Stenza: Difference between revisions

The next three decades were not per se bad for the Stenzan population, who enjoyed all the technological and social developments the Corummese brought to them while their land was still being exploited. Regardless of this progress, the native population was still treated as a second rate class to the Corummese colonizers, who enjoyed considerable wealth based on the labor of the Stenzans.

===Independence and Civil War===

Things changed rapidly for the Corummese puppet state in 1919, when a young Stenzan officer in the colonial army named [[Li Xhipong]] shot his Corummese commanding Colonel and revolted with his mostly native company. Other Stenzan units within the colonial army followed suit, and soon the Corummese and government loyal Stenzan forces were facing a well organized army of ~10,000 Stenzan soldiers who had defected from the colonial army. (The Colonial army at the time was made up of segregated Corrumese and Stenzan forces, with Corummese senior officers leading the Stenzan units at the field level.) This military force, called the [[Stenzan War of Independence|Free Stenzan Army]], retreated into the hills and fought the Corummese forces through asymmetric warfare, raiding military caches and arming willing civilians as they went. By the time the first regular Corummese reinforcements arrived, the Free Stenzan Army counted nearly 30,000.

All was not well for the Stenzans after chasing out the Corummese, for the celebrations of their independence were short lived. The young Lieutenant who had caused the independence movement, Li Xhipong, was hailed by many as a national hero and was to be the first leader of a free Stenza, if it were not for the rapid rise of the far left leaning Stenzan People's Party and their assassination of Xhipong. Over the next seven months, Stenzans who backed the Party and various groups who did not fought over the rule of the island, with the Party eventually coming out on top in April 1923 through the cunning military leadership of [[Hemi Hidao]]. Hidao would end up being the first chairman of the Stenzan People's Party and the leader of the country, which became known as the '''Stenzan People's Collective'''.

===Totalitarian Regime===

Hidao's rise to power was followed by six years of civil unrest called the [[pacification]], this period was characterized by the party's consolidation of power throughout the country, the swift and public assassinations of anyone who doubted the Party and its ways, and the total isolation from any foreign influence by expelling all foreigners, aside from re-educated Corummese who had elected to stay after the war. Between the start of the Independence war and the end of the pacification in 1929 an estimated 35% of the Stenzan population died. By 1928 the Party's control over Stenza was firm and it could shift its focus from establishing dominance to ruling the nation. Plans were drafted to industrialize the next decade and half was spent catching up to the other nations of the world. By 1943 Stenza was an industrialized nation in its own right, most of its citizens having jobs although pay was low across the board.