The Alphabetic Bouts Of Cartography, Round T!

Whose map was best?

  • Jonathan Edelstein

    Votes: 24 55.8%

  • TheseusDeuteros

    Votes: 17 39.5%

  • wolfram

    Votes: 2 4.7%
  • Total voters
    43
  • Poll closed .
Kaiphranos

Kaiphranos

Donor
Welcome to the voting thread for the twentieth round of the ABCs! Topic of the round: Tonga! Color of the round: EB1B00. At stake: the title of "Tsar of T."

The entries for this round were as follows:


Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein said:
The fall of 2006 was a time of great expectations in Tonga. For a year, the kingdom had been rocked by protests demanding more democracy – and for the first time, it seemed that the government was listening. In March, economist and businessman Feleti Sevele was named prime minister, the first non-noble and the first elected legislator to hold that position. Several proposals for electoral reform were floated in Parliament. And in September, the death of the autocratic King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, and his replacement by his more democratic-minded son George Tupou V, raised hopes that 2007 would see Tonga’s first fully democratic election.

But those hopes were not to be realized. On 16 November, the Tongan parliament finished its session without passing any of the reform proposals. A group of democracy activists took to the streets in protest, and by the end of the day, their demonstration had turned into a full-scale riot. Much of the capital city, Nuku’alofa, was burned to the ground before the army restored order, and the first democratic election wasn’t held until 2010.

At least that’s what happened in OTL.

But imagine that, instead of a primal scream, the riots were a planned event. Imagine, if you will, that the democracy movement had planned for a parliamentary double-cross, and had spent months setting up arms caches and fomenting discontent within the army and police. And imagine – although this might be a bit harder – that they did so skillfully enough to stay under the government’s radar.

In such a timeline, the riots might go very differently. Within hours after violence breaks out on 16 November, the democracy movement molds it into an organized uprising, and several key targets including television stations and government offices are soon in opposition hands. The government’s efforts to regain control are stymied when many soldiers refuse to follow orders, and some even mutiny against their commanders. By 19 November, loyalist forces have been driven off the island of Tongatapu; the rebellion culminates that night in a dramatic attack on the royal palace, from which the royal family is evacuated by helicopter just after midnight.

The king flees to Vava’u, the second-largest of Tonga’s islands, and in the capital, opposition leaders ‘Akilisi Pohiva and Clive Edwards declare a republic. A royalist attempt to retake Tongatapu by sea on 22 November is defeated when a Katyusha rocket heavily damages the lead patrol boat. The situation has reached a stalemate, with the republic in control of Tongatapu island (and thus of nearly 70 percent of Tonga’s population) and the king in control of the more widespread, but less populous, outer islands.
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The Tongatapu Revolution results in a flurry of frantic diplomacy among the Pacific Island powers. The king calls for military intervention, and several Pacific states consider it, but it’s obvious that no one’s going to send troops unless New Zealand takes part, and Helen Clark is more inclined to mediate than invade. After much wrangling and shuttle diplomacy, a deal is hammered out. The king will remain on the throne with considerable reserve powers, but the legislature will be expanded to 24 elected members (leaving only six seats for the nobility) and granted the right to appoint and dismiss the prime minister. The agreement is put in the form of a constitutional amendment, which will become effective upon approval by a majority of Tongans at a referendum.

The republic is reluctant to agree to the deal, which is far less than its leaders want, but it’s in an awkward position: the targeting of Chinese nationals during the first day of the riots cost it much of its democratic legitimacy, and the lack of recognition from neighboring states is dragging down the economy. The king also puts on a show of reluctance, but he’s much more sanguine in private, given that the deal is similar to what he was thinking of proposing before the riots. Both sides bargain hard and make Clark throw in a few sweeteners, but in the end everyone agrees, and the vote is scheduled for 26 May 2007.

Pohiva and Edwards insist on a straight, up-or-down vote on the amendment rather than a three-way choice between republic, traditional monarchy and constitutional monarchy (as had been initially proposed), hoping that the democrats and hardcore monarchists will combine to vote down the referendum and they can then return to the table for a better offer. But it turns out that they’ve outsmarted themselves. The decline of the economy and the repressiveness of Edwards’ anti-royalist sweeps have made the government unpopular, and Sevele – who has not fled with the king, but who has pointedly refused to recognize the republic, and still considers himself the legitimate prime minister – campaigns in favor of the deal. Although the “no” vote wins a strong majority in Nuku’alofa, most of the rest of the island votes “yes,” and the referendum trails by less than 1800 votes in Tongatapu as a whole. In the outer islands, where the king and nobles put heavy pressure on the citizens to vote for the referendum, the “yes” vote wins heavily, and the amendments pass by a vote of 21,377 to 20,090.
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On 15 June 2007, Tonga is reunified to much fanfare, and a caretaker unity government under Sevele takes power. Elections are scheduled for 9 September, to be held under a mixed-member proportional system (another Clark inspiration). Three parties contest the election – the republican Tonga People’s Party under Pohiva and Edwards, the moderate Constitutional Party under Sevele, and the ultra-royalist Tonga Conservative Party.

