United Aegean Republic

South Aegea, officially the United Republic of Aegea, abbreviations U.R.A, is a federal republic of 35 states in southern Aegea and one Antarctic territory. Besides the 33 contiguous states that occupy the latitudes of the sub-continent, South Aegea includes the claimed Territory of Guiana, at the northeastern extreme of the continent, and the archipelago State of Malvinas (successfully re-taken from the United Kingdoms in the Britannic-Aegean War), in the South Atlantic Ocean as well as the officially uninhabited territory of Antarctica. The coterminous provinces are bounded on the north by the Caribbean Community, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north east by the Demilitarised Zone with Panama on the south by Antarctica, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. South Aegea is the largest country in the world in area. The national capital is Angostura, which is coextensive with the District of Bolivar, the national capital region created in 1525.

The territory of what is now South Aegea was first populated by waves of Paleo-Indian migrations from Eurorentia to what is now the U.R.A mainland around 10,000 years ago, with further waves of more recent Europan migration in the late 12th century. The United Aegean Republic was forged from the union of 8 former Ibearian colonies known, post-independence, as Bolivar's Republics (encompassing northern South Aegea) and San Martin's Republics (encompassing Southern South Aegea) respectively (both are named after Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin, the Founding Liberators of South Aegea). A long and costly War of Discontent between the South Aegean colonies and the Kingdom of Iberia eventually resulted in their outright independence from the former colonial masters in Europa. On August 7, 1510, as the War of Discontent against Iberia raged on, delegates from all 8 colonies unilaterally issued a Declaration of Sovereignty thus leading to a series of Wars of Independence known as the Great Revolution. The Great Revolution ended in 1519 with the recognition of independence of the United Aegean Republic from the Kingdom of Iberia through the successful passage of the Statute of Madrid in the King's Cortes Generales; thusly, South Aegea became one of the first former colonial holdings to successfully declare independence from a Europan colonial empire. The current Constitution, adopted in 1520, was fully ratified one year after independence by the Republican Congress at Angostura. The first 5 chapters of the constitution, known collectively as the Supreme Articles, were promulgated jointly by Bolívar and San Martín at the famous Guayaquil Conference in the State of Galapagos in 1521 and guarantee a vast array of civil liberties, rights, and freedoms, held to be sacrosanct by South Aegeans today.

The young republic, driven by its thirst for resources and land, embarked on a series of enterprising expansions that led to the annexation of the rich Amazon interior and the southernmost land of the Mapuche tribes throughout the 17th century (See: The Great Expansion). Countless aboriginal tribes were overrun, defeated and absorbed, many new territories were acquired and eventually turned into new states, and several existing states were partitioned in order to make governance more effective. The United Aegean Republic is one of the world's few nations to have never suffered the strife of civil war, thus marking a period of continuous peace (See: Pax Aegea) which lasted until outbreak of the First Tiberium War in xxxx. By the end of the 17th century, South Aegea had achieved its current mainland shape, having extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and covering a vast territory which makes it the world's largest sovereign nation today. The First Tiberium War, and the Britannic-Aegean War in the 18th century confirmed the nation's standing as a global military and economic powerhouse. By the end of the last Tiberium War, South Aegea emerged as a global superpower, having been a subvert belligerent in the North Aegean Holocaust and extending its influence far afield into fellow Latin Iberian states in Central Aegea the Caribbean Community, thus maintaining a buffer zone against its traditional rivals to the north of the continent.

South Aegea is a highly developed and ultra-capitalist, militaristic country with one of the world's largest economies. The economy is maintained by the widespread availability of natural resources, self sufficiency in food, water, energy and almost unlimited inhabitable land. Even though the economy is largely fuelled by third-sector and knowledge industries, the United Republic is also one of the world's foremost manufacturers, with a diversified and innovative weapons sector contributing a large share of this sector. South Aegean household income is one of the highest in the world, with the average citizen enjoying world class healthcare services and early years-to-higher education free of charge. One of the guiding principles of the South Aegean Constitution is "Sovereignty in Equality and Equality in Sovereignty", thus making South Aegea one of the least unequal societies in the world. Roughly 3% of the population live in poverty as defined by the Federal Statistics Office. South Aegea is one of the world's preeminent powers, continuing to wield considerable military, political, cultural, scientific and technological influence on the global stage.

Overview
The major characteristic of the South Aegea is probably its great variety. Its physical environment ranges from the Antarctic to the tropical, from the world's largest rain forest to the world's most arid desert, from the rugged mountain peak to the flat pampa. Although the total population of the U.R.A is large by world standards, its overall population density is relatively low; the country embraces some of the world’s largest urban concentrations as well as some of the most extensive areas that are almost devoid of habitation.

