Iron and Blood - Game Thread

Oceania




Asia



Europe




Africa



South America




North America



Defunct countries

The French Revolution began in 1789. It sent shockwaves throughout Europe. To contain the radical republican threat, the conservative monarchies of Europe invaded France, unknowingly beginning a quarter of a century of war that would change the world forever.

Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France in 1799, and under his direction a rejuvenated France went on the offensive, eventually dominating most of Europe. But Napoleon could not conquer all. A series of military defeats forced him into exile. But Napoleon wasn’t finished. In the end, he returned to lead France, and the Coalition grudgingly accepted the existence of the Second French Republic at the Congress of Ulm. In 1831 relations between France and the royal houses of Europe remained uneasy, to say the least, and the young Napoleon II seems to be no less ambitious than his father.

The easternmost region of Europe is the Russian Empire, ruled by the benevolent iron fist of The Kan. Although rebellions in the 18th century resulted in large swaths of loosely-governed territories, from the Islamic states of Idel-Ural to the far-flung colony of Alaska, being lost to the Empire, the Kan is still firmly in control of the Russian heartland, and may now be in a position to take back the lands which were lost last century. Rather backward by European standards, Russia is nevertheless one of the most powerful European state, if only because of the sheer size of its land and population.

Germany was formed partly in response to the threat posed by Napoleonic France. Under the leadership of Prussia, a coalition of states voted to form the German Empire in 1810, and most of the remaining German states were absorbed under the terms of the Treaty of Ulm. The Kaiser, Friedrich Wilhelm III, has high hopes for the new Empire, and the scope of his ambition is already causing concern throughout the continent.

Italy was also united, under the name of the New Roman Empire. The Italians look back to the days of the old Roman Empire, readopting almost every aspect of old Roman government and society down to language and (reportedly) togas and tunics. It is a republic, and therefore one of France’s few potential friends had the Roman leadership not been so resolutely expansionist.

Europe’s third republic is Scandinavia, under the name of the Socialist Republic of Odin. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the radical socialists, revolutionaries overthrow the Kingdom of Odin in 1805, and since then the country has been endeavoring to build a welfare state, though political dissent is repressed in the name of “socialist transition”. Iceland, meanwhile, is following its own path of development, known for its obsession with “blondness”. It would be a sort of harmless exotic oddity, if not for a fact that it is a disturbing powerful country for its size.

Great Britain has in recent times suffered humiliation after humiliation; the loss of its Indian holdings to an Indian coalition, the loss of its North American and Australian colonies, and finally the survival of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French republican regime. Civil unrest in the British Isles itself has slowed industrial development. But it has survived. It is now at peace, and is still a world power, albeit a weakened one. Britannia may yet rule the waves.


Spain, the scene of so many bloody battles during the Napoleonic Wars, is a shadow of its former self. The Treaty of Ulm left it under an unpopular republican government, widely regarded as a French puppet. The resentment boils over in the Revolution of 1826 that overthrew the Republic and installed an ultranationalist government led by Alejandro Garcia, who imposed an imperialist, theocratic despotism on his people and promised a new golden age for Spain as a world power.

Meanwhile the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America had taken advantages of the chaos in Europe to declare their independence. Mexico declared its independence in 1810, but soon descended into civil war. The northern parts of the country seceded from Mexico in quick succession to from Texas, California and (after uniting with British and American colonists in Oregon) Librulstan. The three states followed very different trajectories of development; Texas emerging as a repressive dictatorship, while Librulstan became one of the most liberal states in the world.

The Republic of Spain, unwilling to accept the fact that it has lost most of the countryside to rebels, attempted to hold on to its remaining American possessions. In 1827, as mainland Spain underwent a bloody revolution, the rebels seized the opportunity and overran the rest of Spanish America. In Peru, the insurrection was led by a Quechua leader, Atahualpa, who resurrected Tawantinsuyo, the realms of the Inca, and promoted native culture and customs. The new state faced a serious threat from Aanastin, where a charismatic aristocrat declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal and established a totalitarian, expansionist slave state, and has declared the Incan state's existence unacceptable.

The American Revolution has established the United States of America in place of Britain’s North American colonies. The new Union, however, was fragile. Canada and Quebec, invaded and severely treated during the Revolutionary War, was an unwilling participant, and there was a growing rift between the northern and southern states. The hope that a victory over the British in the War of 1812 would strengthen the Union was short-lived, and Canada, Quebec and the alliance of southern states, calling itself the Confederate States of America, seceded from the United States in 1821. A Civil War lasted until 1825, when the United States was dissolved, leaving Canada and the CSA to compete over its remains.

In China, the White Lotus Rebellion broke out in 1796. Infamously, the corrupt official Heshen initially dismissed the uprising as “harmless talk”, but soon the Qing Dynasty was seriously under threat. The attempt by the Jiaqing Emperor to purge his court and crush the rebellion failed, and encouraged more uprisings in southern China. By 1821 the Qing has fallen and China has entered another period of disunity. Among the breakaway states, the Southern Han Empire based in Guangzhou is the richest and most powerful, its ruler having created a strong centralized and nationalist state. In the west, the Kingdom of Xi’an is one of the few areas of China which has never been completely subdued by either the Ming or the Qing, and in the power vacuum created by the fall of the Qing has began to expand into the rest of China, while Shaanxi’s coal mines are fueling industrial growth.

To the east, Japan is finally beginning to emerge from its self-imposed seclusion. A new Shogun has ordered a restructuring of the government, and has his sights set on territories on mainland Asia. Further south, Siam has established itself as the most powerful among the various petty Southeast Asian kingdoms. It seems only a matter of time before the rest of the region falls to the Siamese, though the arrival of European colonialists could change this picture.

In Africa, two states have embarked on a remarkable experiment with liberalism. The Horn of Africa is united under a single state for the first time, and its leaders embraced liberal ideals. In the Congo, refugees from persecution from all over the world banded with embattled locals to fight off pirates and slavers, and in 1812 established the nation of Saoirse, founded on the ideals of liberty, equality and justice for all. Africa’s third great state, Swaziland, is a more traditional monarchy. Its expansionist king has secured the recognition of all the tribes of southern Africa, and now looks to expand his kingdom’s borders further to the north.

The Islamic world has seen its fair share of upheavals, not least the sudden fall of the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Mahmud’s attempts to reform the decaying Ottoman state and its military had failed terribly. But it was botched purge of the Janissaries in 1826, and its bloody aftermath, which was the final nail in the coffin. Nationalism swept though the Empire, and its provinces declared independence one by one. In Bosnia, Husein Gradascevic led the uprising against Ottoman rule, established the Bosnian Sultanate, and eventually managed to extend Bosnian rule throughout the Balkans.

Arabia was another region which asserted its independence as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. For a while it seems either the Sharif of Mecca or the House of Saud in Nejd would unify the peninsula, but Yasir al-Fulani defeated both and established the Caliphate of Medina. Looking back to the early days of Islam for inspiration, he sought to unite all the Muslim lands under one banner. Afghanistan was also recently unified, an extraordinary triumph of tribal diplomacy. The Afghans too look to expand, especially into the rich lands of India, where formerly allied states, which together brought about a humiliating British retreat from India, have turned on each other, embroiling the entire subcontinent in frenzied chaotic warfare. Many Indians have escaped the ravages of war to find refuge in Australia, which has declared its independence from the Dutch and British in 1799 as a democratic state, and is now experience an economic and population boom thanks to a gold rush. The other Pacific power, Hawaii, is a less popular immigration destination; infact it is a totalitarian ultranationalistic nation that thrives on slave trading, and is seeking to expand its borders and dominate the Pacific Ocean.