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Confederate States of the Caribbean || Overview

Confederate States of the Caribbean

Motto
Homeland or Death, God Protects
Anthem
TBA

Map of the Confederation

Capital

Havana

Official Language

English

Ethnic Groups

78.6% European
12.4% Mulatto or Mixed
6.4% Afro-Caribbean
2.6% other

Religion

73.4% Christian
16.6% Atheist
7.3% Folk Religions
2.7% Other

Demonym

Caribbean

Government

Federal Presidential Republic

President

Edward J. Wellington

Vice President

Agatha Selwyn

President of the Congress

Pieter van Berkhof

Legislature

Congress
Senate
House of Representatives

History

Spanish Entry to America (October 7 1492)
Ostend Purchase (March 19 1855)
American Civil War (1861-1878)
Establishment of the Caribbean Confederation (10 December 1881)
Golden Circle Era (1881-1897)
Caribbean Civil War (1897-1902)
Current Constitution (19 July 1943)

Area

238,509.7 km2

Population

26,349,973
110.47 (Density)

GDP (nominal)

$776.09 billion
$29,453.25 (per capita)

Gini

48.68 high

HDI

0.856 high

Currency

American Dollar ($) (AD)

Time zone

UTC-6 to -3

Driving Side

right

Calling code

+53

ISO 3166 code

CSC

Internet TLD

.csc

The Confederate States of the Caribbean, commonly called the Confederacy, the Remnant or the Caribbeans is a federation comprising of ten states, one special federal capital district and one federal territory located in the Caribbean Sea, Central and South America. Havana is its largest city and the capital of the federation, while other major cities include Saint Dominic, Princehaven, Saint Joseph and Santiago. The total area of the Confederate States of the Caribbean is 238,509.7 km2 which hosts a population of 26,349,973.

While much of the history of the Caribbean is related to the colonial history of Spain, the Netherlands, Britain and France, the Confederacy's history is much more recent. In 1855 and after months of deliberation, the United States of America under the Pierce administration finalised negotiations with the Kingdom of Spain over the latter's possession of Cuba. The Pierce Administration, following the Ostend Manifesto, bought Cuba and incorporated it as a territory of the United States. Cuba was given statehood in 1859 after Oregon was raised to statehood as a Free State, and as a slave state, it participated in the American Civil War from 1861 to 1878. After the Civil War formally ended in a the White Peace at Gettysburg and with the increasing tensions in the CSA, Cuba broke away from the Confederate States' hold and seceded in form of the Caribbean Confederation in 1881.

The New Confederation, following the Golden Circle ideology of the pre-war American South, followed a policy of expansion in its early years in what came to be known as the Golden Circle Era in which the Confederation expanded into Costa Rica and Hispaniola by war and into Puerto Rico and the Danish Virgin Islands by using filibuster movements funded and supported by Havana. Other filibuster attempts were made in Dutch Suriname and British Honduras to no avail. The Golden Circle Era ended with the Caribbean Civil War, itself a number of slave, separatist and urban revolts agitated by filibusters from the Free States of America. The Caribbean Civil War, which would continue for five years until the Liberation of Havana in 1902, would fully change Caribbean Society: slavery was outlawed, federalism was established and the workers' right to collective bargaining enshrined in the law.

Following its civil war, the Confederation would for the largest part cease its expansionist foreign policy and begin normalising its relations with the world, something that was at first made difficult by a failed Dutch expedition (1906-9) that resulted in the annexation of the Netherlands' possessions in the Caribbean. Its largely agricultural economy went through specialisation and industrialisation to allow for manufacturing, mining and service industries to expand, while its control over major centers of trade in the Caribbean made it a popular centre for immigration, culminating in the wave of 1910-1936. This major wave of immigration itself changed the demographic structure of the Confederation, bringing in new values and ideologies, resulting in a second period of disconcert that finally resulted in the drafting of a new constitution in 1943. The Confederacy played a small part in the Second World War, only entering the war in 1944 -two years before it could end- in a mainly naval capacity. In the Post-War era, the Commonwealth would intervene in many military engagements around the world, especially in colonial wars for independence in Africa, Asia and America. More than 250,000 Caribbean citizens fought in the Liberian Civil War while another 150,000 fought in the Indochinese Civil War.

