A History of Vatican City

PROFILE

Region: Western Europe

Climate: Warm, temperate and seasonal

Leader(s): Pope Francis, since 2013 (at time of writing)
Population: 690

Capital: Vatican City

Largest City: Vatican City
Currency: European Euro
Languages: Italian

Independence: 1929, from Italy
Territories or Colonies: None

HISTORY OF VATICAN CITY

The Facts

Vatican City, officially the Vatican City State is a tiny country completely encircled, not just in Italy, but in fact in its capital city of Rome. Vatican City is so small, that you could walk from the Westernmost point in the country to the easternmost point in the country in about 12 minutes. In comparison, if you were to walk at the average speed of 4 miles per hour for eight hours a day it would take you a year to walk across Russia (that is if you could pierce through the thousands of miles of impenetrable tundra.)

While the vatican is more the size of Disneyland, than a country, it’s incredibly important. Since the early 400s it has been the headquarters of the largest sect of Christianity: Catholicism and the home of the Pope.

Vatican City has an incredibly long and complicated history with Italy and the surrounding area, that led it to become the smallest independent state by area and population with any international recognition.

BEFORE CATHOLOCISM (????-498)

Vatican City is our first country in Europe and when you deal with the history of Europe it tends to go back really far. Even though Africa is the oldest continent most of the people groups in Africa didn’t have written language (except when Arabic spread to the north, and Amharic in Ethiopia, and Heiroglyphics). There was no written language in the new world either (except for some Incan methods of keeping track of corn. In Incan society written expression took a back seat to being able to know how much corn you had.) Eurasia was the hub of written language and therefore historians know more about this continent.

There is a quote “history stops being archaeology and becomes history when written text is brought into the picture” and with Eurasia text was brought into the picture thousands of years ago.

The History of Vatican City will also be the History of the Catholic Church (sort of) as they are so intertwined, so this post will be pretty long and complex (because the Catholic Church is an impossibly complicated organization that’s literally 1,800 Years Old.)

Another note is that I’ll refer to Catholicism as Christianity until the schism of 1054, which is the first point any other kind of Christianity arose.

Vatican City began life (as many cities do) as a small marshy field near the bank of the Tiber River. In about 14 BCE, the first construction began. People began to build some houses on the land to get out of the hustle and bustle of Rome. Even though the Vatican is right smack in the middle of Rome now, back then Rome was less far-reaching and the Vatican wasn’t much more than a quaint suburb downriver. In around 12 CE, Agrippina the Elder built gardens in the area.

Agrippina the Elder isn’t very well known. She married Germanicus and their child was Caligula. I wonder what kind of parent she was?

Caligula was famous for his scandals which involved having sex with his sisters, then prostituting them off to other people for profit. Caligula was basically an incestuous pimp. He would send his soldiers to conquer lands he made up for his amusement. He was drunk 24/7 and tried and failed to make a horse his co-consul. When he was told he couldn’t do that he successfully made him a fucking priest.

Anyway, Agrippina the Elder, Caligula’s hopefully more sane mother built some gardens on the site of modern day Vatican City.

Caligula, not as much a fan of gardens and more a fan of people getting slammed into at 35 mph, ditched the garden and put in the Circus of Nero. A Circus in this context means a long stadium for chariot races. The Circus was completed in 40, a year before Caligula’s death, when he was stabbed by members of the senate, a recurring theme in Rome if you haven’t noticed.

Caligula furnished the Vatican with many things he stole from other places, but the only surviving one is the Obelisk he yanked from Egypt’s Heliopolis.

This Obelisk is important because not only is it the focal point for the entire city, it’s where St. Peter (the first pope as told by Jesus, he had connections) was crucified upside down in 64. At this point the Romans believed Christianity to be this threatening cult of crazy people that only believed in ONE GOD! (holy shit!!!). To be fair Roman religion is much more fun, with their pantheon of seemingly insane gods who liked to trick and rob people. This was a much easier moral role model to follow than the cabal of do gooders that God and his posse were.

Anyway St. Peter was crucified upside down, paving the way for metal bands 1800 hundred years later to have cool logos.

At this time being a Christian was still really dangerous, which is why you couldn’t just go out and say you were a Christian, you had to paint fishes on your door and talk in codes. The first popes were all martyred in increasingly elaborate ways by the Romans. St. Peter was simply crucified, but Clement I was thrown into the ocean with an anchor tied to him, Pontian was banished to a Sardinian mine where he died of exhaustion on Tavolara, and Anterus was killed by Maximus Thrax who is the new title holder for COOLEST NAME EVER. It’s hard to understand why people would want to be pope when it probably said on the job description “you’ll be the leader of a marginalized and hated group of people, and you’re likely to be killed by the Roman government.” Sign me up!

PAPAL STATES GAIN CONTROL (498-1929)

With Christianity gaining more ground as a legit religion and Rome slowly losing its influence, not only in places on its “list of things they wanted”, but within its walls. A series of sackings by Visigoths starting in 402 and going until the early 500s, led the capital of the Western Roman Empire to change from Rome to Ravenna, and then to nothing because it had dissolved.

