111—965 CE: Early Roman settlement
Much of Glascovia's early history remains shrouded in legend, but settlement first occurred around 120 CE. An expedition dispatched by the Roman emperor Trajan departed from Hierasycaminus, at the edge of the Roman frontier, in 111 CE to seek out new (and uncontested) territories. Within six years, the expedition had reached the area now known as Mombasa. Though the coastal regions of modern-day Kenya seemed fertile and welcoming to the weary explorers, they decided to press on after hearing rumors of an ever-more bountiful land, rich in crops and gold, well beyond the distant waves of the horizon.
Ancient myth maintains that the Romans encamped at Mombasa for one hundred days and one hundred nights while a fleet of primitive ships were constructed, and that on the day of Caesar's birthday, their makeshift flotilla set sail for the so-called "fabled land." Archaeologists have been unable to reconstruct the naval journey taken by these settlers, but estimate that the passage to Atlantian Oceania would have taken anywhere from three days to a fortnight. Upon landing on the shores of Glascovia, the Roman expedition, both pleased with its new find and fatigued from nearly a decade of travel, chose to settle the island permanently. Claimed in the name of the Emperor Trajan, the new arrivals christened the land Glascovia Major, and founded the first city, Castra Glascoviae, on the present site of Andreanae.
Fertile land and abundant fish meant that the Roman population on Glascovia grew rapidly. Within a century, coastal hamlets dotted the Glascovian coastline. Though these various settlements all ostensibly owed allegiance to the island's provincial governor at Castra Glascoviae, the mountainous terrain of Glascovia's interior meant that each settlement had broad latitude to act independently from the others. When news of the Empire's fall finally reached Glascovia in 480 CE, what little authority the provincial governor had disintegrated; the city-states quickly asserted their newfound independence and authority, warring with each other over resources and territory.
965—984: Unification of the First Empire
By the beginning of the tenth century, three city-states had emerged as the dominant players in Glascovia: Cansæ, Iacca, and Sciiamchiamensis. With limited maneuverability in the Glascovian Highlands rendering offensive action difficult, the three polities had been locked in a ceaseless military conflict that was starting to take a toll on them all. The Legate of Cansæ, Augustus, realized that his city risked collapse if war went on much longer, and began to formulate a plan to unify the island under his rule. Sciiamchiamensis was a formidable foe, but Augustus recognized that the city was extremely dependent on nearby fisheries for its food supply. In 973, Augustus besieged Sciiamchiamensis, and, under cover of darkness, dispatched a fleet of quickly-constructed quinqueremes to raze the fisheries and (in an early instance of biological warfare) to poison the coastal waters. Facing starvation, the city succumbed to Augustus' forces within six months. With two-thirds of Glascovia now under Cansæ's control, Augustus could turn his attention to Iacca, the most powerful of the city-states. Augustus dispatched his ministers and spies to Iacca's client states, bribing them to ignore insurrections and quarrel amongst themselves; Iacca had no choice but to use its own legions to restore order in its sphere of influence. Constant movement and action exhausted Iaccan troops, and when a freak lightning storm devastated Iacca's crop in the summer of 984, Augustus seized the opportunity and stormed the walls of Iacca with 60,000 men. Iacca soon fell, and in September 984, Augustus declared himself Emperor of Glascovia.
984—1314: Glascovia's Golden Age
With Glascovia united under a single ruler, the leaders of this new realm quickly realized that an empire held together sheerly by military might could not—and would not—stand the test of time. Early leaders of the First Empire embarked on an ambitious program of public works, wealth redistribution, and reform, in an early instance of soft power. Extensive road networks were built between the former city-states; a common currency was instituted; large, aristocratic landholdings were dissolved and parceled out; and a sophisticated bureaucracy instituted a uniform set of progressive laws across the nation.
Imperial rule spurred a flourishing of philosophy, art, culture, and science commonly known as Glascovia's golden age. Imperial coffers financed the construction of temples, theaters, and colosseums; bankrolled some of the world's first public universities and schools; and commissioned grand expeditions of undiscovered lands elsewhere in Atlantian Oceania. Science bloomed during this period—Glascovian scholars developed a rudimentary version of germ theory, postulated an ellipsoidal Earth, and crafted early versions of the telescope. Glascovian glassware was prized for its quality and clarity; today, pieces from this era fetch millions of dollars at auction.
