Constructed Worlds Wiki
Register
Advertisement
This country is part of the Altverse universe.
Republic of Brazoria (en)
República de Brazoria (es)
Republik Brazorien (de)
République de Brazorie (fr)
Flag of Brazoria
Seal of Brazoria
Flag Seal
Motto: "One and Indivisible"
Location of Brazoria
Location of Brazoria
Capital Austin
Largest city Houston
Official languages English, Spanish, German, French
Ethnic groups (2010) 38% Anglo
29.4% Latino
26.6% Tejano
4.1% Afro
2.4% Cajun
1% Other
Demonym Brazorian
Government Unitary parliamentary democracy
• President
Charles Valdes
• Chancellor
Robert Whitmore (Dem. Soc.)
• Deputy Chancellor
Vacant
• President Justice
Elena Quiroga
Legislature Diet of Brazoria
Independence from Mexico
2 March 1836
2 February 1848
• Claims fulfilled
11 May 1861
Area
• Total
1,201,404 km2 (463,865 sq mi) (36th)
Population
• 2017 estimate
44,516,726 (33rd)
• 2010 census
43,100,394
• Density
37.05/km2 (96.0/sq mi) (174th)
GDP (PPP) 2017 estimate
• Total
$2.421 trillion (12th)
• Per capita
$54,386.50 (13th)
GDP (nominal) 2017 estimate
• Total
$1.914 trillion (10th)
• Per capita
$43,003 (19th)
Gini (2017) 32.2
medium
HDI (2017) 0.897
very high · 13th
Currency Dollar ($, B$) (BAZ)
Time zone BST (UTC-6)
• Summer (DST)
BDST (UTC-5)
Date format DD-MM-YYYY
Drives on the right
Calling code +1
ISO 3166 code BAZ
Internet TLD .bz

The Republic of Brazoria is a sovereign state located in central North America. Brazoria is composed of 23 provinces, and it is bordered to the north by Superior, to the east by the United Commonwealth, to the west by Sierra, to the south by Mexico, and to the southeast by the Gulf of Mexico. Brazoria has a total land area of about 1,201,404 square kilometres, making it the world's 36th largest country by land area, and with an estimated population of 44.216 million people as of 2018, Brazoria is the 33rd most populous nation in the world.

Brazoria is a unitary parliamentary democracy. The President serves as the ceremonial head of state, while supreme political power is vested in the Diet, the unicameral legislature of the nation. The Chancellor, the head of government, is elected through a vote of confidence in the Diet at the beginning of every four year term, with the leader of the party or coalition of parties with a majority typically winning the position. The sovereignty of the Diet is guaranteed by the Constitution, a document that transitioned the original government into its modern form in 1848.

The earliest inhabitants of Brazoria were various indigenous tribes scattered across the country, with many different cultures flourishing in the period immediately before European exploration. Spain was the first European nation to enter into and explore Texas, doing so as early as 1526 with the expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez along the Gulf Coast of the country. Despite strong initial claims by Spain, the French would attempt to challenge them with the establishment of Fort Saint Louis in 1685, and, although this attempt failed, it led to the formal declaration of Spanish claims over Texas in 1690. With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, the colonial government expedited the settlement process through the granting of land to empresarios, whose families were given special privileges in return for bringing many new settlers. The empresarios would see their successes increase with the creation of the Intendancy of Texas in 1787, which was followed by another period of sweltering immigration with the outbreak of the Mexican War of Independence in 1810. However, after Mexican authorities estbished control over all of New Spain, the administration attempted to crack down on Anglo settlement in Texas, causing a revolt which led to the Texan Revolution in 1835 and the subsequent establishment of the Republic of Texas the following year. While Texas was victorious in securing its initial independence, the Mexicans would continue to see the fledgling state as a province-in-rebellion until the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. That same year, with its national land claims recognised by its neighbours, the Constitution of Brazoria took effect and transitioned the nation into its current mode of governance.

Brazoria funded quick expansion into its vast territorial claims, an action which resulted in the New Mexico Crisis and the ensuing Pact of the Rockies with Sierra. Cooperation with Sierra expanded into a full alliance after the outbreak of the War of Contingency, a conflict which assured the continued domestic growth of Brazoria without foreign intervention and had large implications on the economic direction of the country through the government-sponsored rise of domestic industralisation. Progressivism swept the nation as a burdgeoning middle class became increasingly aware of monopolistic business practices and their effect on government, and the discovery of oil at Spindletop only further hightened the dramatic reirganisation of industry in the country. However, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl both halted this exponential growth, causing unprecedented economic and societal chaos, especially in more agriculturally-dependent regions. Tens of thousands emigrated into neighboring countries, and many more fled the countryside for the city, prompting the government to introduce stricter economic controls that would ultimately see the end of true lasseiz faire economics and the rise of the domineering Pact of the Left in the First Red Hurricane of 1932. Brazoria joined the Second World War in 1939 alongside the Allies, permanently solidifying the bond between itself and other Western nations as a global power. Brazoria co-founded NATO in 1949, signalling the nation's opposition to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Cultural and political movements throughout the later half of the 20th Century saw a general societal embrace of diversity in the country and a vast rise in levels of both education and standards of living. However, the Great Recession of 2008 put an end to constant economic growth and saw a revival of Leftist spirit in the country through the Second Red Hurricane of that same year.

The economy of Brazoria is considered to be a developed mixed market with a generally high standard of living and a moderate cost of living. The national petroleum company, Brazoco, is one of the world's largest exporters of petroleum-based products, and the vast majority of its profits are put into the Brazorian National Development Trust. Brazoria was one of the world's earliest petroleum centres, and it continues today to possess some of the most productive oil refineries in the world, which are located predominantly in the national economic capital of Houston. Transportation services and shipping are also integral to the economy, due to the country's central continental location; the Port of Houston is the second-busiest container port on the continent. Manufacturing remains a prominent part of the economy due to high rates of automation, with middle-sized general goods manufacturers producing a wide variety of consumer goods, mostly automobiles, appliances, consumer electronics, medical equipment, and chemical products. Financial services contribute to a large portion of the economy as well. Finally, agriculture has remained one of the most significant features of the Brazorian economy since the inception of the country, with Brazoria being North America's largest producer of beef, herbs, and tree nuts. Standards of education, sanitation, health, and general livability are high, while mortality and disease are generally low. Brazoria is considered a politically free country, and the human rights of its citizens are protected through the Brazorian Charter of Civil Rights.

Brazoria enjoys warm relations with most other western countries, and the nation has held a strong, lasting alliance with the neighbouring Kingdom of Sierra since the early 1860s. Other nations with which Brazoria holds close relationships with are Rainier, Britain, Colombia, and Panama. Brazoria was a founding member of the League of Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it is also a member of the Conference of American States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organization of American States.

Etymology

The word Brazoria comes from a combination of the word Brazos, a river of certain importance to the history of the country, and the Latin suffix -ia, meaning land or country. The official name Republic of Brazoria was adopted alongside the Constitution in 1848, when before the nation had been known as the Republic of Texas. This earlier name for the country, Texas, stems from a Caddo word meaning friendship that was translated as Tejas in Spanish. The name Texas is still sometimes used to refer to the country in a poetic manner, especially significant as a cultural image of Old Western frontiers and revolutionary spirit. The name Texas was not adopted by the government due to its association with foreign colonial rule, and the early national government hoped to increase the appeal of the country to non-Spanish immigrants.

Geography

Blanca Peak

Blanca Peak is the highest point of elevation in Brazoria.

The territorial shape of Brazoria is a result of the stipulations of the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States, in that the far northern edge of the country is defined by the 42nd parallel north. The Rio Grande is the other major defining point of the Kingdom's territory, and hence, the western boundary of the nation is defined as all lands south of 42nd parallel north to the headwaters of the Rio Grande, but with the eastern extent of this northern expansion being the Arkansas River. The Arkansas River then serves as the northern border until the 100th parallel west, which runs south from the Arkansas River to meet the Red River. The Red River also serves as the northern border, running east until meeting the point rising from the intersection of the 32nd parallel north and the Sabine River, the latter of which then serves as the eastern border until entering the Gulf of Mexico. The Rio Grande serves as the western border until also emptying into the Gulf of Mexico until it reaches the 25th parallel north.

Brazoria is an environmentally and geographically diverse nation that spans a great deal of central North America. There are five primary geographic regions which make up Brazoria; those being the eastern Piney Woods, the semi-arid Southern Flats, Pecos Valley, and Rio Grande Valley, the central Hill Country, the north-central mixed grass Great Prairie and shortgrass Staked Prairie alongside the more eastern Coastal Prairie, and the western New Mexican and New Canaan alpine regions. Each geographic region can be further subdivided into a total of ten separate ecological zones in the country.

The Brazorian climate varies specifically depending on location in terms of precipitation and humidity, though most of the country has similar monthly temperatures, with summers being very hot and winters being mostly mild in all non-alpine regions of the nation. The Piney Woods, Coastal Prairie, Southern Flats, and Rio Grande Valley all experience a high amount of humidity and precipitation all year round, with spring being especially prone to strong rains which often create flooding conditions. Furthermore, flooding like rains in the springtime are also common in the Hill Country and some more eastern parts of the Great Pairie. These eastern geographic regions also experience the risk of hurricanes, which occasionally make landfall in Brazoria after crossing the warm Gulf of Mexico. The Great Prairie and Hill Country otherwise experience a moderate amount of precipitation for a continental climate throughout the year, and humidity is relatively low. The Stake Prairie and Pecos Valley regions of the country in the west receive a much lower amount of year-round precipitation than eastern regions, resulting in their relatively arid climates which are prone not to flooding but rather to tornadoes, whose presence in the country also overlap in the flood-prone regions of the Great Prairie and Hill Country. The alpine New Mexican and New Canaan regions have much more mild year-round temperatures than other parts of the country, and snowfall is common in the alpine winter.