Christians in the Vatican thought this was a perfect moment to take this land and make it their Christian HQ. Pope Symmachus built a palace on the land where he could lead the church from. This was the beginnings of a formal place the church officials met and did business, as it had been all over the place because if you stayed in one place the Romans would show up with a bunch of centurions and do something crazy like throw you in the sea or banish you to an island.

The Papal States didn’t quite exist until 754. When Rome fell to the Visigoths, Goth influence spread like wildfire throughout Western Europe (everybody was really into Black Metal and Corpse Paint. Actually no…) The Visigoths and Ostrogoths (another group of goths) were fine with Christianity (because they had converted to christianity, often as a “fuck you” to the Romans. Don’t you love converting out of spite.)

The Ostrogoths installed their own guys as pope for a while, until the Byzantines who had ruled over the Eastern Roman Empire (which still went strong until the Ottomans showed up) installed their own guy. The Schism of 1054 hadn’t happened yet, so Eastern and Western Christianity were still one. The Schism was when Catholicism (Western Christianity) broke off from Greek, Russian, Byzantine and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity (Eastern Christianity). That’s why the pope doesn’t have jurisdiction over Eastern Europe, a different guy in a comically large hat does.

In the early days of the Papal States Christians mostly travelled around Western Europe converting the nomadic groups to Christianity. They often just converted the leader and had them sort it out, as in the case of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne was a good friend to have (considering he controlled Germany and France for a bit) and Charlemagne lended his support to his new pal the Pope and used his resources to kill all of the Pope’s enemies.

Here you see that the Pope has transformed from a figurehead of an oppressed fringe group that had a knack for being spectacularly murdered by the Romans to a king of kings with more power than most kings, who can get anyone he wants to murder his enemies.

In 904, on the onset of the Dark Ages, the Popes started getting up to some shifty business, which led to Martin Luther’s 95 theses being nailed on the Castle Church in Wittenburg, and the beginning of the Protestants protesting the catholic church, but that wasn’t for a while.

From 904 onward the Popes began taking bribes from the rich aristocrats of Rome and would do things like Indulgences, which acted as middle aged get-out-of-jail-free cards. If you were a rich guy and you murdered somebody, you could buy an indulgence and have nothing happen to you (in both the real world and the “afterlife”). They would also sell the poor fake artifacts and tools to improve their prayers. They would say if you buy this magical Egg-Wave or whatever, then all of your prayers would be answered, but unlike an Egg-Wave, these artifacts didn’t microwave eggs. They did jack shit.

There was a period of time when the popes just left the Vatican altogether (which I guess means it doesn’t factor in here, but it kind of does… big time). For a bit there was a series of French popes (which there usually weren’t. Up to this point popes had usually been Italians or Germans.) The French popes moved their Papal HQ from the Vatican at the heart of the Papal States (the most powerful Kingdom of Modern Day Italy) to the Palais des Papes in Avignon.

The Papacy was Headquartered in Avignon for about seventy years, which made Italians mad, who liked having the Pope in Italy because it brought in those pilgrimage dollaz, and illegal indulgences dollaz also.

The pope fucking off to France caused the Western Schism (Catholics love their schisms). The Western Schism worked kind of like this. There were two popes and two sets of cardinals and bishops were split between who they agreed with. (Proximity didn’t really matter.) Anytime the Roman pope would do something the French pope would declare it unholy, and vice-versa, which led to, as you probably guessed, nothing getting done until the fucking 15th century!

By the renaissance, even though Martin Luther had now founded the Lutheran church and started the Protestant movement that was much less into fancy figureheads wearing big hats and lavish palaces, and more interested in what it was all about: the god stuff.

And big hats and lavish palaces was the name of the game during the Renaissance. Italy was the center of the renaissance, and it was also the center of the pope, and the papacy was at the forefront of the most important thing the renaissance produced. Paintings and art? While the papacy had a lot of demand for portraits that made the chubby pope look less chubby, the most important thing that came out of the Renaissance was the European discovery of North and South America and their rush to get all of its gold.

The pope, now considerably more powerful than any of the leaders in Europe, was the one granting land rights to european nations. He was the one that gave Spain sole rights to the new world (until England and France showed up). This is why Spain owned so much of it, from the tip of Cape Horn to Wyoming.

The Papal States gained even more power during this period, from dues the other countries were paying them and they organized into something that looks more like a modern day country. The Papal States started as a parcel of land stretching from near Venice to near Naples in the South, owning small pockets farther north and south. The Papal States held the land in the center of Italy (and therefore the most important). They printed currency and appointed local government leaders (usually friends of the pope’s family the Borgias) and invested in infrastructure like bridges, marketplaces and trade routes.

But with these new gains to Rome and the Papal States came the bad news. The papacy was so completely corrupted that almost all of their actions were in the name of coin rather than what was good for Catholic people or the residents of the Papal States.

SIDE NOTE: The video game Assassin’s Creed II, as well as its sequel Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood deal extensively with this topic, ending with a failed assassination attempt on the pope Rodrigo Borgia of dubious historical accuracy.

The Catholic church in general didn’t see many changes until the 1800s. In 1861, following the example of Germany and to a lesser extent Belgium (the former of which unified a mass of small kingdoms that ranged in size from Kingdoms the size of Denmark to those not much bigger than some fields with some castles in it. Declaring sovereignty was much easier back then. You may think the Holy Roman Empire was a form of German unification, but the Holy Roman Empire was not an Empire as it’s name implies, but more a union of cultures and kingdoms that shared economic ties. Much more boring than an empire.) Italy decided that having a mess of states wasn’t good for business as the profits of of the lands were being taxed multiple times and divided amongst many different leaders.

