Georgia
Dominion of Georgia | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
| Location of Georgia | |
| Official languages | English |
| Recognised regional languages | Various Aboriginal Languages Irish Gaelic |
| Minority languages | Cantonese Hokkien Hakka Telugu Malayalam Bulgarian |
| Religion | Evangelical Anglicanism Buddhism Catholic Church Chinese Salvationist Christianity Methodism Hinduism Islam Judaism Others |
| Government | Federal Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy |
| Establishment | |
• Landing of Captain Zachary Hicks in Parmelia | 1775 |
• Formation of Parmelia as a colony | 1824 |
• Consolidation of the four eastern colonies into the colony of Georgia | 1918 |
• Home Rule Acts | 1942 |
Georgia, officially the Dominion of Georgia, is a country on the mainland Australian continent located within Oceania. It borders Australie to the East and New Batavia to the North. First colonized by the British in the early 19th century, the country is known for it's diversity, natural beauty and active membership in the British Commonwealth of Nations & Organization of Democratic Nations.
History
Prior to British colonization the land of Georgia, like Australia as a whole, was inhabited by hundreds of different nations of indigenous Aboriginal peoples with complex economic & cultural societies. These peoples have inhabited the area that is modern Georgia for nearly 65,000 years.
In 1775, during his first royal expedition Captain Zachary Hicks under orders from the British crown lands in Western Australia in modern day Parmelia near the Swan river and claims the region for Britain. Over the next several decades claims to the region go both uncontested and un-utilized by the British who infrequently visit and make no permanent settlements until 1824, when spurred by the establishment of a French colony in the east of the continent build Fort Hicks in current Port Williams along the Black-Swan river.
In the 1820s & 30s settlement of the new colony was lacking with most British emigrants seeking the more fertile and closer colonies of North & South America. In 1833 after the 1st Anglo Virginian war, Georgia was proposed as a site of a British Penal colony but eventually this was rejected in favor of building a colony in Guiana. During these rough two initial decades, colonial authority and administration was exercised mostly through the colonial military force meant to protect the region from French & native threats and overtime this authority was consolidated into a quasi autocratic regime know despairingly as 'The Gin Corps'. This social order was characterized by colonial military leaders and soldiers being distributed large parcels of land whose tenants owned a 'protection fee' to said landlord- this along with other factors of geography & distance severely hampered colonial immigration and the colony was forced to import large amounts of indentured laborers from India to meet agricultural & ranching demands. In 1838 the various British settlements & forts of western Australia were officially consolidated into the Crown Colony of Parmelia.
British authorities in London were dismayed by the affairs in Parmelia & jealous of the relative colonial success of French Australie in the east and as such in the 1840s sought to expand British influence eastward. Most of this push was motivated by colonial prestige and politics rather than economics as the colony was a net loss of funds at the time. In 1843 sailors from Ireland established the Diemensland free-port of Wimberly after frequenting the area for many decades in Whaling expeditions. Over the next few years the port became a haven of rowdy sailors and Irish political exiles until its eventual annexation by Britain in 1848. This annexation coincided with both a push by Britain to expand into the region & the formation of new British settlements along the Tongala river a few years prior. In 1849 settlers near the Tongala river found evidence of gold in the region which was confirmed by a geological expedition in 1850. This led to the 'Eastern Georgia Gold Rushes of 1850 - 1865' in which thousands of British & Chinese miners flooded into the Tongala river basin & coastal South Georgia in search of gold. Overtime prime mining lands were consolidated by Parmelian colonial authorities (the descendants of the Gin Corps) and the Tongala river basin was formed into a separate crown colony closely linked to Parmelia in 1859. Settlers along the southern coast & in Diemensland fearful of falling under Parmelian autocratic government or it's associates petitioned the British crown to become separate colonies which was granted in 1862 & 1863 respectively. In the 1870s Parmelia experienced its own gold rush which led to a wide variety of settlers & prospectors from Britain, Europe & East Asia to the colony. In 1875 British colonial forces were involved in putting down the first Australien independence war alongside French & British forces. 1891 indentured Indian ranch-hands & Chinese miners fleeing the oppressive colonial government & social order in Tongala successfully petitioned the British to create a new colony between Tongala & Parmelia- New Chester initially centered around the city of Canterbury & the Eyre Peninsula.
In the late 19th & early 20th centuries the colonies that will eventually become Georgia experienced a large immigration wave after the gold rushes of previous decades died down. This was promoted both by the colonial authorities seeking more labor & by Britain wanting to compete with French Australie & Dutch New Batavia (both of which claimed large swatches of the Australian outback in which Britain hoped to control). In the last years of the 1880s, Chinese migration to Parmelia exploded following the SIno-Corean war. By the turn of the 20th century, whites in the colonies were outnumbered 2:1 by Asian colonists due to a variety of factors and this was seen as an existential threat by the notorious conservative British prime minister Millard Nightgard & but also by his liberal-party predecessor John Pitt-Rivers. Nightgard in 1912 during the 'Beirut Affair' made a secret agreement with the newly ruling Orkhoist regime in the Ottoman empire to transport thousands of Christian Ottoman subjects to Georgia who were suffering under the Anti-Christian & nationalist 'Turkofication policies' of the regime. This affair came to light in 1914 but the spirit of the agreement was continued by PM Pitt-Rivers when he decreed any Christian Ottoman emigrant to receive haven in the colony of New Devon.
In 1918 in an effort to reform administration of it's colonies, PM Pitt-Rivers attempted to combine the British Australian holdings into a commonwealth similar to home-rule acts of Carolina & New England 4 years prior. These negotiations were held up repeatedly by Parmelia who rejected unification with the eastern colonies. Eventually New Devon, Tongala, New Chester & Diemensland were reformed into the Crown Colony of Georgia but each former colony (now province) retained a large degree of responsibility & the new colony as a whole only had limited home rule rights. In the Great War Georgia & Parmelia fought valiantly, supplying Australien rebels, pushing back the French advance (even after Diemensland & parts of New Devon were occupied) and supplying troops to the British invasion of France. In 1942 in the aftermath of the Great War, Georgia & Parmelia were unified into a federal dominion and granted independence but retaining strong ties to the commonwealth & Great Britain. Additionally Georgia at independence were signers of the Paramaribo Accords & along with Carolina were the first British settler colonies to abolish legal racial & ethnic discrimination.
