I wish mattstrero was on the form, I love his work. also, nice mapJust a vaporwave-esque Worlda basemap I made for anybody to use, based upon the aesthetics of a map done by the excellent Mattystereo on DeviantArt. If you plan to use this, no need to give credit!
Lemme know if there are also any errors.
Map Thread XVIII
- Thread starter FesteringSpore
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Okay, I've finished the last map for 2012 in my map series: military alliances. This will also be put in a bunch of spoilers for the other 2012 maps, concluding the 2012 series.
CDTO: Primarily the USA and the powers in Europe. During World War 2, the US was called into the war against the New Russian Empire and the Japanese Empire that Western Europe was fighting. In the aftermath, the Russian Republic, which rebelled against the New Russian Empire, joined the CDTO, a new organization for European defense to ensure that no threat like the ones from the 20th century would rise and challenge the status quo to world peace, which influenced the faction's aggression towards China, which in turn was aggressive vice versa. However, a schism is occurring where Russia is finding its own way, which would possibly split the CDTO in half. The organization has good ties with Saudi Arabia thanks to the US, Britain, and France importing Saudi oil to Europe and exporting valuable assets for the country.
TCI: Cajuterra, New Wales, Klien Venedig, Haiti, and Jamaica visited a summit in Ulrichburg, Klien Venedig, to discuss the economic future of Central America and the Caribbean after some sects of the CDTO had initiated cyber attacks against the nations. Cajuterra is the leading member of the faction and represented Caribbean disdain for the CDTO's aggression. So far, they are actually very friendly with the USA, Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, and other Western European countries but they do not have good ties with Russia and some Eastern European countries, which led to some speculating that Russia coordinated the cyber attacks on behalf of the CDTO to sabotage foreign relations.
IA: The Republique de l'Inde and its neighbors were concerned about the fledging rogue nation of Mysore, which had nuclear weapons. It is unclear where their nuclear program started and who sponsored it, but Mysore's nuclear arsenal and extreme isolationist policy is crossing paths with l'Inde's ambitions to unite the whole subcontinent of India into a single economic union. The Empire of China has been abrasive towards the Indian nations, annexing lands in Burma and stationing thousands of troops at the Kashmir border.
PDTO: The Pacific Defense Treaty Organization was a league started by Japan and Lisenia in response to Chinese aggression in the East China Sea. Neu Geuinea and Indochina became members despite sour history with the Japanese Empire in the 20th century. The PDTO is willing to cooperate with the CDTO and the Indian Association to take down China, and they followed through when the three factions overthrew the Chinese regime in the Great East Asian War.
EC: The Ethiopian Commonwealth is largely an organization of states that were annexed into the Ethiopian Empire during the 19th century during the Scramble for Africa. Ethiopia became a modernized power as rapidly as Japan did in response to Western imperialists. The Commonwealth today follows the same philosophy as before, as they believed they were stronger together than alone to avoid subjugation by the CDTO. Not only was this organization an alliance against foreign influence, but also a sign of protest against CDTO condemnations of Ethiopia's nuclear program.
CDTO: Primarily the USA and the powers in Europe. During World War 2, the US was called into the war against the New Russian Empire and the Japanese Empire that Western Europe was fighting. In the aftermath, the Russian Republic, which rebelled against the New Russian Empire, joined the CDTO, a new organization for European defense to ensure that no threat like the ones from the 20th century would rise and challenge the status quo to world peace, which influenced the faction's aggression towards China, which in turn was aggressive vice versa. However, a schism is occurring where Russia is finding its own way, which would possibly split the CDTO in half. The organization has good ties with Saudi Arabia thanks to the US, Britain, and France importing Saudi oil to Europe and exporting valuable assets for the country.
TCI: Cajuterra, New Wales, Klien Venedig, Haiti, and Jamaica visited a summit in Ulrichburg, Klien Venedig, to discuss the economic future of Central America and the Caribbean after some sects of the CDTO had initiated cyber attacks against the nations. Cajuterra is the leading member of the faction and represented Caribbean disdain for the CDTO's aggression. So far, they are actually very friendly with the USA, Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, and other Western European countries but they do not have good ties with Russia and some Eastern European countries, which led to some speculating that Russia coordinated the cyber attacks on behalf of the CDTO to sabotage foreign relations.
IA: The Republique de l'Inde and its neighbors were concerned about the fledging rogue nation of Mysore, which had nuclear weapons. It is unclear where their nuclear program started and who sponsored it, but Mysore's nuclear arsenal and extreme isolationist policy is crossing paths with l'Inde's ambitions to unite the whole subcontinent of India into a single economic union. The Empire of China has been abrasive towards the Indian nations, annexing lands in Burma and stationing thousands of troops at the Kashmir border.
PDTO: The Pacific Defense Treaty Organization was a league started by Japan and Lisenia in response to Chinese aggression in the East China Sea. Neu Geuinea and Indochina became members despite sour history with the Japanese Empire in the 20th century. The PDTO is willing to cooperate with the CDTO and the Indian Association to take down China, and they followed through when the three factions overthrew the Chinese regime in the Great East Asian War.
