History of Edvardus

As part of its bicentennial celebrations, Empress Valeria has authorised this official history of the Holy Empire of Edvardus.

Independence (1911)

In 1911, the Italo-Turkish War began. Attacking an already weak empire, Italy easily forced the surrender of the Ottoman in late 1911 with the fall of Libya and the beginning of the Balkan Wars. To ensure the surrender of the Ottoman, the Italian army sent a corps into Iraq, located at an extremity of the Ottoman. One of several army officials deployed was Colonel Salvatore De Luce. The Italian government did not realize that the colonel had his own plans. In the months leading up to deployment, he used his charismatic persona to rally his fellow colonels to see his plan to defect from Italy to start his own nation.

Six of the other seven colonels soon became disillusioned with the Italian government. Rome ordered their withdrawal but De Luce and his fellow defectors disobeyed and invaded and conquered southern Iraq in less than two weeks. When questioned by their superiors, De Luce and his peers turned on the remaining loyal brigade. After word got back to Rome that there had been dissension in the ranks, Italy sent 70,000 reinforcement troops, which was double the amount of De Luce’s troops. De Luce’s peers promoted him to Lieutenant General to lead the renegade corps and to the chagrin of Rome, De Luce annihilated the Italian troops in the following two months.

Formation (1912-1918)

On January 1, 1912, the Holy Empire of Edvardus declared its independence and became a sovereign nation under a semi-presidential constitutional monarchy. De Luce became emperor and took the regnal name Paulo VII. His first task was to improve the lives the local people. This included starting a massive public works project to dam rivers in order to irrigate the barren land and establishing a curfew for teenagers during the first year of his reign. Once he proved to the locals that he was trustworthy, Emperor Paul VII attempted to convert them to Catholicism. This was easily done with his philosophy of, “If you want to live on this land, you must be Catholic”. All other religions and sects were outlawed.

With the onset of World War I, the British deployed troops to Edvardus in 1915 to ensure that it was not taken over by another nation. In return for letting the British occupy the holy empire, the troops were also to be used for Paul VII’s conversion plan. As a result of these conversions, many locals moved out of the area.

Cultural Reform (1918-1940)

Word soon got to the rest of the world that the Holy Empire of Edvardus is a new Catholic state endorsed by Popes Pius X and Benedict XV. Millions of people flooded the new nation and Edvardus soon became the most ethnically diverse nation in the Middle East.

Paul VII then proposed his famous Culture Cultivation Programme. It promotes a traditional lifestyle and social ethics while rejecting individualism and capitalistic values. It also aims to build up morale in a nation that was besieged with corruption. Some goals include courtesy to neighbors, following rules set by the government, keeping streets clean, conserving energy, and so forth. He used the notion of self-cultivation and correct living for this movement. While some have praised the movement for its role in raising the quality of life somewhat, others have criticized it for its lofty goals that were out of touch with the suffering of the general populace.

Some notable legislation passed in this period include: the Fair Wage Act, deregulating of domestic industries, subsidising maternal leave, providing extensive counseling programs for troubled students, pouring millions of dollaros into rehabilitation programmes annually, funding an enormous health awareness programme, and making Edvardus's educational system the envy of many and regarded as a pinnacle of educational achievement.

Recession of 1924-1928

As part of the CCP, Paul VII outlawed gambling. This caused the nation's leading sector, the retail industry, to crash. Up until this point, Edvardus was a developing nation and experienced rapid economic growth. With the sudden disappearance of the retail sector, the economic growth disappeared almost as quickly. It was only after deregulating the automobile manufacturing industry that the economy rebounded. In fact, the auto industry soon led the economy, dwarfing the traditional beef-based agricultural and retail sectors.

World War II (1940-1945)

For fear that Nazi forces may consider advancing into the Middle East, British troops were once again allowed to be stationed in Edvardus. While not officially on the Allied side, Edvardus was obviously an Ally and was invited to be a member of the United Nations. In 1945, with the withdrawal of British troops, Edvardian UN ambassador travelled to San Francisco to partake in the inaugural meeting to sign the charter.

