XI) Decolonization
(1948-2012)
The United Nations
When a body of Allies and Entente members met in San Francisco in April of 1945, little did they know they would be creating an international body that would not only resolve conflict, but create much tension in nation-states over national sovereignty. Nominally the Commonwealth would confront foreign affairs on a unified basis. However, the Commonwealth Assembly agreed that they should enter the United Nations as separate entities. It was not a dissolution of the Commonwealth, but in the U.N. each member gets one vote. If the Commonwealth entered as a single member, they would received only one vote, as opposed to eleven in 1945. In that same year, the Commonwealth accounted for nearly half the members of this new United Nations.
The Queen endorsed the idea, hoping the U.N. would offer the world a place for nations to resolve differences without resorting to destroying each other. Better to mediate with words than new atomic bombs, such as the ones produced by joint effort between the United States and the Imperialist Germans. Unlike the League of Nations, the U.N. Charter allowed for resolutions to be enforced by a multi-national task force.
The first postwar challenge for this new international assembly was rebuilding of a shattered world. Though the Bank of Amsterdam was reeling after the war, the Bank of Colombo was still enriched with gold. Ceylon lead an effort, with the other surviving economies, such as the United States and Brazil, to organize a ‘world bank’ to assist bankrupt and ruined countries to rebuild. Naturally, these donor states expected the loans to be paid in full, with a modest interest.
The United Nations also established a war crimes tribunal for Nationalist Germany and Japan. In a way, this established a double-standard, and the only ‘criminals’ to be charged were those who lost the war. The Dutch people were not nearly as interested in the atrocities committed in the Balkans as they were about those committed by the Japanese in the Far East.
The Kingdom of Formosa, States of Hainan and Indonesia
In 1947, after their dedication to the Commonwealth during the war with Japan, Formosa, Hainan and the islands of Indonesia were to be granted status of realm within the empire. The islands of Indonesia opted to be admitted as a single member, and a parliamentary republic. They would have no monarch, but would recognize the head of the Commonwealth as their royal sovereign. The same status as parliamentary republic was bestowed to Hainan.
Formosa, on the other hand, decided to accept Juliana as their Queen. On July 13, 1947, the Kingdom of Formosa was declared. Formosa, despite the devastation caused by months of attempting to liberate Japan, was the most industrialized nation in East Asia, after Japan’s industry was all but destroyed from above. Formosa also proved to be the most factional, politically speaking, of the Commonwealth members. Though political parties were against the Commonwealth Charter, that did not stop fraternities and voting blocks from forming.
Though the government in Taipei could agree on little, the choice for first Prime Minister was almost unanimous, that would be a monk by the name of Mantama. Universally seen as the liberator of Formosa, Mantama was the most popular Prime Minister in the history of the Commonwealth. When he stepped down after one term, the people nearly rioted. When he died, in August of 1969, Formosa came to a stop and mourned for a week.
Formosa benefitted much from the reconstruction of Japan. In 1946, Japan had few functioning steel mills or foundries. All the iron and steel going into Japan came from Formosa. Some Formosans refused to trade with the Japanese, even with the significant profits they could gain via the World Bank. Many who suffered under Japanese occupation wished the Japanese to suffer. Mantama convinced many factory and smelter owners to take the World Bank up on the offer. The way he phrased it, rebuilding Japan would strengthen Formosa’s depressed economy, and by buying Formosan steel and machinery, Japan was in a way paying reparations they would otherwise never pay.
In the wake of the war in East Asia, many of the rival warlords and states of China simply no longer existed. The two largest forces competing for ‘the throne’ were those of Mao and Chaing. The Chinese Nationalists under the command of Chaing faced the brunt of the Japanese onslaught, and likely would have ruled China if not for the Japanese invasion. But Chaing was weakened by seven years of war with Japan. Though the Communists under Mao did fight side-by-side with their Nationalist brothers, the alliance ended as soon as Japan surrendered. After four years of fierce fighting, Mao succeeded and driving Chaing into exile, and in 1949, the ‘People’s Dynasty’ was established, as Queen Juliana called it. Many of the Nationalists attempted to flee to Formosa, but the Formosans refused to absorb nearly a million refugees, and unwanted immigrants. The Nationalists were hence dispersed across the Pacific, from the Philippines, all the way to Canada and Grand Columbia. As a result of restoring the Union, the United States closed its borders to all immigration, until it could get its own house back in order.
By rebuilding Japan, and even dealing with China after the communist take-over, Formosa’s own economy skyrocketed, overtaking many European states in the 1960s. It was not until Japan was rebuilt and China beginning its own industrialization during the 1980s did Formosa slip to third place in Asia and the Pacific. It battled Japan in production of microprocessors into the 1990s, and today is still tied with Japan in production of the world’s premier electronics.
Dutch Africa
With revolution and rebellion racing across other European possession during the 1950s and 60s, Queen Juliana confronted the Staaten-General with the fact that the United Provinces still had two colonies in Africa; Angola and Mozambique. With other Africans rebelling against their masters, it was foolish to believe Dutch Southern Africa would not join them. The United Provinces had never lost a colony to violent means, and Juliana was not about to be the first monarch to loose one.
Angola and Mozambique were some of the first possessions of the Netherlands, but some of the last to be colonized. By 1950, only seventy years had passed before Netherlanders began to homestead in these colonies. Over the centuries before colonization, the Dutch made sure tribes allied to them came out on top during brutal tribal wars. Many of these tribes benefitted to Dutch trade after slavery was abolished. Since the Dutch often refused to speak any other language, the natives were forced to learn Dutch in order to trade. Between 1710 and 1880, Dutch merchants slowly but steadily assimilated the natives into Dutch culture.
Despite their Dutchification, both Angola and Mozambique had little in the way of self-government in 1950. As with India, the Staaten-General of the United Provinces took it upon itself to design and appoint a government to both colonies. Angolans embraced the new government, but were hostile to the appointees. What was the point in self-determination, if one self could not determine who would be in office? All were assured this was a temporary measure, and elections would be held in 1955.
True to their word, elections were held in both Angola and Mozambique in 1955. Towns and provinces of the lightly inhabited colonies went to the polls to chose their representatives in the new Staaten-Generals in Mauricistadt and Sofala. Not only could they decide who would speak for them, they also voted in colony-wide referendums to determine the future of both colonies. Again, the Staaten-General of the United Provinces wrote constitutions for both colonies, granting them the status of realm within the empire, and establishing Angola and Mozambique as constitutional monarchies, with Juliana as their Queen..
The only other choices were status quo and full independence. Nobody wanted the status quo; Independence won thirty-three and forty percent respectively. However, there were no constitutions for these republics, and news of violence in decolonized states overpowered any resentment the republicans who lost the election might have felt. While colonies, the people were both prosperous and happy. The only difference in being kingdoms were that both states would now control their own internal affairs. With the independence of Angola and Mozambique, the United Provinces’ only remaining colony was the frozen wasteland of Greenland.
As there was little in the way of domestic production during the war and little for civilians to buy, and soldiers having little time to spend their money, Abyssinians returned home ready to buy. Unlike the Brazilians, whose post-war industrial boom was fed by the demand for consumer goods, Abyssinians spent their savings on land. Hundreds of thousands of Abyssinians left the cities and returned to the land. Population in the Highlands expanded by 400,000 between 1946 and 1951. Some of the lands were still controlled by the state, the rest was purchased by former large land owners. The vast coffee plantations were dismantled as individuals took over lots of one square meter.
Coffee was not the biggest crop to be grown. Simple grains, such as wheat and oats, were cultivated by the millions of bushels. Wheat production alone doubled during a ten year period. This migration of people from the cities hit the small industrial base of Abyssinian hard. Businesses were forced to pay higher wages in order to convince some veterans to stay. For unskilled labor, businesses simply depended upon a small stream of immigration into Abyssinia, largely from neighboring colonies. Immigration from southeastern Europe fed the small mining industry, bring hundreds of tonnes of gold to the Abyssinian market.
Production increased not only because more people became farmers, but also due to the mechanization of farming. What use to take days to harvest by a hundred workers, a single farming family could do the same work in less than a day. Combines and tractors were in high demand, more so than Abyssinia’s industrial base could handle. Imports from Brazil and the United States, the only industrial nations with capacity to produce excess machinery. Along with mechanization, new pesticides, fertilizers, as well as planting techniques and new irrigation works sparked a Green Revolution in Abyssinia.
New high yield crops turned Abyssinian into the breadbasket of Africa. By 1960, Abyssinia became the four largest food producer and exporter, behind the United States, Patagonia and Sweden. Luxuries such as coffee, flowed from Abyssinia mostly into the Kingdom of Arabia, the Arab Republic and Iran (Persia), with the Italian Federation being a minor exporter. The food stuffs were largely imported by Abyssinia’s neighbors in Africa itself. Post-colonial states, such as the Sudan, Egypt, Dafar and the East African Republic.
During the 1950s and 1960s, a series of revolutions rocked Africa. British colonies that once surrounded Abyssinia began to declare independence. For the most part, the British government worked to disentangle themselves from strategically unimportant areas. Revolution in Egypt was bloody, with the British fighting to hang on to the Suez Canal. Some of the decolonization proceeded so fast as to leave power vacuums in Abyssinian’s neighbors. In the Sudan, the country broke out in civil war. The war was so bloody, that hundreds of thousands of refugees fled across the border into Abyssinia. It was such a flood, that the Kingdom was forced to close its land borders and turn back refugees.
Revolution in East Africa, lead mostly by communists factions, drug the British into seven years of war, as they fought to prevent Chinese-backed rebels from seizing control. Sandwiched between Abyssinia and Mozambique, the Dutch could not help but be drug into the war. Units of the Commonwealth Army were deployed along the borders of the East African Republic. In 1963, the Dutch were forced in invade East Africa, in order to topple the Marxists regime and install a more friendly government along maritime trade lanes. To prop up the friendly government, the Bank of Mogadishu lent out hundreds of millions of guilders to East Africa, and later the Sudan, for internal improvements in both countries.
