Assimas Islands

Assimas Islands

Native name: Isole d'Assime (Vespasian) Asimeri (Western Imaguan Creole)
File:AssimasIsland.png The Assimas Islands, highlighted on a map of Imagua and the Assimas
Geography
Location	West Arucian Sea
Archipelago	Arucian Islands
Total islands	17
Major islands	3
Area	4,937.61 km2 (1,906.42 sq mi)
Highest elevation	1,467 m (4,813 ft)
Highest point	Mount Apita
Administration
Imagua and the Assimas
Largest settlement	San Pietro (pop. 191,096)
Demographics
Population	301,549 (2011)
Pop. density	61.1 /km2 (158.2 /sq mi)

The Assimas Islands (Vespasian: Isole d'Assime, Imaguan: Asima ubohu-nu, Western Imaguan Creole: Asimeri) are a chain of seventeen islands located in the West Arucian Sea and part of Imagua and the Assimas. The islands have an area of 4,937.61 square kilometres, comprising 28.6% of the nation's land area, and have a population of 301,549 as of the 2011 census, comprising 23.1% of the national population.

Situated west of the island of Imagua, north of the Sabanas, northeast of Sanslumière, southeast of the Eldmarkian island of Vanö, and southwest of Maracao, the Assimas Islands, like neighbouring Imagua have held a strategic position in the middle of the West Arucian Sea. This has led to it being inhabited for millennia, first by the indigenous peoples of the Arucian, and then from the sixteenth century, by Caldia, Geatland, Eldmark, and then Etruria.

After the Solarian War ended in 1946, the islands were transferred to the Estmerish colony of Imagua, which gained independence in 1948 from Estmere.

History

Pre-colonial history

Depiction of Native Imaguans, c. 1866

Humans first settled the Assimas around 7,000 years ago, with fossils and stone tools being discovered in Rutigliano dating from that point in time, with the Assimas being fully inhabited by humans by no later than 6,250 years ago.

The earliest known people to inhabit the island were the Nati, who arrived between 150 BCE and 200 BCE onto the Assimas. They were followed by the Marai peoples around 200 CE, who established some settlements, with the largest being on the site of present-day San Pietro. The Marai would continue to control the cities until the end of the Classical Era around 800 CE, when the Marai cities on the Assimas, like neighbouring Imagua, collapsed as the other Marai cities could no longer support their distant colonies.

Around that point in time, the Mutu people would arrive from Asteria Inferior, and take over the Assimas by no later than 900 CE. The Mutu would engage in trade with neighbouring states, with potatoes and other crops being traded for gold which they fashioned into jewelery, while they kept using the Nati language as a lingua franca despite using the Imaguan language for their own day-to-day lives.

By the early sixteenth century, the Assimas were united under the TBC Confederacy which comprised the entirety of the Assimas. However, the arrival of Euclean explorers and the spread of Euclean diseases would lead to the collapse of the TBC Confederacy by the 1510s.

Early colonisation

View of the Castello di Slott in San Pietro, 2006

Following its discovery by Caldish explorer TBD, the islands were named after Assim Asteris, with the earliest settlement, Baile Adamhnáin in what is today San Pietro being established in 1534. However, unlike neighbouring Imagua, the Assimas never saw substantial settlement by the Caldians, with the settlement of Baile Adamhnáin being abandoned by 1548.

In 1562, the Assimas were captured by Blostland as part of their conquest of Imagua. However, Blostlandic settlement was minimal for nearly four decades, with TBD attempting to establish a colony in 1578 on the site of Porto Cangelosi, with that colony failing. In 1601, Blostland would establish the settlement of Peterstad on the site of the former Caldish settlement of Baile Adamhnáin. However, until 1658, the Assimas were largely underdeveloped compared to the neighbouring Imagua or Vanö.

After the Estmerish conquest of Imagua in 1658, Blostland would invest significant efforts into the Assimas, with intensive efforts at settling the archipelago. This led to the importation of slaves from Bahia as part of the wider Transvehemens slave trade as they were needed to work at the sugar and nutmeg plantations on the Assimas. It also led to the development of Peterstad into being the largest town on the Assimas.

Blostlandic rule would end over the Assimas in 1769 when the local garrison staged a mutiny and declared their loyalty to Eldmark, and in 1771, the Assimas officially became part of Eldmark. However, the abolition of slavery in 1776 led to most of the former landowners to leave the Assimas, and the Assimas became seen as a liability to the Eldmarkian government, as it was heavily indebted from its war of independence against Blostland.

Etrurian rule

View down the Via Di Rienzo in San Pietro, c. 1914

In 1813, Eldmark sold the Assimas to the United Kingdom of Etruria in order to help pay down the debts that the Eldmarkians incurred. The transfer of sovereignty led to the remaining white Eldmarkian population leaving the Assimas, and to the arrival of Etrurians, primarily from New Accadia (present-day Bonaventura) and loyalists from Gapolania, but also immigrants coming from Etruria proper.

The colonial government would engage in policies to Etrurianise the islands, which started by giving all the settlements Vespasian names in 1814, with Peterstad assuming its current name of San Pietro, and making Vespasian the sole official language of the colony. It was followed by policies that promoted the Solarian Catholic Church at the cost of Gospelism and other Amendist sects which were previously the dominant sect of Sotirianity on the Assimas, through only allowing Catholic schools to operate on the island, and by seizing local churches and converting them into Catholic churches. These policies were aided by the reconstruction of San Pietro in an Etrurian style following a fire in 1834 that destroyed much of San Pietro, and the establishment of a naval base in San Pietro in 1840, and continued immigration from Etruria and her colonial empire as the colonial government needed officials to help Etrurianise the islands.

