Wow, thanks! I do try to mull over the borders a lot. Tiring but it has an odd meditative quality to it.
Barry Bull
Donor
Allow me to derail a bit, but hopefully your repertoire of material on IR has grown beyond the Caspian Report. Its approach to IR is, perhaps, too restricted to a mostly geopolitics viewpoint.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialS.../metaquestion_is_the_youtube_channel_caspian/
If the allegation about its link to STRARFOR is correct, then its reliability would decrease as STRARFOR is not well-established in IR community.
https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...-is-wikileaks-for-taking-it-seriously/253681/
Ah I see. I have been trying to expand my repertoire, as you put it, though I'm lost on what sources or authors to start with. Any suggestions? Especially on the middle east?
Barry Bull
Donor
Most online source are just not good, esp. the youtube stuff which tend to simplify things too much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
Good as general reference, very heavily moderated which ensure quality answers.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com One of the best, but need to registered to get 1 article each month. Try to look for it in your local library.
https://foreignpolicy.com One of the practitioner focused, less academic journals as many government figures used it as a place to announce policy intentions. One can get 3 free article each month.
http://www.e-ir.info
the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics, gives you an idea on how one study for IR
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=3320&openaccess=true
You can find many the open access IR journals here. Pick one that deals with your interested area.
German Africa in 1930: iTWoD
Surprise map! Another of my cached WIPs I worked on in late Summer that I've polished up with an hour or two of work. I'm still working on-and-off for TL-172 and others, so watch out for that.
There is no law in Africa—only race. Your lot in life is determined by the colour of your skin. At the top of African society are the Germanic elites both German-born and British-born. Their loyal servants are black Christians, known as “granted citizenry”, who compensate for the “inherent barbarism” of their race by civilizing and Christianizing inferior blacks. At the bottom are the “uncivilized citizenry”: Muslims, pagans and “Satan-worshippers” whose cultures are marked for deconstruction.
The largest and most profitable of these colonies is Kongo. Kongo had been under sadistic Belgian rule little over a decade ago, and Germany had inherited a culled, traumatized populace. The industrialists and bankers of Europe had had to contend with rising wages and sweeping social progress across the continent: safety standards, maximum working hours, worker’s welfare. All these took away from profits, which stopped the mines and cut off the flow of capital. To remedy this unacceptable decrease in German productivity, the Kongolese would just have to make up for it and work harder in the stead of their white betters. The Kongo people work in slavelike conditions, toiling in countless mines and manufactories day and night. The only escape is to join the army and aid in the suppression of their compatriots.
Second in line for the infamous title that is “Model Colony” lies further North, in German Westafrika. Formed from the remnants of British Nigeria and French Niger, the colony had long been divided between an Islamic North and Christian South. The Islamic Hausa and Fulanis have most petulantly enjoyed disrupting the supply chain of resources, hurting worldwide economic stability more than once. It was hence that the Westafrikan elites devised the caste system to be implemented across Africa, inspired by their research on the British Raj. The colony is embroiled in a state of constant war, and the Muslims of the area have found their zealously Christian compatriots just as terrifying as the white man.
Sklavenküste, or “Slave Coast” is by far the worst Germany could offer. Once upon a time, it had been named the “Gold coast” in reference to the Ashanti Empire’s greatest export. Now, it is named for its primary export in the 20th Century. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his merry band of reactionary aristocrats had wisely approved of Westafrika’s caste system as the first amongst the great innovations in racial-engineering, and enhanced it for Sklavenküste. As such, the colony is planned to become Africa’s first white-majority region. To accomplish this, the uncivilized citizenry are to be worked to the death; the granted citizenry are to become the Reich’s crack auxiliaries and taskmasters; while the white man is to push ever deeper into the heart of Africa. Humans and subhumans do their duty in Sklavenküste, as God would certainly have wanted.
Apologists claim that it was the German victory in the Great War that created an overwhelming sense of arrogance and superiority. They claim that German Africa before the Great War had been a hospitable land—these are lies. In Namibia, the nightmare of colonial rule had been in full force since the 19th Century. German pride had been stung by native rebels in the area, and 14,000 troops arrived to lay down the Kaiser’s law. A full half of the Herero and Namaqua peoples were massacred to leave hundreds of thousands dead. Today, Namibia is quiet and cleansed of unrest, known most as the prime exporter of beef to Europe.
The only bright spot upon this suffering mass of humanity is Ostafrika, where the colonial experiment is at its most humane. The Askaris of East Africa were amongst the Reich’s most loyal troops, having defeated many times their number of Egyptians and Indians in the Great War. Furthermore, they are true people of the book, Muslims who (unlike the West Africans) have not been polluted by indigenous pagan traditions. The Ostafrikans have a genuine admiration for the German homeland, and have adopted many of Germany’s more militaristic traditions and worldview along the years.
Germany, while the undisputed hegemon of Afrika, is by no means the sole power. Even the Kaiser knows that the German Empire was immensely overextended, and that they would have to take this “civilizing” business step by step. In Africa, Portugal has been appointed second fiddle. Lisbon was wooed by promises of completing the “pink map” and fulfilling age old aspirations at imperial glory. Portugal has now broken it’s 400-year alliance to the British and is Bonnie to the Reich’s Clyde.
General Jan Smuts has been elected the newest Prime Minister in South Africa to continue decades of friendship with the “British Empire”. His pro-British position is racked with controversy: ever since the defeat in the Great War, the Empire on which the sun never sets is but a collection of loosely-allied dominions clinging helplessly to Imperial glory. Berlin has been sending out feelers to Pretoria, inviting them to join the ascendant German world system, and many an Afrikaner would very much enjoy joining the winning side.
The native African regimes are somewhat better, if only because they see their subjects as humans rather than dark skinned primates. Egypt has inherited much of the British colonial infrastructure—sections of the Cape-Cairo railway still serve Africa’s greatest land-based trade route, though the Suez Canal was seized by the Germans in the British “peace with honour”. Cairo did find the guts to face up an aggressive Germany by confronting them in the Eastern Sahel, and King Faud I counts himself lucky for dodging the German sledgehammer.
Second in line is Greater Algeria, founded in the wake of Islamic rebellion against Marshal Foch’s Casablanca junta. The Muslims of French Algeria seized power in a Revolution against Foch’s tyrannical rule and have now rallied around orthodox Sunni Islam as the defining trait of their new native Republic. Algeria’s expansionist tendancies are obvious through their rhetoric, spooking Berlin, who condemn this “snuffing out of European civilization” in the strongest terms. A war weary Germany has however decided against invasion.
Liberia is the only Socialist regime upon the continent. The small nation once enjoyed the patronage of their American masters, but as America imploded with ineffective Republican rule, Liberia was left isolated and alone. Ruling Amero-Liberians were powerless, and long-oppressed Afro-Liberians increasingly inspired by the ideals of Marx and Engels sparked a brutal civil war now in it’s second year.
There are of course many other tyrants and despots that lord over Africa: from the tycoons of Somalia to the messiahs of Beta Israel, but you will have to experience that in…The Wake of Desolation.
[FN1]: Title crawl heavily based off Perfidious Albion's work here.
There is no law in Africa—only race. Your lot in life is determined by the colour of your skin. At the top of African society are the Germanic elites both German-born and British-born. Their loyal servants are black Christians, known as “granted citizenry”, who compensate for the “inherent barbarism” of their race by civilizing and Christianizing inferior blacks. At the bottom are the “uncivilized citizenry”: Muslims, pagans and “Satan-worshippers” whose cultures are marked for deconstruction.
The largest and most profitable of these colonies is Kongo. Kongo had been under sadistic Belgian rule little over a decade ago, and Germany had inherited a culled, traumatized populace. The industrialists and bankers of Europe had had to contend with rising wages and sweeping social progress across the continent: safety standards, maximum working hours, worker’s welfare. All these took away from profits, which stopped the mines and cut off the flow of capital. To remedy this unacceptable decrease in German productivity, the Kongolese would just have to make up for it and work harder in the stead of their white betters. The Kongo people work in slavelike conditions, toiling in countless mines and manufactories day and night. The only escape is to join the army and aid in the suppression of their compatriots.
Second in line for the infamous title that is “Model Colony” lies further North, in German Westafrika. Formed from the remnants of British Nigeria and French Niger, the colony had long been divided between an Islamic North and Christian South. The Islamic Hausa and Fulanis have most petulantly enjoyed disrupting the supply chain of resources, hurting worldwide economic stability more than once. It was hence that the Westafrikan elites devised the caste system to be implemented across Africa, inspired by their research on the British Raj. The colony is embroiled in a state of constant war, and the Muslims of the area have found their zealously Christian compatriots just as terrifying as the white man.
Sklavenküste, or “Slave Coast” is by far the worst Germany could offer. Once upon a time, it had been named the “Gold coast” in reference to the Ashanti Empire’s greatest export. Now, it is named for its primary export in the 20th Century. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his merry band of reactionary aristocrats had wisely approved of Westafrika’s caste system as the first amongst the great innovations in racial-engineering, and enhanced it for Sklavenküste. As such, the colony is planned to become Africa’s first white-majority region. To accomplish this, the uncivilized citizenry are to be worked to the death; the granted citizenry are to become the Reich’s crack auxiliaries and taskmasters; while the white man is to push ever deeper into the heart of Africa. Humans and subhumans do their duty in Sklavenküste, as God would certainly have wanted.
Apologists claim that it was the German victory in the Great War that created an overwhelming sense of arrogance and superiority. They claim that German Africa before the Great War had been a hospitable land—these are lies. In Namibia, the nightmare of colonial rule had been in full force since the 19th Century. German pride had been stung by native rebels in the area, and 14,000 troops arrived to lay down the Kaiser’s law. A full half of the Herero and Namaqua peoples were massacred to leave hundreds of thousands dead. Today, Namibia is quiet and cleansed of unrest, known most as the prime exporter of beef to Europe.
The only bright spot upon this suffering mass of humanity is Ostafrika, where the colonial experiment is at its most humane. The Askaris of East Africa were amongst the Reich’s most loyal troops, having defeated many times their number of Egyptians and Indians in the Great War. Furthermore, they are true people of the book, Muslims who (unlike the West Africans) have not been polluted by indigenous pagan traditions. The Ostafrikans have a genuine admiration for the German homeland, and have adopted many of Germany’s more militaristic traditions and worldview along the years.
Germany, while the undisputed hegemon of Afrika, is by no means the sole power. Even the Kaiser knows that the German Empire was immensely overextended, and that they would have to take this “civilizing” business step by step. In Africa, Portugal has been appointed second fiddle. Lisbon was wooed by promises of completing the “pink map” and fulfilling age old aspirations at imperial glory. Portugal has now broken it’s 400-year alliance to the British and is Bonnie to the Reich’s Clyde.
General Jan Smuts has been elected the newest Prime Minister in South Africa to continue decades of friendship with the “British Empire”. His pro-British position is racked with controversy: ever since the defeat in the Great War, the Empire on which the sun never sets is but a collection of loosely-allied dominions clinging helplessly to Imperial glory. Berlin has been sending out feelers to Pretoria, inviting them to join the ascendant German world system, and many an Afrikaner would very much enjoy joining the winning side.
The native African regimes are somewhat better, if only because they see their subjects as humans rather than dark skinned primates. Egypt has inherited much of the British colonial infrastructure—sections of the Cape-Cairo railway still serve Africa’s greatest land-based trade route, though the Suez Canal was seized by the Germans in the British “peace with honour”. Cairo did find the guts to face up an aggressive Germany by confronting them in the Eastern Sahel, and King Faud I counts himself lucky for dodging the German sledgehammer.
