A History of the Ukraine, Part 1

PROFILE

Region: Eastern Europe

Climate: Temperate, Continental, Seasonal

Leader(s): Volodymyr Groysman, since 2016 (at time of writing)

Population: 42,539,010

Capital: Kiev, also spelled Kyiv

Largest City: Kiev
Currency: Ukrainian Hryvnia
Languages: Ukranian

Independence: 1991, from the USSR
Territories or Colonies: None

EARLY HISTORY & THE NOMADS (????-900s)
Ukraine was first populated with Neanderthals thousands of years ago, but they all died out because Humans are much better at planning & thinking than the Neanderthals were. In the late BCE times around the turn of the millennium the area was populated mostly by Dacians, Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians. These groups had ties to Rome and were probably considered by Rome subgroups of Eastern Barbarians.

Rome wasn't a huge fan of Barbarians considering they tried to sack Rome many, many times. The Romans were cautious of the Iron Age Ukrainians. They expanded their territory with camps in Greece and didn't attack Rome very much. These Iron Age Ukrainians were similar to the Caucasian (and I mean from the Caucasus, not White) nomadic groups that occupied what is now Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran.

Many different groups made Ukraine its home. After the Eastern Nomadic groups came the Bulgars, where Bulgaria gets its name from. Their capital city of Phanagoria lies right on the straight between Crimea and Russia, which now is kind of a part of Russia. This whole debacle is really confusing and I'll try to explain it later.

A History of The United Arab Emirates

PROFILE

Region: The Middle East

Climate: Hot, Dry, Desert-y

Leader(s): Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, since 2006 (at time of writing)

Population: 5.779.760

Capital: Abu Dhabi

Largest City: Dubai
Currency: UAE Dirham
Languages: Arabic

Independence: 1761, from the United Kingdom
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS
The United Arab Emirates is a country in the Middle East, in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. Like the U.S. the UAE is more of an alliance than a country, but instead of states UAE is comprised of Emirates which are like mini-kingdoms. It's in a hot-arid desert climate and is very rich with oil, having the 7th largest oil reserves in the world. Recently it has moved from oil to tourism and investment, being known as a playground for the rich. The UAE is home to islands in the shape of the world map, large palm-shaped artificial islands, the worlds largest mall, the worlds tallest building, the future worlds largest amusement park and an indoor ski resort. 

However, this has led to a huge wealth-gap. While rich Emirati and rich foreign nationals live well, many poor Emirati and migrant workers from India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia face human-rights violations and terrible, near-slavery working conditions. 

The history might be kind of complicated considering UAE has seven independence dates in 1761, 1775, 1819, 1820, 1899, 1900 & 1952. 

BEFORE ISLAM (????-632) The Arabian region in general is known as a crossroads between Africa, Asia and Africa (the Old World) as Uzbekistan was in the last post. Scientists believe that the region was one of the first human populated places outside of Africa. The whole Arabian peninsula was populated with pre-Islam nomadic cultures that believed in folk religions.

One of these groups was the Umm an-Nar, who existed alongside the Egyptians in the 2000s BCE. The Umm an-Nar traded with North Africa and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and like the Egyptians had a culture that was very burial-focuses. While they didn't quite construct 400 foot tall tombs, they had fairly ornate traditions building cylindrical fortresses out of stone. The era was a golden age for UAE cultures. Art and trade were very prevalent. Another interesting bonus fact is that Umm an-Nar means "Mother of Fire" which on the scale of cool names is pretty high alongside Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Gauls and Vestal Coffin a civil war figure.

The Umm an-Nar were followed by several groups like the Wadi Suq, who in comparison to the Umm an-Nar kinda Suqqed Ass. They didn't have nearly as many trade connections or as much art or ornate tomb construction as their predecessors.

Now you may wonder why anyone at all lived in this inhospitable desert before the invention of AC, advanced irrigation techniques or oil extraction. Back in these days these cultures knew how to work the land using their early irrigation techniques of building long canals that brought water deep into the desert. These canals could be as narrow as a foot, but they used gravity to carry water farther than many irrigation systems at the time.