EC: The Ethiopian Commonwealth is largely an organization of states that were annexed into the Ethiopian Empire during the 19th century during the Scramble for Africa. Ethiopia became a modernized power as rapidly as Japan did in response to Western imperialists. The Commonwealth today follows the same philosophy as before, as they believed they were stronger together than alone to avoid subjugation by the CDTO. Not only was this organization an alliance against foreign influence, but also a sign of protest against CDTO condemnations of Ethiopia's nuclear program.
Soo... I've tried to do the "12 nations meme" with my home region, Murcia (in Southeastern Spain, probably you've never heard of it 'cause even some Spaniards ignore its existence ¬¬), but I ended up running out of ideas so there are only 6, sorry if they're too cliché-y.
A1 Mardanisid Emirate of al-Andalus (1159 - current year of 1512)
Abu Abd Al-lah Muhámmad ibn Sa‘d ibn Muhámmad ibn Áhmad ibn Mardaniš al-Ŷudhami, know as Ibn Mardanis or as Wolf King (by Christian accounts), was a Spanish Muslim of Mozarab and Muladi descent that, in 1147, headed the resistance against the Almohad invasion of al-Andalus. Initially aided by the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and the county of Barcelona, he soon achieved supremacy over Xarq al-Andalus, establishing the capital of his emirate in the city of Mursiyya. After his conquest of the old caliphal capital of Qurtuba in 1159, he became undisputed ruler of Muslim Spain, even recognized as Emir of al-Andalus by the Abbasid Caliph in Bagdad. The defeat of the Almohads at Ishibiliya in 1162 solidified his regime, helped by an aperturist religious policy towards Mozarabs and Jews, previously persecuted under Almoravid and Almohad administrations.
The Mardanisid State managed to end the disunity spiral al-Andalus had suffered since the abolition of the Caliphate in 1031, centralizing power in the new capital of Mursiyya and its fertile hinterlands. The progress of reconquest of the northern Christian realms was halted, and Ibn Mardanis’ successors even managed to recover the city of Tulaytula and reestablish the defensive frontier of the Tajo river. Once again, al-Andalus presented a solid front against a fractured north, playing Christian kingdoms against each other so as to maintain its hegemony. Ahead lies the XVI century, with campaigns in North Africa to control the Transaharan trade and Atlantic explorations that will position al-Andalus as a global power.
A2 Revolutionary Murcian Canton (1872 - revolution ongoing as of 1874)
The Glorious Revolution of 1868 ousted the Bourbon Queen Isabel II from the throne of Spain and the Moderates from power. A coalition of Progressists led by the triumvirate of Generals Serrano and Prim and Admiral Topete called for general elections and a new, more democratic constitution was approved in 1869. Instead of proclaiming a Republic, the Constitution established Spain as a Monarchy, though one without monarch, so Prim was commanded to search for a willing candidate: he found one in the liberal-minded second son of the Italian King, Amadeo di Savoia, who accepted the Spanish Crown. However, things went south for Amadeo from the very beginning, Prim being assassinated one day before his arrival. With his death, all the support for the new King dwindled, and after two years of unstable reign and facing two wars (a Carlist one in northern half of the country and a Cuban revolt for independence), Amadeo renounced the Spanish Crown and departed.
Although a minority in the Cortes, republican factions managed to get the upper hand and finally a Republic was proclaimed, due to the monarchic factions being split between Carlists and Alfonsins, supporters of a Bourbon restoration under the son of Isabel II. Republicans, on the other hand, were as divided as the royalists, with a centralist wing, a federal pactist wing and a radical wing. New elections secured a republican majority on the chamber due to monarchical unwillingness to participate hoping a better chance of restoring Alfonso to the throne, but infighting between republican factions ensued.
The radical faction, fed up with the tardiness of approving a federal constitution, ended up abandoning the Cortes and setting up a Public Salvation Committee to organize an insurrection and implement the federal republic “from below”, with quasi-independent cantons federalizing, instead of President Pi i Margall approach of “federalization from the top”. The radicals chose the city of Catagena, an important naval base, as the center of the revolution.
In July 1873, while the efforts of the central government were focused on suppressing the Carlist rebels of the north, the Federal Republic was proclaimed in Cartagena. Many other cities of the province of Murcia followed suit and declared themselves Cantons. Soon, a Murcian Canton was organized under the authority of Antonete Gálvez, a Murcian revolutionary and radical federalist. The proclaimed goal was to implement the Federal Republic, so, for the time being, the future government of the Republic and that of the Murcian Canton were fused. Centralist troops dispatched to quash the insurrects were defeated by the cantonalist militias, and the authority of the central government on the southern half of the country and Levant cracked under the revolutionary wave.
As of 1874, civil war rages Spain. The central government barely projects power beyond the central region that surrounds Madrid, while trying to hold of the Carlist offensives from the north. The south and Levant are a clusterfuck of cantonalist and anticantonalist infighting with no real authority whatsoever, while the Murcian Canton, despite is cohesive organization, prefers to limit itself to defend its territory and bid for the right moment to strike Madrid.
