MotF 35: Natio Vetus, Gloria Nova

Krall

Banned
Natio Vetus, Gloria Nova


The Challenge
Across time and space many countries have claimed to be successors in spirit of ancient empires. The Ottomans claimed to be the successors to the Caliphate, Saddam Hussein wanted to recreate the Babylonian Empire, and many states from France to Russia have claimed themselves to be the true successor of the Roman Empire.

Your challenge is to make a map showing a nation that is either attempting to revive or recreate a long dead empire (e.g. Mussolini's Italy trying to revive the Roman Empire) or that considers itself to be the cultural or spiritual successor of a long dead empire (e.g. Russia's claim as the "Third Rome"). You may make a map of an empire's direct successor (e.g. the Byzantine Empire as a successor to the Roman Empire, or the Seleucid Empire to Alexander's Macedonian Empire) if you so wish.


The Restrictions
The empire of which your nation claims to be the successor may be an empire that doesn't exist in OTL. For example, if Carthage manages to overpower Rome and forge an empire similar to OTL's Roman Empire then you may make a map of a nation that claims be the successor of this Carthaginian Empire.

Future maps are allowed, but implausibility should be kept to a minimum. There are no specific restrictions on when or where the map can be set.

If you're not sure whether your map idea would count for this challenge, please feel free to PM me.



This round shall finish on Saturday the 7th of May.

!THIS THREAD IS FOR POSTING OF ENTRIES ONLY!

Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread then you will be asked to delete the post. If you refuse to delete the post, post something that is clearly disruptive or malicious, or post spam then you may be disqualified from entering in this round of MotF and you may be reported to the board's moderators.


Remember to vote on the previous round of MoF!
 
This is the Hittite Empire. Never mind that the kings are Scythians, that the peasants are Phyrigians, that the people speak Greek and worship a Habiru god, or that it doesn't even hold the city of Hattusa...

For almost three millennia, the Hittite Empire has stood as hegemon over the Eastern Mediterranean, but in its current form, Suppiluliuma I would find it almost unrecognizable. At its height, the empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Persian Gulf, and from the Danube to the First Cataract of the Nile. Now it is reduced to a few provinces on the shores of the Aegean, sandwiched between two hostile powers, and ruled by a foreign dynasty.

The people of the Empire still think of themselves as Hittites; old habits die hard. The old imperial policy of transplanting conquered populations had left them an ethnically diverse community even before the Scythian conquest. Achaean, Doric, and Phyrigian strains are most common, but most of the empire's inhabitants could most likely trace their ancestry back to a score of peoples.

The language too is a mix, but the end result has been something like a simplified Greek, with significant contributions from the Nesite language of the Empire and loanwords from half a dozen other neighbors and conquerors.

Compared to the rest, the religion is a fairly new development. It has only been around five centuries since the Habiru tribes of the southern wastes stormed out from their ancient homeland around the Hejaz, bringing redemption and the sword to Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, and sending missionaries to the lands their armies could not reach. From early toeholds in the major cities of the Empire, the Yeshuite religion has gradually expanded into the hinterland.

Even the ruling dynasty traces its roots to the steppes of Hungary and Russia, and the old Hittite heartland is held by the Ghazar Khaganate. Yet there is no hint of irony when Kuluksiya IV styles himself Great King of Hatti...

 
An attempt at a more plausible Megali Idea...

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Running with the "America as Rome" meme ... :D

After US democracy and the two-party system proved unequal to the challenges of the Era of Ecological Disaster (2015-2077, roughly) the unitary government of the Neo-Imperial era would expand US territory subtantially, at its largest extent in the early 2100s incorporating most of Canada, Mexico, and Central America/the Caribbean: but failure in the Indian Conflict (or the Nerve War) and the move to hereditary clone rule led to to instability, the Division, the Meme War, and the subsequent Time of Troubles.

Today the Greater United States has not existed as a unified entity for some two and a half centuries, but that does not prevent the government in America City (formerly Mexico City) from claiming its inheritance and a right to leadership over all its former territories. The American Empire (called the Mexican Empire by some foreigners, something they find very annoying) theoretically is overlord over the Eastern Confederates, but the sub-Emperor in New Washington (rebuilt 2235) is little more than a ghost haunting the east: the various states, kingdoms, technarchies and free cities of the East venerate their American Heritage, but follow the ancient American dictum of Mind your Own Business, which is easier to do in a largely post-scarcity world.