Second in line is Greater Algeria, founded in the wake of Islamic rebellion against Marshal Foch’s Casablanca junta. The Muslims of French Algeria seized power in a Revolution against Foch’s tyrannical rule and have now rallied around orthodox Sunni Islam as the defining trait of their new native Republic. Algeria’s expansionist tendancies are obvious through their rhetoric, spooking Berlin, who condemn this “snuffing out of European civilization” in the strongest terms. A war weary Germany has however decided against invasion.
Liberia is the only Socialist regime upon the continent. The small nation once enjoyed the patronage of their American masters, but as America imploded with ineffective Republican rule, Liberia was left isolated and alone. Ruling Amero-Liberians were powerless, and long-oppressed Afro-Liberians increasingly inspired by the ideals of Marx and Engels sparked a brutal civil war now in it’s second year.
There are of course many other tyrants and despots that lord over Africa: from the tycoons of Somalia to the messiahs of Beta Israel, but you will have to experience that in…The Wake of Desolation.
[FN1]: Title crawl heavily based off Perfidious Albion's work here.
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Oh no, it doesn't last until 1980. Systematic deconstruction of cultures combined with religious extremism is just too much for the native Africans to bear. Germany's domination of Africa, her ruthless exploitation of her European neighbours, or her attempts at reaching into Asia and the Americas doesn't make her any friends either. Germany and her colonies are going to have a very rough '50s.
As for Israel, it's the typical Jewish Uganda, but with a dose of Africa's crazies. "King Solomon I Gideon" has created a mediaeval state, built the third temple and kicked out the British. The Ugandans are unhappier about the relationship than OTL's Palestinians.
All in the name of refuting Wherabooism.
Eurasia
Should start using this thread again...
Questions welcome, of course.
---
One Nation.
One Spirit.
One Eurasia.
The first iterations of world Government came in the aftermath of humanity’s first brush with industrial war—the Great War of 1914. This traumatic experience saw thousands driven to their deaths in endless meat-grinders, leaving behind a “lost generation”, broken and battered by the hor rors they saw on corpse-ridden frontlines colored a scarlet red in blood. The response of the global powers was to establish a “League of Nations”, an entity designed to prevent the wars the powers of Europe had just gone through.
By the tail end of the 26th Century, the peoples of Earth had chewed through 7 world Governments, none of them lasting for any longer than a century, and each more toothless than her predecessor. America’s fell from grace together with the prematurely named “United Nations”; China’s fell from grace with her “World Congress”; and Nigeria fell from grace with the “Continental Assembly”. The world had grown tired of these weak-willed agencies and saw through the utopian proclamations of the ruling hyper-power. It had been long accepted that these world governments would seek only to promote the interests of their hyper-power benefactors. Realpolitik, it seemed was the only true constant in a changing millennium.
Nevertheless, there were forces at work: so far, despite all the saber-rattling, countries had been of sound enough mind to avoid full-blown nuclear conflict. The revolving door of rising and falling powers continued in much the same way it had since the Cold War. The “long peace” between the great powers from the Second World War onwards allowed economic interdependence to thrive, creating an ever-evolving, ever-reforming and ever-deteriorating economic system that crisscrossed the globe through a billion transactions a day. Peace created growth, growth whose primary effect—demographically speaking—had come in the creation of megacities across the globe. The Shanghai, Kanto and Mumbai mega-clusters were the first to become politically dominant over their “parent” nation-states, followed by a long string of successors and emulators.
Megacities grew to have a strong resentment of their parent nation-state. Cities would have to contribute what many viewed as extortionate amounts of wealth to the nation, which was then redistributed to the countryside for rural development. Rural areas would provide in return, food and natural resources (again, for what many viewed as extortionate prices). On top of that, nation-states would demand cities divulge sums of money and manpower for expensive colonial wars across the solar system to secure far-flung geopolitical goals which many city-dwellers saw little point in.
There was a realization amongst many that something would give: the growing political independence of megacities would need to be established some way or another in a show of force—and true to the predictions of so many, that came in the 24th Century, as New York began her war of independence from the United States. While this war ended with a coalition of Euro-American states hoisting high Europe’s 30 stars above the ruins of the empire state building (a historical monument that millions flocked to before it’s destruction), the conflict spooked many Governments across the globe. A reckoning had come: the concept of the nation-state had been dethroned.
Larger, more robust states like China, India, and Europe weathered the dying days of the nation-state with some degree of calm and morbid acceptance, though skirmishes and conflicts between national and megacity Governments continued to dominate the political scene. Strange enough, the nation-state found their most avid supporters off-world in (relatively) sparsely populated areas like Luna, Mars or Europa. Offworlders believed the nation-state to be their mouthpiece in influencing Earth’s affairs, which then caused immense distrust between Earth and her colonies.
What had been the United States in the 21st Century meanwhile descended into a conflict between the rural-based Federalists—advocates of the continued American state; and urban-based Millerites, followers of the 25th Century philosopher John Miller who advocated America “dissolve herself” from unjust unity as Holy Roman Italy had. America was divided into a patchwork city-states, a prelude to what would come in the remainder of the millennium.
In the 29th Century, the cities of Samarkand, Astana and Kashgar were some of the wealthiest on Earth. The irrigation of the Gobi had created agricultural superpowers in a desert wasteland, slowly supplanting their parent nation-states through overwhelming urban populations. Under the patronage of city elites eager to do away with the bothersome liability that was a rural population, mining and agriculture had been completely automated. There was no longer any need for a rural population.
The nation-states that ruled over these cities: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Uyghrstan respectively—had slowly and naturally withered away, rendered meaningless but as a front for the cities to conduct diplomacy. Together with the nations, national identity had also disappeared in favor of a vaguely defined, increasingly globalized cultural identity. A Kazakh was less likely to call himself a Kazakh than he was a Turk of Turani—some even called themselves Eurasian or humans even.
The Samarkand Accords between these 3 city states is remembered the first diplomatic document approved and executed without the oversight of the nation state. The accords created direct diplomatic contact between the cities--a diplomatic revolution through and through. The diplomatic revolution spread out from central asia like wildfire, and saw cities across the world adopt the “Samarkand model” to seize control of their rural areas. More often than not, these were not peaceful occurrences. Armies loyal to the nation states, composed of rural militias and offworld loyalist troops (outfitted with power armour to cope with 1G weights) arrived to suppress insurrection, some successfully, others less so.
The cities that signed the Samarkand Accords took full advantage of this period of social upheaval across the globe. Many of these cities desired above all else, economic prosperity. The more xenophobic resorted to wars over resources and mercantilist trading policies. In an attempt to maintain the global (and solar) supply chain, the Accord integrated new member states with the stated purpose of emulating the Hanseatic League in protecting the flow of trade across the world in the face of social and political change that now gripped the world. The Accord’s founding members subscribed to Mackinder’s world island theory of a millennia ago. True to Mackinder’s vision, gargantuan trains powered by roaring thorium reactors were now to facilitate trade from one end of Eurasia to another, brining immense benefit to the cities along the way like a silk road with a thousand times the productivity. To enjoy the league’s protection and the privilege of free trade came at the cost of a degree of sovereignty and the abandonment of mercantilism.
Accord states led the charge against nation-state loyalists, quelling (and later “civilizing”) the rural populations of many areas across the world. This revolution would evolve into a long, protracted war between earth and her colonies. Loyalist offworlders periodically launched massive assaults from the moon directly into Earth’s greatest cities, marked by the familiar shriek of landing craft crashing into sprawling cities of hundreds of millions like fallen angels.
This “siege of Earth” cut off Earth from her offworld resources; and cut of the colonies from earth-borne capital, investment and immigration. It was eventually agreed that both alliances leave each other be in a tenuous ceasefire, reinforced by later restrictions on naval tonnage. However, the siege only served to highlight Earth’s need for self-reliance, lest the colonies ever seek to hold Earth’s economy hostage. The Samarkand Accords' message ran clear and true. There was plenty reason for cities across Eurasia to fulfil Mackinder’s prophecy.
In 3070, representatives from 356 induvidual cities gathered in Samarkand to witness the dawn of a new era: the establishment of the Confederation of Man, more commonly referred to by her popular geographic designation—Eurasia. Eurasia’s members are a patchwork of varying cities, from dynastic kingdoms to plutocracies; from religious orders to the rare Democracy—some even have experimental AI-run Governments, though many are sceptical about the feasibility of handing over absolute power to a glorified calculator. This variation has necessitated a complex system of checks and balances so no great city overextends her power; or that no minor city is subsumed and destroyed.
There is a natural order to the preminence and subservience of each city. There are those who command moral authority: the personal domains of the Pope, Mahdi-Caliph and Grand Lama respectively, who have the right to nominate one of the city’s current rulers to become President of the Confederation. There are those who command respect, the 21 greatest cities of the Confederation whose own governor-electors vote for the next President of the Confederation. The remainder of the cities are then organized into 15 Precincts, comparable to the Holy Roman Empire’s circles, who then organize the payment of the confederal tithe to the Central Government in Samarkand. Together with the numerous affiliated states, solar colonies, regional assemblies, and nomadic enclaves, the Confederation has evolved into a gargantuan beast packed to the brim with contradictions and plagued by division.
Culture in Eurasia, as with any super-state is by necessity globalized and much more homogenous than her 3rd Millennium ancestors. The dominance of a Anglo-American culture has long come and gone (and came again and gone again, but that’s a long, dour 3rd Millennium story for another time). Thanks to Central Asia’s irrigation and subsequent population explosion, a Turkic-derived culture has come to dominate the world. The pre-eminence of Turkic-derived polities in the creation of Eurasia has also helped things somewhat. What constitutes “Turkic” is rather vaguely defined, with many claiming that Persians or Hindustanis were Turkic since time immemorial, though such beliefs are confined to the historically illiterate. The truth of the matter is that Indian and Persian cultures have long since merged with Turkic culture through waves of Northwards immigration along the millennia. Modernized versions of the sari are as popular in downtown Delihi as they are in the Fergana Valley and the streets of Berlin; while the 4th Millenium’s standardized version of Turkish loves to use Farsi and Hindi loan words—perhaps with the occasional Russian mixed in.
Opposing Turkish pre-eminence in Eurasia is West African culture. West African culture (primarly based around today’s Ghana and Nigeria) has grown to be the spiritual successor to African-American (and to some extent, Anglo-American) cultural traditions. Rapping has survived, though English rapping has not, falling in favour of a French-English-Yoruba pidgin which emerged as Africa’s lingua franca in the 27th Century. Names like Jay Z and Eminem are celebrated in art academies as the pinnacle of the 21st Century’s “Golden age of rapping”. Many Africans look back to the Pax Americana with a certain degree of fondness and reminiscence.
East Asia meanwhile has very interestingly become the last holdout of the (White) Anglo-American tradition, and continues to be the home to Earth’s most faithful followers of the Second Baptist Church—though the innate Conservatism has largely been washed away by the sheer force of social changes along the centuries. The President of the Mormon Church is a Viet born and raised in Hanoi, so take that as you will.
The dichotomy between “religiousness” and “spirituality” has only grown with time. There was a sharp drop in religious attendance during the Siege of Earth, and for the first time in history, religious people form a minority of the world population. In contrast, so called “ways of life” like Taoism or Neo-Arabic Paganism has enjoyed a grand resurgence onto the world’s stage. One can be a perfectly faithful Catholic and still seek to live in harmony with the natural world like a Taoist; and one can be a ardent, firey imam who travels Himalayan monasteries in search of enlightenment from the Buddha. All in all, there is a definite move away from organized religion towards disorganized spirituality and polytheism, another product of cultural globalization and the exchange of ideas.
