Proposals and War Aims That Didn't Happen Map Thread
- Thread starter Beedok
- Start date
I can at least understand where people come from in a historical sense with "Southern Mongolia" and "Eastern Mongolia", even if it'd be wise to give the Ordos Loop to China due to both being where tons of the Han population lived in now AND historically via the Hetao Plains... but every Manchuria proponent fails to realize Liaoning has been Sinic in ethnicity and culture since time immemorial AND became "Manchurian" only because it was the first Han territory the Manchus conquered and thus integrated before taking the whole damn Empire. If you're going to go for a "China Proper" China, those two places are as Chinese as Taiwan usually is, which is almost always included in the concept. I also would say Ningxia and Nan Zhao/Yunnan belong to a rump "China Proper" due to both ethnic Han numbers, but also genuinely Sinic culture outside their quirks - the Bai are EXTREMELY Sinicized to where they're very arguably not a separate identity anymore, and Ningxia is the same outside Muslim religion.
Basically, if one's gonna reduce China to "China Proper", at least get it right with every region that's traditionally been part of "China Proper" for the vast majority of Chinese history, if we include as criteria "traditionally Chinese in ethnicity and culture" or "continually part of a native Han dynasty's core/integral lands."
the whole map is very bizzare, but then, its a map of independence movements existing in 1998. its not an exhaustive one, but its also not one culled for stuff like “the group advocates want independence for must be amajority in territory” or “the majority of the group being declared stateless actually wants thier own state” or even that “the whole group sees themselves as a coherent nation” like if it was meant to be a list of everyself defined ethnicty that happens to not have a state then its a woefully incomplete list.
I noticed another issue with the map in that it doesn't show an outline of any actual proposal for a Mapuche state, it just oulines the Chilean administrative region of Araucania.
Which I guess is fair since actual territorial proposals for "Wallmapu" are either vague or ludicrous. Given that most of the movement seems focused first and foremost on land rights and cultural autonomy rather than on getting a concrete independent state.
Which I guess is fair since actual territorial proposals for "Wallmapu" are either vague or ludicrous. Given that most of the movement seems focused first and foremost on land rights and cultural autonomy rather than on getting a concrete independent state.
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Western Ukraine as "nation without state"? It's ridiculous. Halychyna is center of all-Ukrainian nationalism
Crazy Boris
Banned
That’s one of the most baffling ones for me, because why would that area ever want to separate from Ukraine? The only explanation would be someone wanting to revive the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, but why would anyone do that?
The one I'm most confused about is "Waldensia", I don't ever recall seeing the Waldensians ever wanting to form a nation-state of their own.
Probably because the person who made this map did not even try to figure out what was happening to these historical centers of nation formation.
I mean, they probably chose western Ukraine because there was once a strong independence movement there. And in doing so, they ignored the fact that modern Ukraine is the result of what this independence movement wanted.
In short, the map makes no sense.
Why are Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Sikhim, etc, in red? The map is of 'nations without states' and those have their own states within India. /s
On a more serious note why is there so few red in Sub-Saharan Africa. Wasn't that place full of partitioned ethnicities?
If they did that they should have done the same for India (or painted everything which does not speak Hindi red) in the name of consistency.
The more I look at the map, the more eyebleach I need. Cursed borders in the Ural region, South Solomons in Bougainville island, Kamchatka Oblast is not part of the Far East etc.
Why is antioquía considered distinct from Colombia? AFAIK there is no independence movement there
A map I found on r/imaginarymaps.
It's a map that includes not just Cornwall but Northumbria, it doesn't seem to consider questions of viability or even existence of independence movements.
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Here's what the book says about Antioquia:
POPULATION: (95e) 7,966,000 : 8,350,000 Antioquians in Colombia. MA-
JOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Antioquian 89%, other Colombian. MAJOR
LANGUAGE: Spanish. MAJOR RELIGIONS: Roman Catholic, Protestant,
Jewish. MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Medellin 1,783,000 (2,545,000), Manizales
311,000 (518,000), Pereira 250,000 (490,000), Bello 246,000, Armenia 215,000
(326,000), Itague 190,000, Talua´ 109,000 (143,000), Cartago 111,000, Santa
Rosa de Cabal 95,000 (124,000), Buga 91,000 (120,000), La Dorada 88,000
(112,000).
GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 47,516 sq.mi.-123,098 sq.km. LOCATION: Antio-
quia lies in northwestern Colombia, a mountainous region of high valleys in the
Andes Mountains and extending west and north into the coastal lowlands on the
Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. POLITICAL STATUS: Antioquia, as
defined by nationalists, forms the Colombian departments of Antioquia, Caldas,
Choco´, Quindı´o, Risaralda, and the northeastern districts of Valle Department.
FLAG: The Antioquian flag, the flag of the national movement, is a horizontal
bicolor of white over green.
PEOPLE: The Antioquians, popularly called Paisas, are mostly descended
from sixteenth-century Basque and Jewish refugees from Spain. Isolated in the
valleys of the high Andes, the Antioquians developed a unique culture and pre-
served the purest Spanish spoken in the Americas. The Antioquian birthrate,
possibly the world’s highest, with families of up to sixteen children the norm,
has rapidly increased the population and led to the expansion of the Antioqui-
ans from their core area, but, without intermarriage with other Colombians or
26
ANTIOQUIA
the loss of population at the center, a highly unusual phenomenon in Latin
America.
