Oh and I forgot to mention, Indonesia built a nuclear warhead. Kind North Korea levels of ability, and got themselves slapped with more sanctions from everyone. They claim they don't care though.View attachment 289426
The 1980s proved a remarkably stable era for most of the world. India was grount stronger and beginning to flex her economic influence, with nearly every product in 100 Yen stores and Canadian Dollar Stores have a little 'made in India' sticker on it. If not for Canada's massive resource shipments to hungry Asian nations (metaphorically hungry for mineral goods and timber, literally hungry for grain and beef) and returning shipments of mass produced goods across the Pacific the Indian Ocean would have been the dominant ocean of trade. The early 1980s saw the opening of the Honshu-Hokkaido tunnel, the mid-1980s the Hokkaido-Karafuto[Sakhalin] tunnel, and finally in 1989 the Karafuto-Mainland tunnel, at long last connecting Japan and Asia by rail. The success of these tunnels resulted in the rather prolonged Trans-Siberian High Speed Rail project, primarely a scheme out of Moscow (following the success of the various lines in the western portion of the Worker's Federation, especially the Petrograd-Moscow-Kiev route), though Novosibirsk would remain the eastern terminous of that network for the end of the 1980s.
Growth in China further fueled the rising economic power of Asia. As Eurasian Worker's Federation wages went up more and more industrial production moved to China (and Turkestan) as part of a planned effort amongst the Comintern to mimic patterns in the Manilla Community. Meanwhile Russians, Ukranians, and others, shifted increasingly to service work (a fair number would find themselves serving as management in Chinese or Central Asian factories though, a trend which led to significant intermarriage). Unfortunately the significant growth and increasing richness of the Socialist world began to strain the planning committees. A number of mistakes in Siberia mining companies that resulted in major overproduction of a few key resources led to a panic as planners tried to shift workers around then gradually snowballed into a Socialist recession. There wasn't true unemployment, but with oil prices dropping as British production recovered Moscow found itself with a significant cash shortfall resulting in a claw back of both wages and production of certain 'low profit' goods (those typically not exported) as an effort to balance out funds. Unfortunately most goods exported to Europe or the Manilla Pact were now produced in China not the Worker's Federation, and the shock was quite significant. To make matters worse the black market had been flourishing for some time and a drop in production led to a spike in violence as criminal groups used to skimming production now grew more desperate and fought with one another over limited supplies of items like toasters and radios. As the nation was sending cosmonauts to the moon they had protests over shoe shortages in Moscow. Some members of the governing committees discussed an economic liberalisation, others pushed for a massive increase in computer research, some wanted a hardline crackdown on protests. The largest group however pushed instead for political liberalisation. No longer would back room deals between various factions decide the future. 1987 saw the first General Election in the Worker's Federation, though in a mirror of Geneva Accord nations banning Communist parties the Worker's Federation banned Capitalist parties. The Communist Worker's Party won a plurality (a little over a quarter of the seats), the very moderate Social Democrats won roughly 1/5th of seats, the Technocratic Worker's Party and Anarchist Socialist Party each took about 1/6th of seats, and the remaining quarter was divided by a wide range of parties and independents. While the efforts at a planned economy still suffered from a computing shortfall the ability to pick who struggled with the task every 3 years certainly helped vent stress for the public. Socialist China would announce it's plan to hold similar elections in the year 2000 (or earlier if certain very ambitious targest were met).
The Bogata Compact had a similarly mixed decade. Economic growth returned with a vengeance. Various sections of the welfare net and environmental protection laws that had been put in place throughout the 1940s and 1950s found themselves repealed, given the blame for the stagnation of the 1960s and 1970s (obviously the highly oppressive government's and an anti-intellectualism trend in politics couldn't be to blame). New mines and factories sprung up across the country, and transfering most of the anti-guerilla activities to private security groups resulted in lower taxes (income shortfalls for these security groups were usually fixed by either pillaging or being sold land rights where plantations and sweat shops would be set up) both things which boosted the economy for the time. The various companies who's directors were high up in the Naco Party were able to take advantage of new laws, typically before the laws came into existance, quickly resulting in a number of smaller groups either being driven out of business or devoured by the emerging mega corporations. These mega corporations also found it easier to gain access to African markets, not being directly part of the Naco government. Conditions for Blacks also at first improved. Given opportunities to work in low safety standard factories or mines might not sound appealing, but it's worked throughout history, and for American Blacks who had often lived off a sort of grey market on the edge of society, robbed of any legal protections and often banned from holding anything more than transitory employment, it was very appealing. Whites mostly had less interest in such lines of work, resulting in the half abandoned cities in the north mostly filling with Black and Hispanic workers from the southern states, however as various agricultural subsidies began to lessen (a move which benefited the large mega corporations who ruled the new Naco party as it put small farmers into a situation where they had to sell their lands) not insignificant numbers of whites found themselves forced back into the cities and mining towns. Those who complained were labelled 'poor workers weakening the white race' (and frequently had rather questionable family trees discovered "proving" mixed heritage provided by the government to explain it). There were certain civil liberties reintroduced though, as large corporations wanted more freedom in advertising and to run PR moves for themselves via news networks certain freedom of speach restrictions were dissolved, travel grew easier domestically, and for many who still managed to work in agriculture, logging, or other 'clean and traditional' jobs life did improve.
