Brazoria

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 This article is a B-class article. It is written to a good standard. This article is part of Altverse II.
Kingdom of Brazoria (en)

Reino de Brazória (es)
Königreich Brazorien (de)
Motto: Dios Protegenos
God Protects Us
Anthem: Patria Siempre
Location of Brazoria in North America
Location of Brazoria in North America
Capital Grand Llano
Largest city Houston
Official languages English, Spanish, German
Ethnic groups
(2020)
37.5% Brazoreño
34.3% Angleso
10.1% Alamano
12.8% Black
6.1% Asian
1.4% Indigenous
1.2% Other
Demonym(s) Brazorian
Government Federal constitutional monarchy
• King
Juan Carlos II
Ed Gonzales (PP)
Legislature Parliament
Corte
Diet
Independence from the Spanish Empire
• Declared
21 March 1820
2 February 1848
11 May 1861
30 May 1931
19 April 1989
20 February 2000
Area
• Total
1,201,404 km2 (463,865 sq mi)
Population
• 2022 estimate
51,485,000
• 2020 census
49,528,570
• Density
42.854/km2 (111.0/sq mi)
GDP (PPP) 2020 estimate
• Total
$2.21 trillion
• Per capita
$44,620
GDP (nominal) 2020 estimate
• Total
$1.992 trillion
• Per capita
$40,220
Gini (2020) 31.7
medium
HDI (2021) 0.880
very high
Currency escudo ($, B$) (BZE)
Time zone UTC-6:00 (BST)
• Summer (DST)
UTC-5:00 (BDST)
Date format DD-MM-YYYY
Driving side right
Calling code +1
ISO 3166 code BZO
Internet TLD .bz
Website
hmgov.bz

The Kingdom of Brazoria (Spanish: Reino de Brazória, German: Königreich Brazorien; historiographically known as the Second Kingdom of Brazoria or simply the Second Kingdom) is a sovereign state in central North America. A core component of Anglo-America, Brazoria borders the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, the United Commonwealth to the east, Tournesol and Superior to the north, Sierra to the west, and Mexico to the south. The Kingdom is made up of 30 provinces, with Comanche Province being the largest by area and San Jacinto Province the most populous. The capital of Brazoria is Grand Llano, while its largest city is Houston. Brazoria has a total land area of over 1.2 million square kilometers and a population estimated at around 50 million as of 2022.

Brazoria is a federal constitutional monarchy with a bicameral parliamentary system. The Monarch is the head of state, while the Chancellor serves as the head of government. The Parliament is composed of the lower Diet and the upper Corte. The Chancellor is invited to govern by the Monarch after elections for the Diet; since 2000, the Monarch has always chosen the leader of the largest party or coalition of parties. The Chancellor forms government by appointing Secretaries, who serve with the Chancellor as the functional executive of HM Government. The Kingdom's modern political structure was established by the Constitution of 1989, after the Yellowrose Revolution toppled the Landonist government.

The area now comprising modern Brazoria has been inhabited since prehistoric times by Indigenous Americans. The Spanish Empire was the first European colonial power to explore the region named Texas, doing so as early as 1526. Settlement began in earnest with the establishment of Puerto Real in 1573 by John of Austria, at the behest of his half brother King Phillip II. The early Spanish-speaking immigrants, who would become known as the Brazoreños, were later joined by English-speakers starting in the 18th century, the Anglesos. The semi-autonomous Intendency of Texas was created in 1787 to organize the accelerating levels of immigration to the region. At the outset of the Mexican War of Independence in 1810, the Brazoreños resented the Mexican insurgency movement and remained loyal to the King of Spain. In 1820, after Ferdinand VII was imprisoned by his own military, Texas declared its independence as the Kingdom of Brazoria, electing the House of Habsburg de Brazos, the descendants of John of Austria, as its royal house. The brief Brazorian War of Independence resulted in a Brazorian victory by 1821, as Mexico failed to reel in the rebellious Brazoreños and Anglesos.

Tensions with Mexico would remain over land claims surrounding the Rio Grande valley, coming to a head in the Mexican-American War. After the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo, Brazoria had its territory officially recognized as extending to the Rio Grande, although this boundary came into dispute with the newly established California Republic. The initially strained relationship between California–later Sierra–and Brazoria stabilized with the Pact of the Rockies following the New Mexico Crisis of 1861. Brazoria and Sierra grew increasingly close War of Contingency, and Brazoria also played a large role in securing Superior's independence from the collapsing United States. Pronounced economic development and mass industrialization characterized the nearly sixty year period of peace and prosperity known as the Gilded Age following the end of the War of Contingency; the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901 further accelerated the nation's economic emergence. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression in the late 1920s brought an abrupt end to the Gilded Age and saw unprecedented socioeconomic turmoil spread across the country. In 1931, the Republic of Brazoria was established after King Esteban III acceded to the demands of the May Revolution and relinquished the throne. The Brazorian Civil War erupted soon after, and the next year, the United Commonwealth invaded in support of the Landonist Crimson faction, sparking the Great War in North America.

The victorious Landonists formalized the Brazorian Confederation in 1937 and engaged in a prolonged period of society-building known contemporarily as Crimsonification. During the Landonist period, Brazoria saw numerous contributions to Landonist faction of the Cold War, including its most significant in the areas of uranium production and the Space Race. Throughout the Crimson period, Brazoria experienced political oppression, reeducation, and intermittent insurgency, but at the same time, the country developed universal access to healthcare, vastly improved literacy rates, and a near-total eradication of rural and urban poverty. The Yellowrose Movement began in earnest during the late 1950s and grew substantially in popularity during the 1970s and 1980s with the reintroduction of Western Anglo-American culture and limited economic and political transformation of the Garter Reforms in 1969. The Yellowrose Revolution of 1989 saw the collapse of the Landonist government and the establishment of the modern Second Kingdom. The Pecan Revolution of 2000 saw Brazoria transition into its present liberal democracy and accede to the CAS.

Modern Brazoria is a developed mixed market economy with a high human development and standard of living. Since 2000, the country has ranked highly in political freedom and governmental transparency among comparable nations. Brazoria is a nuclear-armed country with a high reliance on nuclear energy. Brazoria maintains strong relations with Sierra and Superior, with all three countries members of the Conference of American States. Additionally, Brazoria is a founding member of the League of Nations, as well as a regular member of NATO, the OAS, the OCED, the World Bank, and the IMF.

