Welcome to my
world.
I hope it’s
not too unfamiliar…
Vicendum: Preamble
This is harder than I
thought. When I conceived the project not so long ago, I thought of it as just
a few touch-ups and then I’d be able to go. Now, several months into it and more
research later, I’m finding that I have to constantly change what I intended.
Thus, this may never be a project that is truly “finished”.
What is this project? It’s
called “Vicendum”, an alternate world that’s based upon our own. It’s an experiment
in counterfactual history, one that basically answers the question of how the
world could have really evolved. While there are more complex issues at stake,
the basic foundations for Vicendum are as follows:
1) The Roman Empire, under Julius Nepos (the Emperor of the
West before Romulus Augustulus, the last de facto Emperor of the West), managed
to survive from its death knell to the present day. In fact, quite a bit of
this project is going to devoted to Rome and how it acts in a modern context, mainly
because I find Rome and the Roman people to be the most fascinating in history
and because the Romans provided much of the foundations for modern society.
2) The United States is no more. Yeah, it’s a cliché, but so
many people write about its demise that it’s foolish not to at least consider
it. Besides, the US is currently as united as the Eiffel Tower would be if it
were made out of cardboard and bubblegum. However, the Fall of the US is not
something consigned to just today and George W. Bush, but a gradual process-
throughout its history the US has been subject to many secessionist groups, and
while none have been as high-profile as the Southern Confederacy, it certainly
leads to the idea that “the Union” has never been as united as it looks.
3) The world has backtracked a little from globalization,
and reverted back to its past as a region-specific world. This stems from the
idea that today globalization is, in effect, a joke, considering that in
practical terms, several of the world’s regions have their own distinct mindset
and rarely do any two regional blocs agree on anything. Entities like the
United Nations do not exist anymore (mainly because the UN itself is
increasingly ineffective, growing much like its predecessor the League of
Nations everyday), as nations now prefer regional alliance and economic
structures. Global entities still exist such as the Internet and some nations
have territories across the globe, but the focus is mainly regional.
4) That said, there exists six major powers that represent
the various blocs: Rome (Western Europe), Britain (the English-language
sector), Bactria (Central Asia), Carthage (the Islamic World), Birea (Oceania)
and Casara (Africa). Birea and Casara are two nations that are completely my
own creation, but they represent what I feel is the inevitable situation where
major powers will eventually come from those regions. Carthage’s choice to
represent the Islamic World doesn’t come from me but from NationStates, a game
I frequently play (where one user has done just that), but since I like
Carthage and since nationalists tend to cling to the past, the recreation of
Carthage in modern-day Tunisia seems inevitable. Bactria comes from the fact
that I’ve always found it fascinating that the Greek World once stretched all the
way to Afghanistan (Bactria being a Greek Kingdom that existed in modern-day
Afghanistan). My Bactrians, however, are a mixture of Greek and Persian,
resulting from the inevitable mixing from the Arabic invasions of the 7th
century. They also hold much of Asia because most of it is connected in some
way anyway, and even have some lands in present-day China because historically
the Chinese have always had an insular view of themselves (“we don’t need any
outside help”, a view that currently is being held by the West nowadays) and
here I make them pay for that (as is the inevitable result- but I’ll cover the
Chinese in more detail). Britain I choose because I love the British Empire,
and I think that if the British adopted a mindset where they didn’t view their
people as “subjects” but rather as “citizens” they may have been able to keep
it- besides, the English-speaking world is pretty united nowadays anyway. Rome
I’ve already covered, but to talk about why France isn’t present, I choose Rome
over France in Western Europe because Western Europe more traditionally
associate themselves ultimately with Rome than with France, because the Romans
laid the groundwork for their current cultures. Besides, the French nation was
on the brink of collapse following World War II, facing defeat after defeat
militarily, but considering how nationalistic the French are, I keep them in
hold of Paris and in Québèc, which is basically French anyway. I realize it’s
arbitrary since Britain too was on the verge of collapse after WWII, but I
think the British were in better shape so they get to stay relatively intact.
5) The Chinese may have lost their main nation, but their
culture is alive and well. I take this from the fact that in the 15th
century the Chinese actually sent out exploration teams, and if they continued
it for a few more years (it stopped abruptly in 1432), they may have colonized
the Americas before Columbus did. Therefore, Latin America does not become
“Latin America” but “Chinese America”, though not completely- I do have Spanish
breakthroughs in areas such as Costa Rica and Bolivia, and the Portuguese still
get Brazil (which is now the capital of Portugal, stemming from the fact that
Rio de Janeiro was actually the Portuguese capital when Napoleon occupied
Portugal in the early 19th century). However, the Aztecs and the
Inca remain because of Chinese help, and in the areas that Spain didn’t conquer
(mostly along the Central American mainland and along the Pacific coast of
South America), a Chinese presence has emerged. This also means that most of
the native peoples of Central America remain, because the Chinese would not
have been as oppressive as the Spaniards were. As far as the Chinese in China-
they’re there, but they don’t have a nation, it being divided by Japan (who did
not necessarily have to lose all the land they did after WWII), Bactria and the
Hittites, another of my favourite ancient peoples revived to be somewhat of a
global power (though not completely). Thus, China becomes my “Poland”.
6) There will also be widespread use of the world’s various
nationalistic and separatist groups, with their states actually created where I
can place them. No fringe group will be too small to be excluded, but not all
of them will be used for the following reason: in a different world order, some
of these groups might not even emerged, and others still may have changed their
focus. For example, I place the Romans in control in both Israel and Palestine
(having regained it in the 20th century along with the rest of the
Eastern Mediterranean), and while nationalistic groups exist in both areas,
there isn’t violence because they’ve been forced to work together by the Roman
government (whose main focus is to prevent problems, not to push an agenda).
There are also nationalistic groups in other areas (such as in Cilicia and
Phrygia) that don’t have nationalistic groups today to reflect regionalism in
my created large states, which always happens in them (just look at Canada and
the US today).
That’s the basics. As I
develop the project, the different areas of the world will be covered in more
detail.