The West Coast and the NE have gone off in their own directions, California and the Wet West looking to an Asia again vigorous after the crumbling of the stifling Chinese World-System, while a NE culturally alienated from the Spanglish elite of the capital has joined with the Neo-British Empire, under the wise and immortal rule of Cyber-Victoria II. New York decided that the rest of the country was as unimportant as the New Yorker cover http://bigthink.com/ideas/21121 always said.

The Empire is most energetically concerned with expansion in space and creating a network of cultural memetic clones throughout the Solar system, but is currently pondering expansion into the Forbidden Zone, which makes its neighbors a bit nervous. Always a conservative area, during the Unravelling its mostly JudeoChristian, over 70 years old, biologically unmodified and fixed-sexuality inhabitants broke away to create Truemerica, a robot-maintained state fixed in the image of the Good Old Days of the 60s (2060s, that is). Always isolationist, Truemerica ceased communications entirely with the rest of the world during the Third Memetic War, and spy satellites have failed to make out any signs of human Truemericans in over a century. The automatic border defenses have however been maintained and indeed improved, and a bad-tempered nanotech wall some 100 feet high encircles the entire area. There is some dispute as to whether the locals have just retreated entirely into a Matrix-like virtual existence (as the Nigerians did in the 2360s), or have simply died out and been replaced by robotic intelligences. People worry that a military incursion may lead to some nasty reaction...

Bruce
 
Ministry of Foreign Intelliengence; Section IX

"Seated behind his mahogany desk, like so many others before him, Director Jacobs Franklin , leader of Section IX, the most clandestine of the M.F.I´S sections, thumbs through the latest intelligence report coupled together by his dilligent, "patriotic" underlings. Scoffing to himself with a smile at the term, knowing half the scurrying rats working in Section IX work even against their own newly refounded nation, grinnign slightly as he moves his chair back and gets up.
Moving from behind the desk, picking up his glass, full of cyro-stored whiskey, from bottles sealed up in the N.A.T´s executive vaults for nigh on 750 years,sipping gently as he stares out the-inch thick windows, over the still crane ridden capital, the new city emerging over the cold , snow covered plain that ocne was fields of nothing for a older world, in the state of illonois, before placing the glass down on the marbled windowsill, and leaving his office through the double doors, the air filtering in before it shuts, brushing over the dossier on his desk, the pages flipping open, exposing several before resting on the last:"

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Russia won the Great Game by putting more emphasis under in Central Asia than in the Balkans, reducing Pan-Slavism. This led to less tension between Russia and Austria and more tension between Russia and Great Britain. The Alliance of the Three Emperors brought together Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany in a military alliance that would lead to the partial modernization of the Russian Army as well as the rise of a larger Russian Fleet in East Asia. In 1898 tensions went critical and the Double Entente went to war with the Quadruple Alliance. In June 1902 the Unions went on a general strike and there are outright mutinies in the military, leading to the Fall of Paris to the Germans. With Paris’s fall and the Communists begin revolting against the Republic. The government having evacuated Paris is overthrown and the Communists look to make peace with the Germans as they continue to push southwards. In the East Asian Front, Japan made peace with Russia in 1900 surrendering Corea and Sakhalin to Russia; seeing Frances weakness and the weakness of the Europeans in general China joined the now Quintuple Alliance and declares war on Britain and France and begins excising their forces from China. With a decent amount of Russian help the Chinese excised the French and British from China and then begin to invade French-Indochina and threatening British India from the East.

In Central Asia, Britain was fighting tooth and nail against the Russian bear who was trying to uproot it from India. After Frances fall into civil war Britain was left alone to fight the Alliance until it too fell into revolution and civil war as the Anarcho-Syndicalists tried to take power. The British Empire fragmented after the Anarcho-Syndicalists proved victorious on Britain. Parts of the British Empire remained loyal to the King who now took up residence in Canada. Others went republican, but a great deal of the empire went Anarcho-Syndicalist with the creation of the Federation of People’s Republics. Only a small part of British India remained under Royalist Control after the civil war Mainland France went communist as did much of the French Empire, but thanks to Italy and America, northern Algeria French Guiana, and Corsica became a Taiwan like state that would go on to become the Third French Empire under Napoléon IV (Napoleon III’s son was never killed by the Zulu). In 1906 the Ottomans experienced the chaos of revolution after the assassination of the royal family by Anarcho-Syndicalists a year after a failed revolution by the Young Turks. The various nationalist groups of the Balkans rose up as the chaos of what to do with the Empire spread. The Ottoman Empire in the Balkans fell and Russia took Constantinople to prevent it from falling into the hands of the syndicalists. Italy and Austria-Hungary jointly intervened to protect the Christian holy sites of the Levant. The Russians did not launch a larger scale invasion of the Ottomans because they had lost so many men during the Great War and were busy controlling their newly acquired Indian territories.