Etymology

The word Brazoria in English is a variation of the originally Spanish word Brazória. The name is derived from the Brazos River in central-eastern Brazoria. The Brazos served as a geographic anchor point for much of the region's first European inhabitants. The Spanish Empire originally called the region the Nuevas Filipinas and later on Texas (Tejás in Spanish). By the end of the 18th century, the Spanish-speaking population of the Brazos River valley had diverged significantly from the Spanish-speaking cultural groups in central and southern New Spain, coming to self-identify as the Brazoreños. Upon declaring independence from both the faltering Spanish Empire and the Mexican rebel state in 1820, the name Brazória was adopted by the Brazoreños to mark the transition from the colonial Intendency of Texas. By changing the name, the Brazoreños sought to relegate the concept of Texas to history, thereby weakening any claim that Mexico might seek over the territory.

The political identifier Kingdom refers to the monarchical national government. The modern Kingdom is sometimes referred to as the Second Kingdom, due to the interruption of the rule of the House of Habsburg de Brazos by the Republican and then Landonist governments from 1931 to 1989. The First Kingdom lasted from 1820 to 1931, directly succeeding the Intendency of Texas, a colony of the Spanish Empire.

Geography

Blanca Peak is the highest point of elevation in Brazoria.

Brazoria's borders are derived in part from a series of treaties between both the Intendency and First Kingdom governments of Brazoria and the then-extant United States, with the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819 defining the Sabine River as the eastern boundary of the country and the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo in 1848 defining the Rio Grande as its western limit. Between these two rivers, a series of straight lines comprise the nation's borders with Superior, Tournesol, and the United Commonwealth; all of these border lines were drafted following the conclusion of the War of Contingency.

Brazoria's long north-south extension and proximity to the geographic centre of North America provide the country which a large degree of environmental and climactic diversity. High level ecological and geographic regions of the country include a portion of the High Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Western Tablelands, the northeastern portion of the Chihuahuan Desert, the Great Plains, the Edwards Plateau, the Prairie Belt, the Gulf Coastal Plain, and the Piney Woods. Often these disparate regions are grouped together further into a collection of five: the Brazorian Rockies, the North-Central Plains and Prairies, the Cisgrande Drylands, the Hill Country, and the Gulf Wet and Woodlands.

Tornados, like the pictured 2013 El Reno tornado, are common in the Northern Praries and can be extremely locally devastating.

One consequence of Brazoria's location at the confluence of these various geographic region is its highly diverse climate composition. The Brazorian Rockies experience cool, dry summers and cold, somewhat wet winters with high volumes of snowfall. The North-Central Plains and Prairies have a varied continental climate with hot summers and frigid winters. The Cisgrande Drylands are arid year-round, with varying degrees of temperature change according to the specific altitude of any given locale. The Hill Country and Gulf Wet and Woodlands are both located in humid subtropical climate zones, although the specific instances of rainfall vary by given distance from the Gulf of Mexico. Much of Brazoria exists in the Sun Belt of Anglo-America, defined simultaneously by its sunny, warm climate and its propensity towards extreme weather. Hurricanes strike Brazoria relatively frequently from the Gulf of Mexico, while tornadoes are quite common in the interior of the country. Occasional drought can have severe consequences for agricultural and domestic water use. The near-entirety of Brazoria is considered to be at high climate risk due to the cumulative effects of climate change.

History

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

Pre-Columbian 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

TThe first Europeans to explore what is today Brazoria were the Spanish, under whose employ Christopher Columbus explored the Americas as early as 1492. Pánfilo de Narváez was the leader of the first expedition to the Brazoria region in 1526, as he unintentionally was washed ashore near modern Galveston. Of the 80 men who began on this expedition, only four survived, with de Narváez himself perishing along the route. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a survivor of the expedition, published some of the first documentation of the tribes, landscapes, and environments on the region now constituting Brazoria and Sierra. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado launched the first intentional expedition of the region in 1540, seeking out the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, rumored to exist in the central regions of the North American continent.

The first Spanish colony to be established in the region was Puerta Real, at the mouth of the Brazos River, by Don John of Austria. A bastard son of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Don John was encouraged by his half-brother, the regnant Philip II of Spain, to lead a settlement of the colony in 1573, with the King hoping that the development of a more firmly rooted non-Indigenous Spanish colony would allow for easier control of the troubled shipping routes of the Spanish treasure fleet. Don John brought several thousand men and women to settle Puerta Real, which soon became a hub for incoming immigration in the area. The early colony was plagued by native raids and two severe instances of cholera; by 1600 it had been mostly abandoned by its non-military population in favor of the more upriver San José de Brazos, leaving only soldiers, sailors, and shipbuilders at the original colony site.

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.

Intendency period

The Intendency of Texas was created by the Spanish Viceroy Manuel Antonio Flórez in 1787, separating it from the Provincias Internas and affording Texas a greater deal of autonomous control. The growth of the towns of San Antonio and Nacogdoches, continued attacks by Comanche raiders, and it's geographic distance from the administrative center of the Viceroyalty all contributed to the creation of the new, local colonial government. Ricardo Mattias Alfonso was appointed as the first Captain General of Texas, and Alfonso took it upon himself to oversee the growth of the region by increasing immigration from outside the empire. As many Spanish subjects were unwilling to migrate to the edge of the Empire, Alfonso permitted foreigners to settle in Texas, granting the first English-speaking settlers the right to settle in areas around San Antonio, Nacogdoches, and the newly established port at Matagorda. 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. The increasing stability of the region saw a rise in the number of overall settlers coming to the area, although almost none of the new arrivals were Spanish-speaking.