Kingdom of Murcia, Crown of Aragon, (1304 – 1703, 1709 – current year of 1767)
The lands of the Muslim Taifa of Mursiyya were originally allotted to the Crown of Aragon by the Treaty of Almizra of 1144, though subsequent treaties transferred it to the Castilian sphere of influence. In 1243, the Mursiyyan Emir decided to sign a protectorate under Castile to avoid Aragonese and Granadan encroachment and maintain the security of the Muslim population. Infant Alfonso, future King Alfonso X, accepted, and so Mursiyya became a Castilian protectorate until 1264, when Muslims revolted due to infringements of the treaty. Already stretched by the revolts of the Mudéjares of the Guadalquivir valley, Alfonso X asked his father in law, Jaume I of Aragon, to take charge of the revolt. The Aragonese, fearing its spread to the recently conquered Kingdom of Valencia, agreed, and so marched south with an army and crushed the Mursiyyan resistance. As a measure of peacekeeping and reward, he settled 10.000 of his Aragonese and Catalan followers in Murcian soil, before devolving it to Castile.
For the next forty years, Murcia would be a point of contention between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon: it was legally Castilian, but predominantly Catalan-Aragonese in its Christian population. At the end of the XIII, a succession war in Castile allowed Jaume II to take the chance and seize the Kingdom of Murcia, and after the War of the Two Peters in 1356, Castile formally renounced every claim to Murcia. This turbulent history made the southernmost realm of the Crown of Aragon develop a unique culture, predominantly Catalan but with strong Aragonese and Castilian influences, and shaped by a frontier mentality.
After the union of Castile and Aragon in 1476 to form the basis of what today is known as Spanish Empire, enlarged in 1580 with the Kingdom of Portugal finally achieving peninsular unity under the Hapsburg dynasty, the history of Murcia is no different from any of the other subkingdoms of Spain, up until the Spanish Succession War. As the rest of the Crown of Aragon, fearing the centralist tendencies of the new Bourbon dynasty, Murcia declared for the Hapsburg candidate, and so the Kingdom was officially abolished by the Nueva Planta Decrees, after being conquered in 1703 by the Bourbonist armies. It would be once again restored in 1709 after it was liberated in an Allied offensive, and when the war entered a draw in 1713, Felipe V negotiated the cease of hostilities in exchange of, among other things, renouncing to the Crown of Aragon as long as Castile and Portugal remained for him. 50 years after, the Kingdom of Murcia and the Crown of Aragon as a whole prosper under a Hapsburg cadet branch, with a blossoming relation with the United Kingdom based on common enemies and trade ties.
Free City of Cartagena, Unincorporated territory of the US (1947 – the present)
Generalísimo Francisco Franco considered himself a careful man, one to act if and only if success was guaranteed. That was how he had achieved supremacy over the rest of the rebel groups that composed the self-declared “Nationalists” during the Spanish Civil War, by bidding his time, meticulously waiting until the right moment approached. By 1939, with the Republic crushed under a combination of reactionary militaries, ultraconservatives, royalists, carlists, fascists and anticommunists, he had risen as undisputed ruler of the country. To the external observer, Franco’s regime was monolithic, a single will, that of the Caudillo, who directed with an iron fist the ruins of an old and broken nation. Reality, however, was far from simple.
In 1937, Franco had decreed the unification of the main supporters of the coup, the fascist Falange and the Carlist Comunión Tradicionalista, and outlawed the rest of parties, to exercise a tighter control. That meant that, once the war was over and leftists were no longer a threat, competing groups with diverging interests found themselves in un uneasy coalition, and that Franco had no intention of relinquishing wartime powers granted to him. On the one hand, the less authoritarian elements of the Movement rallied around the figure of Juán de Borbón, Count of Barcelona and legitimate heir to the crown, and demanded the restoration of the Monarchy under a somewhat constitutional form. The Carlists also wanted the restoration of the Monarchy, but under their candidate and with a more reactionary and traditionalist form. Finally, the initially less important falangists vied for a corporativist authoritarian State similar to fascist Italy. It was this latter faction the one that, once the Second World War begun and especially after the Fall of France and the undisputed hegemony of the fascist powers in Europe, gained increasing ascendancy even as Franco tried to balance the three cliques.
Maybe because of this influence, the intent of participating of the spoils and the pressure of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco decided to enter the war in 1942, in a movement that surprised those who knew him well. He would regret it when, two years later, as Allied armies entered through Portugal and landed on the Andalusian coast from Africa, those who had supported him turned against him. Knowing that Spain could not afford another war, the most liberal elements of the regime, which had had contacts with the Western Allies since the end of the civil war, staged a coup and unconditionally surrendered.
Spain was to be divided between British, French, Portuguese and American occupation zones for a brief time, with collaboration from local authorities. Republicans were allowed back and, while the Allies originally favored the restoration of the Monarchy so as to secure an anticommunist Spain, a referendum was finally allowed and the III Spanish Republic was proclaimed, with the autonomous regions abolished by Franco restituted. During the peace negotiations in 1946, a junior American diplomatic officer discovered that the city of Cartagena, in southeastern Spain, had once declared itself a nearly independent Canton in 1873, and that while under siege from the central government it had petitioned to be admitted into the United States to avoid being crushed, though no answer never came back. Under that pretext, and with the ulterior motive of acquiring its excellent naval base and natural port in the Western Mediterranean, Spain was forced to cede the city indefinitely to the United States in the final peace Treaty of Madrid of 1947.