THE NATION: Refugee Basques and Jews forced to convert to Catholicism,
fleeing persecution in Spain, arrived in the New World in the 1530s. Deliberately
choosing isolation in the Andean highlands, the refugees settled in high valleys
accessible only by mule trails through difficult mountain passes. The immigrants
founded the town of Antioquia in 1541 and took the name of the town as the
name of their new homeland. The isolated Antioquians were unusual in several
ways: a very high birthrate, a refusal to intermarry, and their rejection of slavery
from the start. Dividing the land in the European manner, the Antioquians settled
on small family farms that they worked themselves.
For over three centuries the Antioquians lived in isolation, a prosperous farm-
ing and mining community that received no new immigrants after the first wave
of arrivals. Unusually large families increased the population rapidly. In their
first century they increased from less than 100,000 to over 2 million. The prolific
Antioquians soon expanded in all directions from the original settlements, taking
with them their unique culture and their strong ties to the Antioquian heartland.
The region, rich in minerals, particularly gold, became an important mining
center in the seventeenth century. Smuggling developed as a means to avoid
paying the Spanish king his fifth on gold exports and remains a tradition in the
area to the present.
Antioquia, included in the Federation of New Granada when Spanish rule
ended in 1819, at first moved to separate from the new state, but the Antioquian
leaders were persuaded to accept substantial autonomy rather than to follow
Ecuador and Venezuela into secession. The Colombian constitution of 1855
created a loose confederation of autonomous states, satisfying Antioquian de-
mands for extensive self-government.
Antioquian expansion continued to spread along the fertile mountain valleys.
Manizales was founded in 1848, Pereira in 1863, and Armenia as late as 1889.
To dilute the power of the expanding Antioquian homeland and to undermine
national sentiment in the region, the Colombian government instituted a policy
of separation. The regions of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindı´o were separated
from Antioquia as they became settled; however, the inhabitants of these new
departments retained their sense of Antioquian identity.
The abolition of state sovereignty in 1886 led to a sharp deterioration in the
relations between the Antioquian provinces and the centralizing government in
Bogota´. In 1899 civil war erupted between the advocates of a loose confeder-
ation and the supporters of a strong central government. Antioquian rebels, many
demanding secession, continued to fight government troops until they were fi-
nally subdued in 1902. Government suppression of nationalist and regionalist
tendencies escalated following civil war and the secession of neighboring Pan-
ama in 1903.
Coffee, introduced around 1900, brought stability to the Antioquian expan-
sion, and within twenty years the Antioquian provinces produced a majority of
ANTIOQUIA
27
Colombia’s coffee exports. Industrialization followed the construction of rail-
roads and the end of Antioquia’s long isolation. Textiles, produced in Antio-
quia’s growing industrial cities, followed the coffee boom as the region’s major
product.
Antioquian society, devoutly Roman Catholic, prosperous, and middle-class,
was profoundly shaken by La Violencia, the civil war that engulfed Colombia
from 1946 to 1958. The conflict marked the beginning of modern Antioquian
nationalism and raised demands for autonomy, even independence, to escape
Colombia’s chronic instability.
In the 1960s, the Antioquians spread into the highlands above Cali in the
Cauca Valley. The growing industrialization of their provinces was notable for
some highly progressive social schemes, including model housing estates for
industrial workers. The Antioquian economy began to falter in the late 1970s,
damaged by industrial recession and the end of the coffee boom. Drawing on
the Antioquian tradition of smuggling contraband, a new boom crop appeared:
drugs.
Drug trafficking, taken up by the lowest rungs of Antioquian society in the
1960s, spread through the Antioquian provinces during the economic recession
of the late 1970s and by the 1980s involved all social classes. Developed, pros-
perous Antioquia rapidly degenerated into a killing ground for various armed
groups connected with the military, leftist guerrillas, and the gangs in the pay
of local drug barons.
Antioquians generally blame successive governments and past errors for the
violence that has overwhelmed their homeland. Antioquian nationalists, who
claim that their homeland is paying for these past government mistakes, admit
that independence and the elimination of the drug trade would bring a massive
economic depression but are adamant that with international assistance Antio-
quia would rank among the hemisphere’s richest states within three to five years.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Fluharty, V. L. Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and the Social Revolution in Co-
lombia. 1957.
Kline, Harvey F. Colombia: Portrait of Unity and Diversity. 1983.
Niles, B. Colombia. 1976.
Oquist, Paul. Violence, Conflict and Politics in Colombia. 1980.
JOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Antioquian 89%, other Colombian. MAJOR
LANGUAGE: Spanish. MAJOR RELIGIONS: Roman Catholic, Protestant,
Jewish. MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Medellin 1,783,000 (2,545,000), Manizales
311,000 (518,000), Pereira 250,000 (490,000), Bello 246,000, Armenia 215,000
(326,000), Itague 190,000, Talua´ 109,000 (143,000), Cartago 111,000, Santa
Rosa de Cabal 95,000 (124,000), Buga 91,000 (120,000), La Dorada 88,000
(112,000).
GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 47,516 sq.mi.-123,098 sq.km. LOCATION: Antio-
quia lies in northwestern Colombia, a mountainous region of high valleys in the
Andes Mountains and extending west and north into the coastal lowlands on the
Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. POLITICAL STATUS: Antioquia, as
defined by nationalists, forms the Colombian departments of Antioquia, Caldas,
Choco´, Quindı´o, Risaralda, and the northeastern districts of Valle Department.
FLAG: The Antioquian flag, the flag of the national movement, is a horizontal
bicolor of white over green.