History

Comancheria

The land of Comancheria, where the Comanche maintained a hegemony of power.

Early period

The lands now making up Brazoria were originally inhabited by various bands of Native American peoples who arrived over the Bering Land Bridge approximately 20000 years ago. While the vast majority of the native peoples in the pre-Columbian period were related to the Bering-originated Clovis and Folsom cultures, the Pueblo cultures in the far west of the country are derived from the southern Uto-Aztecan peoples. The most eminent tribe in the region shortly before the arrival of Europeans was the Comanche, who spread out across a vast part of the plains making up the modern-day northern part of Brazoria. The Comanche held hegemonic power over the other peoples of the region in an area known as Comancheria by the time the Spanish arrived in 1526.

Early colonial period

The first Europeans to explore the lands now composing Brazoria were Spanish conquistadors, the first of such being under an expedition originally led by Pánfilo de Narváez in 1526. Narváez did survive the journey, but one of the men of the expedition was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who became responsible for the first identifications of the tribes and landscape of the region which became known as Texas. This original expedition was followed by that of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who searched the western and central parts of Texas in order to find the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in 1540. Although these explorers laid claimed to all the of lands of the region for Spain, the area was largely ignored by early Spanish colonial authorities and settlers.

Coronado Sets Out North

Francisco Coronado in search of the Seven Cities of Gold.

The first challenge to Spanish control over the region transpired in 1684, when a group of French settlers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle settled at Fort Saint Louis near Matagorda Bay, despite originally intending to settle at the mouth of the Mississippi River. While the fort was destroyed by disease and native attacks as soon as 1689, the Spanish would see the settlement as the sign of encroaching French interests into what they had claimed as Spanish territory, and began to fund expeditions and missionary settlements throughout the region, also returning to the territory of the Pueblo indians from which they had been ousted. Alonso de León founded the first Spanish mission in the more eastern part of the Texas region, near present day San Antonio in 1690. The mission was at first unsuccessful, with the priests leaving after a year, and after twenty years of Spanish disinterest in the area, Spain would only sponsor further eastward settlement when the missionary Francisco Hidalgo threatened to ask for French help in building new settlements in 1711. The second Spanish settlement composed of mostly civilians was San Antonio, serving as a way station for new immigrants heading towards different parts of Texas.

The War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1718 saw brief tensions between the French and the Spanish in eastern Texas, but overall, no blood would be shed in Texan boundaries. The Spanish fought with the Lipan Apache in 1746 due to Spanish ties with the Hasinai, but later, in 1749, negotiated a peace with the Apache that angered the larger Comanche tribal confederacy. Although preoccupied with the Comanche in the north, the end of the Seven Years' War saw the leave of the French from the eastern reaches of Texas in 1763. The Spanish government ordered a relocation of many settlers to San Antonio in order to consolidate Spanish civilians and free the troops guarding them for dedication towards conflicts in the north, but many ignored Spanish commands and remained in the east, and instead, founded the town of Nacogdoches around an older mission in the area. The raids from the north came to an end when, in 1785, the Comanche agreed to a peace treaty, and soon after, a lasting alliance was forged between the Comanche and the Spanish colonial authorities.

Intendancy period

The Spanish created the Intendancy of Texas in 1787, after San Antonio and Nacogdoches both grew to sizes which could sustain a local bureaucracy, and the increasing frequency of native raids further cemented the need for the establishment of a local government capable of fielding a small militia in both towns. Officials within the new political unit, under the direction of Intendant-General Juan Carlos de Lara, began to sponsor a policy of more intense settlement by inviting nearby English-speaking settlers from further east into the territory instead of attempting to encourage Spanish settlers to migrate to the far edges of the Empire. By 1790, native raids on Spanish settlements came to an end with Comanche assistance, and in 1793, the mission at San Antonio was secularized and became a fort. Both developments further encouraged white, English-speaking protestants to migrate to Texas, as at the time they only arrived in small numbers; rarely at a rate of more than five families every month. Immigration to the territory subsequently reached its highest level ever, and the Spanish colonial administration continued to overlook the domestic governance of the intendancy despite its high growth rate.

In 1799, Spain returned Louisiana to France, but neither properly defined the border between Louisiana and Texas, and as a result the Louisiana Purchase would lead to a border dispute between the United States and Spain. The dispute continued until 1819, when the Adams–Onís Treaty was agreed upon by the two countries, which defined the Sabine River as the Spanish-American border. While Spain retained de jure control of New Spain following the 1808 transfer of power to Joseph Bonaparte, their colonial empire as a whole began to fall into disorder. The lack of administrative oversight in New Spain during the Peninsular War only encouraged the intendant government of Texas to become even bolder in its attempts to bring foreign settlers to the territory. If the Spanish colonial authority were to assume power once more, the entirety of the new, English-speaking population of Texas would have been expelled, but almost all regional power was vested at the time in the local administration of the intendancy, which only encourged further settlement by these English-speakers.

The small population of the territory was completely isolated from the Mexican War for Independence, and there exist no real support for either side on the conflict among the local populace and in the local government. The territory would continue to be overlooked by the changing authorities of the times, as the Spanish were slowly losing control of New Spain to Mexican rebels, and the strategic value of Texas at the time was low. There would be no serious attempt to establish any real control over the intendancy until the Mexican victory in 1821, when the Mexican government merged the intendant government with that of a neighboring territory, a move that was intended to curb Texan influence in government, and was subsequently met with extreme resistance from the locals.

Revolutionary period

After the independence of Mexico, Texas was made a part of the province of Coahuila y Tejas in 1824, and although the region could opt to become its own state when the Mexican central government deemed such an action feasible, locals within Texas were skeptical at best at the possibility of this actually coming to pass. The same year, the new government implemented the General Colonization Law, allowing for foreigners to settle in Mexico without hindrance in order to bolster immigration and population, especially in the more sparsely populated areas of the nation as to bolster self defense from constant Comanche raids, which had flared in reaction to the loss of Spanish authority in the region.

Stephen F Austin

Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Brazoria.

The Mexican government aimed to continue heavy colonization by attracting settlers from the United States. While there was still a general feeling of resentment towards the Mexican government among locals, the provincial government used the opportunity of support from the central government to begin granting huge parcels of land to prospective new settlers. The first such empresarial grant was given to Moses Austin, whose son, Stephen Austin, commonly considered to be the Father of Brazoria, followed through with his father's plans and brought three thousand families to settle in Texas along the Brazos River. Twenty-three other empresarios would bring tens of thousands of settlers to the territory. The vast numbers of immigrants surprised the Mexicans, who did not expect such a multitude to flock into Texas. Wanting to avoid the complete conversion of northern Mexico into English-speaking regions, Anastasio Bustamante, then President of Mexico, outlawed any further immigration from the United States in 1830, and furthermore, he implemented stricter tax and custom laws, whose enforcement was made possible by the construction of many new presidios in the territory. These measures, which many immigrants considered reactionary, led to widespread civil unrest in Texas, with one notable revolt, the Anahuac Disturbances, becoming the prelude to outright rebellion against Mexican rule in 1832. Mexican troops would flee Texas after the Nacogdoches Revolt that same year, and at the Convention of 1832, many Texans, both older Spanish-speakers and newer English-speakers alike, demanded that Mexico grant Texas provincial autonomy. Stephen Austin was sent to Mexico City to negotiate with the Mexicans in 1833, but he was jailed on arrival and held on suspicion of treason. When Antonio López de Santa Anna began reforms aimed at centralizing the Mexican state and abolishing regional autonomy, local authorities in Texas ended attempts at negotiations and called for an armed revolt against Mexican tyranny, signaling the beginning of the Brazos Revolution in 1835.

The first full-scale, armed action against Mexican authorities took place at the Battle of Gonzales, which is considered the first engagement of the actual revolution. On March 2nd, 1836, representatives at Washington-on-the-Brazos declared the Brazos Compact of 1836, which established the Republic of Texas with David G. Burnet as its first Chancellor. The compact to establish a new nation was given justification by the rebels in that the Mexican government had failed in its promise to preserve their security from native raids which the colonists had enjoyed in Pre-Revolutionary times, and that the Mexican government had violated the federal pact preserving the rights of the individual states of Mexico which had existed during the time of their initial arrival Texas. After the decree, many colonists mistakenly believed the war was over and left the Army of the Brazos to return to their homes. The soldiers left with the local authorities were mostly filibusters from the United States, and because of this, the Mexican congress clarified that any foreign-born peoples fighting against the federal government was to be executed, declaring it would not take prisoners of war.

Surrender of Santa Anna at San Jacinto

The surrender of Santa Anna after defeat at San Jacinto.

President Antonio López de Santa Anna personally led 6,000 troops north to quell the revolutionaries, leading the bulk to besiege the Alamo Mission in San Antonio. General Jose de Urrea led a contingent of soldiers up the coastline under orders from Santa Anna, a move which culminated in the Goliad Massacre, where 300 revolutionaries were executed. After a thirteen-day siege, Santa Ana was victorious in overwhelming and annihilating the near 200 defenders of the Alamo, all of whom were either killed in the fighting or executed afterwards. News of Mexican brutality and defeats for the rebels influenced the Runaway Scrape, in which many settlers fled to the east, with most rejoining the Brazos Army and some returning to the United States. After several weeks of maneuvering through the countryside, the revolutionaries were able to catch the Mexican Army off guard in the Battle of San Jacinto, capturing Santa Ana and forcing him to sign the Treaties of Puerto Velasco, which effectively ended the war. The Mexican government, however, would continue to refuse to recognize the independence of Texas, never formally ratifying the treaties in its own legislature.

