1840-1860: The two Sicilies : bottomless poverty and weary aristocrats ; Heligoland : from island realm to bombing target ; New Brunswick : immigrants with the wool pulled over their eyes ; Corrientes : stamps from the bakery ; Labuan : binge-drinking in a seedy South Sea paradise ; Schleswig : Scandinavianism and martial music ; Danish West Indies : panic sale of slave islands ; Van Diemen's Land : penal colony with fearful stamps ; Elobey, Annobon and Corisco : anti-imperialism and nervous missionaries
1860-1890: Obock : arms dealing and goat soup ; Boyaca : decadents at war ; Alwar : potty princes and sweet dessert ; Eastern Rumelia : drawing-board country ; Orange Free State : hymn-singing and racism ; Iquique : saltpetre war in a dusty landscape ; Bhopal : burka-clad princesses ; Sedang : from the Champs Elysées to Kon Tom ; Perak : tin on the brain
1890-1915: Ile Sainte-Marie : civilized panic in a tropical Utopia ; Nandgaon : peaceful fanaticism ; Kiaochow : a capricious emperor in a rotten game ; Tierra del Fuego : dictator in gold ; Mafeking : boy scouts using diversionary tactics ; The Carolines : sea cucumbers for stone money ; The canal zone : a Siberia in the Caribbean
1915-1925: Hejaz : stamps with a bitter strawberry taste ; Allenstein : a summer of independence ; Cape Juby : mail planes in the dessert ; South Russia : a white knight loses his grip ; Batum : oil fever and bluebottles ; Danzig : sponge cake with Hitler ; Far Eastern Republic : Utopians on the tundra ; Tripolitania : fascist air race in the cradle of Islamism ; Eastern Karelia : national romanticism and brooding woodland pathos ; Carnaro and fiume : poetry and fascism
1925-1945: Manchukuo : at the epicentre of evil ; Inini : mortal sins in an impenetrable rainforest ; Saseno : childhood paradise in the world's most dismal place ; Tannu Tuva : closed country with eccentric stamps ; Tangier International Zone : a modern-day Sodom ; Hatay : genocide and a rigged referendum ; The Channel Islands : sabotage with stamps ; South Shetland Islands : penguins in the furnace
1945-1975: Trieste : a crossroads of history ; Ryukyu : systematic suicide ; South Kasai : miserable Balubas and precious minerals ; The South Moluccas : spices and terrorism ; Biafra : famine and proxy war ; Upper Yafa : mud houses and gaudy stamps.
