About Mahuset

Small as it is, the Confederation is conducted in earnest. It holds elections, keeps public accounts in its own currency, passes and publishes law, and maintains a foreign policy. It is at the same time a community and a long-running cultural project, and it depends on the people who choose to take part in it.

Government and politics

Mahuset is a federal presidential constitutional republic, with elements of technocracy and direct democracy. The capital is the Free City of Lazia, which is also a constituent entity in its own right.

The head of state and head of government is the Lord-Stadtholder, Emiel van der Huijsen, who is elected together with his deputy the Lord-Grand Pensionary, Chase Mahoning. Both offices carry titles revived from the Dutch Republic in 2023.

The Lazian Chamber is the elected parliament, a single chamber that no other body in the Confederation outranks. Hasan Çakar chairs it as Greffier-Consular. Executive business falls to the Council of Ministers, which has had twelve departments since the ministries were consolidated in 2019.

Read more about government and politics in Mahuset

Territory and entities

Seven separate claims make up Mahusetan territory, 36.39 km² in all. Two are in the Netherlands: Groot-Geestmerambacht, within Alkmaar, and Cherrystan, within Hoorn. Two are in England: Mamucium, within Manchester, and Matsia-Northumberland, within Bedlington. Two are in the United States: New Brennonia, within Columbiana, Ohio, and Wentherton-Vryfstadt, within Arlington, Virginia.

The seventh lies far from the others. Virgo and Starnia sits on the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, enclaved within the micronation of Hasanistan, which recognised the claim to Virgo in July 2020. The two republics were merged into one in 2022.

Conditions vary with the distances. The Dutch and English claims are temperate oceanic, cool and often wet, with 873 mm of rain a year at Groot-Geestmerambacht. Wentherton-Vryfstadt is humid subtropical; New Brennonia and Virgo and Starnia are humid continental, with winters below freezing.

Hares, hedgehogs, red squirrels and tawny owls are found across the European land, with newts and toads in the wetter Dutch claims. Virgo and Starnia carries mustelids instead, among them the Asian badger and the steppe polecat.

Eight constituent entities are governed within those seven claims, and the two counts do not match. Groot-Geestmerambacht contains three entities by itself, while Matsia accounts for two of the claims, Cherrystan and Matsia-Northumberland. Entity law is subordinate to federal law, but each entity runs its own system of government under its own Governor. They are:

• the County and Duchy of Ihuset
• the Free City of Lazia, the capital
• the Mahusetan Republic of Mamucium
• the Most Serene and Noble State of Matsia and Mahusetan Krasota
• the Republic of New Brennonia
• the County of Noorderhout
• the Mahusetan Republic of Virgo and Starnia
• the Republic of Wentherton-Vryfstadt

Smaller autonomous administrative areas sit inside the entities: Geestmerambacht within Ihuset, and Cherrystan and Matsia-Northumberland within Matsia. Every entity has a page in the government directory.

Origins and history

Mahuset began as a schoolyard game in the Netherlands in 2011. Its founder, Emiel van der Huijsen, turned it into a claimed state on 29 May 2012 with the Kingdom of Ihuset.

Ihuset merged with Matsia and Radon to form the Kingdom of Mahuset in November 2012. The kingdom declared itself independent the following March and became a single-party state under an ideology of its own, then fell apart in 2014 in a quarrel over the army. Short-lived successors followed, and by the end of 2015 no entity called Mahuset continuously existed.

The present Confederation dates from 3 January 2016. A deadlocked parliament produced the constitutional referendum of February 2019, after which a National Convention took charge of the constitution. The Chamber resumed sitting in 2023, and the years since have gone on consolidating what exists rather than adding to it.

Read more about the history of Mahuset

Language and culture

The name is most often read as a portmanteau of Matsia and Ihuset, the two kingdoms whose merger produced the Kingdom of Mahuset. No pronunciation is official; several are in circulation and the state has never chosen between them. In Dutch the country is the Eedgenootschap Mahuset.

The Confederation works in English and Dutch, with Hasani and Turkish recognised alongside them and Esperanto official in Matsia.

Whatever Mahuset borrows, it tends to give an office to: anime and memes each have an institution of state behind them.

The register of national symbols runs to twenty-five entries, covering a national dish, a national mineral, a national dance and a national microbe among much else, and it is revised from time to time. The flag carries purple, gold and red, the current arms date from 2023, and Liberty, Virtue and Competent Government is the motto.

The national day is Mahuset Day, 29 May, one of a calendar of public holidays fixed in 2019.

Read more about Mahusetan culture and symbols

Economy and technology

The currency is the Mahusetan guilder, written with the florin sign ƒ. Public accounts are kept in it. It is issued by the Lazian Bank, the central bank, which has produced every series since the currency was introduced.

The earlier notes carry the fauna of the constituent territories on one face and engraved portraits on the other. New designs, prepared by the Mahusetan Institute for the Arts, were revealed in June 2026, with no date yet set for their circulation.

Much recent state-building has been digital. It takes in the National e-ID and the id.mi authentication system, the Giroporte payment infrastructure, the anonymous age-verification cards of the Ethical Gooning Initiative and the state-supervised Futamar prediction market.

Foreign relations

Foreign policy is the work of the Ministry of Foreign and Batyr Bloc Affairs. Mahuset is neutral by tradition, and keeps relations with a number of other micronations.

Mahuset is one of the five states of the Batyr Bloc, which it helped found in November 2020.

There is one settled hostility. Since 2019 Mahuset has been barred by its own law from seeking membership of the Grand Unified Micronational, and it works against that body's influence abroad.

Read more about Mahuset's foreign relations

Citizens and citizenship

Citizenship is applied for online, and the conditions are set out on the citizenship pages. Citizens elect the Lord-Stadtholder and the Lazian Chamber, may propose federal legislation themselves, and may challenge a law already passed.

The population is small, and always has been: eleven citizens were counted in 2025, against a peak of twenty-three in 2017 and 2018. In August 2020, during a contraction in the number of active citizens, the government created a provisional grade of membership, visitors' citizenship.

The Confederation has no premises. Its meetings, debates and daily business are conducted online, wherever its citizens happen to live. Citizens are of several faiths and none, and the state itself is secular.

Applications go through the citizenship application form.