As the 19th century continued more and more borders were dissolved until in the early 1860s, the Kingdom of Italy was formally created from all of the smaller Kingdoms. The Kingdom of Italy managed to coerce all kingdoms to cede their land except for the small pocket that is San Marino, but that’s another long and complicated story. The capital was Florence, because they hadn’t managed to get the papacy out of Rome so they could set up their capital their. Rome was (and is) the largest city in Italy, and the most centrally located, almost equidistant from Switzerland and the southern tip of Sicily.

Eventually, through the use of bigger-army intimidation and lots of shouting the Kingdom of Italy gained control of Rome, but the Catholic Church wasn’t going to just disappear and they had to do something about them, so they sectioned off a tiny bit of land, which was just the buildings the Church had used and some plazas around it to be some special area they would deal with later. Procrastination really is the best way to resolve international disputes.

The period leading up to full Vatican independence were rough for Catholics who were being alienated again in their own country. The pope didn’t know what to do and offered to move the papacy to a country that was less mean, but he never found a place for it.

VATICAN CITY GAINS INDEPENDENCE (1929-PRESENT)

Finally in 1929, Italy decided to get off its ass and do something about the problem because shouting at it wasn’t making it go away. Mussolini, the fascist cartoon character that was running Italy at this point agreed that this tiny bit of land within Rome should be its own country and in that way they won’t have to deal with it any more.

World War 2 slowly creeped up, especially prominent in Italy, but the Vatican quietly ducked out and stayed neutral, so nothing much changed until the 60s when Pope John Paul II, who had helped Lech Walesa in the polish revolution and was an all around liberal pope, said some incendiary things. He came out anti-communism (as someone who was instrumental in the Polish revolution probably would be), but he also came out anti-capitalism. He lessened the need for Latin in the church and seemed to be anti-violence and anti-corruption (which seem pretty straight forward and non-controversial now, weren’t so much in the Catholic Church of yesteryear.)

Nowadays the Catholic Church is headed by Pope Francis, the first pope from the new world.

VATICAN CITY FACTS

Vatican City is the smallest country in terms of population and area.

Vatican City is one of the few absolute monarchies left in the world.

Nobody is born in Vatican City.

Vatican City’s population is 100% Male and 0% Female.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.vaticanstate.va/content/vaticanstate/en/stato-e-governo/storia/la-citta-del-vaticano-nel-tempo.html

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/Lanciani/LANPAC/3*.html#sec16

http://www.vaticanstate.va/content/vaticanstate/en/stato-e-governo/storia/la-citta-del-vaticano-oggi.html

http://www.romanmysteries.com/charioteer-facts

http://history-world.org/a_history_of_the_catholic_church.htm

A History of Venezuela

PROFILE

Region: Northern South America

Climate: Balmy, tropical, cool in the mountainous regions

Leader(s): Nicolas Maduro, since 2013 (at time of writing)

Population: 30.933.000

Capital: Caracas

Largest City: Caracas
Currency: Venezuelan Bolivar Fuerte
Languages: Spanish

Independence: 1830, from Gran Colombia
Territories or Colonies: Aves Island, Las Aves Archipelago, Blanquilla Island, Los Frailes Islands, La Sola Islands, Patos island, Los Hermanos Archipelago, Los Monjes Archipelago, Orchila Island, Los Roques Archipelago, Los Testigos Islands, La Tortuga Island

THE FACTS

Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a country on the northern coast of South America. It borders the Caribbean as well as Colombia and Brazil. The country is rich with oil and has a high HDI rating, higher than that of some European countries.

The country’s official name is in reference to Simon Bolivar (the second country to name itself after him after Bolivia). Simon Bolivar was president of six countries in South America (which is about 50% of the countries in South America). Bolivar was president of Venezuela, Colombia, Colombian Ecuador, Colombian Guyana, Bolivia and Peru.

BEFORE COLUMBUS (????-1498)

Before Christopher Columbus showed up in 1498 Venezuela was home to a few aboriginal tribes, most notably the Chibcha and Arawaks. The Chibcha were native to the mountainous Andean region, near the border with Colombia. They were masters of farming literally on the sides of freaking mountains, which is really hard. They innovated ways of transporting water sources around the stepped mountainside, using canals and aqueducts.

The Arawaks were native to the coastal region and along the Peninsula de Paria, which stretches into the Caribbean almost touching the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The Arawak peoples weren’t necessarily one tribe but a group of culturally similar tribes that lived from the Bahamas to Hispaniola to Puerto Rico through the West Indies to the Northern Coast of South America.

The Arawaks cultivated the fertile soil of the area and hunted and gathered as well. Agriculture wasn’t as demanding in the North as the terrain was fairly flat and fertile.

As with many aboriginal groups not a whole lot is known about the residents of Venezuela pre-Columbus. There weren’t written records and most of what we now know is from archaeological evidence, or what the Europeans observed before they commenced the terrible tirade of killing usually brought upon these populations.