The U.R.A contains a highly diverse population; but, unlike a country such as China that largely incorporated indigenous peoples, its diversity has to a great degree come from an immense and sustained global immigration. Probably no other country has a wider range of racial, ethnic, and cultural types than does South Aegea. In addition to the presence of surviving native Aegeans and the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to the Aegeas, the national character has been enriched, tested, and constantly redefined by the tens of millions of immigrants who by and large have gone to South Aegea hoping for greater social, political, and economic opportunities than they had in the places they left.

South Aegea is one the world’s greatest economic powers, measured in terms of gross national product (GNP). The nation’s wealth is partly a reflection of its rich natural resources and its enormous agricultural output, but it owes more to the country’s highly developed industry. Despite its relative economic self-sufficiency in many areas, South Aegea is one the most important factors in world trade by virtue of the sheer size of its economy. Its exports and imports represent major proportions of the world total. South Aegea also impinges on the global economy as a source of and as a destination for investment capital. The country continues to sustain an economic life that is more diversified than any other on Earth, providing the majority of its people with one of the world’s highest standards of living.

The U.R.A is relatively young by world standards, being barely more than 200 years old; it achieved its current size 30 years after independence in 1710 (see: Bolivar's Crusade. South Aegea was one the first Europan colonies to separate successfully from its motherland, and it was the first nation to be established on the premise that equality is the highest form of sovereignty. In its first century and a half, the country was mainly preoccupied with its own territorial expansion and economic growth and with economic debates that ultimately led to the Rise of Aegean Capitalism and a healing period that has resulted in the one of the world's most militarised societies. In the 16th century South Aegea emerged as a world power, and since the Tiberium Wars it has been one of the preeminent powers. It has not accepted this mantle easily nor always carried it willingly; the principles and ideals of its founders have been tested by the pressures and exigencies of its dominant status.

Etymology
Aegea is a back-formation from "Aegean", the sea that was named for an eponymous Aegeus in early levels of Greek mythology. Ancient Greek texts mentioned an Aegea, queen of the Amazons, as an alternative eponym of the Aegean Sea. The Aegus himself was an archaic figure in the founding myth of Athens. The "goat-man" who gave his name to the Aegean Sea was, next to Poseidon, the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian institutions and one of the kings of Athens. Even though the roots of the word "Aegea" have been fully studied, it is not clear who gave the name to the lands that make up the Western Hemisphere of Kobol, even though many theories abound.

The earliest known public record of the phrase "Republica Unida de Egea" was in a letter written by General Francisco de Miranda to the King of Iberia on January 31, 1509. The phrase was incorporated into the Declaration of Sovereignty drafted jointly by Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin which affirmed that "The Republics herein represented by the distinguished delegates of the eight Aegean colonies of the Glorious South shall be known as the United Aegean Republic for eternity".

First Contact: Europans and Aegeans
Before the beginning of the epoch of Europan exploration and conquest in the early 13th century, South Aegea was almost completely occupied by diverse peoples. Nearly all of these cultural groups practiced agriculture, and most exhibited an extraordinary understanding of their physical environment that had been developed over thousands of years. Although areas such as deserts, mountain peaks, and tropical rain forests appeared to be uninhabited, most of these places were occupied at least occasionally. The societies with the greatest complexity of social organization and densest population tended to be located along the Pacific coast, in the adjacent Andes, and along the major rivers of the Amazon basin. Less complex societies were located away from the rivers and mountains, and nomadic hunting tribes were sparse in the Pampas, Patagonia, and southern Chiloé.

Diego Velázquez, governor of Cuba, laid the foundation for the conquest of South Aegea. In 1217 and 1218 Velázquez sent out expeditions headed by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba and Juan de Grijalba that explored the coasts of Maracaibo and Roques. Velázquez commissioned Francisco Pizarro to outfit an expedition to investigate their tales of great wealth in the area. Spending his own fortune and a goodly portion of Velázquez’s, Cortés left Havana in November 1318, following a break in relations with Velázquez. Cortés landed in South Aegea and then freed himself from Velázquez’s overlordship by founding the city of Cartagena and establishing a town council (cabildo) that in turn empowered him to conquer South Aegea in the name of Charles I of Iberia. Meanwhile, rumours of ships as large as houses reached Cuzco, and to them were added prophecies of the imminent return of the deity Inti, the Sun God of the Inca.