1315—1621: Decline
Historians mark the end of Glascovia's golden age with the mysterious death of Emperor Julian in 1315. Though the cause of Julian's death has never been revealed (and still remains the subject of historical controversy), his daughter and successor, Empress Caesellia, became convinced of foreign complicity in her father's death. Fearing an imminent military assault from quarters unknown, Caesellia issued the infamous Grandis Praetentura (literally "grand cordon") order, instructing Glascovian vessels to interdict any and all incoming foreign ships. Glascovia was effectively sealed off from the outside world.
The Grandis Praetentura, ostensibly an emergency measure at the time of its promulgation, soon became a permanent Imperial policy. Isolated from the dynamic region surrounding it, Glascovian society ossified, a trend exacerbated by increasingly despotic rulers who sought to control the minutiae of their realm. Draconian restrictions were placed on the political and economic rights of Glascovians; harshly-enforced legal codes criminalized everything from "salacious" haircuts to private possession of swords. Glascovia quickly fell behind the rest of the world culturally and technology, as a predatory, rent-seeking aristocracy stifled productivity and innovation.
1621—1894: Company and Crown rule
The East Atlantian Company (hereinafter "the Company") ship Scourge of Malice shattered Glascovia's self-imposed isolation in 1621 when it arrived in Volaterræ Harbor. Far superior to contemporary Imperial forces, the Company frigate easily strong-armed Emperor Julius Saturninus into granting the Company the right to establish a trading post in Volaterræ. Subsequent visits from Company ships in 1637, 1645, and 1660 led to the creation of Company outposts in Sciiamchiamensis, Olympia, and Sinus Tonitralis. The Company's directors brought over thousands of EAC soldiers to protect its interests in these new trading posts; the overwhelming military presence of the Company granted it de facto control over the whole northern peninsula.
This de facto state of affairs was rendered official in at the 1682 Battle of Regiilignum, when a force of nine hundred Company soldiers and eight cannon routed thirty thousand Imperial legions. Broken militarily, the Empire ceded more and more of Glascovia by treaty to the Company to stave off complete annexation. By 1701, the Glascovian emperor had been reduced to controlling the city of Cansæ alone, and in 1704, the Company mounted a successful attack on the Imperial capital, bringing all of Glascovia to heel.
For the next six decades, the Company consolidated its rule over Glascovia, using the island as a supplier of raw materials—namely timber, fish, and metals—and as an entrepôt for the Company's trade with the rest of Atlantian Oceania. Then-exotic spices, like cinnamon, turmeric, and pepper, were also major commodities for export, along with tea cultivated in portions of the Glascovian lowlands. To render its occupation palatable, the Company divided Glascovia into three dozen nominally-independent margraviates, led by former members of the Glascovian aristocracy. In exchange for limited internal autonomy, the margraves agreed to recognize Company hegemony and obey the financial, economic, and military directives it issued.
1767 bore witness to Constantine's Insurrection and the dissolution of Company rule. Beginning with a mutiny of Glascovian caligati in Company service over failure to pay wages, Constantine's Insurrection quickly escalated into full-scale rebellion, with the Margrave of Aquæ Flaviæ attempting to declare a new empire and Glascovian independence. Decades of frustration with Company rule fueled horrifying atrocities on the Glascovian side; historical accounts describe rebels raping and murdering British women and children at captured Company outposts, as well as publicly sacrificing still-living Company infantrymen to Mars, the god of war. These barbarities mobilized British support using royal troops to quell the insurrection and reestablish order in Glascovia; when hostilities finally ended in 1769, the British Parliament quickly passed the Government in Glascovia Act to disband the East Atlantian Company and bring Glascovia directly under the Crown's rule.
By this period, the British Parliament had come to believe that its colonial mission in Glascovia carried with it a moral duty to civilize and Christianize the country; direct administration by the British Crown brought profound technological, economic, and social change to Glascovia. A well-developed network of bridges, roads, canals, railroads, and telegraph lines soon criss-crossed the country. Taking advantage of cheap labor and abundant mineral wealth, industrial factories set up shop in Glascovia; thanks to the discovery of the Bessemer process, Glascovia produced 19% of the world's steel by 1880. Moreover, the British crown brought with it modern jurisprudence and governance; to govern the country effectively, the British established public schools and universities to educate a Westernized middle-class capable of running the Glascovian Civil Service, the courts, etc.
