The 3rd Republic of Sokandonika is a naturally beautiful democratic state with a rich culture and history. This document (provided to you by the Sokandonika Ministry of Historical Records) aims to provide an impartial look into the vast history of this great nation.
Act 1: The City-States Period and the First Kingdom (???-466)
Before the founding of the First Kingdom in 436, the fertile land around the Sokand River was home to dozens, if not hundreds of independent city-states. Almost all of these states were Tiranusae, or despotic autocracies. These states were almost always fighting each other over resources, petty land disputes, or succession crises. However, one city-state, Andonika, situated near the Sokand River delta, was able to consolidate its power, annexing nearby city-states and, by 436, was able to carve out somewhat of an empire in the fertile lands around the Sokand River. However, it had rivals, particularly the Kingdom of Mykelos further upstream. In 392, the two powers went to war over the city of Sakoyos, under where the Sokandonikan capital of Saloya is today. This spiraled into a 28-year long series of wars between the two powers, known as the Sokandonikan Wars of Unification. However, at long last, with superior tactics and strategy under a certain Ionius Callopae, the Andonikans were victorious, and united the Sokand River area once and for all. Ionius then, as triumphant generals sometimes do, overthrew the Andonikan government with his loyal armies in 436, and declared himself King of Sokandonika (Sokandonika meaning roughly "Territories of the Sokand [River]", beginning the First Kingdom of Sokandonika. He began enacting reforms that rapidly centralized the country, in an attempt to establish a Sokandonikan national identity that would make his subjects more loyal to the state. Ionius also expanded the young nation's borders rapidly, and put heavy funding into the army so he could wage war across what is now the Sokandonikan "arable zone". His reign, however, would be relatively short; as he died in 466, after 30 years in power. He had named a successor in his 6-year-old son, Marc, but he was too young to rule, putting a regency in power. The regent was Clara, Ionius's wife, which upset his sister Marissa, who was expecting to get the title. So, as rival claimants to positions of power often do, she staged a coup.
Act 2: The 1st War of Upheaval and the 1st Republic (466-549)
The one issue with Marissa's coup was that Clara was very popular with the citizens of Sokandonika. She urged them to take up arms against the pretender queen Marissa, which they did, but not before the "People's Queen" was captured and murdered by Marissa's loyalist "militias," who were really just gangs she hired to help her cause. The people went into an uproar, and by 467 it was clear that the civilians were in full revolt, launching attacks on Marissa's supporters and their homes, rioting, and even forming peasant militias to combat Marissa's hired gangsters. However, it was in 470, when two high-ranking generals in the Sokandonikan army defected to the cause of the peasantry, that the 1st War of Upheaval had truly begun.
This revolution was swift, and Marissa was ousted by 474. After her defeat, nobody was sure what would come of the country’s government. Eventually, the people decided that they would need a government where a coup d'état of this magnitude could not happen again, so they founded the 1st Republic. This republic was corrupt, however, and soon found itself embroiled in political street violence. It was around this time that Sokandonika began to interact with the Northern Peoples, a group of minority ethnic populations to the country’s north (nowadays, most of the Northern Peoples region is controlled by Sokandonika). Most of this contact was through war, particularly with the Principality of Carlodia, who was known for cross-border raids at the time. These wars strained the Sokandonikan economy. However, the 1st Republic still had popular support, and it survived for nearly a century, until it collapsed in 549 because of mounting debt, the leaking of corruption scandals, and general incompetence.
Act 3: The Second Kingdom and 2nd Republic (549-700)
The Callopae family, who had been out of power for nearly a century, saw an opportunity to retake the throne in 549 with the dissolution of the 1st Republic. Tillanus Callopae, descendant of Ionius, staged a coup against the collapsing republic, declaring the Second Kingdom of Sokandonika. This, of course, led to a civil war, as the people of Sokandonika still had faith in democracy, despite the incompetent rule of the 1st Republic. Before the end of the year, Tillanus was removed, and a 2nd Republic was instated, which aimed to liberate Sokandonika from tyranny forever. This, however, would not be the case, as the 2nd Republic would be just as tyrannical as the kings it had opposed.