During the 1970s and 80s, Abyssinia proved a model for post colonial Africa, as newly independent states strove to obtain its level of wealth and standards of living. Most were far from successful, with periodic revolutions and civil wars sending millions of Africans fleeing from their home into their neighbor’s country, which in turn caused its own turmoil. Abyssinia also proved to be a beacon of stability between the Sahara and southern Africa. Of the Dutch Commonwealth members, Abyssinia’s population grew the fastest, mostly do to a steady trickle of refugees. By 1990, Abyssinia’s wealth began to flow across its frontiers, uplifting its neighbors and causing a slow-burning chain reaction. With some prosperity, Africa slowly began to stabilize in the 21st Century.
Restored Union
On May 1, 1946, the International Brotherhood of Workers reinstated the Supreme Soviet and met in Belgrade for the first time since 1940. Many of the previous party members and representatives were absent from the Soviet, including Revolutionary Ivan Mestrovic. The first order of business for the Party was to regain control over the Balkans. After the war ended, violence still rocked the Balkans. Brigands and highwaymen roamed the Balkan Union. German occupation brought nationalism back to the surface after a generation of I.B.W. suppression. Not only did the Red Army have to battle brigands, but they were forced to battle nationalistic militias staffed with partisan veterans of the occupation.
The first order of business was to clean their respective houses. Untold numbers of Balkans collaborated with the Germans and their vassals. In Wallachia alone, fifty thousand people who took part in the Dacian Government were executed by 1948. The ideological pull distracted the government from more pressing matters; such as repairing the Union. The infrastructure, which was not the best in the world to begin with, was utterly destroyed by two invasions. Industry was in shambles, and would take as long to rebuild as it took to construct in the first place.
The Balkan Union also found itself constrained by the presence of Swedish soldiers. The Kingdom of Sweden is none to thrilled by the ideals of the International Brotherhood of Workers. Before the war, the I.B.W. made itself quite a nuisance in the regional parliaments of the Ukraine. Some nationalistic elements within the Union saw the Swedes as the new occupiers. Attacks on Swedish convoys took place during 1946 and 1947 through the Carpathian Mountains. These nationalistic elements did not stop with just attacking foreigners.
In the Bosnian Balkan Socialist Republic, tension between the Serbs and their Croat and Bosniak neighbors boiled over in 1947. The rise of the Serbian National Front, a hold out resistance band from the Crusade, began to raid over the border into Bosnia, burning Bosniak villages in northeast Bosnia. Bosnians naturally retaliated, and this set into action a vicious cycle, that would not come close to ending until the 1990s. The Steel Helmet’s goal of destroying the Balkan Union was rapidly coming true, though not by direct actions. It was the occupation, which lead to rise of nationalism, that inevitably spelled the end of the socialist experiment.
The Serbian Coup
On August 14, 1948, the Serbian National Front, lead by Mikhail Igorvik, stormed the Supreme Soviet in Belgrade, supported by Serbian Generals within the Red Army. The coup removed the Macedonian Mihailou from power and placed Igorvik as the new General-Secretary of the I.B.W. Non-Serbs within the Supreme Soviet were arrested. Igorvik drew up plans to replace the Supreme Soviet and all the Party Congress with Serbs and Pro-Serb Balkans. The coup was two years in the making.
During the years of 1946 and 1947, violence in Bosnia slowly spilled over into Croatia and Montenegro. Attacks against locals by Serbs resulted in attacks on Serbs. In response to this, the Serbian B.S.R. sent in policing forces to defend its people. Order within the Balkan Union was never restored to the level pre-1940. This resulted in many dissatisfied people within the Union, especially in Serbia. As the heartland of the Balkan Union and birthplace of the Revolution, Serbians believed they should have the largest say within the Union.
It goes without saying that other nationalities disagreed with the Serbians. Instead of having endless open debates in the Supreme Soviet, the people resolved their problems by breaking bottles over each others’ heads. Reaction to the coup was almost predictable as the Supreme Soviet was discharges. On August 17, Crimea and Greece seceded from the Balkan Union. As it became clear that the coup has effectively turned the U.B.S.R. into a Serbian Empire, more states left the Union. Bulgaria joined on August 24, followed by Galicia on September 1, and Slovakia on September 12. Croatia attempted to secede, but Igorvik ordered it flooded with Red Army units loyal to Serbia.
On December 25, 1948, the survivors of the coup met for the final Party Congress of the First Balkan Union. Due to failures of the Party, and the Serbian Coup, the survivors voted to disband the Balkan Union. Better to be independent states than provinces under the thumb of the so-called Serbian Empire. Most I.B.W. would work to turn their own nations into socialist states. Not all were in favor of giving up. A faction of the Congress lead by Tito swore to fight on until Igorvik was removed from power and the Balkan Union restored.
The first of many wars in the Balkans erupted with the Serbian invasions of Bulgaria, Transylvania and Hungary. With the dissolution of the Balkan Union, Serbia inherited a disproportionally large amount of the Red Army, which Igorvik did not hesitate to wield. Belgrade intended to force those states back into compliance. Their attempts failed. The Serbian Army’s advances into Bulgaria and Transylvania stalled, while they were ignominiously thrown back from Hungarian territory. The chaos was followed on September 7, 1949, when Slovakia invaded Galicia.
Neighbor began fighting neighbor across the Balkans. Serbia soon found itself fending off a Hungarian invasion, while Greek and Macedonian militias skirmished across their border. No where was the violence more appalling than in Bosnia. Bosnia was the most ethnically diverse of the Balkan states; home to Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, along with smaller enclaves of Montenegrians and Albanians. If blood lines were not enough, the Bosniaks were Sunni, Croats Catholics and Serbs Orthodox. Nothing is guaranteed to make a civil war utterly uncivil than adding theological differences to the mix.
Following battles in Bosnia came the inevitable massacre. Croats slaughtered Serbs, Serbs slaughtered Bosniaks, and Bosniaks retaliated against both. Entire villages simply vanished from the map overnight. Bosnia suffered a case of total war that almost rivals the brutality of World War II. Each side was nearly as efficient as killing off the others as the SS was in their running of the camps. The worst such massacre between the First and Second Balkan Unions occurred on May 7, 1952. The total ethnic cleansing of the Lasva Valley of its Bosniak population by the Croats. Officially, Croatia condemned the action, but recently circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise. During the assault, all the Bosniaks were expelled, with over four thousand men separated from the masses, taken to a shallow ravine and shot. The massacre was covered up by earth movers shortly afterwards.
By October of 1949, Hungarians were on the outskirts of Belgrade. A bulk of the Red Arm deserted, while the rest were either trapped in the city or on Serbia’s other frontiers battling Transylvanians, Bulgarians and now Croatians accusing Serbia of supplying the Serbs in Bosnia. The Igorvik government toppled on October 30, when Igorvik was killed by his own secret police. The Head of Internal Security, Frederick Gimbovik, took the reigns of government, immediately suing for terms with the invaders.
With the Serbian frontier secured, Hungary turned around an invaded Transylvania on November 20 of that same year. With so much of the Transylvania Army in Serbia, the Hungarians drove a hundred kilometers into the nation before stopping. The war would carry on for another two years, with no clear victor. Tragically, this particular conflict in the general Balkan Wars was a repeat of the Great War, with thousands upon thousands of soldiers dying in a no-man’s land between fortifications. The war ended in cease fire only after Poland-Lithuania invaded and annexed Galicia in 1951.
Further east, Moldova and Crimea fought fiercely over large tracks of arable land sitting between the Dniester and Prut rivers. The Crimean-Moldovan War lasted for seven months during 1953. Like so many of the Balkan Wars, this one ended inconclusively with the death of fifty thousand soldiers. Crimea did make gains, partly because it was supplied by Sweden. During October, the last month of the war, negotiators from the VOC sat down with both sides and mediated a truce. Violence along the Black Sea threatened company trade routes with Armenia and Kurdistan.
Sarejavo Conference
In May of 1953, Joseph Tito called together delegates from across the Balkans to attend a conference in Sarejavo. The goal of this conference was to re-establish the Balkan Union and write a new constitution. Many states declined or refused to even acknowledge the invitation. Of the Balkan states; Bosnia, Croatia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Albania and Crimea sent delegates. Two weeks into the conference, the Albanian delegates withdrew as it became clear the new constitution would not benefit them. Albania wanted control over Kosovo, which held many Albanians within its borders, but Tito refused to allow any transfer of territory.
The Second Balkan Union came into existence on August 21, 1953, with Sarejavo as its capital. It immediately saw itself at war with Serbia. This was partially a blessing in disguise, for it forced the Croats and Bosniaks of Bosnia to put aside their differences and unite against the Serbians and Serbs within Bosnia. Tito used all of his political clout to try and stop the violence within Bosnia, with limited success. He did start commissions to investigate the massacres, and even brought several Croats, including those involved in Lasva Valley, to justice. This caused some Croats within Bosnia to see Tito as a traitor, for he too was Croatian.
Serbia was forced to withdrawal any support for its fellow ethnics within Bosnia, as it became apparent that they faced a war on two fronts against the restored Balkan Union. Bulgarians and Crimeans were more than happy to engage in war against those whom they blame for the fall of the first Union. Despite pleas for vengeance, Tito had plans beyond the narrow views of his comrades. He wanted to restore all the Union, and to expand the I.B.W. to places it had never held influence. He orders embassies sent to the Middle East and East Asia. He did succeed in establishing ties with the People’ Dynasty in China, as well as with rebels in Indochina and Mexico.
The Tito Plan also called for rebuilding the Union’s shattered industry and infrastructure. This was only partially enacted, and only insofar as warfare was concerned. The People’s Air Bureau opened in 1955, in Wallachia and produced several models of aircraft that saw action across the Balkans and later in post-colonial Africa. Sadly, the standards of living within all the Balkans fell below their pre-World War II levels. Poverty spread across the Union. Coupled with constant warfare, this lead to a Balkan Diaspora.
