04-16-2018, 10:22 AM | #11 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
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04-16-2018, 12:18 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
On the other hand territorial states (as opposed to nations) are a fairly new thing to this region of the world, and their boundaries are all set by colonial politics with little connection to the truth on the ground. It would not altogether surprise me there are still a few villages along these borders that *don't know* what state they are officially in, though it's getting somewhat unlikely. Half a century ago it wouldn't have been much of a stretch at all for a tribe of tens of thousands of people with no real interest in the outside world to rule themselves and mostly ignore the guys from two or three different surrounding governments who occasionally show up and try to convince them they should pay taxes or set up poling stations for the official election. Isolationists after all aren't making any real trouble, and it's not like the newly independent African states don't have places that are to absorb their attention.
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04-17-2018, 11:26 AM | #13 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
The "don't know what country they are in" approach sounds the most valid to me. They will have some minor geographic obstacles, enough outside contact to have enough guns to not get immediately run off, and they can live in blissful ignorance of their political standing until they are all suddenly millionaires.
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04-18-2018, 01:13 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
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04-21-2018, 03:10 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
Thing is, even on major waterways there's locations where even the shallowest draft boats can be damaged by what's under the water line. Mind, I don't know what Lake Vic is like in that area near the Kenya/Uganda border....
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05-14-2018, 06:22 PM | #16 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
Isn't insularity a necessary part of the slur "banana republic"? If they packed enough juice to play the field in a major way no one would call them that.
Admittedly there are complications as several otherwise small states have a key influence on some rare commodity. Also the word implies a stereotype of instability and political incompetence.
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05-14-2018, 06:26 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
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05-23-2018, 10:26 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
Quite the opposite. The proper use of the term is to describe states dependent on the export of a single commodity to provide the money to prop up a nearly sham government - the original example being the various governments of Honduras bought by the United Fruit Company in the 1890s and 1900s. Being completely export dependent and foreign dominated these are anything *but* insular.
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05-23-2018, 06:14 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
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However those types of governments are "insular" in the sense that no one has ambitions outside the local factional politics with the exception of relations to local foreigners. There is simply not enough resources available to make ambition practical. In a banana republic the quarrel between generalissimo X and the Y liberation front or the Z drug cartel are far more important then familiar old-fashioned Great Power politics. Foreigners are important insofar as they are in country or nearby or directly related to the economy. But one cannot picture them dreaming of eating a whole continent in a gulp and if they tried they will be whacked without anyone thinking about it.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 05-24-2018 at 02:26 PM. |
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05-24-2018, 11:13 AM | #20 | |
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
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Re: [World-Building] Hypothetical insular banana republic - why insular?
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