The first Czechs and Germans arrived in Texas from the Lands of the Bohemian Crown in 1795, many of them secretly Hussites seeking to escape the persecution of their faith in their Roman Catholic-dominated homelands. These Hussites established the community of New Tabor that same year, as while nominally Catholic, their linguistic isolation from the English and Spanish-speaking majority of settlers in the region proved effective in hiding their true faith from colonial administrators. Further, the growing number of Protestant settlers in the area saw the lessening of religious restrictions in the region, as enforcing such policies only proved to stem the flow of immigrants to the area. Within only thirteen years as a Intendency, the population of Texas had quadrupled from just under 3,000 in 1790 to almost 12,500 by 1800. The majority of this population growth was made up of English-speaking settlers in the areas surrounding San Antonio, Nacodoches, and Matagorda, while a smaller minority were the Czech-German Hussites centered in the town of New Tabor. Political concerns in mainland Spain saw a significant decline in colonial oversight, and Charles IV of Spain extended the term of Captain General Alfonso indefinitely, despite protests from then-Viceroy of New Spain Miguel José de Azanza.

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 encouraged 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.

The Province of Téjas, as it existed from 1821 to 1835.

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.

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

Sante Fe, pictured here around 1847, was an important strategic position in New Mexico, whose seizure by the Texans secured the young nation's image as a regional power.

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 neighboring 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 neighbors. 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 realization of Texan territorial claims against Mexico. Lamar also authorized the beginning of nationally-operated universal education and formalized a standing army. 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.

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 favorable 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 recognized 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 neighboring California, which was to later become Sierra. Following the surrender of Mexico, and the realization 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.

Founding Councilors of Brazoria

Gilded period

German immigrants on a wagon train to central Brazoria, dated 1854.

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, many of whom were German revolutionaries escaping the after effects of the Revolutions 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. Germans would continue to be the largest immigrant group to Brazoria until the very end of the 19th century. British, French, Czech and other Europeans also made up considerable portions of the new immigrants to the country, many of whom came for the very same reasons as the Germans before them. The ability to become a citizen of the Republic was made easy for all new immigrants to the country, and immigration processing centers in Galveston and Corpus Christi were expanded multiple times throughout the 19th century to handle the constantly increasing flow of people entering the country from overseas.

As large numbers of immigrants began to settle in the New Mexico territory, ambiguity between Brazoria and Sierra over what defined the border between the two countries caused into skirmishes along the Rio Grande. Brazorian settlers would attempt to cross the river and were often intercepted by Sierran military police. One Brazorian settler group refused to return to the east side of the river, and their fire against Sierran border guards resulted in the Massacre of San Jaun Crossing, triggering the New Mexico Crisis of 1861. 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 Defeat, beginning in 1853 with the Battle of Canadian Creek and ending in 1904 with the Indian Act.

The American Civil War benefited Brazoria greatly as it became a necessary 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. Many Southerners began settling in Brazoria's eastern provinces of Neches and Sabine as the imminent defeat of the Confederate States grew more apparent. Although the South had been 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 the fracturing of the United States into several smaller nations in the War of Contingency. Brazoria would join Sierra to successfully halt the advance of the United Commonwealth and preserve the independence of the newly-founded countries across the continent. With the near-complete collapse of the United States, the continued influx of new European and Southern Anglo-American 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 favorable central location on the continent, Brazoria became the center of the many railroads which connected the east and west coasts. These railroads would allow for the better utilization of the Republic's natural agricultural bounty, further amplifying the regional economic importance of the nation. The plantations founded by the ex-Southerners in the eastern provinces increased this agricultural productivity four-fold. However, by 1885 a shift from agriculture to industry became very pronounced, as shipping, shipbuilding, and industrial and consumer goods manufacturing became core sectors of the economy. The massive economic growth in the few decades following the War of Contingency saw most of its profits in the control of a few monopolisitic companies. Although the growing middle class exercised some political sway in the transition of the Whig Party to the Progressive Party, most politicians remained firmly opposed to major economic reform.

Later Gilded period

President Jim Hogg, founder of the National Reform Party.

With the growth of Progressive Party among middle class residents of major urban centers, many in the elite of the National Party worried of the spreading Landonist sentiments in the lowest classes of Brazorians. As inequality had reached record highs and minor strikes had become more common in the last decades of the 19th century, a group of populist National Party elites split from the party to established the National Reform Party. National Reform and its leader Jim Hogg synthesized middle class concerns with populist messaging that aimed to draw support from lower strata of Brazorian society. In the 1898 elections, National Reform swept into power, completely eradicating the original National Party and even taking some of the Progressive Party's first footholds in the House of Representatives.

Jim Hogg aggressively reformed most functionary offices and departments of the government. Under his leadership, progressively minded middle class voters were wooed by his promise to end slavery, which he fulfilled in 1899. Although he had achieved significant popularity with many rural Brazorians in the east for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, he failed to ebb the growing Landonist movement within industrial worker's unions. The Anti-Landonist Union Act sought to outlaw the largest Landonist union in Brazoria at the time, the Landonist Labor Union of Brazorian. Hogg's presidency coincided with the Spindletop Gusher of 1901, with the following oil boom catapulting Brazoria into becoming the world's largest oil producer. Hogg's popularity would not last his entire presidency however, as middle class Brazorians began to feel a familiar feeling of isolation from federal politics due to the perceived continued enrichment of Brazoria's already wealthy and their scope of political influence.

Likewise, the petroleum industry quickly found itself consolidated in an oligopoly 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. The 1910 elections were subsequently devastating for the National Reform Party, as many middle class voters defected back to the Progressives, and a rising number of lower class Brazorians began supporting the Marxist-Landonist Democratic Worker's Party, which had arisen in the wake of the Anti-Landonist policies of the previous government. By the time of the 1914 elections, Jim Hogg had reached the maximum three terms of Presidency he was forced to step down as National Reform's nominee. The 1914 elections were the party's worst performance in their existence, seeing the rise of the first President from the Progressive Party, journalist and publisher William P. Hobby, and the entrance of the Democratic Worker's Party into the House of Representatives.

