Here's a new map for the RDNA-verse. This one though covering both the Free Nations of Africa and the "New Great Game" between the various political blocs. The DeviantArt version
can be found here.
While this is more of an "historical" snapshot set in 1974, it's an opportunity to really expound on the situation in Africa, not too unlike the entry on
The United African States. With much of the material being either wholly new or thoroughly retconned from the barebones 2010-11 rendition of the same region, I try to not only make the universe even more believable. I also make a point to highlight both the Orwellian "perpetual struggle" of the wider Cold War is being replicated in unique ways, and how various political/ideological/social scenarios could emerge with the same broad circumstances. That there are parallels with various events in postcolonial history, including the Angolan Civil War and Rhodesian Bush War, isn't just a coincidence, in which one change of events could make all the difference.
While much larger and a bit more ambitious, as with the previous "Long Cold War"-themed maps, I also incorporated some of the sleek interfaces and customized stylings of the
Thousand Week Reich and
The New Order mods for
Hearts of Iron IV to give that in-universe "vidscreen" aesthetic. Whether it's the product of whoever runs An Examination of Extra-Universal Systems of Government or the Agency, to say nothing of the "N-P Identity" notes mentioned, which may or may not be shorthand for "Nation-Personification"...I'll leave that up for the viewer to decide.
Just to be on the safe side, this is a work of fiction. This is not a political or ideological screed. The politically incorrect details in the map and text as deliberately meant to be in-universe. In addition, depiction is not endorsement.
All the same, hope you enjoy!
Vive la liberté!
----
The New Great Game: The Struggle for Free Africa
For Africa, the years following the Terror have seen a dramatic upheaval across societal, economic, political and ideological lines, such that those who were alive in 1920 would barely recognize it. One constant, however, has been the struggle for control and supremacy over the continent, especially the remaining regions not under the thumb of the Collectivist Internationale. Though this has been called by various names, with similarly myriad forms and degrees of intensity, it's most commonly known as the "New Great Game."
The term invokes the so-called "Great Game" of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, when the great powers sought to expand their influence over the landmass. There's debate among scholars as to when this began, pointing to events as varied as the seizure of the Cape by the United Kingdom in 1796 and the founding of New Providence by former slaves from the American Federation in 1825, the latter setting the stage for the current West African Federation. Whatever the case, the reach of the European nations up until the 1860s had mostly been limited to coastal colonies, outposts, and whatever native chiefs or kingdoms were aligned with them. By the time a German expedition led by Theodor Nachtigal conquered Dahomey, however, the tides were changing. Advances in industrial technologies, medicine and communications meant that the formerly uncharted interior could be accessed by more than just a handful of missionaries, teachers, or foolhardy explorers. Whether through peaceful means or by force, the vast lands were carved up until only Abyssinia and Morocco remained as truly independent states by 1900, with the Liberians under American protection. The Antwerp Conference of 1874, hosted by the then-recently unified Belgian-Dutch Co-Dominium, had only therefore formalized what was already taking place.
Few would argue that conditions and standards in German colonies, for example, were indistinguishable from those under French, British, Portuguese or Belgian-Dutch rule. For all the differences, it's generally understood that the rush for control in those times were driven by a combination of national prestige, the need for bountiful resources, personal glory, competing interests, and for some, a quest for personal glory. At any rate, the onset of the 20th Century saw growing clamor among both settlers and native Black Africans for more rights, be it in education or representation. Gradually yet increasingly, the changes and influences brought by the Europeans came to benefit the locals, with even the prospect of self-rule, however distant it may have seemed, being entertained. It's hard to speculate how these developments would have played out to their fullest, however. The Terror would reveal just how fragile this status quo was, especially as many of the Continental powers crumbled. Within the span of a few years, much of the landmass was plunged into chaos. More often than not, the severed territories degenerated into patchworks of warlords, tribal kingdoms, rival settler communities and "White Chieftains," many of which would eventually be subsumed in later decades by the nascent Collectivist Internationale. It would be from those that avoided this chaotic fate that the seeds of the New Great Game emerged.
The Liberian Republic, with support from the American Federation, succeeded in maintaining a semblance of cohesion even as several surrounding colonies crumbled. Under President Edwin King, the nation embarked on a campaign to restore order, only to find that the neighboring peoples being freed in the process were seeing Republican Democracy as preferable to what had come before, eventually leading to the formal establishment of the West African Federation in 1944 and later toppling of the Republic of Bolama's dictatorship in 1960. Around the same time, the Gran Patagonians kept a close eye on the former Spanish colony of Camerún, the fractured pieces of which being overrun by the Reactionary
Frente Popular ("Popular Front"). Their support for legitimist factions, particularly the Latin Republicans holding out at the Santa Isabel and San Tome Islands, played a key role in the regime's collapse in 1969, followed by the similar revolt against its counterparts in the Gabon-Kongo Compact three years later. In the span of a few decades, the Twin Republics of the New World had helped establish beacons of liberty in their image, where once were the embers of the Old World.
