Innominada

Innominada is the name of a former country in South Hemithea. The term is also applied to the Innominadan Peninsula, a body of land jutting southward from the continent of Hemithea into the Strait of Portcullia. Today, the peninsula is occupied by four countries, which were divided following Innominada's collapse in 2014: the People's Republic of Innominada, the Republic of Innominada, Isla Diamante, and Argentstan.

The first human populations likely crossed the Strait of Portcullia an estimated 75,000 years ago, when a pronounced ice age lowered sea levels and exposed a large portion of the Innominadan Shelf. This was not a true land bridge, as there was still a 100-kilometer sea gap in between; early human crossings likely involved some degree of island-hopping. The first organized states on the peninsula formed in the 2nd century CE, as a collection of rice-farming kingdoms along the southeast coast and up the Argentan River Valley. These kingdoms flourished off of the lucrative South Menghe Sea trade circuit, which brought them into contact with Taleyan merchants from West Meridia. During this time, most people in the southeastern kingdoms were converted to Shahidism. The Menghean Yi dynasty conquered most of these kingdoms in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, bringing major Menghean cultural influences but allowing local trade and culture to continue flourishing. This prosperity was mainly confined to the southeastern region: northwest of the Sierra Verde mountains, most people lived in nomadic tribes, with a few small sedentary kingdoms along the coast.

In 1499, the first Sylvan explorers arrived on the west coast of the Innominadan peninsula, where they set up a small replenishment camp and paved the way for future voyages. With the Yi leadership thrown into chaos by the Menghean Black Plague, the many small kingdoms of the Innominadan peninsula broke away from Menghean control, only to find themselves quickly overrun by Sylvan conquistadors who were immune to the rapidly spreading disease. By 1543, all local peoples except the prosperous Phan Dok Sultanate had fallen under Sylvan control, and Phan Dok would fall in 1571. Sylvan authorities ran Innominada as an extractive colony, building an economy dependent on gold mining in the Sierra Verde range and plantation agriculture elsewhere on the eastern side of the peninsula. In the process, they established an exclusive racial hierarchy, with pure-blood Creoles at the top, native Argentans and Kedi at the bottom, and mixed-blood Mestizos in between.

Innominada became a semi-independent Commonwealth possession in 1883, though it retained close ties to Sylva. A more radical break came in 1963, when revolutionaries from Menghe and Maverica spilled over into northern Innominada, backing a Marxist movement that seized power in 1967. The resulting People's Republic of Innominada broke up large landholding estates and reorganized the economy among syndicalist lines. For a time it was the wealthiest Socialist state in Hemithea, but by the 1990s, lackluster reforms led it to stagnate economically. Under the leadership of President Hernando Santángel (1990-2013), ethnic tensions between Sylvan Creoles and indigenous groups escalated into violence, and foreign policy grew increasingly erratic.

In 2015, following a perilous intervention in Innominada's civil war, the country was partitioned into three states. Isla Diamante was temporarily placed under Sylvan control, and later transferred to a Sylvan-backed commonwealth government. The Menghe-backed Republic of Innominada was carved out of the provinces running along the South Menghe Sea and Strait of Portcullia, bordered inland by the Sierra Verde mountains. In the northwest of the country, Maverica established the People's Republic of Innominada, a rump state claiming to represent the deposed prewar government. The most recent change came on June 6th, 2018, when three provinces of the Republic of Innominada were carved off to form the state of Argentstan.

Name

When the first Sylvan explorers arrived on the west coast of Hemithea, they labeled the region Terra Innominada, literally "Unnamed Land," on their maps and in their records. Originally, they applied the name to the entire continent, to express its unknown status and unclear extent. Although it was likely intended as a temporary label, pending a royal decision on whether to name the new land after the King or one of the lead explorers, the name stuck, and by 1510 it was recognized as the official name of Sylva's colonial possessions along the west coast.