Trade was another reason to stay. Southern Arabia was an important stop for Caravans going to Yemen or across the Red Sea to the cultures of the Horn of Africa like Ethiopia and Somalia or Egypt.

MUHAMMAD & ISLAM SHOWS UP (632-1500s)
The UAE's convenient location near-ish Mecca meant they were visited by Muhammad and
absorbed into his first caliphate which included Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar among other places. The locals took to the new religion rapidly and those who didn't were rapidly killed. The non-muslims lost the war of conquest, as most did.

The UAE was important to the expansion of Islam in other ways. The UAE port of Julfar was used as a stop on the way to Iran which was still Zoro-Astrian and the Muslims weren't into that.

Islam stayed the dominant system of beliefs and culture for most of the next 1000 years until 
the Portuguese showed up.

THE PORTUGUESE & OTTOMANS (1500s-1790s)
Ok, so it's the 16th century and you're the head of Portugal. You're empire is already doing pretty well with holdings in Africa & Brazil but you're noticing that the Indian Ocean is the hot new ocean (quite literally as it's a very warm ocean, but it was also hot shit back then) and you want to get in on it.

The Portuguese had this conundrum and decided the Arabian Peninsula was the way to go. Portugal actually did have some ties with Islam as many of its people were Muslim and it was part of the Caliphate for a while along with Spain, Southern France, Sicily and Malta.

Vasco da Gama, who was Portugal's star explorer was at the head of Portugal's Indian Ocean expeditions, and while Portugal was more interested in Macau and Portuguese India, they did have large territories in the UAE.

In the early half of the 18th century the Ottoman Empire was gaining power. They had existed since the 1200s, but they were at their largest from 1680-1720. They controlled vast portions of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other areas in North Africa as well as large parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

THE BRITISH MAKE DEALS (1790s-1930s)
If you remember from the Yemen post the Brits were in a full on race with Russia to colonize the Middle East and Britain was winning. To ensure they won, in 1892 they went to the weakened leader of the Al Qawasim dynasty. This dynasty had lost power  because of attack from the British. They then went to the Al Qawisim and basically said. You guys can still rule the Emirates, but we're gonna technically own them and we're gonna collect taxes and impose some new laws. 

The British did this a lot. It's called home-rule and while it's technically better than having some pasty British guy boss you around, it's still not preferred.

The region was known as a hotspot of pearl fishing, along with the southern coast of India and Sri Lanka. The British wanted that pearl money, but the depression in the 30s along with other factors, like people not wanting pearls as much as diamonds and other more expensive gemstones and the ability to raise oysters domestically led to this industry tanking. UAE didn't see the example Zambia set when they put all of there eggs in the copper basket and said "Oh no, we've put all of our resources, infrastructure and money into a fickle industry with a finite amount of resources". But, then oil was discovered so they said "Let's put all of our resources, infrastructure and money into this fickle industry with a finite amount of resources!" 

THE BRITISH LEAVE AND THE UAE IS BORN (1930s-PRESENT)
The country, with its newfound oil wealth had new capital to start a country and tell the British to fuck off. Oil exports began in 1962 and the country used its newfound wealth to build new roads, public works projects and a new drydock-port system in its major port towns of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And calling these places towns was fairly apt. While Dubai and Abu Dhabi are now towns with more than a million people each back then they had only 150,000 & 90,000 people respectively, less than some suburbs. 

But the population spiked with the arrival of foreign nationals who saw the opportunity to get work as contractors, architects and designers of the UAE's many ridiculous and insane projects. 

The UAE in many ways is like the Middle East's Vegas. It was a small desert outpost that was taken over by some shady businessmen and was transformed by a newfound industry into a massive, tacky blob. But like Las Vegas, the UAE has many problems deep down. Only 10% of the residents of the UAE are citizens, the rest being foreign migrant workers, primarily from India and Pakistan (40%) and other migrant workers and western foreign nationals. This means only one in ten get any representation in the government, which itself is very backwards. 