Old Republic period

The newly founded Republic was first based out of Washington-on-the-Brazos, but the capital was later moved to Houston in 1837 and then finally to Austin in 1839, where it remains today. The first elected Chancellor of the National Council was Sam Houston, who at first pursued a foreign policy which sought to build a strong relationship, geared towards eventual annexation, with the neighbouring United States. Although Houston's efforts were largely unsuccessful cementing an outright deal of annexation, he began a lasting policy of openness towards Anglo-American neighbours. In 1838, with the election of the nationalist Mirabeau Lamar, the political effort seeking eventual annexation by the United States was ended, and instead, the primary foreign policy goal of Lamar became the realisation of Texan territorial claims against Mexico. Lamar also authorised the beginning of nationally-operated universal education, formalised a standing army, and signed a treaty with the United Kingdom which vowed to outlaw slavery by 1840 in exchange for their economic and political support. Lamar organised the Santa Fe Expedition in 1841, the success of which saw the rise of Texan power in New Mexico, much to the detestation of the Mexican government.

Mirabeau B Lamar

Chancellor Mirabeau Lamar, prominent nationalist.

In 1841, popular nationalist Garrett Langley was elected Chancellor, and unlike Houston and Lamar, Langley viewed the United States as a potentially useful ally for its powerful army, near location, and strong cultural similarities with Brazos settlers. Hence, Langley arranged a diplomatic campaign which culminated with the Treaty of Nacogdoches in 1845, in which the United States vowed to come to the defense of Texas if its territorial sovereignty was threatened, and in exchange, merchants and colonists from the United States would be given very favourable tariff breaks and land grants respectively. Though the American federal government ideally wished to annex Texas, the domestic implications of expanding slavery and the United Kingdom's support of Texas prevented an outright occupation of the country. This arrangement infuriated Mexico, as the territory of Texas as recognised by the United States thereafter included the disputed lands to the north of the Rio Grande. When a contingent of American-Texan troops moved into a defensive position south of the Nueces River in 1846, the Mexicans responded by sending their own defense force, and the two eventually met in what became known as the Thornton Affair, causing the outbreak of the Mexican-American War.

Texas launched its own New Mexico Campaign with professional soldiers and American volunteers in the summer of 1846, which won a swift series of victory and eventually opened western routes into the rebelling California Republic by that same November. The Republic thereafter became a staging point for an American invasion of Mexico, and two years later, after intense and bloody fighting in the Mexican homeland, Mexico surrendered at the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The treaty caused the formal recognition of Texan sovereignty by the Mexicans, the establishment of American military installations in Mexico, and the allowance of the independence of neighbouring California, which was to later become Sierra. Following the surrender of Mexico, and the realisation of its formal, internationally-guaranteed territorial sovereignty, a series of constitutional conventions in Austin were held in order to establish a more democratic and easily expandable form of government, which resulted in proclamation of the Constitution; a document that established the modern system of administration through the Chancellor and Diet, and which officially renamed the Republic of Texas as the contemporary Republic of Brazoria.

Gilded period

In the time after the end of the Mexican-American War, Brazoria's economy grew rapidly as immigrants from Central Europe poured into the countryside, most of whom were German socialists and anarchists escaping the after effects of the German Revolution of 1848. Through organizations such as the Adelsverein, hundreds of thousands of immigrants came to Brazoria, settling across the plains in the central, northern, and western reaches of the Republic. Although many held radical political ideologies, they were welcomed by officials due to their high levels of education and their intention to settle in unexplored regions. Germans would continue to be the largest immigrant group to Brazoria until the very end of the 19th century. British, French, Czech and other European ethnicities also made up considerable portions of the new immigrants to the country, many of whom came for the very same reasons as the Germans. The ability to become a citizen of the Republic was made easy for all new immigrants to the country, and immigration processing centres in Galveston and Corpus Christi were expanded multiple times throughout the 19th century to handle the constantly increasing flow of people entering the country.

Large swaths of land were settled in mere decades in the central plains, and towns continued to be founded further and further west. As immigrants settled in the New Mexico territory, ambiguity between Brazoria and Sierra over what defined the border between the two countries realised into small skirmishes along the Rio Grande, as Brazorian settlers attempting to cross the river were often intercepted by Sierran military police and sent back to Brazorian lands. The Massacre of San Jaun Crossing took place in 1861, which triggered the New Mexico Crisis between the two young nations. Large scale hostilities were avoided after diplomats between the two parties agreed to the Treaty of Santa Fe, which set the Rio Grande as the official border between the two nations. Another result of the increased settlement of the western reaches was an increasing amount of violent confrontations between local indigenous bands and newly arriving immigrant populations, a prolonged period of tension known as the Long Little War, beginning in 1853 with the Battle of Canadian Creek and ending in 1904 with the Hogg-Parker Agreement.

The American Civil War benefited Brazoria financially as it became a valuable middle ground for trade between Confederate States of America and the outside world, due to a heavy Union blockade of the Confederacy in place for a large part of the war. Although the Confederate States were militarily defeated, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and nearly all other high ranking officials of the Union's presidential administration by Confederate agents resulted in the withdrawal of the Union army from the South and resulted in the fracturing of the United States into several smaller nations after the foundation of the Brazorian-Sierran alliance in the War of Contingency in 1865. With the demise of the United States, the continued influx of new immigrants, and the economic phenomenon of the Second Industrial Revolution, Brazoria quickly became one of the leading independent nations in North America.

Relaxed urban planning restrictions and low taxes, alongside a favourable central location on the continent, Brazoria became the literal centre of the many railroads which connected the east and west coasts. The railroads would allow for the better utilisation of the Republic's natural agricultural bounty, further amplifying the regional economic importance of the nation. By 1885, a shift from agriculture to industry became very pronounced, as shipping, shipbuilding, and other manufacturing became core sectors of the economy. This mass industralisation also brought along consequential uncontrolled monopolistic practices, and consequently, politics became entrenched in the hands of a small number of business elites. Many working class labourers in the country began banding into trade unions, which were initially repressed by the government, but after the Shipwright's Riot of 1889, the government was forced to end its outright opposition to any trade union, beginning the first stages of transition away from outright lasseiz faire economic policies. The growing leftist spirit, combined with widespread corruption in the public body, instigated the growing middle class to take the first leaps into the emerging political sensation of progressivism.

Later Gilded period

James Hogg

Chancellor James Hogg, major progressive politician.

The rise of political discourse among working and middle class citizens culminated with the foundation of the Progressive Party in 1890. A large amount of pressure was put on the government through mass demonstrations in many cities throughout the country, some of which became affairs that would last for weeks at a time, most prominently the Big Summer Camp-out, which lasted for the entirety of the month of August in 1891. Bowing to massive social pressure, the government of Lawrence Ross passed the Great Reform Act of 1891, which extended universal suffrage to all citizens, limited political donations, and established the Commission for Oversight, the first national ombudsman agency. The sweeping reforms allowed for the Progressive Party to take power in the 1892 elections, lead by outspoken activist James Hogg. Only 14 seats in the Diet were not in the control of the Progressive; these largely conservative Members of the Diet formed the National Party and became their primary opposition.

James Hogg aggressively reformed most functionary offices and ministries of the government, and under his leadership, corruption was virtually eliminated. Many disgraced officials were given harsh jail sentences and heavy fines in a fulfillment of the Progressives' primary promise of returning the government back to the working people of the country. Another key delivery of the Hogg administration was the creation of the Office for Fair Commerce and the breakdown of the rail, coal, and shipping monopolies which had developed during earlier governments. While at first there was a minor period of economic stagnation, the Spindletop Gusher of 1901 turned this trend around, and the oil boom that followed catapulted Brazoria into becoming the world's largest oil producer at the time, surpassing even the enormous Russian Empire. In 1906, James Hogg died in office, and his then-deputy, Charles Culberson, succeeded him as leader of the Progressive Party.

The prosperity brought by the oil rush was great, but the industry soon fell prey to consolidation in a collection of three major companies; the Humble Oil Company, the Gulf Standard Oil Company, and the Valpetrol Company. These companies would often buy out any well which had been struck by an independent wildcatter, often times at values which appeared high to the purchasers, but which in reality were extremely under-value. This practice, alongside general leftist discontentment with the moderate steps taken by the Progressives, was key in motivating many socialists to demonstrate publicly and fervently for the nationalisation of large industries around the country. In reaction, the Progressive government began to distance itself from its more left-leaning policy proposals and actively campaign on a platform which disavowed any socialists in its party. In reaction to the Brazorian entrance into the First World War in 1914, the various unions which had become more politically active organised formally into the Brazorian Association of Combined Labour Unions, the original predecessor to the modern Democratic Socialist Party.

Interwar period

Under William Hobby, the entrance into the First World War was swift, as that year it had been revealed by Brazorian agents in Mexico that the German Empire was courting Mexico's support under the premise of a reclamation of its lost territories across North America. These revelations of conspiracy motivated many Progressives to call for the support of the Entente, and many German-speaking Brazorians and supporters of the National Party further instigated government action in support of its staunch ally, the United Kingdom. Consequently, many Brazorian soldiers were sent to fight in Western Europe, a traumatic experience for many which over time shifted the national mood of support for the Entente to a general disapproval for the war and its original and unclear motivations. While domestic industry began to flourish after the end of the war, as a devastated Europe began importing large quantities of Brazorian goods, returning soldiers, the working class, and some more left-leaning members of the Progressives questioned the motives of the country's entrance into the war, leading to the replacement of Hobby with one of the first elected female leaders at the time, Miriam Ferguson.

Dust Bowl dust storm, 1935

The Dust Bowl devastated Brazoria's agricultural output and caused mass migrations from the rural northern provinces to urban areas and foreign countries.