Sadly the Arawak and Chibcha groups didn’t fair any differently. Now, before Columbus came not everything was roses and sunshine (well, actually there was a lot of sunshine because Venezuela is in the tropics), but everything wasn’t perfect. One of my sources (geographia.com/venezuela/history.htm) describes the pre-Coumbian Venezuela as a paradise, and while Columbus significantly fucked over the native populace by giving them diseases, killing and raping thousands of people and reducing their population by 60%, Pre-Columbian life wasn’t perfect.

Like any group the Arawaks and other indigenous peoples of Venezuela had tribal conflict and while it wasn’t really large-scale conflict (mostly skirmishes that often weren’t fatal) it was persistent. The tribal groups weren’t unified into one single government which made it hard to cooperate, especially when Columbus invaded.

There is a theory that the only way of making humanity unite is if faced with the threat of alien encounter. This was kind of the situation in much of North and South America (as well as Africa, Asia and Australia). Many groups that were divided in conflict united against this alien force that was Europeans. This didn’t really happen in Venezuela. This might have been because when the Europeans showed up they didn’t say “we’re taking all of this and we’re going to kill you if you say otherwise” which is what they meant, they just started building some sparse settlements and hanging out.

The Arawaks were noted by the Europeans for being pretty friendly offering food and gifts to the visitors. The Arawaks and other indigenous groups didn’t feel the need to unite because they didn’t really see the Europeans as a threat until much too late.

COLUMBIAN AND EUROPEAN VISITATION (1498-1810)

Christopher Columbus arrived in the land that is now Venezuela in 1498 on his third voyage (this voyage had a much less catchy song “In fourteen hundred ninety-eight, Columbus sailed the ocean… great.” Not as good of a song.)

At this point Columbus and his buddies in Spain, Portugal and Italy knew that North and South America weren’t in fact China, India, Japan and Indonesia, but was its own continent. Oops. They didn’t however know of the extent of these continents, thinking them to be conveniently narrow strips of land you could walk from the west side to the east side of with time to spare, which is sort of true in Central America (if you ignore the 6000 foot high mountains in Panama), but in places like Brazil and America it’s a good 3000 miles across.

Columbus went back to Europe and told everybody that not only is the Caribbean waaaaaaaaay nicer than Europe, that South America was a good place to go.

A couple years down the road Spaniard Alonso de Ojeda went back to Venezuela to scope out if it was good for settling (i.e. if it had any gold and/or people to enslave and make mine for gold). Ojeda arrived and named the area Venezuela (or little Venice because he thought the Arawaks’ stilted lakeside houses looked like Venice). They did some looking and found that in fact Venezuela wasn’t home to a lot of useful natural resources. It did have trees for timber and some other sparse minerals, but nothing like the insane reserves of Argentina (literally named after Silver, which it turned out it didn’t have, but it did have other things the Spanish wanted). Ironically enough Venezuela is home to one of the most coveted resources Black Gold itself OIL!!! But, the Spaniards couldn’t get it because it was hidden underground and it didn’t have a whole lot of use before cars were invented or the industrial revolution happened.

The secondary objective of the Spaniards after get rich or die tryin’ was to convert the locals or often die tryin’.

Because of the lack of usable resources the Spaniards just kind of fucked off to Bogota in the much more strategically located and bountiful Colombia. They let the natives kind of do what they wanted, but slowly built up Spanish cities, founding Maracaibo in 1529 and Caracas in 1567.

Venezuela never really achieved the kind of hustle and bustle of other South American colonies like Portuguese Brazil and Spanish Argentina, Chile and Colombia.  

Spain controlled Venezuela, not often utilizing it’s few resources. It became a satellite colony, mainly used for farmland.

In 1783, during the peak of Spanish colonization of the region, Simón Bolívar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He was born to a rich creole family. In South and Central America, as well as in the Caribbean, there was a complex racial structure that was created when the Spanish arrived. Three races and social classes emerged, these being the White Spaniards who were mostly people born in Spain and were sent in the army or for leadership roles like Colonial Governors or other things like that. The next group, that the Bolivar was part of was the creoles. These people were descended from both Spaniards or French  and aboriginal people. These people were often given local roles of leadership and tended to be middle class to upper class. The lowest group was either African slaves, aboriginal slaves or other aboriginal people who often didn’t have freedom, or if they did were often poor farmers or merchants. It was common for the Spaniards and Creole people to own slaves, as Bolivar’s family did.

Bolivar later denounced slavery by saying “slavery is the worst human indignity” and vying to unify the creoles and slaves and provide more opportunities for equality for both groups.

Bolivar wasn’t as interested in what the Spaniards wanted, and he promised the creole and native peoples that they could overthrow the Spanish. Various new-world revolutionaries had used the struggle in Europe as a way to gain the allegiance of certain European powers. In the American revolution, the Americans knew the British were at war with not only America, but France, and enlisted the help of the French in the revolution.

Bolivar saw that Spain and France were seeing a period of struggle. Napoleon’s high-heel wearing brother Joe just recently came into power in Spain by overthrowing the previous Spanish King Fernando the Seventh. Bolivar figured he could take advantage of this conflicted time in Europe. As soon as the news of the power switch in Europe came to the New World, Bolivar began kicking out the Spanish troops in Venezuela. They claimed that they had no jurisdiction because their leader had just been ousted by Napoleon’s high heeled, fuck-up brother.