Meanwhile, the former colonies of British Nigeria and the German Gold Coast banded together in 1948, establishing the United African States, with Benjamin Azikiwe as its first elected President. Instead of simply following the lead of its American and Gran Patagonian allies, however, its "Fathers of Unification" presented an African Republicanism, forged in the years following the Terror that transcended blood and celebrated merit, even while embracing its constituent peoples' heritage. Thus, despite its troubled beginnings, the fledgling union soon rose as a regional power, challenging Reactionaries and Collectivists alike. This has led to its campaigns against the Ténéré Confederation, which became a protectorate in 1969 after the Tuareg-dominated dictatorship was deposed. Which is not to ignore its on-and-off skirmishing with the Sultanate of Ouaddai, which not only spurred the involvement nearby Reactionary regimes, but also sparked a tense rivalry with the "Afrikaner-Mosleyite"
Volksfront ("People's Front") of Southern Africa that would persist to this day. Against the odds, even the simmering tensions that threatened to tear the dream of United Africa apart, its stalwart defenders confronted their foes on their own terms.
As for the Union of Southern Africa, which had declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1924, Johannes Gerhardus Hertzog and his successors had not been idle. Seeing the turmoil to the north, as well as the threat posed by both the Internationale and those deemed "degenerate," the Reactionary nation saw an opportunity to prop up compliant warlords and influence (if not set up) any regime that was similar enough to its own. Though these were initially haphazard, with the less stable fiefs either collapsing outright or falling to Collectivists as time went on, after 1942 such efforts not only grew more organized, but had begun bearing fruit. Through the League of Neutral Defiance, the Afrikaners became so successful in swaying the various Reactionaries within their reach that these not only joined the organization as full-fledged members. Whether it be it the secular, militaristic African Salvationists (Union of the Sahel), the Islamic-Reactionaries with pretensions of purely upholding their Prophet's words (Sultanate of Ouaddai), or the clerical, settler-dominant Franco-Mosleyites and their slaves (Free State of Equatoria), they all became near-mirror images of the regime in Bloemfontein.
Then, there are the enduring legacies of the royalists, however much they may have changed over the generations. Portuguese Angola, in particular, was formally handed over to Brazilian suzerainty in 1925, being the only other one of the Lost Nation's colonies that remained loyal to the monarch known to history as King Afonso VII. While much of its surrounding lands succumbed to barbarism and the lure of either Reactionarism or Collectivism over the next few decades, settler and native Angolans alike held the line against the encroaching darkness. The sporadic yet persistent skirmishing between the
Forças Armadas Brasileiras ("Brazilian Armed Forces") and
Volkstaat Weermeg ("National Defense Forces") along the southern border alone, along with the thwarted attempts by the Volksfront to ferment secessionist sentiment over the years, pale only to the stern vigil kept against the Internationale. More than the strategic value of the territory's resources, it came to represent the Pluricontinental ideals espoused by the Lusitanian Brigandine Throne. Thus, even after the Junta assumed power following the Belem Incident of 1992, and the ever-encroaching influence of Gran Patagonians in local affairs, its loyalty and dedication remain unquestioned, given the alternatives.
This is not to ignore the Free State of Senegal-Lazarie, a New Austrian protectorate comparatively smaller than all others on the African continent. Yet the role this nation's history has played on the region's fate, specifically how its civil war turned out, could not be understated.
The Senegal-Lazarie Civil War: A Pivotal Turning Point in the New Great Game
To understand this significance requires going back to 1944. Vicomte Martin de Lambertye was deposed in a coup after nearly two decades of rule as sovereign of Lazarie (formerly French Senegal), so-called due to deliberate symbolism for one day resurrecting the old homeland. This overthrow, which resulted in the sovereign's death and those of his immediate family, was orchestrated by Marshal Christien de Montfort's Action Europa, a radical movement that opposed attempts to placate both the Black African majority and colonial populace, in the name of preserving the "true" France. With discreet Afrikaner backing, they assumed power and established a Franco-Mosleyite regime, wherein those of "pure" European descent alone were considered citizens, and most others treated as subservient, if not little better than slaves. This Reactionary order, however, did not enjoy a similar degree of success as in Equatoria, whether due to the growing corruption and infighting lurking beneath a superficial facade of unity, or simmering discontent that became worse with ever more excessive force.