The UAE is a complicated mesh of seven absolute monarchies, so democracy isn't really involved. Imagine if the US had only seven states and each was ruled by a wealthy family from that state. This is kind of how this works. 

The UAE has been criticized, like Bahrain and Qatar for its atrocious human-rights record. Many migrant workers die during the construction of these massive projects. Also it's illegal to be gay in the country, with one man on trial for a "gay handshake". This man reports not being gay, but handshaking another man in a way that "offended the government". 

Also many of the monarchs of the UAE are convicted rapists and torturers who get a pass because they are in the rich upper class.

FUN FACTS
The UAE contains the worlds largest skyscraper, shopping mall, theme park and many other world records.
The UAE contains the worlds fastest roller coaster.
There's a hotel in Dubai that's apparently so nice it's the only seven star hotel in the world.
The Dubai police drive Lamborghinis.
There are ATMs in Dubai that dispense gold.
Dubai has no sewer, just trucks that drive poop from houses to treatment centers.
You have to have a liquor license just to drink by yourself.
The Emirate of Abu Dhabi owns most of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan.

A History of Uruguay

PROFILE

Region: Southern South America

Climate: Seasonal, Humid, Subtropical

Leader(s): Tabare Vazquez, since 2015 (at time of writing)

Population: 3.324.460

Capital: Montevideo

Largest City: Montevideo
Currency: Uruguayan Peso
Languages: Spanish

Independence: 1825, from Brazil
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS

Uruguay, officially the Oriental (Eastern) Republic of Uruguay, (the Western Republic of Uruguay technically being the Entre Rios province of Argentina, as it is on the west bank of the Uruguay River, while Uruguay is on the east.) Uruguay is a relatively small country in South America that is often confused with the other -guay nation, Paraguay.

Uruguay has a high Human Development Index and is advanced when it comes to things like political freedom and clean water. Montevideo, the capital, is rated as the best city in South America to live in based on census and WHO data.

BEFORE AND DURING COLONIZATION (????-1600s)
Uruguay shares a lot of its pre-European history with Brazil, and in fact a lot of its post-European history as well. Uruguay was a province of Brazil for a while and much of its culture as well as customs and cuisine are similar. You may think that because Uruguay was a province of Brazil it speaks Portuguese, but Uruguay speaks its own dialect of Spanish: Uruguayan Spanish, which like Argentine Spanish has some differences from say Mexican Spanish, or Spanish Spanish. It has a large Italian influence, like neighboring Argentina’s Spanish.

The indigenous peoples of the area, were very similar to the indigenous people groups in Southern Brazil. Uruguay was hit especially hard by the arrival of Europeans. Most Central American, South American and Caribbean countries’ populations are made up of people who mostly descend from European settlers and native peoples. These people are called Mestizo, Mestiso, Creole or Kreyol. Uruguay followed a path more similar to that of the United States. The Europeans didn’t really mingle with the native people in Uruguay as they did in other places. The European settlers instead nearly wiped out the native population with disease and constant attack.

Sadly today, there are very few if any native indigenous Uruguayans.

Colonization first began 14 Years after Columbus landed on the continent. The Portuguese wanted a piece of the colonization cake and (as you probably guessed) they got it. Portugal had a fairly expansive colonial empire, if you take into account the fact that it was all based in a country roughly the size of Maine, with only about a million people. Portugal grabbed hold of Eastern South America, while Spain dominated Northern and Western South America.

Uruguay was a sort of keystone, where both empires met and of course this was a problem. Portugal controlled much of Brazil, along the coasts and riverbanks. The inner Amazon had not been explored yet. Spain grabbed almost the entirety of the west, as far south as the glaciers of Chile, and France held pockets in between. Uruguay was on the Atlantic end of a long colonial border between the two giants. Even though Uruguay and Spain had been allies in the fight to colonize all of Latin America, the two were still fiercely competitive.