Culturally, the Confederacy is an amalgamation of many different cultures and cannot be considered part of any major cultural bloc. It is a multiethnic society whose people, culture and customs derive from diverse origins. The majority originate from Europe -Anglo-American settlers in 1854-91, Spanish, Dutch and French settlers belonging to the colonial periods of each of these nations and a host of mostly German, Italian, Irish and Portuguese immigrants coming in the 20th century. The second-largest group are the Mutallos while a noticeable minority of Afro-Caribbean people, descendants of African slaves freed in 1902 are the third major group.

The Confederacy is a founding member of the Organisation of the United Nations, the G77, the Caribbean Council and the Pan-American Treaty Organisation. It has a diverse economy dominated by the tourism industry, plantation-style agriculture and medicine. Private enterprise and the right to collective bargaining are both enshrined in the Caribbean Constitution, allowing for the development of a free market economy with good labour laws and workers' rights.

Contents
Etymology
History
Economy
Agriculture
Mining and Resource Extraction
Manufacturing
Tourism
Trade
Currency
Demographics
Races and Ethnic Groups
Languages
Religions
Population Centres
Politics
Political Divisions
Parties and elections
Foreign relations
Government finance
Law enforcement and crime
Military
Culture
Music
Cuisine
Literature
Dance
Sports
Cinema
Museums
National Holidays and Festivals

Etymology

The name 'Caribbean', which refers to both the Confederacy and the larger region, is derived from the Caribs, an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. This term was popularised by British cartographer Thomas Jefferys who used it in his The West-India Atlas (1773).

The two most prevalent pronunciations of "Caribbean" outside the Caribbean are /ˌkærɪˈbiːən/ (KARR-ə-BEE-ən), with primary stress on the third syllable, and /kəˈrɪbiən/ (kə-RIB-ee-ən), with the stress on the second. Most authorities of the last century preferred the stress on the third syllable. This is the older of the two pronunciations, but the stressed-second-syllable variant has been established for over 75 years. It has been suggested that speakers of British English prefer /ˌkærɪˈbiːən/ (KARR-ə-BEE-ən) while North American speakers more typically use /kəˈrɪbiən/ (kə-RIB-ee-ən), but major American dictionaries and other sources list the stress on the third syllable as more common in American English as well. According to the American version of the Oxford Dictionaries, the stress on the second syllable is becoming more common in UK English and is increasingly considered "by some" to be more up to date and more "correct".

While Caribbean is a noun, rather than an adjective, it is common to use the term to refer to a citizen of the Confederacy, though "Confederate Citizen" is equally used. The way to refer to people living in the region but not in the Confederacy is "Caribbean people".


History
Main Articles: History of the Caribbean

While human presence began in the Caribbean around the beginning of the Holocene, permanent settlements were only made in the islands after 5100 BCE. Prior to European arrival, the main Native American tribes living in the Caribbean were the Arawak who lived in the Greater Antilles, the Island Carib who lived in Windward Islands and the Ciboney who lived in Western Cuba. Of these three groups, the Arawak were the most important, and they were further divided into the Classical Taínos who occupied Hispaniola and Puerto Rico; Western Taínos who occupied Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamian archipelago; and Eastern Taínos who occupied the Leeward Island.


Spanish Caribbeans at its greatest extent
The Caribbean sea was the first place discovered by Europeans during the Age of Discovery, first colonised by the Spanish in 1492 after Colombus' first voyage. Originally, the Caribbean Sea was claimed wholesale by Spain according to the Treaty of Tordesillas and as it was the most powerful empire in Europe its claims remained realised until the late 16th century though only Cuba and Hispaniola were major sites of Spanish settlement. French, Dutch and British Empires began colonising the Caribbean in the 17th century, with France holding the second largest territorial possessions in the Caribbeans due to its holding of Hispaniola, while the Dutch and the British owned wealthier but smaller colonies. European colonisation of the Caribbean was primarily built on a plantation economy, resulting in the shipping of 3.76 million slaves from Western Africa from 1492 to 1870. The majority of the Caribbean native population died in the early Spanish period due to harsh conditions and backbreaking labour forced upon them by the Spanish.