PEOPLE: The Antioquians, popularly called Paisas, are mostly descended
from sixteenth-century Basque and Jewish refugees from Spain. Isolated in the
valleys of the high Andes, the Antioquians developed a unique culture and pre-
served the purest Spanish spoken in the Americas. The Antioquian birthrate,
possibly the world’s highest, with families of up to sixteen children the norm,
has rapidly increased the population and led to the expansion of the Antioqui-
ans from their core area, but, without intermarriage with other Colombians or
26
ANTIOQUIA
the loss of population at the center, a highly unusual phenomenon in Latin
America.
THE NATION: Refugee Basques and Jews forced to convert to Catholicism,
fleeing persecution in Spain, arrived in the New World in the 1530s. Deliberately
choosing isolation in the Andean highlands, the refugees settled in high valleys
accessible only by mule trails through difficult mountain passes. The immigrants
founded the town of Antioquia in 1541 and took the name of the town as the
name of their new homeland. The isolated Antioquians were unusual in several
ways: a very high birthrate, a refusal to intermarry, and their rejection of slavery
from the start. Dividing the land in the European manner, the Antioquians settled
on small family farms that they worked themselves.
For over three centuries the Antioquians lived in isolation, a prosperous farm-
ing and mining community that received no new immigrants after the first wave
of arrivals. Unusually large families increased the population rapidly. In their
first century they increased from less than 100,000 to over 2 million. The prolific
Antioquians soon expanded in all directions from the original settlements, taking
with them their unique culture and their strong ties to the Antioquian heartland.
The region, rich in minerals, particularly gold, became an important mining
center in the seventeenth century. Smuggling developed as a means to avoid
paying the Spanish king his fifth on gold exports and remains a tradition in the
area to the present.
Antioquia, included in the Federation of New Granada when Spanish rule
ended in 1819, at first moved to separate from the new state, but the Antioquian
leaders were persuaded to accept substantial autonomy rather than to follow
Ecuador and Venezuela into secession. The Colombian constitution of 1855
created a loose confederation of autonomous states, satisfying Antioquian de-
mands for extensive self-government.
Antioquian expansion continued to spread along the fertile mountain valleys.
Manizales was founded in 1848, Pereira in 1863, and Armenia as late as 1889.
To dilute the power of the expanding Antioquian homeland and to undermine
national sentiment in the region, the Colombian government instituted a policy
of separation. The regions of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindı´o were separated
from Antioquia as they became settled; however, the inhabitants of these new
departments retained their sense of Antioquian identity.
The abolition of state sovereignty in 1886 led to a sharp deterioration in the
relations between the Antioquian provinces and the centralizing government in
Bogota´. In 1899 civil war erupted between the advocates of a loose confeder-
ation and the supporters of a strong central government. Antioquian rebels, many
demanding secession, continued to fight government troops until they were fi-
nally subdued in 1902. Government suppression of nationalist and regionalist
tendencies escalated following civil war and the secession of neighboring Pan-
ama in 1903.
Coffee, introduced around 1900, brought stability to the Antioquian expan-
sion, and within twenty years the Antioquian provinces produced a majority of
ANTIOQUIA
27
Colombia’s coffee exports. Industrialization followed the construction of rail-
roads and the end of Antioquia’s long isolation. Textiles, produced in Antio-
quia’s growing industrial cities, followed the coffee boom as the region’s major
product.
Antioquian society, devoutly Roman Catholic, prosperous, and middle-class,
was profoundly shaken by La Violencia, the civil war that engulfed Colombia
from 1946 to 1958. The conflict marked the beginning of modern Antioquian
nationalism and raised demands for autonomy, even independence, to escape
Colombia’s chronic instability.
In the 1960s, the Antioquians spread into the highlands above Cali in the
Cauca Valley. The growing industrialization of their provinces was notable for
some highly progressive social schemes, including model housing estates for
industrial workers. The Antioquian economy began to falter in the late 1970s,
damaged by industrial recession and the end of the coffee boom. Drawing on
the Antioquian tradition of smuggling contraband, a new boom crop appeared:
drugs.
Drug trafficking, taken up by the lowest rungs of Antioquian society in the
1960s, spread through the Antioquian provinces during the economic recession
of the late 1970s and by the 1980s involved all social classes. Developed, pros-
perous Antioquia rapidly degenerated into a killing ground for various armed
groups connected with the military, leftist guerrillas, and the gangs in the pay
of local drug barons.
Antioquians generally blame successive governments and past errors for the
violence that has overwhelmed their homeland. Antioquian nationalists, who
claim that their homeland is paying for these past government mistakes, admit
that independence and the elimination of the drug trade would bring a massive
economic depression but are adamant that with international assistance Antio-
quia would rank among the hemisphere’s richest states within three to five years.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Fluharty, V. L. Dance of the Millions: Military Rule and the Social Revolution in Co-
lombia. 1957.
Kline, Harvey F. Colombia: Portrait of Unity and Diversity. 1983.
Niles, B. Colombia. 1976.
Oquist, Paul. Violence, Conflict and Politics in Colombia. 1980.
Here's Northumbria:
POPULATION: (95e) 3,071,000 : 3,496,000 Northumbrians in England. MA-
JOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Northumbrian 91%, Scots 5%, other English.
MAJOR LANGUAGE: English (Northumbrian dialect). MAJOR RELIGIONS:
Protestant, Roman Catholic. MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Newcastle upon Tyne
195,000 (1,305,000), Sunderland 181,000, Middlesbrough 160,000 (604,000),
Gateshead 90,000, Hartlespool 88,000, Darlington 85,000 (108,000), Stockton-
on-Tees 84,000, South Shields 84,000, Carlisle 78,000 (105,000), Barrow-in-
Furness 48,000 (81,000), Durham 39,000 (94,000), Peterlee 35,000 (56,000),
Blyth 34,000 (123,000).
GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 5,944 sq.mi.-15,401 sq.km. LOCATION: Northum-
bria, commonly called the North, occupies a region of rolling hills and lakes
between the Irish and North Seas in northern England, just south of the border
with Scotland.* POLITICAL STATUS: Designated a European region, North-
umbria forms the English metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear and the non-
metropolitan counties of Cleveland, Cumbria, Durham, and Northumberland.
FLAG: The Northumbrian flag is a horizontal bicolor of red over green
charged with a centered, broad yellow cross.
PEOPLE: The Northumbrians, commonly called Geordies, particularly in the
Tyneside region, are a northern English people speaking a dialect that developed
from medieval Northumbrian, a language not influenced by the introduction of
Norman French to the South in the eleventh century. The Geordie character and
culture, incorporating both English and Scottish influences, retain many traits
and traditions that disappeared in other parts of England. The culture of the
NORTHUMBRIA
417
North developed around the ancient coal mines, mining dictated the way and
rhythm of life for centuries. The Northumbrians increasingly consider them-
selves a distinct British people and a separate European nation.
THE NATION: The Celtic Ottadeni of the region between the seas came under
Roman rule in the first century A.D. Their Latinized homeland formed the north-
ern frontier of Roman Britannia. In an effort to protect the northern districts
from attacks by Picts and Celts, the Romans constructed the defensive structure
known as Hadrian’s Wall between A.D. 120 and 123. The region, prosperous
under Roman rule, declined rapidly with the collapse of Roman power and the
withdrawal of the Roman garrisons from Britannia in 410.
Invaded and occupied by Germanic Angles from the European mainland in
the early sixth century, the region became a separate kingdom, Bernicia. The
kingdom later united with Deira, to the south, to form Northumbria, one of the
seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. Converted to Christianity in 627, the
kingdom experienced a golden age in the eighth and ninth centuries, a great
flowering of the arts, literature, and scholarship.
The coastal areas came under Viking attack in the ninth century, the southern
part of the kingdom conquered by the Norsemen in 867. The Viking invasion
ended Northumbria’s preeminent position in England. The Angles, maintaining
a small kingdom north of the Tees River, accepted the authority of the king of
Wessex in 920 and became part of the united English kingdom.
The Norman conquest of England in 1066 introduced a more centralized form
of government, the North divided into counties administered by Norman nobles
and the traditional liberties of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants greatly curtailed.
Reaction to authoritarian Norman rule, especially among the Anglo-Saxons, led
to the reestablishment of political and personal freedom with the signing of the
Magna Carta in 1215 and the creation of an English parliament in 1295.
The northern counties, forming the border with the separate Kingdom of Scot-
land, suffered during centuries of border wars until the two kingdoms united
under the rule of the House of Stuart in 1603. Scotland joined the united King-
dom of Great Britain in 1707, ensuring the security of the Northumbrian region.
Peace on the border allowed the spread of the Industrial Revolution to the North,
with the rapid development of large industrial enterprises, ports, and mines,
largely based on the region’s important coal deposits, the world’s oldest coal
field and the center of Northumbrian life.
The region, far from the center of government, experienced serious unrest in
the early nineteenth century with Geordie industrial workers demanding the
same rights as those enjoyed by the more prosperous classes in the south. Rapid
industrial expansion converted the region into a powerhouse of English industry,
spurred by the expansion of the overseas British Empire. The profits from the
industrialization of Northumbria, however, mostly went to the industrialists and
the government based in London.
Important to the British war effort during World War I, the long conflict
seriously drained the region’s wealth and manpower. Severe economic problems
418
NORTHUMBRIA
in the 1920s converted the declining northern counties into a bastion of anti-
governmental sentiment and a center of support for the new Labor Party. Eco-
nomically devastated by the depression of the 1930s, the region revived during
World War II. A Labor government, elected in 1945, nationalized the mining
industry and introduced the British welfare system in 1948 that helped to elim-
inate regional economic and social differences. In 1950 the Northumbrian in-
comes drew equal to those of the prosperous South.
The North began a long decline following the election of a Conservative
government in 1951, exacerbated by the increasing centralization of political
power in London and the southeastern counties. Chronic unemployment, decay-
ing cities, and aging industries raised social tensions and sparked a renewal of
a regionalist movement and a resurgence of separate Geordie identity. The grow-
ing regional movement demanded a fairer distribution of development and in-
vestment for the perennially depressed North.
The United Kingdom’s entry into the European Economic Community in
1973 further concentrated investment and development in the prosperous coun-
ties around London. By 1985 incomes in the North had fallen to 3% below the
national average, while incomes in the Southeast climbed to 5% above the av-
erage, and the gap continued to widen.
Demands for autonomy and devolution of political power by the non-English
nations in the United Kingdom reverberated in the Geordie North. Proposals for
regional government, more responsive to local needs, have met with repeated
rejections in London. Geordie regionalism grew rapidly during the 1980s amid
increasing unrest and growing unemployment, up to 30% in some areas. In 1991
severe rioting swept the region, the riots highlighting the massive political and
economic problems of the North.
The longest economic decline since the depression of the 1930s, blamed on
the Conservative government, has raised demands for economic independence.
The region, with strong support for devolution of power, increasingly looks to
Europe, with a nationalist minority advocating independence within a federal
United Kingdom or even within a united, federal Europe. Following the over-
throw of Communism in Eastern Europe, Northumbria is often called the only
remaining one-party state in Europe, a state ruled by a political party, the
Conservatives, that have never won an election in the region.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Forester, G.C.F., ed. Northern History: A Review of the History of the North of England.
