Cazacasia
Cazacasia ⰆⰡⰈⰆⰦⰔ Qazqās | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
 | |
| Capital | Tobro |
| Official languages | Thawari |
| Religion | Vaestism |
• Banner | Cazacasian Banner |
| Demonym | Cazacasian |
| Government | Respublican monarchy |
• Emperor | Ettayyeb II |
| Establishment | |
| 1903 | |
• Conferral of the Cazacasian Banner | 1958 |
| Area | |
• Total | 1,927,624 km2 (744,260 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 152,300,000 |
• Density | 79/km2 (204.6/sq mi) |
| Driving side | right |
Cazacasia (Thawari: ⰆⰡⰈⰆⰦⰔ Qazqās) is a country covering the majority of the landmass of Petty-Lestria in the south of Messeno-Joriscia. It borders the Holy Empire to the south, Matal to the west, Qammam to the northwest, Settecia to the north, and Anabbah and Khabbat in the northeast. Cazacasia is the westernmost Vesnite state on the Messeno-Joriscian continent, although it incorporates significant swathes of territory populated primarily by adherents of Siriash.
Etymology
The name Cazacasia is an Ellicisation of the Thawari Qazqās, a toponym originally referring roughly to the northernmost region of the modern state and adopted as a name for the new polity under the 1901 Thawar War. Qazqās itself is of unclear etymology; it appears to predate Qund and not be of native origins. In many languages Cazacasia is known by a derivation of the name Thawar, strictly speaking the name of its predecessor state. In official contexts, however, the government insists on the use of Cazacasia.
Geography
Cazacasia is divided into five geographical and cultural regions: greater Ilmazarei on the western coast (also including Eswed), Lashpur on the south, Thawar proper on the central-eastern coast (comprising Nahrelbinn and Eshammar), Ozorot on the far northeast, and Qazqas in the southern Hump which separates Thawar and Ilmazarei. Central Cazacasia is dominated by highlands that slowly ascend into the Hump on the Qammami border. The east is flatter, with Eshammar's expansive coastal plains, watered by the Eref river system, hosting most of the population. Most of Cazacasia's area is affected by the Sunnar Monsoons: the north experiences a humid subtropical climate, while the south is covered by a tropical savanna climate. The area thus experiences heavily distinct wet and dry seasons.
History
Dabaia and Qund
Some of the earliest urbanised cultures in Cazacasia, located on its eastern coastline, have been dated to the 2nd millennium BCE. Northeastern Cazacasia was part of the heartland of the Dabaian civilisation at the turn of the Cairan era, whose influence on the cultures in modern Qammam gave rise to the Qundi civilisation. By the 6th century, Qundi generals had conquered most of Petty-Lestria, and spread Siriash through it. The ascent of the Kingdom of Inabo in the 7th century brought most of the southern Qundi states under Inabbine influence, although by the end of that century an ascendant and aggressive Hosamia under Albaqir set out to overthrow Inabbine hegemony, decisively defeating the latter in the Breaking of Inabo and thereby claiming suzerainty over the Qundi princes, establishing the Empire of Qund. By this time, the growth of civilisations in both Messenia and Outer Joriscia had developed Petty-Lestria into a prosperous entrepôt along the arteries of continental trade. Local culture, likewise, was to constantly betray influences from both the Neokos and Chotar.
The consolidation of imperial Qund over Petty-Lestria established the prevalence of Qundic languages and highly sophisticated Sirian practices inheriting from the Neokoi, as well as a number of aesthetics and political structures drawn from the Fifth Chotarian Empire. Regularised provinces and lamnearies were established throughout Cazacasia. Upon Qund's collapse in the 11th century, various governors and warlords known as umara carved out kingdoms for themselves. At this point the regions making up modern Cazacasia remained disjointed, their polities and culture largely independent from each other, although some events such as the adoption of the Sophoran Compact in the late 13th century affected all Cazacasian states alike. By the 14th century these regions were each individually united under Empire-Pacts: the east under Hudud, the south under Irbat, and the west under Qammam. Later in the century, however, what would become the modern Holy Empire swept north through Petty-Lestria and conquered as far as modern Tobro. The surrender of Hudud and other local rulers proved ephemeral, however; Tarshi control over the region disintegrated in the Bloody Head Wars of the 15th century.
