MotF 107: The Locked Country

So, finally got this finished. Pretty bog standard North Korea analogue but it turns out that there are a lot of statues going up in Macedonia at the moment that look the part.

Anyway, basic idea is that WWII ends up going with a uti possidetis method for dividing Europe between Eastern and Western spheres of influence. In the north this resulted in some interesting situations- Soviet Finnmark for one, and the allies and Soviets nearly came to blows in Prague- but from the coast north of Schwerin, the Elbe-Vitava line, came to serve as a suitable division. From there, a Czechoslovakia ruled from Bratislava, People's Republic of Austria and Yugoslav Trieste complete the line of the Iron Curtain.

And then there's the Balkans. Determined not to allow the Soviets complete dominance of Eastern Europe Churchill pushed for further landings to secure Greece as well as sending sufficient forces to assist in the liberation of Albania to ensure Albania would be neutral, though denuded of territory to both Greece and Yugoslavia.

Meanwhile Macedonia the Soviets co-opted the local resistance, led at this point by Metodija Andonov-Cento and the maximalists, to sweep through Thrace. Greek landings on the Chalkidiki peninsular would lead to a race for Thessaloniki- the two sides meeting in the city and with most of Macedonia on the Soviet side of the border a puppet Greater Macedonia was created- Bulgaria being compensated with the Dobruja and 'voting' to become a full SSR. Andonov-Cento was to become the nation's leader through most of the Cold War, eventually succeded by his son in the 1980s. While the fall of the Prague Wall most of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union itself, fell, but Andonov-Cento was successfully able to fuse Macedonian nationalism with communism and a cult of identity from the liberation movement. Persuading enough of the military and intellectuals that to crate disruption in the political system would open the nation to partition between the revanchist governments of Bulgaria and Greece, he embarked on a programme of antiquism claiming many historical figures for Macedonia.

By the early 21st Century Macedonia is more nationalistic than ever, and having lost her biggest allies has isolated herself diplomatically to a greater degree than ever before.

MOTF 107

Someone would say that reality, from time to time, ends up being more bizarre than fiction could be allowed to be; and I would not disagree, not with the theme this chapter will expose. How do you lose an island, after all?

The truth is more complex, of course, but it is still a fact that, from May 1348 to the end of 1501, the Elban Republic, composed of the island of Elba and other minor islets, was a reality completely detached from Italian and European politics. Pisa, its formal overlord, had been strongly weakened by Genoa during the 13th century, and never recovered from that defeat. To add insult to injury, Genoan ships gave it a further smack when ships carried the Bubonic Plague to Pisa itself. Sources get confused, by this point; but what is sure is that some noble families decided to escape to the island, close the port and, as such, avoid the wave of death that was washing over Italy.

What happened, then? In one of the most curious - but mostly irrelevant - chapters of European history, the plague came and went, but no one moved to reclaim Elba. A self-governing council was created, becoming more and more complex each year; and a lot of years, passed, decades, before anyone remembered that the island was, in fact, still there.

This happy haven, that went by with modest farming thanks to its reductive population, finally ended when Cesare Borgia, having conquered Piombino, moved to seize Portoferraio, the capital. The tiny republic, that for one century and half had gone on without anyone noticing, died with a whimper, leaving behind only a curious story that still baffles historians.

(Edoardo Montelli, Storie d'Italia: dal Medioevo al Risorgimento.)

In this timeline, Operation Pike goes through, which leads to a brief war between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. With a more cooperative Soviet Union that actually joins the Axis, Hitler delays Operation Barbarossa and takes advantage of a stronger German-Soviet relationship. The Germans do attack the Soviets, but they do so in 1944, after peace has been reached between the Western Allies and the Germans. The Nazi-Soviet War ends in a stalemate in 1949, with much of Central Europe remaining under German control. Both blocs are very hostile to one another, and often don't recognize the others' client states.

(With many thanks to Georgepatton, who inspired the original idea and wrote this lovely desription.)

The Unorganized African Territory of the United States

After the end of the Civil War (1861-1867), the United States was confronted by two intractable problems, which it seemed impossible to solve simultaneously. First was the problem that confronts all states in the aftermath of domestic bloodletting: the defeated. The great masses of ex-Confederate soldiers and supporters, disenfranchised and dispossessed by an embittered North, swarmed disconsolately across the ruined South, and there were many yet still willing to fight and die on their feet, rather than strangling in the mud an inch at a time.

