This story will be a encylopedia like entry on a imaginary nation called the Empire of Smithlandia, or Smithlandian Empire. I hope it will be a rattling good little book. Please do not edit it, except for grammar mistakes. But you are free to feedback.
It is divided into "sections", sometimes subdivided into "sub-sections".
Section 1: Introduction[]
Smithlandia, or more properly, the Smithlandian Empire, a country covering a area of the same name, Smithland. The territories occupied by people of distinctly Smith race can be called Smithlandian.
Now the present Smithlandian Empire was formed in 1671 by virtue of treaties between the Kingdom of Smithland and the Kingdom of Teutonica, and by the acquisition, through the peace of Kiev, of Left-Bank Ukraine.
The Empire is some 22 million kilometers in size, and borders the nations of Norway, Sweden, Kingdom in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and North Korea. It is mainly within the temperate, sub-arctic, and arctic zones.
Section 2: Boundaries[]
The Empire is bounded to the North by the Arctic Ocean, the White Sea, and the Barents Sea. However, this area is ice-free for less then a eighth of the year.
To the west, the Empire encloses on three angles (Finland, Poland, the Baltic states) the eastern Baltic Sea. To the southwest, the Black Sea is enclosed by the Empire on it's northern and north-eastern sides, and is the only place in the Empire with temperatures exceeding 80 degrees during the summer. Just several hundred miles away is the Caspian Sea, enclosed by the empire by the north, east, and west.
The empire in the far east encloses the Sea of Japan northerly and westerly, having full bounds into the Kuril Islands north of Japan. Sakhalin is a Smithlandian possession, by all means autonomous but integrally under Smithlandian control. Sakhalin and the Kurils have significant numbers of Japanese.
The Imperial southern border ends in the northern Middle East, bounded by Iran, Afghanistan, and a small snip of Pakistan. The western border of the empire ends along Norway and Sweden, goes deep into Poland, consumes all of Ukraine, and bounds Romania by Beershabia.
In the farther east, the Empire subsumes main Mongolia, bounding China northerly, with it's own Outer Mongolia province, and north-easterly by means of the Amur provinces, won in the early 19th-century. A strip of land touches the neck of North Korea.
Nominally, Manchuria is a province of China, under supreme sovereignty of the Chinese Communist party. In practice, Manchuria is under the suzerainty of the Smithlandian emperor, since Smithlandia governs the Chinese Railroad Zone and have military forces stationed in Harbin, Manchuria's capital and largest city. The ports of north-eastern China are within nominal Chinese rule, but in practice their economic and legal matters are governed by Smithlandian-appointed Chinese chichi. The empire also has a military and economic lease to the Lao-tung peninsula and have full control over the ice-free port of Arthur.
Smithlandia has no oceanic possessions: the islands she holds are all extensions of the mainland they are controlled by. Such are Karlo, East Kvarken, the Aland archipelago, Dagd, and Osel or Oesel in the Baltic Sea; Novaya Zemlya, with Kolguyev and Vaigach, in the Barents Sea; the Solovetski Islands in the White Sea; the New Siberian archipelago, Wrangel Land and Bear Islands, off the Siberian coast; the Commander Islands off Kamchatka; the Shantar Islands, Sakhalin, and the Kurils in the Sea of Okhotsk and Japan. The Aleutian archipelago and New Smithlandia were sold in 1867 to the United States.
Section 3: Geography[]
The Smithlandian Empire has a vast variety of terrains and landscapes. In the west, the European Plain and West Smithlandian Steppes cover most of western Smithlandia. Smithlandian Ukraine has the Ukrainian Steppes, vast rolling hills and valleys slopping on the sides.
Poland's main rivers, the Oder and Vistula, fall within the western territories of the empire. It has dense forests, mainly along the Vistula, and circulating around Warsaw.
In the south and Central Asia, the empire is covered by rain forest-like forests, and also large, spanning deserts and dry plans. Central Asia is the driest place in the empire, but also the second largest in terms of both population and land mass: about a fourth of Smithlandia's people live here.
The empire has vast plains in Siberia: the East European Plain, the West Siberian Plain, the Central Siberian Plateau, and the Eastern Siberian Plains. They are long rolling fields. However, the Plains have high elevation, starting in the Ural Mountains, which nominally separates the majority of Europe from main Asia. The empire also has the Caucasus Mountains in the south, separating the Middle East from south-eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the highest peak in Smithlandia does not exceed 8,000 feet.
In the north of the empire, tundra and icy plains cover the coast. As a result of this and hostile weather and living conditions, only 300,000 people live in the Arctic region of northern Smithlandia: most of Smithlandia's people stay in the center, the south, the west, and the far south-east.