In Menghean and its related languages, the region is known as Wŏlnam (월남 / 越南), for its location south (and west) of the Wŏl river. As the Wŏl river is well inside Menghe, forming the boundary between Hwangjŏn Province and the Lakkian Semi-Autonomous Province, the label initially included the Menghean Southwest, which until the 14th century was outside of Menghean control. After Menghe expanded its control over the area under the Yi dynasty, and later under the Myŏn dynasty, the term Wŏlnam was reinterpreted to encompass only the lands southwest of Menghean territory, even though the boundary currently lies at the Sama river.

History

Sylvan rule

The first Sylvan explorers arrived on the west coast of what is today Innominada in 1499. There, they set up a small number of coastal settlements, where they could take on supplies and trade with the natives. From there, they moved along the Hemithean coast, landing in the Menghean port of Bokju (today Giju) in 1502. In addition to lightweight muskets and Christian teachings, the new arrivals brought the Yersinia pestis bacterium, previously absent in Hemithea. The resulting plague killed half of Menghe's population, toppling the Yi dynasty and opening the way for the Eastern Caliphates to break away from Menghean control once again. Their independence, however, would be short-lived: knowing loosely of the plague's transmission by flea-infested animals, Sylvan colonists released plague-infested rats and feral pigs into central Innominada, then sent columns of conquistadors inland to take control in the ensuing chaos. Between 1524 and 1543, they conquered the Kedi-populated Sultanates in the south; between 1664 and 1671, they conquered the Argentan Phan Dok Sultanate, extending the Innominadan colony to its 2014 borders.

Sylvan rulers treated Innominada as an extractive colony, using gold mining in the Sierra Verde mountains and plantation agriculture elsewhere to finance military expansion plans at home. Yet the institutions they set up differed by region, with lasting social and cultural consequences. In the west, where the indigenous population was sparse, Sylvan colonists displaced the native tribes eastward and set up independent farms. Southeast of the Sierra Verde, where the population was denser, they relied more heavily on local labor, enslaving the Kedi peoples and using them as plantation and mining labor. The conquistadors, many of whom were veterans of religious wars in Casaterra, forcibly converted most of the population to Catholicism, and over time, intermarriage and sexual violence produced a large mixed (or Mestizo) population. After adding the Phan Dok Sultanate to the colony in 1671, Sylvan authorities imposed an even more extreme form of this system, tying the local peasants to the land as serfs and forbidding intermarriage between Creoles and local Argentans. The resulting social pyramid of Creoles, Mestizos, and indigenous people was burned deep into the fabric of Innominadan society.

Innominada gained autonomy from Sylva in 1883, though it remained part of a Commonwealth alliance with close ties to the metropol. The new government abolished serfdom in 1885, but it retained a system of apartheid in the northeast, and in practice most Argentans and Kedi continued to work on massive Creole-run estates as tenant laborers.

In the wake of the Pan-Septentrion War, Innominada experienced a modest economic boom. Menghe and Maverica, its main economic competitors, had been devastated by war, while its west coast was spared the worst of the destruction when Menghean forces withdrew prematurely in 1944. Innominada also received generous economic support from Sylva, and benefited from low tariffs in the immediate postwar era. Most of its newfound growth came from the textiles sector, as low-wage spinning mills linked up with existing cotton plantations, but growth also spilled over into other areas of light industry.

People's Republic of Innominada

Innominadan revolutionaries posing in the Presidential Palace, 1967.

Rapid economic growth in the postwar era relied on poor labor conditions, which by the early 1960s had given way to deep social unrest. Inspired by the success of recent Communist revolutions in Maverica and Menghe, the underground People's Revolutionary Front - Syndicalist (FRG-S) began smuggling arms across the northern border to support the armed overthrow of the state. Fighting broke out in 1963, and it quickly spread from the cities to the countryside, where Argentan and Kedi rebels staged uprisings against large landowners. The FRG-S formed an alliance with the indigenous rebels, promising land reform and racial equality in return for minority cooperation in a unified state. Despite Sylvan military support, the Prime Minister surrendered to the revolutionaries on August 4th, 1967.