Uruguay and Paraguay may sound similar but their geographic placement makes them quite different. While Uruguay was very heavily colonized with tons of missions and churches built. Montevideo like most South American cities has an old colonial center. However, Paraguay is in the category of countries that are inland and weren't colonized until later. This is why countries like Bolivia (which was one of the most inaccessible areas) weren't as heavily colonized.

The Portuguese began by building a capital city Colonia do Sacramento. The capital later moved to Montevideo in the early 18th century when Spain got involved. Colonia do Sacramento was designed as a gateway for Portugal to the Southern portion of the continent, but they were never able to colonize farther south because of Spanish influence.

RUSH FOR URUGUAY (1600s-1811)

The Spanish saw the threat of the Portuguese incursion and rushed to build their own settlement and capital city in 1726, calling it Montevideo. It was settled by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala who was a.) named Zabala and was b.) a pirate hunter, so he had a lot going on.

In 1750 the treaty of Madrid was signed by Ferdinand the Sixth and John the Fifth of Spain and Portugal respectively. John wasn't super into Ferdinand on account of his wife being Austrian and Ferdinand inciting a useless war against them based on false information.

Meanwhile the Uruguayan native and mestizo people are being fucked because this constant squabbling between two colonial powers was the cause of trade problems and skirmishes.

It took twenty years for the Spanish to fully gain control of the land by just flooding it with Spanish cows and cowboys and saying "Those are Spanish cows, not Portuguese cows, so get the fuck out". This was back when socio-political conflicts could be solved with cows.

Spain held on to their colonial possession pretty evenly until 1806, when Britain decided it wanted in. Britain hadn't been very present in Latin America except for in Guyana, Honduras & Belize and most people don't think of the British when they're talking about Latin America.

Britain however was present in the region, even conquering the Falkland Islands later. At this time however Spain had taken over the Falklands and this made Britain mad, so it attempted a takeover. This however, as you may have guessed, was a failure, as they don't speak English in Uruguay.

A History of Uzbekistan, Part 1

PROFILE

Region: Central Asia

Climate: Continental, Seasonal, Incredibly Cold at Times

Leader(s): Shavkat Mirziyoyev, since 2003 (at time of writing)

Population: 31.576.400

Capital: Tashkent

Largest City: Tashkent
Currency: Uzbekistan Som
Languages: Uzbek, Karakalpak, Russian

Independence: 1991, from the Soviet Union
Territories or Colonies: None

THE FACTS Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan (of course), is a country in Central Asia. It's one of the "stans" which besides Pakistan and Afghanistan are incredibly obscure countries most people haven't heard of, like Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ugrigstan and Kyrgyzstan. One of those is fake, but you probably don't know which one is.

Uzbekistan is culturally similar to Central Russia, as they were part of the USSR, and Uzbek people come from several different ethnic groups. The country is about as big as California, with about as many people as California and has a pretty low standard of living.

EARLY HISTORY (????-700s)

Uzbekistan has been an important country since the time of Rome. Before then the land was settled by nomads that moved east from Mesopotamia (also called the cradle of civilization), which I guess makes the "stans" the "awkward teenage years of civilization". Uzbekistan, like Yemen benefited greatly from its position in the world. Central Asia is so central it literally has the word Central in its name, just like the MIDDLE East. Central Asian civilizations like the city state of Samarqand, for examponnected different people from China, to Java to Kenya to Rome. This fostered the specializale, benefitted greatly from the Silk Road. The Silk Road is the network of trade routes in Asia, Europe, Africa and Indonesia. It wasn't necessarily a single road, but a sort of ancient interstate that ction of industry in different countries. India and Java sold Spices to China and Rome, while China sold silk to the Romans.