Unfortunately, 3rd Millenium commercialization has left a mark on spirituality. With the rise of spirituality, one can find God anywhere without the aid of a organized religion. This has lowered the bar for what is considered worship-worthy, and what sources are to be trusted when looking to revive ancient prayer rites. There are Greek pagans of the 4th Millennium who whole-heartedly believe Disney’s Hercules was a herald of the coming pagan revival, and any evidence to the contrary is buried deep inside the catacombs of the world’s most ancient libraries. The Norse Gods haven’t fared much better. Academics who known of the folly of the neo-pagans around them are struggling to explain to the world that Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is in fact, a work of pure fiction.
The age-old belief that technology will continue improving until time immemorial has sadly been proven wrong. Technology has hit somewhat of a slump in recent years, most particularly articificial intelligence, which can talk, can walk, but can’t do these without a complex code instructing it on how to respond to specific prompts. People said that AI was a long way from sentience in the 21st Century. It still is.
Space travel has made several key breakthroughs. The first solar sailing ships have been created, tested, and await only the Martian Confederation’s go-signal to start mankind’s first interstellar mission. Intra-solar travel is certainly feasible, and even readily available to the average middle-class salaryman off to work on the colonies. The tourism industry on the other hand…Earth needs time to mend bridges with her colonies before the average citizen will be happy to travel to worlds that had actively sought to starve them only a century ago. Space travel’s less glamorous ancestors: planetary travel has made a big comeback with chilly relations between Earth and her colonies. Trains have become more efficient than maritime travel, and can transport more goods at a much faster speed.
Military doctrine and technology have changed somewhat, though the relics of the post World War 2 system persists. Energy-based weapons are now the norm, but personal shielding has proven too expensive. All soldiers are equipped with exoskeletons and power armour, though the predicted automation of warfare never occurred. AI serves only as a complement to the necessary wit of a human operator within exoskeletons. Europan military hardware companies pioneer the power armour field with exceedingly tanky designs—Europan soldiers really should just start becoming mecha pilots with how ridiculously bulky their suits are getting. A focus on raw punching power has resulted in a military doctrine based around a strong frontline capable of trench warfare, combined with a hard-hitting strike team able to slice through enemy weak points as if they were 40k Space Marines.
Healthcare is progressing along nicely. Human lifespans have doubled to 170 years old, with on average 150 of those years being spent fit and healthy. The stereotypical sight of bedridden old people is certainly no inevitability, and suffered by a minority of the unfortunate who contract a deadly illness in their age. Nanobots capable of repairing human tissue are soon to be mass produced, but can only be installed in children from birth, not halfway through their lives.
All in all, one would be disappointed with the lack of progress. No, we can’t travel the stars (yet); no, flying cars aren’t efficient; no, robots can’t take over the world. Perhaps it was the 2nd Millenium that was the odd one out.
Questions welcome, of course.
---
One Nation.
One Spirit.
One Eurasia.
By the tail end of the 26th Century, the peoples of Earth had chewed through 7 world Governments, none of them lasting for any longer than a century, and each more toothless than her predecessor. America’s fell from grace together with the prematurely named “United Nations”; China’s fell from grace with her “World Congress”; and Nigeria fell from grace with the “Continental Assembly”. The world had grown tired of these weak-willed agencies and saw through the utopian proclamations of the ruling hyper-power. It had been long accepted that these world governments would seek only to promote the interests of their hyper-power benefactors. Realpolitik, it seemed was the only true constant in a changing millennium.
Nevertheless, there were forces at work: so far, despite all the saber-rattling, countries had been of sound enough mind to avoid full-blown nuclear conflict. The revolving door of rising and falling powers continued in much the same way it had since the Cold War. The “long peace” between the great powers from the Second World War onwards allowed economic interdependence to thrive, creating an ever-evolving, ever-reforming and ever-deteriorating economic system that crisscrossed the globe through a billion transactions a day. Peace created growth, growth whose primary effect—demographically speaking—had come in the creation of megacities across the globe. The Shanghai, Kanto and Mumbai mega-clusters were the first to become politically dominant over their “parent” nation-states, followed by a long string of successors and emulators.
Megacities grew to have a strong resentment of their parent nation-state. Cities would have to contribute what many viewed as extortionate amounts of wealth to the nation, which was then redistributed to the countryside for rural development. Rural areas would provide in return, food and natural resources (again, for what many viewed as extortionate prices). On top of that, nation-states would demand cities divulge sums of money and manpower for expensive colonial wars across the solar system to secure far-flung geopolitical goals which many city-dwellers saw little point in.
There was a realization amongst many that something would give: the growing political independence of megacities would need to be established some way or another in a show of force—and true to the predictions of so many, that came in the 24th Century, as New York began her war of independence from the United States. While this war ended with a coalition of Euro-American states hoisting high Europe’s 30 stars above the ruins of the empire state building (a historical monument that millions flocked to before it’s destruction), the conflict spooked many Governments across the globe. A reckoning had come: the concept of the nation-state had been dethroned.
Larger, more robust states like China, India, and Europe weathered the dying days of the nation-state with some degree of calm and morbid acceptance, though skirmishes and conflicts between national and megacity Governments continued to dominate the political scene. Strange enough, the nation-state found their most avid supporters off-world in (relatively) sparsely populated areas like Luna, Mars or Europa. Offworlders believed the nation-state to be their mouthpiece in influencing Earth’s affairs, which then caused immense distrust between Earth and her colonies.
What had been the United States in the 21st Century meanwhile descended into a conflict between the rural-based Federalists—advocates of the continued American state; and urban-based Millerites, followers of the 25th Century philosopher John Miller who advocated America “dissolve herself” from unjust unity as Holy Roman Italy had. America was divided into a patchwork city-states, a prelude to what would come in the remainder of the millennium.
In the 29th Century, the cities of Samarkand, Astana and Kashgar were some of the wealthiest on Earth. The irrigation of the Gobi had created agricultural superpowers in a desert wasteland, slowly supplanting their parent nation-states through overwhelming urban populations. Under the patronage of city elites eager to do away with the bothersome liability that was a rural population, mining and agriculture had been completely automated. There was no longer any need for a rural population.
The nation-states that ruled over these cities: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Uyghrstan respectively—had slowly and naturally withered away, rendered meaningless but as a front for the cities to conduct diplomacy. Together with the nations, national identity had also disappeared in favor of a vaguely defined, increasingly globalized cultural identity. A Kazakh was less likely to call himself a Kazakh than he was a Turk of Turani—some even called themselves Eurasian or humans even.
The Samarkand Accords between these 3 city states is remembered the first diplomatic document approved and executed without the oversight of the nation state. The accords created direct diplomatic contact between the cities--a diplomatic revolution through and through. The diplomatic revolution spread out from central asia like wildfire, and saw cities across the world adopt the “Samarkand model” to seize control of their rural areas. More often than not, these were not peaceful occurrences. Armies loyal to the nation states, composed of rural militias and offworld loyalist troops (outfitted with power armour to cope with 1G weights) arrived to suppress insurrection, some successfully, others less so.
The cities that signed the Samarkand Accords took full advantage of this period of social upheaval across the globe. Many of these cities desired above all else, economic prosperity. The more xenophobic resorted to wars over resources and mercantilist trading policies. In an attempt to maintain the global (and solar) supply chain, the Accord integrated new member states with the stated purpose of emulating the Hanseatic League in protecting the flow of trade across the world in the face of social and political change that now gripped the world. The Accord’s founding members subscribed to Mackinder’s world island theory of a millennia ago. True to Mackinder’s vision, gargantuan trains powered by roaring thorium reactors were now to facilitate trade from one end of Eurasia to another, brining immense benefit to the cities along the way like a silk road with a thousand times the productivity. To enjoy the league’s protection and the privilege of free trade came at the cost of a degree of sovereignty and the abandonment of mercantilism.
Accord states led the charge against nation-state loyalists, quelling (and later “civilizing”) the rural populations of many areas across the world. This revolution would evolve into a long, protracted war between earth and her colonies. Loyalist offworlders periodically launched massive assaults from the moon directly into Earth’s greatest cities, marked by the familiar shriek of landing craft crashing into sprawling cities of hundreds of millions like fallen angels.
This “siege of Earth” cut off Earth from her offworld resources; and cut of the colonies from earth-borne capital, investment and immigration. It was eventually agreed that both alliances leave each other be in a tenuous ceasefire, reinforced by later restrictions on naval tonnage. However, the siege only served to highlight Earth’s need for self-reliance, lest the colonies ever seek to hold Earth’s economy hostage. The Samarkand Accords' message ran clear and true. There was plenty reason for cities across Eurasia to fulfil Mackinder’s prophecy.
In 3070, representatives from 356 induvidual cities gathered in Samarkand to witness the dawn of a new era: the establishment of the Confederation of Man, more commonly referred to by her popular geographic designation—Eurasia. Eurasia’s members are a patchwork of varying cities, from dynastic kingdoms to plutocracies; from religious orders to the rare Democracy—some even have experimental AI-run Governments, though many are sceptical about the feasibility of handing over absolute power to a glorified calculator. This variation has necessitated a complex system of checks and balances so no great city overextends her power; or that no minor city is subsumed and destroyed.
There is a natural order to the preminence and subservience of each city. There are those who command moral authority: the personal domains of the Pope, Mahdi-Caliph and Grand Lama respectively, who have the right to nominate one of the city’s current rulers to become President of the Confederation. There are those who command respect, the 21 greatest cities of the Confederation whose own governor-electors vote for the next President of the Confederation. The remainder of the cities are then organized into 15 Precincts, comparable to the Holy Roman Empire’s circles, who then organize the payment of the confederal tithe to the Central Government in Samarkand. Together with the numerous affiliated states, solar colonies, regional assemblies, and nomadic enclaves, the Confederation has evolved into a gargantuan beast packed to the brim with contradictions and plagued by division.
Opposing Turkish pre-eminence in Eurasia is West African culture. West African culture (primarly based around today’s Ghana and Nigeria) has grown to be the spiritual successor to African-American (and to some extent, Anglo-American) cultural traditions. Rapping has survived, though English rapping has not, falling in favour of a French-English-Yoruba pidgin which emerged as Africa’s lingua franca in the 27th Century. Names like Jay Z and Eminem are celebrated in art academies as the pinnacle of the 21st Century’s “Golden age of rapping”. Many Africans look back to the Pax Americana with a certain degree of fondness and reminiscence.
East Asia meanwhile has very interestingly become the last holdout of the (White) Anglo-American tradition, and continues to be the home to Earth’s most faithful followers of the Second Baptist Church—though the innate Conservatism has largely been washed away by the sheer force of social changes along the centuries. The President of the Mormon Church is a Viet born and raised in Hanoi, so take that as you will.
Unfortunately, 3rd Millenium commercialization has left a mark on spirituality. With the rise of spirituality, one can find God anywhere without the aid of a organized religion. This has lowered the bar for what is considered worship-worthy, and what sources are to be trusted when looking to revive ancient prayer rites. There are Greek pagans of the 4th Millennium who whole-heartedly believe Disney’s Hercules was a herald of the coming pagan revival, and any evidence to the contrary is buried deep inside the catacombs of the world’s most ancient libraries. The Norse Gods haven’t fared much better. Academics who known of the folly of the neo-pagans around them are struggling to explain to the world that Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is in fact, a work of pure fiction.