The victorious FRG-S ruled Innominada as a one-party state. It dissolved the large plantation estates, allowing tenant villages to either farm the land in common or break it into equal household plots. Factories and workshops were reorganized along syndicalist lines, with workers voting on economic decisions in conjunction with state-appointed managers. General-Secretary Sosimo Capote (r. 1967-1983), himself a Mestizo, abolished the apartheid system and appointed Kedis and Argentans to high positions in government. Official Party doctrine in this period held that religious and racial boundaries were a bourgeois tool to divide the workforce, and advocated for inter-communal harmony. Yet as part of this doctrine, the FRG-S refused to institute affirmative action quotas or carve out autonomous provinces, and it organized campaigns to promote atheism in majority-Shahidic areas.

As time passed, the FRG-S increasingly aligned itself with urban, Creole interests. Vicente Arellano, President and General-Secretary from 1992 to 2000, responded to growing opposition in the west by gradually reshaping Party ideology to include nationalist and religious appeals. To revitalize the stalled economy, he also allowed private businessmen to run small and medium enterprises as long as they allowed workers to vote on all key management decisions. These decisions won him support from Sylvan Creoles, but alienated Argentans, Kedis, and some Mestizos, as the Party continued its anti-Shahidism campaigns and instituted Sylvan as the national language.

In the 2000 presidential election the FRG-S instituted another political reform, allowing opposition parties to run for office. Through ballot stuffing and other irregularities, the ruling party ensured that Hernando Santángel, its hand-picked choice, won the presidency. Like his predecessor, Santángel was a pure-blood Creole who viewed Innominada as a culturally Christian state, but he brought this ideology into the open. After polling ahead of the 2004 election suggested a closer margin of victory, Santángel responded by mobilizing Shahidophobic rhetoric against the Kedi and Argentans, setting off a chain reaction of violence which culminated in the Christmas Riots of 2004. Creole nationalists continued to stage isolated beatings of Kedi and Argentans well into the 2010s, while state security forces carried out raids on mosques and indigenous neighborhoods. Argentan separatists responded with a string of terrorist attacks, fueling a cycle of tit-for-tat ethnic violence.

Civil war and partition

See also: Innominadan Crisis

Hernando Santángel passed away in 2013, leaving the reins of power to his appointed successor, Vice President Pablo Bienvenida. In response to widespread protests about the undemocratic transition, the FRG-S announced that a special election would take place on March 9th, 2014. With the economy stagnant and racial tensions peaking, Bienvenida's popularity tumbled ahead of election day, and after initial exit polls showed the moderate opposition candidate Hernan Martínez in the lead, the FRG-S halted ballot counting and announced a victory for Bienvenida. Reform supporters responded by staging violent demonstrations in the streets, and a member of the Presidential Guard assassinated Bienvenida in retaliation for a deadly attack on protesters. Opposition supporters in the south rallied around Hernan Martínez, who had declared himself the rightful winner, and Argentan and Kedi separatists staged uprisings throughout the northwest.

In response to a string of pirate attacks in the Strait of Portcullia, Sylvan forces occupied Isla Diamante and declared their intention to annex it as a military base. This move deeply provoked Menghe, which launched a large-scale invasion on September 21st, 2014. As demoralized, worn-out government forces crumbled before the Menghean advance, Maverica moved troops into the northwest of the country to prop up the Innominadan regime. With the help of a last-minute diplomatic intervention from Hallia, the two powers were able to narrowly avoid escalation into a Third World War, and they agreed to partition Innominada into Northwest and Southeast zones. The new borders followed existing provincial boundaries, and also placed the Sierra Verde range between the two countries as a natural barrier.

At first, Menghe administered the Republic of Innominada with relatively light imposition, allowing Prime Minister Hernan Martínez's government to set its own political and economic policy. Even under the leadership of a moderate Mestizo, however, ethnic tensions continued to simmer. In late 2016, the Menghean Special Liaison to Innominada concluded that the policies of ethnic consociationalism and political autonomy were not working, and authorized a referendum on Argentstani independence. After the secessionist victory triggered another string of riots, which the Martínez government appeared to back, Menghean troops stationed in the country launched an organized crackdown. Argentstan's secession was allowed to move forward, with a continued Menghean presence in the country, and the Republic of Innominada's government was reorganized into a single-party regime with more active Menghean interference.