The 2nd Republic was oppressive, with state secret police, oppression of people’s rights, and was more corrupt than the 1st Republic. To make matters worse, it had chronic debt issues, due to its constant wars with Carlodia, Tolpia, and other Northern ethnic groups. It was only a matter of time before it was overthrown. However, it held power longer than any other regime prior, mostly due to its suppression of rights, political freedoms, etc. It wasn’t until the year 700 when the government had become bankrupt and weak, so much so that it was overthrown by monarchists, who wished to see a return to autocratic rule due to the failures of the two republics.
Act 4: The Third Kingdom and The Paxe Sokandia(700-1344)
After the coup in 700, there was no civil war. This was because nobody supported the 2nd Republic’s regime, therefore rising up against the monarchist takeover wasn’t necessary. The monarchists installed the Duke of Saloya to become King, and he promptly moved the capital there. For the next 644 years, the kingdom was more peaceful than ever before. Granted, wars still occurred, especially in the north and in the Sokand Rainforest. However, they were less frequent and smaller than the wars of the previous regimes.
It was during this timeframe that the Principality of Carlodia had been annexed by Sokandonika. The Carlodians, who had fought for hundreds of years for their independence prior to this, promptly rebelled at any opportunity. Most of these rebellions were put down, of course, but in 1306, the Carlodian rebels were able to enforce their demands, breaking away from the Third Kingdom. It would be a long time before they were ever reincorporated into Sokandonika. Otherwise, this period is known as the Paxe Sokandia, or Sokandonikan Peace, due to its internal stability and relative peacefulness. Act 5: Atrocities and the War of 1390 (1344-1401)
The Carlodian Revolt of 1306 had caused a new issue for the Third Kingdom: the ethnic minorities on the fringes of the country, particularly the Tolpites, began seeking independence from Sokandonika as well. So, in 1344, the King passed the Northern Proclamation Acts, a series of laws that did three major things:
-Allowed ethnic Sokandonikans to settle in ethnic minority lands in the north, which had previously been protected.
-Forced Tolpites to relocate to a small-ish reservation in the far north of the nation, or face ethnic cleansing.
-Permitted the Sokandonikan military to kill Tolpites or other ethnic minorities should they not comply with these acts and others.
This ethnic cleansing campaign was devastating to those who were forced out of their homes, with their loved ones killed. At first, the Sokandonikan people believed this would be a short, temporary campaign, as a means of threatening the minority groups into compliance with the central government. However, after nearly a half-century of this ethnic cleansing, the population got upset. They were led to believe this would end quickly, that only a few thousand Tolpites needed to be killed before they learned their lesson. Unfortunately, the reality was that the government probably planned on exterminating the Tolpites entirely. This, compounded with increased taxes to fund “foreign wars” (a faux, designed for funneling cash to the corrupt King Antonius XI), caused a massive uprising in 1390, known retroactively as the War of 1390, or sometimes as the Sokandonikan Civil War (particularly in the northern provinces). The war was a back-and-forth between the Loyalists (those who supported the government’s decisions in the Tolpic Genocide), and the Rebels (armed opposition to the government’s oppressive policies, contained many Tolpic/northern minority freedom fighters). After 11 years of fighting, the rebels were eventually defeated. However, they managed to leverage the government into ceasing its ethnic cleansing campaigns in the north, and also spur on various other reforms as well. Act 6: The Great Reconstruction and the 1st Carlodian War (1401-1500)
After the widespread devastation of the War of 1390, Sokandonika had to take many years to recover and rebuild. The population loss from the war, which is estimated to be around 300,000 people, was mended by 1460, as was the physical property damage done, but the scars left on the regime still persisted, and were the backbone of a new rhetoric the Kings and upper house statesmen called, “Publio Placatum” (lit. “Placate the Public”), which consisted of reforming according to popular demand, making the government incredibly weak and susceptible to collapsing, which it nearly did. However, they were forced out of this phase in 1498, with the outbreak of the 1st Carlodian War.