Later on in the nineteenth century, the construction of dedicated sugar refineries and factories in San Pietro, and to a lesser extent, in Rutigliano helped grow the colonial economy, as it facilitated the export of refined sugar and furniture to the rest of the Etrurian Empire, although due to the small size of the Assimas compared to New Accadia, or even the neighbouring Estmerish Colony of Imagua, the Assiman economy remained small, and most of the Assiman economy remained dependent on sugar production.

The Great Collapse would greatly affect the Assimas from 1915 onward, with 18% of the Assiman population becoming unemployed by 1918. Unlike metropolitan Etruria, the economy would be slow to recover, and on the eve of the Great War, the Assimas was only at around 90% of its 1915 levels of production. The Great War would initially see an economic recovery for the colony, but after Etruria entered the Great War in 1928, the Assimas were swiftly conquered by Gaullica, and the Assimas would remain under Gaullican occupation until it was liberated in 1933 when the Grand Alliance liberated the archipelago as part of an island-hopping campaign.

After the Legionary Reaction in 1937, the Greater Solarian Republic would rename the Assimas to Nuovo Aeolia in 1938 to assert a greater connection to Etruria, and would intensify the Etrurianisation program, with a policy in 1938 requiring that all people adopt Etrurian names. In 1939, the Università di San Pietro was established by the Greater Solarian Republic, which would allow local Assimans to attend university without leaving the archipelago for Bonaventura or elsewhere, and by the early 1940s, the Greater Solarian Republic invested in improving roads between settlements.

However, the outbreak of the Solarian War led to the Colony of Imagua invading and occupying the Assimas by February 1944. Although the islands would officially remain Etrurian until November 1946, Imagua de-facto administered the island from February 1944 onward.

Imaguan rule and contemporary era

View of a sugar refinery near Soldo, 1973

After the end of the Solarian War in November 1946, the Assimas were annexed into the United Provinces. In January 1947, after the Sotirian Democrats threatened to break their coalition with the Democratic Party, the Assimas were annexed into the province of Imagua as Assimas County. However, in April 1948, Imagua was expelled from the United Provinces, leading to the Assimas becoming part of an independent Imagua and the Assimas.

Due to the dominance of the country by Estmerish speakers, many Assimans started agitating for increased autonomy or for independence from Imagua and the Assimas, with increasing resentment towards the Università di San Pietro, who was attracting a lot of Estmerish students as a result of it being the only university in the island nation. This led to the growth of the nationalist Assiman Independence Party in the 1950s and 1960s, which led to Prime Minister Efrem Lacovara giving autonomy to the county government in 1969, and to establish a university in Cuanstad, in order to acquiesce to these demands. By the mid-1970s, the sovereignty movement had largely died out.

However, with the Sugar Crash and the decline in sugar production, combined with the transition towards a service economy, the Assimas started to experience a population decline as younger Assimans would leave the islands to find work elsewhere, especially as the Imaguan economy became more concentrated in Cuanstad and San Pietro. These trends led to a population decline in the 1980s as the Recession of 1980 greatly affected the Assimas on a much larger scale compared to Imagua.

Since the 2000s, the economy on the Assimas Islands has started to recover as it completed the transition towards a service economy, with the Assimas economy now being largely based on the hospitality industry, information and technology, and retail. However, it continues to decline in population, as those who remain on the island generally trend older compared to the national average.

Geography

A hiking trail on Mount Pioniere, 2015

The Assimas Islands comprises of three major islands, and fourteen islets.

The largest island, Avitabile Island (Vespasian: Isola Avitabile, Western Imaguan Creole: Mitener) is 2,582.72 square kilometres in area, with its highest point being Mount Pioniere, at 940 metres above sea level. The second largest island, San Sigfrido Island (Vespasian: Isola di San Sigfrido, Western Imaguan Creole: Ineweyer) has an area of 1,967.62 square kilometres, with its highest point being the 921 metre high Mount Tramonto. Finally, the smallest island, Guardia Island (Vespasian: Isola della Guardia, Western Imaguan Creole: Onirer) has an area of 321.97 square kilometres, with the highest point being Mount Oniri, at only 626 metres above sea level.

Unlike Imagua, which still has active volcanoes, there are no active volcanoes on the Assimas Islands, with several dormant volcanoes, and one extinct volcano (Mount Oniri). This has meant that erosion has become the main geologic force on the islands, which have made the islands relatively flat compared to its eastern neighbour. The Assimas are separated by the Pilastri Straits from Imagua.

This, combined with colonial policies by Etruria have meant that these islands have experienced more deforestation, as the land was exploited for its agriculture. However, due to the flatter terrain, more of its land is arable, with 1,685.91 square kilometres, or about 18.1% of the Assimas being arable, compared to 8.1% on Imagua.

Climate

Climatically, the Assimas experiences a tropical monsoon climate, due to its location near the equator, with the yearly average highs being 32 °C (89.6 °F), and the yearly average lows being 20.5 °C (68.9 °F). The wet season is generally from May to October, while the dry season typically lasts from November to April, although the months of April and November receive more rain than any other month in the dry season.

The highest recorded temperature on the Assimas Islands was at 37.6 °C (99.7 °F), recorded in Venzon on 28 July, 1939, while the coldest recorded temperature recorded on the Assimas was at 8°C (46.4 °F) on the summit of Mount Pioniere on 19 February, 1911.

Administration

The entirety of the Assimas Islands is administered as Assimas County, which is an autonomous county due to the Assimas Autonomy Act of 1969. This means that the Assimas has powers over education, welfare, and social development, which is normally a power reserved for the national government in Cuanstad.

Before the annexation of the Assimas by Estmere in 1946, the islands were divided into... (TBC)