By the time of the Marshal's death in 1968, Action Europa had no clear provisions for continuity, paralyzing the government. In the southern reaches of the country, a writer-turned-activist named Léopold Senghor openly declared that the
Union National pour Indépendance et Liberté ("National Union for Independence and Freedom"; U.N.I.L.) would oppose the Reactionaries and free what was by then called Senegal-Lazarie as a nation patterned after African Republicanism. Around the same time, a group of colonial-descended reformers and aristocrats led by the aging yet charismatic Antoine de Saint-Exupéry led an armed uprising in the city of Saint-Louis, calling for the fulfillment of what the murdered Vicomte had sought to achieve, eventually calling themselves the
Alliance Pour La Justice en Senegal-Lazarie ("Alliance for Justice in Senegal-Lazarie"; A.J.S.L.). Meanwhile, the Gambia River basin became the gathering point for various disgruntled serfs and workers, who had flocked around the young, militant Ibrahim Roche to wage a revolution under the banners of the
Mouvement Populaire Pour Le Travailleurs D'Afrique ("Popular Movement for the Workers of Africa"; M.P.T.A.). All the while, the dictator's son, Gen. Albert de Montfort, rallied much of the fractured loyalists under his command, while warning the League of Neutral Defiance of the growing severity of the threat.
The ensuing civil war would mark the most heated phase of the New Great Game. That the increasingly grueling bloodshed coincided with mounting social unrest within the U.A.S. (spurred by extremists believed to be backed by both Reactionaries and Collectivists), as well as heightened regional tensions, including the insurrection in Angola, further underscored this point. While there was no sense of certainty early on, many observers looked to either the U.N.I.L. (aided by American arms and United African reinforcements), or even the Reactionary loyalists (with Southern Africa sending weapons and volunteers through neighboring League members). The prospects of an M.P.T.A. victory, meanwhile, was seen as even more dire. Regardless of whether the Supreme Politburo truly trusted Roche or intended to replace him, it would have would have given a crucial opening for the Collectivist Internationale, by then having all but consolidated much of its possessions on the continent all the way to the remains of the Belgian-Dutch Congo, to exploit. An unforeseen development, though, would not only change the fortunes of those on the battlefield, but also the fate of various Free Nations across the region.
The Royal Dominion of New Austria had discreetly sent advisors to aid Saint-Exupéry in the initial stages, whether due to the latter's claim to the throne or the murdered de Lambertyes' ties with the Habsburgs themselves. Whatever the reasons Archduke Rudolf VII or his officials had, however, it was seen by many within the realm that the escalating conflict could not be ignored. Thus, in 1972 it openly declared its support for the A.J.S.L. Before long, New Austrian supplies and regiments (including soldiers from the Duchy of Kuba) were arriving in droves. These proved instrumental in the capture of Dakar itself the following year and the royalists' expansion further inland, hard-earned as it may have been for the locals. Meanwhile, the old nobleman's efforts in brokering an alliance with the U.N.I.L. also succeeded, providing greater legitimacy to both his and Senghor's mutual cause against their foes, their joint offensives forcing both the M.P.T.A. and Action Europa (along with contingents from the
Volkstaat Weermeg) to retreat. It wouldn't be until 1977, following further hardly fought struggles (with the Battle of Fort Basse claiming Roche's life), before the civil war finally came to an end, with the capture of Gen. de Montfort.
After much debate, it was decided that the two victorious parties would form a coalition government under New Austrian protection (formalized in 1978), with Saint-Exupéry being crowned Vicomte not long after. While the aging yet beloved monarch died a few years later, this arrangement proved lasting, as Senghor's democratic reforms proceeded to give an otherwise colonial remnant a distinctly African flavor that benefited all, regardless of blood. The effects of this victory would have wider consequences for the entire region, however. The experiences of the United African soldiers returning from the conflict would play a crucial role in helping an aging Benjamin Azikiwe secure the Acts of Amity, discrediting the extremist voices fostered a rejuvenated U.A.S. Meanwhile, the loss of Action Europa's grip dealt a blow to Volksfront influence, weakening Southern Africa's dominance within the League and contributing to the fall of Ouaddai to African Republicanism in 1986, as well as the final collapse of the Angolan secessonists in 1995. Though remnants of the M.P.T.A. would continue to remain a thorn in the Gambian jungles for years after, the Internationale's advance through Africa was effectively halted.
Thus, while the New Great Game continues on, in many respects a microcosm of the global standoff between the Free World and Collectivism, the peace won at Senegal-Lazarie has helped ensure that the light of liberty and civilization in that corner of the globe remains as bright as ever, against the encroaching madness. Had the conflict played out with any other outcome, be it under the thrall of Reds or power-craving dictators, the present and future would look very different, indeed.