Space travel has made several key breakthroughs. The first solar sailing ships have been created, tested, and await only the Martian Confederation’s go-signal to start mankind’s first interstellar mission. Intra-solar travel is certainly feasible, and even readily available to the average middle-class salaryman off to work on the colonies. The tourism industry on the other hand…Earth needs time to mend bridges with her colonies before the average citizen will be happy to travel to worlds that had actively sought to starve them only a century ago. Space travel’s less glamorous ancestors: planetary travel has made a big comeback with chilly relations between Earth and her colonies. Trains have become more efficient than maritime travel, and can transport more goods at a much faster speed.
Military doctrine and technology have changed somewhat, though the relics of the post World War 2 system persists. Energy-based weapons are now the norm, but personal shielding has proven too expensive. All soldiers are equipped with exoskeletons and power armour, though the predicted automation of warfare never occurred. AI serves only as a complement to the necessary wit of a human operator within exoskeletons. Europan military hardware companies pioneer the power armour field with exceedingly tanky designs—Europan soldiers really should just start becoming mecha pilots with how ridiculously bulky their suits are getting. A focus on raw punching power has resulted in a military doctrine based around a strong frontline capable of trench warfare, combined with a hard-hitting strike team able to slice through enemy weak points as if they were 40k Space Marines.
Healthcare is progressing along nicely. Human lifespans have doubled to 170 years old, with on average 150 of those years being spent fit and healthy. The stereotypical sight of bedridden old people is certainly no inevitability, and suffered by a minority of the unfortunate who contract a deadly illness in their age. Nanobots capable of repairing human tissue are soon to be mass produced, but can only be installed in children from birth, not halfway through their lives.
All in all, one would be disappointed with the lack of progress. No, we can’t travel the stars (yet); no, flying cars aren’t efficient; no, robots can’t take over the world. Perhaps it was the 2nd Millenium that was the odd one out.
Please don't tell me Hong Kong is a Detroitian slump with old Greater Bay advertisement billboards laying everywhere. Also, not surprised if the 40K fandom has evolved into a legit cult.
Optimistically, Hong Kong might be a nice little oddity where people come to see the semi extinct language of Cantonese.
Pessimistically it might be another district in Hive City Dawan.
Speaking of HK, I felt like you'd like my current project:
I like this I like this alot. But......If russia was ever in that situation Billions would have died in nuclear holocaust, just saying.
what are the 7 world government? and what does the rest of the world look like?I know I haven't been using this thread much-so here's a little something to keep the thread alive. Not a map, but part of an upcoming project I've had in the works for a long time. Feedback greatly desired and appreciated.
Thanks for the comments to my previous maps, and sorry for not responding earlier--I must have skipped over them the last time I checked my alerts.
Thanks for the comments to my previous maps, and sorry for not responding earlier--I must have skipped over them the last time I checked my alerts.
I don't quite remember what I wrote for this scenario, but IMO it could be plausible for anti-missile technology to grow mature enough to severely reduce the threat MAD poses. Or perhaps Russia is much more weaker and aware of her geopolitical situation, which makes Russian leaders simply give up in the face of global intervention.
They are the successive incarnations of the United Nations, toothless proxy organizations through which the reigning global hegemon projects their will.
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New map--I was a bit busy last night so I didn't post it here. Once again thanks to Viralworld, Issac (HowAboutThisForAName), Kapitod and FancyHat for the help on this one.
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In June 1900, the British Empire was at the top of the world. The Empire and her possessions stretched from the frigid Canadian North to the tropical coves of Malaysia. Her people spoke a thousand tongues from Bengali to Gaelic. Her power was unparalleled on each and every continent.
In the first days on the new century, the Asante Empire dared take up arms against the greatest empire the world had ever seen. From the British point of view, the Asante were an upstart kingdom off the coast of West Africa, who now angrily and irrationally claimed that a British representative had sat upon the Golden Stool of the Asantehene, an object of such religious and traditional significance, that it warranted a throne of her own.
While the Asante were powerful by African standards, they were inconsequential in comparison to British might. An expedition was sent off to reclaim the colony, and soon the Asante was reeling from defeat after defeat. Many, including the royal family were resigned to their fate and hid the Golden Stool deep within the jungle lest it be stolen by the British. Others were determined to fight to the death—in particular a singular Akan priestess by the name of Asina Sarpong. Asina invoked the spirit of the ancestors and of the God Anansi, praying for the salvation of the Asante, for the expulsion of the British.
Her prayers were soon answered. News soon came that the wider world had simply disappeared. Everything that lay but one step off the coast of Africa had vanished in a glaring light, and the colonial empires were cut off from their homelands. Each people has a distinct name for the incident—some in praise; others in mourning. But one Mahatma Gandhi would call it the “Exile”, and the name has stuck.
A tumultuous period of transition soon followed. Colonial economies were built upon the exploitation of Africa for the monetary gain of an European colonial elite, and once Europe disappeared together with her titanic demand for resources, the African economy crumbled. Colonial empires contracted and collapsed into chaos and anarchy, leading to the three-decade “Little Dark Age”, where conquest, war, famine and death were all in full display. But this great calamity allowed native states to rise in the ashes of empires. At the turn of the new millennium, a mysterious spider-like deity has returned to the Africa to survey his handiwork, and perhaps stir up yet more mischief…
West Africa’s climate and soil made it well-suited to cash crops, and therefore heavily reliant on exporting goods to Europe. Therefore, it fell furthest and hardest in the days after the Exile.
In Anglo West Africa, British indirect rule had left the pre-colonial political structures intact, and still intact native states quickly rose in rebellion to reestablish the old world order. Nigeria, the Gold Coast and other British possessions collapsed in a wave of colonial unrest, which then spread to the colonies of other European powers. Newly founded native states were unsophisticated at best, and were by design deprived of any sophisticated, modern bureaucracy—instead relying on monarchial edicts as the one and only system of governance. Strangely enough, this was advantageous in the short term, as absolutism was still the most efficient system of governance in times of crisis: in the sense that brilliant monarchs could efficiently lead their kingdoms to success; and incompetent monarchs could efficiently lead their kingdoms to ruin. Political Darwinism took care of the rest.
As far as the Asante were concerned, the Exile also meant the collapse of the British expedition sent to subjugate their kingdom. The strong Asante military staved off further invasions from Africans and Europeans, making them a rare beacon of hope and stability in a dark continent. Asante grew to be a regional hegemon in the 1950s, though her power was inevitably eclipsed by the economic hyperpower Senegal grew to be.
The colonial administration in Nigeria attempted to divide and conquer her subjects by pitting Southern, Christian Igbos against Northern, Hausa Muslims, only to end up inflaming ethnic tensions and expediting the collapse of British rule. The old Sokoto Caliphate was revived in the North; while the South shattered into a thousand fiefdoms. No centralized polity would come out of the mess Nigeria had become until the 21st Century, when a consolidated Yoruba Empire emerged in the West.
On the flip side of the coin, Latin West Africa—in particular Senegal was amongst the best equipped to meet the era’s challenges. Jacobin tradition of centralizing governance had theoretically allowed the colonial subjects of French Senegal to obtain full rights as French citizens. In practice, social barriers remained firmly in place, but as a symbolic gesture, it at least guaranteed a degree of loyalty amongst the populace. There were few rebellions in Senegal, and French rule continued despite frequent shortages and famines.
Supporters of the colonial administration (white elites) and supporters of Senegal’s elected deputies to the rump French Parliament (black elites) were in constant political and economic competition, only ending when the threat of popular revolution ended white minority rule. Blaise Diagne, representative for Senegal in the (defunct) French Parliament, was begrudgingly sworn in as President of the French Fourth Republic, beginning the rule of a black elite.
Majority rule was achieved with little bloodshed. This meant that pre-existing systems of government would also survive the Exile. A centralized Senegalese Government in Dakar could efficiently and effectively guide a transition from cash to food crops, end of famines, and even find time to establish a proper school system. Senegal’s sophisticated economy grew to desire more resources, which prompted wars of conquest along the Niger River, and later colonies along the American coast. The Sokoto Caliphate was subjugated, and the Hausa successor states that sprung up from her corpse became Senegal’s chosen enforcers. Arabic grew to replace French as the language of administration, though a Wolof ethnic identity would remain entrenched in the Senegalese leadership.
By 2000, Wolof culture has established herself along the metropolises of the Niger River. Dakar has long since grown into a beautiful city populated by peoples from across the world speaking a thousand languages. Trade flows down the Niger River from the industrial heartland in Mali to the epicenter of world trade in Dakar. West Africa can now rightfully call itself the most civilized land on Earth.
The Sahara and Sahel had never been easily subjugated lands. European control of the region was nominal, dependent on the loyalty of local tribes, and often of little economic benefit—a sentiment shared by the Ottomans that came before, and the Romans further back. Following the Exile, life simply reverted to the way it was before the Europeans: where tribal loyalties remained the guiding force of politics.
Across the Sahel—in particular in Mauritania, tribes could be clearly divided into the warrior (Hassan) and marabout (Zwaya) tribes. The former was respected for its strength; and the latter for its knowledge. Although these tribes shared a symbiotic relationship, more often than not, the Hassan were at the top of the pecking order. In the chaos of the Exile, the Hassan desired a strong leader, which came in the form of Rabih az-Zubayr, the infamous slave-trader Lord of Bornu. Az-Zubayr had long been waging a war of resistance against the French Empire, and now could unite the Hassans of the Sahel under the banner of anti-European jihad.
In 1905, Az-Zubayr led a great Islamic army of Fulanis, Hausas, Nubians and Maures, composed of everything from spear-wielding militias to az-Zubayr’s own elite slave-musketeers. His conquests reached from the Bight of Biafra to Lake Chad, but his fragile coalition fell apart without the external threat of the Europeans. After fleeing to his stronghold in Bornu, az-Zubayr raised a new host and led it deep into the Egyptian Sudan in 1912, where he allied with the Zwaya tribes to gather legitimacy amongst the Islamic clergy. With support from imams across the Sudan, az-Zubayr crossed into Dafur, declaring himself the second coming of the Mahdi, Caliph and Restorer of Islam. The Egyptians were expelled from the land, and righteousness restored to the realm.
The Caliphate of Islam would continue to expand during the reigns of Ali, Muhammad and Sulayman, the “3 Good Caliphs” who ruled justly. However, by 1378 AH (2000 AD by Christian reckoning), the Caliphate seems to have entered a slow decline, with branches of the House of az-Zubayr quarreling amongst one another. The realm is informally split in 2: the Hakimids, the Arabic branch of the family have established themselves in Sudan; and the Zubayrids, the Nubian branch of the family rules from their ancestral home in Bornu. Today, the Caliphate stands on the brink of Fitna, and the vultures circle around its corpse.
There were others inspired by az-Zubayr’s conquests. Take for example Shaykh Ma al Aynin, a Mauritanian warlord who would unite the Maures to expel the French invaders. The Maures waged numerous jihads against the French and later the Senegalese, but were soon broken and subjugated by superior strength of arms, and ultimately used as pawns in the constant rivalry between Morroco and Senegal. Numerous Tuareg conquerors would also wage copycat conquests across the Sahara, founding dozens of Caliphates, Sultanates or tribal confederacies that periodically threatened the borders of the settled, agricultural empires. Most infamous are the Senussids, a secretive Sufi order that has inducted a great many Tuaregs into their ranks. Most recently, the Senussids have conquered much of Lybia, and seek to emulate az-Zubayr’s dazzling rise.