1966.
Fraser, C. M., and K. Emsley. Northumbria. 1989.
Mason, Roger. The North. 1986.
JOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Northumbrian 91%, Scots 5%, other English.
MAJOR LANGUAGE: English (Northumbrian dialect). MAJOR RELIGIONS:
Protestant, Roman Catholic. MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Newcastle upon Tyne
195,000 (1,305,000), Sunderland 181,000, Middlesbrough 160,000 (604,000),
Gateshead 90,000, Hartlespool 88,000, Darlington 85,000 (108,000), Stockton-
on-Tees 84,000, South Shields 84,000, Carlisle 78,000 (105,000), Barrow-in-
Furness 48,000 (81,000), Durham 39,000 (94,000), Peterlee 35,000 (56,000),
Blyth 34,000 (123,000).
GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 5,944 sq.mi.-15,401 sq.km. LOCATION: Northum-
bria, commonly called the North, occupies a region of rolling hills and lakes
between the Irish and North Seas in northern England, just south of the border
with Scotland.* POLITICAL STATUS: Designated a European region, North-
umbria forms the English metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear and the non-
metropolitan counties of Cleveland, Cumbria, Durham, and Northumberland.
FLAG: The Northumbrian flag is a horizontal bicolor of red over green
charged with a centered, broad yellow cross.
PEOPLE: The Northumbrians, commonly called Geordies, particularly in the
Tyneside region, are a northern English people speaking a dialect that developed
from medieval Northumbrian, a language not influenced by the introduction of
Norman French to the South in the eleventh century. The Geordie character and
culture, incorporating both English and Scottish influences, retain many traits
and traditions that disappeared in other parts of England. The culture of the
NORTHUMBRIA
417
North developed around the ancient coal mines, mining dictated the way and
rhythm of life for centuries. The Northumbrians increasingly consider them-
selves a distinct British people and a separate European nation.
THE NATION: The Celtic Ottadeni of the region between the seas came under
Roman rule in the first century A.D. Their Latinized homeland formed the north-
ern frontier of Roman Britannia. In an effort to protect the northern districts
from attacks by Picts and Celts, the Romans constructed the defensive structure
known as Hadrian’s Wall between A.D. 120 and 123. The region, prosperous
under Roman rule, declined rapidly with the collapse of Roman power and the
withdrawal of the Roman garrisons from Britannia in 410.
Invaded and occupied by Germanic Angles from the European mainland in
the early sixth century, the region became a separate kingdom, Bernicia. The
kingdom later united with Deira, to the south, to form Northumbria, one of the
seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. Converted to Christianity in 627, the
kingdom experienced a golden age in the eighth and ninth centuries, a great
flowering of the arts, literature, and scholarship.
The coastal areas came under Viking attack in the ninth century, the southern
part of the kingdom conquered by the Norsemen in 867. The Viking invasion
ended Northumbria’s preeminent position in England. The Angles, maintaining
a small kingdom north of the Tees River, accepted the authority of the king of
Wessex in 920 and became part of the united English kingdom.
The Norman conquest of England in 1066 introduced a more centralized form
of government, the North divided into counties administered by Norman nobles
and the traditional liberties of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants greatly curtailed.
Reaction to authoritarian Norman rule, especially among the Anglo-Saxons, led
to the reestablishment of political and personal freedom with the signing of the
Magna Carta in 1215 and the creation of an English parliament in 1295.
The northern counties, forming the border with the separate Kingdom of Scot-
land, suffered during centuries of border wars until the two kingdoms united
under the rule of the House of Stuart in 1603. Scotland joined the united King-
dom of Great Britain in 1707, ensuring the security of the Northumbrian region.
Peace on the border allowed the spread of the Industrial Revolution to the North,
with the rapid development of large industrial enterprises, ports, and mines,
largely based on the region’s important coal deposits, the world’s oldest coal
field and the center of Northumbrian life.
The region, far from the center of government, experienced serious unrest in
the early nineteenth century with Geordie industrial workers demanding the
same rights as those enjoyed by the more prosperous classes in the south. Rapid
industrial expansion converted the region into a powerhouse of English industry,
spurred by the expansion of the overseas British Empire. The profits from the
industrialization of Northumbria, however, mostly went to the industrialists and
the government based in London.
Important to the British war effort during World War I, the long conflict
seriously drained the region’s wealth and manpower. Severe economic problems
418
NORTHUMBRIA
in the 1920s converted the declining northern counties into a bastion of anti-
governmental sentiment and a center of support for the new Labor Party. Eco-
nomically devastated by the depression of the 1930s, the region revived during
World War II. A Labor government, elected in 1945, nationalized the mining
industry and introduced the British welfare system in 1948 that helped to elim-
inate regional economic and social differences. In 1950 the Northumbrian in-
comes drew equal to those of the prosperous South.
The North began a long decline following the election of a Conservative
government in 1951, exacerbated by the increasing centralization of political
power in London and the southeastern counties. Chronic unemployment, decay-
ing cities, and aging industries raised social tensions and sparked a renewal of
a regionalist movement and a resurgence of separate Geordie identity. The grow-
ing regional movement demanded a fairer distribution of development and in-
vestment for the perennially depressed North.
The United Kingdom’s entry into the European Economic Community in
1973 further concentrated investment and development in the prosperous coun-
ties around London. By 1985 incomes in the North had fallen to 3% below the
national average, while incomes in the Southeast climbed to 5% above the av-
erage, and the gap continued to widen.