Haiti was the first Caribbean state to become independent, realising its ambitions of freedom in what originally began as a slave revolt in 1791. The eastern, larger half of Hispaniola followed through in 1822, but it was quickly subsumed by the Haitians who invaded and occupied their republic in what they claimed was an act of national security. Haiti, a black republic that controlled one of the wealthiest regions of the Caribbean, quickly became unpopular among the other American States, in particular the wealthy slave-owners of the American South. These southern slave-owners began to view Cuba as an obvious territory within their sphere of influence and began calling for its annexation both to ensure the balance of slave and free states in the Senate and to ensure it wouldn't fall to a similar slave revolt. This ambition manifested into the Ostend Purchase in 1854 during the Pierce Administration. Cuba was granted Statehood as a slave state in 1859, but its time in the USA was limited as two years later, the American Civil War began. Cuba fought in a relatively limited manner on the Confederacy's side throughout the 17-year-long Civil War, sending 45,000 to fight on the continent and fending two separate Union invasions in 1863-64 and 1876-78. After the Civil War ended in 1878, Cuba seceded from the now-free but extremely poor and powerless Confederate States of America in 1881, beginning the history of the Caribbean Confederation.


Battle of Pignon
As an independent state, the Remnant began its history with the Golden Circle Era, a period of expansion through direct and indirect means. Hoping to get more slaves, expand to take more territory to turn to plantations and to secure the interests of the small Anglo-Saxon slave-owning minority, Cuba invaded Haiti (1883-84), the Dominican Republic (1884), an independent Puerto Rico (1887) and Costa Rica (1891-93) in short and decisive wars enslaving nearly their entire Black or Hispanic population, while filibusters hailing from the Confederacy waged independent movements in Puerto Rico (later leading to its independence and subsequent annexation) and the Danish Virgin Islands. Increasing urbanisation and problems with continued plantation economy without spending much on medicine or an unending supply of slave labourers resulted in the end of the Golden Circle Era in 1895.

The Caribbean Civil War, fought from 1897 to 1902, put an end to slavery in the Confederacy. Starting as a slave revolt and backed by sympathetic riots in many urban areas, this conflict quickly turned into a war between two governments claiming sovereignty on the whole confederacy. Supported by money, resources, material and volunteers from the Free States, Louisiana, Mexico and the British Empire the liberal and abolitionist Saint Dominic Government defeated the Havana government's forces in the Battle of Hispaniola in 1900 and then landed forces to capture Cuba, culminating in the fall of the Slave government in 18 July 1902. The new, more liberal government abolished slavery, restored citizenhood to Hispanic citizens and granted citizenship and franchise to its black population. They confiscated nearly all the land and property of the slave-owning minority, who for the most part fled to Florida with nearly nothing but the cloth on their back and attempted to compensate the former slaves by offering them either land confiscated from their former owners or emigration to Liberia and Sierra Leone (for the Blacks) or any Latin country (the Hispanics). Most Blacks took the emigration offer, creating the ruling classes of both Sierra Leone and Liberia -the both of whom remained in good relations with the Caribbean afterwards- while most Hispanics took the offer of land. While the Caribbean Confederation had to defend itself from a Dutch expedition in 1906-9 which resulted in the annexation of all Dutch territories in the sea, most of the lands confiscated were sold to wealthy German, British and Dutch who would immigrate to the confederation, while Italian, Portuguese and other poorer Europeans -as well as Christians in Ottoman Levant- migrated to the cities for work in the manufacturing centres.

The Confederacy saw great prosperity between 1902 and 1929, but it suffered terribly from the Great Depression as unemployment became rife and trade nearly became impossible. This resulted in a period of tense labour relations -especially between 'super-unions' and the "pro-business" government of Hendrik Vanderhuit. Once the Vanderhuit government began rolling back liberal and democratic reforms in 1938, the country fell to major protests and general strikes, eventually leading to Vanderhuit being deposed by the Congress. The succeeding government of Nathan Hart drafted a new, more "socialist" constitution in July 1942 that enshrined the right to organise in the constitution and also granted the franchise to women and lowered the minimum voting age to 18. Hart's government brought the Caribbean Confederation into the second World War after a French invasion of Saint Martin. Caribbean soldiers fought only in a limited manner and only served in the West Indies Campaign by capturing French possessions in the Americas, and once the war was ended the confederacy was given only the paltry prize of the French section of Saint Martin, though it was given UN Trusteeship over other French territories in the Caribbean.


Confederate Marines in Indochina
The Remnant joined the Pan-American Treaty Organisation, an organisation of 42 states in the Western Hemisphere and led PATO interventions on many Caribbean and South American states to establish pro-PATO regimes in those countries, which is in part the reason why the PATO now has 42 members. Outside of the Caribbean, the Confederacy intervened in many African and East Asian nations, the two most important being the Indochinese Civil War and the Liberian Civil War.