The well-educated middle class upon which the British relied for day-to-day administration, ironically, were instrumental in bringing an end to British rule. Nationalist and Marxist thought captivated this Glascovian elite, leading them to believe that Glascovia should rule itself for the benefit of its citizenry, not for the benefit of a foreign aristocracy. During the early 1880s, these activists organized a series of demonstrations and protests agitating for independence; many of these initially peaceful protests soon yielded to violent altercations between the British military and Glascovian demonstrators. The violence came to a head on 10 September 1885, when an independence march in Sciiamchiamensis devolved into a city-wide riot which left three British grenadiers and two hundred Glascovians dead. Known as Bloody Thursday, the incident sparked intense debate in the British Parliament vis-a-vis the status of Glascovia, but eventually a consensus was reached that the Crown needed to play a less direct role in Glascovia's rule. On 1 January 1886, the British Parliament approved the Dominion of Glascovia Constitution Act, reorganizing Glascovia as a Dominion of the British Empire.
Eight years later, on 12 May 1894, the Dominion of Glascovia formally renounced any governmental ties to the United Kingdom when it ratified the Lex Axiomæ, a new constitution for the country which restored the Imperial monarchy as a ceremonial institution and provided for representative, parliamentary democracy.
1895—2013: Modern era
Glascovia had achieved her independence, free from, and unfettered by, the trappings of British imperialism. Despite ubiquitous support for independence per se, the newly declared Second Empire was deeply divided about the kind of country it hoped to be. When the transitional government held elections for the first time in 1900, divisive arguments about the character of the new country threatened to tear the Empire asunder before it even had a chance to flourish.
The Second Empire's first elected consul, Socialist party leader Tiberius Maximius Auspex, adroitly employed his rhetorical skills to rally the country around a single vision of a modern Glascovia; historians now label this vision as the Undiscovered Country, referring to a now-famous excerpt from Auspex's first speech to the Imperial Congress:
| QUOTE | "[W]e step forward into an undiscovered country—the future. And though none of us can know what this enigmatic land can hold for us, we must chart it together, day by day."
—Consul Tiberius Maximus Auspex, 17 March 1900 |
Auspex proposed a sea change in the relationship between the state and the people, reversing six hundred years of predatory, exploitative, and decadent government; instead, the state, under Auspex's vision, would serve the people and their interests above all else. The influence of Auspex's Undiscovered Country cannot be overstated; its guiding principles have still shaped policymaking well into the 21st century.
Glascovia took an international lead in creating the modern welfare state. The 1902 Imperial Health Service Act created one of the first systems of universal healthcare, with hospitals funded directly by the taxpayers. Passage of the 1905 Higher Education Act created the three-tier public university system still present in Glascovia today. Amendments to the Lex Axiomae in 1911 provided constitutional guarantees of workers' rights to organize and collectively bargain.
Though Glascovia refrained from participating in World War I, the so-called Great War still had profound effects on Glascovia. Faced with widespread devastation in Europe, businesses sought opportunities elsewhere, and Glascovia quickly adapted to attract foreign capital. An omnibus economic reform bill, the 1919 Economic Vitalization Act, reduced trade barriers, simplified product regulations, and strengthened property rights. These reforms marked the beginning of Glascovia's economic ascendancy during the 20th century, as companies vied for access to Glascovia's burgeoning markets and pool of hard-working, talented labor.
The tumult of the worldwide Great Depression and the ensuing Second World War certainly extended to Glascovia, with the latter drawing the Empire into the conflict on the Allies' side. Glascovian marines reinforced Australian troops during the defense of New Guinea and played an important role in fighting the Japanese in Burma. Had the invasion of the Japanese home islands proceeded, the Imperial Navy would have provided naval support to U.S. forces landing at Honshu.
After the war, Glascovia, like the United States, experienced a significant post-war economic boom. International immigration, especially from Kenya and South Africa helped fuel demographic growth and provided a larger labor force commensurate with Glascovia's growth. Economic growth reached new peaks during the 1973 global energy crisis, when the West turned into droves to Glascovian uranium and nuclear reactors as an alternative to OPEC-controlled oil.
This post has been edited by Glascovia on Feb 7 2013, 02:49 PM
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