Countries That Moved Their Capital City

 every country has a capital city

some even have two it's the city that

usually holds the seed of power of that  specific nation sometimes it's not the most well-known city like what happens in the us brazil or australia coincidentally three cases we'll look at in this video and a lot of times a country's capital city has not always been the same throughout all of its history in fact most of them have changed it throughout time denmark's capital was ross killed in 1020 only moving to copenhagen in 1443 portugal had its capital in guimaraege and then cuimbra before moving it to lisbon in 1255. morocco changed theirs from fess to rabat in 1912  turkey from istanbul to ankara in 1923 and russia moved it back and forth from moscow to saint petersburg like  times but these are historical examples a lot of them centuries old i want to focus on some that are slightly more recent  starting with the ones on the thumbnail and beginning with australia everybody associates australia with sydney but its actual capital is canberra inside the purposefully created australian capital territory but this wasn't always the case and until 1901 when a federation of british colonies was formed there was no capital with melbourne working as the de facto capital by housing the seat of government sydney was the largest or one of the largest cities and most important from an economic point of view at the time there was a long dispute over whether sydney or melbourne should be the official national capital reaching a compromise melbourne stopped being the de facto capital and a new city was agreed to be built being founded and named canberra in 1913 and apparently the reasons why they chose this were a little crazy two of them apparently were the 100 mile rule the australian constitution stated that the seat of government of the commonwealth shall be in the state of new south wales and be distant not less than 100 miles from sydney and to the weather australian leaders apparently wanted a colder city to work in so i guess officially there wasn't a capital change here but in reality there was melbourne was the de facto capital in colonial times with canberra becoming the new one next brazil brazil's historical capital was rejected it even became a temporary capital of portugal when the portuguese king john vi moved to the colony that they had there when napoleon invaded portugal in 1808 however in 1960 it changed to brasilia another city built on purpose to become the country's capital but why well there were a number of reasons one the overcrowding of rio two to encourage inland growth like many other nations most of the population of brazil was on the coast and this was an effort to better distribute it three to make the location of the capital more regionally neutral as was stated in the brazilian constitution in 1891 by being in the center of the country if you will it's more accessible by every part of the country and four to eliminate the vulnerability of attacks by sea although i imagine by 1960 this wasn't that much of a present threat moving to germany germany's capital never really moved and this is a perfect example of a temporary capital with the end of world war ii germany was divided into east and west berlin itself was also divided in two but it was located inside east germany because of this it just wasn't practical for it to function as the capital of western germany and so the city of bonn was chosen to become western germany's capital upon reunification of the two germans berlin was once again available to be the capital the decision of reunification however did not mandate that the republic's political institutions would also move back to berlin and some advocated they should remain in bonn in a situation similar to that of the netherlands where amsterdam is the capital but the hog is the seat of government the debate that resulted was settled by germany's parliament in 1991 by a vote of 338 the bundestag voted to move the seat of government back to berlin a very close call by 18 votes only bond currently still shares the status of germany's seat of government withberlin with the president the chancellor and many government ministries maintaining large presences there as well another big case is the united states of america and this one kind of also has to do with temporary capitals their capital today is washington dc however throughout its revolutionary and independence process it had more capitals as stipulated by the residents act philadelphia served as the first temporary capital of the united states between 1790 and 1800 while washington dc was being built however during the revolutionary war there were also very short-lived temporary seats of government in other places as the americans had to sometimes flee from british invasions examples of these were baltimore and annapolis in maryland lancaster and york in pennsylvania in princeton and trenton in new jersey and most of all new york in january 1785 congress convened in new york and for more than five years it served as the de facto seat of power in fact it was here that george washington took the oath as first president of the united states so essentially the u.s didn't have one capital and then choose to change it they immediately chose what it would be but necessity dictated that they would have to use different ones until their plan could be fulfilled at a sub-national level there are also examples of state capitals changing for instance in texas which has had five different temporary capitals before moving to the current one in austin a little to the south in central america is belize belize city used to be the capital ever since the time when it was part of the british honduras colony in 1638 until fairly recently in 1970 but in this year the capital moved