Central Asia, however, took a different approach. They basically entered into the hotel business. All across Central Asia, in Uzbekistan and surrounding countries stopping places popped up. They were sort of proto-truckstops. They had places to sleep, food, often mosques or churches and even an Ancient Cinnabon. If you were a trader crossing the vast steppe of Uzbekistan you'd fucking cry tears of joy if you saw a place to stop after walking for months across arid, desolate nothingness.

In the 400s BCE, the Persians saw the profit that could be gained in annexing all of this land, so the Persians walked north a bit and easily conquered the land. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan both spoke dialects of Persian and were culturally similar, since they had migrated mostly from what is now Iraq and Iran. Persia finally annexed Transoxiana (read Central Asia) to their increasingly large list of things they wanted.

Transoxiana's prime location was perfect for trade between Persia, China, Rome, Indonesia and Africa, and therefore was one of the most vital Persian colonies. It was constantly attacked because when your colony is in such a prime location, it's almost taunting other Empires that they can't rake in the wealth from it. 

Uzbekistan's early pre-Islamic history is marked with people coming up to it and being like "hey Uzbekistan, we're gonna, like, colonize you and take all of your trade money" and Uzbekistan was like "dammit, not again." Uzbekistan has been conquered by the likes of the Mongols, the Persians, Alexander the Great and the Arabs, in a relatively short period of time. 

Alexander the Great is noted to have one of the largest empires in the world and I will discuss him in greater detail in the Greece post. Coinage from his empire has been found as far east as Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and remember he traveled all that way from Northern Greece.

As BCE turned to CE, Uzbekistan was enjoying the fruits of its lucky location, as well as dealing with the negative things that come with that, like constant invasion. In 200 BCE to 100 BCE the market for Chinese Silk in Greece and Rome was growing, after all what are you gonna make Togas out of, so the Chinese needed a way of shipping their valuables: Silk and Porcelain to Europe. They used something called the Silk Road, which is a network of trade routes that zig-zag around Eurasia. If you include Indian Ocean Trade Routes, the Silk Road stretched from the two ends of the known world. From Rome in the west, to Manila in the east, to Zanzibar in the south, and at the center was the Persian Empire and its star province Transoxiana.

When you're the center of trade, you invariably become the center of arts and culture, ask London, Istanbul and New York, among many others, and Transoxiana was no different. It became a crossroads for religion, and culture. The culture of the region blended east with west, with the indigenous culture of the Central Asian steppe. You had Chinese influence (many residents were Buddhist), Persian influence (many residents were Zoroastrian, the monotheistic religion of the Persians) and Christianity from the Levant was present. 

MUSLIM CONQUEST TO THE KHANS(700s-1200)

This changed in the 700s CE though when the new Caliphates of Arabia, based on the new religion of Islam, which at this point was only about seventy years old. Think of it like how Scientology is perceived today. Throughout the Eighth Century the various Caliphates, especially the Umayyad Caliphate led by Qutaybah ibn Muslim (who is so Muslim, his name is Muslim) arrived in Transoxiana, after crossing the treacherous deserts of Iraq, Iran and the southern steppe of Central Asia. 

The Muslims main goal was to transform the religiously diverse population into Muslims. There were already some Muslims, primarily from Persia in the south which had converted years prior.

The Muslims, probably more importantly were after that Cash Money, and Transoxiana was still flush with Cash Money. The Silk Road was still the primary system of transporting goods across Eurasia all the way until the early 13th Century, when the Crusades turned this relatively stable and holy-war-free zone into a battlefield. Darn Crusades!

But in the 8th Century the Silk Road was still the bees knees, and the Muslims knew this and wanted to capitalize on it, but this period of success wasn't meant to last and in less than 150 years the Caliphates lost control of the region. Their religious footprint remained, but their political control didn't. In fact, Muslims are still the dominant religion today, with 90% of the population identifying as Muslim.

Until the 1200s when the Mongols happened, the region was controlled by a series of ethnically Turkish dynasties and sultanates and empires that traveled east to the region. 