Demands for autonomy and devolution of political power by the non-English
nations in the United Kingdom reverberated in the Geordie North. Proposals for
regional government, more responsive to local needs, have met with repeated
rejections in London. Geordie regionalism grew rapidly during the 1980s amid
increasing unrest and growing unemployment, up to 30% in some areas. In 1991
severe rioting swept the region, the riots highlighting the massive political and
economic problems of the North.
The longest economic decline since the depression of the 1930s, blamed on
the Conservative government, has raised demands for economic independence.
The region, with strong support for devolution of power, increasingly looks to
Europe, with a nationalist minority advocating independence within a federal
United Kingdom or even within a united, federal Europe. Following the over-
throw of Communism in Eastern Europe, Northumbria is often called the only
remaining one-party state in Europe, a state ruled by a political party, the
Conservatives, that have never won an election in the region.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Forester, G.C.F., ed. Northern History: A Review of the History of the North of England.
1966.
Fraser, C. M., and K. Emsley. Northumbria. 1989.
Mason, Roger. The North. 1986.
And here's West Ukraine:
POPULATION: (95e) 6,824,000 : 5,280,000 Western Ukrainians in Ukraine.
MAJOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Western Ukrainian 77%, Polish 7%,
Russian 2%, Moldovan 1.5%, other Ukrainian. MAJOR LANGUAGES: Ukrain-
ian, Polish, Russian. MAJOR RELIGIONS: (95e) Uniate Catholic 64%, Ukrain-
ian Orthodox 10%, Roman Catholic 8%, Protestant 3%, Russian Orthodox.
MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Lwiw (Lvov) 850,000 (1,026,000), Cernivci (Chernov-
tsy) 284,000, Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankovsk) 270,000, Ternopil (Ternopol)
234,000,
Drohobych
(Drogobych)
106,000,
Cervonohrad
(Chervonograd)
79,000 (118,000), Kalus (Kalush) 71,000, Kolomyja (Kolomyya) 70,000, Stryj
(Stry) 66,000, Boryslav (Borislav) 48,000 (94,000).
GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 22,329 sq.mi.-57,847 sq.km. LOCATION: Western
Ukrainia occupies a flat plain, traversed by the Dniestr River and its tributaries,
rising to the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine. POLITICAL
STATUS: Western Ukrainia has no official status; the region, the historic region
of Galicia, forms the Ukrainian oblasts of Lwiw, Cernivci, Ivano-Frankivs, and
Ternopil.
INDEPENDENCE DECLARED: 14 November 1918; 30 June 1941.
FLAG: The Western Ukrainian flag, the flag of the national movement, is a
horizontal bicolor of red over black. OTHER FLAG(S): The historic flag of
Galicia, used by several Western Ukrainian nationalist organizations, is a hori-
zontal bicolor of red over green.
PEOPLE: The Western Ukrainians are an East Slav people, ethnically part
WESTERN UKRAINIA
621
of the Ukrainian nation but historically, culturally, and religiously distinct. The
region’s language, the southwestern dialect of Ukrainian, is quite different from
the Russianized southeastern dialect spoken in Kiev and the eastern provinces.
The Western Ukrainian culture, through centuries of Austrian and Polish rule,
is a Central European culture and is notably free of the strong Russian influences
in the culture of central and eastern Ukraine. The majority of the Western
Ukrainians belong to the Byzantine rite Uniate Catholic church, with an Ortho-
dox minority split between the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, an independent
Ukrainian Orthodox sect banned in 1930, the official Ukrainian Orthodox
Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church.
THE NATION: Populated by East Slav tribes during the Slav migrations in
the sixth century A.D. the region early came under the influence of the non-Slav
peoples to the west. The Slavs of the upper Dniestr River basin became part of
Kievan Rus, the first great East Slav state, in 1054. Within fifty years Kievan
Rus had fragmented into twelve principalities. The most southerly of the prin-
cipalities, Galicia, lay on the frontier between the Latins and Byzantines.
Separated from Russian territory by the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth
century, Galicia eventually came under Tatar rule in 1324. The Poles liberated
and annexed the region in 1349, and in 1386 Galicia became part of the merged
Polish-Lithuanian state. The Roman Catholic Poles, intent on converting the
state’s Orthodox subjects, agreed to a compromise in 1596. The Orthodox
Ukrainians formed a union with Rome and accepted the pope as their spiritual
leader but retained the Byzantine religious rite and their own hierarchy, their
priests preserving the right to marry.
Galicia, with a mixed population of Ukrainians and Poles, became part of
Austria as a result of the first Polish partition in 1772. The southeastern area
around Cernivci, the region of Bukovina, was added to Austrian Galicia three
years later. Better educated and less restricted than the Ukrainians under Russian
rule, the Western Ukrainian culture and language developed separately, influ-
enced by Vienna and Krakow, not Kiev or Moscow.
Lemburg (Lwiw) emerged as the principal center of Ukrainian nationalism in
the Hapsburg Empire in the nineteenth century. The Uniate Church, closely tied
to Western Ukrainian culture, provided the focus of Western Ukrainian nation-
alism.
A border region on the frontier with Russia, Galicia became a battleground
when war began in 1914. As Austro-Hungarian defeat neared in October 1918,
Western Ukrainian nationalists organized to oppose Polish and Romanian claims
on the region. On 14 November 1918 nationalist leaders declared the independ-
ence of Galicia. Romanian troops invaded the new state to occupy the south-
eastern region of Bukovina, but a hastily organized national army repulsed the
Poles in 1919. Threatened on all sides, the Western Ukrainians voted for union
with newly independent Ukraine despite vigorous opposition to the union on
religious and cultural grounds. After the Soviet occupation of central and eastern
Ukraine, Polish troops overran the region during the Polish-Soviet War in 1919.
