The history of the world1!
(TL;DR: Speedrun industrialization killing the empire in record time.)
Note that this file isn't necessarily told in chronological order, since so many things are happening at the same time. It's mostly chronological.
It all started from the Bauhinian Empire, a huge kingdom spanning across the entire continent. How did Bauhinia become an empire? Nah, I don't care.
The Industrial Revolution broke out in 19112 when people found out how to use electricity3.
Prodictivity surged. Capitalism was established as the economic model. The working class emerged. People began eyeing the Bauhinian emperor and talking about new forms of government.
The region that would become Moreland were the first to act. Having historically been some sort of place that was big on military4, they started a bourgeoisie revolution in 1930 and established a provisional republican government in 1935, complete with a provisional constitution.
How could the empire just stand and watch? In the same year, they sent troops to teach those fuckers a lesson. The young provisional government was under pressure from both the imperial army and its own citizens being unsatisfied because, well, they're being drafted and killed.
That's when the Guardian Moose came in. A group of partisans, some former members of the provisional government's military, some ordinary people forced to take up arms against Bauhinia's soldiers, all of them brave fighters. In 1936, they took over the provisional government by force in an event later referred to as the Guardian Moose Takeover and seen as the peak of the Morelandian independence movement.
Immediately after the Guardian Moose seized the government, they employed drastic reform measures, establishing a stratocracy. After two more years of gruelling war with Bauhinia, they finally drove them away and achieved complete independence of The Republic of Moreland.
The creation of a truly independent Moreland pissed off more people than just the emperor. Some Moose themselves -- though they never identified themselves as "Moose" -- deemed the new military government illegal and undemocratic. Seeking a future of freedom and opportunity, they moved to the southeast of Moreland (around the middle-east part of the continent) where the Guardian Moose hasn't yet controlled. They declared independence of The Republic of Atlasia in 1945.
Back home in Bauhinia, class conflict was getting high. Combined with resentment of the government because of the loss of Moreland, and revolutionary ideals from the success of Moreland, revolution broke out in 1939, throwing the country into a ten-year-long mess.
Amid the chaos, in 1943, an influential group of environmental preservationists announced independence of The Republic of Fanton over the territories of the Plateau and the Southern Basin, which got subsequently renamed to the Fantoni Plateau and the Fantoni Basin.
In 1944, the revolution established a republican government. Though they were still far away from being completely free of the imperial forces.
In 1945, our favorite monopoly Starcorp was created, though at that time they were just a no-names arms dealer. They sold weapons to the revolutionary government, to the imperial army, to the Guardian Moose, to the newly-independent Fantoni, and to the independence movements in soon-to-be Atlasia and Westavia. Starcorp would soon rise to be the most powerful company in Bauhinia.
In 1948, the struggles have finally come to an end. The republican government had a hold on the country, the imperial forces were in shambles, and Bauhinia's territory map largely resembled the one in modern-day.
Fuelled by the revolutionary fire sweeping through the entire continent, Sylvandia also had their own independence movements against the Bauhinian Empire. However, they were scattered, ununited, and weak. Easily crushed by imperial troops. Unable to make much of a difference.
Enter the newly-created Moreland to the rescue. In 1939, after driving away their own Bauhinians, Moreland began giving all sorts of material and moral support to Sylvandian resistance groups. The catch? "Unity" was not a word in their glossary. Each resistance group held to some extent the belief that they, fighting in their specific area, would become an independent state; and Moreland played right into it.
In 1945, after Westavia gained independence with their help, Moreland straight up launched an invasion of the area to drive away the Bauhinian troops.
Bauhinia, being neck-deep in revolution themselves at that time, had scarcely any attention to pay to Sylvandia. Also a lot of the imperial troops were called back to suppress the revolution anyways. One by one, Sylvandian states declared their independence.
In 1951, after the establishment of the fifth state, Mistle, Moreland urged the five states to form a federation. (Like now they're talking "unity.") The federation agreement marked the independence of The Sylvandian Federation. However, Moreland never took back their troops. To this day the country remains heavily under Morelandian control. Some may even call them a pseudo-colony.
Let's dial back the time a little. The sands of Westavia was also getting ready to break apart from the empire.
Westavia's independence movement started in 1935 with the Great Westavian Strike. In the face of the imperial army suppressing the independence movement in Moreland, workers refused to manufacture weapons and stuff, farmers refused to sell their crops to the army, and the railway workers refused to carry the soldiers to their destination. (They simply went through the Atlasian plains instead.)
The empire found enough scabs and slowly the strike died down. But the worker's movement hadn't stopped. Paired with support from Moreland, they announced their independence in 1945, shortly after Atlasia did.
Being right next to each other, one in the west and one in the east, and backed by two opposing forces, Bauhinia and Moreland the two new nations started fighting each other in 1947, just two years after they were formed. They fought over territorial disputes between themselves, but actually the war was more of a proxy war between Bauhinia and Moreland.
The war lasted for eight years, and ended when Bauhinia nuked Westavia. Surprise, motherfucker. We got nukes now. Atlasia and Westavia drew permanent borders and signed a peace treaty. Moreland worked on their own nukes and pretty quickly made it, thanks to their spies. It was 19555, and the cold war between the north and the south had started.
I am in no way a proper historian. I'm just here spending more time than I probably should have to attempt to build a coherent history to explain the current world order. Do yell at me (nicely) if there are things drastically wrong and illogical with these events. Also there are some phrases I may not know in English so there might be awkward phrasing (like "people who fight like wack-a-mole" instead of "guerrilla" for a recent example. I learned the word now).
Don't ask me why they use the same calendar as us. Convenience. Also the timeline has some weird explanation too. The comic started in 2023 and Sparky was 5 (almost 6), and everything else went from there. (Sparky's starting age got changed to 7 (almost 8) later.)
They skipped steam right. I guess they did. Also I wonder why there's "steampunk" and "cyberpunk" but not some sort of "electricpunk"? Why'd you leave my baby out?
Wow, the timeline started later than ours but the cold war kind of started at around the same time. What sort of a dramatic catch-up.