The mass consumerism and high volume of exports which Brazoria experienced in the years following the end of the First World War only compounded the original strength of the economy which had been bolstered by the discovery of oil two decades earlier. Ferguson was wildly popular, and her political prowess, combined with a strong budget surplus, allowed for her to make significant improvements in the quality of state education, national pensions, and diminishing the percentage of people living in urban poverty. The decade was extremely prosperous for both the middle and upper classes of the country, and many people began to buy in to the stock market in a means to solidfy their good fortune. The rapid rise of the popularity of this practice caused an eventual price bubble due to overspeculation in many areas of the economy, and when the bubble collapsed in 1929 on Black Tuesday, the entire banking system collapsed as well due to a lack of any sufficient capital to cover the cost of the defaulting private loans. The Progressives began to introduce measures of regulation in the financial sector of the economy, but their inability to truly cope with the development of the Great Depression cost them dearly in the First Red Hurricane of the 1932 elections, in which the newly-rebranded All-Union Syndicalist Party won a slim majority in the Diet. Thereafter, Wilbert Davidson became the first and only leader of the AUSP to serve as Chancellor.

Davidson immediately seized control of the major petroleum, shipbuilding, and rail companies in Brazoria and nationalised them as Brazorian National Petroleum, Brazorian National Shipyards, and Brazorian National Rail respectively. The assets of many upper level managers in these companies were also seized and used to establish the Brazorian National Development Trust, which immediately began paying out small pittances for people who had lost their money as a result of the bank failures and not due to private loans for what was essentially gambling on the stock market. These measures were not sufficient to curb the massive rise in unemployment and homelessness, and as a result the Civil Labour Programme was established in 1933 in an attempt to provide immediately relief to those most direly affected. As Brazoria continued to suffer from the dire economic situation, the drought of 1934 brought about the beginning of what became known as the Dust Bowl, a massive desertification crisis of the once fertile Great Plains due to the overworking of the soil, causing rampant dust storms for the rest of the decade. A divide in the AUSP over what direction the government should take crippled the government, costing them heavily in the 1936 elections, when the Progressives, led by Allan Linz secured an overwhelming victory due to successful campaigning across the country.

The new Progressive government opted to maintain state control over the three AUSP-nationalised industries, which many viewed as becoming eventually profitable once the immediate crisis had been dealt with. Linz massively expanded the Civil Labour Programme to include new infrastructure, public housing, and park building projects across the country, and many manufacturing complexes which had been closed were reopened through extensive government subsidisation. The CLP was a massive success in its construction of new railways, highways and parks across the country, and most notably, electric power was supplied for the first time to the majority of rural communities in the country. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the lend-lease deals which were made with the Allied powers began to give material purpose for the restored manufacturing output of the country. The military-industrial complex was only further expanded upon the entrance of Brazoria into the war in 1941. Brazoria retained the newly refurbished economy after the conclusion of the war, and its manufacturing capabilities were soon turned to rebuilding a devastated Europe for a second time.

Modern period

Carl Schmidt and lunar rover, 1970

Astronaut Carl Schmidt and the lunar rover on the successful Artemis 8 mission, 1970.

After the end of the Second World War, rising tensions between the Eastern Bloc and the democratic nations of Western Europe and North America became a global phenomenon of confrontation. Movements seeking closer unity among Western nations in opposition to the Soviet Union soon became prominent in domestic politics, leading to Brazoria co-founding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1949 and joining the Conference of American States in 1950. A sizable wave of protests within the country prevented it from directly entering into any military actions, and for the majority of the soft conflict, Brazoria would provide a predominantly humanitarian and logistical role for its alliance. A general push towards more pacifistic foreign policy resulted in a political environment centered around expanding and entrenching radical social change in the country. The promise of instituting universal healthcare won the Progressives the 1952 elections, and in 1953, this yielded the foundation of the Bureau of Healthcare under the leadership of John Lindenburg.

Lindenburg, riding on the success of his fulfilled promise, used the social momentum of the time to launch a series of radical social and scientific changes which begun emerging in his time in office. He worked to eliminate discrimination against ethnic minorities for the first half of his rule, improving the economic, political, and social standings of African, Indigenous, and Hispanic Brazorians through the reorganisation of the educational service into the Bureau of Education, the expansion of state housing projects, and the implementation of affirmative action. Lindenburg also headed a movement to eliminate poverty, introducing a national food stamp programme and providing benefits for the unemployed and the disabled. In the later half of his Chancellorship, Lindenburg's focus shifted towards women's rights and the development of a national space programme to compete with the advances of the Soviet Union. In 1962, Lindenburg was able to finally institute the Brazorian Charter of Civil Rights, which constitutionally banned discrimination of any form. The Commission for Space Exploration was established out of a combination of the amateur rocketry societies and parts of the Air Force in 1964, and it was rapidly geared towards putting a Brazorian on the lunar surface, a goal which was eventually accomplished through the Artemis programme in 1970.

Increased government allocation of resources to social services gave way to a sharp rise in the number of immigrants entering the country from Latin America throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The rising number of new residents was met with a degree of reactionary nativism, which, when combined with the soft McCarthyism of the time, saw the emergence of a revived conservative activism from the National Party. In the 1968 elections, the National Party won a majority in the Diet and put Dolph Briscoe into power as Chancellor. Briscoe, opting to leave the social policies of his predecessor unchanged, introduced a series of privatisation measures for the national petroleum, shipbuilding, and rail companies in 1969. Privitisation saw an immediate rise in private investment in those industries, and coupled with the end of the Vietnam War and increased national confidence, Brazoria experienced a period of intense economic expansion for most of the 1970s. However, due to the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and a subsequently steep decline in its petroleum exports, a price shock gripped the nation, and the quintupling of the price of crude oil resulted in the Great Gas Recession, mass protests against the Briscoe government, and the subsequent domination of the Progressives in the 1980 elections under Mark White.

Postmodern period

Chancellor Mark White re-established the national petroleum and rail companies under their contemporary corporate identities, Brazoco and Brazonara respectively. While measures were immediately taken to raise domestic production, White also instigated a series of major research and development investments in renewable energy sources to avert total economic dependence on a single commodity. Oil prices stabilised within the next year, and the permanently raised price only benefited Brazoco, and in turn, increased the capabilities of the BNDT. Government funds were invested in non-petroleum industries, namely consumer electronics, superconductors, and other information technology firms, which, alongside automobile and airplane manufacturing, contributed to a heightened diversification of the economy and the end of its reliance on petroleum. The White government was largely credited with successfully steering Brazoria out of the crisis, and White remained in power until he stepped down before the 1992 elections in favour of his Deputy Chancellor, Dorothy Ann Richards.

Dorothy Ann Richards hunting

Dorothy Ann Richards, 15th Chancellor of Brazoria, was one of the most popular Chancellors ever to hold office, with a peak approval rating of 73% in 1999.

A general trend towards globalisation in the 1990s, coupled with a rise in the use of personal computers and the Internet, saw significant developments in the field of computational technologies and a general rise in the value of tech development firms. Richards' government authorised the investment of several hundreds of millions of dollars in Brazos Instruments and Digsys, and the national educational system was reformed massively as well, with STEM and other technical fields receiving a great deal of importance in the new national curriculum. Futhermore, Richards increased national endowments to many research universities across the country, allowing for a drop in tuition fees and a large spike in the number of degree holding citizens, from 41% in 1990 to 52% by 2000. While Richards was highly popular, the substantial increases in government spending resulted in budget deficits for the first time in Brazorian history in 1999 and again in 2000.

On 11 September 2001, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks were staged across the Conference of American States, with attacks in Brazoria causing 112 casualties in the capital, Austin, and 1,314 casualties in the largest city, Houston. Swift government intervention in rescue efforts saw public approval stand in favour of the Richards government, but after investigations revealed that foreign Islamic extremist groups had coordinated the attacks and the government remained hesitant at the idea of direct confrontation, public support began to shift in favour of the more jingoistic National Party. Perceived national inaction coupled with the effects of the Early 2000s recession caused the Progressives to lose the 2004 elections to the Nationals under James Perry, whose government quickly and very publicly announced Brazoria's participation in the War on Terror alongside its CAS allies.

A major touchstone of the Perry government was its reformation of the Brazorian Armed Forces to better fit the emerging idea of the battlespace, which developed out of increasing participation in allied deployments around the world. The Army, and to a lesser extent the Navy, were cut in size and cost, while spending was increased on the Air Force, the Rangers, and the Strategic Forces. Perry also emphasized the role of and the increased spending of domestic counter-terrorism efforts through an array of systems, most notably through new methods of mass surveillance and air travel security. Despite consistent public support throughout most of his administration, the onset of the Great Recession in 2007 galvanised the nation, and support for formerly fringe political beliefs began to gain considerable ground. This was especially predominant in the renewed rise of the Democratic Socialist Party, which won double its previous number of seats in the 2008 elections in a movement known as the Second Red Hurricane. For the first time in Brazorian history, no single party had won a majority in the Diet, and so with the conclusion of the elections, a coalition government, known as the Pact of the Left, was formed between the Progressives and the Democratic Socialists, with Eva Delaney as Chancellor and Robert Whitmore as Deputy Chancellor.

Contemporary period

The Delaney government immediately implemented a series of controls over the domestic shadow banking system, cracking down especially hard on investment banks and mortgage companies, and the government also raised the capital gains tax substantially. These factors contributed to the outbreak of a capital flight in the nation, which the government responded to by detaining any financier whose excessively risky investments was directly linked to the price bubble which caused the crisis. In total, over $1.2 billion worth of assets were seized around the country, with the most of the money being placed into the BNDT. In response to claims that income inequality and wage stagnation caused many middle class Brazorians to take on excessive amounts of debt, the government raised the minimum wage from $8.50 an hour in 2007 to $10 an hour by 2011. Furthermore, taxes were raised on the wealthiest brackets in the country, with the top rate shifting from 45% in 2007 to 55% by 2011. These subtle changes saw a moderate amount of success throughout the country, and by the time of the 2012 elections, the effects were measurable enough that the Pact of the Left maintained a government for a second term.

