A federal capital is a political entity, often a municipality or capital city, that serves as the seat of the federal government. A federal capital is typically a city that physically encompasses the offices and meeting places of its respective government, where its location and relationship to subnational states are fixed by law or federal constitution. Federal capitals may or may not be considered states in themselves, and either exercise significant political autonomy from the federation or are directly ruled by the national government located within their premises, as federal districts.
Federal capitals are often new creations. That is, they are not established in one of the existing state capitals (but they may well be a pre-existing city). They have not grown organically as capitals tend to do in unitary states. This is because the creation of a federation is a new political entity and it is usually necessary not to favour any one of the constituent state capitals by making it the federation capital. This is also the motivation behind the creation of federal capital territories as districts governed apart from the constituent state governments.Ramesh Dutta Dikshit, Political Geography: The Spatiality of Politics, p. 88, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 1999 . It is especially important that the choice of federal capital be neutral in multi-ethnic states such as Nigeria.Emmanuel O. Ojo, Mechanisms of National Integration in a Multi-ethnic Federal State: The Nigerian Experiment, p. 109, John Archers, 2009 .
Examples of well-known federal capitals include Washington, D.C., which is not part of any U.S. state but borders Maryland and Virginia; Berlin, which is a state of Germany in its own right and forms an enclave within the much larger state of Brandenburg; and the Australian Capital Territory, a territory of Australia which includes the capital city of Australia, Canberra.
Canada is the only federation in the world not to accord a special administrative subdivision to its capital. Rather, Ottawa is merely another municipality in the Province of Ontario. The Canadian government does designate the Ottawa area as the National Capital Region, although this term merely represents the jurisdictional area of the government agency that administers federally owned lands and buildings, and is not an actual political unit. The City of Ottawa is governed as any other city in Ontario would be.
Early capitals of the United States
During and immediately after the American Revolution, eight cities served in turn as the capital of the new country:
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania served at various times as the home of the Continental Congress, then as capital of the US under the Articles of Confederation and from 1790 to 1800 while Washington, D.C. was being built. Baltimore, Maryland late 1776–1777. Lancaster, Pennsylvania September 1777. York, Pennsylvania September 1777–June 1778. Princeton, New Jersey Summer 1783. Annapolis, Maryland November 1783–August 1784. Trenton, New Jersey November–December 1784. New York, New York 1785–1790.
List of federal capitals Current Country Federal Capital Autonomous City of Buenos Aires Vienna Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Brussels-Capital Region Sarajevo Federal District of Brasília Ottawa Moroni Addis Ababa Berlin New Delhi Baghdad Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya Mexico City Palikir Kathmandu Federal Capital Territory of Abuja Islamabad Moscow Basseterre Mogadishu Juba Khartoum Bern Abu Dhabi Washington, D.C. Caracas
Former and historical Country Former and historical Capital Rio de Janeiro Guatemala City, then San Salvador Bogotá Richmond, Virginia Prague Jakarta Tripoli and Benghazi Dakar Lagos Karachi Salisbury Moscow Bonn Chaguaramas and Belgrade
References
Further reading Donald C. Rowat, "Ways of governing federal capitals", in John H. Taylor, Jean G. Lengellé, Caroline Andrew (eds), Capital Cities/Les Capitales: International Perspectives/Perspectives Internationales, McGill-Queen's Press, 1993 . Donald C. Rowat, The Government of Federal Capitals, University of Toronto Press, 1973 . Enid Slack, Rupak Chattopadhyay (eds), Finance and Governance of Capital Cities in Federal Systems, McGill-Queen's Press, 2009 .