Capitals
Capitals that moved, and countries with more than one.
- Why Australia built CanberraMelbourne → CanberraSydney and Melbourne each wanted to be the capital of the new Australia, and neither would accept the other. The deal that got federation through was a new city in New South Wales, at least a hundred miles from Sydney, with Melbourne keeping Parliament until it was built.
- Why Bolivia has two capitalsSucre · La PazThe constitution says the capital is Sucre. The president, the government and Congress are in La Paz. The split goes back to a civil war in 1899, and as recently as 2007 Sucre was fighting to get the rest back.
- Why Brazil built BrasíliaSalvador → Rio de Janeiro → BrasíliaBrazil has had three capitals: Salvador on the coast, then Rio de Janeiro, then a city built from nothing on the central plateau. The move inland was written into the constitution in 1891 and took until 1960 to happen.
- Why Burundi moved its capital to GitegaGitega · BujumburaIn 2019 Burundi made Gitega, a small town in the middle of the country and the old seat of its kings, the political capital. Bujumbura, the much bigger city on Lake Tanganyika, stayed the economic capital.
- Why Canada’s capital is OttawaKingston → Montreal → Toronto and Quebec → OttawaFor its first 25 years the Province of Canada couldn’t agree on a capital, and its government moved between four cities. Queen Victoria was asked to choose, and picked a lumber town on the line between English and French Canada, a safe distance from the United States.
- Why South Africa has three capitalsPretoria · Cape Town · BloemfonteinThe government sits in Pretoria, Parliament in Cape Town and the appeal court in Bloemfontein. It was a bargain struck in 1909 between colonies that had just fought a war, and it has outlasted every attempt to undo it.
- Why the Netherlands is governed from The HagueAmsterdam · The HagueAmsterdam is the capital: the constitution says so, and kings are sworn in there. But parliament, the government and the King’s own office are all in The Hague, where the country has been run from since the 1500s.
- Why the United States built WashingtonNew York → Philadelphia → WashingtonThe American government met in New York and then Philadelphia before settling on the Potomac in 1800. The site came out of a dinner-table deal over war debts, and the idea of a district outside any state came from a mutiny.