Even Morroco, a traditional superpower in North Africa, would take after az-Zubayr. Morocco failed to shake off her Franco-Spanish protectors in the early days of the exile, and became a virtual dominion of the deeply entrenched Pied-Noir regime in Algeria. Prince Abdelhafid, brother to the ruling Sultan Abdelaziz fled into the African interior to lead an avenging army of Tuareg slave-soldiers. The Prince found success in adapting hit-and-run cavalry tactics to the 20th Century, and stirred enough chaos to swoop in and expel the Pied-Noirs. Morroco evolved into a fundamentalist Sultanate that the most devout Zubayarid imam would recoil at, and led a brutal campaign of cleansing and conquest across North Africa.
Traveling North from Khartoum to the mouth of the Nile is the Islamic Republic of Egypt. Whilst under the British thumb, Egypt had grown into a prosperous colony second only to India. Following the Exile, British colonial authorities hung on to dear life in the colony through an uneasy alliance with the local nobility and the backing of Ethiopian capital, the latter of which greatly feared anarchy in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Foreign meddling in Egyptian affairs incited Arab nationalism in Egypt, and cumulated in the Revolution of 1920, led by the presiding Sultan against his British handlers. The Sultan was elected President of the Islamic Republic of Egypt, only to be voted (read: couped) out of office by members of the Egyptian military. This weak, coup-prone state has lost several wars to the Caliphate in the South, with her only saving grace being her near monopoly on the spice trade in the Orient.
Central Africa is a vast land that stretches from Congo’s rainforested Northern extremities to the South African border. It is a diverse land populated by thousands of Bantu ethnic groups, divided into hundreds of kingdoms and hundreds more chiefdoms, tribes and nations. French and Belgian conquerors came to dominate the native populace of Central Africa, and set them to work strip-mining their bountiful land. Africans toiled away falling trees and mining copper in slave-like conditions.
The Exile was both a catastrophe and godsend for the people of Central Africa. On one hand, the collapse of the colonial economy had sent the hated taskmasters running, leaving the Africans to their own devices. On the other hand, the collapse of the colonial economy also meant Central Africa had to somehow become agriculturally self-sustainable, a tall order for an economy solely devoted to mining and logging.
For half a century, no proper polities emerged. Colonial rule had demolished the pre-existing kingdoms in the area, with small villages scrambling to find enough food to feed their populace, eventually fighting each other for basic necessities. War created ephemeral, feudal polities which lay claim to the imperial splendor of pre-colonial empires, take for example the Yeke Empire, whose royal family has little connection to her 19th century predecessor except being of the same ethnic group. By 1945, 3 polities have formed in such fashion: the Yeke and Kongo in the former Congo Free State; the Orungu in Gabon; and the Sangha in Ubangi-Shari. Incessant warfare is the driver of centralization, and these new polities have organized bureaucracies, taxation and armies.
Some men had the charisma to take advantage of the humanitarian catastrophe. In 1902, A 70 year old Zanzibari slave trader by the name of Tippu Tip led a host of 200 Hausa mercenaries across Lake Tanganyika and into the Congo, where he would forge the Sultanate of Tanganyika, a slaver’s empire the size of Texas. In the 1950s, Tanganyika’s coffers swelled when she found herself part of a vast trade network of consolidated empires throughout Africa, with buyers as far as the Americas. Through great wealth, Tanganyika’s wealthy Islamic ruling elite transformed their backwater corner of the world into the envy of the continent.
In the 1970s, South Africa and the Islamic Caliphate in Sudan began advancing into the African interior, directly threatening the interests of the Kongo, Yeke and Tanganyika. Under pressure, these 3 empires set aside their differences to face the common foes to their North and South. With cooperation came trade, and with trade came prosperity: the Yeke would supply the minerals, the Tangayika would supply the slaves, and the Kongo would supply the navy to protect precious goods travelling across the seas.
This was different from the age of colonialism, when the resources of Africa were unjustly stolen from their native inhabitants. Now, consolidated kingdoms had much greater bargaining power on the diplomatic arena, and would be treated fairly in the world market. Wood from the Congo Rainforest built Senegalese palaces, and gold from Katanga adorned the necks Morrocan women—these resources do not flow freely, and merchants are obligated to pay a hefty tariff for the privilege of trade. With the coming of the new millennium, the prosperity of Central Africa knows no bounds, and her people look towards the future with anticipation.
At the time of the Exile, South Africa was embroiled in the Second Anglo-Boer War. British reinforcements had arrived to back up their South African allies, and the two Afrikaner Republics of the Orange and Transvaal had been pushed on the brink of collapse. But when the European metropole simply vanished off the face of the earth, both the Boers and British panicked, and fighting ceased in the confusion.
Into that confusion came Cecil Rhodes, (in)famous imperialist stooge. Months ago, the man had pulled a great stunt by placing himself in harm’s way at the Fort of Kimberly, which annoyed British forces, but garnered Rhodes a great deal of prestige. Rhodes also enjoyed much respect amongst Afrikaner voters within South Africa, making him a very important man indeed. This old and sickly patriarch of South Africa called for an immediate ceasefire, and in the following months got Afrikaners and British alike to sign terms of peace. Rhodes rallied the terrified public, demanding the creation of a South African Confederation (SAC) for the duration of the Exile to “keep the peace in the civilized world”, until contact could be re-established with the homeland.
The SAC had power-sharing provisions embedded in her constitution, and in fact functioned much more like a Federation than a Confederation—eligible voters always voted on ethnic lines, with British and Afrikaner representatives pit against each other in the South African Parliament. Nevertheless, as long as the fallout of the Exile persisted, the SAC would remain united in purpose. British and Afrikaners alike found that the abundance of farms and mines South Africa’s economy was built upon had been rendered useless. Unlike the rest of Africa, South Africa actually had an abundance of food, so much so that the price of grain had collapsed in a freefall. To remedy this, crops had to be burnt, or bought up by the Government to artificially increase the price of food.
Another source of income for the SAC was mercenaries. South Africa had an abundance of unemployed veterans following the Boer War. Veterans would be employed by the state, and sent across Africa to serve as elite shock troops in the first years of the Exile. In return for their service, South Africa was not paid in the now worthless pound, but in immigrants, and welcomed White colonists under attack from their African subjects to make South Africa their home, which helped bolster the demographic muscle of the White ruling class. Sometimes, South Africans came, but never left—for example the “pacification” of Namibia (led by Jan Smuts himself), or the “Mozambique intervention”. The most famous of South Africa’s colonial expeditions was in Algeria, when a group of Afrikaner Commandos in the employ of French authorities attempted to capture the escaped Ranavalona III, Queen of Madagascar, only to be cut down by Madagascan loyalists. Ranavalona III would return to Madagascar to great jubilation, and the native Madagascans threw off their French oppressors to welcome the return of the Queen. Later years saw Madagascar grow militaristic and decidedly vengeful at South Africa’s trespasses.
In the ’30s, Cecil Rhodes fell into another bout of sickness. 30 years after the Exile, the prestige Rhodes had was still only thing between the Confederation and Civil War. As one of his last acts, Rhodes would host the Conference of Pretoria, which did away with the façade of unity and formalized the division between Afrikaner and British. The Confederation was split into 11 Federal Republics, with the two Anglo and Afrikaner Republics dominating the 9 others, united only by a common foreign policy. This would at least ease tensions and stave off bloody civil war for a few years more.
Rhode’s successors in both the Afrikaner and British provinces recognized that mercenaries were no longer a valid source of income by the 1930s. They pushed to revitalize the agricultural sector, and ironically enough, ban slavery or unpaid black labor in the process. This did not come from the good hearts of the ruling Whites, but was a pragmatic decision aimed to increase employment amongst low-skilled white workers. The economically disenfranchised blacks would frequently break out into riots, and would then be sent across the ocean blue to African colonies in Australia, India and the Southern Cone. White settlers would meanwhile advance further North into Africa, sparking numerous skirmishes with the kingdoms of the Congo.
By the ‘80s, a emerging liberal middle class seemed to have found their conscience. A strong civil rights movement grew to dominate British South Africa’s political discourse, so powerful that British MPs pushed for the South African Parliament to pass laws allowing the enfranchisement of blacks in British Provinces—provided they pass (unfair) literacy tests. Being protestant and speaking English helped too. Blacks emigrated en masse to British South Africa, where they continued the fight for civil along the decades. Governor Robert Mugabe of North Rhodesia would even go as far as to provoke a skirmish between his home province and neighboring Outer Transvaal.
In 1994, the SAC went to war with Madagascar, which was funding rebellions and fostering pan-Africanism in the Afrikaner Provinces. Afrikaner troops landed in Madagascar expecting an easy conquest, only to be cut to pieces by elite Madagascan emplacements, ending the invasion to the great embarrassment of Afrikaner political leaders. Governor Frederik Willem de Klerk of Greater Transvaal took the fall for this embarrassment, weakening political Conservatism amongst Afrikaners.
Today, the SAC is embarking on a slow reintegration into global economy. The decline of right wing politics has emboldened reformists to reestablish diplomatic relationships with the rest of Africa. Agriculture and mining moves North, while Southern metropolises are growing into prosperous, international cities.
The days following the Exile were of universal pandemonium. Anarchy, infighting, civil war and looting. Africa was consumed in a never-ending orgy of violence as evil men killed until they could kill no more.
This was true in the rainforests of the Congo, where tribes slaughtered entire villages.
This was true in the dunes of the Sahara, where empires wrestled for oases.
But this was not true in the land of Ethiopia, land of lions. Ethiopia had been independent of any foreign power for the duration of the 19th Century, and had fought hard and well to preserve that cherished independence. Under King Menelik II, the Ethiopians beat back the Italian invader, establishing themselves as a well-respected military power in Africa and in Europe. Ethiopia had never had to plant cash crops, or strip mine her natural resources for the benefit of colonial powers. As such, she was relatively capable of self-sufficiency, and lost “only” 10% of her population.
Ethiopia became Africa’s premier power less by her own ability than by default. The Ethiopian talari was only reliable currency on the continent, which forced what remained of the financial world to start revolving around Addis Ababa. In the first days of the Exile, when European colonists still hung desperately to the illusion of normalcy, Ethiopia’s financial credibility meant a great deal. Europeans in Africa were willing to sell off modern arms and industrial equipment to Ethiopia at extortionately low prices, as Ethiopian currency was now worth its weight in gold and more. The Ethiopian army easily expelled the Italian occupiers of Eritrea, and even made their way into Somalia, reestablishing Ethiopian hegemony over the Horn of Africa.
In the coming decades, Ethiopia fell under the rule of great and visionary kings who guided the empire to new heights, and the royal family grew ever more popular in the eyes of the common man. The rise of the Zubayrid Caliphate in Sudan frightened Ethiopians, and Emperor Tewordros III led 4 Crusades against the Caliphate, nearly capturing seized the holy city of Mecca on one occasion. Ultimately though, these wars were fruitless endeavors, and had little effect on the grand scheme of things. Though it must be noted these wars were not exclusively religious efforts, as a great many Islamic peoples from Ethiopia would fight alongside their Christian compatriots in defense of their homeland.
Further South, there were other happenings in Kenya. Kenya’s traditional core was by the Indian Ocean, where wealthy Swahili city states ruled over empires of trade. In bygone times, the Swahili Coast's dependence on trade had once made it wealthy and cultured. Now, it proved to be her downfall. Post-Exile trade was oriented Westwards towards the Atlantic, not East towards India. Minerals, slaves and guns would pass from the Congo, through Nigeria and into Senegal, with the Swahili Coast playing no part. As such, the city-states that dotted the coast fell into decay, and those who still followed the dethroned Sultan of Zanzibar left for their ancestral homeland in Oman.