To sum up the war, Sokandonika attempted to reconquer Carlodia, but failed. This was mainly due to Carlodian guerrilla tactics, as well as low support for the war on the home front. Due to the two-year disaster that this war was for Sokandonika, the country began shifting focus away from dealing with northern minorities with violence, yet at the cost of sending Sokandonika into isolation from the rest of the world for many years.
Act 7: The Isolation Period (1500-1812)
After losing a great deal of public support in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Third Kingdom went into isolation, in order to preserve its international reputation. However, all the isolation did was, well, isolate Sokandonika from the stage of world politics, from which its diplomatic staying power never really recovered. During this time, few wars were fought, even against the old traitors in Carlodia.
Despite this, in the late 18th century, foreign merchants began arriving at Sokandonikan ports, bringing with them new technologies, such as contemporary muskets. Sokandonika reacted to these advancements slowly, marginally adapting to these never-before seen devices, though the king Iuanos I “the Reformer”, who ruled from 1799 until his death in 1812, made great strides in opening up the country to modernization, and ensured that his heir (aptly named Iuanos II) would continue this rapid modernization and industrialization after the death of the king. Act 8: Industrialization and Conquest (1812-1950)
With Sokandonika rapidly industrializing, attempting to catch up to stronger powers much farther north, the army also reignited its campaigns to conquer Carlodia in a series of wars lasting from 1816 to 1857. In 1856, during the 4th Carlodian War, the Sokandonikan army was able to decimate the Carlodian forces at the Battle of Tessolanoka, which to this day remains the most proud Sokandonikan military victory, as it crushed the Carlodian army and it’s morale, forcing the rogue state to surrender in January of 1857, finally bringing it back into the Kingdom.
A lesser-known campaign undertaken during this time frame was the Southern Frontier, where local petty kingdoms and warlord states were gobbled up by Sokandonika, as it fought to secure the resources of the region. In addition, in order to feed the growing economy of Sokandonika, the nation became much more dependent on the rest of the world for resource imports, since Sokandonika is not a resource-rich country. By 1950, Sokandonika had increased its territorial grasp by nearly a third of its pre-industrialized borders.
Act 9: The Northern Alliance War (1950-1974)
Despite all the good fortune Sokandonika had found in the past century, the Third Kingdom still had, and enforced, a system of systematic oppression and racism against the Northern Minorities. While it was not even close to the Toplic Genocide in terms of oppression, these people wanted equal rights. They were opposed by, of course, most of the Sokandonikan majority, as well as the government. When protests erupted in 1950 demanding these rights, the government responded with violence. That would be the final straw.
So, as oppressed minorities with a historically rebellious streak often do, they revolted. In 1966, the Northern Minorities initiated a coordinated uprising, led by the Carlodians, to secede from Sokandonika. They fought the Sokandonikan government for 8 years, waging a guerrilla conflict that, by 1974, proved far too costly for the Sokandonikan government to maintain. Thus, a peace agreement known as the Treaty of Saloya brought an end to the conflict, granting the Northern Minorities equal rights, as well as granting Tolpic and Carlodian ethnic lands autonomy, in order to prevent them from revolting. Act 10: Sokandonika in the Modern Age (1974-2010)
With a conclusion to the destructive Northern Alliance War, Sokandonika had changed radically. It would no longer, and could no longer, use violence to solve its problems. Thus, the nation began moving away from its traditional views of the military, which caused a military coup in 1980 (though it was deposed later that same year). The nation has since struck a delicate balance between nonviolence and strategic deterrence, in order to protect its vital import economy.
It was also in the 1980s that Sokandonika began transitioning to democracy, abandoning the traditional monarchist practices of the Third Kingdom. By 1999, the 3rd Republic had been declared, and the King had been forced to resign. All is not well in this fledgling republic, though, as the Carlodians, ever trying to escape the Sokandonikan fold, are becoming restless once again, and it looks like Sokandonika may once again have to come to blows with it’s oldest enemy...