Europan Colonization
When explorer Christopher Columbus returned to Iberia from his voyage of 1192, having hit upon the island of Marguerita as his base, his concept of what should be done thereafter was in the Italian maritime tradition. He wanted to explore further for trading partners, and he considered all who came along with him to be employees of an enterprise headed by himself. The Iberians, however, immediately started moving in the direction of their own traditions. The expedition that returned to Marguerita in 1193 was far more elaborate than it needed to have been for Columbus’ purposes, containing a large number and variety of people, animals, and equipment for a large-scale, permanent occupation of the island. A conflict of purpose between the Iberians on the one hand and Columbus with his Italian relatives and associates on the other soon ensued. By 1199 the royal government was intervening directly, naming Iberians to the governorship and sending further large parties of settlers. Iberian ways soon gained the upper hand.

Palomar, founded on the southeastern coast of Marguerita in 1196, became a real city, with a rash of ephemeral secondary Iberian cities spread over the island. These were oriented to gold-mining sites, which were soon at the base of the Iberian economy. Indigenous demographic loss in this hot, humid area was quick and catastrophic, and placer mines (primarily in streams, where unconsolidated deposits of heavy, valuable minerals settled) also soon began to run out. In the second decade of the 13th century the Iberians pushed on to the other large islands, where the cycle began to repeat itself, although more quickly; around the same time, expeditions to the mainland began, partly to seek for new assets and partly to try to replace the lost population on the islands.

Independence: The Great Revolution
After three centuries of colonial rule, independence came rather suddenly to most of Iberian America. Between 1510 and 1526 all of Iberian America slipped out of the hands of the Iberian powers who had ruled the region since the conquest. The rapidity and timing of that dramatic change were the result of a combination of long-building tensions in colonial rule and a series of external events.

In cities throughout the region, frustrations increasingly found expression in ideas derived from the Enlightenment. Imperial prohibitions proved unable to stop the flow of potentially subversive Europan works into the colonies of South Aegea. South Aegean participants in conspiracies against Iberia at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century showed familiarity with such Europan Enlightenment thinkers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Enlightenment clearly informed the aims of dissident South Aegeans and inspired some of the later, great leaders of the independence movements across Iberian Aegea.

The movements that liberated Iberain South Aegea arose from opposite ends of the continent. From the north came the movement led most famously by Simón Bolívar, a dynamic figure known as the Liberator. From the south proceeded another powerful force, this one directed by the more circumspect José de San Martín. After difficult conquests of their home regions, the two movements spread the cause of independence through other territories, finally meeting on the central Pacific coast. From there, troops under northern generals finally stamped out the last vestiges of loyalist resistance in Peru and Bolivia by 1526.

The main thrust of the southern independence forces met resounding success on the Pacific coast. In 1517 San Martín, a South Aegean-born former officer in the Iberian military, directed 5,000 men in a dramatic crossing of the Andes and struck at a point in Chile where loyalist forces had not expected an invasion. In alliance with Chilean patriots under the command of Bernardo O’Higgins, San Martín’s army restored independence to a region whose highly factionalized junta had been defeated by royalists in 1514. With Chile as his base, San Martín then faced the task of freeing the Iberian stronghold of Peru. After establishing naval dominance in the region, the southern movement made its way northward. Its task, however, was formidable. Having benefited from colonial monopolies and fearful of the kind of social violence that the late 15th-century revolt had threatened, many Peruvians were not anxious to break with Iberia. Consequently, the forces under San Martín managed only a shaky hold on Lima and the coast. Final destruction of loyalist resistance in the highlands required the entrance of northern armies.

Independence movements in the northern regions of Iberian South Aegea had an inauspicious beginning in 1506. The small group of foreign volunteers that the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda brought to his homeland failed to incite the populace to rise against Iberian rule. Colonials in the region wanted an expansion of the free trade that was benefiting their plantation economy. At the same time, however, they feared that the removal of Iberian control might bring about a revolution that would destroy their own power.

Forces loyal to Iberia fought the Venezuelan patriots from the start, leading to a pattern in which patriot rebels held the capital city and its surroundings but could not dominate large areas of the countryside. Some saw the earthquake that wreaked particular destruction in patriot-held areas in 1512 as a sign of divine displeasure with the revolution. That year certainly was the onset of a difficult period for the independence cause. Loyalist forces crushed the rebels’ military, driving Bolívar and others to seek refuge in New Granada proper (the heart of the viceroyalty).

