Kaiserines

The Republic of the Kaiserines, commonly shortened to the Kaiserines, is a developing country in Oceania. It shares maritime borders with Papua and the North Solomons. It is the only country in the Pacific region in which German is an official language.

The Kaiserines were discovered early in the European age of exploration, but went unclaimed until Austrian explorers arrived in the 1850s and claimed the region for the small Habsburg colonial empire. The Kaiserine Islands developed initially as an Austro-Hungarian plantation farm before attracting significant peasant and guest worker migration following the discovery of gold in eastern New Austria. The islands became part of the British Empire following the First World War and saw significant combat during the Second World War's Pacific conflict. The first nuclear bomb was deployed by the United States against Thai-held Rabaul in New Austria.

The Kaiserines were granted independence peacefully in 1960. The country is considered a rapidly developing nation with a high level of economic inequality between settled urban populations and the largely subsistence-based indigenous Melanesian and Austronesian peoples, whose way of life is threatened by the growing resource extraction industry.

Name
The Kaiserines take their name from an English corruption of the long-form name of the archipelago, the Kaiserin Elisabeth Islands, as given following 1858 by the region's largely Austrian settlers. The islands were named to honour then-Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, wife of then-Emperor Franz Joseph I.

History
The archipelago has been inhabited for nearly 40,000 years, beginning with a poorly-known seres of early migrants and followed later by the regionally-predominant Lapita people. By the time of broader European awareness of the region, the islands were inhabited by a mix of early-arriving Melanesians and more recent-arriving Austronesians.

The islands were first visited in 1616 by the Dutch explorer Willem Schouten. While they were nominally claimed for England in the early 1700s, this claim remained unrealized and lapsed, and the islands were largely ignored for years beyond a few ephemeral visits. The largest two islands were given the names New Britain and New Hibernia, and some regional placenames still retain evidence of British exploration.

Austrian interest in the islands began in the 1850s with the 1858 global circumnavigation expedition of SMS Novara, which stopped on the Gazelle Peninsula en route through the Solomon Islands. In the wake of the voyage, Austria - which maintained a small network of overseas possessions but had been stymied in earlier efforts to settle the Nicobar Islands - laid claim to the archipelago, seeing potential to set up a plantation economy. The region was designated the Kaiserin Elisabeth Islands, the largest two islands renamed New Austria and New Bohemia, and a first wave of settlers arrived in 1861 to set up the early capital at Laurenzhöhe.

Initial exploration and settlement was diffident and plagued by jungle, malaria and mixed reactions from the natives, and by 1880 the settler population was no more than 600 people, many of them Catholic missionaries. This population increased following the 1882 Adolf Schwarzenberg Expedition to the northern mountains of New Austria, which discovered gold deposits. The discovery triggered a wave of fortune seekers to migrate to New Austria and settle around Laurenzhöhe. The New Austria Gold Rush prompted not only an influx of German, Hungarian and Slavic settlers, but the arrival of thousands of African "guest labourers," mostly of the Tsonga ethnic group, imported as low-wage labourers on mines and plantations. These labourers largely worked alongside natives brought into the settlement areas through the Catholic missions.

By the outbreak of the First World War, more than 100,000 European and African settlers had relocated to various communities around the islands, outnumbered by nearly 200,000 natives on New Austria alone. The islands were defended going into the conflict by the 105th Corps of the Common Army and by two sloops, though the battleship SMS Tegetthoff was in the area on a tour of the colonies at the outbreak of war. The islands saw some of the earliest combat in the war and were quickly taken by British and Australian troops, while Tegetthoff continued to harass targets in the Pacific before being sunk by the Japanese.

The Kaiserines were allocated to Britain after the war and become part of the New Guinean territories administered out of New Zealand, but the significant colonial population proved too numerous to be easily deported. The islands continued as a British-administered territory with regional autonomy until the Second World War, when they were captured by Thailand. While the locals initially greeted the Thais as liberators, they were rapidly alienated by the Thai regime's anti-European policies, and a local insurgency developed by the time of the Allied pushback. Allied landings in New Austria and New Bohemia were assisted by German-speaking partisans who aided in confining the Thais to their reinforced base at Rabaul. That site was later used as the first atomic bomb target, demolishing the Thai aerodrome and irradiating much of the surrounding area in the short term.

