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{{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.
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==
* ''[[Titanium Rain]]'' has a neo-Imperial China and the Sino Union, made of China's peripheral territories minus Tibet.
* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', [[Divided States of America|America]], [[Red Scare|Russia]], China, and [[Land Down Under|Australia]] all consist of independent [[Mega City|Mega-Cities]] and massive radioactive deserts.
== Literature ==
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== 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.)
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== 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!
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** [[The Daily Show]] publication "America: The Book" suggests that "today, each resident [of former Yugoslavia] lives in the Independent Republic of Himself".
* Since [[Alexander the Great]] left no heir and no instructions for a regency (and his only son Alexander IV born after his death), his Macedonian Empire fractured after his death in 323 BCE. Once the dust cleared (after ''forty years''), it was divided among his generals: Macedon (Cassander / Alexander's native Greece), the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Ptolemy I Soter / modern-day Egypt), the Seleucid Empire (Seleucis I Nicator / modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel), and the Kingdom of Pergamon (Lysimachus / modern-day Bulgaria, eastern Greece and European Turkey).
* It's a major historical pattern that the fall of a [[Space-Filling Empire]] often results in its balkanization, with states declaring independence and people taking advantage of the fall for themselves. The Persian Empire, [[The Roman Empire]], the [[Holy Roman Empire]], the Byzantine Empire, the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, [[The British Empire]], the Austro-Hungarian
* China deserves special mention. This has happened so often between Chinese dynasties that it was considered the "Will of Heaven" for a kingdom with a corrupt dynasty to break down into warring states, only to be reunited some time later under the banner of one of them.
** Summed up in the opening line to [[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]: "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide."
** In modern times China remains divided between the People's Republic of China (mainland) and the Republic of China (Taiwan), while there are separatist movements within the mainland in both Tibet and Xinjiang, provinces which are Autonomous Regions only in name.
* In a somewhat logical conclusion of the events of [[Mikhail Gorbachev]]'s reign, USSR balkanized itself rather peacefully in 1991, thus creating [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]. Ever since, the USSR's breakaway states balkanized even more. Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia; Transnistria from Moldova; Crimea from Ukraine (although later re-conquered and given status as an Autonomous Republic), Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan, etc. As the 2008 South Ossetian war has shown, a large number of these separations have been violent.
** Ironically enough, most of these further balkanizations has been under the auspices of Russia in order to weaken the states that broke away from the USSR, but also with a plausible
** In 1993 Czechoslovakia followed USSR's example.
** Famously inverted by the two German states in 1990.
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** 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:
** Some figures point out that, if Belgium were to split, it could split into up to 4 different
* One recent example is [[wikipedia:South Sudan|South Sudan]], which broke off from the rest of Sudan to become its own internationally-recognized nation in 2011.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Alternate History Tropes]]
[[Category:
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