Simon Bolivar

WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE (1810-1830)

The war for Venezuelan independence began and at the helm was Bolivar fighting on the side of the Independentists. On the other side was Spanish general Juan Domingo de Monteverde, at the helm of the Spanish military.

Monteverde kicked Bolivar’s ass the first time around and he ran for (sort of) independent Colombia to brood. He wrote his Manifiesto and after publishing more papers and gaining the support of many Northern South Americans (at the time called New Granada) he gathered an army to defeat Monteverde. In 1812 and 1813 Bolivar gained control of New Granada, renamed to Gran Colombia, which included territory in modern Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.

But this victory was short, and not so sweet, marred by famine and corrupt leaders massacring innocents. This finally ended the next year, when Spain, once again led by Fernando, who had just finished dealing with Napoleon’s persistent, if not capable brother.

Fernando rebuilt Spanish infrastructure and restructured its military into a huge force that could cripple any enemy. Fernando saw how Jose Bonaparte (Napoleon’s fuck-up brother) had lost their precious colonies in the Americas and he vowed to regain control of them. Spain marched in a huge number of troops in Colombia and Venezuela in an attempt to regain control.

Gran Colombia fought back. The war was long, lasting until 1823. Most battles were battles of attrition. One side slowly chipping away at the defenses of another, until the tables were turned the other way. Very little got done, but finally Puerto Cabello Fort fell in late 1823 and Gran Colombia emerged victorious. They had defeated the largest colonial force on Earth at the time and Bolivar was free to reign.

He believed that all of the countries of South America should unify into a massive superpower. They could pool resources and have an ideologically consistent government which would give them more of a chance against the superpowers who’d been on the world stage for a while like The United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, the US, China and Russia.

Others believed that Gran Colombia and a unified South America could never work and that several states (like we have today) should operate independently.

The fight didn’t end until 1830, after Bolivar’s death and the secession of Venezuela and other countries from Gran Colombia, essentially putting the final nail in not only Bolivar’s coffin but much of what he worked for.

Bolivar didn’t accomplish nothing though. His main life goal was to free his home country of Venezuela from the oppression of Spanish rule, which he did and unite the countries of South America into one big super-state, which he didn’t do.

A NEW VENEZUELA (1830-1899)

1830 was a year of rebirth for Venezuela. A new constitution was written and for the first time since 1811 and 1812 Venezuela was free from the shackles of Spanish rule, or the rule of squabbling leaders. But, not everything was calm, in fact quite the opposite. The squabbling leaders I was talking about starting really going at it. In 1859, right near the time of another famous civil war, Venezuela entered into a four year long conflict. The nation was split. In the U.S. the split was between the slave-holding South who wanted independence as a non-industrialized agricultural nation, and the non-slave-holding North who wanted the nation to remain as one, without slavery. In Venezuela, the split was much more similar to how our nation is split today. The country was ideologically split between the conservative Centralists and the liberal Federalists. The Centralists were like Republicans and the Federalists were like Democrats. 

After four years of fighting the Federalists won and installed Antonio Guzman Blanco, who during his thirteen year presidency led Venezuela into an industrial boom. Public buildings were built, the central government was strengthened and the church's presence was lowered. A nationwide railroad was built. Antonio Guzman Blanco was one of Venezuela's most liberal leaders. His father, also named Antonio Guzman was so liberal he founded the liberal party of Venezuela during the time of independence in 1812. Antonio Guzman Blanco followed in his father's footsteps and enacted a series of liberal policies. 

DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY (1899-PRESENT)
After a few mostly liberal presidents followed Antonio Guzman power suddenly shifted away from the Liberal party to the Military leader Cipriano Castro in 1899. Castro overthrew Ignacio Andrade in a coup and said "fuck all of these government programs and public works and things that benefit the citizens. I think that Venezuela would be much better under military rule." I'm paraphrasing a bit. 

Castro was a bit of a war monger, inciting a war with the Netherlands (bad idea) by shooting down some ships bound for Netherlands owned Curacao, Sint Maarten and Aruba. The Netherlands sent some ships and a small war began. Right around now Castro decides to go to France because he got syphilis, (that sucks) and he didn't want his nose to rot off and die. 

While Castro was in France trying desperately to not die from early 1900s syphilis treatment, Juan Vicente Gomez took over. He figured that since the president was not in Venezuela, he wasn't president. (Perfect logic.) 

Juan Vicente Gomez went full fledged dictator destroying the last smithereens of liberal policy. He enacted military school to brainwash citizens and set up military checkpoints in major cities. His most important action was his use of the countries recently tapped oil resources. He set up government companies to regulate the sale of the oil and kept all of the profits. Very little of the oil profit actually benefited the citizens. His reign lasted until 1913, when he stepped down and handed the presidency over to various other military guys.

In 1945 Isaias Medina Angarita was chosen to be president and thought that Venezuela should be a democratic nation. He set up elections to occur when his term was complete, but a coup in 1948 started a chaotic period that ended in 1952 when dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez became president.

As a dictator he wasn't super into democracy (a.k.a. dictator kryptonite.) After he fell, a brief intermediate period went into action. Finally democracy arrived in Venezuela. Since the early 60s Venezuela has been ruled by a series of socialist leaders that have been elected, but the current leader Nicolas Maduro has been doing some fishy things. He's talked about seizing the country forcefully if the socialists leave power, but the international stage isn't sure about him yet, as he's only been president for three years. 

