With its land perfect for growing turnips and parsnips, it was inevitable that the mighty farmers of Norfolk would create a world empire.
With its independence, the Republic of Texas benefitted from geography as the sparely populated plains to her west and north gave her plenty of room for expansion. With the American Civil War, the two Mexican Civil Wars, the Tex-Mex war soon after, and the fracturing of the formet United States due to the rise of the Silver Legion, her borders stretched from the Sabine to the Arkansas to the Colorado rivers to include the whole of Baja and eventually Alta California by 1949. While the First and Second World War brought Louisiana, Arkansas, Cascadia, Utah, Nevada, Montana, and Colorado into the Republic the remainder of Mexico applied for admission on a state-by-state basis as did Guatemala and El Salvador by 1990. Texas now has the world's largest economy and dominates the Western Alliance and is the single most feared opponent to the Eastern Coalition. She claimed the first manned moon landing in 1969, Mars landing in 1999, and Jovian manned flyby in 2009.
Indeed. Switzerland's insatiable, bloodthirsty greed for "Lebensraum" began even with the Helvetii tribe under Orgetorix, who had a conspiracy to conquer Gaul.It was inevitable that Switzerland would become one of the most warlike and expansionist European states. Their mountainous heartland gave them a nigh-impregnable base to fall back on, life in a tough environment turned them into excellent soldiers, and the lack of arable land meant that they were forced to expand or face overpopulation. It should come as no surprise that they chose to invade their wealthier neighbours, nor that they were so successful at doing so.
Indeed. Switzerland's insatiable, bloodthirsty greed for "Lebensraum" began even with the Helvetii tribe under Orgetorix, who had a conspiracy to conquer Gaul.
As this event proves, ruthless expansionism runs deep in the Swiss psyche. Hence I think many TLs are too glib when they suggest that the Swiss army might have refrained from committing some of its more notorious atrocities (the Rape of Nantes, for example, or the attack on the US fleet in the Canary Islands). Switzerland by that time had already had over twenty centuries of fighting bloody wars against its neighbours, and combined with the pikeman military culture that dominated Switzerland for so many centuries, their attitude of xenophobia and militarism was far too deeply ingrained for them to not go around slaughtering foreigners whenever they got the chance.
Personally, I've always felt that Switzerland had the potential to have been broken out of its militaristic cycle had the French or Germans managed to conquer it and introduce better values to the country, in fact, I think that the Swiss natural revanchist urge would have to be broken completely for it to have a chance at becoming a more respectable country. The Swiss, after all, invaded Alsace-Lorraine, starting a Great War, and that was merely one of their many aggressive actions. Perhaps given a forced cultural transplant and a crushing defeat from which there would be no way of rebuilding Swiss natural militarism, but unless that were the case, I think Switzerland would have been stuck as the Scourge of the West forever.
Yes, it sure is lucky that the Allied occupation managed to transplant the values of individual liberty, democracy and capitalism onto what had hitherto been a murderously xenophobic fascist state. Of course, the Italian War of the '50s probably helped too, as Swiss businessmen were able to make a mint selling arms to help in the struggle against the communist South Italians.
Well, to some extent, historians have argued for geographic and climatic factors that played a role in the rise and fall of Assyria. From the increased prevalence of iron mines in the core of their territory, to suitable pasture lands that assisted in the development of Assyrian cavalry. For the fall of the Assyrian Empire, a period of increased desertification has been pointed to as the tipping point towards the collapse of Assyria's revenues, weakening their agriculture, their military, the loyalty of their provincial governors and allowing their conquest by Babylon.Assyria was destined to dominate the near east. With their stranglehold on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, no other power in Mesopotamia could even think to challenge them. The population growth from controlling the fertile lands between the rivers made their army one of the largest in antiquity. Not only was their homeland fertile and powerful, it was well defended, as would-be invaders from the north, east and west had to pass through easily defended mountains bristling with fortresses, while the southern border was protected by the harsh desert climate. Finally the domination of Phoenicia, Dilmun and Egypt meant that any trade going from the Mediterranean to the Indian ocean had to go through their territory.