William Hobby's administration put a high priority on addressing the root of social and economic inequalities, which he feared would continue to worsen and eventually result in mass political instability. The first anti-trust legislation in Brazoria was passed within a hundred days of Hobby's presidency beginning. As Hobby moved to break up the petroleum oligopoly through enforcement of the legislation, a provincial court judge in Sabine Province stayed the enforcement of the law, and the case eventually moved to the Supreme Court. There, it was ruled that the law was unconstitutional in overstepping the bounded powers of the national government. The loss at the Supreme Court invalidated the anti-trust laws, resulting in a series of nationwide protests against the Supreme Court decision, especially among middle and lower class citizens. The DWP continued to make strong gains in industrial, urban areas, and it even began to amass support among the majority black and latino communities at the edges of the country. Despite the gains of the DWP, most of the middle class had remained staunchly in support of the Progressive Party, which went on to enact a series of politically liberalizing reforms that saw the enactment of universal and women's suffrage in 1919 and the election of Brazoria's first female President Miriam A. Ferguson in the 1924 elections.

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

The high growth in volume of exports experienced in the wake of the Continental Revolutionary War only compounded the original strength of the economy which had been bolstered by the discovery of oil two decades earlier. The decade of the 1920s was extremely prosperous for both the middle and upper classes of the country, and many people began to buy in to the burgeoning stock markets to expand their personal fortunes. The rapid pace at which people loaned money and invested it in stocks caused an eventual price bubble, and when the bubble popped in 1929 on Black Tuesday, the nation's entire banking system collapsed as lenders saw mass defaults from nearly everyone who had made investments financed by loans. President Ferguson's inability to cope with the development of the Great Depression and the emergence of the Dust Bowl crisis saw the Republic in a state of crisis by the beginning of 1932.

Landonist revolutionary period

Tensions between Brazoria and the neighbouring United Commonwealth had been deteriorating since that nation's Landonist Revolution. Although Brazoria reached deeper assurances from Sierra over matters of mutual defense, both nations were struggling to cope with the severe economic disarray caused by the Great Depression. Inadequate attention to military administration, alongside mounting defections by soldiers to paramilitary organizations left the Brazorian Army in its most vulnerable position in history by the year 1932. As Landonist and Anti-Republican paramilitary organizations grew, the remaining structure of the Brazorian Army began to prepare contingency plans for a possible popular uprising against the constitutionally legitimate government, which many in the higher echelons of the Ferguson administration grew ever the more fearful of.

Brazorian Crimson Army forces, pictured here outside of Austin in August 1932, were largely supplied by the Continental war machine.

On 2 April 1932, after a defecting Army Major revealed the military's plot to seize political power in the event of a Landonist victory in the coming elections, tensions reached a boiling point in the nation's industrial centers of Houston and Beaumont. The Federation of Landonist Unions declared a general strike and demanded the Army be reined in by the President, crippling what little ongoing economic activity remained. With a looming bankruptcy crisis not far out of sight, President Ferguson declared martial law and ordered the Army to break up the strikes. On 3 April 1932, the Third Battalion of the Brazorian Army mobilized in Houston and attempted to break up the strikers at the refineries of the Ship Channel. This confrontation culminated in the Battle of Baytown, the first engagement of what would become the Brazorian Landonist Revolution. Not long after the fighting in Baytown commenced, the Reformed Union Combine of Brazoria called for the mobilization of all workers, unions, and Landonist organizations against the tyranny of the Ferguson government. It is generally believed that at this point in time, the RUCB sought the intervention of the United Commonwealth in the Revolution.

By 11 April 1932, the Brazorian Army had been fully mobilized, albeit without a full complement of supplies and soldiers in many divisions. Although revolutionary forces had seized control over much of the industrial areas in the east, they were lacking in organization and supplies themselves to a degree greater than that of the Army. On 12 April 1932, Continental Army units began crossing the Sabine River line, triggering the beginning of the North American Front of the Great War. The quick flush of Continental armor and troops into the regions under Landonist revolutionary control solidified those fronts against White Army assaults, and by the end of April the Landonist forces began pushing the front westward. The relief brought by the Continental invasion allowed time for the Brazorian Landonist organizations to centralize into the Crimson Army. After a clear perimeter front had been established over much of Neches, Sabine, and San Jacinto, leading figures within the Democratic Worker's Party declared the foundation of a Landonist Revolutionary Transitional Government, to which the Crimson Army became subordinated.

The Summer Offensive of 1932 saw a hard push by Continental and Crimson Army forces towards the political capital of Brazoria, Austin, where the Ferguson government was centering its defensive capacities. Much of the country's western territories were left completely undefended as the White Army sought to build a "Steel Wall" running along rail lines from Oklahoma through Dallas to San Antonio. The White Army used what little resources it had undevoted to the Steel Wall to secure key metropolitan areas in the west, otherwise leaving the sparsely populated rural areas in a state of near-anarchy. Banditry became extremely common in this period, as defecting soldiers harassed towns along rail lines and beyond. Many editorials from the period compared the phenomenon as a return to the days of the Wild West. By July, it became clear that the Steel Wall strategy was buckling, especially at its outer flanks, and that the line would soon collapse without external support. Brazoria's solely capable ally, Sierra, was busy managing the outbreak of war in the Pacific, and the logistics links between the two countries was hardly equipped to handle the transfer of manpower and supplies necessary to keep the front line in place.

Dallas fell to Continental and Crimson Army forces in August, resulting in a break along the central corridor of the White Army's Steel Wall. Fearing the eminent encirclement of forces in Oklahoma, the White Army General in charge of the Third Army Group, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower unilaterally declared a general retreat from the region, to a new, more defensible position in the Rocky Mountain foothills stretching from Albuquerque to Denver. The August March West was a seminal moment in the Revolution, as many already-demoralized White Army soldiers began defecting and turning to banditry or even the Crimson Army. In the meanwhile, the Continental-Crimson Army marched into Oklahoma unopposed. The Third Army Group of the White Army managed to use the retreat to dig-in in a long line stretching along the railway from Albuquerque to Denver, and although it was not sanctioned by leaders in Austin, some within the President's inner circle began pressuring her to follow suit and consolidate their forces in the west. With all advisors forecasting the eventual fall of Austin to the Continental-Crimson forces, Ferguson authorized the retreat of the Second Army Group to the west, while the First Army Group was ordered to maintain the front and buy the departing forces time.