Caribbean citizens had migrated to Indochina, promised lands confiscated from Japanese occupiers by the pro-Independence Rebels during the Indochinese War of Independence (1948-56), and when the government tried to renege on this deal, confiscate their newfound lands and deport -or kill- them in 1959, the National Liberal Front, a coalition of mostly-migrant Landowners and urbanites began the Indochinese Civil War. The Caribbean government officially entered the Civil War to aid the NLF alongside Japan and the United States of America, fighting against the Saigon government and its backers in China and Russia. While Caribbean operations in this war were relatively small, limited to airstrikes, amphibious assaults and special operations, 150,000 Caribbean soldiers fought in this war until a Status Quo peace was established thanks to a British diplomatic convention in 1982 that gave way to the withdrawal of Chinese, Russian, American, Japanese and Caribbean soldiers and facilitated the transfer of power to a new government that was acceptable to all parties involved two years later in 1984.

Similarly, the Caribbean fought in the Liberian Civil War (and concurrent, related domestic conflicts in Cameroon, Nigeria) between 1968 and 1991. While Liberia had been effectively governed by a small minority of Black landowning settlers of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean descent from 1862, a "neutral" government was established in the Constitution of 1960 that extended share in power to the Native Africans. This liberal government was mostly taken over by Natives who thanks to their larger population had a better ability to project electoral results, giving way to a dictatorial government that passed decisions deemed unacceptable to the Afro-Caribbeans in Liberia. After many riots and attempts to reform the government democratically, the Buchanan Clique, founded in Liberia's third-largest city, began the Liberian Civil War. The Caribbean, alongside Sierra Leone and the United States of America, intervened on behalf of the Buchanan Clique in 1968, something that later led to Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Benin intervening on behalf of the Monrovia government. The scope of Caribbean operations in this war was much larger, with the Caribbean Navy putting an effective blockade on all of the Gulf of Guinea. Airstrikes against the Liberian military -and later military sites in Cameroon and Ghana- were common and the military even staged civil wars in Cameroon and Nigeria to weaken the Liberian government's support among their fellow African states. Success was reached in Liberia in the 1991 Siege of Monrovia, which ended the greatly destructive civil war. The Confederacy played a major part in the rebuilding of Liberia, though in exchange for most of the country's resources.

After the Cold War's end, the Caribbean became more isolationist, limiting their field of influence to the Caribbean region, with most of their military missions only against piracy in the East Indies, Mediterranean, Horn of Africa and the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean Government has supported and worked towards further diplomatic, political and economic integration within the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere, being one of the prominent powers behind the American Single Currency and the establishment of the Caribbean Council.


Economy
Main Articles: Economy of the Caribbeans

Link
Caribbean Exports in 2019
The Caribbean Confederation has the largest economy inside the Caribbean sea and the fourth strongest economy among all the countries that border the Caribbean Sea. It is a developed economy, with a 2015 GDP per capita of $17,979. Over the last 25 years, the Caribbean has had the fastest-growing economy in the Americas, with an average real GDP growth rate of 5.4% between 1992 and 2014. GDP growth between 2014 and 2020 reached 12.4%, the highest in the Western Hemisphere. The average wage in nominal terms is $4,106.32 per month ($23.32 per hour). The country is the site of the second-largest gold mine in the world, the Pueblo Viejo mine.

While originally dependent on the export of agricultural commodities (mainly sugar, cocoa, coffee, cotton and tobacco), the Caribbean economy has transitioned to a diversified mix of services, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, tourism and trade. Telecommunication, finance and medicine are the main components of the service sector; and many around the Americas and Africa come to the Caribbean for medical purposes in form of medical tourism. The Confederacy has a stock market, the Havana Stockhouse and an advanced telecommunication system and transportation infrastructure. While unemployment is by no means an issue, income equality is a long-term challenge that the government has done little to solve but much to alleviate. The Caribbean is affected by international migration greatly, sending and receiving large flows of migrants. Illegal immigration from Venezuela, and integration of Venezuelans -mostly in Aruba- are major issues. A large, wealthy Caribbean diaspora exists, with Caribbean diaspora famous for owning predominant businesses in countries like Liberia, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Indochina and Hawaii; though middle-class migrants of Caribbean origin exist in many Anglosphere, Western Hemisphere and Hispanic countries, in total contributing to the development of the confederation. More than $47.3 billions were sent to the Caribbean in remittance in 2019 alone.