Path of Progress (1945-1958)

Immediately following World War II, as other countries were rebuilding themselves, Edvardus embarked on a campaign to define what the government ought to spend its budget on. Parliament settled on prioritizing religious/spiritual programmes, social welfare programmes, and law & order.

Examples of legislation passed in this period include: making torture illegal, strict privacy laws, converting to GMOs, banning smoking in public areas, maintaining roads throughout the empire, regulating the arms industry, and registering all firearms.

Great Recession (1958-1993)

The last half of 1958 saw a decrease in the empire’s GDP. After the government began to regulate the arms industry in an attempt to show the international community its dedication to disarmament, the economy slipped into one of the worst depressions any nation has faced in history.

UN Withdrawal

In 1959, the United States successfully launched its first ICBM. Not wanting the world to embark on an arms race, Edvardian UN ambassador implored the nations on the Security Council to ban nuclear weapons. Not only was this plea laughed at, but the United States built its first submarine to carry ballistic missiles. Seeing that the UN clearly had a different agenda than Edvardus regarding nuclear weapons, Edvardus became the first founding member to withdraw its membership in October 1959.

Death of Paul VII

One morning in 1961, the empire’s newspaper shocked the nation by announcing the death of Emperor Paul VII. At the age of 87, the nation’s father had passed away. His body lay in state at the capital for a week, allowing nearly a quarter of a million people to pay their respects.

"Stay on the 'Path of Progress'"

Shortly after his father’s death, Emperor Julius IV called his people to “stay on the ‘Path of Progress’”. Despite obvious economic and foreign setbacks, his speech instilled hope in the people that the sun will come out tomorrow. This provided major justification for significant tax increases to fund other programmes in education, the environment, public transit, and social equity over the next 25 years.

In the emperor's mind, the "Path to Progress" had no room for direct democracy. He outlawed all pro-democracy protests and all other protests are to be strictly supervised. Some say that he showed a moment of concession when he allowed the people to vote for candidates pre-selected for government positions.

As the Cold War came to an end in the 1980s, many nations had already begun researching nuclear capabilities. However, Emperor Julius IV reaffirmed Edvardus's stance and banned all weapons research in the last years of his reign.

Expansion

In 1986, Emperor Julius IV noticed that the empire was becoming too densely populated. Thus, he sought to expand the area of the empire, but without a strong army to compete with the armies of the surrounding nations. With no international allies due to their support of deterrence, Edvardus had to resort to threatening the US with an oil embargo, similar to that from 1973, and shipping their oil to the USSR. President Reagen could not afford an oil embargo in an election year let alone having more oil shipped to the USSR. He conceded by sending troops to Edvardus. Emperor Julius IV commanded the troops, along with Edvardian militia to take over the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt. This expansion angered their Iranian and Saudi neighbours, but Edvardus simply threatened to leave OPEC, which it help found in 1949, and sell crude oil at prices lower than OPEC. As part of negotiations, Edvardus allowed Egypt to have 100 years of autonomy. Parliament said it would allow Muslims to worship freely, but that was not enforced. This resulted in millions of natives of the region to migrate to neighbouring Muslim nations.

Era of Good Times (1993-2029)

Emperor Pius XIII became emperor near the end of the Cold War upon the death of his father. During the first decade of his reign, Edvardus saw an enormous migration of people into the newly acquired territories. This promoted economic growth and miraculously, Edvardus came out of its decades-long depression.

Pius XIII reigned in a very similar fashion as his grandfather, partly because he is the first emperor of Edvardus to be born after it became independent. He greatly extended Edvardus's diplomatic arm to all nations, industrialised and industrialising countries. The number of embassies in Capitale Occidentale grew as did trade. These newfound friendships only fostered the economic growth of the nation. In fact, the economy grew to its then strongest point ever.

There was also a resurgance of support for the Cultivating Culture Programme and the Path to Progress at this time, both in the minds of Parliament and the people of Edvardus. Increased spending on social programmes, especially education, justified the income tax increase to 100% for all citizens of Edvardus.