As the Second Army Group began its departure to the west, the Continental-Crimson Army began a general push across the front, with intelligence having reached them of the retreat. On the afternoon of 14 August 1932, the combined Landonist forces broke through the defensive nexus at Bastrop, and armor columns quickly advanced to the outskirts of the capital. By the early morning of the 15th, Landonist forces had seized the core of the city, with Crimson Army soldiers raising a crimson standard atop the rotunda of the Capitol building. President Ferguson and her administration had escaped the city some days before, but Gen. William Simpson of the First Army Group had remained in the city and was captured that afternoon.

With its political military apparatus consolidated in the Pecos, Colorado, Ute, and Comanche provinces, the White Brazorian government could more effectively resist the offensive efforts of the continuous Landonist advance that had begun eight months before. Centralized defensive measures were supplemented by the more direct rail links to Sierra through Albuequerque and Denver. The Rio Grande Winter provided for a fleeting period of territorial control stability, as White Army forces entrenched themselves along the Albuequerque-Denver railway and Crimson Army forces cracked down on the anarchic and bandit organizations stirring continuous unrest in the occupied east. By the spring of 1933, the Crimson Army had grown to rival the White Army in size. Continuous repair efforts to industrial centers damaged in the conflict's outbreak began yielding the first fully functional military-industrial production in Brazoria in some time. While the United Commonwealth had begun exerting itself across more fronts, so too did the allies of the White Army, namely, the Sierrans.

Landonist era

Early contemporary period

Contemporary period

Politics

Brazoria is a federal constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. The contemporary system of government was established by the Constitution of Brazoria, passed in 1989 and heavily revised in 2000 through the 2000 Brazorian Constitutional Convention. The Monarch of Brazoria is the largely ceremonial sovereign and head of state of Brazoria and appoints the Chancellor of Brazoria, selects members to their Council of Secretaries. The Parliament of Brazoria is a bicameral chamber consisting of the Corte of Brazoria and the Diet of Brazoria, which are both elected through mixed voting systems. The Supreme Court of Brazoria is the national judiciary and is headed by the President Justice of Brazoria and organized into a council of seven justices.

Government

John Cornyn (cropped).jpg Gusbilirakis.jpeg
Juan Carlos II
King since 1989
Ed Gonzales
Chancellor since 2019

The Monarchy forms the executive branch of the Brazorian government. The monarch, known as the King or Queen of Brazoria, is the head of state and sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Brazoria. Like most modern monarchies across the world, the sovereign is limited to a ceremonial position within the government of Brazoria, with real executive authority being placed in the hands of the Chancellor and their cabinet. However, the sovereign is entrusted with a handful of executive privileges, known as the royal prerogatives, which allow the government to function properly. As the head of state, the sovereign is the commander-in-chief of the Brazorian Armed Forces, though like in the government, delegates the actual proceedings of the military to a council of military leaders, known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As sovereign, the monarch is the symbol of national sovereignty and pride.

The Parliament is the bicameral legislature of Brazoria. It serves as the primary organ of the Legislative branch, and it is through the Parliament that the Government is appointed and confirmed from. The Parliament is made up of a lower house, the Diet, and an upper house, the Corte. Seats in the Diet are apportioned to the provinces based on census data, which is collected every ten years. Seats in the Corte are set by the Constitution and are equal among the provinces, with each province entitled to five representatives to the chamber. A parrel voting system is employed for elections to the Diet, where 230 members are elected through the first-past-the-post system while 120 members are elected through the party-list proportional system.

It is from within the Diet that the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor are elected to a term which is determined by the monarchy, but generally last four years along with the Parliament. The Chancellor is typically the leader of the largest party in the Diet and the Corte, while the Vice Chancellor is appointed by the Chancellor and is typically their deputy, either in their party or in a coalition agreement. The Chancellor is responsible for running the day-to-day proceedings of the federal government and the appointment of a cabinet of ministers who assist them in leading a certain sector of the government. Collectively, the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Commissioners, and the Cabinet, make up what is considered to be the de facto the Brazorian Government, responsible for coordinating national policy on matters of state and affairs.

The other primary branch of the Government is the Judiciary, which is made up of the Circuit Courts and the Supreme Court. Unlike the Parliament and its associated positions, members of the Judiciary are not elected, but rather appointed by the sovereign based on the advice of the chancellor and consent from Parliament. Although not a requirement prior to appointment, members of the Supreme Court and the associated circuit courts have specialized experience with their profession. Members of the Supreme Court are known as associate justices, while the head of the court is the President Justice. There are a total of thirteen associate justices, including the president justices.

Law and justice

Brazoria, like many other Anglo-American states, utilizes a common law legal system, where precedent carries significant weight in the judicial framework. Brazorian courts are organized across municipal, provincial, circuit, and federal levels. Decisions made at the lowest level can be appealed through each level given the next agrees to take on the case, whereas otherwise the decision of the last court would stand. The lowest courts, located at county and provincial levels, handle the majority of both criminal and civil cases filed in the country. These courts are organized by their respective provinces, and are subject to the distinct laws and regulations which may vary from province-to-province. Judges within these lower courts are elected in a similar manner to those of higher, national courts, albeit with votes only coming from those residing within their respective jurisdictions. The Circuit Courts are the lower level appeals courts of the Brazorian Judiciary, where the Supreme Court is the highest level in the country. Circuit Courts and the Supreme Court both have the power to influence the operation of any provincial government or even the federal government, but decisions made by the Supreme Court are unique in that they cannot be overturned by statutory legislation.

Law enforcement in Brazoria is primarily left to the discretion of the individual province. Most republics organize their law enforcement agencies at the municipal level, in addition to maintaining more specialized, province-wide police forces. Some provinces, particularly in the more rural and sparsely populated western regions, utilize solely province-wide law enforcement bodies. Ambiguous jurisdiction in otherwise municipal-level cases are typically taken up by these province-wide police forces. Otherwise, the vast majority of cases are tended to by municipal law enforcement and municipal courts. At the national level, the Department of Justice and the Department of Internal Security serve as the principal organs of the Brazorian Government in justice and law enforcement. The Royal Constabulary is the sole law enforcement body under the authority of the Department of Justice, with jurisdiction over major interrepublic crimes, enforcing higher level court rulings, and coordinating local and national police efforts in extraordinary circumstances. The Major Investigations Bureau, Transportation Security Bureau, Drugs and Firearm Enforcement Bureau, Civil Security Bureau, and Border Security Bureau are all organized under the Department of Internal Security, with each serving a specific role in nationwide security administration.