Of course this drop in funding for anti-guerilla forces and rather poor effort at winning the hearts of Latin America may have reduced stress on Washington, but it made life for her Bogata Pact allies much harder. Various rebellions grew out of control and Brazil began to suffer serious economic strain maintaining troops in both Latin American and Central Africa. Some began to discuss adopting the Anarcho-Fascism policies as well, but with many of the American technocrats moving to Brazil that faction grew stronger and the anarcho-fascists began to be pushed from positions of power. Hints of a cooling in relations between Rio and Washington grew throughout the 1980s.
The shift in the US to a less militant stance was a major boon for Canada, especially as relations with Moscow also warmed. Military spending dropped and Canada now had a lot of money to spend. What on though? Why Canada's favourite thing to bankrupt itself with: rail infrastructure. Wanting to copy the success of Japanese bullet trains the St. Laurence Corridor and Calgary-Edmonton Corridor lines would be significant successes upon completion in 1983. By 1986 further lines started development, with the 1987 Trans-Canada Line theoretically connecting the East and West Coast with HSR (Newfoundland required ferry connections to the mainland, as did Vancouver Island, while Alaska Territory and the Yukon Province remained mostly cut off and Cook Territory[Chukotka] remained lacking in any real rail infrastructure, along with having few roads) the line proved a massive expense that when aligned with the Socialist Recession led to a prolonged stalling of the Canadian economy into the early 1990s. There was however still an improved sense of national unity by the project aided by a shift in royal succession.
King George VII had 4 children, the eldest girl (Princess Alice) was born in 1959, while the next three were sons born between 1962 and 1968. As such when the family had arrived in Canada to tour for the Centennial celebrations the daughter soon ecountered the Dutch crown prince Frederick William (the Dutch royal family spent most of their time in their Caribbean holdings, but were in Canada and especially Ottawa quite often and always visited the city for Canada Day each August). Frederick and Alice were roughly the same age, and the two young children became good friends during the month long tour by the House of Windsor (which the House of Orange followed in a move that deeply angered the socialist government in the Netherlands and also angered the young Labour government that was working to improve relations with said regime). The two would become pen pals, and travel across the Atlantic to visit the other as often as possible, to the increasing ire of the Labour prime ministers trying to mend relations with Amsterdam. As such when in 1978 a movement was put forward to reform the monarchy towards sexual equality it wound up with the left wing Labour party refusing reform while the Conservatives pushed the reform angle. In the end the motion failed to gain support in the UK and saw Australians muttering quietly, but in Canada the movement was very popular, Princess Alice's frequent trips to Canada had made her seen as the most Canadian member of the royal family. Then in 1983 she and Frederick married in Kingston Jamaica to the surprise of most apart from their immediate families (it had been known that the British Prime Minister would do everything possible to halt such a marriage). Prime Minister Elysse Riel (Canada's first female and first Metis PM) was quick to push through a change in Canadian succession laws for gender equality almost as soon as news of the marriage got out (there had been talk before the marriage to perhaps shift from the house of Windsor to the house of Orange as the latter spent much more time in Canada, a dynastic union made life much easier). While King George VII was still likely to be king for a couple more decades when the law was passed (being only 53 at the time) it still marked a step for increased Canadian inependence, and the young couple would only return to Europe for two brief vacations during the rest of the 1980s.
Beedok's Maps Thread
- Thread starter Beedok
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Oh and I forgot to mention, Indonesia built a nuclear warhead. Kind North Korea levels of ability, and got themselves slapped with more sanctions from everyone. They claim they don't care though.
Well yeah, it was a fairly stable decade, so most folks are in a similar situation, just a little better. Russia is still dependent on China, as is Japan. The only slight issue is Persia, which is mostly done falling apart after reaching a compromise (aka Indian doesn't invade and set up their favoured faction in exchange for a theoretical power sharing system that has constant gridlock and frequent assassinations), but still isn't a great place.
K'ay, I kinda expected that. Nice work on the HTSSITW or maybe just HSSW stuff you have been making.
Isaac Beach
Banned
I think they mean The Sun Sets in the West. I think that's what it's called anyway. The one with the suped-up Canada and Asian prosperity complex.
Okay, thought so, but swore I had a Latin League in South America in one of my settings. (The Reverse Cold War one maybe?)
Brazil couldn't quite puppetise Argentina, and the Americans didn't care enough to get involved, so it was left awkwardly neutral. If anyone tried to befriend it the Bogata Compact would have taken that as a threat, so everyone backed away slowly.
Chile meanwhile just went Switzerland.
Image is not loading for me, but there is a chance that it's my internet connection doing this too me.Stumbling forward.
Spotted a few pixels of the old color scheme: that Korean island in the Sea of Japan and the Oman exclave in Balochistan.
The new color scheme is helpful for differentiating blocks but it can be hard to tell which country a pasific island belongs to when there are like 10 different shades of green.
This has been one of my favorite map siries to follow and I can wait for the write up and upcoming story.
The new color scheme is helpful for differentiating blocks but it can be hard to tell which country a pasific island belongs to when there are like 10 different shades of green.
This has been one of my favorite map siries to follow and I can wait for the write up and upcoming story.
Also is this map considered to have remained accurate for the Sun Has Set in the West?http://beedok.deviantart.com/art/Dimension-2-Continenta61083292
Edit: deleted the misplaced quote closer, now it looks like your mistake and not mine
Edit: deleted the misplaced quote closer, now it looks like your mistake and not mine
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Mostly. Some city sizes might be a little off, but borders are good.