[UKGov]A Brief History of the eUK

Day 1,783, 15:25 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Betafoxtrot



To begin our “Encyclopædia eBritannica” series we’ll be starting by giving you the general history of the eUnited Kingdom. And who better to tell us about our past than the guy who’s been there since the beginning, and depending on if you’re Alphabethis, the guy who’s been secretly incharge the whole time, Iain Keers!

I apologise for the temporary graphics in advance 😛



Background

In times long, long ago

When the game was in beta, there was no war module. Therefore countries with close real life ties tended to band together out of habit. We were close with the USA, Canada, Ireland and so on. Other nations added later which we have close ties to IRL were also close to us ingame. The countries from North Europe and America were particularly close, and eventually (cutting out a lot of stuff irrelevant to the present) formed the alliance ATLANTIS. The important bit here is that Ireland was our best friend, a lot of Americans (like Dish) moved and lived in the UK, and we hadn’t really had any war yet.

In December 2008 the UK, along with a few other countries, tried and failed to invade France. In the aftermath of this invasion, Germany ended up formally applying for and getting ATLANTIS membership. Somewhat screwed over by the war with France, and seeing their Southern border becoming impassable, Sweden went a bit mad and attacked Germany, an ally, in May 2009. This was largely because of two factors- firstly Sweden’s President was an idiot at the time, and secondly because Sweden was slowly losing its position as a top 5 nation in the world to upcoming countries and wanted a last bash at power. It was also supported by Poland, who despite being weak were Sweden’s long-time allies since Sweden had saved them when they were young and empty.

This series of events led to the collapse of ATLANTIS. At this juncture it’s important to describe how the ATLANTIS nations reacted to the invasion. The East Euro countries (Romania, the newly created Croatia and Poland) all sided with Sweden. The UK sided with Germany (no thanks to Sara Droz). The USA and Canada remained neutral whilst offering moral support to Germany.

Germany was obviously beaten, though it took a while. Hungary (then the world superpower supreme) moved North through the region, conquering the German regions and then freeing them. As a result, Hungary ended up in Denmark.

At this point (sometime in July) Hassan was CP, and he made a deal with Hungary to allow them to conquer Scotland from the UK. This was touted as a “training war” but was in fact a secret plan to allow the Hungarians access to North America. At this point the North American countries and the former East European countries in ATLANTIS had coalesced into FORTIS and EDEN- essentially representing the break in opinion over Germany. Their damage was divided and they didn’t really fight together. America was actually quite isolationist.

The Americans and Irish saw this is a massive betrayal, and began trolling our media. Although many in the UK were still pro-American, and Hassan was relatively on the outskirts of public opinion, the consistent attacks neatly turned the UK against our RL friends. At this point a massive multi-pronged invasion of North America began, with many countries participating. The UK (belatedly) joined in by attacking and conquering parts of North East Canada and moving West. At one point the UK was actually in China, believe it or not.

Sometime in the early stages of this invasion, the UK congress accepted the inevitable and voted for PEACE GC membership. For those of you too lazy to wiki it, PEACE GC was the enemy alliance of ATLANTIS at the time and consisted of a whole bunch of countries, most notably Hungary, Indonesia, the Baltic states, Russia, Brazil, Italy, France, (Germany), Japan, Pakistan, Serbia and so on.



The not so distant past

Our relationship with the PEACE countries was a bit weird. We had been invited in by Hungary, who were the biggest country in PEACE by a country mile, and we had a decent relationship with Indonesia, who were the daddies of the alliance. However our personal relations with various countries were basically defined by our (somewhat) limited presence there- mainly Hassan, GLaDOS and Dish.

We therefore moved close to the Dutch, the Hungarians, the Portuguese and the Brazilians. Dish invited me into the alliance to help lead the PEACEKeepers, and through them I got involved in strategy/planning for the alliance. I developed personal links with many of the Balkan countries in the alliance, hence my own personal loyalties ingame.

In December 2009 the PEACE alliance was dying. It had achieved all its goals and the game was rapidly changing. Bloated with members, a lot of people felt that pruning some of the smaller countries out would make the alliance both easier to manage and less susceptible to infiltration. I’m not convinced by that, but it’s a school of thought which stuck with the countries in PEACE to this day- hence ONE.

So at this point PEACE died a graceful death and was quickly replaced by Phoenix- which was basically PEACE mark 2, except more focused on Europe rather than Asia and South America like PEACE was. Serbia was an up-and-coming superpower, and the older countries like Indo were beginning to fade. I ended up as treasurer, and so my own personal relations/prejudices effectively steered the UK towards a closer relationship with Serbia and Hungary over the other countries.