- “The New Haven Review of Foreign Affairs.” American Federation. 2023.
----
For added trivia, the Senegal-Lazarie Civil War's heavily inspired by the
Angolan Civil War and
Rhodesian Bush War, complete with the involvement of Afrikaners. The seemingly out-of-context intervention by New Austria, meanwhile, is based on
how the Cubans got involved in Angola in real life, albeit for political and ideological reasons ironically opposite of Fidel Castro.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is, well, very much
based on the famed novelist himself, though his aristocratic heritage is highlighted more. While he never wrote something like
The Little Prince in the RDNA-verse, he nonetheless avoided his untimely fate in reality, while led to his death in 1944. Léopold Senghor, meanwhile is based largely on his
historical counterpart, who's considered a hero, poet, and the "founding father" of Senegal. His willingness to cooperate with Saint-Exupéry is similarly inspired by his real penchant for cooperating with former colonizers rather than antagonizing them.
The de Montforts are based on various French collaborationists and fascists from World War 2, namely
Pierre Costantini and
Jean Boissel. While the Franco-Mosleyite Reactionarism practiced by Action Europa and their counterparts in Equatoria is similarly patterned after Vichy France, on top of the worse excesses of Congo Free State/Belgian Congo and Rhodesia being amplified. The capital of Louisville is situated where Bambiri, a major market town, would be.
Ibrahim Roche is an amalgamation of
Kwame Nkrumah (who in real life was a socialist who became the first president of Ghana),
Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and
Agostinho Neto (Angola's first president and leader of the MPLA), with some elements of Che Guevara.
The photos used for Rudolf VII and Afonso VII are the same people seen in
The Throne-in-Exile (AD 2019): RDNA-verse Wikibox and
The Braganzas (AD 2019): RDNA-verse Wikibox, but much later in life, reflecting the time period. Meanwhile, Gran Patagonia's president is based on
Arturo Frondizi, who's known for instituting "developmentalism" in Argentina and maintaining good ties with the US in spite of Peron during the Cold War.
Pluricontinentalism, though usually associated with Portugal's Estado Novo regime, is an old concept going as far back as the 14th Century, in which the country itself was not confined to the Iberian Peninsula, but encompassing various parts of the world. In the RDNA-verse, it evolved along somewhat different lines, by the "present" coming to mean the unity of the various Free Lusophone peoples under the Lustanian Brigandine Throne.
Jean Lefebvre, the leader of Equatoria is partially based on
Rene and
Marcel Lefebvre (both of whom were known for their ultratraditionalist views on politics and Catholicism), as well as various figures from the Belgian Congo. Coincidentally, his name is a Frenchified form of the late
Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia.
In real life, the Ouaddai/Wadai region of Chad was the site of a
Sultanate with ties with the Islamic Senussi brotherhood and had held onto power until 1911-12, when the French finally defeated it. In this version of events, the Sultanate managed to survive the loss of French colonial rule but adopted an Islamic take on Reactionarism until the U.A.S. eventually defeated it. While the Union of the Sahel would be more comparable to both the military dictatorships of Cold War-era Mauritania and Algeria.
The Volksfront itself, and Afrikaner-Mosleyite Reactionarism, is an amalgamation of Apartheid South Africa (especially the Ossewabrandwag and more radical elements of the then-ruling
National Party) and North Korea's
Juche, among others. While Oswald Mosley himself might seem like an unlikely figure to pop up in this alternate TL (though as among the founders of Reactionarism rather than British Fascism as in real life),
he wasn't the only one to bear that name. His background as a disgraced baron is also based on his background as part of the nobility.
The Santa Isabel and San Tome Islands are the setting's equivalent to Bioko, Equatorial Guinea and the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe. As an aside, if you look closely at the flags, they incorporate various elements, such as the Cross of Lorraine (Action Europa), the stars of the Belgian Congo (Equatoria) and in the case of Brazilian Angola, the colonial coat of arms.
Saint-Hillaire is situated where the city of Franceville, Gabon exists in reality. Coincidentally, it has an old colonial-era church called Saint-Hillaire.
Saint Andrew and Bolama are a nod to how Portuguese Guinea (modern Guinea-Bissau) could have wound up in British hands in the 18th Century. In the version of events, that happened, with the colony subsequently being Anglicized not unlike Sierra Leone.
While the Angolan secessionists mentioned echo UNITA (complete with Southern African support), ironically the family that would have spawned
Jonas Savimbi is opposed to it.
EDIT: Adjusted image size