As part of the CCP, Pius XIII not only renewed laws from the reign of Paul VII such as protecting children from domestic abuse but also the historically popular attention on increasing the quality of education, but also enacting laws that addressed the then-current issues. The major pieces of legislation involved instituting rehabilitation centres for inmates, ex-convicts, and drunk drivers. He also passed legislation that addressed public health such as extensive-safety testing for all new products and severely limiting genetic research.

However, Pius XIII is arguably most known for his vision of space exploration. In the last few years of his reign, he decided to join the rest of the most developed world and launched Edvardus's first space programme. Unfortunately, he died before any spacecrafts were launched into orbit.

Isolationism and the Space Programme (2029-2050)

Shortly after Emperor Marcellus III acceeded the throne, he adopted an isolationist approach to international politics. Up until this point, the government was very stringent on what outside information could be leaked to the population of Edvardus. The government had tried its best to keep most international thoughts away from the populace. However, Marcellus III's stance was even more extreme. He severed all trade and diplomatic relations with all nations, except the United American Republic. Marcellus III used this new foreign policy to continue the CCP and renewed legislation passed by his predecessors.

By the time Marcellus III died in 2048, Edvardus's space programme had already launched a human into space, nearly completed a space station, and sent humans into orbit around the Moon. In his personal life, however, his son Prince Sandro died at the age of 49, making him the only heir apparent to die before acceeding the throne. Therefore, Prince Sandro's son, Rinaldo, replaced Marcellus at the age of 21, making Rinaldo the youngest heir apparent to acceed the throne.

Project Caelus (2022-2040)

Project Caelus is the first of two parts of the space programme. With the completion of the Robert F.R. Bellarmine Space Centre on the Sinai Peninsula, the Imperial Space Sciences Agency launch four unmanned rockets between 2029 and 2032 to test the Hyperion rocket and two-passenger Caelus space vehicle. In 2033, Lt.Col. Václav Pantaleon Kirwitzer became the first Edvardian to travel into space aboard Caelus 5. Over the next two Caelus missions, carrying two and three passengers respectively, the astronauts learned to get acquainted to zero-gravity. Caelus 8 and 9 were unmanned launches of pieces of the Olympus Space Laboratory while Caelus 10, the final Caelus mission, launched three astronauts to live aboard Olympus for 5 days. This was also Kirwitzer's last space mission before retirement.

Caelus Astronauts

• Václav Pantaleon Kirwitzer (Caelus 5, 6, 7, 10)
• Nikolaus Krebs (Caelus 6, 7, 10)
• Augustin Cauchy (Caelus 7 & 10)

Project Olympus (2022-2062)

Project Olympus had one goal: to build a space laboratory in space to conduct scientific experiments in zero gravity. However, in 2048, the Olympus changed its full name officially to the Olympus Space Station by Emperor Innocent XIV to focus more on the lunar landing proposed by his father. Marcellus III wanted to land on the Moon just so Edvardus could say that it did, but the main goal of Olympus was still for scientific purposes. However, Innocent XIV wanted to use the Moon as future settlements and thus gutted funding for the future of Project Olympus. It was not obvious at first, because the space laboratory was completed, but out of its 22 years in orbit, it hosted humans for only about 3 years. People still debate as to who actually gutted Project Olympus: Marcellus III or Innocent XIV.

Project Diana: Phases 1 & 2 (2033-2054)

Project Diana was proposed by Marcellus III at the completion of the Caelus 5 mission. It sought to compete with other industrialised nations in sending humans to the Moon. Therefore, the Paul A. Foscarini Spaceport was completed in 2037 and that became the centre for lunar missions while the Bellarmine Space Centre was used for Caelus and Olympus missions. In 2054, Thomas Bradwardine became the first Edvardian to step onto the lunar surface on the Diana 7 mission.

