Succession of states in the context of "United States of the Ionian Islands"

An independence referendum was held in Montenegro on 21 May 2006. It was approved by 55.5% of voters, narrowly passing the 55% threshold. By 23 May, preliminary referendum results were recognized by all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, suggesting widespread international recognition if Montenegro were to become formally independent. On 31 May the referendum commission officially confirmed the results of the referendum, verifying that 55.5% of valid votes were in favor of independence. Because voters met the controversial threshold requirement of 55% approval, the referendum was incorporated into a declaration of independence during a special parliamentary session on 31 May. The Assembly of the Republic of Montenegro made a formal Declaration of Independence on Saturday, 3 June.

In response to the announcement, the government of Serbia declared itself the legal and political successor of Serbia and Montenegro, and that the government and parliament of Serbia itself would soon adopt a new constitution. The United States, China, Russia, and the institutions of the European Union all expressed their intentions to respect the referendum's results.

The Kingdom of Italy (Italian: Regno d'Italia, pronounced [ˈreɲɲo diˈtaːlja]) was a unitary state that existed from 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 10 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished, following civil discontent that led to an institutional referendum on 2 June 1946. This resulted in a modern Italian Republic. The kingdom was established through the unification of several states over a decades-long process, called the Risorgimento. That process was influenced by the Savoy-led Kingdom of Sardinia, which was one of Italy's legal predecessor states. In 1882 it became a colonial empire, establishing the Italian Empire.

In 1866, Italy declared war on Austria in alliance with Prussia and, upon its victory, received the region of Veneto. Italian troops entered Rome in 1870, ending more than one thousand years of Papal temporal power. In the last two decades of the 19th century, Italy developed into a colonial power, and in 1882 it entered into a Triple Alliance with the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, following strong disagreements with France about their respective colonial expansions. Although relations with Berlin became very friendly, the alliance with Vienna remained purely formal, due in part to Italy's desire to acquire Trentino and Trieste from Austria-Hungary. As a result, Italy accepted the British invitation to join the Allied Powers during World War I, as the western powers promised territorial compensation (at the expense of Austria-Hungary) for participation that was more generous than Vienna's offer in exchange for Italian neutrality. Victory in the war gave Italy a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations, but it did not receive all the territories it was promised.

Somaliland, officially the Republic of Somaliland, is an unrecognised state in the Horn of Africa. It is located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the east. Its claimed territory has an area of 176,120 square kilometres (68,000 sq mi), with approximately 6.2 million people as of 2024. The capital and largest city is Hargeisa.

Various Somali Muslim kingdoms were established in the area during the early Islamic period, including in the 14th to 15th centuries the Zeila-based Adal Sultanate. In the early modern period, successor states to the Adal Sultanate emerged, including the Isaaq Sultanate, which was established in the middle of the 18th century. In the late 19th century, the United Kingdom signed agreements with various clans in the area, establishing the Somaliland Protectorate, which was formally granted independence by the United Kingdom as the State of Somaliland on 26 June 1960. Five days later, the State of Somaliland voluntarily united with the Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somalia) to form the Somali Republic. The union of the two states proved problematic early on, and in response to the harsh policies enacted by Somalia's Barre regime against the main clan family in Somaliland, the Isaaq, shortly after the conclusion of the disastrous Ogaden War, a 10-year war of independence concluded with the declaration of Somaliland's independence in 1991. The Government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to British Somaliland.

The Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor (simplified Chinese: 宣统帝退位诏书; traditional Chinese: 宣統帝退位詔書; pinyin: Xuāntǒng Dì Tuìwèi Zhàoshū; lit. "Xuantong Emperor's Abdication Edict") was an official decree issued by the Empress Dowager Longyu on behalf of the six-year-old Xuantong Emperor, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty of China, on 12 February 1912, as a response to the Xinhai Revolution. The revolution led to the self-declared independence of 13 southern Chinese provinces and the subsequent peace negotiation between the rest of Qing China and the collective of the southern provinces.

The issuance of the Imperial Edict marked the end of the over 200-year rule of the Qing dynasty, and the era of Chinese imperial rule, which lasted 2,132 years. Furthermore, the Imperial Edict established the Republic of China as the sole successor state to the Qing dynasty and provided the legal basis for the Republic of China to inherit all Qing territories, including China proper, Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet.