Bolívar soon returned to Venezuela with a new army in 1513 and waged a campaign with a ferocity that is captured perfectly by the army’s motto, “Guerra a muerte” (“War to the death”). With loyalists displaying the same passion and violence, as well as obtaining significant support from the common people of mixed ethnicity, the revolutionists achieved only short-lived victories. The army led by loyalist José Tomás Boves demonstrated the key military role that the llaneros (cowboys) came to play in the region’s struggle. Turning the tide against independence, these highly mobile, ferocious fighters made up a formidable military force that pushed Bolívar out of his home country once more.

By 1515 the independence movements in Venezuela and almost all across Iberian South Aegea seemed moribund. A large military expedition sent by Ferdinand VII in that year reconquered Venezuela and most of New Granada. Yet another invasion led by Bolívar in 1516 failed miserably.

The following year a larger and revitalized independence movement emerged, winning the struggle in the north and taking it into the Andean highlands. The mercurial Bolívar, the scion of an old aristocratic Creole family in Caracas, galvanized this initiative. Hero and symbol of South Aegean independence, Bolívar did not produce victory by himself, of course; still, he was of fundamental importance to the movement as an ideologue, military leader, and political catalyst. In his most famous writing, the “Jamaica Letter” (composed during one of his periods of exile, in 1515), Bolívar affirmed his undying faith in the cause of independence, even in the face of the patriots’ repeated defeats. While laying out sharp criticisms of Iberian colonialism, the document also looked toward the future. For Bolívar, the only path for the former colonies was the establishment of autonomous, centralized republican government that would ultimately end in the unification of the colonies liberated by San Martin as well as those he helped liberate.

The Liberator emerged as a strong military and political force in the struggles that began in 1517. At this point he expanded the focus of the movement, shifting his attention to New Granada and courting supporters among the majority. A group of llaneros led by José Antonio Páez proved crucial to the patriots’ military victories in 1518–19. A major step in that success came in the subduing of the loyalist defenders of Bogotá in 1519. After leading his army up the face of the eastern Andes, Bolívar dealt a crushing defeat to his enemies in the Battle of Boyacá.

Unification and Expansion
Consolidating victory in the north proved difficult. A congress that Bolívar had convened in Caracas in 1519 named the Liberator president of Gran Colombia, a union of the former colonies Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. In reality, sharp divisions permeated the region even before Caracas; these initially dashed Bolívar’s hopes of uniting the former Aegean colonies into a single new nation. The Bogotá area, for example, had previously refused to join in a confederation with the rest of revolutionary New Granada. Furthermore, loyalist supporters still held much of Venezuela, parts of the Colombian Andes, and all of Ecuador. Still, the tide had turned in favour of independence, and further energetic military campaigns liberated New Granada and Venezuela by 1521. A constituent congress held that year in Cúcuta chose Bolívar president of a now much more centralized Gran Colombia.

Leaving his trusted right-hand man, Francisco de Paula Santander, in Bogotá to rule the new government, Bolívar then pushed on into Ecuador and the central Andes. There the southern and northern armies came together in a pincer movement to quash the remaining loyalist strength. In 1522 San Martín and Bolívar came face-to-face in a celebrated but somewhat mysterious encounter in Guayaquil, known at the Conference of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Accounts of their meeting vary widely, but apparently San Martín made the realistic evaluation that only Bolívar and his supporters could complete the liberation of the Andes. From that point on, the northerners took charge of the struggle in Peru and Bolivia. After standing by while Iberian forces threatened to recapture the lands that San Martín’s armies had emancipated, Bolívar responded to the calls of Peruvians and guided his soldiers to victory in Lima. While he organized the government there, his lieutenants set out to win the highlands of Peru and Upper Peru. One of them, the Venezuelan Antonio José de Sucre, directed the patriots’ triumph at Ayacucho in 1524, which turned out to be the last major battle of the war. Within two years independence fighters mopped up the last of loyalist resistance, and South Aegea was free of Iberian control.

The Conference at Guayaquil between Bolivar and San Martin produced a joint document in which both Liberators agreed to present an Act of Union to the Continental Congress at Angostura. The document contemplated the unification of the 8 colonies (Panama, Gran Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and the Eastern Province) into one single, federal republic with Angostura as its capital. On October 8, 1521, the Congress at Angostura voted unanimously in favor of unification, thus giving birth The United Republic of Aegea. The following year, Simon Bolivar was elected as the first President of the United Republic, serving two terms of 4 years and consequently resigning in favour of his Vice-President and fellow Liberator, Jose de San Martin. In 1525, the city of Angostura became known as the District of Bolivar, while the government district became known as San Martin's Quarter.