians began to settle there and displace them.
Ethnic Macedonian irredentists have expressed land claims to the entire region of Macedonia out of which only 40% lies within the Republic of Macedonia, the rest being in Greece, Bulgaria and Albania, by claiming ethnic Macedonian minorities in those regions of those countries.
Cambodia has claimed parts of the Mekong Delta that lie in present day Vietnam on the basis that the area, which was formerly part of the Khmer empire, was artificially carved up by the French during the Colonial Period and given to South Vietnam upon French withdrawal. The area still is home to at least one million ethnic Khmers (the Khmer Krom) who claim to be persecuted by the Vietnamese.

Irredentist entities

The following is an incomplete list of irredentist entities, both present and historical (i.e. non-extant).

List of irredentist claims or disputes

Irredentist disputes

Irredentist entities

See also