Gyre
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| Flag of Gyre | |
| Motto: Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam | |
| No Map Available | |
| Region | Western Atlantic |
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| Capital | |
| Official Language(s) | |
| Leader | Premier Astrid Beck |
| Population | 3.67 billion |
| Currency | |
| NS Sunset XML | |
The United Socialist Republic of Gyre is currently under reconstruction whilst I turn it into somewhere actually nice to live in. Please check back later.
Contents
History
The Colony: 1503 to 1806
Gyre was first sighted by Europeans in 1503 by the Portugese navigator Tristan da Cunha, who dismissed it as a minor island due to poor visibility and did not land. The discovery of Gyre was left to a German explorer in Portugese employ, Ernst von Gyr, who discovered the island by accident in 1626. Von Gyr, unlike da Cunha a century earlier, readily recognized the island as a large landmass, believing it to be a northward extension of the mythical Terra Australis. He explored much of the north and west coasts, and then - apparently believing his reward would be greater - he defected to the British with his charts.
Britain was preoccupied with Vasconia, but readily stationed a Royal Navy squadron in "Von Gyre's Lande" to ward off other colonial interests, and soon discovered that Gyre's Land was not connected to a great southern continent at all. Colonization waited until 1650, when Lord Elliot Tremaine - notorious freethinker, libertine, natural philosopher and minor nobility - petitioned Oliver Cromwell to establish a colony in the distant territory. The island was divided between Tremaine and fellow nobles Ashton, Ellory, Fletcher, Hargreave, Haughton, Hollinworth, Leigh, Morne, Seele, and Sykes, who pooled their finances to establish a colony at Cromwell on the north coast. Following the Restoration of the monarchy in England the settlement was renamed New Cambridge after the short-lived Henry Stuart, Earl of Cambridge.
For the next hundred years the colony prospered, although at a slower pace than the Vasconian colonies in what is now Laneria and Nabarro Abarca due to its distance from Britain. Increasing colonial interest following Vasconian secession to join Nabarro Abarca, however, led to de facto control of the colony being ceded to the British Gyre's Land Company, and the decline of the thirteen Lords to figurehead rulers.
The Republic: 1806 to 1920
Increasing dissatisfaction with British taxation, particularly among the wealthy landholding class, turned to revolution in 1806, when the colonists took the opportunity offered by Britain's war with France to declare independence and ally themselves with the Emperor of the French. The Constitution of the First Gyric Republic, based on classical models, was similar to that of Laneria (which had seceded from Nabarro Abarca in 1775) except that the vote was limited to landholders. This cemented the authority of the colonial magnates, particularly in the frontier which was technically owned by them and to whom the frontiersmen had to pay taxes.
Although wavering between support of France and England during the 19th century, Gyre began to industrialize a few decades after the European nations during the Industrial Revolution, making the Republic's magnates very wealthy in the short term. The Industrial Revolution, however, further concentrated wealth in the hands of the economic elite, at the same time that workers were entering the cities. This led to a large pool of disenfranchised, disempowered workers during the late 19th and early 20th century, which only increased following the First World War when Gyric soldiers returned from the Front to find no work available; and the Russian Revolution of 1917 provided the final impetus for proletarian uprisings in late 1919.
The Socialist Republic: 1920 to 1966
Politics
Geography
At 1,094,061 square kilometers in area, Gyre is a large nation (a little under twice the area of metropolitan France), most of which is composed of the large subcontinental island of Gyre in the South Atlantic, east of Ambara between 25 and 40 degrees south. It is warmed by the southern extension of the Southern Equatorial Current and possesses a cold but temperate climate, save in the far south where approximately one sixth of the nation is covered in taiga. The landscape ranges from littoral plains and deeply indented bays and river valleys in the west to mountains in the east and south. The south country is intersected by extensive fjords. Snow cover ranges from several months in the north to nearly half the year in the south and the mountainous regions.
Crops grown include wheat, barley, oats, rye, and potatoes, as well as commercial timber plantations, and sheep, llamas, cattle, and dairy cows are farmed.
Natural hazards include avalanches, blizzards, and occasional flooding. Environmental issues include air pollution from vehicles and industry and agricultural runoff.
Natural resources include iron, coal, copper, gold, uranium, fish, timber, and zinc.