So this Map has several successor states. The first being the French Empire which claims to be the real France, but controls no part of Mainland France. The second is the Imperial Federation which is made up of Canada, Cape Town, Bengal and Australia. The Third is Workers Social Union (a.k.a Communist France) which claims to be both the First French Republic and the Commune of Paris and to hold all their ideals. The Forth is Russia which since it has Constantinople and access to the Persian Gulf is pretty confident that it is the Third Rome. The fifth semi-successor is Levant which as a joint Italian-Austro-Hungarian protectorate is kind of a Crusader state successor.


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The Ming lasted for longer than OTL, surviving an extra century by keeping the Manchus and Mongols fighting each other instead of invading. Eventually the state collapsed into a period of warring states as multiple claimants to the throne, ethnic groups and religious sects battled it out throughout the end of the 18th century. Europeans and Russians became a real menace in the 19th century, particularly in the backward north. Though some states found themselves colonized, others became small-scale colonizers in their own right, with Gwongdung taking several South Pacific islands and the Hokkiens taking part of the Congo. In the early 20th century, a Han Chauvinist state emerged in the Yellow River region and attempted to unify the region under a Han, Mandarin-speaking regime. This caused some of the worst wars in history, and we only ended when a Hakganger bomber dropped a purchased German atomic bomb on Beijing.

In the aftermath, there was little desire to see a strong Mandarin state, but there remained a desire to see a new China emerge. In response to the economic unity of other regions (Austria-Germany successfully dominated Europe, and the King of Virginia and Queen of Mexico had married, creating a vast North American superstate), the Chinese Union was formed. The first members were those who had suffered the most in the wars: Newland [Wu speakers, the language becoming known as Ngu or New], Hokkien [Min speakers], Hakgang [Hakka speakers], and Gon [Gan speakers]. Wealthy and powerful Gwongdung added legitimacy, and even Tayo Formosa joined after it's Dutch king was dethroned. Falan [Xiang speakers] entered, after it's conservative Islamic leaders became convinced that joining it would make stemming the tide of banned Hakka music and literature easier; at the same time as Annam, which had successfully achieved independance from Spain.

Relatively undeveloped Cathay [Jin and Mandarin speakers] and Bachhan [A multi-ethnic state, with a plethora of minorities recieving economic and political benefits. Has experienced de-Sinification as Han people reidentify themselves as Miao, Wa or Burmese] were brought in, despite some distrust due to the large Han populations of those nations. This would eventually lead to the admission of a reunited Hania, the rump Chinese state, as a political and economic necessity. However, bitter Liao remains outside of this arrangement, the Chauvinist Hanliao party remaining in power there.

The next expansion sees a number of new candidates, but some are claiming that they do not represent "Chinese" nations. There remains some prejudice against Manchuria and Mongolia for their "northern barbarian" history. After years of requesting membership, it's now the Dzungarstanis who are turning down offers to join the Union: the increasing importance in rare earth elements in modern electronics has made that Dzungaria has become suddenly and unexpectedly wealthy. Gwongdungese surveyers in Mongolia have noted that it appears there are even greater deposits located there, this has quietened down the barbarian talk quite a bit. The Caulese and Kambujans are also controversial: Caul was occupied and partially Sinified by the Chauvinists, while the Kambujans are being considered due to some aggressive Siamese actions of later. Some, however, think that opening up membership to former vassal states of the Chinese empire threatens to lose the coherancy of the whole organization.

Today, the squabbling organization has introduced a single currency, the China (often referred to as the "China peso"), and the Chinese Congress in Zanhe [Shanghai] is a raucous place. However, the Union deliberately traces it's lineage to the old empire of Han and believes itself to represent the reunification of China after 300 years.

