completely off-the-wall question

[kaigou]

(No, this has nothing to do with any plans for world domination. JUST ASKIN', really.)

What happens if more than 50% of your country's tangible property -- land -- is purchased/owned/occupied by nationals of another country? I mean, is there any scenario in which you could visualize or rationalize or imagine buying out a country? Or maybe just causing significant political shifts (assuming it's a multi-party and/or non-authoritarian regime)? Or... what happens when refugees from another country completely overwhelm the existing population (numbers-wise)? Could you end up with such chaos that the country ends up in a state of quasi-claimant by the nationals of a second country?

Feel free to reference books, movies, other fiction that's addressed such ideas, or your own experience and/or theories, academic or just fantastical, or real-world political, economic, financial, etc.

[Consider it purely curiosity on my part, but probably a curiosity that's buttressed by my own culture's assumptions that a nation is made up of its people & its land, which is where the foregone conclusion resides that a massive paradigm shift of people & ownership would have to, therefore, affect the nation as a whole.]

Comments

[tiercel]

I don't have any personal knowledge, but something about your question trips my memory. Leaving aside just straight-out imperialism, I would look into the histories of island nations, particularly Hawaii. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a vague memory of Japanese folks buying up large section of Hawaiian real estate back in the... 80s? Maybe? Alas, I don't know what kind of effect that had on Hawaii, but I'd be surprised if someone hadn't written a book or two about it.

[kaigou]

Land speculation! Another keyword for today's pathetic google-fu... and that led me to an article about the current/recent tension between Indonesia & Singapore... where the latter intends to build more (on landfill), which means it needs sand & gravel for the concrete. Except that according to Indonesia, Singapore is getting this sand & gravel... by stealing it from the various uninhabited islands that ring Indonesia. (Some of the islands are reportedly "disappearing" as a result of the massive, uhm, theft.)

I mean, there's land piracy, but I never thought of it being this literal.

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

Oh, that Singaporean "land-stealing." For me, this is one of the issues that shows the colossal incompetence of the Indonesian government, since much of the mining and trade in sand and gravel is actually done by poor Indonesians digging up single boatloads (and the boats weren't even very big), rowing them over, and then selling them rather cheaply in Singapore. When the government is confronted with the fact that this trade stemmed from its inability to stimulate the economy and create more productive employment opportunities, it just starts mouthing off vague promises and excuses.

[kaigou]

Entrepreneurs are everywhere!

So not surprised -- makes a great deal more sense. (I was trying to figure out how in the hell you could have barges, y'know, slink as they sneak up to an island and then, uhm, carve some of it out.) That, and the snarky tone in the article about Singapore "hoarding" sand -- I mean, there's hoarding salt in wintry areas, and I get hoarding fresh water or gasoline or whatever else governments save for their people, but sand? Can't you, like, buy that? Doesn't Australia have entire regions that are a whole lot of sand?

Still... if I had a boat and a crew of people to dig, and the market were right there, I'd probably have thought of doing the snatch-and-sell as well. It's basic economics: there's demand, and someone's gonna supply. Although I have to say that it's just an amusing side-note to think of some Indonesian Coast Guard ship doing its rounds, and some little low-rank dweeb with the binoculars asking his CO, "doesn't that island out there seem... a little shorter today, sir?"