How France and the Netherlands share a land border

Transcript

This is the Netherlands, and this is France. And surprisingly, they share a land border. Not in mainland Europe, but thousands of kilometers away in the Caribbean. It runs through the island of St. Martin, where the northern part belongs to France, while the south is part of the kingdom of the Netherlands. But there's a curious legend behind this split, and it sounds more like a joke. In 1493, Christopher Columbus had just returned from his journey and told Europe about the new lands he discovered. Europe's reaction was something like, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. For the next century and a half, Europeans fought each other over the Caribbean islands, and at one point, Spain took control of the whole island of St. Martin, but then the Spanish left and the Dutch and French returned. And instead of fighting another war, they decided to split the island. And this is where the legend begins. A Frenchman and a Dutchman started at the same point on the shore and walked around the island in opposite directions, and the place where they met would mark the other end of the border. The Frenchman drank wine. While the Dutchmen drank gin, so the Frenchmen walked faster and France ended up with the larger part of the island. Sounds more like a story they tell tourists, but the island really was officially divided by the Treaty of Concordia, except it didn't specify the exact border. So this led to centuries of arguments over some parts of the border, and only in 2023 did they sign a new agreement that finally put an end to the dispute.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.