The Delaney government, in its second term, focused on expanding the existing social safety net in an effort to eradicate the widespread poverty which was emerging in some immigrant communities throughout the country. New, nationally funded housing projects were constructed in multiple major cities, and national funding for localised public transportation networks was nearly tripled. From 2012 until 2015, the government ran a budget deficit with its massively increased public spending, with some of the more expensive aspects of the spending effort being a substantial rise in funding for public education facilities around the country and a major hike in the rate of spending on the Commission for Space Exploration. The Delaney government was also responsible for an increasing in spending on the Office for Foreign Aid and Development, which greatly expanded its efforts in the more conflicted regions of the mid-2010s.

In early 2018, it was revealed that Delaney had been using the logistics of the Office for Foreign Aid and Development to distribute armaments and weapons to rebellious democratic movements in the Libyan Civil War and the Syrian Civil War, with the expenses being laundered through the BNDT. As a result, Delaney became the first Chancellor in history to resign and subsequently to face arrest. Her Deputy Chancellor, Robert Whitmore, leader of the Democratic Socialists, became the first Chancellor of that party to hold office. When Whitmore and high ranking members of the Progressive Party failed to come to a conclusion over the possibility of Whitmore stepping down to allow a new Progressive Chancellor to take office, President Charles Valdes indicated his intention to dissolve the Diet later that year, in what would become the first recall election in Brazorian history.

Politics

Brazoria is a unitary constitutional republic with a parliamentary democracy. The contemporary system of government employed in Brazoria was established through the Constitution of 1848. In the Brazorian system, the Diet is the unicameral supreme legislature of the country. The Chancellor is the national head of government, and they are elected within the Diet at the beginning of each four year term. The President officially appoints the Chancellor, and the Council of Ministers are also appointed by the President on the advice of the new Chancellor. Laws originate as bills within the Diet, and upon the acquisition of presidential approval, are then enforced by the Government.

Government

Charles Valdes Bobby Whitmore
Charles Valdes
President since 2010
Robert Whitmore
Chancellor since 2018

The President is the official head of state of Brazoria and is a largely ceremonial position. The President is elected through the National Convention, which is made up of the Members of the Diet and delegates from the Provinces, with the total number of delegates matching the total number of Members of the Diet and each province receiving a share equal to their proportion of the national population as defined in the census. The provincial delegates are appointed by the provincial government. The National Convention is held every ten years, and the current President, Charles Valdes, was elected in the 17th National Convention, which was held in 2010. In official order of precedence, the next highest official after the President is the Speaker of the Diet, who is elected alongside the President during the National Convention. Both the President and the Speaker are required to not hold any official political affiliation and remained independents for the entirety of their term in office.

The Chancellor is the official head of government and exercises executive power within the government as the leader of the Council of Ministers. The Chancellor is a Member of the Diet who has been appointed by the President upon the advice of the Diet, meaning that the leader of the largest party or coalition of parties within the Diet is typically appointed as Chancellor. The Chancellor nominates members of the Council of Ministers, and upon approval from the Diet, they are then officially appointed into their positions by the President. The Chancellor and the Council are responsible for the administration of all government ministries and their subsidiary offices and services. Decisions can be made internally within the Council which can directly effect and direct existing government ministries to perform any specific role. The Diet must necessarily vote on the creation of any new ministry, but otherwise, executive power rests largely within the hands of the Council. It is only in the creation of foreign treaties or in declarations of war that a vote of the Diet is necessary to legitimate an action.

Capitol of Brazoria, Austin

The Capitol of Brazoria, where the Diet and its members' offices are located.

The Diet is the unicameral supreme legislature of Brazoria. It is composed of 250 members, each elected within a Diet constituency through a single transferable vote method. Elections for the Diet take place every four years, though this is done merely out of precedence, as the President can nominally dissolve the Diet at their own behest. The Government and its executive functions are technically derivative of, and therefore, inferior to the power of the Diet, but in practice, as the Government is typically made up of a majority party within the Diet, the Diet is more of a law-making body than it is an administrative organ. The Diet, however, has the power to create its own agencies, known as commissions, for purposes which are better suited to non-partisan direction, such as the Commission for Space Exploration, the national space agency, and the Commission for Oversight, the national ombudsman. The Diet, unlike many other sovereign parliaments, does not have the power of impeachment, as only the President can appoint and dismiss the Chancellor and Ministers.

The Supreme Court is the apex court of Brazoria. It is composed of five member judges, known as Justices, with the most senior member of the Supreme Court known as the President Justice. The Justices are selected and appointed by the President; the only case where the President acts entirely upon their own accord without precedent for otherwise. Members of the Supreme Court serve lifetime appointments, though they can choose to voluntarily resign from their position. The Supreme Court is the highest court of appeal in the country, and it is also responsible for the function of judicial review, given that any specific case relating to a law enacted by the Diet was challenged by a private citizen. The doctrine of stare decisis applies to the Supreme Court; the decisions which the Supreme Court makes are constitutionally-binding, and the only way a Supreme Court decision can be overturned is through an amendment to the constitution or through a subsequent later trial relating in some way to the previously made decision.

Law and justice

Brazorian National Policemen in ceremonial uniform

National Policemen in ceremonial uniform.

The Brazorian justice system is a common law legal system. Precedence is the framework through which criminal and civil cases are decided. Courts are organised at their most basic level through the provinces, with each province locally responsible for the organisation of its courts into provincial circuits, which correspond with the boundaries of police precincts. Rural provinces often extend the boundaries of their circuit courts to a much greater degree than more urban provinces. Circuit courts handle the vast majority of cases within the country, and only a fraction of cases are ever appealed to the first level of appellate court, the provincial courts. Decisions made the provincial courts set precedents within the jurisdiction of a province, and subsequently, the National Police Service fundamentally organise policemen at a provincial level. Cases in provincial courts can be appealed to the national circuit courts, of which there are seven in the country. The national circuits predominantly serve as an intermediary for the Supreme Court, which is the highest court of the appeal in the nation. Decisions made at the level of the Supreme Court are constitutionally binding, and so the national circuit courts play a vital role in deciding which cases ought to advance to the Supreme Court, which has a highly selective process of legal review.

The National Police Service is the national law enforcement service. It is a service of the Ministry of Justice, and as such, its head administrator, the National Marshal, is appointed by the Minister of Justice upon the advice of the Chancellor. The National Police are organised by provincial boundaries; the local precincts of the service reflect the provincial circuit courts and are headed by Sheriffs, while the entirety of a provincial unit of policemen is headed and administered by Marshals. Sheriffs and Marshals retain special powers of jurisdiction which do not apply to regular police officers, and both positions are appointed by the National Marshal. The National Penitentiary and Correctional Service, also a subsidiary service of the Ministry of Justice, is responsible for the management of correctional facilities in the country.

Administrative subdivisions

Below is a clickable map of Brazorian provinces.

East AlbuquerqueSan AntonioOklahomaEl PasoDallasAustinCorpus ChristiHoustonValle de las PalmasMagdalenDenverLlanoArapahoUteRio GrandeGuadalupeBrazosNechesSabineLeonKiowaComanchePecosMap of Brazorian provinces with names
About this image


Brazoria is divided into 23 provinces. As Brazoria operates under a unitary system, most provinces do not perform any administrative functions of their own aside from their legal systems. Some provinces, however, maintain special privileges due to their linguistic and demographic compositions, known collectively as Special Provinces; these are the two Autonomous Provinces of Llano and Magdalen and the ten Metropolitan Provinces of Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Denver, East Albuquerque, El Paso, Houston, Oklahoma, San Antonio, and Valle de las Palmas. The Special Provinces retain control over certain aspects of education, healthcare, public safety, and, for the Metropolitan Provinces, transportation.

     Province      Metropolitan Province      Autonomous Province
Province Flag Capital Population (2017 estimate) Land area (km2)
Arapaho File:Flag of Arapaho Province.svg Fort Collins 1,011,633 47,339
Austin File:Flag of Austin Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 1,735,212 5,587
Brazos File:Flag of Brazos Province.svg Sugar Land 1,633,892 34,021
Comanche File:Flag of Comanche Province.svg Lubbock 1,642,709 206,541
Corpus Christi File:Flag of Corpus Christi Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 852,422 5,372
Dallas File:Flag of Dallas Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 6,287,869 9,782
Denver File:Flag of Denver Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 2,757,954 9,828
East Albuquerque File:Flag of East Albuquerque Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 753,254 2,580
El Paso File:Flag of El Paso Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 840,410 2,629
Guadalupe File:Flag of Guadalupe Province.svg San Marcos 816,046 32,023
Houston File:Flag of Houston Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 6,561,420 10,997
Kiowa File:Flag of Kiowa Province.svg Tulsa 1,301,931 112,873
Leon File:Flag of Leon Province.svg Waco 1,491,859 65,100
Llano File:Flag of Llano Autonomous Province.svg Friedrichsburg 322,472 30,618
Magdalen File:Flag of Magdalen Autonomous Province.svg Fleurs d'Oranger 183,752 5,931
Neches File:Flag of Neches Province.svg Beaumont 613,337 20,749
Oklahoma File:Flag of Oklahoma Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 1,172,465 7,592
Pecos File:Flag of Pecos Provinces.svg Santa Fe 1,222,653 273,000
Rio Grande File:Flag of Rio Grande Province.svg Laredo 768,852 87,720
Sabine File:Flag of Sabine Province.svg Nacogdoches 1,955,600 72,405
San Antonio File:Flag of San Antonio.svg Metropolitan 1,958,578 3,253
Ute File:Flag of Ute Province.svg Colorado Springs 1,346,043 147,525
Valle de las Palmas File:Flag of Valle de las Palmas Metropolitan Province.svg Metropolitan 1,286,363 7,939

Diplomacy and defence

BAF WAAS Bobcat IV in flight, Ute Province

A Brazorian Air Force WAAS Bobcat IV in flight over Ute Province, 2008.