This time was a time of relative stability. There was some fighting between the Turkish empires, as to who would rule the region but the steady influx of money from China and the East, as well as Europe and Africa brought immense wealth to the region.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16218972

http://www.uzbekistan.org/uzbekistan/history/

A History of Vanuatu

PROFILE

Region: Oceania

Climate: Wet, Tropical, Humid

Leader(s): Baldwin Lonsdale, since 2014 (at time of writing)

Population: 272.264

Capital: Port Vila

Largest City: Port Vila
Currency: Vanuatu Vatu
Languages: Bislama, French, English

Independence: 1980, from France and the United Kingdom
Territories or Colonies: None

HISTORY OF VANUATU

THE FACTS

Vanuatu is a small island country in the Melanesian region of Oceania. The Melanesian region, which also includes the sovereign states of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, as well as the French territory New Caledonia. Vanuatu is made up of many islands stretched across the South Pacific.

The residents of Vanuatu speak English, French and an English creole called Bislama. A creole is a language that uses much of the vocabulary and maybe a bit of the grammar of a different language (usually a colonial language like Dutch, English, French or Spanish). These languages come about when often disenfranchised groups that are unified under colonial rule have to communicate with one another. What makes creoles different from pidgins is that creoles continue to be spoken as a first language for many generations and may even become the official language as in the case of Vanuatu or more famously Haiti. There are no pidgin languages that are official languages.

BEFORE EUROPEAN CONTACT (2000 BCE-1606)
Usually the first time period I cover starts with ???? because it’s unclear when people settled in that exact region. Archaeologists know, but I don’t think that’s super important to the history. However, Vanuatu is a special case because the Melanesian region is the youngest region on Earth. People began in Africa and slowly moved to Eurasia, the second oldest continent. Then people crossed the land bridge into the new world, the third oldest continent, but it wasn’t until pretty late in the game (I mean like five or six thousand years ago that people moved into Australia through another land bridge that connected many of the Indonesian islands. Then a bit later the many islands of the pacific were settled by the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples.

As history is only history when the written word comes into things, this first section will get a bit archaeological.

Archaeologists have found pottery and other signs of human life like burial mounds, as well as stories spoken by the native people that have pointed to the islands of Vanuatu being populated in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE, around the time of Ancient Egypt, for a chronological marker.

Many of the traditions and customs of the islands have been observed by Europeans, who accurately guessed these things had been going on for quite some time. An interesting example is the land diving tradition on Pentecost Island in the country, which many believe is the precursor of Bungee jumping. The tradition is that young boys would prove their manliness by jumping off a hundred foot scaffolding with a rope made of reeds into a dirt slope. The rope would catch him and he wouldn’t die.

It’s basically super legit bungee jumping with a taut cord that could break if too dry and a rickety 100 foot climb. The Islanders actually sued the inventor of Bungee jumping for royalties, but lost.

I’m kind of frustrated that most of these posts start when the Europeans arrive and bring written history into the mix, but their usually isn’t enough information pre-arrival to say a lot. Obviously these countries had a rich history before colonization, but the definition of history, the study of the past, becomes a lot easier when people wrote things down.

EUROPEAN ARRIVAL (1606-1882)
In 1768 everything changed for the people of Vanuatu, as did for the people of most countries visited by Europeans. Oceania was in an interesting position as the last inhabited continent to be discovered by Europeans. Most European maps of the world just showed Australia as an amorphous blobby part of Antarctica that was escaping and the islands of the pacific were either not there or just guessed dots.

In 1606 Europeans finally explored Australia by sea, and eventually made their way out into the pacific. Explorers charting Australia saw some of Vanuatu but didn’t think to check it out. The islands were rediscovered in 1768, an impossibly late year might I add to still be discovering new land. For some perspective, in nine years the US would come into existence.

In 1768, frenchly-named Louis Antoine de Bougainville charted them from afar in his ship but didn’t land on their shores because of…, well I’m not sure, perhaps apathy.

