When was the last time a country acquired territory by buying land from another country?

Upvote:0

There is a Wikipedia list article which may answer your question. The most recent instance given on the article is that of Gwader, a port city in current day Pakistan. It was purchased in 1958 from Oman.

Upvote:4

Tiran is an island within the maritime borders of Saudi Arabia that was administered by Egypt in the past. However, sovereignty of the two Red Sea islands, Tiran and Sanafir, was ceded officially to Saudi Arabia as part of a maritime borders agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The agreement subsequently was approved by the Egyptian Parliament and finally ratified by the Egyptian President on 24 June 2017 Wikipedia:Tiran

Apparently, there was no explicit price tag for those islands, but

Saudi Arabia [is] an ally which has given billions of dollars of aid to Egypt. reuters

Upvote:8

I believe the most recent compensated border change was a January 1, 2018 change to the Dutch/Belgian border to eliminate enclaves they each had on the other's side of the Meuse (probably due to changes in that river's course, but I haven't checked on that). In this case the compensation can be considered the swapped land.

I could not in fact find a sovereignty transfer involving money since the end of WWII. The basic patterns since then appear to all involve either wars, gifts as part of decolonization, swaps, or in some rare cases, leases. There's probably a "last" one before that, but the war kind of makes things complicated.

More post

Search Posts

Related post