Brazoria has a network of 432 diplomatic missions abroad and maintains formal relations with more than 190 countries. Brazoria is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the League of Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization of American States. Brazoria joined the Conference of American States in 1950 and participates in the St. Louis Area. Brazoria maintains a "Special Relationship" with the Kingdom of Sierra; the two are each others closest and oldest allies, having fought together for mutual sovereignty during the Mexican-American War of 1848. Brazoria also maintains particularly warm relationships with other North American states, and in recent years the country has been strengthening its partnerships with developing nations in Latin America and Africa, particularly Chile, Colombia, Panama, and Equatorial Guinea.

The Brazorian Armed Forces are the combined military forces of the nation, charged primarily with the matters of national security and defence. The Armed Forces are divided into four branches and two special services: the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Strategic Forces are the primary service branches, while the Rangers and the Militia are the special services, with the Rangers serving a special operations and high profile security role and the Militia serving as the national military reserve force. Since the early 1960s, the Air Force has received the most funding per capita of soldiers, as the physical distance of Brazoria from any hostile power has made the Army and Navy capable of focusing solely on defense, while the Air Force remains the single part of the Armed Forces with long range, conventional attack capabilities. The Armed Forces maintain a total professional force of 245,157 active service members; 130,050 in the Army, 94,050 in the Air Force, 14,025 in the Navy, 5,007 in the Rangers, and 2,025 in the Strategic Forces. Alongside these professional, active service members, there are an additional 246,178 members of the Militia which stand at varying levels readiness depending on the national DEFREDEL status. Firearm possession in Brazoria is higher than the average of most developed countries, with 42 out of 100 households owning at least one handgun or hunting rifle. Automatic, semi-automatic, and explosive weapons are banned for civilian possession in Brazoria; possession of assault rifles and shotguns is an especially significant criminal charge in the country. Brazoria is a nuclear state with ICBM capacity and was one of the first nations to develop nuclear weapons, doing so alongside Sierra in the early 1940s.

Economy

Economic indicators
Nominal GDP $1.914 trillion (Q4 2017)
Real GDP growth -0.3% (Q1 2018)
4.2% (Q4 2017)
CPI inflation 2.9% (April 2018)
Employment-to-population ratio 47% (April 2018)
Unemployment 4% (April 2018)
Labor force participation rate 64.9% (April 2018)
Total public debt $1.227 trillion (64.1% of GDP) (Q4 2017)
Household net worth $8.355 trillion (Q4 2017)

Brazoria has a mixed economy which began to undergo vast industrialisation in the 1870s. The Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Space Race, and the Great Recession are all key to the modern interventionist policies which have led Brazoria to develop into one of the world's most comprehensive welfare states. A developed, high-income nation, Brazoria is the 12th largest economy in the world at purchasing power parity, with a total gross domestic product of $2.421 trillion as of 2017. Brazoria is the third largest trading partner of the Conference of American States, with the Port of Houston being the third busiest container port in North America, and overall, the fourth busiest in the world. Brazoria has maintained a trade surplus for the majority of its history, and it has been a leading centre of petroleum and natural gas corporations in both Anglo-America and the world at large since the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901.

The BNB is the country's central bank and is responsible for the management of the national currency, the Brazorian dollar. The dollar is the fifth most used reserve currency in the world; the central approach which the government has taken towards investment in many Latin American countries means that the dollar is one of the most commonly used currencies in that region for international trade. The Brazorian dollar has historically been used as an indicator related to the price of oil and the efficiency of the petroleum market, gaining the colloquialism of the "blackback," though in recent years, especially since the 1980s, this term has fallen out of useage due to state-led efforts to increase economic diversity.

Houston Ship Channel

The Houston Ship Channel is one of the world's busiest ports and largest centres of petrochemical refinement.

Exports considered fundamental to the Brazorian economy include petroleum products, airplanes and related devices, home and computer appliances, heavy machinery, cargo ships, and a variety of automobiles for consumer and governmental purposes. Brazoria is home to largest concentration of oil refineries in the world along the banks of the Houston Ship Channel, and the country was the world's single largest exporter of petroleum products for the first half of the 20th century. Throughout the middle of the 20th century, however, the Brazorian government sponsored initiatives aimed at diversifying the economy, producing an array of aerospace and high technology companies which are some of the largest contributors to national exports in the contemporary period. Strong government regulation of foreign ownership and aggressively selective competition law have contributed to the development of monolithic domestic corporations. In order to prevent human capital flight to more competetive domestic markets in the CAS, the government has partnered with major corporations to provide residencies for top students in the country since 2009.

Brazoria is also a traditional centre of agriculture in North America, most notably in an economic and cultural sense with its long history of ranching. Brazoria is one of the top exporters of cattle and sheep products in Anglo-America, although in recent years government initiatives aimed at creating a more sustainable, ecologically sound socioeconomic order have caused stagnation in the ranching industry. On the other hand, Brazoria has seen a rise in the number of crops grown in the country, and the nation is already the largest exporter of herbs and tree nuts in North America. A large variety of fruits and vegetables are capable of thriving in a number of regions across the country due to high climatic diversity. Recently, a great deal of government-sponsored research has been put into the development of biofuel and bioplastic using agricultural sources in order to help foster a more environmentally sustainable economy.

Energy

Wind farm in rural Brazoria

Wind power in the rural flat lands of Brazoria are increasingly prominent in the nation's electric supply network.

For the early half of the 20th century, Brazoria was the largest producer and exporter of petroleum and petroleum products in the world. Today, Brazoria is the world's seventh largest producer of petroleum, generating an average of 3.592 million barrels a day in March 2018. Natural gas is the second most plentiful fossil fuel in Brazoria, with proven reserves in the country of over 5.354 trillion cubic metres, making Brazoria the world's eighth largest producer of natural gas. All of the crude oil and natural gas in Brazoria is explored, extracted, and transported by the state-owned petroleum and natural gas corporation Brazoco, which is one of the world's largest producing companies of crude oil and natural gas. Only a third of refineries in the country are owned by Brazoco; the rest are owned and operated by private companies of both Brazorian and international origin. Some of the largest private refiners in Brazoria include ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, Citgo, Phillips 66, Chevron, and BP. Brazoria has a total of 907,316 kilometres of oil and gas pipelines spread throughout the country. While Brazoria is one of the world's top producers of petroleum, the fuel source is only rarely used as a source of electric power generation, representing only 2.6% of the national energy grid as of 2018. Natural gas, however, makes up 43.9% of the national electricity generation. On the other hand, petroleum derivaties such as gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel are integral to the Brazorian transportation economy, with over 91.2% of all vehicles operating on some refined version of oil.

Since 2008, governmental interest in the development of renewable energy has resulted in direct action being taken to transition Brazoria into a leader of sustainable development. In the last decade, the output of wind and solar generation plants rivals the output of fossil fuel power plants. While in 2008 wind and solar power only produced 27.4% of all electric generation, today, the combined production of the two amounts to a total figure of 41.1%. The remaining 12.4% of electricity in Brazoria is generated by nuclear power, which has seen minor expansion in recent years. Current governmental projections aim to completely phase out fossil fuel power generation by as early as 2030. Furthermore, a large amount of money has been allocated to the research of more sustainable sources of automotive fuels, namely, in the research of biodiesel and other biofuels.

Transportation

F5 and F210 Interchange, Dallas

The F5 and F210 Interchange in Dallas is an example of one of the many spaghetti junctions located throughout the country.

Rates of car ownership in Brazoria are some of the highest in the Western world. Around 82% of all commuters travel to work in private automobiles daily. Car ownership is generally on the decline, especially so since 2008, when the national government increased funding for the development of local mass transit networks in some of the largest cities in the country. Major cities with the lowest rates of car ownership are Austin (61%), Denver (66%), Valle de las Palmas (67%), East Albuquerque (69%), and El Paso (71%). There are approximately 1.731 million kilometres of paved roadway in Brazoria. Of these public roadways, 1,154,000 kilometres are paved and 577,000 are unpaved. Around 12,395 kilometres of this paved roadway makes up the National Freeway System, a large controlled-access highway system which links the major population centres around the country. The freeways of Brazoria have speed limits in urban centres, but in rural areas, there are no speed limits on clear days, where speed limits are enforced at night time and in poor weather conditions. A further 120,064 kilometres of paved roadway composes the National Highway System, which supplements the freeways by making connections through smaller settlements. Nearly all goods and services in Brazoria utilise the freeway and highway system at some point. Many Brazorians use the combined highway network to travel to work, and a third of all domestic civilian travel is through the network. Special Provinces have the ability to plan, construct, and maintain their own provincial roadway networks, while in regular provinces, local municipalities are responsible only for the planning and maintenance of roadways. All paved roadways within Brazoria are constructed and maintained by the national Ministry of Transportation.

The most popular form of transportation before the mass construction of the freeways and highways in the 1960s was the railroad. At its peak in 1948, there was a total of 52,304 kilometres of railway track in Brazoria, though as of 2017, the number has declined to only 37,659 kilometres. All railway tracks in Brazoria and owned and managed by the state-owned firm Brazonara. The company received relatively little support throughout the majority of its first three decades of existence. It had been re-incorporated through a merger of its two predecessor, privitised firms Brazorian Western Rail and Brazos Rail in 1981. In 2008, however, renewed interest in the expansion of the railway network saw the construction of new passenger rail lines by the end of 2010. Throughout the last decade, passenger rail travel in Brazoria has undergone something of a renaissance, with strong government subsidisation of ticket costs for young and elderly people in an effort to reduce the prevalence of air travel in the country. Three new high-speed rail networks are planned to be finished with construction by 2027, with the first fully operational segment connecting Houston and Dallas in 2013.

Air travel is operated primarily by private airlines in Brazoria; the flagship airline of the country is Brazorian Continental, while its only major domestic competitor is SunJet. Three of the fifty busiest airports in the world are located in Brazoria, located in Houston, Dallas, and Denver respectively. Brazorian Continental is based out of both Houston and Denver, while SunJet is primarily based out of Dallas; both airlines are two of the largest in North America in terms of passengers carried. There are a total of 617 paved-runway airports in Brazoria; the vast majority of these are single-strip municipal airports which are operated and maintained locally. Only 35 Brazorian airports have daily commercial operations, yet much more than a third of all domestic travel is through air transportation.

