40 Fun Facts About Autonomous Regions of the World

Which autonomous Danish territory quit the European Economic Community in 1985 over fishing rules?

Greenland walked out because it rejected Europe's commercial fishing regulations and a ban on sealskin products, while Denmark itself stayed a member.

Which Chinese territory, run by Portugal until 1999, has a far bigger gambling trade than Las Vegas?

Macau is known as the gambling capital of the world, and its handover in December 1999 ended 442 years of Portuguese rule.

Which autonomous monastic peninsula in Greece bars all women from entering, by law and tradition?

Mount Athos is governed by its own community of Orthodox monks, who hold the mountain to be the garden of the Mother of God and out of bounds to all other women.

Which semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, with its own president, was Freddie Mercury's birthplace?

Zanzibar is where the Queen singer was born Farrokh Bulsara, in Stone Town; he fled to Britain with his family at 17 during a revolution.

Which Chinese region kept its own dollar and driving on the left after Britain's 1997 handover?

Hong Kong changed hands at midnight on 1 July 1997 after 156 years of British rule, with China guaranteeing its economic and political systems for 50 years.

Which self-governing Danish archipelago between Iceland and Norway has its own FIFA football team?

The Faroe Islands run their own affairs apart from defence, policing, justice and currency, and their team won its first competitive match by beating Austria 1-0.

Which Native American nation governs the largest US reservation, in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah?

Navajo lands cover more than 27,000 square miles, an area larger than West Virginia, and are run by a tribal government seated at Window Rock, Arizona.

Which autonomous region of Portugal, governed from Funchal, was the birthplace of Cristiano Ronaldo?

Madeira named its airport after the footballer in 2017, and the bronze bust unveiled with it was widely ridiculed for bearing little likeness to him.

Which autonomous region of China, established in 1965, draws visitors to the Potala Palace in Lhasa?

Tibet's borders as an autonomous region take in only about half of the wider cultural area, and a failed 1959 uprising in Lhasa is marked every year by exiles.

Which autonomous community of Spain is the home of Euskara, Europe's only known language isolate?

The Basque Country's language is ringed by Romance languages yet unrelated to any of them, and its parliament sits in Vitoria-Gasteiz rather than larger Bilbao.

Which Spanish autonomous community, governed from Barcelona, held a disputed 2017 independence vote?

Catalonia's parliament declared independence weeks after the vote, and Madrid answered by imposing direct rule and dissolving the chamber.

By what nickname is Scotland's parliament, reconvened in 1999 after almost 300 years, usually known?

Holyrood is the Edinburgh district where the parliament's building opened in 2004; the earlier Scottish legislature vanished with the 1707 union with England.

Which island, the largest in the Mediterranean, became an autonomous region of Italy in May 1946?

Sicily won its special status 18 days before the referendum that made Italy a republic, and about a quarter of its people live in and around Palermo.

Which French island, given wider self-rule than other regions, was Napoleon Bonaparte's birthplace?

Corsica was rather neglected by the emperor's own government despite being his home; he was born in Ajaccio, and its assembly may exercise limited executive powers.

Which autonomous community of Spain, governed from Seville, is the country's most populous?

Andalusia seats its High Court of Justice in Granada rather than the capital, and its city of Córdoba once outgrew Constantinople to become Europe's biggest.

Which autonomous community of Spain is a Mediterranean archipelago governed from Palma on Mallorca?

The Balearic Islands fall into two groups: the Gymnesian Islands, chiefly Mallorca and Menorca, and the Pityusic or Pine Islands of Ibiza and Formentera.

Which self-governing Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea makes its laws in the Tynwald parliament?

The Isle of Man's parliament is of Viking origin, and in 1881 it became the first national legislature to let women vote in a general election, though not married ones.

Which Canadian territory was split from the Northwest Territories in 1999 to give Inuit self-rule?

Nunavut is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada, with a landmass almost as large as Mexico.

Which semi-autonomous region of Iraq, with its parliament in Erbil, fields the Peshmerga forces?

Kurdistan gained self-rule in 1992, once no-fly zones imposed after the Gulf War had curbed Baghdad's power in the north.

Which Swedish-speaking Baltic archipelago is an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland?

Åland owes its neutral, demilitarised status to the peace treaty that followed the Åland War of the 1850s, and its capital is Mariehamn.

