Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,897
edits
Balkanize Me: Difference between revisions
→Real Life
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (→Comicbooks: -> Comic Books) |
|||
| (3 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope|wppage=Balkanization}}
{{quote|''"It is a general truth of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide."''|''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]''}}
In [[Alternate History]] and [[Speculative Fiction]] (especially the kind that takes place [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]), authors like to have fun by turning big countries into lots of smaller ones. May be justified by a war, a large-scale catastrophe, or simply a successful secessionist movement. Often happens with the United States of America, resulting in the [[Divided States of America]], but other large countries such as
Contrast [[Space-Filling Empire]], which is about filling the map with large countries so as not to bother with pesky borders. Also see [[United Europe]], [[Expanded States of America]], and [[Middle-Eastern Coalition]] as other examples of counterparts, where different countries link up or expand into huge regional or continental polities.
Line 53:
== Web Originals ==
* ''[[Decades of Darkness]]'' starts with the USA falling apart, and later France, Italy and Britain will meet the same fate {{spoiler|after being defeated by Germany in the Great War}}.
* Parodied and taken to the illogical extreme in the [[
* The [[Alternate History]] project [http://www.bethisad.com/ Ill Bethisad] has only Russia as the only real [[Space-Filling Empire]]. Both Brazil and China are broken up into smaller states and the USA are a looser union than in OTL. [http://ib.frath.net/w/images/0/08/WorldMap2001.png Here's a map.]
* The [[Chaos Timeline]] does this to North <s>America</s> Atlantis, and sometimes China, France and Russia. And even New Albion (New Zealand.)
Line 60:
== Real Life ==
* The term [[Trope Namer|stems from the fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire]] (specifically, in the Balkans) which was happening throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
** Ironically, the same would happen to Turkey's archrival, the Habsburg Empire. Nationalist pressures forced Austria to grant autonomy to Hungary, creating the Austro-Hungarian Empire and dividing the realm between Cisleithania (Austria) and Transleithania (Hungary). Then after [[World War
** After [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s death, ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia brought a more modern meaning to the term (as in through ethnic lines). Yugoslavia's balkanization was bloody, involved various foreign powers, and is still ongoing, the latest event being Kosovo's secession in 2008.
*** Coming soon to a Southeastern Europe near you: the independence of the four Serbian-majority counties in Kosovo as ''North'' Kosovo!
Line 86:
** Quebec wasn't the first to attempt secession. Nova Scotia seemed to move to that direction in the first provincial election right after Confederation even occurred. British Columbia and western Alberta also mulled secession at the same time as Quebec. Newfoundland, the last province brought into the fold, has had a recent Premier who made overtures of secession, but it's never been taken seriously as in Quebec. Even ''Provinces'' came close to this at different times, such as creating a Province out of northern Ontario and dividing the Northwest Territories (one successful attempt is Nunavut)(Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Nunavut were all carved out of the Northwest Territories).
*** YMMV on whether it has never been taken as seriously as in Quebec. The idea of joining Canada was put to a vote for Newfoundlanders and they joined the confederation because that side won by 1%.
** Saskatchewan and Alberta went through a phase of this in the early 1980s, with several secessionist parties, such as the Unionist party (Who wanted to join the US) and the Western Canada Concept (who wanted to make a new country from the western provinces and the territories.). The latter
* Several political parties in Belgium also want to split the country up between Dutch-speaking Flanders and Francophone Wallonia. Flemish nationalist party N-VA (the New Flemish Alliance) became the largest party in Parliament in the 2010 elections, leading to [[wikipedia:2010–2011 Belgian government formation|cabinet formation negotiations that have dragged on for]] almost two years. Because of this, Belgium has been without a functioning national government for a longer period of time than ''Iraq''.
** Some figures point out that, if Belgium were to split, it could split into up to 4 different countries—Flanders, Wallonia, formerly Prussian Eupen-Malmedy, and the multicultural city-state of Brussels, which also functions as the headquarters of the [[European Union]].
Line 96:
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Alternate History Tropes]]
[[Category:
| |||