Science and technology

Brazoria is a world leader in scientific and technological research and development. Since the Second World War, the government of the country has allocated large amounts of financial resources to educational, research, and technological institutes in the nation. The Brazorian University System is the nationally-administered network of publicly funded universities in the country; the flagship campus is located in the capital, the University of Austin, and there are a further three major campuses, located in Houston, Denver, and Dallas. Various private universities and research institutes also exist, with one of the most notable being Rice University, located in Houston. High expenditures on research grants and tax breaks for major technology firms has led to the development of the Silicon Hills, a science park centered around the capital. Notable technology firms headquartered in Brazoria include Brazos Instruments, WAAS, Dell, Astratus, and Firefly. The Houston Medical Centre is one of the worlds largest medical research centres, and it is one of the leading centres of cancer research in the world.

Brazoria maintains one of the world's most prominent space programmes, and the country has been a regional leader in space exploration since the middle of the 20th century. The Space Race, a period of intense rivalry and competition between Brazorian and Soviet space agencies, was a key factor in the constant expansion of the national space agency, the Commission for Space Exploration, known simply as the CSE. The CSE is an institution integral to Brazorian society, its economy, its culture, and its scientific community. The budget for the CSE has consistently been one of the largest expenditures of the national government; in 2018, the CSE was appropriated $36.7 billion, the highest figure it had received in its history of existence. As of 2018, there are four major programmes which are in various stages at the CSE that have won the agency a degree of international and domestic fame; the Gradivus programme, which aims to put the first humans on the planet Mars by 2030, the Selene programme, which aims to put a human habitat on the Moon by 2025, the Nyx programme, which is currently using a series of probes to intensely study the Asteroid Belt and the planets beyond it, and the Hemera programme, which is investigating the viability of space-based solar power systems. Since 2011, the CSE has been actively investigating a replacement for its old reusable launch system, the Mule II space shuttle.

Demographics

Ancestry in Brazoria by province

Ethnicity in Brazoria by province:     Latino     Tejano     German     English     Indigenous     Cajun

According to the Commission for the Census, there are an estimated people residing in Brazoria as of July 2017. Of these residents, approximately 40.2 million have full citizenship status, about 90% of the total population, while the remaining 4.3 million is made up of immigrants and other foreign nationals residing long-term in the country. The official Census of 2010 found that the national population was 43,100,394, meaning that between 2010 and 2017, the total population grew by an estimated 1,416,332 in those seven years. This means that Brazoria has an average yearly growth of 202,333 people, which is an annual growth rate of 0.32%. This is one of the lowest growth rates in Anglo-America, and this is mostly attributed to the low natural growth rate of the country. The fertility rate in Brazoria is, likewise, one of the lowest in Anglo-America, at only 1.12 births per woman in 2017. The vast majority of Brazoria's population increases come from immigration; an estimated 9.39 million people were born outside of the country, representing 21.1% of the national population, which is the highest rate of immigrant population in continental Anglo-America. Likewise, Brazoria's 9.39 million immigrants mean that it has the fourth largest number of foreign born residents in the world, after Germany, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

According to the 2010 Census, there was no single majority race in the country, and instead, there was a plurality of racial groups, with the three largest of these groups, and the only three to each represent over a quarter of the population, being the Anglos at 38% of the population, the Latinos at 29.4%, and the Tejanos at 26.6%. The Anglo-Brazorian racial group, which is composed of all predominantly English-speaking and European-descended peoples in the country, was the majority racial group in the country until the 1960s, when immigration laws were liberalised to allow large-scale immigration from Latin America. The Anglo-Brazorian group is typically divided into its two largest components, British Brazorian and German Brazorian, which collectively make up 89% of all Anglo-Brazorians. The Latino-Brazorian racial group includes all Hispanic people in Brazoria, with some two thirds of the immigrant population of the country self-identifying as Latino. All Latino-Brazorians are either first or second generation immigrants to the country, as the countries with the largest number of immigrant groups to Brazoria include Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. The Tejano ethnic group is a unique multiracial group of the Brazorian population, a fusion of the Anglo and Latino races, which has developed in the country as a minor subset of its racial composition until the 1960s, when mainstream social prejudice against miscegenation began to dwindle dramatically. Since the 1960s, the Tejano population group have seen the fastest rates of growth, and it is estimated that by 2040, Brazoria will have a majority Tejano pooulation. The Afro-Brazorian racial group, made up of mainly the descendants of escaped slaves from the east, makes up 4.1% of the population and is largely concentrated in the eastern part of the country. The Cajun people are a small ethnic group located in near-entirety in the Magdalen Autonomous Province; they are predominantly descended from the early settlers of Acadia, who were later expelled to the lower Mississippi River, and today they make up 2.4% of the country's population and speak predominantly French. The remaining 1% of the population is a mixture of indigenous peoples and other immigrant population groups from around the world.

Language

There are four primary languages which are considered official languages in Brazoria; these are English, Spanish, German, and French. Civil servants in the country are expected to be fluent in any two of these official languages. Although English is considered the de facto national language, the number of Spanish speakers in the country is almost equal to the number of English speakers; English is often privileged in schools and businesses for its high international usage. The vast majority of Brazorians are bilingual, or fluent in either Spanish or English with a good understanding of the other. German is the third most common language in Brazoria; its speakers are mostly centralised in the Llano Autonomous Province, where limited home rule is granted for the administration of the local people in their own language. French, and various Cajun dialects, is spoken primarily in the Magdalen Autonomous Province; it is the smallest official language in Brazoria. Various indigenous languages are also spoken throughout the country, and activists have been pushing for recognition of these languages at a national level in order to provide them safety from the threat of extinction. In some major cities, a number of Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Hindi speakers are present, especially so in Houston and Dallas.

Languages spoken at home by more than 100,000 persons in Brazoria (2017)
Language Percent of
population
Number of
speakers
Number who
speak English
very well
Number who
speak English
less than
very well
English (only) 24.17% 10,760,179 N/A N/A
Spanish
(including Spanish Creole)
73.99% 32,942,377 22,135,251 10,807,126
German 1.25% 558,073 553,766 4,307
French
(including Cajun derivatives)
0.57% 256,097 241,886 14,211

Religion

The Brazorian federal government maintains an official policy of secularism which is held as universal throughout the entire country, meaning that, alongside the federal government, no individual province or any associated organization endorsed by the Brazorian government in a manner of law can establish a religion or discriminate based upon the person's practicing religion. However, there is an exemption in the federal government made towards the status of any organizations posing as religious institutions, which, in actuality, function in the manner of a cult insofar as they deprive emotionally unstable individuals of their freedom unwillingly. Hence, while no religion is specifically banned, any organization classified by the federal government as a cult is banned from public practice or promotion and does not receive federal tax breaks. Only three currently practiced belief systems are classified as cults: Scientology, Santeria, and Baahgulism.

The majority of the Brazorian population practices Catholicism, with Catholics representing around 71% of the population. The heavily Catholic population is a result of the historical immigration of Catholics to the country, with Brazoria's percentage of Catholics being the highest among the Anglophone nations of North America. The next largest religious group are the various Protestant denominations, which collectively represent about 17% of the population. Of the Protestant denominations, Lutheranism, Methodism, and Baptism are the most prevalent denominations, with each group historically tied to a specific collection of ethnic groups which migrated to Brazoria over a large period of time. The designation of Irreligious is reported by about 11% of the population, which includes, among that category, the identification of "spiritual but not religious", atheist, and agnostic. The remaining 1% of the population is classified as other, with that being a collection of various belief systems which are tied to specific communities across the country; this category includes Judaism, Islam, Canaanism, and different eastern religions.

Largest cities


Welfare

Brazoria maintains a large social security system comparable to most other developed welfare states around the world. Alongside Canada, the Brazorian social service system is one of the most extensive in terms of coverage in North America, and although elements of a capitalist system are built into its framework, the Brazorian welfare system has largely been developed under a program more akin to a socialist system of operation. The Brazorian system includes universal education, universal healthcare, unemployment benefits, state pensions, food and housing assistance, and nationalized sanitation and water management. Unlike most other North American countries, Brazoria has a strong history of social services entrenched into the cultural impacts of its constituent citizens. The concepts of a strong hand in helping the disadvantaged citizens of the nation comes from the strong national sense of solidarity despite social class, within which economic needs are placed second to humanitarian needs. This system comes from the strong influences of German utopian socialism and Mexican familial bonds created by decades of heavy immigration from both groups, and it is a persisting feature of the distinctly Brazorian national identity.

Education

Rice University, Houston

Rice University is one of the most renowned institutions in Brazoria.

In the Brazorian federal system, the administration of universal educational programs is a responsibility of the provincial governments, although national standards are set for what material is required to be taught, and federal grants are given to the provinces in order to insure equality among the quality of education provided in accordance with the federal policy of equal opportunity. About 38% of the population of Brazoria holds any form of college degree, one of the highest percentages in the world.

Among the provinces, there are two primary systems of education utilised. In more densely populated urban provinces, the independent school district system is used, in which the school district is a separate government entity from any local level of government within the province, and the school district is responsible for setting a level of local property taxes to support themselves. Independent school districts are common among urban provinces because of their flexibility in terms of administration and non-dependence on city government, as the independence of school taxes means that city or county officials are never required to cut funding for schools in order to provide other essential services. The independent school district system is used in seven of the 17 provinces, although it represents approximately three quarters of the population of the country. The second system utilized in Brazoria is the unified school district, in which both elementary and high schools are operated at county levels alongside the local county government. The unified school district system is employed in rural areas, as the local governments of counties in rural areas is not as often pressed for financial support as urban governments can be. Often times, in counties were the population is especially sparse, multiple counties might make up a single unified school district.