The TPP is the most organized, and due to the large number of independent candidates competing for the constituency seats, it wins a plurality of those seats. It only wins 32 percent of the party-list vote, though, so it only gets one top-up seat. The CP, with 43 percent of the list vote (the king was campaigning for them and not the diehard royalists, who support the nobles’ privileges a bit too much for his taste), gets seven list seats to add to its three constituencies. When the dust clears – and with the king pulling strings behind the scenes – the CP works out a coalition deal with the three independent constituency members and three of the six nobles, and Sevele is re-elected prime minister. No one’s very happy, but at least it’s democracy, right? Right?
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TheseusDeuteros

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wolfram

wolfram said:
Intending to keep the Allies away from their South Pacific campaigns, in December 1942 the Japanese Navy sent five fleets of ships to Tonga. The US Navy decided to "punch through" the blockades there, in part due to its proximity to Australia and New Zealand.
Map approved by the Tonga Ministry of Education 12/07/2002.
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(And once you've voted, stop on by the main thread to see what this week's challenge will be!)
 

TheseusDeuteros

Kaiphranos said:
Welcome to the voting thread for the twentieth round of the ABCs! Topic of the round: Tonga! Color of the round: EB1B00. At stake: the title of "Tsar of T."

(...)

TheseusDeuteros

map

(...)
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Thanks to everyone who voted for me, and I hope there'll come more (deserved :D:p) votes to me :D, but I now see I forgot to add some information, so here you go.

The map is linked to an alternate global war, taking place around 1930, in which China is some sort of world colionial power, like Japan in our world's World War II. China desires to create a wealthy, prosperous empire and seeks land to exploit, to live on, and to increase the empire.
However, this brutal agression towards neighbours and tiny island states does not happen without resistance. When attacking Russian Manchuria, Kamchatka and consequently the Kuril islands and the Aleutian islands, China gets North America entirely against it. Canada, the US, Mexico and Russia launch an immense countre offensive which results in Chinese withdrawal and dozens of thousands of Chinese casualties. Additionally, many educated Chinese people argue that their autocrat rulers have done incredibly stupid things. This, among other, mostly ethnic problems, causes a civil war within China at the same time as the global war.
The emperor, though, still has his expansionist wishes, nonetheless, and he commands the Tonga islands to be attacked. The Tonga islands were a US protectorate state, like many other Polynesian island states after the Chinese invasion into Russia, to make sure that China would not attack the islands. Yet the US government had not foreseen that the Chinese would be as impolitic and unwise to attack US protectorate states. But they did...
The US moblisation of troops to Tonga was too slow to stop devastation. They were namely only very few soldiers on the islands at the moment of the attach, since all soldiers had been sent to the Aleutians and later Russian territory, and since the Americans had thought the Chinese would not touch America's world power territory - as America was a feared nation in the world which had by far most power over land, sea and air. The attack, however, did not turn into an American disaster. With efficient bombings, albeit slightly late, they got rid of the Chinese...
The question still was, after the Tonga islands; "when will they ever stop?!". The Chinese had lost enormous numbers of lives, but kept on annexing, conquering, fighting, losing, winning, being defeated, beating, struggling, suffering.
 
Milites

Milites

Indeed, t'was a nice map, but IMHO one really needs to be careful in regards to mixing the "washed out" look with sharper elements (in your case the ships). On a related note, is the last round of voting concluded?
 
Milites

Milites

I really didn't mean to brag or anything along those lines of distastefulness. I'm just very new to posting on these forums and was wondering about the procedure. Sorry if I offended anyone :(
 
Kaiphranos

Kaiphranos

Donor
Milites said:
I really didn't mean to brag or anything along those lines of distastefulness. I'm just very new to posting on these forums and was wondering about the procedure. Sorry if I offended anyone :(
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No fear! I generally announce the winners in the main discussion and entries thread, though.
 

TheseusDeuteros

Come on guys! Only a few days to give me nine votes. Should be doable :rolleyes:. No, I'm kidding. This post will anyway also bump for more votes, I hope. Congrats already, Jonathan Edelstein ;).
 
Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein

TheseusDeuteros said:
Come on guys! Only a few days to give me nine votes. Should be doable :rolleyes:. No, I'm kidding. This post will anyway also bump for more votes, I hope. Congrats already, Jonathan Edelstein ;).
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Thanks! (I actually voted for you, because I thought that yours was the technically superior map - not that I'm complaining about the result, of course!)
 
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