Not much happened in the year Phoenix was around to affect that. The Bulgarians defected to EDEN shortly before the fall of PHX in protest to Macedonia’s entry. I always got on well with the Bulgarians, but we’d been stalling Macedonia’s membership for months. When I became SG one of the first things I did is let them into PHX- which I guess is the major reason our relationship with them has been good. Woldy helped with a lot of the negotiations, and the entire PHX office was UK at that point, so it helped. In addition, the iNCi guys started turning up at the end of PHX, leading to Turkey’s power skyrocketing and their stability plunging.



Recent history!

When my term as SG came to an end on 22nd December 2010, it was obvious Phoenix was going to die. Major disputes between Hungary and Brazil precipitated a divide between them and the rest of the alliance. Hungarian overtures towards Poland, and a massive divide between SPoland and EDEN provided the rest. Phoenix existed leaderless for another couple of weeks, then it died.

Brazil and the USA formed the Terra alliance (or rather, it’s predecessor), and the rest of EDEN just soldiered on without SPoland. Around March, the four superpowers which had been tentatively working together (Spain, Poland, Serbia and Hungary) signed an alliance treaty forming ONE. Macedonia and Sweden joined later. Most of the former Phoenix countries decided to stick with ONE, but the UK decided to join Terra.

There were a few reasons for this. Firstly, it seemed like a safe option. We would be surrounded by allies, and protected from ONE by our relationship with Serbia. We had a good friendship with France and Germany which had bloomed at the end of Phoenix as we struggled together against Poland. We were actually offered a place there. It’s relatively small size meant it was easy for Brits to outshine the other countries and take charge (which we did, with jamesw and Artela becoming SG/SC).

However our relationship with the USA and Canada was still poor. Many British people wanted a war, and Ireland was the likely target due to the changes in the economy module, general boredom and a lack of other targets. USA and Canada had maintained their relationship with Ireland since day 0, and didn’t want us to. Eventually we attacked them anyway, resulting in many Terra and EDEN people fighting for Ireland. Without going into too much detail, Ireland eventually joined EDEN, meaning they were technically “allies” and we decided enough was enough and left.

After a period of some months of “neutrality” the UK officially became proONE. This was a de jure change- in reality all our MPPs had been ONE MPPs for a long time. With ONE being a relatively small alliance, we found ourselves surrounded by enemies. Canada and Ireland to the West, France to the South and the minor Scandinavian power of Norway to the East. In addition the USA had a border but frankly had better things to do than bother with us.

Over the next year we traded blows with Ireland and Canada, at times holding the whole island of Ireland. But eventually the tide turned against ONE. Poland was driven out of France and Germany by a lightning strike by Terra, with the USA, Canada and RW movements through the region combining to push them back. This left a regenerated France to our South, unmolested and free for the first time since ONE’s creation. What was left of our relationship fell in tatters as France declared war on the UK. Faced with a three front war, the UK was conquered and stood without congress for three consecutive months. During these hard times, ONE extended an invitation to the UK to join. We accepted and became full members.

Eventually circumstances intervened in the form of Bulgaria leaving EDEN. With Bulgaria being a close ally of Ireland and now an ally of ONE, it provided an excuse for new peace talks. The Irish offered fair terms, swapping two of our regions for two of theirs, giving us both the bonuses we need without a need for war. Since then the two countries have co-operated, and whilst not exactly friendly there is a basis for future growth in relations. Eventually attacks from a revitalised ONE crushed France and with them distracted the UK was able to free itself from France and Canada under the leadership of Talon Karrde.



History so recent it's only a few weeks old

Now, with ONE dissolved and with the creation or CTRL, we are currently "neutral" as we're not in any alliance. However, from our days in ONE we still maintain alliances with old allies such as Poland who are in CTRL making us in fact less neutral than we'd otherwise be. Which path we take is yet to be seen. Perhaps we'll join, perhaps we won't. That, I'm afraid, is for another person to write about when the facts here need updating.



Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s article where I will be interviewing the vice-Country President Ergo Deus! Hopefully we’ll have our Ministry of Home Affairs org back by then. If you have any questions you wish to ask, feel free to PM me in-game by clicking right here.

Thanks to Iain for providing the information, you can see the thread I extracted it from by clicking this mysterious blue writing

Thanks for reading,

Beta
Minister of Public Health & Knowledge