While education is only mandatory by a federal standard at both elementary and high school levels, a large percentage of the population prefers to continue onwards to higher education. There are 201 federally accredited institutions of higher learning in Brazoria, with some of the most prominent public schools of those including the University of Austin, University of Lubbock, National Agricultural and Mechanical University, and the University of Oklahoma. Important private universities include Rice University, Baylor University, and Brazoria Christian University.

Healthcare

Houston Medical Center

The Houston Medical Center is the largest agglomeration of medical research institutions in the world.

Brazoria is one of the world's largest centers of private medical research, and this is complimented by a national health insurance program which is mandated by the federal government and administered by the provinces. Unlike most other countries with universal healthcare, no government institution pays directly for medical centers, their staff, or their equipment. Instead, medical institutions are privately owned and managed, in order to foster competition and a high quality standard of care for patients. In turn, the federal government manages the Federal Health Insurance Service, or FHIS, in order to pay these private health companies for their provision of service to the public. Each individual province manages their own programs of payment to the healthcare industry, and in turn, the government allocates funding for the FHIS system according to how much a province owes in payments to health service providers. The FHIS system is paid for through federal taxes, and there is rarely a personal cost to healthcare provision depending on the level of care required by a patient. The Brazorian system is well ranked among the world, with the World Health Organization giving it 23rd place in terms of efficiency among the world. Prominent private health care institutions in Brazoria include Memorial Hermann, MD Anderson, and Brazoria Children's Hospital.

Subsidies

In Brazoria, there is a comprehensive program of federally backed social security through the Federal Accommodation Insurance Service, or FAIS. Through the FAIS system, the federal government manages all pensions for the elderly and subsidies for the unemployed, disabled, homeless, and impoverished. Like the sister program FHIS, FAIS is instituted through a system of general federal taxation, in which the funds are then redistributed for administration by the individual provinces according to how much each province needs in support. The disastrous effects that the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression had upon the Brazorian economy made the FAIS system a necessity during its implementation in the late 1930s. Originally, the system was employed through a means of general monthly payments and tax breaks made to persons who required assistance in living, but gradually, after multiple reforms in 1962, 1981, and 1994, the FAIS program became a monthly series of payments which are administered through provincial government officials and regulated and monitored in a way that protects the security of the program by preventing exploitation. The most controversial portion of the FAIS program is its assistance of the unemployed, which many fiscally conservative political groups in the country lambast as outright government intervention in the economy.

Culture

Brazoria is a multicultural society with a rich historical approach to the idea of a melting pot. Since the beginnings of mass influxes of German immigrants in the 1870s and Latin Americans in the 1910s, the country has been on a radically shifting cultural path than most other Anglo-American nations. Ultimately, by the beginning of the counterculture movements of the 1960s, the Brazorian national identity became a mixture of the three most prominent cultural groups in the country, with the British, German, and Hispanic influences on the country intermingling into common traditions shared by all. Brazoria has a philosophical tradition stemming from earlier American ideas of liberty and equality under law, which were further expanded upon by German socialist immigrant-thinkers, resulting in the common beliefs of freedom, civic responsibility, and brotherhood by the middle of the 20th century. This was further drawn upon as Hispanic Brazorians became more prominent in the 1960s, with the ideas of family and common identity creating a uniquely Brazorian outlook of American philosophy. The reflection of commonality in thought upon the tangible culture of Brazoria is profound, with the idea of mixing practices prominent in most material forms of national culture, such as food, holidays, music, and literature.

Aesthetics

Lilacs in a Window, painting

Lilacs in a Window, an Impressionist piece of the San Antonio School.

The Brazorian artistic tradition is derived from the overall Western tradition of visual arts, with the first wholly Brazorian realizations of stylistic movements beginning with the Brazorian impressionist movement of the late 19th century. The San Antonio School was the most representative group of impressionism in Brazoria, and its constituent artists are regarded as some of the greatest in the country's history. Brazoria, however, shifted away from embracing American realism, developing its own artistic path due to differences in the urban societies of the two countries, and instead, followed upon the Fauvist movement as a successor to impressionism, with a gradual expansion of the Fauvist idea in the San Marcos School. The San Marcos School retained relevance in its later period by shifting to surrealism in the later part of the 1920s, a relevance which would largely fade after the embrace of the American Figurative Expressionism and Pop art movements in the 1950s. After the end of the Dallas School in the early 1970s, Brazorian art has transitioned from singular prominent artistic movements to a conflux of modern art movements, though minimalism has remained a prominent feature of art to the contemporary day.

In architecture, Brazoria has a diverse range of movements which, as opposed to visual art, have largely followed American styles in prominence over time. Italianate and Renaissance revival were the most prominent movements in the early history of the country, and these were followed by a trend in Romanesque revival which would last into the 1910s. After these movements, early modernist principles became more prominent around the country, and, as a substrate of modernism, Art Deco flourished in the wealth of the 1920s and lasted into middle of the 1950s. The International style began to take hold in the country in the 1960s, but more prominent was the impact of the postmodernist style upon skylines with its mainstream adoption in the late 1970s. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neo-futurism has become the most prominent architectural movement in the country.

Brazorian fashion generally follows the trends of Western fashion, and otherwise, is considered to be, on a whole, largely casual and highly informal. As the country maintains a high standard of living and a highly urban society, fast fashion is by far the most common and influential form of stylistic impression upon contemporary Brazorian fashion, with foreign retailers such as Forever 21, H&M, American Apparel, and Zara being the largest, and most influential, companies in the mainstream Brazorian fashion industry. While casual fashions are largely influenced by foreign fast fashion retailers, there are a number of Brazorian haute couture designers, such as Tom Ford and Elaine Turner, who have become internationally famous for their designs.

Cuisine

Veal Schnitzel in Brazoria

Veal schnitzel is a staple in the Brazorian diet.

The most prominent display of the Brazorian culture is in its food. Brazorian cuisine is largely representative of the immigrant groups which made up the country, and relies heavily upon local sources of food for most of its composition. Akin to most other Western countries, wheat is the most widely consumed grained, but since the 1960s, rice has become almost as equally as popular due to its usage by Hispanic cultures. Beef and chicken are the most important sources of meat, with Brazoria being internationally famous for its large ranches which cover a great deal of the western provincs of the country. The Brazorian cowboy is derived from the prominence that beef played in the nation's history, making the meat one of the most important part of the Brazorian diet.

Characteristic dishes in the country are derived from the cultural mixture of the most prominent immigrant groups, with sausage and schnitzel derived from the Germans, burritos and tacos derived from the Hispanics, and steak derived from the British. These five forms of food are by far the most commonly consumed dishes in the country on a daily basis, with a great deal of emphasis placed on zest and savor adopted from the Hispanic tradition. Chile con queso, a dish with a great deal of significance in Brazoria, is typically added to most casual meals, though it is not as common in formal settings. Other important additions to dishes include guacamole and refried beans, both from the Hispanic cultural group. The most common beverage in Brazoria is beer, which is widely popular throughout the country and stems from a necessity of clean liquids to drink in the colonial era. Non-alcoholic soda is also important to the country, with the most popular brands including Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola. Brazorians drink coffee four times more often than tea.

Stemming from an infusion of the British and Hispanic traditions, the most important meal of the day in Brazoria is lunch, eaten in the middle of the day. Breakfast and dinner are lighter than the large lunchtime meals that are consumed in the country. This stems from the colonial agricultural idea that lunch allowed for recuperation from work in the morning and supplied energy for work in the afternoon. As the nation became more developed, however, the idea of lunch as the most important social time of the day became popular. Before the advent of air conditioning, the siesta was a highly popular action undertaken following these large lunches, though it has now become far less common since climate control has largely allowed for aversion from the intense afternoon heat of the sun.

Holidays and sport

Dia de Muertos in Brazoria

Dia de Muertos is one of the more prominent holidays in the country.

In Brazoria, cultural celebrations are held often through the course of a year, with specific times of the year being dedicated to the celebration of a particular holiday. The vast majority of Brazorian holidays come from the Catholic traditions of the country. In chronological order, New Years Eve and New Years Day are both celebrated at the very end of the preceding year and the beginning of the new year as a festival associated with recollection of the past and looking forward to the future. Constitution Day is celebrated on February 2nd, and Valentine's Day, a largely private celebration of love, is held on February 14th. The next celebratory season of the year is Carnival, a large celebration of individualism and hedonism before the more sanctified and holy season of Lent. Easter, at the end of Lent, is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, and is the end of the first religious season of the country. Independence Day is celebrated on March 2nd, and it is the largest celebration associated with the nation's secular history, and San Jacinto Day, celebrated on April 21st, is considered to be a public memorial day of those who died fighting for freedom under the auspices of the Brazorian government in any war throughout the nation's history. Cinco de Mayo, a celebration of Hispanic heritage, is held on May 5th, and Labor Day, a celebration of workers, is held on the first monday in September. Oktoberfest, a two-week long celebration of German heritage, begins on the third saturday in September, and is one of the more famous holidays of Brazoria for its travelling funfairs and beer halls. The Day of the Dead is celebrated on October 31st, a large street festival held in memory of the departed, and the celebration has completely eclipsed the more American Halloween in terms of celebration. Thanksgiving is held on the fourth thursday in November, and is a celebration of family and common North American heritage. Advent begins the season of Christmas four sundays prior to the day which celebrates the birth of Jesus, and the holiday, along with following Boxing Day, is one of the most widely celebrated holidays in the country.

Association football is the most popular sport in the country, followed by basketball, American football, and baseball. The Brazorian Football Association is the largest of its kind in North America, with 18 participating teams in the First League drawing in the largest number of spectators to any association football games in the English-speaking part of the continent. The Brazorian men's national team has consistently placed highly in the FIFA World Cup and has won the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 1991, 1996, 2005, and 2007. In basketball, Brazoria is a part of the larger North American Basketball Association, with five teams in the pan-American organization. Brazoria has two teams in the North American Football League and the North American Baseball Major League.

See also

Advertisement