Thawar
In 1440, the forces of the warlord Elmutasem, who had secured Eshammar for themselves amidst the Bloody Head Wars, deposed the Lamneary of Hudud and established the Kingdom of Thawar. Thawar's early history was in fact unremarkable if not derisory: intrusions from the Anabbine Empire and Great Neritsia, the latter of which permanently established a border at Sobieborsk, removed half of the prosperous Eref river basin from the Thawari demesne. But as proven by Elmutasham I, the state was able to hold its own, chartering breathing space by conquering territories to the south, and marching deep into Anabbah in the 1500s. In the late 15th century, after the death of Movar, Thawar had also provided shelter to the followers of Sedikprourka and the equilibrians after Viswald II's destruction of their movement in the Vesnite west and their expulsion from the Tirfatsevid Empire. This made the kingdom a target for the orthodoxy of the early Neritsovid period, but Neritsia ultimately failed to destroy Thawar or its growing heterodox Vesnite community despite campaigns in 1512, 1528, 1534 and 1538. The number of Vesnites in Thawar was swelled by further migrations of heretics throughout the 16th to 18th centuries, and they had developed their own sophisticated organisations such as the Annihilant Prophecy and the Risen Schools. Nonetheless, Thawar's population remained predominantly Sirian.
In 1514, a succession dispute in Ilmazarei that saw the Holy Empire threaten to re-extend its influence north led to the beginning of a series of wars between the Lestrians and the Pact of Elsawat, in which Thawar took an increasingly dominant role in. The Thawari king eventually laid claim to the succession and control of Ilmazarei, which after military successes in 1535 was affirmed by other powers, resulting in annexation of Petty-Lestria's northwestern coast. Further battles with Tarsh for influence around the Messenic and along the Great Golden Arc continued, all while resisting Neritsovid incursions (though Combinations and the zamorsk steadily gained greater commercial influence regardless). After the Sublimation of Anabbah, however, Thawar would form the Holy Alliance and participate in the Cinnabar Wars of the 17th century against Vesnite expansion. Besides these spectacular though ultimately draining military endeavours that soon seeded Thawar's decline, a halting programme of absorption of the conquered territories (primarily Ilmazarei) proceeded with little success. Burdened by overspending in war and a bloated yet ambitious military aristocracy, the empire was becoming difficult to keep together: major rebellions had occurred in the 1680s, and a disastrous invasion of Anabbah during the Crown Wars in 1707 set off more rebellions, and a war of succession was sparked in 1715.
The War of the Jewels from 1715 to 1719 carved up Thawar between three successor kingdoms, but in the Key Wars from 1733 to 1739 they were overthrown by charismatic Lamneants, who were able to mobilise popular armies alongside better-drilled warrior monks. These forces, employing the emerging doctrine of line infantry and mass-equipped Vesnite firearms, defeated the knights the princes represented and almost wiped them out politically. In 1740 the new Lamneant rulers met at the Hawsh Disr Committee, which restored a ceremonial Thawari monarchy, but left real power to the Lamneants and other local rulers. The Hawshdisr period, or the Thawari Oligarchy, saw semi-integration with the equally loose formation of the Holy Empire, but also continued growth of ties with Outer Joriscia, now on the path to both an industrial and intellectual revolution.
Long 19th century
From the end of the 18th century, the Vaestic powers began to adopt a new attitude towards far-flung populations of Vesnites after their practical disappearance from public discourse during the internal constitutional struggles of the 18th century. In 1793 the first Azophine mission was dispatched to determine the religious proclivities of the Thawari Vesnites. These initial measures were followed by greater and greater Vesnite penetration into Thawar and the surrounding regions through the founding of schools and other institutions intended to bring orthodoxy to the Thawari. Soon after the March Through the Gates in 1809, Azophin masterminded the Eiha Restoration in 1810, in which Vesnites, a resurgent and now more mercantile aristocracy, and Azophine adventurers overthrew the Lamneants of Thawar proper, allowing king Elmutasem IV to exercise full power. After a period of uneasy coexistence, the western Lamneants were also defeated in the 1817 Thawar War, restoring Tobro's control over Ilmazarei.
Foreign favour and education eventually produced an orthodox Vesnite economic elite, who came to pose something of a threat to the Thawari state, which itself was now firmly in Azophin's orbit. The kings of Thawar themselves, wanting to reform and re-establish the country on their own terms, came to seek the assistance of other Vaestic powers, and eventually the rising Messenian Sirian countries of Madaria and Zeppengeran. In 1889, the King of Thawar became monarch of the new Kingdom of Lashpur after the Treaty of Tet Tsint carved that state out of the Holy Empire, done with Lacrean patronage; this caused a panic on part of Azophin, which now sought more direct and secure control over Petty-Lestria.