Belgrade Council
In response to the restored Balkan Union, Serbia, under the command of Gimbovik, called for delegates to attend their own conference. In 1956, a Belgrade-lead Balkan Union was established, with Serbia, Hungary and Transylvania joining. Zoltan Tildy has reservation about joining Belgrade, but unlike Tito, Gimbovik did promise transfer of territory. The Belgrade Council was not a Union in the same way as the Balkan Union, but rather an alliance of convenience. The year it was founded, Hungary threw its weight behind Serbia in a full-scale invasion of Bosnia.. In return for their aid, Hungary would be awarded parts of Slovakia, as with Transylvania. The Transylvanians will be compensated with lands in Wallachia.
Sarejavo fell under siege during the first four months of 1957. The city was completely cut off from the outside world, with the exception of the air waves. The rest of Europe heard the pleas for help come out of the Bosnian capital, but none lifted a finger to come to their aid. Bosnia was just not strategically important. The United Nations did impose sanctions against Serbia and Hungary, but with no avail. The governments in Budapest and Belgrade did not feel the sanctions, but the people did. It was the Balkan people that suffered the most, and sensing the ineffectiveness of the sanctions, they were withdrawn in 1959.
Thousands were killed during the Siege of Sarejavo, including General Stephan Filipovic, and the city itself was left in ruins. When the Serbians did finally capture the city, it was of little use to the conquerors or the vanquished. Following the Fall of Sarejavo, Crimea withdrew from the Balkan Union and switched sides, allying with the Serbians. This defection effectively dissolved the Second Balkan Union. Despite this betrayal, Tito did not give up on restoring the Union. He did, however, withdrawal to Croatia and lead the Croatian Red Army in defense against Serbian incursions.
The Belgrade Council did not last long after their victory over the Balkan Union. In 1958, Slovakia was partitioned between Hungary, Austria and Poland-Lithuania. Slovakia called for aid with its former allies, but all they received were humanitarian aid from Croatia. The aid was quickly intercepted by the Hungarians. Though Serbia wished to continue their campaign against Croatia, Tildy decided that Hungary has warred enough for the time being. Hungary withdrew from the Belgrade Council in 1959. Serbia withdrew three weeks later. The Belgrade-lead Union fell after only three years.
Greco-Wars
While the Balkans burned in the flames of war, Turkey came under the control of the ultra-nationalists. The new Turkey had dreams of restoring the glory of the Ottoman Empire, along with the land lost in 1916. With the Balkans in turmoil, Ankara thought it would be an easy conquest. The first act of the brief Turkish Invasions was the near disastrous invasion of Rhodes. Though the Greeks garrisoning the island had no reason to expect attack, they reacted quickly to the surprise. Of the Turk’s air assault, twenty percent of the bombers were downed by the few surface-to-air missiles and obsolete turbo-prop P-58s. The Turkish Air Force’s bomb sights were jokes, and most of the bombs fell a foul of the Greek fortifications. However, hundreds of civilians were killed during the bombardment.
Three torpedo boats intercepted the Turkish invasion force. Though all three boats were destroyed, they were not before they released their torpedoes, destroying a troop transport and destroyer. Ten thousand Turks poured ashore to do battle with the roughly fifteen hundred Greek soldiers based on the island. The landing itself resulted in over a thousand Turks killed. Even after the Turks were in control of the city, surviving Greek soldiers carried out guerilla warfare against the invaders. In response, the Turks began executing Greek civilians for each of its own soldiers killed.
More successful, or rather less disastrous, was the crossing of the Bosporus by the bulk of the Turkish Army. Through October to December of 1953, the Turks placed Constantinople under siege, damaging much of the city. During the siege, over twenty thousand civilians were killed, and untold ancient building destroyed. The dome of the Haiga Sofia collapsed under the bombardment of Turkish artillery. The Turkish Invasions never reached inland in the Balkans, and were reduced to raiding along the Aegean and Black Seas.
At the time, the Greek government, under the control of Nikos Zachariadis, saw Turkey as a major threat. It was with some relief in January of 1954, when George Patton arrived in Athens and offered his services. Patton served his country, the Confederate States of America, faithfully during the Great War. When his government came to an end, he was at a loss. He was a soldier at heart, but without a government, who would he fight for? The answer came in the form of the American Foreign Legion. This entity was designed to bring former Confederate soldiers into the service of their long-time enemy. Patton rose in prominence during the Legion’s actions in New Granada during the 1930s, as well as fighting along side Commonwealth and German Imperialists in the 1940s. When the Balkan Union fragmented, Greece called out for help in supporting its new, imperfect Republic. It was a plea that the United States answered with a stream of arms and a few volunteers.
Patton was accepted as advisor and made a general in the Greek Army. His first plans called for the relief of Constantinople. After campaigning against some of the better generals of his generation, Patton was astonished by what he considered the stupidity of the Turk’s plan. To begin with, their navy could not hope to defeat the Greek Navy, despite controlling the waters around Constantinople. The Turks also had limited ability to engage in strategic bombings. Even then, they still targeted symbolic buildings, such as the Acropolis in Athens.
The Greeks lifted the Siege of Constantinople by forcing the Dardanelles, at high cost to their navy, and cutting off almost half the Turkish Army. Before the Turkish invasion force could even surrender, the Greeks landed one hundred thousand of their own soldiers on the Ionian Coast of western Turkey. In turn, the Turks attempted to evacuate their army in Europe to thwart the invasion.
One more nail in the Turkish coffin came with the intervention of the Dutch East India Company. The Turkish Invasions severely disrupted trade in the Aegean Sea, much so that the VOC was concerned that oil from Armenia and Kurdistan might be cut off. The VOC assessed the situation and decided their company would be best served if Greece was in control of the sea. The VOC began overtly supporting Zachariadis with arms shipment at a reduced price, and even escorting Greek merchantmen with their own private warships. By April of 1954, the Turkish Navy ceased to exist as a functional branch of their military.
It was not until late 1954 that the Ankara Government collapsed, turning Turkey into a failed state. Even more than fifty years after their war with Greece, Anatolia is still ruled by petty warlords and factions of the Ottoman Mafia. On January 1, 1955, Greece officially annexed the west coast of Anatolia. This was not the end of Greco expansion. While Greece did work to consolidate its new holdings, its attention soon turned to the state which called itself Macedonia. Being part of Greek history, Zachariadis decided that any state which calls itself Macedonia should be under Greek control. It was more than historical; the fact that a large armor production facility as well with other military-industrial infrastructure existed within Macedonia did factor into his equation.
In 1969, the Greeks went to war with the Third Balkan Union. The war was slow going, lasting for four years and claiming two hundred sixteen thousand dead. The war concluded in 1973, with Greece annexing Macedonia. Only three days after the treaty was signed, the long standing Greek President Zachariadis died. General Andreas Papandreou replaced him as President until 1981, when elections were finally enacted.
The Turbulent Sixties
Turkey was not the only outside power to invade the Balkans. In 1962, Sweden launched its own invasion of Crimea. Crimean bandits had spent the previous year raiding into Sweden, burning farms in the Ukrainian steppes and finally sacking Petrelogorod, a town of three thousand along Sweden’s Sea of Azov Coast. The attack took the world by surprise, as over a thousand Swedish aircraft struck at targets across the Crimean Peninsula in simultaneous strikes. Such an awesome show of air power had not been seen since the blitzes of World War II.
The Crimean military was all but crippled in the first day of the war. The Swedish Army, spearheaded by two Cossack Armored Divisions rolled over what few Crimean soldiers remained. They reached Sevastopol only eight days after the war began, despite the poor road conditions. The Democratic Republic of Crimea had little choice but to cede the Crimean Peninsula to Sweden, thus removing Crimea as a player in the Balkans. Afterwards, Crimea remained an economic dependent to Sweden to this very day.
Again, the Turks were not the only ones with dreams of restored empires. In 1960, the Habsburgs, restored as Kings of Austria, looked to expanding their own borders once again. Not satisfied with the portions of Slovakia they carved off for themselves, the Austrians invaded Hungary in attempts to reclaim its throne as well. The war was a fruitless exercise in maneuver and counter-maneuver, with battles comprising of long-range artillery duels. Two months into the war, the Kaiser mediated a peace between the two belligerents, with Austria gaining only three square kilometers of land at the cost of nine thousand dead.
After the collapse of the Belgrade Council, the Serbians were up to their old bag of tricks again; plotting to found a Serbian Empire on the ashes of the Balkan Union. As with every attempt, Serbia began its expansionism at Bosnia’s expense. Though this new wave of invasions lacked the ethnic violence of previous wars, it still ripped up what little of the roads and rails the Bosnians managed to repair since the fall of the Second Union. Bosnia itself fell under Serbian control from 1961 to 1963.
The Bosnians themselves, Bosniaks and Croats, were not content to let Serbia keep and even colonize their homeland. Resistance movements hampered Serbian occupation and administration. Despite previous levels of violence, the Serbian Army did not instigate massacres against the Bosnian population. They did, however, impose martial law under draconic conditions, including internal passports and identification cards. Those who lacked papers were arrests and held for long periods. Those who violated curfew were often assumed to be part of the resistance and shot on sight.
Despite lower levels of violence, the Serbians did precede to deport Bosniaks from regions bordering Serbia. The Serbian government planned to move Serbs within Serbia closer to the border with the motherland. This ethnic redistribution caused serious disruptions to supply, and even allowed near-famine conditions in some of Bosnia’s cities. Most of the resources were expended in transporting peoples and making the demography of Bosnia, something that met with Belgrade’s approval.
In Kosovo, the Serbians decided to redistribute the demographics, but not in the same way as Bosnia. In Kosovo, Belgrade decided that it was time to expel the Albanians. The ethnic cleansing brought numerous protests from Albania, but protests were all they were. Albania attempted to garner United Nations support, despite the fact that no Balkan state was a member of the UN. The UN did, in fact, pass a resolution condemning Serbia’s actions, but made no attempt to stop them. By 1963, more than forty percent of the Albanians were refugees within Albania.
In May of 1963, Hungary once again went to war against Serbia. It was not that they supported the Bosniaks or Albanians, but rather they could see the writing on the wall. There was concern in Budapest that the Serbians might turn their eyes towards Hungary. The Hungarians struck at the relatively undefended eastern border of Serbia, breaching their defenses after only three days of brutal fighting.