The Confederation uses the American Dollar, the single uniform currency that is used by 25 other Western Hemisphere countries as their official currency and by 15 more nations around the world -predominantly East Asia and Africa- as a coofficial currency. The Caribbean ranks for 4th in the hemisphere for per capita income, 3rd in life expectancy and boasts a literacy rate of 98.7%, being the 2nd highest in Central America. It also ranks 9th in the world in the number of doctors per capita. It has a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, though average wages go as higher up as $23.32 per hour.

In 2020, the Caribbean had exports of $164.3 billion and imports of $132.7 billion. Its major export partners are Canada 16.2%, the Free States of America 16.1%, the United Kingdom 12.8%, the Netherlands 10.3% and China 9.2%. Its major exports are sugar, tobacco, coffee, cotton, cocoa and fish in agriculture as well as manufactured products made from the former -including rum and clothing; nickel, iron, cobalt, oil and copper in mining; as well as medical products. Imports include machinery, vehicles, military equipment and raw materials. The Caribbean controls 43% of the world's export market for sugar.

There is virtually no homelessness in the Caribbean, with 81.5% of the citizens owning their own home. There is no property tax in the country, and mortgage payments usually do not exceed more than 25% of any household's combined income. Transportation is the only major sector of the economy where the government holds any notable percentage of, with most of the economy functioning under a Free Market economy with the workers' right to organise and form private trade unions for the purpose of collective bargaining enshrined in the constitution.

Agriculture

Caribbean agricultural produce includes various plantation crops such as sugar, tobacco, coffee, cocoa and cotton as well as other crops like beans, potatoes, rice, citrus fruits, avocado, papaya, banana coconut, pineapple, cassava and palm oil as well as lemons, melons, onion and yam. It controls nearly half of the world's sugar export market.

More than 75% of the total land is suitable for crop production and about 6% of the labour force engages in farming. Agriculture makes for 4.7% of the annual GDP. Value of agricultural output grew at an average annual rate of 7.1% though occasional droughts and hurricanes remain a hamper to agriculture. Sugar remains the most important crop in the Caribbean, with Cuba and Dominica respectively being the first and second most-largest producers of sugarcane in the region. There are 25 sugar mills in Cuba and 24 in Hispaniola, though due to general lack of interest in sugar on the global field, the land is gradually being taken out of sugar production and switched to food crops. Cocoa, tobacco and coffee are other important plantation crops whose market export the Caribbean controls a notable portion of

Mining and Resource extraction

Nickel is the most important mineral in the Caribbean, ranking the 5th in terms of annual production in the world. It is mostly mined in Dominica and Cuba. Silver and gold are mined in Pueblo Viejo, the western hemisphere's largest gold mine located in Hispaniola. Silver and Gold mines are the only mineral resources that non-Caribbean companies are not legally allowed to extract, and while some Silver and Gold are exported, the majority is bought from companies by the government to keep in reserve. Bauxite, aluminium, calcium carbonate, marble, amber, gypsum, copper, lignite and platinum are also some other minerals extracted in the Caribbean.

As recently as 2005, oil fields were discovered in the North Cuba Basin and the confederacy began the exploitation of these fields after a period of test-drilling. In addition to Cuban oil and gas, the Confederacy owns large portions of the oil fields in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, making it the most oil-rich Caribbean country, though oil is not a major export in the Confederation. While 76% of the energy used in the Confederacy is fossil-based, there have been actions taken in urban solar farming, in particular in Havana, Santiago and Saint Dominic.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing and industry make for 43.7% of the Caribbean GDP and employs 42% of the population. Medicine -biotechnology, pharmaceutical industry and equipment production- is a major sector making for 14% of the annual export. Among the products sold internationally are vaccines against various viral and bacterial pathogens -including most tropical diseases. The Caribbean has done pioneering work on the development of drugs for cancer treatment.

Manufacturing of consumer goods, food products and electronic equipment for export as well as materials and military equipment for the local market and other Caribbean states are also major segments in the Confederate industrial sector. About 2,500 companies manufacture goods primarily for the Central and North American markets. Situated in 120 industrial parks around the country, these mostly foreign-owned corporations employ around 7% of the world force and produce clothing, electronic components, footwear, and leather goods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, textiles, perfumes & foodstuffs. Much of the basic material needed in these industrial parks have to be imported and paid for.