In 1774, British Captain Cook arrived. You may know his name if you’re familiar with Hawaiian history (as he visited there many times and eventually died after he accidentally crashed into their harbor a couple too many times. I guess too many Cooks spoiled their broth, and by too many I mean “one”. The Hawaiians stabbed him to death many times, which is now honored by a monument near the town of Captain Cook, Hawaii. That’s kind of fucked up right. He obviously angered the Hawaiians enough to stab him, but he gets a town named after him on the island. Okay.

Well, five years before his death Captain Cook was fucking around the South Pacific when he spotted the islands Bougainville had spotted and named them the New Hebrides, after the (Old) Hebrides, an island group in Scotland.  

But still at this time European interest in the South Pacific wasn’t really all that high, except for Australia which proved to be a convenient, massive landmass to keep all of their prisoners.

In 1789 The Bounty stopped by en route to Tahiti, after mutinizing (I know that’s not a word, sadly) their captain, Captain Bligh (who is such a fucking badass. He was cast adrift in a life raft and sailed 3600 miles to Indonesia with little food and no sails. Damn.) The mutineers decided to screw their boring mission of shipping some goods from Point A to Point B and instead decided to romp around the South Pacific stopping by Vanuatu on their way to have sex with people in Tahiti, and live there forever, except for a group of them who founded the colony of the Pitcairn islands, a british dependency with 47 people now that is utterly fascinating and I encourage you to read about.

Europeans left the islands relatively alone for a while longer until in 1839 British missionaries (that’s where the name Pentecost Island comes from) arrived on Erromango Island, an island abundant with Sandalwood trees and voted “Best Smelling Island in 1839”. The missionaries were greeted in one of the two ways missionaries are usually greeted.

Greeting #1: Oh, hello white people. I hear you want to build a settlement on our land. As long as we share the resources and you are kind to our culture, you’re welcome to. You have a crazy religion that makes no sense, but hey, I’m open minded. I’ll give this a try.

Greeting #2: Get out. We don’t want you here.

They got the second one, but persisted and persisted until they forcefully introduced Presbyterianism to the islanders. The missionaries banned many of their fun sounding rituals including smoking, getting drunk, polygamy, performing ancestral ceremonies and gaining social currency by killing pigs. They also banned dancing because I guess Vanuatu was some sort of colonial Footloose.

One of the few things I can understand them banning was the practice of eating people, which wasn’t just a racist thing that the English pretended the natives did. They actually did that.

The English, always bastions of cultural tolerance, banned most of these things because they were weird, but to be fair certain English customs of the time were weird like wearing powdered wigs and dancing around Maypoles.

The missionaries slowly started realizing the profit to be had in an island paradise with sandalwood and mangos and other tropical commodities the west wanted.

The westerners began setting up cotton plantations, as well as other commodities when cotton’s price plummeted.

Now, Vanuatu was an interesting case in that there were two colonial powers. The British who had mostly come from Britain’s penal colony in Australia had began populating the island, but the French catholic missionaries had started to outnumber the Brits.

The islanders didn’t care and wanted everybody to leave, but that wouldn’t happen for another hundred years.

The fact that the British and French couldn’t decide who was in charge became increasingly problematic. British marriages weren’t recognized, while French marriages weren’t recognized. They had seperate supply ships and mail ships, and everything was really inconvenient. When the car was invented they drove on different sides of the road. The Brits drove on the left, while the French drove on the right, which ended in many a collision I would expect.

Before then, in 1889, the town of Franceville (now Port Vila) decided it had enough and declared independence from France and Britain. This came after the French and the British tried to establish the colony as a joint-venture, but that fell through. Franceville had enough and elected their own president. They also allowed anyone over 18 to vote (including women and natives) which was rare. Black people couldn’t vote in South Africa until 1994!

DUAL OWNERSHIP (1882-1960s)

In 1906, France and Britain decided they’d had enough too, and decided to change their colony into something called a condominium, which was a colony run by two colonial powers, that would share power in courts and legislative stuff. There was a lot of arguing about who should have more power France or Britain, but they finally figured out in 1922.