Second, of course, were those who the Confederates had fought to hold in chains: the negro. Freed from his chains, and armed with the ballot, the rifle, and the strong right arm of the Federal Marshal, prosperity might at last be within his grasp. But, of course, it was not to be, for hearts are not so easily won as wars.

Terrorism, cycles of killings and revenge killings, race riots, bread riots, labor riots, just plain old riot riots: there was no end to it. The Hamlin and Davis administrations grappled fruitlessly with the problems, and as the body count mounted, the public began to ask when, exactly, peace was scheduled to arrive.

The answer would come from a much unexpected source: Abraham Lincoln, who had retired from politics to repair his shattered health and family after the War, returned to answer the national cry for peace once more. He looked across the Atlantic Ocean, to the continent from which all this sorrow had sprung: Africa.

Lincoln, who had once thought that the races might live in harmony in the United States, sorrowfully returned to his belief that separation was the only true path to peace. But that was not all bad, he reasoned, for the American negro, by his residence upon that continent, had indelibly acquired respect for the great virtues of the land: freedom, liberty, democracy, education, and hard work. And the African negro languished in poverty, ignorance, slavery. The great civilizing mission of the United States could be brought back to Africa, bringing peace and prosperity to two lands in the same solution.

But the great masses of American negroes had no great skill at arms or settler organization. Some class of men with those skills would have to lead them. Who better, suggested General Sheridan, than that other people without a future in America: the Confederate veteran?

And so it was that black and white at last found unity of purpose, in the Great Grey Fleet, which hurled itself upon the African coast in 1879. By dint of blood and iron, they forged a great country upon that continent, bringing the flag of the United States to the darkest corners of Africa. Even the European trading posts fell before the advancing tide of liberty, with covering fire from Lincoln and his Great Civilizing Christian Mission program that so many in the Old World were willing to accept.

The natives, sadly, were ignorant and superstitious, and it was great and difficult work to bring them into the light of knowledge and progress. The savage proto-caliphates of the Musselmen statelets in the interior were especially resistant, and it was only the military genius of Pete Longstreet, and the selfless devotion of thousands of his negro troops, that set the cross above the crescent.

But, eventually, for all the tales of blood and thunder, of the noble Christian missionary, of the valorous negro soldier giving his life for his white comrade (and even for all the excoriation Sam Clements could muster in The Darkest River), the popular imagination would turn elsewhere. The American West, and beyond it the Pacific beckoned, and the Europeans were forever preoccupied by slaughtering one another at the behest of callous princes.



These days, the generals in the UATUS (or rather their public relations officers) will tell you they're waiting on Congress to provide some legislation to organize the territories, appoint territorial governors, and move the process of statehood forward, and that the 'current geopolitical situation being what it is', they can't speculate on when that will be.

They're good boys, though, these Benjamin Junior and Longstreets the Third and Sheridans the Fourth: the praise the Constitution to high heaven, take assiduous action to protect the rights of each and every person in the UATUS, regardless of race, tribe, color, or National Labor Service status, and they even go so far as to collect federal mineral excise taxes, depositing them in numbered Swiss bank accounts for the day when the Treasury can collect. And there's a lot of mineral taxes to collect.

Legally, of course, trade in UATUS-sourced diamonds and gold and oil is not supposed to take place. The UN isn't clear about the status of resources extracted from apparently military-occupied territory, but luckily, that's not a problem, since that cargo ship that left Monrovia two weeks ago is definitely not the same one that put into port at Boston yesterday, and those Diamond Trade Board Certificates are perfectly in order, sir (please be careful with them or the ink will smudge).

The generals acknowledge, of course, the on-going problems of the territories: the endemic brushfire conflicts on the edges of the districts, the slow progress of education and infrastructure, the difficulties faced by the Agriculture Board in improving beyond subsistence farming in many places, and, of course, the on-going necessity for martial law outside a few coastal cities. Still, once Congress gets its act together and pushes through that important legislation, they say, it'll be smooth sailing from there on out!