On June 4, 1963, the Hungarian 3rd Division rolled into Belgrade, virtually unopposed. When news of the city’s fall reached the Serbian colonies, the Bosniaks and Croats of Bosnia and Albanians living within the Serbian border, rose up in revolt. The uprisings were almost as abrupt as the original Balkan Uprising. So forceful were they, that Serbian units in Bosnia withdrew to the firmly Serb-held areas. On June 9, the Serbian government fell.
Terms for peace were rather lenient. Hungary had no interest in occupying Serbia, but demanded that it withdrawal from Bosnia and Montenegro, the former racked by civil war un 1971. There was no terms concerning Kosovo, which was a province within Serbia. Thus, the Serbians continued their cleansing. However, having much of their power broken, Albania went to war against Serbia. There was no declaration, but units of the Albanian army crossed the border to protect ethnic Albanians, and did manage to push Albania’s border several kilometers into Serbia.
The Third Balkan Union
At the start of 1968, with the better part of a violent decade behind them, Joseph Tito once again tried to restore the Balkan Union. He called for all Balkan States to send delegate to a conference in Zagreb. Fewer delegates arrive, and even less agreed to a new constitution, this one authorizing more power to the executive branch. Of the ten states that attended, only Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Wallachia and Macedonia ratified. The Third Union was weaker than the previous two, and infrastructure in Bosnia was all but shattered.
Tito’s first Five Year Plan of the Third Union called for linking all the states by road and rail. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in rebuilding Bosnia alone. The Third Union was almost a failure from the beginning. In the 1970s, they fought a losing war against Greece, where all of Macedonia was annexed by them. Further Greek air strikes into Bosnia and Albania severely damaged industry and infrastructure that had already seen two decades worth of on-again, off-again warfare. The plus side of the conflict saw that outsiders were getting involved within the Balkans.
During the Greco War, the Italians sent in a small expeditionary force into Albania to prevent the spread of Greek influence. The Italian Federation was already wary of Greece following their crippling blow against the former Republic of Turkey. Greek shipping began to overlap on Italian interests, and pirates were even operating out of the many islands in the Aegean Sea, targeting mostly Italian ships. They wisely avoided any ship waving the VOC banner. Thought Italy did not declare war on Greece, it did fight several small naval engagements against pirates and Greek patrol boats, along with landing a regiment in Albania to keep the Greeks from gaining any holds on the Adriatic coast.
The idea that Greece, despite its regional power, was ever a threat to the Italian Federation is somewhat of a misnomer. The Greek Navy consists of relics from previous wars, with a few modern mods, while the Italian Navy had five guided missile cruisers and even an aircraft carrier. Italian nationalism played a role as well, for the Nationalist Party, with its ultra-nationalistic views, was playing on the Greek menace to gain votes. It did gain a coalition majority in Italy’s parliament, and went about trying to ‘rebuild the glories of Rome’. They did in part, restoring Ancient Roman structures in time for the 1972 Olympics, and even completely rebuilding the Flavian Amphitheater, the legendary Roman Colosseum.
In the end, Italian intervention, albeit light, did not stop Greece from achieving its goals. By 1973, it was in control of the relatively intact industrial base of Macedonia. For two decades, Macedonia managed to avoid much of the Balkan Wars, mostly because it was a primary arms manufacturer in the region. This became doubly important following embargos and sanctions against the various states in the region. Greece had little to no interest in supplying any of its northern neighbors, and instead used the industrial pygmy to help rebuild its own country. Greece joined the United Nations in 1976, the first of the Balkan states to do so. Hungary followed in 1979.
On January 17, 1979, Joseph Tito, the General-Secretary of the Balkan Union, was scheduled to give a speech outlining his new Five Year Plan in Sarejavo. The plan called for the completion of the public works and repair to the regions’ damaged roads and rails, along with expanding the production of consumer products. He was to speak in front of the Sarejavo Copper Works, a state-ran business that once produced copper plating and wiring, but was not retooled to produced cooking ware and hand tools.
His speech was not to be. At 9:16, only fourteen minutes before he was scheduled to make his appearance, Tito worked his way through the crowds outside of the factory. Though many of the International Brotherhood of Workers claimed to be ‘of the people’, Tito was truly the People’s General-Secretary. When he encountered one Pavel Minkail, he offered his hand and called the man comrade. In return, Minkail produced an Austrian-era pistol and fired three shots into Tito. The first two shots missed anything vital but the third shot entered his chest and ripped through his heart. Tito died only minutes later, while his personal guards and some of the local workers tried to get him to medical attention. As for the assassin, the instant he fired off his rounds, three of Tito’s guards drew their own weapons and gunned him down. Tragically, not all shots found their target in the crowd, and two other workers were wounded.
Tito’s death rippled across the Third Balkan Union. Days after his assassination, senior members of the IBW began fighting for control of the Party and the Union. It was not open civil war, but two of Tito’s senior party allies did vanish, and neither was Croatian. By November of 1979, Croatian Statesman Andre Marik was in control. He placed fellow Croatians in key positions in the government and military. Non-Croatian Generals were purged from the service. In response, the Union began to fracture. It began with Albania withdrawing in January of 1980, followed by Wallachia in March. Wallachia did not so much as secede as it was taken control of from within by the Ceausescu Junta. By April, the Third Union was dissolved, and Croatian forced moved to occupy Bosnia while Albania split.
The Romanian Empire
On January 7, 1980, the Romanian Nation was founded by a military junta commanded by Nicolae Ceausescu. Romania was first established by simultaneous coups in Transylvania and Moldova. The Romanian National Front was a nationalistic movement with occult undertones. The society saw the Romanian people as the lost children of Rome and Byzantium. They also traced their alleged roots back to mythological times, and had racial views not unlike the National Socialists of forty year earlier. The fact that the original Roman genes had long since been replaced by genetic Slavs did not even factor into their racial superiority dogma.
The first, and only, Tsar of unified Romania started his life on January 17, 1918, in the village of Scornicesti in the Wallachian Balkan Socialist Republic. Unlike many future leaders in the Balkans, Nicolae Ceausescu was born a peasant on the eve of the U.B.S.R.’s founding. Little is known about his early years, save for the official biography commissioned during his reign as Tsar. At the age of fourteen, he left his hometown and was relocated to work in the factories during the industrialization process along the Danube. Working conditions were tough, though nowhere near as difficult in the labor camps or those that Ceausescu would later impose upon his enemies.
During the German Crusade, the official biography runs accounts that has Ceausescu leading his own resistance band against Nationalist occupation and their Fascist puppet state of Dacia. There is little evidence ever fired a shot against the National Germans, or was in the resistance. Steel Helmet documentation recovered after the war reports that Ceausescu was arrest and interned for his membership in the Wallachian Worker’s Party. It is said that much of what he inflicted upon his countrymen later in life, he learned first hand from his German captors.
Following the war, the Balkan Union tore itself apart in civil war, as the German occupation brought back ancient ethnic rivalries and vendettas. Ceausescu did participate in these wars, rising quickly through the ranks of the Wallachian People’s Army, obtaining the equivalent of Colonel by 1960. It was around this time he began to become deeply involved in the Worker’s Party, rising in rank as quickly here as in the army. By 1965, he was within the Party’s inner circle, and by 1967, he had enough support from Party men and the army to launch his own coup.
His enemies were dealt with quickly; some 20,000 alone were executed in his first year as General Secretary. Most of the 1970s were spent in reforming Wallachia, and streamlining the previously inefficient councils. By 1978, Ceausescu had turned the country into a one-man dictatorship. His Romanian National Front soon eclipsed the decaying Worker’s Party as the new face of the state. During his first decade in power, he encouraged a cult of personality around him, elevating him to the Communist pantheon, along side Marx and Karadordevic. His influence expanded well beyond his own borders, into the third incarnation of the Balkan Union, as well as Moldova, Transylvania and Bulgaria.
On January 7, 1980, juntas organized by Ceausescu and his foreign supporters took control simultaneously in Moldova and Transylvania. One of the RNF’s long standing goals were the unification of the Romanian people under one ruler, that being Ceausescu himself. A third state was added to Nation when Wallachia seceded from the Balkan Union, following a pro-Ceausescu coup. On May 8, 1980, the three states, under the same guiding hand signed the Treaty of Unification, establishing Romania as a state. The state was not to be a socialist republic, or any republic at all. Ceausescu saw himself as Caesar reincarnate, and on June 19, he declared himself Tsar Nicolae of the Romanian Empire.
Romanian plans for empire were evident from the beginning. On February 14, 1981, the Romanians Army, with the Tsar in personal command, invaded Bulgaria. Factions sympathetic to Romanian goals did exist within the Bulgarian government, and even moved to press for union with the new state. The vote did pass Bulgaria’s lower chamber of parliament, but was blocked by the upper chamber. When the Romanians crossed the border, they would cross as liberators, freeing the people from the tyranny of the minority.
Romania’s invasion of Bulgaria has to be the most bloodless conquest of the Balkan Wars. For the most part, the Bulgarian Army did not resist and their Air Force remained grounded. Romanian infantry marched into Sofia on February 20. It is now known that a Fifth Column was planted the year before by Ceausescu and his followers. Many in the government were appointed by a pro-unification president. When the Romanians crossed the border, no orders were issued calling for the Army to fight.
It soon became clear that it was indeed a Tyranny of the Minority. However, it was not in Romania’s favor. The minority were the pro-unification faction. The bulk of Bulgaria’s masses were against Romanian occupation. The Tsar had hoped to add Bulgaria’s industrial capacity to his own, but wide-scale strikes broke out in late 1981, that brought the Bulgarian economy to a halt. When the Tsar attempted to use his army to end the strikes, full scale rioting engulfed Sofia for three days. It was only after additional army units were flown in from Romania that the rioters were dispersed, and an addition week was required to extinguish the fires.