At first, the citizens of the now American unincorporated territory of Cartagena were hostile, but American investment into the base and the prosperity it brought ended up changing the minds of the majority of the inhabitants. It has remained a thorn in the relations between Spain and the US, especially when the former has been under left-leaning governments, but the two referendums carried out in 1996 and 2016 have shown that the Free City of Cartagena, an industrial and turistic hub apart from a prime military base, favors the status quo by an ample margin.
B2 Empire of Ispanya (296 – 378) Note: description is very vague and Roman-like because I don’t really know much about Carthage, but I found it a necessary cliché addition.
After the Second Roman War, the Carthaginian State reigned supreme in the Western Mediterranean, it’s rival forcibly reduced to a shell of its former self. For the next 200 years, Carthage would solidify its position in Ispanya and North Africa, and even conquer the Eastern Mediterranean and Italy. However, as the African city expanded and transitioned from a mercantile power to a militarist one, it discovered that the republican government suited for a city-state wasn’t enough to properly run an empire. Military governors in the provinces grew power hungry and ambitious, and an age of civil wars ensued until one dynasty rose supreme, imposing an autocratic regime.
The Carthaginian Empire enjoyed peace and prosperity for a century, but long term structural problems and the end of the expansion period brought a crisis that threw once again the Mediterranean into wide scale civil war. Barbarians from the north, displaced by eastern tribes unheard before, stormed the European provinces of the Empire, but Carthage managed to resist in Ispanya and North Africa. At that point, the Emperor in Carthage was but a figurehead, with the real power in the militarized border districts. The final demise of such an ancient State would come from the East, with a Persian invasion sweeping through Egypt and capturing the heartland of the Empire.
The elites and remnants fled to Ispanya, the oldest and more accultured province and last Carthaginian holdout. Organized around the city founded by Asdrubal Barca during the Second Roman War, also named Carthage, they continued to see themselves as Carthaginians and claim the totality of the Empire, even though they had problems imposing their rule over the whole peninsula as Cantabrian tribes of the north rejected to submit and Gallic armies invaded the Iberus valley. This “Empire of Ispanya”, as it is historiographicaly called, endured less that a century after breaking up into numerous independent Carthaginian successor states under combined pressure of Gallic and Berber encroachement.
B3 Republic of New Murcia (1842 – the present)
Although the territory of the current Republic was inhabited for centuries before European colonization by Native American tribes, the history of New Murcia, or República de Nueva Murcia de los Tejas, as it is officially named in Spanish, can be traced back to the Morisco Expulsion Decrees enacted by Felipe III of Spain in 1609. Morisco is the name given to those Spaniards that descended from Muslims and had been forced to convert after the fall of Granada in 1492. They were quite disperse over the whole peninsula, with higher concentrations in the southern and eastern regions (making up around a third of the population of Valencia, a sixth of Aragon…), and it’s integration varied from place to place: in New Castile, Extremadura and Murcia, for example, they didn’t spoke Arabic but the local Romance, and most were sincere Catholics or had a poor understanding of the Islamic faith, while in Valencia most were Arabic-Valencian bilingual and more or less openly practiced their religion.
The causes of the expulsion are complex, but ultimately the distrust due to the Granadan Alpujarras’ Rebellion and the fear of a Morisco fifth column that would help the Ottomans led the Crown to take such a harmful decision. In the Kingdom of Murcia, the measure originally only affected the new Moriscos, those poorly assimilated that had been resettled all over Spain after the Rebellion; the old Moriscos, who dated back to the conquest of the Kingdom and many were vassals of the Order of Santiago, were reported as well assimilated and sincere Christians, so they were spared. However, one year after, the decree was extended to them as well, despite the heavy lobby in their favor by their lieges and the support of the local population that didn’t see them as foreigners but true Spaniards.
The Crown ended up reconsidering the decision, allowing the Murcian Moriscos to chose between being deported to North Africa or remaining Spanish Catholic subjects and being resettled to the American colonies. It was an unusual measure, given the strict policies forbidding the emigration of Spaniards with Muslim or Jewish backgrounds to the New World, but the Crown wanted to send them to the northern provinces of New Spain, lightly populated territories dominated by unruly Indians. It was expected that the Moriscos, eager to probe the sincerity of their Christianity, would try their best to evangelize the natives.
And so, in 1613, the first expedition to the province known as Teyas or Tejas, the name of a local tribe, was organized. The first years were difficult, but with support from friendly natives the initial outposts survived. In total, nearly 2.000 Moriscos were resettled, the main population center being named Ricote after the Murcian valley many came from. For the next seventy years, the Spanish Crown would not invest much in the province of Nueva Murcia de los Tejas, New Murcia of the Tejas, but the Morisco communities, which included converted natives, thrived even under pressure from hostile Indians of the plains.
In the 1690s, French attempts at establishing outposts on the Mississippi mouth alerted the Spanish authorities, which decided to invest more in New Murcia as a buffer against the Louisiana. Military personal presence increased, Christianization attempts among the Natives redoubled and immigration was promoted. By 1700, New Murcia was home to around 25.000 colonists, most of them descended from the original Moriscos. After the French defeat in the Seven Years War against Great Britain, Louisiana was cede to the latter and New Murcia found itself at the door of the rising power of the moment. Imprecisions about were the border between British and Spanish lands was led to frequent clashes, and Spain reinforced its position with a series of forts and promotion of settlement in the eastern ridge of the province.