This is from my ongoing project, The Affiliated States of Boreoamerica (thread, site). The name is supposed to indicate that the world can't be derived from a single PoD; but I hope it's far enough away from wild insanity to be part of MotF.

The history:

Maryland was founded by the Calverts, Barons Baltimore, a Catholic English family looking to establish a land where they could live out their manorial ambitions and profit from plantation farming. The colony grew under the benevolent but absolute rule of the Calverts, and the planation culture that took shape there resembled that of Virginia, only Catholic.

The colony's religion placed it in an awkward position within the British Empire. Tensions flared up repeatedly between the original Catholic colonists and Protestant newcomers. During the Civil War, power passed between partisans of the two confessions. Lord Baltimore managed to come out on top, welcoming the Stuart Restoration in England and expelling the Puritan interlopers from his restored colony.

However, political chaos continued to churn both the British Isles and their colonies. Less than thirty years after the Restoration, the empire was again torn apart by a conflict between king and parliament. This time, the reigning Calvert came out strongly in favor of the King James and the Jacobites, something to be expected of an English Catholic. He fled England for Maryland. All this provoked an open conflict with Virginia. Things looked dark for Calvert when Maryland's Protestants rose up to support Virginia and the Revolution. Maryland avoided occupation and annihilation by allying himself with the Shawnee and obtaining arms and loans from leading citizens of Pennsylvania. William Penn himself, who might have objected, was absent from America at the time. The war dragged on until 1691, when Virginia's underpaid militia began deserting in such numbers that the attack had to be called off.

Maryland's Jacobitism isolated the colony and effectively destroyed the unity of the English colonial empire. The war with Virginia set a precedent for English colonists using Indian allies against one another, a practice that caused a great deal of bloodshed but that ultimately may have saved many native societies by guaranteeing them a place in the continent's political order.

To this day the colony remains loyal to its absentee king. The Jacobite claimant, who lives in Italy, has more-or-less abandoned claims to the English and Scottish thrones, but acknowledges the minimal constitutional role he plays in Maryland. It has never been seen as appropriate for the King to live in Maryland - in the old days this would have looked like the start of a campaign to conquer all of Boreoamerica, while in more modern times it would look like an infringement of the liberty of Maryland and of the ASB more generally. But he does visit his little realm fairly often.

The map:

In 1756, the first true World War broke out. It was, from the very beginning, called the Fenno-Slavic War, and that is precisely what is was. The war erupted over various disputes in colonies throughout the world. The Slavs of Central and Eastern Europe banded together to invade various Finn and Mari holdings in the New World, India and Africa. Finnia and Mari El banded with other Fenno-Ugric countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including the Kingdom of Saami, the Grand Duchy of Hungary and the Moksha Empire to fight the Slavs.

In the middle of the European theater was the Russian province of Ingria. Ingria had a native Izhorian Finnic population as well as a well-assimilated Russian population. The divide was nearly 50/50. At the beginning of the war, there was talk of Izhorian rebellion; however, with a very mixed culture, and very mixed people, it would not be possible without large opposition from within the province. Talks between the Russian and Izhorian leaders ensued, and they decided that independence for the entire province as a whole could be possible.

When it was proposed to Moscow, the emperor quickly accepted. The war had turned against the Slavs, and a invasion of the mainland could be avoided if there was a buffer state. It was so that the Republic of Ingria, the first republic in Europe and the first country with a codified constitution in modern history, was established. Immediately, they established diplomatic relations with their Slav neighbors to the south and the east, and with their Finnic neighbors to the north and the west. They also signed pacts with all of them to prevent invasion of their country with the agreement that they would remain neutral in the war, and then stepped off the page of history books for a while.

When the great war finally ended a decade and a half later, it was Ingrians, as the citizens of Ingria had come to be known, who brokered the peace between the Finn victors and the Slav losers. It seemed that, with the Treaty of Novgorod, peace would be there in Europe for a while. But just a few years after the signing of the treaty, border skirmishes began again, followed by another war. The president declared that ethnicity-based parties had to go, and the two most popular parties were abolished. After a few years, when a clear north-south divide started to become very obvious again, all parties were abolished, and the president declared himself President for Life.