The decline of the Swahili was contrasted by the rise of peoples like the Kikuyu. Kenya had been one of Britain's most prized African possessions, and had received exceptional care by colonial officials. Britain took care to win over the large Kikuyu tribe, an agricultural people who had worked the land for centuries. British officials introduced crop rotation to the land, which increased the yield of Kenyan fruits and vegetables many times over.
The Kikuyu’s agricultural productivity at first seemed to harm them, as local clans resorted to crop-burning to avoid the collapse of the local economy. But when consolidated states took shape, merchants (turned away from autarkic South Africa) came looking to buy up Kikuyu’s agricultural produce. The Kikuyu primarily traded with the Congolese Kingdoms to her West, but would soon establish close ties with the Caliphate and Ethiopia.
Even today, Somalia and the Swahili Coast are inhabited by an impoverished people, bowing to Kikuyu and Ethiopian overlords respectively. Luckily for the two, interest in East Africa exploded when Egyptian explorers began to journey East towards Maritime Southeast Asia in search for valuable spices. A staggering amount of trade flowed through the Red Sea, which attracted a swarm of Somali and Swahili pirates. The Arabian Peninsula would soon be populated by large communities of Swahilis and Somalis looked for a better life elsewhere.
It took 30 years for Africa to get a grip of itself; and it took 20 more for Africa to stabilize—but when things calmed down, Africa soared high. Colonialism had left behind a dysfunctional economy that lived and died with exports to the metropole, but it was also left behind an economy that required trade to survive. Trade meant growth and state-building, which in turn led to a massive population explosion (Quadrupling from 100,000,000 in 1900 to 423,000,000 in 1950). This, amongst a host of other causes would pave the way towards the rise of colonialism.
The first explorers captained ramshackle ships. The powers that be behind the Exile had inconveniently appropriated anything so much as a centimeter away from a continent’s shores, leaving the continent with a few gunboats, the largest concentration of which was along West Africa’s Niger River. In 1948, cheap, but large sailing ships would travel from Dakar to the mouth of the Amazon, where the first Senegalese outposts were founded. Navigators (many of them experienced sailors fleeing the deterioration of the Swahili Coast) were employed by kings and princes across Africa to establish stable travel routes across the Atlantic (existing, accurate maps helped a lot), and thousands would make the move to the Americas in the successive years.
The first colony in the Americas was not founded by a state actor, but rather by a group of wealthy imams from Senegal. In 1956, zealots disgusted by the blatant iconoclasm of Senegalese society left Africa to found the perfect society in what was once Florida. Ironically, the colony would be overthrown by Congolese slaves who threw off the imamate’s oppressive taskmasters, later establishing the very iconoclastic Republic of Al-amazuniat. Al-amazuniat grew to be a wealthy merchant republic in control of trade throughout North America, and would be populated by a diverse population drawn from every corner of Africa—including a sizable community of Moroccan Jews.
This would not be the end of utopian dreams in the new world. Many cults founded isolated colonies deep within the unexplored reaches of North America in underprepared and overly ambitious expeditions. A group of Amero-Liberians would even try their luck at a new United States, and Kongolese Christians would establish a short-lived bishopric in Patagonia. Still, this has led to the rapid spread of horses across North America, and some refugees from failed colonies have established small nomadic states in the American interior.
The obvious big colonizers of the region were the Islamic giants—Senegal and Morocco. Senegal’s emerging industrial economy had a growing demand for rubber, oil and agricultural land, all of which could be found in Brazil; while Morroco’s already strong plantation industry would snake up the Mississippi to procure fertile land for cash crops. At some point, Egyptian colonies lined the Georgian coast, but were lost in a war against Morroco.
In the South are the colonies of Kongolese El Salvador and South African Patagonia. El Salvador is primarily populated by Congolese slaves from Africa’s vast interior, who are overseen by a relatively benevolent Christian-Kongolese ruling class. Owing to her small size and strategic location, Kongo was one of the first places where slavery first grew unprofitable. South African Patagonia is the only white-majority colony in the Americas, sparsely populated by Boer (and the odd Anglo and Black) cowboys. They are the world’s primary source of soybeans and beef, and her profitability has made Pretoria very happy.
Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa are the only competitors in the oriental colonial race. Egypt was the first to arrive, seeking out routes to access lucrative spice production, and soon had a network of resupply outposts in India and maritime Southeast Asia. Ethiopia also staked her own—admittedly less lucrative—claims. As usual, South Africa arrived to be the odd one out, and built up her Australian colonies to (comedic genius, I am not) dump convicts and black dissidents in.
Following the Exile, most societies defaulted to the social structures that had defined them for centuries: with organized kingdoms reappearing in the North, and primitive tribal structures taking root in the South. However, the dysfunctional nature of colonial economies led to an extended period of resource warfare across all of Africa, and the final downfall of tribal African society.
Victory in warfare required organized society and a cause for sustained war. So the centre of social, economic and therefore political power shifted to more “combative” units of society like religious communities. When political leaders failed (and most of them did), mullahs, imams, bishops and shamans took up the mantle of societal leadership. Religious leaders could easily package wars for resources as wars of religion, which created a massive upturn in religious zealotry across Africa.
The trend of religious society was best expressed in the Zubayrid Caliphate, as well as the numerous other minor religious states across Africa. Non-Abrahamic states in Central Africa caused many traditional African faiths to become standardized and restructured along Christian or Islamic lines where a supreme religious leader would serve social and political functions. The worship of Anasi as a monotheistic deity incidentally ballooned in these strange times.
The tide of religious society receded with the resurgence of secular political authorities—be they monarchs or democratically elected officials. Secular authorities founded their power upon the growing middle class, which preferred not needed to answer to a domineering, jingoistic clergy, but rather to engage in friendly relations with their neighbors for the sake of mutual benefit. Nevertheless, Africa is a continent on transition--these changes have manifested, but not asserted themselves.
Another aspect of African society is the institution of slavery—a system that had existed in many forms throughout the continent’s history. Thanks to Tanganyika's massive slaving empire, half of all slaves are Congolese. These slaves can be broadly divided into indentured servants, military slavery and chattle slaves.
Indentured servants predominate in West and Central Africa, and serve as the drivers of agricultural (and in turn, population) growth. There are universal rules regarding the treatment of indentured servants in legal codes, and it would be considered dishonorable to punish a slave without reason. It is not uncommon for slaves born into their master’s household to rise to prominent positions as kinsmen.
Chattle slavery predominates in North Africa and the Americas. They are often put to work in vast plantations, and are treated with utmost disdain by uncaring masters. In Morrocan and Egyptian colonies, this disdain is racial in nature. Chattle slaves are almost exclusively black, hailing mostly from Congo and East Africa.
Military slavery is the rarest of the three, and most common in the Zubayarid Caliphate. Before assuming the mantle of Islamic leadership, the Caliphate had first fought in numerous jihads to expel the French and British empires, taking many slaves in the process. Common practice was to sell these slaves to the highest bidder, but Crown Prince Ali az-Zubayr would ask his father to spare a group of captured Hausa Warriors. Ali invested tremendous amounts of time and money in equipping and retraining these Hausas, creating an elite force of slave soldiers to do his bidding.
Fig 1: Rabih az-Zubayr’s jihad against the Anglo-French (c.1910)
Rabih az-Zubayr’s campaign against the French and British lasted from 1900 to 1910, and was an extention of his earlier war against the French for control of Lake Chad. Az-Zubayr’s religious zealotry and ability as a logistician let him unite most of Islamic West Africa in jihad, and establish nominal authority over a vast area covering former Nigeria and Dahomey. Az-Zubayr’s empire collapsed due to internal conflicts and pressure from the hostile Asante Empire, but those loyal to the jihadist cause followed az-Zubayr in his conquest of Sudan.
Fig 2: Egyptian North America (c.1973)
When the first trade routes to North America were re-established, Egyptian authorities immediately sought to establish a presence in North America. The National Colonization Bureau would set aside a fund with which to build the colony of Maghrib al-Aqsa, and successfully did so in the spring of 1958. Due to the great distances between Egypt and North America, colonization proceeded at a trickle, and the colonists grew rather autonomous of the homeland. Ultimately, Morrocan authorities took over most of Western Maghrib al-Aqsa in the Egypto-Morrocan War of 1990; while the East was left to the colonials.
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Castles of Mud and Sand: the Lost Kingdoms of Africa
In June 1900, the British Empire was at the top of the world. The Empire and her possessions stretched from the frigid Canadian North to the tropical coves of Malaysia. Her people spoke a thousand tongues from Bengali to Gaelic. Her power was unparalleled on each and every continent.
In the first days on the new century, the Asante Empire dared take up arms against the greatest empire the world had ever seen. From the British point of view, the Asante were an upstart kingdom off the coast of West Africa, who now angrily and irrationally claimed that a British representative had sat upon the Golden Stool of the Asantehene, an object of such religious and traditional significance, that it warranted a throne of her own.
While the Asante were powerful by African standards, they were inconsequential in comparison to British might. An expedition was sent off to reclaim the colony, and soon the Asante was reeling from defeat after defeat. Many, including the royal family were resigned to their fate and hid the Golden Stool deep within the jungle lest it be stolen by the British. Others were determined to fight to the death—in particular a singular Akan priestess by the name of Asina Sarpong. Asina invoked the spirit of the ancestors and of the God Anansi, praying for the salvation of the Asante, for the expulsion of the British.
Her prayers were soon answered. News soon came that the wider world had simply disappeared. Everything that lay but one step off the coast of Africa had vanished in a glaring light, and the colonial empires were cut off from their homelands. Each people has a distinct name for the incident—some in praise; others in mourning. But one Mahatma Gandhi would call it the “Exile”, and the name has stuck.
A tumultuous period of transition soon followed. Colonial economies were built upon the exploitation of Africa for the monetary gain of an European colonial elite, and once Europe disappeared together with her titanic demand for resources, the African economy crumbled. Colonial empires contracted and collapsed into chaos and anarchy, leading to the three-decade “Little Dark Age”, where conquest, war, famine and death were all in full display. But this great calamity allowed native states to rise in the ashes of empires. At the turn of the new millennium, a mysterious spider-like deity has returned to the Africa to survey his handiwork, and perhaps stir up yet more mischief…
In Anglo West Africa, British indirect rule had left the pre-colonial political structures intact, and still intact native states quickly rose in rebellion to reestablish the old world order. Nigeria, the Gold Coast and other British possessions collapsed in a wave of colonial unrest, which then spread to the colonies of other European powers. Newly founded native states were unsophisticated at best, and were by design deprived of any sophisticated, modern bureaucracy—instead relying on monarchial edicts as the one and only system of governance. Strangely enough, this was advantageous in the short term, as absolutism was still the most efficient system of governance in times of crisis: in the sense that brilliant monarchs could efficiently lead their kingdoms to success; and incompetent monarchs could efficiently lead their kingdoms to ruin. Political Darwinism took care of the rest.
As far as the Asante were concerned, the Exile also meant the collapse of the British expedition sent to subjugate their kingdom. The strong Asante military staved off further invasions from Africans and Europeans, making them a rare beacon of hope and stability in a dark continent. Asante grew to be a regional hegemon in the 1950s, though her power was inevitably eclipsed by the economic hyperpower Senegal grew to be.