Other, more traditional -and more consistently domestic-owned- manufacturing is based on sugar refining, cement, iron and steel production and food processing. Rum, beer, cigars, butter, flour, soup, pipes and cigarettes are manufactured for both local consumption and export, with Caribbean (mostly Cuban) Cigars and (mostly Hispaniolan) Rum being famous worldwide.

Tourism


Cuba's Varadero Beach
Tourism is a major sector of the Caribbean economy. It devotes significant resources to building tourist facilities and renovating historic structures. Roughly 8.9 million foreign visitors arrive in the Caribbean per year, bringing nearly $11.6 billion. People often arrive to visit white sand beaches in both Cuba and Hispaniola, Pico Duarte and Lake Enriquillo in Hispaniola, enjoy the year-round warm climate, mountainous scenery and see the various historical buildings -fortresses, castles, cathedrals and other relics from the colonial period- that dot the islands under Caribbean control. In addition, various resorts, hotels, golf fields and Caribbean-style outhouses also entice many from both Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Trade

Canada, the Free States of America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands receive the largest share of Caribbean exports, with their total making 55.4% of total exports from the Caribbean. The Confederacy's main export partner is the Free States of America with 21.3% of all annual imports though Brazil, Germany and the United Kingdom are other major import partners who, along with the FSA, import 50.3% of all goods brought into the country. China is the largest import and export partner that isn't in the above list.

While by no means an ardent believer of free trade, the Confederacy does not impose tariffs on fellow member-states of the Pan-American Treaty Organisation, as well as other states with whom they have signed free trade agreements such as Liberia, Indochina and Sierra Leone. The average tariff rate is 8.2% for other countries, however. The Caribbean has a negative trade deficit as it imports much less than it exports, with $36.1 billion more exports than imports, making for 6% of its GDP.

Currency

The Confederacy, alongside 25 other states in the western hemisphere, uses the American Dollar (abbreviated $; Iso 4217 code is "AD") as its official currency. Other currencies accepted at most tourist sites include the Pound Sterling, the Canadian Dollar, Swiss Franc and German Mark.


Year

Population

Growth rate

1881

1,500,000

-

1902

2,645,000

+76.3%

1929

5,467,344

+106.7%

1938

8,346,417

+52.6%

1945

13,185,901

+57.9%

1972

16,071,579

+21.8%

1991

20,405,273

+26.9%

2010

25,869,500

+26.7%

2020

26,349,973

+1.8%

According to the official census of 2020, the Confederacy's population is 26,349,973, comprising of 13,701,986 women and 12,647,987 men. It has a birth rate of 18.2 per thousand population. Although there was a generally high population growth rate in the confederation throughout the second half of the 20th century, its numbers have reached their lowest in the 21st century, with an average 0.18% growth per year in the last decade. The Confederacy has a fertility rate of 1.94 children per women, and immigraton is also a major source of population growth. This relatively high fertility and birth rate are in spite of the country's largely unrestricted access to legal abortion and widespread use of contraceptives. The Confederacy averages approximately 110.47 people per square kilometre, with population concentrated in urban areas such as Havana, Santiago, Princehaven, Saint Dominic and Saint John.

Caribbean people are divided into three major groups: Euro-Caribbeans who are either descendants of Danish, Dutch, Spanish, French and British colonists, Anglo-American settlers migrating into Cuba (and later Hispaniola, Porto Rico and Costa Rica) after the Ostend Purchase and migrants coming from Europe after 1902. Mulattos or people of mixed origin are the second largest group, made of interbreeding between European settlers, Native Caribbeans and Afro-Caribbean slaves. Afro-Caribbeans are the third major group, with the majority being emancipated slaves, though a minority of wealthy Africans exist who migrated from some coastal African nations.

Tens of millions of Caribbeans live abroad in the Free States, Louisiana, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Indochina, the United Kingdom, Formosa and Spain. There are an estimated 3,100,000 Caribbeans in the United States, 2,350,000 in Brazil, 2,100,000 in Mexico, 1,800,000 in Indochina, 1,500,000 in the United Kingdom, 1,000,000 in Canada, 600,000 in France and up to 1,750,000 in other countries bordering the Caribbean Sea. There are smaller Caribbean communities in other countries like Chile, Japan, Argentina, the Confederate States, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.

Races and Ethnic Groups


Caribbean people in Havana
The Caribbean population is multiethnic, reflecting its complex colonial origin and history. As a result of its colonial history and new world migration, no absolute major ethnicity exist, with the largest group having only barely more than a third of the country's total population. With the exception of Anglo-Americans, no ethnocultural group in the country makes more than 10% of the country's population.