Phase 3 (2054-2125)
Emperor Innocent XIV also extended Pius XIII'a vision of space travel in 2054 to colonise the Moon. This created 3 more Diana missions to build the colonies and also research into a space ferry. Within four years, research and construction was complete for the first space ferry. The prototype was tested for the next four years and the first operational space ferry, SF Radon, was launched in 2063. Edvardus launched a new space ferry every four months for the next eight years.

The space ferry would carry a maximum of 111 passengers from a UAR space elevator to the lunar surface. In 2074, there was a space ferry leaving for the Moon every 5 hours!

Diana Astronauts

• Pierre Duhem (Diana 4 & 5)
• Jacques de Billy (Diana 4 & 5)
• Jean-Charles de la Faille (Diana 4 & 6)
• Thomas Bradwardine (Diana 5, 7, 8)
• Roger Bacon (Diana 6, 7, 9)
• Jean Buridan (Diana 6, 7, 9)
• Ignazio Danti (Diana 8 & 10)
• Nicolas Oresme (Diana 8 & 10)
• Francesco di Bruno (Diana 9 & 10)

Schism (2050-2056)

Within the first two years of his reign, Emperor Innocent XIV (Rinaldo De Luce) showed that he was going to make some major changes. He legalised capital punishment and the government became increasingly militant as shown through the development of a nuclear programme. The Vatican admonished the emperor to tread carefully, but Innocent XIV did not heed the warning. The pope himself wrote to the emperor threatening excommunication if his actions did not cease, and in response to His Holiness, Innocent XIV changed his regnal name to Rinaldo I and severed diplomatic ties with the Vatican.

Military Expansion (2057-2067)

Immediately after this schism, Emperor Rinaldo I gave the Edvardian military a facelift. Up until now, Edvardus only had the Military Police (started in 2025) and the Coast Guard (started in 2030). However, Rinaldo severely downsized both of these to divert funding towards an Army, Navy (including a Marine Corps), and an Air Force.

Increased military spending also coincided with landing an Edvardian on the Moon as part of Project Diana. Originally, Pius XIII's vision of space travel did not include sending humans to the Moon, but some argue that Rinaldo extended his vision to justify increasing military spending. However, most believe that it was merely a nationalistic reason.

Economic Tiger (2067-2075)

In 2067, something unprecedented occurred: another political party emerged. This ended nearly a century of a single-party system (the UCCP was officially founded in 1968, but can be traced back to the beginning of the empire). The new Republican Party ran on the platform of a more capitalist approach to economics. At first, many were skeptical and in the 52nd Session of Parliament, the Republican Party managed to seal 38 seats in Parliament. This paved the way for strengthening the Edvardian economy further than it had been in nearly 70 years. In the 54th Session of Parliament, the Republican Party managed to grab 102 seats in Parliament.

The method was for the government to subsidise the automobile manufacturing industry and place tariffs on all auto imports. By limiting foreign competition, the Edvardian auto industry exploded in the domestic market and massively increased employment.

Population Decline (2075-2175)

In the middle of Rinaldo's reign, the Edvardian Census Bureau noticed a decline in the population for the first time in the empire's history. However, due to the soaring economy, little attention was paid to this anomoly. When Valeria replaced her father as monarch, she launched an investigation into the cause of the population decline and found that there has been a significant increase in infant mortality, significant problems with pollution starting in urban areas and spreading to the contamination of the water supply, and an increasing trend of poor diets among the people. When the decade-long study was presented to Parliament, Parliament decided to take immediate action. However, due to the lack of funding, very little was done to curtail the population decline.

Legislative Stagnation (2097-2135)

In 2086, a third party was founded and took the name Arab Baath Party. Their support grew significantly within a decade of its founding and as a result, set up Parliament for it's do-nothing image.

Civil War (2124-2134)

see: Civil War

When the Civil War broke out, the population took a stark downturn. In the decade between the start and end of the war, nearly 280 million Edvardians died, which was about 45% of the population. After the war was over, the project started by Valeria before the war was given to the individual provinces to manage because they were now under the temporary control of foreign nations.