The American Revolution and Spanish involvement in it had in important impact in New Murcia, as it showed that a colony was able to challenge and even defeat its colonial master. Tight trade ties were established with the nascent United States, but they were cut again once the revolution was over due to Spanish mercantilist policies, creating resentment among New Murcian elites, who had grown wealthy by smuggling goods through New Orleans to the patriots. The province, by 1810 home to nearly 150.000 settlers, became a hotbed of liberalism.
After the Napoleonic Wars and the Latin American Independence Wars, New Murcia ended up as a province of the First Mexican Empire. However, divergences with the central government soon ensued: the distance, different interests and history, and the ties with the United States set New Murcians apart, it’s elites resented being governed from Mexico City. The turmoil of the First Empire allowed New Murcia to conduct policy nearly on it’s own, and finally when the federal constitution was abrogated by the Mexican government in 1840, Ricote had enough and declared itself a free republic.
The República Libre y Soberana de Nueva Murcia de los Tejas was at first only recognized by the United States, which hoped to influence or even incorporate it into its Union. New Murcia defended itself against centralist armies with help from American filibusters and allied with the United States after the California Revolution of 1850 that sparked the Mexican-American War. Their victory secured the independence of the young Republic, under a red-white-green flag that symbolized the color of their original homeland, their current Catholic faith and their Morisco heritage.
Abu Abd Al-lah Muhámmad ibn Sa‘d ibn Muhámmad ibn Áhmad ibn Mardaniš al-Ŷudhami, know as Ibn Mardanis or as Wolf King (by Christian accounts), was a Spanish Muslim of Mozarab and Muladi descent that, in 1147, headed the resistance against the Almohad invasion of al-Andalus. Initially aided by the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and the county of Barcelona, he soon achieved supremacy over Xarq al-Andalus, establishing the capital of his emirate in the city of Mursiyya. After his conquest of the old caliphal capital of Qurtuba in 1159, he became undisputed ruler of Muslim Spain, even recognized as Emir of al-Andalus by the Abbasid Caliph in Bagdad. The defeat of the Almohads at Ishibiliya in 1162 solidified his regime, helped by an aperturist religious policy towards Mozarabs and Jews, previously persecuted under Almoravid and Almohad administrations.
The Mardanisid State managed to end the disunity spiral al-Andalus had suffered since the abolition of the Caliphate in 1031, centralizing power in the new capital of Mursiyya and its fertile hinterlands. The progress of reconquest of the northern Christian realms was halted, and Ibn Mardanis’ successors even managed to recover the city of Tulaytula and reestablish the defensive frontier of the Tajo river. Once again, al-Andalus presented a solid front against a fractured north, playing Christian kingdoms against each other so as to maintain its hegemony. Ahead lies the XVI century, with campaigns in North Africa to control the Transaharan trade and Atlantic explorations that will position al-Andalus as a global power.
A2 Revolutionary Murcian Canton (1872 - revolution ongoing as of 1874)
The Glorious Revolution of 1868 ousted the Bourbon Queen Isabel II from the throne of Spain and the Moderates from power. A coalition of Progressists led by the triumvirate of Generals Serrano and Prim and Admiral Topete called for general elections and a new, more democratic constitution was approved in 1869. Instead of proclaiming a Republic, the Constitution established Spain as a Monarchy, though one without monarch, so Prim was commanded to search for a willing candidate: he found one in the liberal-minded second son of the Italian King, Amadeo di Savoia, who accepted the Spanish Crown. However, things went south for Amadeo from the very beginning, Prim being assassinated one day before his arrival. With his death, all the support for the new King dwindled, and after two years of unstable reign and facing two wars (a Carlist one in northern half of the country and a Cuban revolt for independence), Amadeo renounced the Spanish Crown and departed.
Although a minority in the Cortes, republican factions managed to get the upper hand and finally a Republic was proclaimed, due to the monarchic factions being split between Carlists and Alfonsins, supporters of a Bourbon restoration under the son of Isabel II. Republicans, on the other hand, were as divided as the royalists, with a centralist wing, a federal pactist wing and a radical wing. New elections secured a republican majority on the chamber due to monarchical unwillingness to participate hoping a better chance of restoring Alfonso to the throne, but infighting between republican factions ensued.
The radical faction, fed up with the tardiness of approving a federal constitution, ended up abandoning the Cortes and setting up a Public Salvation Committee to organize an insurrection and implement the federal republic “from below”, with quasi-independent cantons federalizing, instead of President Pi i Margall approach of “federalization from the top”. The radicals chose the city of Catagena, an important naval base, as the center of the revolution.
In July 1873, while the efforts of the central government were focused on suppressing the Carlist rebels of the north, the Federal Republic was proclaimed in Cartagena. Many other cities of the province of Murcia followed suit and declared themselves Cantons. Soon, a Murcian Canton was organized under the authority of Antonete Gálvez, a Murcian revolutionary and radical federalist. The proclaimed goal was to implement the Federal Republic, so, for the time being, the future government of the Republic and that of the Murcian Canton were fused. Centralist troops dispatched to quash the insurrects were defeated by the cantonalist militias, and the authority of the central government on the southern half of the country and Levant cracked under the revolutionary wave.