to bel mopan because of the devastating effects of hurricane ati in 1961 which almost entirely destroyed the city apparently since 2000 both cities hold the title of capital moving on to pakistan pakistan has had several capital cities throughout its history more recently there have been two of them before reaching the current one karachi was the first from 1947 to 1959 in that year it moved to rawal pindi and then in 1967 it moved over to the current capital islamabad the initial choice of karachi likely had to do with the importance of the city especially economically an importance which dated back to the arrival of the british and the establishment of the east india company there creating a major seaport but its biggest growth came with the independence of pakistan it's still the main industrial and financial center but in order to reflect the diversity of the pakistani people they decided to change the capital to a separate area which would also be more accessible from all parts of the country therefore moving it first to rawalpindi and then to the adjacent and especially built islamabad a fun fact rawalpindi used to be one if not the greatest military garrison location in british india then becoming the headquarters of the pakistan army and in central asia kazakhstan ever since its membership as a republic of the soviet union starting in 1920 kazakhstan has had several capital cities starting with odenburg then moving to bishkek which is now in kyrgyzstan gizi lorda and then al-mati which is still the country's largest city however in 1993 they moved the capital again this time to astana which they've also apparently just renamed to noor sultan and al mari was also initially called alma atta so it seems the kazakhs like renaming cities and why did they move it from almaty to astana well almaty was the capital when the country gained independence from the soviet union in 1991 but the city had little room to expand it's in an earthquake risk area and apparently it was too close to the chinese border so the government moved the capital 1200 kilometers north to the city of astana the central bank is the only remaining government body in almaty with all of the others having moved to astana now nur sultan traveling to the indian ocean indonesia now the article i found about this was written in 2019 and it spoke of how indonesia was going to change its capital i'm not sure if it's already been done or if it's still in the works indonesia's capital before this was jakarta but apparently it has moved to east kalimantan so why well according to the indonesian president at the time the change is partly about addressinginequality and relieving some of the burden on jakarta and the island of java java is home to 60 of the country's population and more than half of its economic activity kalimantan is almost four times bigger but accounts for less than a tenth of the gross domestic production its location is also more central in the indonesian archipelago but there's another factor anatural disaster jakarta is sinking areas of north jakarta have been falling at an estimated 25 centimeters a year apparently the city relies on a lot of wells for its drinking water and somehow this leads to the land above it collapsing back to the asian continent myanmar yangon also called rangoon was the capital from 1948 to 2005 when the country's military rulers moved the seat of government 320 kilometers north to naipidao the new capital is more centrally located and so maybe that was a reason for the change the country's leader at the time also apparently argued that the goal was to ease the heavy traffic and population density of yangon moving to malaysia it moved its capital city from kuala lumpur to putrajaya in the 1980s the country's leaders decided to move the administrative capital of the country just 25 kilometers south of kuala lumpuressentiallywhile kuala lumpur remained as the country's financial and commercial capital putrajaya became the seed of government apparently the goal was to free up space in kuala lumpur so that it could have more housing and office spaces available to the private sector in order to help it become a greater hub for international business finally all the way in africa tanzania is another example the sultanate of zanzibar and tanganyika joined up in 1964 to form tanzania before that each of them had their own capital zanzibar city and dar es salaam when they joined together to form a single country they moved a single capital to the doma another example we had not seen so far which justifies a change in the capital city two countries coming together and instead of picking one of the previous capitals as a compromise they choose slash create a new one and in the future we might see new changes in other countries egypt for instance is apparently planning on moving to a new administrative capital being built in the desert about 45 kilometers from cairo and others might happen as well with climate change alone water levels might rise causing coastal capitals to be forced to move or at least adapt i found this map on reddit showing us which countries in the world have coastal capitals and it's a considerable number now obviously the water wouldn't rise equally even in the worst scenario in all these places but it is something to take into account so those are a few countries in the world which have 

considerably recently changed their 

capital from one city to another 

allowing us to understand 

why and how this happened did i miss any recent capital changes and do you know of any others which might soon take place  plus what do you think about thisconcept of a country choosing to change the place which is supposed to be the nation's seat of power let me know in the comments below remember to subscribe ifyou want and i will see you next time