Strikes continued into 1982 and 1983. Ceausescu was forced to import Romanian workers to take over the industry, causing a worker shortage within his own kingdom. By 1984, Romania’s position in Bulgaria was no longer practical to hold. The Tsar had some concerns about other Romanian state attempting to secede, but with enough of his own people in position, Romania remained united. By June 29, 1984, the last of the Romanian soldiers left Bulgaria, and it was “granted” its independence from Bucharest.
The occupation of Bulgaria put severe strains on the Romanian economy. Ceausescu worried that the withdrawal might be seen as a weakness and exploited by his neighbors. Over the next five years, the annual budget for the Romanian Military rose to 37% of Romania’s income. The Tsar began to show signs of mental instability in 1987, when he declared before parliament that not only would Romania have an army to rival Greece, but it shall have one to rival even Sweden. As Army and Air Force grew, civilian spending power declined. By 1989, the last year of the Empire, more than forty percent of the nation’s inhabitants lived below the poverty level. Food and supply shortages popped up in every city, and the nation’s children began to go hungry.
During the early 1980s, the Tsar worked thousands to death on constructing the Palace of the People in Bucharest. This palace still holds the record as the largest administrative building in the world, and is only outsized overall by a few aircraft assembly plants. The palace cost ten billion Dutch Guilders, three thousand lives and four years to complete. Several districts of Bucharest, including some dating back to Medieval time, were bulldozed to make room for the neo-classical monstrosity.
Life was not all good within the Palace. The heir designate, Nicu, took over reigns of the puppet parliament, and his sister Valentina was placed in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Technology. Both proved to be as ruthless as their father. In the case of Valentina, when the workers in a Sibiu Steel Mill went on strike, she ordered army units in the region to break the strike. Leaders of the union, as well as other Steel Unions, were put on trial as traitors to the Empire and executed between May and July of 1987. The only one of the Tsar’s children who was not cold-hearted and cruel, was Zoia, whose defection to the Italian Federation in 1988, hit the Tsar hard.
What brought down the Emperor was not the will of the people or outside invaders, but his own socialist planning– or at least his own concept of socialism. By 1989, the total debt collected during the Imperial Years nearly equaled the country’s annual income. Banks began to stop handing out loans, and a few demanded payment. Cuts were made across the board, with the Army being the only exception. During the summer of 1989, hard times hit the country as stores ran out of goods and queues wrapped around city blocks. Some citizens were forced to wait in line all day for their bread rations.
Popular uprisings spread like a wildfire across the country in the Fall of 1989. The Tsar became more and more erratic, and in October of that year, turned against his own army chiefs. He went as far as to accuse General Michael Romani of treason when he refused to fire upon crowds of hungry Romanians. When he attempted to have Romani arrested, the Army mutinied. Like Ceausescu before him, Romani had the support of the Army when he pulled off his own coupe.
The final straw came in October of 1989. With deficit spending at its end, the Tsar began to make cuts to support his bloated army. Cuts from education, healthcare and unemployment. To this, the people of Bucharest rose up and stormed the palace with the same force as the French had in 1789. Fighting broke out across Bucharest, with Ceausescu’s diehard supports fighting elements of the army that would rather see him deposed. His madness over the previous two years prompted many in the higher levels of the military to begin plotting his downfall. They feared that with all his spending on the army, that the Tsar might actually be foolhardy enough to start a war with Greece, or God forbid, Sweden. In either case, the international community would be against them, and in the end Romania would lose. A defeat would spell the end of the new unified nations.
On October 8, the fighting in the palace was over, when General Michael Romani captured the Tsar and put him before an impromptu people’s court. By the end of the day, the Tsar was taken out into the courtyard and shot. At the end, his iron will that he worked so hard to project broke down, as he offered the guards taking him to his execution two million guilders each if they helped him escape. The next month filled Romania with the Twentieth Century pastime in the Balkans; endless purges. By December, the monarchy was abolished and a military dictatorship installed until such time as elections can be arranged. This period lasted until Romania joined the Fourth Balkan Union. They applied for admission on the last day of 1989.
The Serbian Empire
Romania was not the only country with dreams of empire. Once again, Serbia rose up and took notice at her neighbor’s lands. As a rule of thumb in Balkan regional dynamics, it appears mandatory for Serbia to grab the land around her once per decade. However, Serbia did not start out to become a monarchy. Instead, this empire was ruled by the Communist Party of Serbia with goals of a Greater Serbia. No longer did Serbia desire, nor contain the ability to, rule all of the Balkans.
The Unification of the Serbian people began in 1982, with Serbia’s intervention in the growing Bosnian Civil War. By the 1980s, the ethnic distribution of Bosnia was divided sharply, with the Serbs living in the provinces bordering Serbia. Croats attempt at taking total control of the country forced a stream of Serb refugees to flood into Serbia. The humanitarian plight was just the justification Belgrade required to invade Bosnia without turning the international community against them. Though it was not as if Serbia required either justification or support. For once its invasion of Bosnia was not condemned.
For two years, Serbia pressed its way into Bosnia, and once again the country was torn apart by warfare. Croatia pressed back against Serbian advances, retaking city’s occupied by the Serbians, and lashing out against the populace. In the case of Banja Luka, retaken by Croats on May 19, 1985, the Croats executed hundreds of Serbs and Bosniaks. Among the dead were dozens of Croats declared collaborators. When the town was again taken back by Serbia, on July 25, the atrocity was exposed to the world.
In response to the massacre, Belgrade decided to take a more direct approach to the Croat problem. On August 29, two divisions of the Serbian Army crossed the border into eastern Croatia. For three years Croatia and Serbia fought along a static front. The war would have continued to this day, if not for the fall of the Croatian government. Milan Kucan, follower of Tito back in the 1970s, lead a coalition that came to power in Zagreb. Peace talks between Croatia and Serbia lead to a division of Bosnia that exists to this day.
The Treaty of Split effectively partitioned Bosnia. The Serbian portion of the country was fully integrated into Greater Serbia. After 1993, when Serbian Premier Slobodan Milosevic staged a coup against the parliament and declared himself Emperor, or Tsar of Serbia, Serbia began a full scale effort to expel not on Bosniak and Croats, but also all Albanians from the portions of Kosovo under Belgrade’s control. Albania attempted to prevent the expulsion, but to little effect. Serbia of the 1990s was far stronger than the Serbia of the 1970s. The Serbian Empire survived the turn of the century, with Tsar Slobodan still in power as of 2009. The part of Bosnia under Croatia’s control accepted the Bosniak refugees and became the cornerstone of the Fourth Balkan Union.
The Fourth Union
The current incarnation of the Union of Balkan Socialist Republics came into life on December 8, 1988, when Croatia, Bosnia and free Montenegro signed the Zagreb Accords. Bulgaria ratified the Accords on December 19, becoming the fourth member. Following the toppling of Ceausescu from the throne, Romania joined the new Union in 1989. Romania’s revolution and ascension to the Fourth Union often marks the end of the Balkan Wars. The 1990s, despite ethnic cleansing in Greater Serbia, was the first regional peace in fifty years. The Balkan Union also acts as an effective counter to the Serbian Empire, forcing a balance of power in the Balkans.
With peace, albeit a cold peace, in effect, the Balkan Union began rebuilding once again. This time, the outside world took an interest in the Union, despite it being a communist state. China, under the People’s Dynasty, is the biggest investor in the Union, followed by Sweden and Italy in a distant third. In 1994, Greece hosted a general peace conference for all the Balkan states. The Athens Pact, negotiated over a five month period, finally settled borders between all the Balkan states. The Pact also guarantees the movement of ethnicities out of states where they are majority and into their ethnic homelands. This last piece was inserted by Serbia as a condition for them to sign. It also permits their acts of purification in a legal sense.
The Balkan Union became the third of the Balkan States, after Greece and Hungary, to join the United Nations in 1996. As per Union wishes, a UN peace-keeping force of five thousand international soldiers patrol the border with Serbia. Even a company of Austrian soldiers were welcomed by General-Secretary Kucan personally. The Austrian tour of duty lasted between 1998-99, with no repeat to this date. For the most part, the peacekeepers consisted of UN members without power projections; such as Kurdistan, Chile and even Vietnam.
Foreign investment within the Balkan Union has risen to twelve billion dollars by 2005, with much of it going into developing the Ploesti oil fields, which suffered from lack of proper maintenance during the Empire-era in Romania. Further investment rebuilt the roads in Croatia and Bosnia. France and Britain signed free trade agreements with the communist state, and began to outsource some of their industries to the cheaper labor of the Balkan Union. The I.B.W. appreciated the irony of the ‘capitalist fat cats’ own greed being used to power the Worker’s State’. The Balkan Union even hammered out an agreement with the VOC, for use of the Union’s Black Sea ports in exchange for technical support and modernizing facilities on the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts. The VOC uses these new ports as a base to protect the oil flowing out of Armenia.
The Balkan Union’s future remains uncertain. Despite two decades of peace, the concentration of ethnicities in ethnic homelands could still tear the Union apart. Attempts to expand the Union have thus far failed. Kucan extended membership offers to Hungary, Albania and even Greece. In response, Tsar Slobodan accused Kucan of attempting to surround Serbia, and such an arrangement would not be tolerated by Greater Serbia. Some say a war between the Union and Serbia during the 21st Century is inevitable; only time will tell.
American Eagle in the Balance
In 1960, the Socialists returned to the White House (quite literally the first presidents to return to the presidential mansion since the 1880s). On the top of their list of objectives was a program called the Great Society. In principle, the program was designed to bring unity back to the nation. In reality, it conflicted with Progressive goals of assimilation. It also reopened the borders, in hope of enriching American culture with an influx of foreigners.
Immigrants brought with them many of the problems of their former homelands. Immigrants from the former Balkan Union were under suspect, for concern, even with the Socialists, that they might bring their violence with them. No such ethnic war erupted in the urban jungles of Boston, Philadelphia or New Amsterdam. Most put aside any age-old hatred and tried to build a new life in a far more peaceful land.
Similar instability in Latin America sent hundreds of thousands fleeing north in the United States. After ninety years of French rule, Mexico was once again free. Like many former colonies, it quickly plunged into civil war as factions, many driven by the drug trade, vied for power. Many fled north, and were welcomed by the Kennedy administration as refugees escaping potential retribution. However, many of the Mexican refugees refereed to themselves as exiles and made no attempts to join American society. A small percentage of the refugees were gang-connected and were responsible for introducing Latin American drugs into America’ inner cities.