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October 1979 would prove to be a decisive time for the Middle East, changing the face of the region forever. The Soviet Union, hoping to shore up its’ failing puppet government across the border, launched an invasion of Afghanistan. In Iran, tension against the oppressive Shah gave way to riots that would ultimately topple the country and set up a radical Islamic Republic. Seeing the emerging chaos, Saddam Hussein, new ‘President’ of Iraq, decided that it was the perfect time to launch a short victorious war against Iraq’s neighbor, Kuwait, which Saddam hoped would solidify his popularity. Kuwait, a small nation that had long-simmering disputes with Iraq, was overrun in a matter of hours. The United Nations howled with disapproval, slapping an arms embargo on Iraq, but could do little more than that to help Kuwait. The United States under President Carter, the only nation that could really contest Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, found itself with its hands tied. Iranian militants had seized the American and Soviet embassies, and Carter found it increasingly difficult to negotiate with Brezhnev on any joint action due to the dispute over the Afghanistan invasion. Faced with the Iranian Crisis, Carter realized he could care less about the demise of a feudal monarchy.

By late 1980, Carter was going down as the worst President in history. He had lost reelection by a landslide to Ronald Reagan amid calls of ‘traitor’ and ‘impeach him’ due to his botched handling of foreign policy. In a personal meeting with Brezhnev in Geneva, Carter decided that enough was enough, and told the Soviet leader that if the USSR didn’t get on board with joint action against Iran, the United States would take unilateral action. Operation Midnight Sun was launched on an early Wednesday morning, with Delta Force assaulting the militia-held American Embassy and Spetsnaz assaulting the miltia-held Soviet embassy. Within a few hours, both groups had liberated the embassies but were bogged down with by Iranian reinforcements. Realizing the plan was a disaster, Soviet and American officials went to Plan B, and launch Operation Hellstorm, a major air-assault against Iran.

Saddam Hussein, smelling blood in the water, abruptly attacked Iran. By 1981, Iraq, the Soviet Union, and the United States faced international condemnation for the Persian Gulf War. Facing increasing pressure and a deteriorating front against Iraq, the Ayatollah ordered the release of the hostage and captured Special Forces. Nevertheless, by 1982, Iran had decisively lost the war to Iraq, which still had the support of both superpowers, losing the province of Khuzestan to Iraq and islands in the Persian Gulf to UAE.

In the mid 1980’s, Saddam’s Iraq was at the top of the world. Viewed by the powers as a stabilizing force in the Middle East, Saddam was able to annex the entirety of the Iraq-Saudi neutral zone, and build up a large, Western armed military. The success of Saddam’s regime gave a boost to Arab nationalism after the defeat of the ultra-religious Persians, whom many Arabs saw as an enemy. In 1985, after years of violent war against the Muslim Brotherhood had weakened the state and unsuccessful war against Israel had delegitimized the government, Syria agreed to a long sought after union with Iraq. The new Iraq-Syria Union was the most powerful player in the Middle East, especially following the alliance with Jordan in 1986. In 1989, under heavy American pressure and with promises of increased aid, Israel and Iraq-Syria agreed to make peace. Israel further made peace with the Palestinians as to avoid any further conflict with the Arab world.

Saddam, who remained in power despite rivalries from Syrian leaders, became enormously not just from increased oil revenue but also from American aid, as he claimed to keep stability in the Middle East. Indeed throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s, the Middle East remained fairly stable. It was only 2006 Arab Spring that brought many Arab regimes to their knees. In Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Palestine, corrupt dictators stepped down, while in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar, the monarchs were able to dismiss government figures and spare themselves widespread criticism. Saddam, noticing this trend, came up with an ingenious solution to the problem of the growing resentment against him. In December 2006, Saddam proclaimed himself Emperor of the Babylonian Empire.

Middle_East98.jpg
 
"Seated behind his mahogany desk, like so many others before him, Director Jacobs Franklin , leader of Section IX, the most clandestine of the M.F.I´S sections, thumbs through the latest intelligence report coupled together by his dilligent, "patriotic" underlings. Scoffing to himself with a smile at the term, knowing half the scurrying rats working in Section IX work even against their own newly refounded nation, grinnign slightly as he moves his chair back and gets up."
Oooh! Very very nice! I want to see more from this world.
Could we have one with all of the water the same color?
 
I'll admit that I got... a little carried away. Hopefully it still qualifies.

The bastardizations of names that are halfway between English and their native form are intentional. The Neo-Revanchist states of Qartaj, Babil, and Mugolistan, for example, insist that the Arthurdom essentially preserve their names, but still translate them to make them understandable in English.

...okay, I just thought 'Hunok' sounded cool.

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A pride for one’s heritage, a sort of ‘our tribe is better than their tribe’ and ‘our tribe deserves freedom from their tribe’ feeling, has existed throughout human history. What is commonly called nationalism, however, did not really exist until Napoleon Bonaparte’s conquest of most of Europe. And it took Europe by storm in following decades.