VENEZUELA FACTS
Venezuela was named after Venice, Italy.
Venezuela is home to the tallest waterfall, Angel Falls, which looks really cool. (You should image search it.)
Venezuela the world's largest oil reserves in one nation, higher than that of Saudi Arabia or the UAE.
Because of the plentiful oil, Venezuelan gas prices are as low 5 cents per gallon. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.unep-wcmc.org/#?country=VE&dashboard=show

http://www.venezuelatuya.com/historia/resum1eng.htm

http://www.geographia.com/venezuela/history.htm

http://ux.brookdalecc.edu/fac/history/Tangents/ARTICLESFORTANGENTS/Columbus's%20Genocide.htm

A History of Vietnam

PROFILE

Region: Southeast Asia

Climate: Damp and Tropical

Leader(s): Truong Tan Sang, since 2015 (at time of writing)

Population: 91,700,000

Capital: Hanoi

Largest City: Ho Chi Minh City
Currency: Vietnamese Dong
Languages: Vietnamese

Independence: 1945 from France

Territories or Colonies: None

HISTORY OF VIETNAM

THE FACTS

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,  a name that comes from its time as a communist state, is a narrow country in Southeast Asia, that encompasses most of the Pacific coast in the region.

Vietnam has a damp and tropical climate, similar to its neighbors Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam is relatively dense, having a small land area and the 11th largest population of any country on Earth.

BEFORE AND DURING CHINESE OCCUPATION (????-938)

Vietnamese people are thought to have come from two places. Northern Vietnamese people came from Mongolia and China and migrated south to the Indochina Peninsula. The Southern Vietnamese migrated north from Indonesia and Malaysia to the area.

These two cultures assimilated and eventually the Vietnamese cultural identity was born. The Vietnamese people quickly developed new ways of cultivating rice, which are still used, as rice is still the largest crop in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese origin story is a good example of how the Vietnamese thought of themselves in ancient times. The story involves the two groups, the lowlanders and the highlanders as brothers and sisters separated at birth that live in different areas, yet share a lot of cultural tradition.

The first major historical event came when China, an important figure in Vietnamese stories, on account of China being a massive empire with rockets and a million-man army growing ever closer and closer to not only the Vietnamese but every country that bordered China.

Chinese colonization began by accident. The central Chinese government in the 300s B.C.E. didn’t just decide to waltz into Vietnam and add it to their list of things they wanted, the colonization began somewhat peacefully when members of Southern Chinese kingdoms were forced to leave when the Qin Empire (back then the largest of the Chinese Empires, and the one that gave China its name) hiked their borders south.

An influx of ethnically Chinese people radically changed the Vietnamese culture and to this day Vietnamese people share some genetics with the Chinese and some of the traditions the Southern Chinese brought with them.

The Qin Empire/Dynasty didn’t last forever. Empires always fall, no matter what ideology they’re based in. The Qin Empire fell because Qin Shi Huang, the last emperor ate waaaay too much mercury (which to be fair is any amount of mercury) because he thought it would make him immortal, which was so violently wrong he died a painful death as he slowly poisoned himself. Anyway, I’ll go more into this in the long and incredibly complicated China post). The long and short of it is that Chinese power shifted from the Qin to the Han, one of the most far reaching and long lasting Chinese dynasties reaching from the Pacific to Kazakhstan, and lasting a good 405 years.

The Han decided to move their borders even farther south into what is now Northern Vietnam and started the colonization train. The people of Northern Vietnam were already more related to the Chinese because of the Southern Chinese southern immigration, but the Chinese still saw the Vietnamese people they met as backwards and dumb, which was not true and was just racism (which is ironically what the Europeans and Americans thought of the Chinese, despite the fact that China invented almost everything), anyway the Chinese were big ol’ racists against the Vietnamese because they didn’t have a centralised government or gunpowder. The Vietnamese lived in small villages that were sometimes united in a regional council, something similar to many African societies of the time.

China had a different idea than Europeans when it came to colonialism. The Europeans had this idea that if you had “one drop” of non-white blood in your genetics that you weren’t white and were shunned by the Europeans which led to it being a taboo to have relationships with colonized peoples or slaves in European colonies. China had a different idea. They thought they could impose their will and ideas on the Vietnamese if they completely assimilated. They tried to force the Vietnamese to adopt Chinese religions, culture and language (which mostly didn’t work). China created trading posts in Vietnam for trading with the Indonesians or the Indians without having to navigate the treacherous route through the Himalayas.

The Chinese built roads, temples, canals and other infrastructure that was missing from Vietnam. The Han Dynasty faltered in 9 CE and many of the aristocrats found sanctuary with the Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese under China, hated it because China was raising taxes and slowly annexing Vietnamese farmers' land, which made it harder for them to grow food for themselves and to sell for profit. The Chinese imposed ethnically discriminatory laws that prevented the Vietnamese from ever gaining power because they were “inferior”.