622
WESTERN UKRAINIA
The Paris Peace Conference, convened after World War I, citing religious af-
finities, assigned most of Galicia to Poland.
The Soviets, as part of the secret Nazi-Soviet pact signed in 1939, occupied
the eastern provinces of Poland in November 1939 and in 1940 took Bukovina
from Romania. The region’s ties to Rome and the West provoked severe re-
pression, with over a million Western Ukrainians killed or deported, including
all those with the smooth hands of the intellectual.
In June 1941 the Nazis launched an invasion of their Soviet ally, and, as
Soviet authority collapsed, Western Ukrainian nationalists emerged from hiding
to take control of the region. On 30 June 1941 the nationalists declared Western
Ukrainia an independent state, but the Nazis ignored the proclamation and oc-
cupied the region. The Germans suppressed the national government and sent
the region’s leaders to concentration camps. Separated from the eastern Ukraine
and eventually promoted as an ally in the Nazis’ anti-Communist crusade, many
Western Ukrainians joined the Germans to fight the hated Soviets.
Retaken by the Red Army in 1944, another half million Western Ukrainians
faced deportation or imprisonment between 1945 and 1949. Stalin accused the
entire Uniate Catholic population, including the Metropolitan of Lwiw, of col-
laboration with the Nazis. Forced to renounce its ties to Rome, the Uniate
Church was absorbed by the official Russian Orthodox Church. While Russian
Orthodoxy received state subsidies, Ukrainian Uniate Catholic priests, nuns, and
laymen filled Stalin’s slave labor camps.
The church, forced underground, became a center of clandestine Western
Ukrainian nationalism from the 1950s to the liberalization of the late 1980s.
The Uniate Church functioned openly after 1987 and received official sanction
in 1988. The legalization of the church opened bitter disputes between the Un-
iates and Orthodox over church properties confiscated in 1946, the controversy
becoming part of the growing rift between the strongly nationalist Western
Ukraine and the traditionally pro-Russian central and eastern regions.
Ukrainian independence, enthusiastically supported in the western provinces,
achieved during the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, temporarily
submerged the east-west rifts. In the 1990s economic hardships exacerbated the
split between the two halves of the country, the nationalists versus the unionists
of eastern Ukraine seeking renewed ties with Russia. In Ukrainian presidential
elections in July 1994, the pro-Russian victor received less than 4% of the vote
in the region, the danger of civil war in Ukraine moving closer. Nationalist
leaders reiterated their readiness to go it alone and to suffer the initial hardships
of independence.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Armstrong, John A. Ukrainian Nationalism. 1990.
Markovits, Andrei, and Frank E. Sipyn. Nation Building and the Politics of Nationalism:
Essays on Austrian Galicia. 1982.
Ramet, Pedro. Cross and Commissar: The Politics of Religion in Eastern Europe and
the U.S.S.R. 1987.
Sullivant, R. S. Soviet Policies in the Ukraine, 1917–1957. 1962.
MAJOR NATIONAL GROUPS: (95e) Western Ukrainian 77%, Polish 7%,
Russian 2%, Moldovan 1.5%, other Ukrainian. MAJOR LANGUAGES: Ukrain-
ian, Polish, Russian. MAJOR RELIGIONS: (95e) Uniate Catholic 64%, Ukrain-
ian Orthodox 10%, Roman Catholic 8%, Protestant 3%, Russian Orthodox.
MAJOR CITIES: (95e) Lwiw (Lvov) 850,000 (1,026,000), Cernivci (Chernov-
tsy) 284,000, Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankovsk) 270,000, Ternopil (Ternopol)
234,000,
Drohobych
(Drogobych)
106,000,
Cervonohrad
(Chervonograd)
79,000 (118,000), Kalus (Kalush) 71,000, Kolomyja (Kolomyya) 70,000, Stryj
(Stry) 66,000, Boryslav (Borislav) 48,000 (94,000).
GEOGRAPHY: AREA: 22,329 sq.mi.-57,847 sq.km. LOCATION: Western
Ukrainia occupies a flat plain, traversed by the Dniestr River and its tributaries,
rising to the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine. POLITICAL
STATUS: Western Ukrainia has no official status; the region, the historic region
of Galicia, forms the Ukrainian oblasts of Lwiw, Cernivci, Ivano-Frankivs, and
Ternopil.
INDEPENDENCE DECLARED: 14 November 1918; 30 June 1941.
FLAG: The Western Ukrainian flag, the flag of the national movement, is a
horizontal bicolor of red over black. OTHER FLAG(S): The historic flag of
Galicia, used by several Western Ukrainian nationalist organizations, is a hori-
zontal bicolor of red over green.
PEOPLE: The Western Ukrainians are an East Slav people, ethnically part
WESTERN UKRAINIA
621
of the Ukrainian nation but historically, culturally, and religiously distinct. The
region’s language, the southwestern dialect of Ukrainian, is quite different from
the Russianized southeastern dialect spoken in Kiev and the eastern provinces.
The Western Ukrainian culture, through centuries of Austrian and Polish rule,
is a Central European culture and is notably free of the strong Russian influences
in the culture of central and eastern Ukraine. The majority of the Western
Ukrainians belong to the Byzantine rite Uniate Catholic church, with an Ortho-
dox minority split between the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, an independent
Ukrainian Orthodox sect banned in 1930, the official Ukrainian Orthodox
Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church.