Even then, not a single person who lived prior to the twentieth century could have imagined what nationalism has evolved into today.

In 1905, a political movement, which we now usually call Neo-Revanchism and sometimes call National Socialism, began as the brainchild of a few fringe politicians in Hungary. They proposed a centralized state led by a supreme ruler and a few inferiors, with a strong military, strong national and ethnic pride, and staunch opposition to capitalism, communism, and the Jewish religion.

Throughout the Great War from 1914 to 1919, Neo-Revanchism did not really expand in popularity.

However, in the 1920s, ravaged Europe found itself vulnerable to new political ideologies. While Russia and Germany fell to communism, France, Hungary, and Greece became Neo-Revanchist.

And all the while, communist movements began to gain steam around the world in China, Persia, and Japan, and Neo-Revanchist movements began to gain steam around the world in Tunisia and Algeria, England, British Iraq, Korea, Finland, Russian Central Asia, and British India. Each of these movements had varying success and came to fruition at varying times.

In 1935, by which time Germany and Russia finished their communist revolutions and France, Hungary, and Greece had concluded their Neo-Revanchist revolutions, the ruler of the Francs, Corentin Jacques Bernard, peacefully annexed Belgium, inciting disapproval from Socialist Germany, the Soviet Union, and non-French-speaking Belgians, but the latter were forcefully kept in line. In 1936, Hungary also peacefully annexed Transylvania. Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union again disapproved.

In early 1937 the Pact of Restoration was signed by Hungary, Greece, the Francs, and newly-Neo-Revanchist Finland.

In November 1937, Hungary demanded that Yugoslavia cede Vojvodina and Croatia to Hungary, as they were rightful lands of the Kingdom of Hungary. With much French prodding, they did. The Germans and Soviets again disapproved, but it seemed like Hungary and the Francs were finally appeased.

In January 1938, the Neo-Revanchist powers agreed with Britain, which was still a fairly free parliamentary monarchy, that Britain would attack the Germans and Soviets if war between the Pact of Restoration and Communists ever occurred. Britain was promised most of Germany, including Hannover.

In late 1938, Denmark declared itself a Republic of Vikingerne, or Republic of the Vikings..

In February 1939, the Francs invaded the Netherlands. Germany declared war on the Francs, and as a result, Great War II began. Socialist Germany, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China (which only possessed Manchuria and Shandong) went to war with the Francs, Hungary, Greece, Finland, and the Vikings.

At the same time, Neo-Revanchist revolutions raged in Mongolia, Korea, Tunisia, British Iraq, and Muslim areas of the Soviet Union and the Chinese state of Xinjiang. Communist revolutions ravaged Japan and Persia.

Already Neo-Revanchist Hungary declared itself the Horde of the Hunok--the Huns. The Prime Minister of Hungary declared himself the Attila.

Since then, more than sixty years have passed. Communism is all but dead, and democracy is weakened, surviving in the New World and Oceania in its true form and surviving in a failed form in Africa and Southeast Asia. Jews are a rare people, and, persecuted in their former homelands and with the rest of the Old World being rather dangerous for people of their beliefs, have been forced to emigrate to the New World. Most Jews live in Argentina, the United States, or Brazil.

Since then, England has been overtaken by a Neo-Revanchist revolution and declared itself a pure Anglo-Saxon state. The United Kingdom of Great Britain was eventually betrayed by the Neo-Revanchists, and its empire in Africa collapsed and its territories in the Middle East and India become territory of Greece (now Rhomaion), the Babil State (former Iraq), and Mugolistan, a state founded by Muslims revolting in India, who now outnumber the Hindus due to deportation of Hindus and immigration of Muslims from Neo-Revanchist states other than Babil and Mongolia, especially Muslims expelled from Anatolia and Egypt.

Mongolia and Korea have made Asia their oyster; Mongolia is a union of Mongolia and all Muslim states in Central Asia which has conquered Soviet Siberia and inland parts of China, and Korea has taken advantage of the chaos in China and Japan to unite the most populated parts of East Asia. The Francs, Hunok, Republic of Vikingerne, and Finland, now named the Suomi Empire of Grand Ugria, have split Europe between themselves.

The Qartajinian Khilafat is the newest Neo-Revanchist state. Neo-Revanchist sentiment was very minor until the 70s, and Tunisia and Algeria were not taken over until 1983. Since then, though, the Khilafat has managed to reconquer most of the territories of their namesake, except Morocco and Iberia.