The Chinese all in all were huge dicks to the Vietnamese and as this thing usually goes (see every country ever colonized, besides perhaps Canada) there was a revolt. The series of revolts happened between 39 CE and 248 CE, when a woman revolted against the Chinese because she could see women’s quality of life declining, as the Chinese had introduced foot binding and concubinage to the Vietnamese, which made life for women increasingly harder. This rebellion did nothing, sadly.

With the rise to power of Emperor Wu, in the 500s Vietnam enjoyed a brief period of relaxed Chinese rule. Emperor Wu wasn’t a big proponent of colonialism and favored art and philosophy to war, which of course angered everybody in the Chinese government, that was filled with people who loved fighting and taking land.

Emperor Wu, however, was terrible at keeping control of the land holdings he did have. The local governors of land in Vietnam were fed up by Wu’s lack of support and broke off from the Chinese government setting up satellite states, which was terrible because now these governors could do whatever they wanted unfettered by the Chinese government.

From 546 to 603 Ly Bon, a Vietnamese revolutionary and his followers set off a series of guerilla attacks against the massive Imperial Chinese force and the force of the satellite governors.

In 618, the Tang Dynasty gained power in China and regained control of Vietnam from the satellite governors. They renamed Vietnam Annam, which means “pacified south” which is kind of a dick move.

And this proved to be false as well, as the Vietnamese launched yet another series of attacks from 687 to 820. The most interesting of which was led by Mai Thuc Loan a.k.a. The Black Emperor who tried to defeat the Chinese from his giant death fortress called the Citadel, which was later converted into a buddhist temple where people go to pray for him. That should be every person’s dream to have a cool nickname, defeat an imperialist power from a well-constructed death fortress and then be worshipped even after death.

The final rebellion and only successful one, was that of Ngo Quyen who in 939 defeated the Chinese at the battle of Bach Dang River, where Ngo Quyen pulled one of the coolest war maneuvers ever. He planted a bunch of sharpened metal poles in the harbor, just low enough that they couldn’t be seen at high tide and sent a bunch of rafts to bait the huge Chinese war boats. The fast rafts retreated to the bank of the river and watched the Chinese war boats cripple themselves on the sharpened metal rods. DAAAAAAAAMN!

This tactic was so cool that it was reused in 1288 by Tran Hung Dao to destroy the Mongols.

After this, Ngo Quyen declared himself the coolest person in Vietnam and also king. He set up government buildings at Co Loa and renamed Annam, Dai Viet. After the death of Ngo Quyen who was holding together Vietnam, the country fell back into disarray under the leadership of his ineffectual son and the Chinese tried to retake the country, but failed. They finally had independence from the Chinese after almost 1000 years under them. China needs to learn to let go.

INDEPENDENT VIETNAM (944-1859)

Vietnamese independence began with leadership in the north by a man named Dinh Bo Linh, who tried to unify the north with China, by mixing religion and political traditions. He was popular, but his dynasty lost control in 980 when it was overthrown.

Something that people don’t often think about is that back a long time ago, power was almost never handed over peacefully. This was one of the most revolutionary ideas of the American Revolution. When Washington served his two terms John Adams succeeded him, without an armed conflict.

Back in the old days a dynasty held power until a different dynasty went and killed the leader and installed their own guy. This was true in Vietnam. Independent Vietnam was in a position of every 80 or so years, their dynastic government would be replaced by a new dynastic government, Game of Thrones style. For the average agricultural worker in Vietnam this usually didn’t mean much. Policy usually didn’t change much and these dynastic changes more affected the dynasty that just got overthrown and the upper echelons of society than your average Joe.

The Ly Dynasty greatly expanded the borders of Vietnam. The Vietnamese state now stretched from China in the north to the water in the south. This dynasty was then overthrown by the Tran who had Mongol problems. The Trans made enemies with the worst possible people, Kublai Khan and his Mongol fighting force that were known to destroy empires from Japan to Europe, but surprisingly the Tran kicked Kublai Khan’s ass.

Various dynasties remained in power until the country was again split into the North and South, in the early 1700s, with the split in power between the Le Kingdom in the North and the Nguyen Kingdom in the South.

These ruling Kingdoms were increasing the wealth of the ruling families and the bureaucratic government class in each of the societies and ignoring the struggles of the working and peasant classes. They imposed strict taxes which left the peasants penniless and unable to escape the cycle of poverty in the country. The Kingdoms would employ these peasants and pay them less, essentially creating a system of indentured servitude, which the peasants hated.

So, in the 1770s the peasants supported an uprising by the Tay Son Dynasty who promised better conditions for workers and actually did what they promised. They lowered taxes, but kept the same services for the public and gave women more rights allowing them major public offices as either Generals, or Treasurers or other things like that.

Everything was going well until the Tay Son King died and his successor was to be chosen, and thus began the game of thrones all too similar to societies with hereditary leadership.

The Tay Son King Quang Trung left the throne to his tiny ten year old brother (because what could go wrong giving the throne of a country with thirty million people and a huge economy over to a ten year old).

The leader of the Nguyen Dynasty which had fallen at the hands of the rebellion thirty years earlier saw that he could easily defeat a dynasty whose most powerful member wasn’t old enough to see PG-13 movies.

