Why do countries move their capital cities?

ON JANUARY 18th Indonesia announced that its new capital city will be named Nusantara (“archipelago” in Javanese). The country’s president, Joko Widodo, dismissed 80 other options before deciding on Nusantara. The project, estimated to cost $32bn, will sit on 180,000 hectares of what is now jungle on the island of Borneo. Egypt has ambitions to build a grand new capital, too. In December the government held its first cabinet meeting in the as-yet-unnamed new administrative capital, a city being built some 49km east of Cairo. Why do countries change their capital cities?

Historically rulers have used new capitals to unite different areas. Legend holds that King Menes merged upper and lower Egypt into one kingdom in 3150 BC, and placed Memphis at its centre. President George Washington handpicked the location of Washington, DC in 1790 as a bridge between the northern and southern states—though it was a bastion of the Union during the Civil War. And Australia chose Canberra as its capital at the start of the 20th century in part because of its rough equidistance between Melbourne and Sydney.