Perhaps the most persistent character to emerge from this era of ephemeral states is Michael J. Oliver. A concentration camp survivor, coin dealer, and land developer, Oliver wrote the treatise A New Constitution for a New Country (1968) in which he created a model constitution for a nation whose extremely limited government could be financed voluntarily. Along with his sinister-sounding group, the Phoenix Foundation—whose members included John Hospers, the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate—Oliver would spend the next decade in an emphatic quest for his tax-free independent state.

It was Oliver who, in 1972, had hired a dredging ship to deliver tons of sand to the Minerva reefs as part of a plan to build a resort there named Sea City. Before the Tongan intervention, he had hoped that Minerva would one day attract a population of thirty thousand, who would have “no taxation, welfare, subsidies, or any form of economic interventionism.” A few years after the Minervan debacle, Oliver was at it again, this time aiding separatist movements on both the Bahamian island of Abac and the South Pacific Island of Vanuatu, in the hopes that the new governments would be sympathetic to his libertarian cause. But Oliver had overreached himself. Despite having provided financial support to 800 separatists on Vanuatu, his revolt was quickly crushed by the arrival of troops from Australia and Papua New Guinea. Oliver denied any wrongdoing, but by now the Phoenix Foundation had caught the eye of the FBI. With charges threatened against him for violating the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from interfering in US relations with foreign powers, the Phoenix Foundation slowly melted away. Oliver, unfortunately for those interested in his monomaniacal quest, has not been heard from since.

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The United States Office of the Geographer stresses that five factors are needed to become a country: space, population, economic activity, government structure, and recognition from other countries. Of these, it is the last that has always been the hardest to attain. However, one micronation has perhaps come closer to fulfilling these requirements than any other. Founded by a former “pirate” radio operator, Paddy Roy Bates, Sealand is situated on an abandoned World War II anti-aircraft tower seven miles off the British coast. Consisting of 550 square meters of solid steel, it was declared independent by “Prince” Roy in 1967. (The country’s initial economic activity consisted largely of selling passports and minted coins—both common practices amongst modern micronations out to make a quick buck).