In 1964, Kennedy was killed in an automobile accident in Martha’s Vineyard, and his vice president, Lyndon Johnston became the first southerner to take the presidency since the Nineteenth Century. He furthered the Socialist policies in unrestricted immigration. With the border now wide open, cities along the southern border faces a spike in crime as Mexican drug lords extended their reach into Houston, Los Angeles and Port Sinoloa.
Not even Johnston’s attempt to rid the nation of poverty could save him in 1968, when his own party passed him over for nomination, instead choosing Robert Kennedy for the ticket, who won by a clear margin. However, his policies were the party’s and he did not fare better in cleaning up the rapidly deteriorating cities. In 1972, the American voters rejected the Socialists, and picked Democrat Richard Nixon as president, who swore to clean up the mess. Instead, the Democrats, who were always supported by big business, left the borders open to cheap immigrant labor. Little changed, and in 1976, America decided it was time for a change.
The change came in the Progressive Party candidate, James Dean. Dean was best known to his nation for his acting career following the end of the wars of the 1940s Dean was far too young to have served in any war, so instead he took on various anti-Confederate roles in movies about the Great War. Many of the socio-political problems within the United States were blamed on the southerners, especially Johnston. One such conspiracy theory of the day stated that border policy was directly controlled by the remaining land owner in the south, as a means to procure cheap labor.
Like all Progressives, Dean was progressive on social issues, but very nationalistic, and believed America should stay American, and this could not happen while the front door was left open. Once in office in 1977, Dean ordered tens of thousand of soldiers to the southern border to close it, and sent the Justice Department to find and deport the millions of illegal immigrants in the country. The Progressive Party controlled numerous state assemblies, and during the backlash of the Seventies and Eighties, amended constitutions to make English the official language. This meant that all government business must be transacted in English, and English only. Further laws were passed at the national level imposing tariffs and many imports, much to the free-traders in the Democratic Party dismay.
By sealing the border, Dean took away post-colonial Mexico’s only outlet for dissension. The Mexican government, through it various lobbies tried to fight the Progressive’s plans. This angered Dean to no end, the fact that a foreign nation was so intrusive into America’s internal affairs. In reply to the demands, Dean was heard saying that the United States had battled and defeated many of the World’s greatest powers, and were not about to take any (guff) from a pipsqueak, post-colonial dump. Unfortunately, this was said while in a meeting with Mexico’s ambassador. During the tense exchange, the ambassador proclaimed that Mexico will take back the lands that were stolen. In response, Dean told him that if Mexico tried, then he would take the other half of their country away, and they would have no country at all.
Open borders were more than just an influx of people. In the 1970s, the great problem in American cities was crime. Crime fueled by the trade of narcotics. Drugs from Mexico, New Grenada and Bolivia flowed across the border between 1965-1975 almost unimpeded. The anti-drug agencies created during the Nixon administration could do little since the cartels were too heavily armed. Worse still, corruption was so rabid in Mexico, that the cartels bribed police, politicians and even units of the Mexican Army. On the night of August 12, 1978, one such run of drugs, escorted by ‘bought’ units of Mexico’s army, crossed the border in Durango. The convoy was intercepted by the U.S. Army and a firefight ensued. The convoy was destroyed, but two American soldiers were killed.
The fact that American blood was spilled defending American land outraged the people. Dean ordered an immediate response. Units of the Army based in Costa Rica, Durango and Texas crossed into Mexico on search-and-destroy missions, in an attempt to wipe out the drug trade along its border. Dean even went as far as to ask Congress to declare a state of war. The tensions and bloodshed served as a way to root out those immigrants (that came here legally) that had any loyalty to ‘their country’. More than half the first-generation citizens who were born south of the border supported Dean. They did not wish to see any ‘reconquest’ and moved to America to become American and pursue the American dream, and above all, to escape the corruption and poverty of Mexico.
War was not declared, but that did not stop the War Department from setting up ‘policing zones’ one hundred miles within the border. Aside from destroying the drug cartels and rooting out corrupt officials, the zones were used to resettle deportees and set up a economic climate to keep them there. So successful were the zones, that when Mexico finally descended into civil war (without the outlet of dissent) in 1979, these zones were the only peaceful part of the country. With the old regime deposed, various factions fought for control of Mexico until 1992.
Dean’s actions were not without price. While speaking before a crowd in San Diego during his campaign for re-election, Dean was gunned down by a survivor of the Mexican drug cartel. On March 1, 1980, James Dean was the second American President to be assassinated. The backlash against the Mexican community was immediate. The American southwest was consumed by anti-Mexican fever. States that still allowed Spanish as a second language were quickly amended. This period in the early 1980s was the only time the United States saw emigration, as hundreds of thousands fled to South America and even Spain.
At the dawn of the 21st Century, the United States still maintains its closed border society, and allows for some of the highest tariffs in the world, though tariffs with friends (such as Germany and the Dutch Commonwealth) were relatively low. Its industrial might is second to none, and its military might only exceeded by the combined output of the Dutch Commonwealth. Though the nation remains at peace and isolates itself from international affairs, dwindling resources around the world will eventually force it into conflict with other world powers as the 21st Century drags onward.
France
France’s colonial empire effectively ended the moment Japan seized Indochina and Spain Algeria. France was no longer able to defend its colonies, and more importantly its inhabitants. For decades, tensions were mounting throughout its colonies, and by leaning heavily on the colonies for its own reconstruction, France pushed its colonies over the edge. By 1950, the colonies began to view themselves no longer as French, but as exploited.
The first to break away was French Indochina. Lead by Ho Chi Minh, the Indochinese rebellion lasted from 1945 to 1954. In a way, it was simply an extension of the war against Japan. Ho lead the resistance against Japan, but when France came in to reassert itself, it simply swept the Viet Minh aside. During the war years, Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian nationalism rose in response for Japan’s repression.
Before France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Algerians rose up against their former colonial masters. Unlike Indochina, whose nationalities were merely fighting for independence, Algeria faced a wave of religious extremism that included bombs of hotels, buses and subways in Metropolitan France. France’s reaction to Algeria was far harsher than in Indochina. Algerian rebels attempting to surrender were shot on sight, for fear of extremists wearing explosive jackets lined with metal splinters. More than one ‘rebel’ trying to surrender blew himself up while ‘surrendering’ to French soldiers. Many Algerians within the Foreign Legion were expelled from the Legion and from France.
Rebellion in Mexico was far more civil than in Algeria. When France withdrew from Algeria, over a hundred thousand French settlers and their allies left with them, many of these went to French enclaves in Mexico, despite the rebellion. The French colonized along the Gulf Coast and Pacific Coasts of Mexico, leaving the interior to the locals. However, just as in Algeria and Indochina, France attempted to ‘civilize’, that is impose their laws and customs, the natives. However, unlike the other colonies, France experienced a moderate success in Mexico, where French is now spoken as often as Spanish.
However, France stripped Mexico of much of its natural wealth, especially after oil was discovered in the lands surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. A sharp disparity between the haves and have-nots lead to revolution in the mid 1950s, after nearly ninety years of French rule. With the fall of the Balkan Union, international socialism moved its headquarters to China, and it was the Chinese smuggling arms to Marxists rebels in Mexico. Like with Vietnam, when Mexico freed itself from French rule, it soon fell to communism, the same fate of many former colonies.
The British Commonwealth
The British Commonwealth of Nations, a pale impersonation of the Dutch Commonwealth, only worked as far as the citizens were Anglicized. Canada, Australia and Patagonia, along with various islands stayed within Britain’s association of states, unlike Britain’s former African colonies and Burma. The Burmese were the first to break away, starting their war in 1947. For over a decade, Burmese waged a guerilla war against the British, often crossing the Indian border to launch their attacks.
Though the Commonwealth Assembly tried to work out a deal between Burmese and British, India’s own national guard did take part in the war, mostly shooting any rebels who crossed the border. On March 5, 1951, several villages on the Indian side of the border were raided by Burmese rebels, prompting the Indian Staaten-General to threaten invasion of Burma. They further reiterated that land the Dutch took, they seldom gave back.
The use of the name Dutch by India was obviously an attempt to get the Commonwealth on their side. India has always been the odd man out in the Dutch Commonwealth. Forced into the United Provinces’ colonial empire, language and customs and they even had their own constitution forced upon them. Abyssinia was also conquered, but unlike India, it created its own government, as opposed to the Staaten-General back in the Hague.
The Commonwealth did keep up the pressure on Britain to resolve the Burma Crisis, while at the same time, Queen Juliana blessed the Indian Staaten-General’s plan for a limited invasion of Burma, in order to root out rebels and bandits along the border. In 1952, the British forced many of the rebels into the very path of Indian invasion, hoping to crush the rebellion. For the next two years, the Burmese Liberation Front fell silent.
When violence flared up again in 1955, the United Nations stepped in to mediate between rebels and British. In 1956, a U.N. peacekeeping force, including thousands of Indian soldiers, occupied the country and began disarming rebels and taking over functions of the British. There was sporadic violence into 1957, but for the most part, the peacekeepers did just that; kept the peace until a nation-wide referendum at the end of the year. The Burmese voted overwhelmingly for independence, and by 1958 the Republic of Burma was established, with the U.N. staying until 1960 to insure a smooth transition in government.
The British Empire continued to fade during the 1960s, with the loss of most of their African colonies, the last, Kenya, achieving Independence in 1971. Rebellion and revolution in Central Africa created a crisis of refugees for Abyssinia and Angola. The Commonwealth closed the borders, and after the events in Burma, patrolled it vigilantly. For the most part, the Dutch stayed out of British and African affairs. The only exception being in Egypt, which won its freedom in 1952. Because Dutch interests still owned part of the Suez Canal, the Commonwealth was forced to strike a deal with the new government in Egypt. Simply put, as long as traffic was not impeded through the Suez, then the Commonwealth had no reason to meddle in Egyptian affairs. Though the Dutch Empire was now a Commonwealth of Nations, the Dutch were still a mercantile people whose power was based on trade and commerce.