Following the war, decolonization negotiations resulted in the population of the Kaiserines voting 94% in favour of self-rule in a 1951 referendum. Independence was finalized in that decade and put into force beginning in 1960.

The post-independence era has seen the Kaiserines experience modernization and economic development driven largely by gold and copper mining. Democratization resulted in political instability that has since eased somewhat as mixed-race and settled indigenous people have increasingly asserted political rights and equality to the previously dominant white ruling class. The Kaiserines are still considered a developing country with large inequalities between the urban centres and the subsistence-based highlands.

Geography and environment
The Kaiserine Archipelago consists mainly of volcanic islands, overlying the North Kaiserine, South Kaiserine and Manus Plates. The largest islands in the chain are New Austria, New Bohemia, Schouten and New Carinthia. They are divided into several broad groups:


 * The New Austria Group, consisting of New Austria (main island), the Vitu Islands, and the Dampier Islands along the maritime border with Papua;
 * The New Bohemia Group, consisting of New Bohemia (Latangai) as well as New Carinthia, the northerly Mussau Islands; and the various groups of the New Dalmatian Islands;
 * The Natterer Islands, consisting of Schouten island and several smaller islands;
 * The Westward Islands, consisting of the Hermit Islands and several islets in the northwest.

The islands cluster broadly around a large body of water known as the Novara Sea, after SMS Novara, the ship of the expedition that claimed the islands for Austria. New Austria and New Bohemia are separated by the St. Coloman Strait, and New Bohemia and the Mussau Islands by the Franz Joseph Channel.

Most of the islands have a volcanic origin, and several active volcanoes dominate the area. The highest point in the archipelago is Mount Taron on New Bohemia. Other notable volcanoes include Ulawun and the Rabaul Caldera on New Austria.

The islands are part of two ecoregions. The Kaiserine lowland rainforests extend from sea level to about 1,000 metres elevation before giving way to the Kaiserine montane rainforests. Particularly in the lowlands, these forests have suffered depletion since the 1890s to make way for farms, settlements and gold mining operations. Despite this, most endemic species in the Kaiserines are still widespread, with some subject to newly-established protection programs, namely the Kaiserine kingfisher and other vulnerable tropical kingfisher species considered to be the islands' national birds.

Demographics
The Kaiserines are an ethnically diverse country with no clear majority. Indigenous Kaiserinese make up the largest share of the population, divided between Austronesian and Melanesian tribes in dozens of villages. Upwards of 60 languages are recognized, among numerous additional dialects. Since the Second World War, many of these indigenous people have migrated to urban centres and integrated into settler culture to an extent.

The remainder of the population consists of the descendants of white and black settlers as well as people classed as "Multiracial," a term specifically referring to individuals with mixed indigenous and settler bloodlines. Multiracial individuals make up the largest share of settler descendants, edging out people of white European background by a fraction of a percentage point. The white population is largely made up of descendants of immigrants from old Austria-Hungary, with German, Czech, Ukrainian and Hungarian families well-represented, along with a smaller concentration of English-speakers with roots in Australia during the interwar years.

The black population of the Kaiserines largely descends from individuals brought to the colonies by the Austrians as cheap labourers, mainly through recruiters based in the former Delagoa Bay Colony. These individuals are predominantly of southern Bantu ethnic groups, mainly Tsonga, Swazi, Ndebele and Zulu speakers.

Languages
German is the official language and is spoken by the vast majority of the population, universally in urban areas and partially as a second language in remote indigenous communities. Among indigenous languages, Kuanua, a major dialect of New Austria, has also achieved official status.

The Unserdeutsch dialect is recognized as an official language of communication. It is a German-based pidgin language similar in nature to the English-based Tok Pisin spoken in Papua and to similar Pacific Island pidgins spoken throughout Oceania. Most Kaiserinese can communicate fluently in Unserdeutsch as well as another language: Those living in urban areas are likely to speak Unserdeutsch and German, while those in montane indigenous communities are likely to speak Unserdeutsch alongside their native dialect.

Religion
Approximately 65% of Kaiserinese are Roman Catholics, including significant Indigenous populations contacted by a large number of Austro-Hungarian mission expeditions during the colonial period. Other religious groups include Kaiserinese pagan and animistic faiths, Islam (5%) and those who follow no religion.