Administrative divisions

Map of Brazorian regions, colored and with names.svg

Brazoria is divided into 13 Provinces. In the Anglo-American system employed by Brazoria, Provinces have some degree of independence from the Brazorian Government, though are ultimately subserviant to the federal government. As represented in the Parliament, all Council Republics are given a portion of seats in the Diet proportional to their total population. In the Corte, each province is equally represented, with each province entitled to five representatives.

According to the Constitution of Brazoria, each province is entitled to their own governments, constitution, and laws, if they are not contradicting pre-established federal laws or Supreme Court rulings. A constitution is required from admittance to Brazoria as a province, and is legally required to be modelled off of the Constitution of Brazoria, as to insure the province is guaranteed the same amount of rights shared with other provinces. The head of a province is the TBD, and is elected through means that differ from each province. However, most provinces employ a parliamentary system similar to the federal government.


Province Flag Capital Population (2022 estimate) Land area (km2)
Brazos Flag of Brazos Province.svg Austin 4,250,000 N
Colorado Flag of Colorado Region.svg Denver 4,750,000 N
Comanche Flag of Comanche Province.svg Lubbock 650,000 N
Guadalupe Flag of Guadalupe Province.svg San Antonio 4,500,000 N
Leon Flag of Leon Province.svg Dallas 9,850,000 N
Llano Flag of Llano Autonomous Province.svg Waco 3,500,000 N
Neches Flag of Neches Province.svg Beaumont 2,250,000 N
Oklahoma Flag of Oklahoma Metropolitan Province.svg Oklahoma City 3,950,000 N
Pecos Flag of Pecos Province.svg Santa Fe 1,350,000 N
Rio Grande Flag of Valle de las Palmas Metropolitan Province.svg Laredo 1,850,000 N
Sabine Flag of Sabine Province.svg Nacogdoches 2,050,000 N
San Jacinto Flag of Houston Metropolitan Province.svg Houston 10,450,000 N
Ute Flag of Ute Province.svg Amarillo 550,000 N

Diplomacy and defence

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 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 2000 and participates in the Lincoln Area. Brazoria maintains strong relationships with the Kingdom of Sierra, Superior, and Astoria, with the four being viewed as regional leaders of western North America. 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, Argentina, and Angola. Brazoria maintains neutral, yet slightly tense relations with the United Commonwealth, its former ally and benefactor, and other members of the Chattanooga Pact.

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 and the United Commonwealth 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.

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

In the early 20th century, up until just before the Landonist Revolution, 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 theorized to be more plentiful than oil reserves in Brazoria today, with proven reserves in the country of over 5.354 trillion cubic metres putting Brazoria at 8th in the world in terms of known reserves. All of the crude oil and natural gas in Brazoria is explored, extracted, and transported by the self-organized, nationally monopolized petroleum and natural gas corporation COG, which is one the world's largest individual source-to-buyer producers. All fossil fuel operations in Brazoria are managed by COG, which exports most its products to the neighboring United Commonwealth.Additionally, all 907,316 kilometres of oil and gas pipelines across the country are managed by COG. While Brazoria retains a significant petroleum extraction and refinement industry, it is scarcely used as a source of electric power generation, typically in emergency scenarios on a smaller, more localized context in the form of back up diesel-electric generators. Natural gas, however, makes up nearly a quarter of the national electricity generation. Petroleum derivatives such as gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel are integral to the Brazorian transportation economy, with over 91.2% of all modern vehicles operating on some refined version of oil.

Uranium mining and nuclear energy have served as the cornerstones of the modern Brazorian energy sector since the Atomic Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Over 70% of the nation's electric generation was through nuclear energy in 2021. All uranium exploration, extraction, and refinement operations are managed by Confederation Atomics, which also manages all nuclear plant operations. Since the mid-2010s, atomic energy has been a crucial part of the Brazorian plan to decarbonize the internal economy by the year 2050. Brazoria's heavy reliance on nuclear energy has drawn criticism from a number of environmentalist and anti-atomic organizations throughout the modern period, most notably in reaction to the 1993 Castle Rock incident, where three workers were exposed to cancer-inducing doses of ionizing radiation and died within a decade of exposure. Since then, Confederation Atomics has claimed to have increased safety measures to the most maximum level possible under direction from the Confederation Government. There have been several minor incidents since then, albeit with no associated long-term impacts. While uranium mining is considered a key aspect of Brazoria's contemporary energy economy, it makes up a relatively small percentage of the total energy sector labor force. Positions in petroleum and natural gas operations provide two to four times more of annual energy occupation rates than any uranium-related field.

Renewable energy makes up a smaller portion of electric generation in Brazoria, with only wind power being utilized on a non-localized scale and making up the remaining 5% of electric generation for the national grid. There is no nationally monopolized renewable energy production company in Brazoria, with instead the primary producers of wind power being owned at the level of their respective republics. Namely, Comanche Wind Power, Ute Wind Electric, and Colorado Consolidated Renewables. There has been some republic-level interest in expanding renewable energy production, particularly in relation to wind power, but also in the form of solar power by those western, desert-climate republics where the majority of the year is cloud-free.

Energy in Brazoria is managed at a Confederation-level by the Directorate of Energy, which exercises a wide array of coordinative and regulatory authority in the respective field. While the national monopolies COG and Confederation Atomics remain self-organized and political independent, they are still subject to statutory measures of the Confederation Congress and the primacy of the Directorate of Energy in administrative and operational affairs. One example of this relationship lies within the authority of the Directorate of Energy to outline plans for future energy production expansion, where neither COG nor Confederation Atomics could independently determine where and by what means their enterprises would be expanded domestically.

