Afederal capital is a political entity, often a municipality orcapital city, that serves as theseat of thefederal 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 tosubnational states are fixed by law or federalconstitution. 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, asfederal 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 inunitary 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.[1] It is especially important that the choice of federal capital be neutral in multi-ethnic states such as Nigeria.[2]
Examples of well-known federal capitals includeWashington, D.C., which is not part of anyU.S. state but bordersMaryland andVirginia;Berlin, which is astate of Germany in its own right and forms anenclave within the much larger state ofBrandenburg; and theAustralian Capital Territory, aterritory of Australia which includes the capital city ofAustralia,Canberra.
Canada is the onlyfederation in the world not to accord a special administrative subdivision to its capital.[citation needed] Rather,Ottawa is merely another municipality in the Province ofOntario. The Canadian government does designate the Ottawa area as theNational 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.
During and immediately after theAmerican Revolution, eight cities served in turn as the capital of the new country:[3]