THE NATION: Populated by East Slav tribes during the Slav migrations in
the sixth century A.D. the region early came under the influence of the non-Slav
peoples to the west. The Slavs of the upper Dniestr River basin became part of
Kievan Rus, the first great East Slav state, in 1054. Within fifty years Kievan
Rus had fragmented into twelve principalities. The most southerly of the prin-
cipalities, Galicia, lay on the frontier between the Latins and Byzantines.
Separated from Russian territory by the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth
century, Galicia eventually came under Tatar rule in 1324. The Poles liberated
and annexed the region in 1349, and in 1386 Galicia became part of the merged
Polish-Lithuanian state. The Roman Catholic Poles, intent on converting the
state’s Orthodox subjects, agreed to a compromise in 1596. The Orthodox
Ukrainians formed a union with Rome and accepted the pope as their spiritual
leader but retained the Byzantine religious rite and their own hierarchy, their
priests preserving the right to marry.
Galicia, with a mixed population of Ukrainians and Poles, became part of
Austria as a result of the first Polish partition in 1772. The southeastern area
around Cernivci, the region of Bukovina, was added to Austrian Galicia three
years later. Better educated and less restricted than the Ukrainians under Russian
rule, the Western Ukrainian culture and language developed separately, influ-
enced by Vienna and Krakow, not Kiev or Moscow.
Lemburg (Lwiw) emerged as the principal center of Ukrainian nationalism in
the Hapsburg Empire in the nineteenth century. The Uniate Church, closely tied
to Western Ukrainian culture, provided the focus of Western Ukrainian nation-
alism.
A border region on the frontier with Russia, Galicia became a battleground
when war began in 1914. As Austro-Hungarian defeat neared in October 1918,
Western Ukrainian nationalists organized to oppose Polish and Romanian claims
on the region. On 14 November 1918 nationalist leaders declared the independ-
ence of Galicia. Romanian troops invaded the new state to occupy the south-
eastern region of Bukovina, but a hastily organized national army repulsed the
Poles in 1919. Threatened on all sides, the Western Ukrainians voted for union
with newly independent Ukraine despite vigorous opposition to the union on
religious and cultural grounds. After the Soviet occupation of central and eastern
Ukraine, Polish troops overran the region during the Polish-Soviet War in 1919.
622
WESTERN UKRAINIA
The Paris Peace Conference, convened after World War I, citing religious af-
finities, assigned most of Galicia to Poland.
The Soviets, as part of the secret Nazi-Soviet pact signed in 1939, occupied
the eastern provinces of Poland in November 1939 and in 1940 took Bukovina
from Romania. The region’s ties to Rome and the West provoked severe re-
pression, with over a million Western Ukrainians killed or deported, including
all those with the smooth hands of the intellectual.
In June 1941 the Nazis launched an invasion of their Soviet ally, and, as
Soviet authority collapsed, Western Ukrainian nationalists emerged from hiding
to take control of the region. On 30 June 1941 the nationalists declared Western
Ukrainia an independent state, but the Nazis ignored the proclamation and oc-
cupied the region. The Germans suppressed the national government and sent
the region’s leaders to concentration camps. Separated from the eastern Ukraine
and eventually promoted as an ally in the Nazis’ anti-Communist crusade, many
Western Ukrainians joined the Germans to fight the hated Soviets.
Retaken by the Red Army in 1944, another half million Western Ukrainians
faced deportation or imprisonment between 1945 and 1949. Stalin accused the
entire Uniate Catholic population, including the Metropolitan of Lwiw, of col-
laboration with the Nazis. Forced to renounce its ties to Rome, the Uniate
Church was absorbed by the official Russian Orthodox Church. While Russian
Orthodoxy received state subsidies, Ukrainian Uniate Catholic priests, nuns, and
laymen filled Stalin’s slave labor camps.
The church, forced underground, became a center of clandestine Western
Ukrainian nationalism from the 1950s to the liberalization of the late 1980s.
The Uniate Church functioned openly after 1987 and received official sanction
in 1988. The legalization of the church opened bitter disputes between the Un-
iates and Orthodox over church properties confiscated in 1946, the controversy
becoming part of the growing rift between the strongly nationalist Western
Ukraine and the traditionally pro-Russian central and eastern regions.
Ukrainian independence, enthusiastically supported in the western provinces,
achieved during the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, temporarily
submerged the east-west rifts. In the 1990s economic hardships exacerbated the
split between the two halves of the country, the nationalists versus the unionists
of eastern Ukraine seeking renewed ties with Russia. In Ukrainian presidential
elections in July 1994, the pro-Russian victor received less than 4% of the vote
in the region, the danger of civil war in Ukraine moving closer. Nationalist
leaders reiterated their readiness to go it alone and to suffer the initial hardships
of independence.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Armstrong, John A. Ukrainian Nationalism. 1990.
Markovits, Andrei, and Frank E. Sipyn. Nation Building and the Politics of Nationalism:
Essays on Austrian Galicia. 1982.
Ramet, Pedro. Cross and Commissar: The Politics of Religion in Eastern Europe and
the U.S.S.R. 1987.
Sullivant, R. S. Soviet Policies in the Ukraine, 1917–1957. 1962.
Kanem-Bornu is really intriguing since I can't find anything on a modern independence movement.
@Thon Taddeo I thought the only country who tried to separate in LATAM was Yucatan and Southern Brazil. What does it say about Santa Cruz? Because so far I only found about an autonomy referendum.
A map I found on r/imaginarymaps.
The Volga Germans haven't been a thing for decades at that point, it doesn't make any sense to include it. Same with Manchuria, whose Manchu population hardly reaches 5-10%.
A map I found on r/imaginarymaps.
Also, why Transylvania? I could understand Székeliland, but not the whole of Transylvania.