Transportation

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 Zavala 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

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 predominantly speak the Cajun language, a unique creole language which is isolated to the Magdalen Province. 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. Cajun, a creole language of French, English, and Spanish origin, 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
Cajun 0.57% 256,097 241,886 14,211

Religion

The Brazorian Constitution enshrines the policy of the secular state as fundamental to the country's society. This arrangement stems from the original agreement between the original Catholic Tejanos and the Protestant Anglo-Americans, who originally composed the Republic of Texas. Both the original Tejanos and the Anglo-Americans recognised the success of the United Statesian model, which aimed to remove any sectarian conflict from the process of national governance. Freedom of religion is a societal underpinning in Brazoria which has long been associated with the tolerance of the state towards all historical immigrant groups. However, the lack of importance upon religious belief in Brazorian society which dominates the nation's modern culture has not always existed in the country. For the later half of the 19th century and the beginning decades of the 20th century, there was a great degree of disdain held by religious peoples against atheists and other irreligious people in Brazoria. For this reason, many irreligious groups settled in the plains of the western portion of the country; most of these early irreligious peoples were German Socialists and other Central European Leftists who would go on to inhabit the modern Llano Autonomous Province. The degree to which irreligious people faced normative ostracism began to fade after the end of the Second World War.

The largest religious group as a percentage of the population in Brazoria is Christianity, which, with all respective denominations combined, represents a total share of 72% of the population as of 2016. Within the Christian religion, the largest denomination is Roman Catholicism, which holds a 41% share of the national population. Catholicism is the fastest growing religion in Brazoria, as the majority of annual immigrants practice Catholicism. The second largest Christian denomination in Brazoria are the Mainline Protestant churches; the Brazorian United Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church of Brazoria, and the Baptist Fellowship of Brazorian are the three largest of these Protestant churches. Collectively, all mainline Protestants in Brazoria represent a total share of 22% of the population. The third largest Christian denomination in Brazoria are the Southern Baptists; belonging entirely to the Eastern Brazorian Baptist Convention, these Baptists consider themselves separate from mainline Protestant churches due to a vast number of theological issues. The Eastern Brazorian Baptist Convention holds a total share of 8% of the Brazorian population. The various other remaining Christian denominations represent 2% of the total population. The second largest religious group in Brazoria are the Canaanites, who collectively make up 17% of the population. Of this group, which makes up the predominant religion in the northwestern provinces, the vast majority are members of the Sanctuary of Isachul. Other Canaanite denominations represent less than 2% of the total population. A further 2% of the total population does not belong to either Christianity or Canaanism, with the largest of these other faiths being Judaism and Buddhism respectively. 9% of the Brazorian population are either atheist, agnostic, or other irreligious persons.

Largest cities

Template:Largest cities of Brazoria

Welfare

Brazoria is considered to be a welfare state with a developed, extensive social security system that has been cultivated since the beginning of the 20th century. Historically, especially in the 19th century, Brazoria's national government had maintained a laissez-faire attitude towards social expenditures, with the majority of public assistance taking place voluntarily by various religious organisations. It was not until the development of the Progressive Party and the following beliefs of progressivism took to the mainstream in the 1890s that the real politicisation of social improvement began to take precedence in governmental affairs. The first steps towards social improvement came through mandates relating to a national minimum wage and a cap on the number of hours that workers could be expected to perform. The Great Depression is considered one of the primary events that precipitated the rise of the All-Union Syndicalist Party in the 1930s in Brazoria, and under the government of Wilbert Davidson the precursor to the modern social security system took root in the nation, particularly through the foundation of the Bureau of Social Assistance and the Bureau of Education; the former of these organisations would later become the Bureau of Healthcare and the Bureau of Public Security in the early 1950s. By the end of the 1960s, the contemporary Brazorian social security institutions had mostly been founded and began operations, though there have been a number of changes made to social expenditures since then.

Education

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

The Bureau of Education is responsible for the administration of the national universal education system. The Bureau sets national standards and targets which all primary and secondary educational facilities are required to meet. Mandatory education is divided into three levels in Brazoria: elementary education, middle education, and high education. In every regular Province, public schools acquire funding from the national government, and as a result must coordinate their policies to align with the national standards for education. Local planning agencies are responsible for the physical location of the school, and these agencies posses the power to request any special regional accommodations which must be made, such as the use of school buses in more rural areas. The administration and maintenance of public schools is coordinated at a national level but implemented on a smaller scale in the form of a "school district." Districts are responsible for the staffing, scheduling, and upkeep of the schools which are contained within them. As regular Provinces do not have any regional jurisdiction or form of self governance, official policy-making and standard-setting for these Provinces is left to the national government. As a result, all funding for education in regular Provinces is derived from the national government as well.

In Special Provinces, the Autonomous and Metropolitan Provinces respectively, the Bureau of Education continues to standards, but every individual Special Province is able to request a degree of difference depending on the regional situation. In the Autonomous Provinces of Llano and Magdalen, special accommodation is made for the linguistic differences of their respective local societies. In Llano, students are expected to maintain fluency in both German and a second language, which can either be Spanish or English. The same difference is permitted in Magdalen, where the Cajun language replaces the status of German. Because of the primary language difference within the Autonomous Provinces, the administration of specific educational standards are also set differently; where in the regular Provinces the use of specific textbooks can controlled nationally, the language difference requires individually-maintained agencies of textbook administration for both Autonomous Provinces. On several occasions, the differences between the national standard textbooks and Autonomous Province textbooks have caused controversy over regionalist bias, particularly in the subject of history, where both Cajun-Brazorian and German-Brazorian regionalist politics have been said to affect bias in the explanations of historical events and movements. Metropolitan Provinces do not have the same level of material autonomy given to Autonomous Provinces; the primary difference between a regular Province and a Metropolitan Province in regards to education is the amount of control that the Provincial government wields in regard to any particular school district. A Metropolitan Province has more flexibility in terms of administration, meaning that special accommodations can be made without the need for national governmental level approval, given that the Metropolitan Provinces are much more diverse, densely populated, and prone to a wider variety of wealth inequality.

The population of Brazoria has a comparatively large percentage of people with degrees from post-secondary institutions. As of 2018, 41.31% of all Brazorians held any level of degree from an accredited institution of higher learning, up from 38.70% in 2010. The majority of post-secondary institutions in Brazoria are publicly-funded; the national government currently operates two primary systems for higher education, the National University Service and the National Community College Service. The National University Service includes the major public institutions of higher learning in the country which are capable of awarding degrees in the postgraduate level, and its flagship school is the National University of Austin. The National Community College Service is operated in conjunction with school districts in the country, as these institutions are more streamlined with local high schools. Schools which are a part of the NCCS are only able to award associate-level degrees. Private universities exist in Brazoria as well, with the most prominent being Zavala University.

