Are their regions in the world that are detained to be nations.

After reading peter ziehans book the accidental superpower are there regions in te world pre destined to be nations.
 
River valleys are destined to be united, invaded, and reunited due to the accumulation of wealth and ease of travel along them for armies. You could argue that it's what let China get as large and homogenized as it is today.
 
I don't think using Calvinism to analyze history would be at all useful. "Why did Operation Sealion fail? It was pre-destined to fail." "Why did America win the Cold War? It was pre-destined to succeed." Etcetera for everything you could possibly ask.
 
Short version - mountains are hard to cross, so people on the other side of a mountain aren't likely to be as easily relate-able as someone on the same side. There will still be some crossing, but it will be at easier locations (mountain passes), so expect communications that way. If the mountain passes are small, there will be little cross-culture. If the mountain passes are large, there will be a higher amount of cross-culture (flat land is the ultimate mountain pass). Deserts also form natural boundaries, as travel across them is difficult.

As mentioned by EMT, river valleys are excellent for communications, as well as water and food supplies. You will see civilizations tend to sprout in those areas, and be relatively homogenous. This similarity of cultures will lead to them finding more alike than different (or just enough alike to declare the other a heretic), and more likely to partner. if they are different enough to war over, those rivers will make it easier to move troops around, and eventually one of the civilizations will conquer the others.

This conquest will eventually reach a point where communications takes too long, and the empire may stop there. If there are multiple nearby rivers, expect the whole area to be a similar culture (I.e. the Punjab region). If the empire tries to expand too far, you will eventually see revolutions because the time/effort it takes to reconquer the area is too high.

So regions that heave easy communications are more likely to form a nation. Regions that hinder communications are more likely to be borders. There are of course the exceptions where one culture decides to stay on one side of the river and the other on the other side, as the river forms an easily recognizable boundary (compared to mountains where determining the separation line is difficult due to snowfall and avalanches changing the crest).
 
I think California (the U.S. State, not Alta and Baja combined) is one of the more perfect places to house an independent nation.

Isolated (in a good way), surrounded by mountains, deserts, and more mountains, and more deserts, it's difficult for an army to get in.

Fertile, the Central and Imperial Valley offer some of the best farmlands on the continent, with some irrigation you can have a huge surplus of fruit and grain and livestock. Even the hilly coasts could easily be turned into grazing land, which much of it is today.

Defensible. The land on the coast is rugged and the Sierra Nevada are a natural border, an invading army Would be harassed by dense population and rugged terrain.

An amazing harbor. I may be San Franciscan, but let's be honest, is there a more perfect natural harbor than San Francisco Bay? I'm sure there is, but not on on the Pacific! San Francisco, which is fed by rivers coming from hundreds of miles allowing for easy transport, allows for trade dominance in the Northern Pacific.


Honestly, if you're looking for a rich, small nation, go Cali.


West Coast is Best Coast.
 
I think California (the U.S. State, not Alta and Baja combined) is one of the more perfect places to house an independent nation.

Isolated (in a good way), surrounded by mountains, deserts, and more mountains, and more deserts, it's difficult for an army to get in.

Fertile, the Central and Imperial Valley offer some of the best farmlands on the continent, with some irrigation you can have a huge surplus of fruit and grain and livestock. Even the hilly coasts could easily be turned into grazing land, which much of it is today.

Defensible. The land on the coast is rugged and the Sierra Nevada are a natural border, an invading army Would be harassed by dense population and rugged terrain.

An amazing harbor. I may be San Franciscan, but let's be honest, is there a more perfect natural harbor than San Francisco Bay? I'm sure there is, but not on on the Pacific! San Francisco, which is fed by rivers coming from hundreds of miles allowing for easy transport, allows for trade dominance in the Northern Pacific.


Honestly, if you're looking for a rich, small nation, go Cali.


West Coast is Best Coast.

Any independent 'natural' Californian state would have to give up the Southland though. The Transverse Ranges aren't easy to cross, the Ventura bypass is steep and narrow, and there aren't any defensive features south of LA.
 
Any independent 'natural' Californian state would have to give up the Southland though. The Transverse Ranges aren't easy to cross, the Ventura bypass is steep and narrow, and there aren't any defensive features south of LA.

