ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that both maps are incomplete and looks at the extreme case of almost two hundred small territories that, for over half a century, have existed outside the world state system. The South Asian case allows to qualify 'single-colony-to-nation-state' theories, particularly concerning the impact of colonial rule on postcolonial trajectories: three states and nations were fashioned from a single colony and followed distinct trajectories. The states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh provide with a very special case of postcolonial state formation. The story of the enclaves upsets such neat binary constructions and allows the complexities that went into the making of states and identities in post-colonial South Asia to re-emerge. The enclaves were all in one section of the border where precolonial state formation, two patterns of colonial rule, and uneven decolonization combined to produce them. Finally, the case of the India-Bangladesh enclaves makes us consider the connections between territory, nation, and identity.