The colonial administration in Nigeria attempted to divide and conquer her subjects by pitting Southern, Christian Igbos against Northern, Hausa Muslims, only to end up inflaming ethnic tensions and expediting the collapse of British rule. The old Sokoto Caliphate was revived in the North; while the South shattered into a thousand fiefdoms. No centralized polity would come out of the mess Nigeria had become until the 21st Century, when a consolidated Yoruba Empire emerged in the West.
On the flip side of the coin, Latin West Africa—in particular Senegal was amongst the best equipped to meet the era’s challenges. Jacobin tradition of centralizing governance had theoretically allowed the colonial subjects of French Senegal to obtain full rights as French citizens. In practice, social barriers remained firmly in place, but as a symbolic gesture, it at least guaranteed a degree of loyalty amongst the populace. There were few rebellions in Senegal, and French rule continued despite frequent shortages and famines.
Supporters of the colonial administration (white elites) and supporters of Senegal’s elected deputies to the rump French Parliament (black elites) were in constant political and economic competition, only ending when the threat of popular revolution ended white minority rule. Blaise Diagne, representative for Senegal in the (defunct) French Parliament, was begrudgingly sworn in as President of the French Fourth Republic, beginning the rule of a black elite.
Majority rule was achieved with little bloodshed. This meant that pre-existing systems of government would also survive the Exile. A centralized Senegalese Government in Dakar could efficiently and effectively guide a transition from cash to food crops, end of famines, and even find time to establish a proper school system. Senegal’s sophisticated economy grew to desire more resources, which prompted wars of conquest along the Niger River, and later colonies along the American coast. The Sokoto Caliphate was subjugated, and the Hausa successor states that sprung up from her corpse became Senegal’s chosen enforcers. Arabic grew to replace French as the language of administration, though a Wolof ethnic identity would remain entrenched in the Senegalese leadership.
By 2000, Wolof culture has established herself along the metropolises of the Niger River. Dakar has long since grown into a beautiful city populated by peoples from across the world speaking a thousand languages. Trade flows down the Niger River from the industrial heartland in Mali to the epicenter of world trade in Dakar. West Africa can now rightfully call itself the most civilized land on Earth.
Across the Sahel—in particular in Mauritania, tribes could be clearly divided into the warrior (Hassan) and marabout (Zwaya) tribes. The former was respected for its strength; and the latter for its knowledge. Although these tribes shared a symbiotic relationship, more often than not, the Hassan were at the top of the pecking order. In the chaos of the Exile, the Hassan desired a strong leader, which came in the form of Rabih az-Zubayr, the infamous slave-trader Lord of Bornu. Az-Zubayr had long been waging a war of resistance against the French Empire, and now could unite the Hassans of the Sahel under the banner of anti-European jihad.
In 1905, Az-Zubayr led a great Islamic army of Fulanis, Hausas, Nubians and Maures, composed of everything from spear-wielding militias to az-Zubayr’s own elite slave-musketeers. His conquests reached from the Bight of Biafra to Lake Chad, but his fragile coalition fell apart without the external threat of the Europeans. After fleeing to his stronghold in Bornu, az-Zubayr raised a new host and led it deep into the Egyptian Sudan in 1912, where he allied with the Zwaya tribes to gather legitimacy amongst the Islamic clergy. With support from imams across the Sudan, az-Zubayr crossed into Dafur, declaring himself the second coming of the Mahdi, Caliph and Restorer of Islam. The Egyptians were expelled from the land, and righteousness restored to the realm.
The Caliphate of Islam would continue to expand during the reigns of Ali, Muhammad and Sulayman, the “3 Good Caliphs” who ruled justly. However, by 1378 AH (2000 AD by Christian reckoning), the Caliphate seems to have entered a slow decline, with branches of the House of az-Zubayr quarreling amongst one another. The realm is informally split in 2: the Hakimids, the Arabic branch of the family have established themselves in Sudan; and the Zubayrids, the Nubian branch of the family rules from their ancestral home in Bornu. Today, the Caliphate stands on the brink of Fitna, and the vultures circle around its corpse.
There were others inspired by az-Zubayr’s conquests. Take for example Shaykh Ma al Aynin, a Mauritanian warlord who would unite the Maures to expel the French invaders. The Maures waged numerous jihads against the French and later the Senegalese, but were soon broken and subjugated by superior strength of arms, and ultimately used as pawns in the constant rivalry between Morroco and Senegal. Numerous Tuareg conquerors would also wage copycat conquests across the Sahara, founding dozens of Caliphates, Sultanates or tribal confederacies that periodically threatened the borders of the settled, agricultural empires. Most infamous are the Senussids, a secretive Sufi order that has inducted a great many Tuaregs into their ranks. Most recently, the Senussids have conquered much of Lybia, and seek to emulate az-Zubayr’s dazzling rise.
Even Morroco, a traditional superpower in North Africa, would take after az-Zubayr. Morocco failed to shake off her Franco-Spanish protectors in the early days of the exile, and became a virtual dominion of the deeply entrenched Pied-Noir regime in Algeria. Prince Abdelhafid, brother to the ruling Sultan Abdelaziz fled into the African interior to lead an avenging army of Tuareg slave-soldiers. The Prince found success in adapting hit-and-run cavalry tactics to the 20th Century, and stirred enough chaos to swoop in and expel the Pied-Noirs. Morroco evolved into a fundamentalist Sultanate that the most devout Zubayarid imam would recoil at, and led a brutal campaign of cleansing and conquest across North Africa.
Traveling North from Khartoum to the mouth of the Nile is the Islamic Republic of Egypt. Whilst under the British thumb, Egypt had grown into a prosperous colony second only to India. Following the Exile, British colonial authorities hung on to dear life in the colony through an uneasy alliance with the local nobility and the backing of Ethiopian capital, the latter of which greatly feared anarchy in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Foreign meddling in Egyptian affairs incited Arab nationalism in Egypt, and cumulated in the Revolution of 1920, led by the presiding Sultan against his British handlers. The Sultan was elected President of the Islamic Republic of Egypt, only to be voted (read: couped) out of office by members of the Egyptian military. This weak, coup-prone state has lost several wars to the Caliphate in the South, with her only saving grace being her near monopoly on the spice trade in the Orient.
The Exile was both a catastrophe and godsend for the people of Central Africa. On one hand, the collapse of the colonial economy had sent the hated taskmasters running, leaving the Africans to their own devices. On the other hand, the collapse of the colonial economy also meant Central Africa had to somehow become agriculturally self-sustainable, a tall order for an economy solely devoted to mining and logging.
For half a century, no proper polities emerged. Colonial rule had demolished the pre-existing kingdoms in the area, with small villages scrambling to find enough food to feed their populace, eventually fighting each other for basic necessities. War created ephemeral, feudal polities which lay claim to the imperial splendor of pre-colonial empires, take for example the Yeke Empire, whose royal family has little connection to her 19th century predecessor except being of the same ethnic group. By 1945, 3 polities have formed in such fashion: the Yeke and Kongo in the former Congo Free State; the Orungu in Gabon; and the Sangha in Ubangi-Shari. Incessant warfare is the driver of centralization, and these new polities have organized bureaucracies, taxation and armies.
Some men had the charisma to take advantage of the humanitarian catastrophe. In 1902, A 70 year old Zanzibari slave trader by the name of Tippu Tip led a host of 200 Hausa mercenaries across Lake Tanganyika and into the Congo, where he would forge the Sultanate of Tanganyika, a slaver’s empire the size of Texas. In the 1950s, Tanganyika’s coffers swelled when she found herself part of a vast trade network of consolidated empires throughout Africa, with buyers as far as the Americas. Through great wealth, Tanganyika’s wealthy Islamic ruling elite transformed their backwater corner of the world into the envy of the continent.
In the 1970s, South Africa and the Islamic Caliphate in Sudan began advancing into the African interior, directly threatening the interests of the Kongo, Yeke and Tanganyika. Under pressure, these 3 empires set aside their differences to face the common foes to their North and South. With cooperation came trade, and with trade came prosperity: the Yeke would supply the minerals, the Tangayika would supply the slaves, and the Kongo would supply the navy to protect precious goods travelling across the seas.
This was different from the age of colonialism, when the resources of Africa were unjustly stolen from their native inhabitants. Now, consolidated kingdoms had much greater bargaining power on the diplomatic arena, and would be treated fairly in the world market. Wood from the Congo Rainforest built Senegalese palaces, and gold from Katanga adorned the necks Morrocan women—these resources do not flow freely, and merchants are obligated to pay a hefty tariff for the privilege of trade. With the coming of the new millennium, the prosperity of Central Africa knows no bounds, and her people look towards the future with anticipation.
Into that confusion came Cecil Rhodes, (in)famous imperialist stooge. Months ago, the man had pulled a great stunt by placing himself in harm’s way at the Fort of Kimberly, which annoyed British forces, but garnered Rhodes a great deal of prestige. Rhodes also enjoyed much respect amongst Afrikaner voters within South Africa, making him a very important man indeed. This old and sickly patriarch of South Africa called for an immediate ceasefire, and in the following months got Afrikaners and British alike to sign terms of peace. Rhodes rallied the terrified public, demanding the creation of a South African Confederation (SAC) for the duration of the Exile to “keep the peace in the civilized world”, until contact could be re-established with the homeland.
The SAC had power-sharing provisions embedded in her constitution, and in fact functioned much more like a Federation than a Confederation—eligible voters always voted on ethnic lines, with British and Afrikaner representatives pit against each other in the South African Parliament. Nevertheless, as long as the fallout of the Exile persisted, the SAC would remain united in purpose. British and Afrikaners alike found that the abundance of farms and mines South Africa’s economy was built upon had been rendered useless. Unlike the rest of Africa, South Africa actually had an abundance of food, so much so that the price of grain had collapsed in a freefall. To remedy this, crops had to be burnt, or bought up by the Government to artificially increase the price of food.
Another source of income for the SAC was mercenaries. South Africa had an abundance of unemployed veterans following the Boer War. Veterans would be employed by the state, and sent across Africa to serve as elite shock troops in the first years of the Exile. In return for their service, South Africa was not paid in the now worthless pound, but in immigrants, and welcomed White colonists under attack from their African subjects to make South Africa their home, which helped bolster the demographic muscle of the White ruling class. Sometimes, South Africans came, but never left—for example the “pacification” of Namibia (led by Jan Smuts himself), or the “Mozambique intervention”. The most famous of South Africa’s colonial expeditions was in Algeria, when a group of Afrikaner Commandos in the employ of French authorities attempted to capture the escaped Ranavalona III, Queen of Madagascar, only to be cut down by Madagascan loyalists. Ranavalona III would return to Madagascar to great jubilation, and the native Madagascans threw off their French oppressors to welcome the return of the Queen. Later years saw Madagascar grow militaristic and decidedly vengeful at South Africa’s trespasses.
In the ’30s, Cecil Rhodes fell into another bout of sickness. 30 years after the Exile, the prestige Rhodes had was still only thing between the Confederation and Civil War. As one of his last acts, Rhodes would host the Conference of Pretoria, which did away with the façade of unity and formalized the division between Afrikaner and British. The Confederation was split into 11 Federal Republics, with the two Anglo and Afrikaner Republics dominating the 9 others, united only by a common foreign policy. This would at least ease tensions and stave off bloody civil war for a few years more.