Caribbeans are divided into three major demographics: Euro-Caribbeans, Mulattos and Afro-Caribbeans. The majority of the population are of European origin. 34% of the population are identified as "Anglo-Americans". These people came to the Caribbeans in three main waves. The first wave occurred between 1854 and 1861, and to a lesser degree even afterwards from 1861 to 78. These were American citizens who migrated to Cuba for the purpose of settlement. As its Hispanic and African population had been wholly enslaved, Americans were needed to form both the political and social elite, as well as to allow for a demographic shift to occur in the new territory. The first wave, which makes less than 5% of the total Anglo-American demographics, mostly came to that island from southern, predominantly slaver states that later formed the Confederate States of America. The second wave occurred from 1881 to 1895 during the Golden Circle era, in which people from the newly-erected Confederate States of America migrated to the newly conquered territories in Hispaniola, Costa Rica and various islands in the West Indies to purchase land, plantation and slaves. This group makes for, at most, another 5% of the population. Most of the people who migrated to the Caribbean states in these two waves were later deported to the CSA during and after the Caribbean Civil War with only their clothes on their back. The third wave occurred during and following the Caribbean Civil War. Anglo-American volunteers fighting for Free Hispaniola preferred to settle in the now-liberated Caribbean confederation, in some cases settling in places formerly populated by CSA migrants that had now turned into ghost towns. Migration from the Free States of America, as well as from Texas and Louisiana continued from 1902 to 1940, with a smaller group of Anglo-Americans migrating from the United States to settle in Costa Rica.

The second largest European demographics in the Confederacy is German who make 9.8% of the population. The earliest German migration to the Confederacy begins with the migration of non-slaveholding Germans hailing from the CSA in Cuba. Such migrations of Germans -who make the second largest demographic group in both the FSA and the USA and the second largest in Texas and Louisiana- continued afterwards during the Golden Circle era from the mainland North America, but European Germans did not migrate to the Confederacy until after the Civil War. The majority of these Germans migrated to the Caribbean during and after the First World War, and these are largely of Prussian origin and can trace their lineage back to Polish Silesia and West Prussia.

Other Euro-Caribbean people include Portuguese, Irish, English, Scottish and Italians -who migrated from European countries for better economic purposes-, Spanish, Dutch, Danish and French -who were the original settlers in some territories the Confederacy now controls, as well as various other people of European origin that make a total 0.1% of the population.

The second largest demographic classification are the Mixed or Mulattos. They make a total 12.4% of the population, though their demographics is the fastest rising, and are divided into three main groups: those of European and Native Caribbean origin, those of African and Native Caribbean origin and those of African and European origin. The second is the largest of that group, with 8.6% of the total population.

Black Africans make the third largest group with 6.4%. They are divided into Afro-Cubans, Afro-Hispaniolan and Afro-Antillean people, each hailing from either Cuba, Hispaniola or the Lesser Antilles. A further 1.9% of the population are Liberian-Caribbeans, an extremely wealthy class of Africans who migrated from Liberia between 1920-1980 and especially during the Liberian Civil War.

Other demographic groups include Armenians (0.8%), Assyrians (0.3%) and Jews (0.4%) the majority of whom fled the Middle East during the various periods of chaos in the 20th century, Caribbean Natives (0.4%), as well as Filipino (0.35%) and Chinese (0.15%) workers who migrated during the colonial era and afterwards.

Languages

English (specifically, Caribbean English) is the de facto national language of the Confederacy and the official language at both a federal and state level. Spanish, Dutch, French and Danish hold Co-Official status in some states and territories of the Confederacy. According to a survey in 2015, 17 million Caribbeans (out of a total population of 26.34 million) spoke only English at home. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include German (2.58 million), Spanish (2.29 million), Portuguese (1.92 million) and Italian (1.68 million).

The most widely taught foreign languages in the Confederacy, in terms of enrollment numbers from kindergarten through university undergraduate education, are German, Italian and Spanish. Other commonly taught languages include Latin, Japanese, French and the American Sign Languages. Nearly one-third of all Caribbeans are polyglots, while nearly everyone is fluent in at least one more language other than English.