After the president died, his successor followed. While no diplomatic relations where broken, the country got less diplomatically active, and locked themselves from the rest of the world. For two centuries, communication from inside the country to the rest of the world was extremely limited. The Republic stayed neutral in the next three world wars. However, in the last century, after a coup, the country has finally started to open up to the rest of the world again, showing how much the country has changed. The two ethnicities are no longer distinct anymore, and the language most widely spoken is a mix of the two colloquially called Izhorusski, though the official languages are still Standard Russian and Standard Ingrian.

The decolonisation of India was a complex and chaotic affair - perhaps appropriately, considering the region had the size, population, and diversity (religious, ethnic, and political) of a continent. Though the simplistic "Two-Nation Theory" - by which India was considered to consist of two nations; one Hindu, one Muslim - was popular among Muslim Indians for a time, such an easy solution quickly proved to be impractical. The rise of groups such as the Pashtun Khudai Khidmatgar in the Northwest Frontier Province brought the theory's popularity to an end, as the KK and the various Muslim movements it inspired believed India was a multitude of nations based on ethnicity, rather than a pair based on religion. Though the All-India Muslim League, which believed strongly in the Two-Nation Theory, attempted to gain power by promising support for the British during WWII in return for recognition of the League as representing all Indian Muslims, this ploy failed due to their lack of support from large portions of the Muslim population and the impracticality of their ideal independent "Pakstan".

The question of what to do with India's numerous, nominally sovereign Princely States was perhaps one of the simpler ones that faced British administrators. It was decided that they would have the option of joining a newly united India on their own terms once a united India had been established or remaining independent. It was the latter that the Maharajadhiraj of Kashmir and Jammu - Hari Singh - chose for his country. Rather than join with India, he hoped that his nation could remain neutral and independent; an Asian Switzerland nestled in the mountains of the Himalayas, prosperous and respected yet without affiliation or fear of war.

In order to attain such a status, Kashmir and Jammu was kept isolated - a hard thing to do in the midst of a Cold War, and stuck between the opposing juggernauts of India and China. Kashmir had almost no transport links to other countries, and international trade with Afghanistan and India was deliberately avoided in fear of drawing China's wrath (though Kashmir's approval of China's entry to the UN and the subsequent peaceful negotiations over disputed territory in Aksai Chin curtailed such fears somewhat). Relations between Kashmir and its neighbours was generally warm, but very limited, as it refused almost all political and economic association.

However, Kashmir's isolation helped preserve the state as a peaceful yet underdeveloped country during times when those around it underwent chaos and strife. Afghanistan, looking to throw its weight around after joining with the US, aided Turkic Muslim rebels in the USSR and China. India remained generally unaligned - save for its antagonistic relationship with China, with whom they had numerous border disputes, and numerous border skirmishes as a result - and later suffered as unrest among its Sikh population snowballed into a civil war, leaving India fractured, with a rump federation having lost much of its territory. Though political unrest in these newly independent countries would eventually begin India's reunification, Kashmir was glad to have been spared the chaos.

As the 21st century loomed ahead, the regional situation had been stable for quite a while, and without fear of invasion the people of Kashmir and Jammu were free to agitate for domestic reforms. The Kingdom gradually changed, with more and more power being devolved to democratic bodies, and franchise being extended across ethnicies, gender, class, and religious groups. The now modernised government of Kashmir now sought to modernise the country's economy. Being on generally good terms with its neighbours Kashmir was able to quickly expand their trading relationships with them, and by 2000 plans had been put in place to expand Kashmir's transport infrastructure and make several new international connections both by road and by rail.

Most of the population was concentrated in the south of the country, whereas the mountainous north was sparsely inhabited, therefore much of the development was concentrated in the south, being centred around the capital city of Srinagar. The short, simple railway line that ran though the capital was to be extended, covering a great deal of the densely populated south, connecting to Indian and Afghanistani rail networks, and providing the basis for further expansion with a line through the mountains to Kargil in Kashmir's hard to access northern areas. Roads were also to be expanded - or often just properly paved - providing ease of movement all throughout the country, as well as connecting to China along the Sênggê river in the East, and through the Khunjerab Pass in the north.

With its improving infrastructure and decreasing isolation Kashmir is on the verge of a great change, though the modern democratic government still maintains the country's now-traditional neutrality, entrenching the country's reputation as the Switzerland of Asia.



Link to DeviantArt page.