Which Indonesian province, devastated by the 2004 tsunami, has special autonomy to apply sharia law?

Aceh was the closest land to the earthquake's epicentre, and the later peace deal with separatist rebels traded their disarmament for special autonomy.

Which autonomous region of Papua New Guinea voted 98 percent for independence in a 2019 referendum?

Bougainville fought a civil war from 1988 to 1998, triggered by conflict over the Panguna mine, that cost up to 20,000 lives.

Which Muslim-majority autonomous region of the Philippines was founded in 2019 after peace talks?

Bangsamoro, a name meaning Moro Nation, replaced an earlier autonomous region that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front had rejected as too weak.

Which Chinese autonomous region, named for the Uyghur people, is the country's largest by area?

Xinjiang spans more than 1.6 million square kilometres, which makes it the eighth-largest country subdivision in the world, and is governed from Ürümqi.

Which neighbouring country shares its name with the Chinese autonomous region governed from Hohhot?

Mongolia's frontier with China runs for two-thirds of its length along the region, which was set up in 1947, two years before the People's Republic itself.

For which people did the Soviet Union create an autonomous oblast around Birobidzhan in 1934?

Jews never made up more than about a quarter of the oblast's population, a peak reached in the late 1940s, and the 2021 census counted just 837 there.

Which mostly German-speaking autonomous province of Italy belonged to Austria-Hungary until 1918?

South Tyrol was occupied by Italy in November 1918 and annexed the following year; Mussolini's regime then banned German in its schools, yet most people there still speak it.

Which French Pacific territory voted to stay French in a 2018 poll promised by the Nouméa Accord?

New Caledonia has a unique legal status with its own chapter in the French Constitution, and 56.7 percent of its voters chose to remain in 2018.

Which autonomous city of Spain on the North African coast was conquered by Portugal in 1415?

Ceuta fell to a surprise assault led by King John I, which gave Portugal its first foothold on the Strait of Gibraltar.

Which Russian republic, governed from Kazan, was the last to lose its autonomy deal with Moscow?

Tatarstan signed its power-sharing treaty in February 1994, and the agreement lapsed in July 2017, ending the special status it alone had kept.

Which autonomous okrug of Russia, facing Alaska, was governed by Roman Abramovich from 2001 to 2008?

Chukotka is the only part of Russia lying partly in the Western Hemisphere, and its village of Uelen is the easternmost settlement in Asia.

Which island, home to South Korea's highest peak, became a special self-governing province in 2006?

Jeju is crowned by the shield volcano Hallasan, and its lava tubes were made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2007.

Which Caribbean island, Alexander Hamilton's birthplace, failed to secede in a 1998 referendum?

Nevis, which has its own island assembly, saw 2,427 votes for leaving Saint Kitts against 1,498, short of the two-thirds required.

Which autonomous republic of Georgia, on the Black Sea coast, has Batumi as its capital?

Adjara's capital is Georgia's second most populous city, and the region sits in the country's southwestern corner, just north of Turkey.

Which autonomous province of Serbia, administered from Novi Sad, has six official languages?

Vojvodina holds about a quarter of the country's population, and its administrative centre is the second largest Serbian city.

Which autonomous republic is a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan between Armenia, Iran and Turkey?

Nakhchivan was once cut off entirely when Armenia closed the railway that was its only link to the rest of the Soviet Union.

Which shrinking body of water impoverished Karakalpakstan, the autonomous republic of Uzbekistan?

The Aral Sea once fed the fisheries on which the local economy depended; Karakalpakstan has become mostly desert, governed from the city of Nukus.

Which autonomous unit of Moldova was created for a Turkic, mostly Orthodox Christian people?

Gagauzia's people were moved by Russia from what is now eastern Bulgaria between 1812 and 1846, and a 1906 peasant uprising gave them six days of independence.

Which semi-autonomous state of Somalia, formed in 1998, takes its name from ancient Egyptian texts?

Puntland borrows from the Land of Punt, whose exact location is unknown, though many studies place it in present-day Somalia.

Which Russian republic is the world's largest country subdivision and holds its coldest major city?

Sakha, also known as Yakutia, covers more than three million square kilometres, and its capital Yakutsk holds the cold-weather title.