As of 1874, civil war rages Spain. The central government barely projects power beyond the central region that surrounds Madrid, while trying to hold of the Carlist offensives from the north. The south and Levant are a clusterfuck of cantonalist and anticantonalist infighting with no real authority whatsoever, while the Murcian Canton, despite is cohesive organization, prefers to limit itself to defend its territory and bid for the right moment to strike Madrid.
Kingdom of Murcia, Crown of Aragon, (1304 – 1703, 1709 – current year of 1767)
The lands of the Muslim Taifa of Mursiyya were originally allotted to the Crown of Aragon by the Treaty of Almizra of 1144, though subsequent treaties transferred it to the Castilian sphere of influence. In 1243, the Mursiyyan Emir decided to sign a protectorate under Castile to avoid Aragonese and Granadan encroachment and maintain the security of the Muslim population. Infant Alfonso, future King Alfonso X, accepted, and so Mursiyya became a Castilian protectorate until 1264, when Muslims revolted due to infringements of the treaty. Already stretched by the revolts of the Mudéjares of the Guadalquivir valley, Alfonso X asked his father in law, Jaume I of Aragon, to take charge of the revolt. The Aragonese, fearing its spread to the recently conquered Kingdom of Valencia, agreed, and so marched south with an army and crushed the Mursiyyan resistance. As a measure of peacekeeping and reward, he settled 10.000 of his Aragonese and Catalan followers in Murcian soil, before devolving it to Castile.
For the next forty years, Murcia would be a point of contention between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon: it was legally Castilian, but predominantly Catalan-Aragonese in its Christian population. At the end of the XIII, a succession war in Castile allowed Jaume II to take the chance and seize the Kingdom of Murcia, and after the War of the Two Peters in 1356, Castile formally renounced every claim to Murcia. This turbulent history made the southernmost realm of the Crown of Aragon develop a unique culture, predominantly Catalan but with strong Aragonese and Castilian influences, and shaped by a frontier mentality.
After the union of Castile and Aragon in 1476 to form the basis of what today is known as Spanish Empire, enlarged in 1580 with the Kingdom of Portugal finally achieving peninsular unity under the Hapsburg dynasty, the history of Murcia is no different from any of the other subkingdoms of Spain, up until the Spanish Succession War. As the rest of the Crown of Aragon, fearing the centralist tendencies of the new Bourbon dynasty, Murcia declared for the Hapsburg candidate, and so the Kingdom was officially abolished by the Nueva Planta Decrees, after being conquered in 1703 by the Bourbonist armies. It would be once again restored in 1709 after it was liberated in an Allied offensive, and when the war entered a draw in 1713, Felipe V negotiated the cease of hostilities in exchange of, among other things, renouncing to the Crown of Aragon as long as Castile and Portugal remained for him. 50 years after, the Kingdom of Murcia and the Crown of Aragon as a whole prosper under a Hapsburg cadet branch, with a blossoming relation with the United Kingdom based on common enemies and trade ties.
Free City of Cartagena, Unincorporated territory of the US (1947 – the present)
Generalísimo Francisco Franco considered himself a careful man, one to act if and only if success was guaranteed. That was how he had achieved supremacy over the rest of the rebel groups that composed the self-declared “Nationalists” during the Spanish Civil War, by bidding his time, meticulously waiting until the right moment approached. By 1939, with the Republic crushed under a combination of reactionary militaries, ultraconservatives, royalists, carlists, fascists and anticommunists, he had risen as undisputed ruler of the country. To the external observer, Franco’s regime was monolithic, a single will, that of the Caudillo, who directed with an iron fist the ruins of an old and broken nation. Reality, however, was far from simple.
In 1937, Franco had decreed the unification of the main supporters of the coup, the fascist Falange and the Carlist Comunión Tradicionalista, and outlawed the rest of parties, to exercise a tighter control. That meant that, once the war was over and leftists were no longer a threat, competing groups with diverging interests found themselves in un uneasy coalition, and that Franco had no intention of relinquishing wartime powers granted to him. On the one hand, the less authoritarian elements of the Movement rallied around the figure of Juán de Borbón, Count of Barcelona and legitimate heir to the crown, and demanded the restoration of the Monarchy under a somewhat constitutional form. The Carlists also wanted the restoration of the Monarchy, but under their candidate and with a more reactionary and traditionalist form. Finally, the initially less important falangists vied for a corporativist authoritarian State similar to fascist Italy. It was this latter faction the one that, once the Second World War begun and especially after the Fall of France and the undisputed hegemony of the fascist powers in Europe, gained increasing ascendancy even as Franco tried to balance the three cliques.
Maybe because of this influence, the intent of participating of the spoils and the pressure of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco decided to enter the war in 1942, in a movement that surprised those who knew him well. He would regret it when, two years later, as Allied armies entered through Portugal and landed on the Andalusian coast from Africa, those who had supported him turned against him. Knowing that Spain could not afford another war, the most liberal elements of the regime, which had had contacts with the Western Allies since the end of the civil war, staged a coup and unconditionally surrendered.