Nowadays, the Neo-Revanchist states and the Pact of Restoration live in relative peace and prosperity... in their perverted definition of relative peace and prosperity. Their leaders have established huge systems of censorship and propaganda, successfully convincing their people that lands outside the Pact of Restoration are tribal hellholes, and have industrialized their nations to massive extent with little concern for the environmental consequences.

Neo-Revanchism continues to spread. Most non-Neo-Revanchist territories are in anarchy, and as a result fall to the growing menace. It seems little stands in their way. Neo-Revanchism is even spreading to the new world--’Inca nationalists’ in Peru, Imperialists in Mexico hoping for the restoration of the American Southwest as Mexican territories, and rebel groups hoping to restore the Confederate States of America in the American south are arising.

However, conflicts are arising between Neo-Revanchist states. Suomia Grand Ugria is not too happy about the Hunok owning Estonia, nor Qartaj happy about French Hispanie owning southern Iberia, nor Rhomaion happy that Italie and North Africa are not under their rule. The Christian Neo-Revanchist states are not so happy about the existence of Muslim Neo-Revanchist states and Koguryo, and vice versa. All Neo-Revanchist nations, due to their racism and belief that their own people should conquer the world, hate all the others.

It is only a matter of time before everything... falls apart.
 

Krall

Banned
The American States have had a short, but eventful history since they won their independence in the late 18th century. They began weak and humble enough, but soon the inherent potential of this empire of liberty began to show.

Under their first monarch, King William I Hohenzollern, America expanded greatly in terms of population, industry, economy and territory. Louisiana was purchased from France early on in the 19th century when the newborn republic found no use for it, and wished to gain an ally with which to fight Britain.

The idea of Manifest Destiny quickly rose to the fore in the national psyche of the American people - immigrants and Royal American citizens rushed westwards in droves, hoping to find their fortunes and start their lives over in the untamed wilderness of Columbia. These settlers soon came into conflict with Mexico, who retained claims to the region of Oregon, but their cries of indignation were soon drowned out by the sharp application of American guns. The Mexican Empire died that day, and the Kingdom of American States stood triumphant over its body.

But America had defeated an Empire, and yet it still clung to the less prestigious title of "Kingdom". Surely America, a nation that was the clear master of an entire continent, was greater than the Mexicans' pretentious claims to glory? The notion of an American Empire, both in name and effect, latched on to existing ideological tensions between the states - there were those who shunned the independent power of the states and lobbied extensively for a more powerful federal government, headed by a strong monarch. Drawing inspiration from ancient Rome the Americans reforged their empire - to outsiders the changes were few, but those within the States knew well that this was a shift of great importance, for better and for worse.

The steadily increasing power of the Northern states in Congress worried and provoked the South - the common folk feared for their rights as a state within the Empire, and the rich feared for their right to hold slaves. But underneath the more material concerns was a fire that had been burning since before the revolution, one which many Americans long thought snuffed out - the fire of republicanism.

France's monarchy had already fallen to republican radicals, and in nearby Mexico the long-fought civil war seemed to be ending with the republican revolutionaries firmly in control of the nation. In retrospect the Civil War seemed so easy to predict, yet so hard to avert.

For eight years America burned. The western states rose up in their own rebellion, one unmarred by the issue of slavery - a purely republican ideal. Whilst many in the west supported the idea of a republic, few were prepared to fight for it, and the Oregon Country was soon brought under control. The South, with aid from republican Mexico, fought on long and hard, but without the industrial power of the North their defeat was inevitable, and the Empire was once again united.

It had been a dark time for America, but time marched on and soon the ashes of the revolution had been tidily sweep out of sight (though, for some, not out of mind). It was a beginning of a new era for America, an era of renaissance.

Now it is 1900 and America has recovered splendidly from the wars of its youth. The obsession with reviving the Roman Empire has passed for the most part, with less dominating Emperors giving way to a golden era of powerful, elected government and prosperous trade. Only a couple of decades ago America used its wealth to purchase vast swathes of British North America in an exchange that would cement America's place in the world.

For all their enemies Britain remained the world's sole superpower, but it maintained a policy of including their lesser allies in their dominion of the globe. Portugal and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands both shared in Britain's bounty, and now America had been lured into the fold - the friendly exchange of wealth between the nations' governments cementing an informal alliance between the current world superpower and the next.

It is the turn of the century, and Glorious Columbia has everything to look forward to.

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