Socialism
During the 1960s, the World Powers experienced revolutions of their own, albeit far more peaceful than their colonies. For the Dutch people, a nominally mercantile society, socialism was revolutionary. Unlike many capitalistic countries, the United Provinces’ companies thought of their nation before their profits. Never had a company, with the possible consideration of the South Atlantic Company, ever go against national interest, and not just because the Staaten-General could revoke their license or monopoly.
By 1963, the Dutch Worker’s Party won several seats in the House of Electorates. The Worker’s Party is believed to have had its origins in the form of Balkans fleeing the chaos that was 1950s southeastern Europe. Their first act was to introduce several bills aimed at protecting the worker. Protect them from what? The rest of the Staaten-General asked that very question. Workers in the United Provinces were far from exploited, and many factories would just as soon employ honest and loyal Netherlanders for three times what cheap foreign labor might go for.
Among the proposals, the socialists wanted a mandatory minimum wage, thirty hour work weeks so that four shifts could be enacted instead of three, two weeks of paid vacation a year, and allow unrestricted unionization. Instead of gaining worker’s support, many Netherlanders were suspicious about the proposals. Why take thirty hours when they now receive forty hours? That would involve a reduce in pay. The socialists claimed it was to increase employment, but the United Provinces had next to no unemployment. With strict tariffs on imports, the Dutch people bought mostly Dutch products, and with Germany still rebuilding itself, many of the products went across the border.
If anything, these changes would entice Germans to cross the border and take jobs from Netherlanders. Some enterprising Netherlanders, when this law was passed, simply took two shifts a week, and actually reduced the number of employees required. As for minimum wage, the wage proposed and passed was far less than the average wage of the Netherlander. The idea of a minimum wage was more of an ideology for International Socialism Inc. Every other country had them, so why should the United Provinces be exempt.
The most popular of the laws was that of paid vacation. A majority of employers did not offer paid vacation, though workers could take leave with sufficient notice. To now have two weeks of relaxation without worrying about missed paychecks, that was a boon. It was also the only Worker’s Law to not be repealed in the 1980s. As for labor unions, those existed in the United Provinces since the turmoil of industrialization in the mid-Nineteenth Century. They were a bane in the existence of factory and mill owners, but they also kept them honest, and the unions took credit for making the United Provinces the country with the highest standard of living in Europe (perhaps not without too much exaggeration).
Several other laws were proposed, but rejected immediately. These included universal health care, unemployment insurance, and an idea borrowed from Britain and Canada; social security. It was a kind of government-ran retirement plan. In order to afford such programs, the United Provinces would have to do something it rarely does; raise taxes. Most of the nation’s income comes from tariffs and duties, with just the minimum of taxation upon the people. Universal health care was voted along party lines, socialists for it and everyone else against. The idea of government as helping hand will always be foreign in the very Provincial minded Provinces. The Dutch people have long standing traditions of self-reliance. After all, a people who required a helping hand could never have colonized the far corners of the globe.
VOC Stars
The first Dutch satellite was launched into orbit in 1959. This was two years after the first satellite. VOC Communications saw the potential in satellites. Using the mathematics of a British engineer, Author Clarke, VOC Communications aimed to establish a communication network in orbit of Earth. Over the space of several years, starting in 1963, the VOC began to launch its own constellation of communication satellites into geosynchronous orbit. This first network was completed in 1967, and allowed for wireless communication anywhere in the world. The first network was decades ahead of the Information Age, and it was not until the 1990s, that communication satellites were exploited to their fullest.
In order to reach orbit, the VOC established its VOC Stars department. VOC Stars developed and built launch vehicles, satellites and even space capsules. Most of its assets were sunk into unmanned launches, with it flagship rocket, Griffon. Hundreds of Griffons were constructed, and not only used by the Company, but VOC Stars was also under contract with other communication companies for launches. Companies like Bell and Greison found dealing with the VOC a lot easier, and with a lot less red tape, than contracting launches to their own national space programs or aerospace giants.
VOC Stars also built the Capricorn space capsules, a three-man orbital spacecraft, which were purchased by both Commonwealth and British Space Agencies. Though the Capricorns were cheaper than anything produced in the United States, Germany, or Sweden, these other spacefaring nations refused to go beyond their own borders to purchase spacecraft. Italy cooperated with both German and American programs, Italian Astronauts hitching rides on either, while the French struggled to keep in space with the other World Powers.
Fort Recife was humanity’s first outpost on another world. In 1983, the VOC inaugurated the first component of its research station on the surface of Luna. Fort Recife consists of several inflatable structures erected on the surface of the Ocean of Storms, connected by accordion passages and buried beneath a meter of lunar regolith. The purpose of the station was to learn the industrial potential that the VOC could harvest from the surface of the moon. The first module was home to four astronauts for three months. A second and third inflatable habitat was added in 1985. Construction was completed in 1988, with a fifth module. It was at this point that Fort Recife received its first researchers; geologists, chemists and a metallurgist. The base is currently home to thirty researchers who stay on six month tours of duty. In twenty years of operation, there has only been one death recorded at the base; a geologist named Hans Vjrenrik, who has the massively bad luck of standing outside precisely where a micrometeor struck, puncturing his helmet and killing him instantly. Despite the inherit risk of living in space, the Dutch Commonwealth has expressed interest in acquiring rights to Fort Recife and expanding it. These negotiations are still ongoing.
Life in Fort Recife is very spartan. Crew members are allocated ten square meters for their quarters; enough room for a bed and a desk. Meals are eaten communally in a cafeteria. There are no dedicated cooks in the base, but some residents do know the art. Some food stuffs are shipped in at great cost from Earth, but Fort Recife does have extensive aeroponic facilities, and grows its own vegetables. Plans to expand the base to include fruit-producing plants, along with the honey bees required to pollinate them are on the drawing board for Commonwealth expansion. The base is powered by solar cells during the Lunar day, and by a radio-isotope thermal generator during the equally long Lunar nights.
In the decades to come, the VOC has plans of constructing industrial sites on the moon, using Fort Recife as the nucleus. The main interest in industry is the harvesting of Helium-3 from the lunar regolith. Extracting light metals from the moon’s surface will facilitate construction of the sites and a mass driver. Through the course of the 21st Century, Fort Recife will become the seed for the first city on the moon.
VOC Today
The VOC is the world’s first 600 billion guilder (one trillion dollar) company. What was once a mere spice monopoly has become the dominate force in world trading. VOC is to the shipping industry, sea, land and air, what Microsoft is to the operating system industry. It might not be a monopoly, but it is so large and dominate that it might as well be. More than 70% of all Dutch shipping is done by the VOC, and the Company has nearly a 50% market world wide. Countries like China and its Communist satellites use sate-owned shipping monopolies, while Japan and France boycott the VOC in favor of their own national companies. France boycotts to the point where it subsidizes its own shipping companies to make them able to compete.
The VOC is also the 18th largest automotive producer in the world, despite hardly producing a single passage vehicle. VOC trucks can be seen around the world. The Company is also the fourth largest commercial aircraft producer, though half of these jets are sold as cargo planes to postal services and fast shipping companies around the world. 4th place is not so impressive when one notices the size of the three ahead of them, which the VOC’s production does not even match 20% of the 3rd place company. The VOC also happens to be number eight in the telecommunication industry, and the largest provider for the Dutch Commonwealth.
Outside of government, the VOC is the world’s largest employer, employing well over one million people around the world. The Company pays high wages to its workers in order to keep talent from migrating to a rival, as well as to keep organized labor out of its facilities. Labor unions around the world criticize the VOC for this aspect, as do foreign socialist parties. VOC managers and executives actually receive a proportionally lower than in other multinational corporations. Business interests criticize the Company for this aspect, as do capitalists worldwide. Such moderation, and lack of entitlements without merit, is what has kept the VOC strong, and will continue to do so through the 21st Century.
Queen Beatrix
Born on January 31, 1938, Beatrix grew up in partial exile. Her first memories of Delft were not until the Royal Family returned home following the success of War Plan Tulip. She is unique among Dutch monarchs for several reasons. The first being that she was the first Princess (or Prince) of Oranje to attend public universities, in both The Hague and Recife. She was also the first to have a Masters Degree, hers in international law. An appropriate field of study for one who would eventually become the head of the Dutch Commonwealth of Nations.
During her college days, Beatrix studied abroad, in Paris, Baltimore, Arborea and even spending one quarter studying in the American city of Atlanta. It was there during the days of the Kennedy administration that she came face to face to a world that puts race above nation. She was blasted by critics in America for her quote ‘race is skin deep, but the nation is in the heart.’ The Dutch people have always considered themselves Dutch first.
Her notions of a color-blind society struck hard many of the civil rights leaders in the American south. During the 1960s, black Americans still faced an uphill struggle against the white southern society. Despite national laws against discrimination, those laws were barely enforced in the southern states until the 1970s. Beatrix left Atlanta wondering if Brazil or the Boer Republics could have ended up this way had her predecessors governed differently.
Beatrix was crowned on April 30, 1980, not after her mother died, but rather after Juliana abdicated. It was not the first time a Dutch monarch voluntarily relinquished the throne, but Juliana did not do so in disgrace. After more than forty years as Queen and Empress, Juliana simply decided it was time to retire. At forty-two years of age, and eighteen years of service within Dutch government, Beatrix was crowned the Queen of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Empress of Brazil, Lady Protector of Kapenstaaten, Transvaal, New Oranje, Natalia and Johannestaaten, Queen of Ceylon, Empress of India, Queen of Abyssinia, Princess of Java, Royal Sovereign of Indonesia and of Hainan, Queen of Formosa, and of both Angola and Mozambique.
The Changing World
However, there is a far greater concern than cybernetic revolt, and that is of dwindling fuel. In th first decade of the Twenty-first Century, the world has hit what is known as peak oil production. There are alternatives to petroleum based fuels, but as with the shipping companies in face of the railroad, many petro companies are fighting against fuel-cell technology. It will put them out of business they claim. Perhaps, but so will the depletion of oil. More over, fuel cells will not alter the climate in the same way as the burning of fossil fuels.