Rhode’s successors in both the Afrikaner and British provinces recognized that mercenaries were no longer a valid source of income by the 1930s. They pushed to revitalize the agricultural sector, and ironically enough, ban slavery or unpaid black labor in the process. This did not come from the good hearts of the ruling Whites, but was a pragmatic decision aimed to increase employment amongst low-skilled white workers. The economically disenfranchised blacks would frequently break out into riots, and would then be sent across the ocean blue to African colonies in Australia, India and the Southern Cone. White settlers would meanwhile advance further North into Africa, sparking numerous skirmishes with the kingdoms of the Congo.
By the ‘80s, a emerging liberal middle class seemed to have found their conscience. A strong civil rights movement grew to dominate British South Africa’s political discourse, so powerful that British MPs pushed for the South African Parliament to pass laws allowing the enfranchisement of blacks in British Provinces—provided they pass (unfair) literacy tests. Being protestant and speaking English helped too. Blacks emigrated en masse to British South Africa, where they continued the fight for civil along the decades. Governor Robert Mugabe of North Rhodesia would even go as far as to provoke a skirmish between his home province and neighboring Outer Transvaal.
In 1994, the SAC went to war with Madagascar, which was funding rebellions and fostering pan-Africanism in the Afrikaner Provinces. Afrikaner troops landed in Madagascar expecting an easy conquest, only to be cut to pieces by elite Madagascan emplacements, ending the invasion to the great embarrassment of Afrikaner political leaders. Governor Frederik Willem de Klerk of Greater Transvaal took the fall for this embarrassment, weakening political Conservatism amongst Afrikaners.
Today, the SAC is embarking on a slow reintegration into global economy. The decline of right wing politics has emboldened reformists to reestablish diplomatic relationships with the rest of Africa. Agriculture and mining moves North, while Southern metropolises are growing into prosperous, international cities.
This was true in the rainforests of the Congo, where tribes slaughtered entire villages.
This was true in the dunes of the Sahara, where empires wrestled for oases.
But this was not true in the land of Ethiopia, land of lions. Ethiopia had been independent of any foreign power for the duration of the 19th Century, and had fought hard and well to preserve that cherished independence. Under King Menelik II, the Ethiopians beat back the Italian invader, establishing themselves as a well-respected military power in Africa and in Europe. Ethiopia had never had to plant cash crops, or strip mine her natural resources for the benefit of colonial powers. As such, she was relatively capable of self-sufficiency, and lost “only” 10% of her population.
Ethiopia became Africa’s premier power less by her own ability than by default. The Ethiopian talari was only reliable currency on the continent, which forced what remained of the financial world to start revolving around Addis Ababa. In the first days of the Exile, when European colonists still hung desperately to the illusion of normalcy, Ethiopia’s financial credibility meant a great deal. Europeans in Africa were willing to sell off modern arms and industrial equipment to Ethiopia at extortionately low prices, as Ethiopian currency was now worth its weight in gold and more. The Ethiopian army easily expelled the Italian occupiers of Eritrea, and even made their way into Somalia, reestablishing Ethiopian hegemony over the Horn of Africa.
In the coming decades, Ethiopia fell under the rule of great and visionary kings who guided the empire to new heights, and the royal family grew ever more popular in the eyes of the common man. The rise of the Zubayrid Caliphate in Sudan frightened Ethiopians, and Emperor Tewordros III led 4 Crusades against the Caliphate, nearly capturing seized the holy city of Mecca on one occasion. Ultimately though, these wars were fruitless endeavors, and had little effect on the grand scheme of things. Though it must be noted these wars were not exclusively religious efforts, as a great many Islamic peoples from Ethiopia would fight alongside their Christian compatriots in defense of their homeland.
Further South, there were other happenings in Kenya. Kenya’s traditional core was by the Indian Ocean, where wealthy Swahili city states ruled over empires of trade. In bygone times, the Swahili Coast's dependence on trade had once made it wealthy and cultured. Now, it proved to be her downfall. Post-Exile trade was oriented Westwards towards the Atlantic, not East towards India. Minerals, slaves and guns would pass from the Congo, through Nigeria and into Senegal, with the Swahili Coast playing no part. As such, the city-states that dotted the coast fell into decay, and those who still followed the dethroned Sultan of Zanzibar left for their ancestral homeland in Oman.
The decline of the Swahili was contrasted by the rise of peoples like the Kikuyu. Kenya had been one of Britain's most prized African possessions, and had received exceptional care by colonial officials. Britain took care to win over the large Kikuyu tribe, an agricultural people who had worked the land for centuries. British officials introduced crop rotation to the land, which increased the yield of Kenyan fruits and vegetables many times over.
The Kikuyu’s agricultural productivity at first seemed to harm them, as local clans resorted to crop-burning to avoid the collapse of the local economy. But when consolidated states took shape, merchants (turned away from autarkic South Africa) came looking to buy up Kikuyu’s agricultural produce. The Kikuyu primarily traded with the Congolese Kingdoms to her West, but would soon establish close ties with the Caliphate and Ethiopia.
Even today, Somalia and the Swahili Coast are inhabited by an impoverished people, bowing to Kikuyu and Ethiopian overlords respectively. Luckily for the two, interest in East Africa exploded when Egyptian explorers began to journey East towards Maritime Southeast Asia in search for valuable spices. A staggering amount of trade flowed through the Red Sea, which attracted a swarm of Somali and Swahili pirates. The Arabian Peninsula would soon be populated by large communities of Swahilis and Somalis looked for a better life elsewhere.
The first explorers captained ramshackle ships. The powers that be behind the Exile had inconveniently appropriated anything so much as a centimeter away from a continent’s shores, leaving the continent with a few gunboats, the largest concentration of which was along West Africa’s Niger River. In 1948, cheap, but large sailing ships would travel from Dakar to the mouth of the Amazon, where the first Senegalese outposts were founded. Navigators (many of them experienced sailors fleeing the deterioration of the Swahili Coast) were employed by kings and princes across Africa to establish stable travel routes across the Atlantic (existing, accurate maps helped a lot), and thousands would make the move to the Americas in the successive years.
The first colony in the Americas was not founded by a state actor, but rather by a group of wealthy imams from Senegal. In 1956, zealots disgusted by the blatant iconoclasm of Senegalese society left Africa to found the perfect society in what was once Florida. Ironically, the colony would be overthrown by Congolese slaves who threw off the imamate’s oppressive taskmasters, later establishing the very iconoclastic Republic of Al-amazuniat. Al-amazuniat grew to be a wealthy merchant republic in control of trade throughout North America, and would be populated by a diverse population drawn from every corner of Africa—including a sizable community of Moroccan Jews.
This would not be the end of utopian dreams in the new world. Many cults founded isolated colonies deep within the unexplored reaches of North America in underprepared and overly ambitious expeditions. A group of Amero-Liberians would even try their luck at a new United States, and Kongolese Christians would establish a short-lived bishopric in Patagonia. Still, this has led to the rapid spread of horses across North America, and some refugees from failed colonies have established small nomadic states in the American interior.
The obvious big colonizers of the region were the Islamic giants—Senegal and Morocco. Senegal’s emerging industrial economy had a growing demand for rubber, oil and agricultural land, all of which could be found in Brazil; while Morroco’s already strong plantation industry would snake up the Mississippi to procure fertile land for cash crops. At some point, Egyptian colonies lined the Georgian coast, but were lost in a war against Morroco.
In the South are the colonies of Kongolese El Salvador and South African Patagonia. El Salvador is primarily populated by Congolese slaves from Africa’s vast interior, who are overseen by a relatively benevolent Christian-Kongolese ruling class. Owing to her small size and strategic location, Kongo was one of the first places where slavery first grew unprofitable. South African Patagonia is the only white-majority colony in the Americas, sparsely populated by Boer (and the odd Anglo and Black) cowboys. They are the world’s primary source of soybeans and beef, and her profitability has made Pretoria very happy.
Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa are the only competitors in the oriental colonial race. Egypt was the first to arrive, seeking out routes to access lucrative spice production, and soon had a network of resupply outposts in India and maritime Southeast Asia. Ethiopia also staked her own—admittedly less lucrative—claims. As usual, South Africa arrived to be the odd one out, and built up her Australian colonies to (comedic genius, I am not) dump convicts and black dissidents in.
Victory in warfare required organized society and a cause for sustained war. So the centre of social, economic and therefore political power shifted to more “combative” units of society like religious communities. When political leaders failed (and most of them did), mullahs, imams, bishops and shamans took up the mantle of societal leadership. Religious leaders could easily package wars for resources as wars of religion, which created a massive upturn in religious zealotry across Africa.
The trend of religious society was best expressed in the Zubayrid Caliphate, as well as the numerous other minor religious states across Africa. Non-Abrahamic states in Central Africa caused many traditional African faiths to become standardized and restructured along Christian or Islamic lines where a supreme religious leader would serve social and political functions. The worship of Anasi as a monotheistic deity incidentally ballooned in these strange times.
The tide of religious society receded with the resurgence of secular political authorities—be they monarchs or democratically elected officials. Secular authorities founded their power upon the growing middle class, which preferred not needed to answer to a domineering, jingoistic clergy, but rather to engage in friendly relations with their neighbors for the sake of mutual benefit. Nevertheless, Africa is a continent on transition--these changes have manifested, but not asserted themselves.
Another aspect of African society is the institution of slavery—a system that had existed in many forms throughout the continent’s history. Thanks to Tanganyika's massive slaving empire, half of all slaves are Congolese. These slaves can be broadly divided into indentured servants, military slavery and chattle slaves.
Indentured servants predominate in West and Central Africa, and serve as the drivers of agricultural (and in turn, population) growth. There are universal rules regarding the treatment of indentured servants in legal codes, and it would be considered dishonorable to punish a slave without reason. It is not uncommon for slaves born into their master’s household to rise to prominent positions as kinsmen.
Chattle slavery predominates in North Africa and the Americas. They are often put to work in vast plantations, and are treated with utmost disdain by uncaring masters. In Morrocan and Egyptian colonies, this disdain is racial in nature. Chattle slaves are almost exclusively black, hailing mostly from Congo and East Africa.
Military slavery is the rarest of the three, and most common in the Zubayarid Caliphate. Before assuming the mantle of Islamic leadership, the Caliphate had first fought in numerous jihads to expel the French and British empires, taking many slaves in the process. Common practice was to sell these slaves to the highest bidder, but Crown Prince Ali az-Zubayr would ask his father to spare a group of captured Hausa Warriors. Ali invested tremendous amounts of time and money in equipping and retraining these Hausas, creating an elite force of slave soldiers to do his bidding.
Fig 1: Rabih az-Zubayr’s jihad against the Anglo-French (c.1910)
Rabih az-Zubayr’s campaign against the French and British lasted from 1900 to 1910, and was an extention of his earlier war against the French for control of Lake Chad. Az-Zubayr’s religious zealotry and ability as a logistician let him unite most of Islamic West Africa in jihad, and establish nominal authority over a vast area covering former Nigeria and Dahomey. Az-Zubayr’s empire collapsed due to internal conflicts and pressure from the hostile Asante Empire, but those loyal to the jihadist cause followed az-Zubayr in his conquest of Sudan.
Fig 2: Egyptian North America (c.1973)
When the first trade routes to North America were re-established, Egyptian authorities immediately sought to establish a presence in North America. The National Colonization Bureau would set aside a fund with which to build the colony of Maghrib al-Aqsa, and successfully did so in the spring of 1958. Due to the great distances between Egypt and North America, colonization proceeded at a trickle, and the colonists grew rather autonomous of the homeland. Ultimately, Morrocan authorities took over most of Western Maghrib al-Aqsa in the Egypto-Morrocan War of 1990; while the East was left to the colonials.
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I want to say I love your maps, Xianfeng. They all looked awesome in their own right.