In 1802 the Nguyen matriarch Nguyen Anh asked the French to help him regain the throne, and thus began the beginning of French involvement in the area. Nguyen Anh went crazy with power and reversed everything won in the revolution. He was like “fuck you peasants and women, I’m reinstating old taxes and my palace is going to be made entirely of gold and have pictures of myself in every room. I’m taking away all rights from women and setting up a crazy bureaucratic mess because I can!!!”

Nguyen Anh wasn’t super concerned with being well-liked by the populace as you can probably tell, but he should have been because a revolution was yet again steaming in the villages. Revolution Take Two, however failed as Nguyen Anh’s successor was somehow crazier and never left his palace. His only idea for policy for the country was to buy a fleet of war elephants from Laos to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. Vietnam was struck with food shortages and the threat of the French Imperial Forces invading and their missionaries converting people, so the government administration began jailing missionaries. They didn’t believe that the French were a threat, so they didn’t do anything to prevent their attack, which in 1859 came ending a period of independence that lasted almost a thousand years. The French did this by slowly converting disenfranchised southerners and villagers in the north to Catholicism. These people easily converted because the other religious option Confucianism was the religion of the oppressive Nguyen Dynasty and was the basis for much of the taxation that was so unpopular.

The French sympathizing converts aided the French in overthrowing the leadership in Da Nang. The French inserted themselves into the North during a period of intense strife. The North had been ruled by a string of crazy people, peaking with the Elephant Man and his successors Thieu Tri and Tu Duc, so the French saw an entrance. They could get the populace to overthrow the government. Eventually they forced Tu Duc to sign away most of his power to the French, which they claimed when he died in 1883.

FRENCH COLONIZATION (1859-1954)

The French colony of Indochina was unwieldy. This was an area that was somewhat unfamiliar to Europeans, culturally and geographically. The French had trouble reaching out to the citizens in the north who were in conflict with Tu Duc until his death in 1883.

France introduced French cuisine, culture and literature to the region in hope of Frenchifiying the Vietnamese. (This is why the Vietnamese Banh Mi Sandwich is on a French Roll.) Under France the Vietnamese were somewhat prosperous, but most of the money went to France. Most people stayed as low-paid peasants, but a few ascended the ranks of French government.

By the early 20th Century though Vietnam was really finding it’s own voice and cultural identity among the French. One of the main goals of imperialism besides steal the resources of others to make money, was to impose the culture of the Imperial force on to the colonized country, and it’s always a challenge to cultivate a national identity and culture, when a different culture is imposed upon you. Sometimes it creates a culture that is a blend of imperial ideals and old school tradition, which is what happened in Vietnam.

Eventually the colonial fist of France had grown unbearable to the Vietnamese people and were looking for a way out. A young student named Ho Chi Minh (who got Saigon named after him) travelled to Europe and learned about communism and liked it because of its stance against imperialism (even though the USSR was a big fan of imperialism). Communism quickly spread among the Vietnamese as a way of overthrowing the imperialist leaders. The Indochinese Communist Party or ICP was founded as the second most famous ICP after Insane Clown Posse.

Ho Chi Minh, Communist Leader

The ICP failed to gain control though because in WWII the Japanese seized control of all of the area from southeastern Russia to Korea to the Pacific Islands to Southeast Asia. The French and Japanese although on opposite sides of the war were both united in their belief that the Vietnamese should not govern themselves, but the Japanese were destroyed in 1945 and after removing forces from Vietnam struck a deal with Ho Chi Minh to give all of their weapons and stuff to the Communist Viet Minh, so they could fight the French.

CIVIL WARS AND THE PRESENT (1954-PRESENT)

The French returned to reclaim full control of their colony, but were met with opposition from Ho Chi Minh who eventually kicked the French’s ass, but was only granted control of Communist North Vietnam, while South Vietnam was left to be run by Ngo Dinh Diem, who hated Communism.

A civil war broke out between the Communist North and the Capitalist South in 1954, which included the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem by the Viet Minh. JFK sent Americans to sort out the situation, but found out that the capitalist south who they were poised to support were corrupt and ineffective and not as worthy of support as they had hoped. Both sides of the conflict were not favorable to the US, but that didn't stop America.

By 1964, Americans had joined in the fighting on the side of South Vietnam and the Vietnam War officially became an American conflict. In 1968 it became clear that the Vietnam war was a lost cause as the North Vietnamese knew the land better and had more civilian support.

In 1968, when Nixon became president he tried to remove soldiers from the area and hand over power to the South Vietnamese, but this didn’t work. Americans had left Vietnam by 1975, after the utter failure of the Cambodian Invasion which did nothing but make Cambodia which was neutral, hate America and side with the North Vietnamese.

After America left, the South Vietnamese economy was crippled from wartime spending and embargos from the North and eventually the North seized many southern cities like Hue, Da Nang and Saigon which the north invaded in 1975 and renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

After the war recently victorious North Vietnam's economy faltered as the government started destroying anything to do with their capitalist past. In 1986, the economy was in an all-time slump and the election of Nguyen Van Linh helped jumpstart capitalism into Vietnamese society. As of now, Vietnam still has remnants of its communist/socialist past, but has some modern capitalist elements as well. 

VIETNAM FACTS

It is popular to look pale in Vietnam, rather than Tan like in the West. This bizarre quirk is also true in Japan and Korea.

75% of Vietnamese people have motorbikes, while only 2% have cars.

Vietnam is the sixth narrowest country in the world.