As a nation at and below sea level, the United Provinces are deeply concerned about climate change and inevitable sea rises. Even if all fossil fuel consumption were cut today, the ocean will still rise by a meter. Billions of guilders are going into improving, modernizing and even expanding the system of dikes and levies that keep the Provinces relatively dry. The VOC, as always, is not only looking to the future of its profits, but the benefit of its country. Several model fuel-cell vehicles are already in test markets across the Provinces.
Gasoline is but a minor irritant compared to two centuries of burning coal. Whereas most oil will be gone by the 2050s, there is still enough coal to burn for centuries. Many European nations have the technology to offset coal, with nuclear, hydroelectric and even wind. The biggest producer of coal-borne carbon dioxide is the still industrializing China. As a nation of over a billion, the energy demands are astronomical. If China is unable to find a solution other than coal, then the United Provinces, and the Dutch Commonwealth, may have no option but to destroy the hundreds of coal-fired plants across China. As a fellow nuclear power, it is unlikely China will sit by and let their power plants be destroyed.
Physicists in Formosa and China are operation an experimental nuclear fusion reactor. By fusing hydrogen into helium, this new source of power produces no pollutants, and harnesses a fuel that is nearly inexhaustible in the universe. By taming the power in the heart of the sun, the Commonwealth, and perhaps all of humanity. Optimism aside, a commercial fusion reactor is still a decade away, but the prototypes produce far more power than they consume.
As with the two previous centuries, the Dutch people entered it the commercial power of the world. The combined industrial output of the Dutch Commonwealth surpassed any individual nation of Earth. However, with current growth trends, this will not be the case for the rest of the 21st Century. At its current rate of growth, China is projected to surpass the United States in the 2030s and the Dutch Commonwealth by the middle of the century. The rise of China back to the same peaks it has held in the past is cause for concern in the United Provinces and other members of the Commonwealth.
Communication technology in the 1990s under went a rapid change. At the start of the decade, communication involved telephones and fax machines connected via copper cables. By 2000, wireless technology miniaturized to the point were cellular telephones were smaller than the human hand, and portable computers could communicate with each other across the world via the communication satellite constellation. Such revolutionary change in technology had serious impacts on society and politics. And the way nations waged war.
The Dutch Commonwealth was one of the many participants in an arms race in the early Twenty-First Century, eerily reminiscent of the same arms race the precluded the Great War. Instead of building larger and more battleships, the aim in this race was to produce a smarter weapon. By 2010, the Commonwealth had produced missiles that could hit a target anywhere in the world with a meter of where it aimed. New laser-guided missiles were capable of penetrating a window in the side of a building.
The advance computing technology went a long ways to automate much of modern warfare. The Commonwealth Navy refit all of its older ships with new Central Intelligences, a system to link all the weapons of a fleet to a single button. Coupled with communication and observation satellites, for the first time in history it was quite possible for the Dutch Monarch to personally control the entire battlefield. Queen Beatrix never exercised her right to command a battle, for no major conflict involving the Dutch Commonwealth occurred during her reign.
Widespread information networks extended the collective knowledge of humanity to the masses. For the first time in history, anything anybody could ever want to know was only a mouse click away. Despite its beneficial use, networks were given over to entertainment. This boasted software companies world-wide, lead by the American corporation Microsoft. Microsoft was one of the few companies in history to actually cause a foreign product to take the number one position in sells within the Dutch Commonwealth.
At the start of the 21st Century, the planet’s resources have reached the point of maximum crunch. Steel, aluminum and oil productions neared their peaks, and with the growing industrial appetite of the People’ Dynasty, it was clear as day that there would not be enough to go around. The most pessimistic of economists project that easily obtained resources would be depleted by the 22nd Century at current rates of consumption.
Ramped consumerism threatened to drain Earth of the resources required to sustain current industrial outputs. The start of the 21st Century was a time of great uncertainty as World Powers grew and the world itself effectively shrank. Like with spices four centuries earlier, entrepreneurs looked outward for new sources of minerals wealth to power the industrial mechanisms of Earth. First among them was a relatively new branch of the VOC, VOC Stars. By the middle of the century, a space rush was underway.
Peak Oil
By 2010, the oil reserves of Earth hit their peak production. Following this year, oil supplies would continue to drop until not a drop was left. With its demand in fuel and plastics production, oil was one of the key strategic resources in industrialized society. The Dutch Commonwealth’s supply was secure via its members, the Principality of Java, State of Indonesia and Kingdom of Angola. The United Provinces had its own supply of oil off shore. Large deposits were discovered in the North Sea during the 20th Century, causing both the United Provinces and the United Kingdom to an oil rush.
Around the world, the rush to develop alternative fuel sources was in full swing during the start of the 21st Century. In the United Provinces, the electric car gained a great deal of popularity. Being such a relatively small nation, and with an extensive rail network already in place for inter-provincial travel, the demand for long-range vehicles was low. Further more, the streets in the United Provinces were designed centuries ago with humans and horses in mind, and would not support the larger automobiles of the United States, Germany or Brazil. The largest cars in the United Provinces were designed to hold five passengers. With birthrates hitting an all time low, just barely remaining in the positive, large, family vehicles had no market in the Provinces.
In Brazil, and other members of the Dutch Commonwealth, advances in fuel cell technology gradually replaced gasoline engines. However, it did not replace the need for oil. Much of the hydrogen extracted was done so from hydrocarbon sources. It slowed the demand of oil, but only enough to extend the supply a decade at the most. Not all of the world’s oil supply was under the control of the World Powers, which would lead to new wave of colonialism and interventions.
In 2010, when the King of Arabia, Abdul bin Selim al Saud, decided on a change in trade policy, he peaked the ire of the World Powers. No longer would Arabia accept paper currencies. With oil supplies limited, the King decided he would only accept gold, silver and other precious metals for oil. Since the World Powers depended on their own gold stockpiles to back up their currencies, such an arrangement was untenable.
Dutch Commonwealth involvement in the War of Unification was limited. The United Arab Emirates, former protectorate of the Dutch, and regional friend, were backed up by a Commonwealth task force sent from Ceylon, along with two regiments of Commonwealth Marines, once the situation in the Kingdom of Arabia exploded. The fact that these forces were in place meant the Commonwealth knew of the plans for revolution.
Despite low taxes and free education, the Arabs within the Kingdom were not all happy with the House of Saud. Many wished to overthrow the King. Of these, a majority wished union with their brothers in the north. A fringe group sought to establish a theological state over the Muslim heartland. Over the past decade, agents of the Arab Republic’s Ba’ath Party have infiltrated into the Kingdom of Arabia, establishing branch parties and even Fifth Column movements. Along, the Republic could not hope to tackle the Kingdom.
However, Damascus had help in the form of France and the United States. These were the two largest customers of the Arabian Peninsular, and neither were about to part with the gold. However, neither had sufficient domestic supplies of oil. In the case of France, virtually no domestic oil. The United States reached peak oil back in the 1980s, and were scrambling to take control of the Gulf of Texas, and would alter take control of Mexico and its oil supply, was starting to run out.
In 2010, the two World Powers backed the Arab Republic and the Ba’athists in the Kingdom in their move to topple the Saudis. The Revolution was violent, cumulating with the massacre of the royal family, and short. Within three weeks, the Ba’athists were in control of the Kingdom, and called for a referendum for annexation to the Arab Republic. To win over some of the Kingdom’s nationalists, the referendum technically called for unification and the formation of the United Arab Republic. During the chaos of revolution and unification, which passed with some 61% of votes in favor, the U.A.E., backed by the Commonwealth, seized for themselves vast tracks of the south-east corner of the peninsula for themselves. Being mostly empty lands, an arrangement was made between the Emirates and Republic, or more precisely, between the Commonwealth and the Republic’s powerful backers. Once the United Arab Republic was formed, the oil began to flow to foreign markets, paid for by foreign currency.
Demographic Bomb
By 2010, almost half of the population of the United Provinces, New Zeeland and New Holland, and nearly thirty percent of Brazil and the Boer Republics were nearing the age of retirement. When they ceased working, the industrial output of all countries named would sag. With retirement approaching, the Count of Zeeland, in an address to the Staaten-General warned that ‘a demographic bomb was about to explode’. When they retired, the strain on businesses that paid pensions to lifelong workers would severely cut into their profits. A few even warned of economic depression when the demographic bomb detonated.
The Dutch were not the only people who were affected by the demographic bomb. However, the German Empire and United Kingdom depended on income taxes for a substantial portion of their income. In 2010, only 10% of the United Provinces’ budget was derived from income taxes. A bulk of their revenue still came from tariffs and corporate taxes (albeit small compared to other nations). Further concerns on how one was going to pay for the medical care of millions of Netherlands who were no longer productive citizens grew within the Senaat.
The mass retirement did cause a downtown in the global economy as demands for luxury goods decreased by five percent. Factories need not lay off workers since the numbers retiring exceeded the numbers that would have required termination. However, profits did suffer as many businesses, which had life-long contracts with workers now retired, including pensions and insurance. The increasing life expectancy added to the percentage of Netherlanders no longer contributing to society.
There were some calls within the House of Electorates for the Dutch Government to provide financial security for its older citizens. Similar social programs were already enacted in India and Formosa since the 1980s, and in Ceylon and Abyssinia during the 1990s. However, the United Provinces, Brazil and especially the self-reliant Boers, resisted such movements within their own government. For the Boers, it was hardest, since their whole governments were elected by the people. There was no maximum age limit for voters.
During the second decade of the 21st Century, something happened in the United Provinces that never happened before; the private sector demanded health. The Dutch have never been a people with any use for welfare or any other sort of ‘Socialism’, despite experiments back in the 1960s. However, with such a large percentage of Netherlanders approached retirement age, businesses required aid to prevent themselves from imploding under the benefits and pensions that would be delivered to life-long employees. Though businesses would not get all they required, the Staaten-General reluctantly agreed to broker loans to keep these companies afloat.
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