As a San Diegan, I have no idea what Southlands is. Are you referring to Southern California? The state is best kept as a unit. And I have found people suggesting it should be partitioned are non-Californians. Anyways, if we go with a state that never joined the U.S., it should still be in one unit. alta and Baja California had been split for which religious orders got to set up missions, and therefore the administrative divisions were already being set up, while also depopulating large tracts of areas by forcing people into Missions. One of the more monstrous things to happen in the history of the area, but it would help in the views of a heartless man to colonize and organize the region.
 
As a San Diegan, I have no idea what Southlands is. Are you referring to Southern California? The state is best kept as a unit. And I have found people suggesting it should be partitioned are non-Californians. Anyways, if we go with a state that never joined the U.S., it should still be in one unit. alta and Baja California had been split for which religious orders got to set up missions, and therefore the administrative divisions were already being set up, while also depopulating large tracts of areas by forcing people into Missions. One of the more monstrous things to happen in the history of the area, but it would help in the views of a heartless man to colonize and organize the region.

He's talking about the geographical boundaries of a " natural California " not political ones of the existing state.

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Iceland maybe? Lonely enough no one really cares, and unable to support enough people for multiple state (unless something weird happens).
 
Honestly, looking at California as a geographic entity, presuming some ATL where advanced civilization arose (or after a fall in civilization thousands of years from now) I'd expect that the Central Valley + The Bay Area would be one state, and Southern California would be another.
 
Honestly, looking at California as a geographic entity, presuming some ATL where advanced civilization arose (or after a fall in civilization thousands of years from now) I'd expect that the Central Valley + The Bay Area would be one state, and Southern California would be another.


•_•

Excuse me while I go write a story.
 
Personally I believe that England, Scotland and Wales are nations which are destined to be regions, but that opinion is controversial...
 
Hello, this is my first post and english its not my first language, so i apologize beforehand for any gramatical error.
That being said
I feel like Chile, it´s destined to be, most of the reason because and independent California its viable, álso applies to Chile if not more.

A really drier desert as north frontier(10 times drier than the death valley)

Huge mountains on the east frontier.

The pacific in the west with the added point that australia and new zealand are far away from chile than Japan or China from california

A lot of natural forming bays, not as good than San francisco, but good enough

A lot of rivers wich goes from the Mountains to the sea.

Weall this only applies to the chile in his extension before 1860 (from the Copiapo valley to Chiloe). his extension to Arica in the North and the Magallean pass in the South are posterior in his procces of expansion
 
Personally I believe that England, Scotland and Wales are nations which are destined to be regions, but that opinion is controversial...

The problem with maintaining independent nations in the British Isles is that they're all just small enough that a king could feasibly imagine ruling them all. It was never an impossible goal like conquering Europe might be.


I will say that whoever controls the mouth of the Mississippi is destined to control the entire center of the continent. It's a highway system into the very heart of the continent. We forget it because it was rarely contested but New Orleans is probably one of the most strategic points in the western hemisphere.
 
In the long wrong, I don't think anything is destined to be. The smaller the scope we're talking about, the easier things are to predict, but that doesn't make them predestined.

Certain geographical areas are ideal borders, so it is easier to argue, for example, that the Alps are 'destined' (well, incredibly likely) to be a geopolitical border but whether the state controlling the French side consist of southern France, Provence and he Rhone valley, the whole of France or any other span.

The more I try to think of which countries have borders which could be imagined as so likely that they could be called destined to be, the more I disbelieve that any are. Certain areas have been political foci, but the political and cultural setups change so much that they're not really constant enough to be imagined as obvious natural states. Egypt has obvious centres on the east coast and along the Nile valley, and has a good western border with the desert, but different states based off of Egypt have controlled anything from half of north Africa, to north and south Sudan, to the majority of the Levant.

So no... There is no nation on earth that was destined to be.
 
So no... There is no nation on earth that was destined to be.
I'd largely agree. While certain geographical regions are more likely to be united for various reasons (Mesopotamia, despite the conflict there today, has been united for thousands upon thousands of years), nothing in history is destined. Looking at a map, one would think that Portugal would be "destined" to be a part of Spain, considering the few natural barriers between the two and the cultural similarities. Similarly, why would the mountainous and more diverse areas of Southern China necessarily be destined to be in a state with the North?
 
So no... There is no nation on earth that was destined to be.

Iceland still remains my choice. It's too big to stay as a Falklands set up too long, too isolated to integrate easily, and lacks space for more than one country. It's not 100%, but I'd guess 9 times out of 10 it would probably be it's own thing.
 
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