This system of government turned out to be a huge failure. The natives were shit outta luck, because they’re citizenship of France and Britain were revoked and they technically didn’t live anywhere. Laws passed by the French weren’t enforced by British cops and vice versa. Half the country was on the France, while the other half on the Pound. Everything was still a mess and the condominium just opened up another floodgate for the Europeans to squabble about power.

The French seemed to have the upper hand in the struggle for power, as they were working more and more of the land using workers from Vietnam, while the natives seemed to side more with the british because they didn’t like how the French were just bringing in foreigners to their land.

World War II came to the islands and some really bizarre stuff happened. The American army held the islands during the war and many interesting customs came of this. An island in Vanuatu created a religion based on the idea that a god masquerading as an American soldier. This is a prime example of what is called a Cargo Cult. Cargo Cults are basically when an isolated population takes some sort of western item (cargo) as some sign from god. An example of this would be the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a tribe of !Kung find a coke bottle dropped from a plane overhead. Cargo Cults however, are most prevalent in the south pacific. In Vanuatu, the island of Tanna is home to a Cargo Cult where Prince Philip is worshipped.

An example in fiction is the video game Far Cry 3, where the fictional South Pacific Rook Islands are overrun with pirates and the natives of the islands, the Rakyat, believe a warrior from “the northern kingdom” would come and defeat the evils of the island. The main character from Los Angeles comes to the island and lives out the prophecy.

By the 1950s, the British and French had stopped totally governing the island and were acting more as a majority owner of the land. They just wanted the money from the cash crops like Coconuts and Pineapples (see Lana’i Plantation in Hawai’i) and weren’t as interested in governing the islands.

In the 60s, the British wanted to leave the islands. They felt their colonial period was over and wanted to focus on other problems back home, but the French were like “no, why?” They had colonial holdings all over the pacific and they were worried that giving up the New Hebrides would make other islands want to have independence like French Polynesia and New Caledonia (which France still owns). The British eventually got their way. They backed the Vanua’aku Party who wanted independence.

INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT AND SUCCESS (1960s-PRESENT)
The Vanua’aku Party told the European landowners to git, and they obliged (the French begrudgingly). The Vanua’aku Party could now fully govern the group of islands. Independence wasn’t as smooth as I made it sound though.

Jimmy Stevens, Nagriamel Leader

The problem with island nations like Vanuatu is that governing them can be a chore. Take say, Germany. Germany isn’t too big, a bit smaller than California. If you want to go Dusseldorf in the west to Dresden in the north, that’s not too much of a chore. Even island nations like Barbados, things aren’t complicated because Barbados is limited to just the Island of Barbados, so getting around is pretty easy. Countries like Vanuatu have it rough though. Many of the islands are cut off from the central government at Port Vila, so independence movements are much easier.

This happened during the time of independence. The island of Tanna, the one from before who has worshippers of Prince Philip, as well as the largest island Espiritu Santo both tried to either become independent countries (which would be rough considering Tanna has only about 28,000 people, the population of some neighborhoods), or become colonies again.

Finally, in 1980 Vanuatu became a country, independent from France and England. This is where the story ends, but Vanuatu is still going strong. They’ve had their fair share of problems, as any former colony has, but increased tourism and infrastructure creation is helping the country become a western tourism destination.

VANUATU FACTS

-Pentecost Island is home to the practice of Land Diving, similar to bungee jumping.

-Tanna Island is home to a Cargo Cult that worships Prince Philip.

-Only the government and kastom owners (which is a pidgin word meaning “custom”. Basically these owners are religious officials) can own land. If you aren’t a kastom owner or the government you’re only allowed to lease land for “the productive lifespan of a coconut palm” which is about 75 years.

-Vanuatu’s olympic team could fit in a small sedan, at just five people.

https://books.google.com/books?id=wjuxcXTEJ_sC&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.portvilavanuatu.com/vanuatu-history.php

http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/vanuatu/history

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