Cazacasia
Azophin's practical monopoly on activities in Thawar was broken in 1897 by Yorsephor's decision to centralise missionary activity under the Prysostaia. Although Azophin continued to have a deciding influence, this opened the door to greater involvement by other powers, in particular Terophan. This escalation in missionary activity led directly to the 1901 Thawar War, which spelt the end for the kingdom. Azophine and Agamari intervention on the side of the Vesnites saw them win a decisive victory, and Thawar was replaced by the autonomous Azophine Marshalate of Cazacasia and Sirian satellite states in Eswed and Nahrelbinn to the south. In 1935, Cazacasia immediately annexed these states and overran Lashpur. The First Lashpur War would last until 1942, and drew in the surrounding Sirian powers (the Pact of Ilsnid) and Zeppengeran — one of the first theatres to see clashes between east and west. The war was brought to a compromise close at peace talks in 1943, when Zeppengeran's attention was redirected towards the Straits Game. In 1946, however, Terophan began activity alongside the Pact of Ilsnid to destabilise the vast and not yet consolidated new territories of the Cazacasian state. This escalated into the Second Lashpur War, in which Terophan played a direct military role. As the Azophine-Terophite conflict in the metropole began to intensify and the Vesnite state itself on the verge of being toppled by Sirian forces, Cazacasia defected to the Terophatic side in 1956. At the 1959 Congress of Kethpor it was rewarded for these actions with the Conferral of the Cazacasian Banner, promoting it to an independent sovereign state.
As ruled by Ettayyeb I, Cazacasia firmly identified and positioned itself as a loyal ally if not client of Terophan. Ettayyeb's ambitions of reproducing Vsevolod the Great's dramatic programme in Cazacasia, however, ran against the realities of the heterogenous factions the Light and Dark Society had split into along geographical and ideological lines since the foundation (and the effective warlordism caused by the confused fighting during the Lashpur wars), and in turn the still-diverse nature of the country as a whole. A heated standoff between rival Scholars' troops in Tobro during the years without summers in 1962 forced Ettayyeb to acquiesce to a federal and respublican arrangement of power. When the economic and food crisis wore off by 1970, Ettayyeb tried his luck again at sweeping centralising reforms, backed by a wave of purges and popular violence against regional bosses, as well as cooptation of dissent among the Sirian majority to counterbalance rival factions. His death in 1978 set off panic over the succession: in the backdrop of the Constellation Crisis, Azophin and Agamar seemed to take interest in substantial regime change. Ultimately, however, against expectations of either civil war or establishment of a Debates-state, Ettayyeb's grandson was elected as Ettayyeb II in 1979, though effective power was to be exercised by an oligarchy of older Scholars, something left uncontested by the Ettayyeb junior's young age and lack of prestige. This order has since steadily if haltingly furthered the economic development of Cazacasia, the conversion of Sirians, and political integration of its regions, all while maintaining a generally pro-Terophite alignment to today.
Government and authority
Cazacasia is in principle a classic Vaestic Banner-State ruled autocratically by an Emperor, currently Ettayyeb II as Standard-Bearer. In practice, although the Emperor's authority is extensive, policy is set by the Supreme Committee, a secretive body inherited from the Light and Dark Society which won Cazacasia in 1901. Emperors are elected by the Cazacasian Debates, a self-appointing body currently consisting of 59 senior Scholars known as Electors.
Cazacasia's constitutional structure is to some extent complicated by the presence of a significant population of Sirians. Statistics on different religious groups in the country are not made readily available by its government, and the demographic question is inevitably highly politicised, but Messenian estimates suggest that Sirians constitute a small majority of the country's total population. Part of the 1901 settlement, renewed in the wake of the First Lashpur War, provided compromise legal protections for Sirians whose religious and political independence were guaranteed by Zeppengeran. In practice, however, over the last 70 years the government has pursued an intermittent policy of forcible assimilation to Vaestism and Demediatisation of independent Sirian institutions. Until 2011 the Cazacasian Convocation of Houses remained largely independent of state influence, but on Nollonger 12 of that year was placed by Imperial Utterance under the authority of the Censure of Transcension, a body whose official purpose is to handle the conversion of Sirians.
Government authority is exercised in most areas through a bureaucracy that operates within the hierarchy of Schools. Three areas of former Lashpur, however, have retained the privilege of local self-government by Lamnearies overseen by the central state. Although these were intended to be areas with minimal Vesnite presence, they have been shrinking steadily since the 1980s with the construction of new Schools and the conversion of significant portions of their population.