Religions

While the Confederate States has no official religion enshrined by law, the majority of its population adhere to various denominations of Christianity. In the 2020 census, 74.4% of all Caribbeans were Christians, with 44.4% adhering to Anglican and 8.1% to Continental Protestant denominations of different kinds; 19.2% Catholics, 1.4% belonging to one of the many Eastern Christian Faiths (Eastern Orthodoxy, Assyrian or Armenian Christianity) and a further 1.3% to other Christian denominations. The survey suggested that 10% of the population belonged to other religious groups. These include African (5.75%), Afro-Caribbean (1.15%) and Native Caribbean (0.4%) Folk Religions, Judaism (0.4%), Buddhism (0.3%) and Islam (0.2%). The survey reported that 16.6% of Caribbeans described themselves as agnostic, atheist or simply having no religion.

Population Centres

Name

State

Population

Saint Dominic

Dominica

2,181,455

Havana

Havana Capital District

1,598,610

Princehaven

Haiti

926,056

Santiago

Dominica

414,818

Cape Haiti

Haiti

401,111

Cafou

Haiti

331,617

Santiago

Cuba

325,185

Saint John

Porto Rico

296,494

Delmas

Haiti

287,190

Saint Joseph

Costa Rica

256,641


Politics

The Confederate States are a federal republic made of 10 states, a federal capital districts and one federal territory. It is one of the oldest surviving federations in the world. A federal republic and a representative democracy, the Confederation boasts that it holds a system wherein majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law. The Confederacy ranked 18th on the Democracy Index in 2018, classified as a True Democracy and one of the three in the New World.

In the Confederate federal system, citizens are subject to three levels of government: federal, state and local. The local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In both cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a majority vote within a given district.

The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances resembling that of the US Constitution through which its own system is designed. The Constitution establishes the structures and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled by the courts to be in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review in and of itself was originally not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution but was put to letter in the 3rd amendment of the Confederate Constitution.

The three branches of the federal government are as followed:

  • Legislative: A bicameral Congress, made of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse and the power of impeachment through which it can remove sitting members of the government.

  • Executive: The president is the Commander-in-Chief of the military, has the right to veto on legislative bills (though the veto then can be subject to congressional override), appoints the members of his Cabinet (subject to Senate approval), and is tasked with administering and enforcing federal laws and policies.

  • Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the President with Senate approval, interpret laws and override those they deem unconstitutional.

The House of Representatives has 319 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population. Each state draws single-member districts to confirm with the census apportionment. The Capital District in Havana has three allocated seats, while the territory has one member of Congress who is not allowed to vote. The Senate has 65 seats with each state having a number between one to three senators based on their general population, elected at-large to six-year terms; one-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years. The Capital District and the federal territory do not have senators.

The President serves a four-year term and can be elected to office as many times as he wishes to run. He is elected to office through direct election in a proportional system. Meanwhile the Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the Confederate States, has nine members who serve for one twenty-five year term.

Political Divisions

The 10 states are the principal political divisions in the country. Each state holds jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory where it shares sovereignty with the federal government. The state is subdivided into counties or county equivalents, and further divided into municipalities. The Federal Capital District contains the capital of the Confederacy, the city of Havana. The states and the capital district have the right to elect the president through direct elections, while the singular territory does not have the right to vote in presidential elections. Citizenship is granted at birth in all Confederate states and territories.

Parties and elections

The Confederacy operates under a multi-party system. For elective offices at most levels, state-administered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1942, the Confederacy has been dominated by three major parties: the Progressive Party (representing interventionism and social progressive politics), the Conservative Party (representing isolationism and conservative politics) and the Workers' Party (representing Trade unionism and anti-socialist labor).

In Caribbean political culture, conservatives identify with blue, progressives identify with yellow and workers identify with red. As such, states dominated by each of these parties are identified as "red/blue/yellow" states. Smaller numbers of municipalities and electorates vote for smaller parties, though of them only the liberal democrats have reached beyond 10% of the total House or Senate seats throughout the the Confederacy's modern history.

Progressive Edward J. Wellington, the winner of the 2018 presidential election and former vice president, is serving as the 23rd president of the Confederate States. Leadership in the Senate includes vice president Agatha Selwyn and the President of Congress Pieter van Berkhof. The current Congress is narrowly controlled by the Progressives who control 45% of the seats in the Senate and 48% of the seats in the House. There are 5 Progressive, 3 Conservative and 2 Worker' state governors.

Foreign relations

Government finance

Law enforcement and crime

Credits for the flag go to Wexas

Caribbean confederation

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