The Kingdom of Holland (Dutch: Koningrijk Holland (contemporary), Koninkrijk Holland (modern); French: Royaume de Hollande) was the successor state of the Batavian Republic. It was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in March 1806 in order to strengthen control over the Netherlands by replacing the republican government with a monarchy. Since becoming emperor in 1804, Napoleon sought to extirpate republican tendencies in territories France controlled, and placed his third brother, Louis Bonaparte, on the throne of the puppet kingdom. In 1807, the adjacent German regions of East Frisia and Jever were added to the kingdom.

In 1809, after the Walcheren Campaign, Holland had to surrender all territories south of the River Rhine to France. Also in 1809, Dutch forces fighting on the French side participated in defeating the anti-Bonapartist German rebellion led by Ferdinand von Schill, at the Battle of Stralsund.

The Ottoman Empire developed over the years as a despotism with the Sultan as the supreme ruler of a centralized government that had an effective control of its provinces, officials and inhabitants. Wealth and rank could be inherited but were just as often earned. Positions were perceived as titles, such as viziers and aghas. Military service was a key to many problems.

The expansion of the Empire called for a systematic administrative organization that developed into a dual system of military ("Central Government") and civil administration ("Provincial System") and developed a kind of separation of powers: higher executive functions were carried out by the military authorities and judicial and basic administration were carried out by civil authorities. Outside this system were various types of vassal and tributary states. Most of the areas ruled by the Ottomans were explicitly mentioned in the official full style of the sultan, including various lofty titles adopted to emphasize imperial rank and show the empire as being "successor-in-law" to conquered states.

The North German Confederation (German: Norddeutscher Bund) was initially a German military alliance established in August 1866 under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was transformed in the subsequent year into a confederated state (a de facto federal state) that existed from July 1867 to December 1870. A milestone of the German Unification, it was the earliest continual legal predecessor of the modern German nation-state known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Confederation came into existence following the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 over the lordship of two duchies (Schleswig-Holstein) resulting in the Peace of Prague, where Prussia pressured Austria and its allies into accepting the dissolution of the existing German Confederation (an association of German states under the leadership of the Austrian Empire), thus paving the way for the Lesser German version of German unification in the form of a federal state in Northern Germany. The construction of such a state became a reality in August 1866, following the North German Confederation Treaty, initially as a military alliance only, while its first federal constitution establishing a constitutional monarchy with the Prussian king holding as the head of state the Bundespräsidium was adopted on 1 July 1867. Laws could only be enabled with the consent of the Reichstag (a parliament based on universal male suffrage) and the Federal Council (Bundesrat, a representation of the states). During the initial three and a half years of the Confederation, a conservative-liberal cooperation undertook important steps to unify (Northern) Germany with regard to law and infrastructure. The designed political system and the political parties remained essentially the same also after 1870.

Dutch New Guinea or Netherlands New Guinea (Dutch: Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea, Indonesian: Nugini Belanda) was the western half of the island of New Guinea that was a part of the Dutch East Indies until 1949, later an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. It contained what are now Indonesia's six easternmost provinces, Central Papua, Highland Papua, Papua, South Papua, Southwest Papua, and West Papua, which were administered as a single province prior to 2003 under the name Irian Jaya, and now comprise the Papua region of the country.

During the Indonesian Revolution, the Dutch launched politionele acties to capture territory from the Indonesian Republic. The harsh methods of the Dutch drew international disapproval. With international opinion shifting towards support of the Indonesian Republic, the Dutch managed in 1949 to negotiate for the separation of Dutch New Guinea from the broader Indonesian settlement, with the fate of the disputed territory to be decided by the close of 1950. The Dutch in the coming years stated at the UN that the indigenous population of Dutch New Guinea represented a separate ethnic group from the people of Indonesia and thus should not be absorbed into the Indonesian state. The Indonesian Republic, as successor state to the Netherlands East Indies, claimed Dutch New Guinea as part of its natural territorial bounds. The dispute over New Guinea was an important factor in the quick decline in bilateral relations between the Netherlands and Indonesia after Indonesian independence. The dispute escalated into low-level conflict in 1962 following Dutch moves in 1961 to establish a New Guinea Council.