Spain was to be divided between British, French, Portuguese and American occupation zones for a brief time, with collaboration from local authorities. Republicans were allowed back and, while the Allies originally favored the restoration of the Monarchy so as to secure an anticommunist Spain, a referendum was finally allowed and the III Spanish Republic was proclaimed, with the autonomous regions abolished by Franco restituted. During the peace negotiations in 1946, a junior American diplomatic officer discovered that the city of Cartagena, in southeastern Spain, had once declared itself a nearly independent Canton in 1873, and that while under siege from the central government it had petitioned to be admitted into the United States to avoid being crushed, though no answer never came back. Under that pretext, and with the ulterior motive of acquiring its excellent naval base and natural port in the Western Mediterranean, Spain was forced to cede the city indefinitely to the United States in the final peace Treaty of Madrid of 1947.
At first, the citizens of the now American unincorporated territory of Cartagena were hostile, but American investment into the base and the prosperity it brought ended up changing the minds of the majority of the inhabitants. It has remained a thorn in the relations between Spain and the US, especially when the former has been under left-leaning governments, but the two referendums carried out in 1996 and 2016 have shown that the Free City of Cartagena, an industrial and turistic hub apart from a prime military base, favors the status quo by an ample margin.
B2 Empire of Ispanya (296 – 378) Note: description is very vague and Roman-like because I don’t really know much about Carthage, but I found it a necessary cliché addition.
After the Second Roman War, the Carthaginian State reigned supreme in the Western Mediterranean, it’s rival forcibly reduced to a shell of its former self. For the next 200 years, Carthage would solidify its position in Ispanya and North Africa, and even conquer the Eastern Mediterranean and Italy. However, as the African city expanded and transitioned from a mercantile power to a militarist one, it discovered that the republican government suited for a city-state wasn’t enough to properly run an empire. Military governors in the provinces grew power hungry and ambitious, and an age of civil wars ensued until one dynasty rose supreme, imposing an autocratic regime.
The Carthaginian Empire enjoyed peace and prosperity for a century, but long term structural problems and the end of the expansion period brought a crisis that threw once again the Mediterranean into wide scale civil war. Barbarians from the north, displaced by eastern tribes unheard before, stormed the European provinces of the Empire, but Carthage managed to resist in Ispanya and North Africa. At that point, the Emperor in Carthage was but a figurehead, with the real power in the militarized border districts. The final demise of such an ancient State would come from the East, with a Persian invasion sweeping through Egypt and capturing the heartland of the Empire.
The elites and remnants fled to Ispanya, the oldest and more accultured province and last Carthaginian holdout. Organized around the city founded by Asdrubal Barca during the Second Roman War, also named Carthage, they continued to see themselves as Carthaginians and claim the totality of the Empire, even though they had problems imposing their rule over the whole peninsula as Cantabrian tribes of the north rejected to submit and Gallic armies invaded the Iberus valley. This “Empire of Ispanya”, as it is historiographicaly called, endured less that a century after breaking up into numerous independent Carthaginian successor states under combined pressure of Gallic and Berber encroachement.
B3 Republic of New Murcia (1842 – the present)
Although the territory of the current Republic was inhabited for centuries before European colonization by Native American tribes, the history of New Murcia, or República de Nueva Murcia de los Tejas, as it is officially named in Spanish, can be traced back to the Morisco Expulsion Decrees enacted by Felipe III of Spain in 1609. Morisco is the name given to those Spaniards that descended from Muslims and had been forced to convert after the fall of Granada in 1492. They were quite disperse over the whole peninsula, with higher concentrations in the southern and eastern regions (making up around a third of the population of Valencia, a sixth of Aragon…), and it’s integration varied from place to place: in New Castile, Extremadura and Murcia, for example, they didn’t spoke Arabic but the local Romance, and most were sincere Catholics or had a poor understanding of the Islamic faith, while in Valencia most were Arabic-Valencian bilingual and more or less openly practiced their religion.
The causes of the expulsion are complex, but ultimately the distrust due to the Granadan Alpujarras’ Rebellion and the fear of a Morisco fifth column that would help the Ottomans led the Crown to take such a harmful decision. In the Kingdom of Murcia, the measure originally only affected the new Moriscos, those poorly assimilated that had been resettled all over Spain after the Rebellion; the old Moriscos, who dated back to the conquest of the Kingdom and many were vassals of the Order of Santiago, were reported as well assimilated and sincere Christians, so they were spared. However, one year after, the decree was extended to them as well, despite the heavy lobby in their favor by their lieges and the support of the local population that didn’t see them as foreigners but true Spaniards.
The Crown ended up reconsidering the decision, allowing the Murcian Moriscos to chose between being deported to North Africa or remaining Spanish Catholic subjects and being resettled to the American colonies. It was an unusual measure, given the strict policies forbidding the emigration of Spaniards with Muslim or Jewish backgrounds to the New World, but the Crown wanted to send them to the northern provinces of New Spain, lightly populated territories dominated by unruly Indians. It was expected that the Moriscos, eager to probe the sincerity of their Christianity, would try their best to evangelize the natives.
And so, in 1613, the first expedition to the province known as Teyas or Tejas, the name of a local tribe, was organized. The first years were difficult, but with support from friendly natives the initial outposts survived. In total, nearly 2.000 Moriscos were resettled, the main population center being named Ricote after the Murcian valley many came from. For the next seventy years, the Spanish Crown would not invest much in the province of Nueva Murcia de los Tejas, New Murcia of the Tejas, but the Morisco communities, which included converted natives, thrived even under pressure from hostile Indians of the plains.
In the 1690s, French attempts at establishing outposts on the Mississippi mouth alerted the Spanish authorities, which decided to invest more in New Murcia as a buffer against the Louisiana. Military personal presence increased, Christianization attempts among the Natives redoubled and immigration was promoted. By 1700, New Murcia was home to around 25.000 colonists, most of them descended from the original Moriscos. After the French defeat in the Seven Years War against Great Britain, Louisiana was cede to the latter and New Murcia found itself at the door of the rising power of the moment. Imprecisions about were the border between British and Spanish lands was led to frequent clashes, and Spain reinforced its position with a series of forts and promotion of settlement in the eastern ridge of the province.
The American Revolution and Spanish involvement in it had in important impact in New Murcia, as it showed that a colony was able to challenge and even defeat its colonial master. Tight trade ties were established with the nascent United States, but they were cut again once the revolution was over due to Spanish mercantilist policies, creating resentment among New Murcian elites, who had grown wealthy by smuggling goods through New Orleans to the patriots. The province, by 1810 home to nearly 150.000 settlers, became a hotbed of liberalism.
After the Napoleonic Wars and the Latin American Independence Wars, New Murcia ended up as a province of the First Mexican Empire. However, divergences with the central government soon ensued: the distance, different interests and history, and the ties with the United States set New Murcians apart, it’s elites resented being governed from Mexico City. The turmoil of the First Empire allowed New Murcia to conduct policy nearly on it’s own, and finally when the federal constitution was abrogated by the Mexican government in 1840, Ricote had enough and declared itself a free republic.
The República Libre y Soberana de Nueva Murcia de los Tejas was at first only recognized by the United States, which hoped to influence or even incorporate it into its Union. New Murcia defended itself against centralist armies with help from American filibusters and allied with the United States after the California Revolution of 1850 that sparked the Mexican-American War. Their victory secured the independence of the young Republic, under a red-white-green flag that symbolized the color of their original homeland, their current Catholic faith and their Morisco heritage.
Starforce
Banned
The map in my alternate ww2, in the cold war era. In this era the Soviets have a much stronger foothold in Europe, but are probably overstretched. They will fall at some point, if it happens earlier it will be due to armed revolutions supported by America and it's allies in Blue. If they don't fall due to that, they will fall due to economic issues in the mid 2000's. The states on the Eastern side of the Warsaw pact are more or less pro-soviet, while the ones on the west are less so, but still communist nations within the Warsaw pact.
At the moment, nothing.
This being on account of them currently working with China to better prop up Pakistan to act as a counter to Iran.
Though I'm sure there are people in Washington just aching to provide some aid to Colombia and friends.
Hey, I'm happy to see Murcia get some recognition: I lived there as a kid when my father was teaching English there (age 4-11) and still have fond memories.
I thought that the "12 nations meme" was to be done with real countries or regions. What will come next, Teruel?
map of the celtic tribes around 58 BC and two cultures that would lead to them: the Hallstat-culture and the La-Tène-culture
This is absolute wonderful! I would almost go so far and say that this is your best map yet! A small matter of constructive criticism though: Have you thought about increasing the opacity of the colour boxes in the lower left corner denoting the various entities? The transparency makes it a bit difficult to make out the distinctions.
Earlier this week I posted a practice piece I had been working on featuring patches of all the colours available for Canada in @Drex's marvelous colour scheme. I received some pretty positive feedback from it, so following some advice I reorganized the piece to make it more clear and concise. Mind you it's still a massively overloading jumble, but I think it looks alright!
A few notes:
- Lots of the pieces are inspired by alternate history works I found online (Kaiserreich, People's Atlas, Canada Plus Ultra, and many, many DeviantArt Oneshot maps) so if you recognise some - it's not a coincidence! In all honesty I should've compiled and credited all the flags and pieces but I feel that would become unreasonable by the end of the piece.
- Yes, I do plan on continuing on and doing the rest of the colours, but obviously that is going to take quite some time so hopefully I don't spam up the thread. Also, hopefully I managed to remain motivated!
- I'm annoyed that I couldn't find a way to fit all the boxes together better but I think the photo pieces are an ok compromise.
- Take the distribution of First Nation's people/Drainage Basins with a grain of salt, they're absolutely not 100% accurate, they're mostly drawn by guesswork and few geographical clues.
- Finally, feel free to use these patches and also ask me questions about the individual patches/flags. Also please feel free to point out any graphical errors I might have made so that I can fix them
- Yes, I do plan on continuing on and doing the rest of the colours, but obviously that is going to take quite some time so hopefully I don't spam up the thread. Also, hopefully I managed to remain motivated!
- I'm annoyed that I couldn't find a way to fit all the boxes together better but I think the photo pieces are an ok compromise.
- Take the distribution of First Nation's people/Drainage Basins with a grain of salt, they're absolutely not 100% accurate, they're mostly drawn by guesswork and few geographical clues.
- Finally, feel free to use these patches and also ask me questions about the individual patches/flags. Also please feel free to point out any graphical errors I might have made so that I can fix them
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So I decided to post some older maps of mine that are not so good in quality and created a test thread for the purposes of posting them. If anyone is interested here is a link: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/gokbays-thread-of-unprofessional-maps.456910/
I will post other maps whenever I find the time to do so.
I will post other maps whenever I find the time to do so.
- Status