Healthcare

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

The Bureau of Healthcare is the national agency responsible for the administration and operation of universal healthcare in Brazoria. Hospitals and clinics are operated through intermediary institutions respective to each individual province known as Provincial Health Districts, and for most provinces, the policies, procedures, and other operational protocols are decided at the national level through the Bureau. In the case of the Autonomous Provinces, there is more local control over the management of their Provincial Health Districts, though funding and most policies are still mandated by the national government. Metropolitan Provinces also have a degree more control over the physical location of clinics and hospitals, though other procedures remain in line with national policies. Teaching hospitals are the only form of semi-autonomous medical centres permitted to exist in Brazoria; these institutions receive a large amount of funding from the national government and are largely regulated in a manner which lines their own general procedural policy with that of the national government as well. Because of Brazoria's virtual banning of private health practices, the number of doctors which annually leave the country to pursue careers in other Anglo-American states has been a longtime area of political concern in Brazoria.

Dentistry, alongside other highly cosmetic surgical professions, is given more leeway in terms of private cost and operation in Brazoria. The extent to which cosmetic procedures are covered by the Brazorian healthcare system is another pertinent political issue in the country. Current national policy stands as such where the cost of cosmetic operations are covered so long as it is considered necessary for the well-being of a person to have such operations done. For example, a victim of an acid attack would have the expense of any reconstructive surgery covered by the Brazorian system. Conversely, when operations are undertaken purely for cosmetic reasons, such as most plastic surgery operations, these expenses are left entirely on the patient.

Subsidies

The Bureau of Public Security is the principal agency of the Brazorian government responsible for the administration of public assistance subsidies. Brazoria maintains a robust social security network centred around the use of subsidies for those with disabilities, unemployed persons, and students. The current system of subsidisation for those with low income dates back to the 1930s, during a major effort to tackle poverty following the Great Depression which saw the development of the Low-Income Assistance Programme. The LIAP later expanded to include more disadvantaged persons during the 1960s, when persons with disabilities and students were added to those included in subsidy coverage. A variety of other anti-poverty programmes are employed by the Brazorian government, such as food stamps and unit-by-unit housing project inspections, to give Brazoria one of the lowest rates of homelessness, malnutrition, and low-income mortality in North America.

Culture

Brazoria is uniquely situated at the intersection of three distinct North American cultural regions, Northern Mexico, Dixie, and the Anglo-Southwest. Brazoria has long been known as the place "where the South meets the West," referring not only to its geographic location but to its cultural heritage as well. Alongside the influences caused by the spillover of neighbouring cultural features, the large number of immigrants to the country has definitively shaped the country's cultural composition. The historical influxes of Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, Germans, and other Latin American ethnic groups has contributed greatly to the traditions prevalent throughout Brazoria today. The individual contributions made by specific ethnic groups are today largely amalgamated into what has been called a melting pot, where the formation of a uniquely Brazorian identity is said to have derived from. Indeed, the growing presence of the Tejano people, as well as the increasing prevalence of bilingualism, is considered a key identifier of the emergence of an independent, endemically Brazorian culture.

Art and architecture

Lilacs in a Window by Louisa Cox, 1897, an Impressionist piece of the Colorado River School.

The first wholly Brazorian artistic movement was an offshoot of the Hudson River School known as Brazorian Pastoralism, a semi-Romantic artistic movement which captured the scenes of settlers in the mid-19th century. The Pastoralists often idealised scenes of early settlers and wagon trains in the Great Plains and the Hill Country, presenting a pioneer spirit which reflected the birth of a new nation and its settlement and taming by the arriving colonists. Pastoralism dominated Brazorian visual art until the development of Brazorian Impressionism in the 1890s, which began to spill over into Brazoria from the emergence of the American Impressionist movement. Art colonies began to dot the Hill Country, especially around the Colorado River, leading to the development of what is known today as the Colorado River School of artists. Albert Yaeger and Louisa Cox are the two most prominent artists to gain significant national recognition from their art; both spent a number of years in art colonies along the banks of the Colorado River.

Brazorian Impressionism diverged into two distinct forms which generally followed European examples of Fauvism and Expressionism. Strong use of colour and a beginning of a departure from the attempt to capture realistic forms are definitive qualities of Brazorian art at the beginning of the 20th century, which is today grouped under a common movement known as Brazorian Expressionism. Proto-Cubism reached Brazoria in the late 1910s, and the movement flourished for a short amount of time, though it never develloped into the matured Cubism which flourished in Europe around the same time. Instead, Brazorian Proto-Cubism retained significant Expressionist influences until the 1930s, when the first exhibitions of Surrealism were held in the country. Brazorian Surrealism soon swept the country with immense popularity, as many began to identify the chaos of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl within the unique realisation of Surrealist art. Social realism and Pop art were the next two major movements of Brazorian art, though the metropolitan and international nature of the movements meant that the influence of specifically Brazorian cultural features was somewhat lost on these movements. With the development of Minimalism in the 1970s, the uniquely Brazorian flair which was prominent in earlier movements had largely vanished from Brazorian visual art.

The Alamo, one of the earliest Spanish missions in the region, is an example of period colonial architecture.

The earliest form of architecture used by English-speaking settlers in Brazoria was the log cabin, a vernacular method of construction which was concerned primarily with practicality rather than design. Earlier Spanish missionaries and soldiers constructed a variety of buildings using adobe materials, modern variations of which are still highly popular in more arid regions of the country. The first aesthetically-oriented examples of architecture in Brazoria are mostly examples of the Italianate and Romanesque Revival, which were widely popular throughout North America during the mid-19th century. These two styles dominated Brazorian architecture until the early 20th century, where Art Deco and Arte Moderne became massively influential over the design of many early skyscrapers in the country. Modern architecture thereafter became the most prominent form in Brazoria, moving through the mainstream styles throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries to the Neo-futurist style which is the most popular today.

Film, literature, and music

Brazoria contains an as-of-recently expanding independent film production scene, especially in the region around Austin and San Antonio. This region, often referred to in a cultural sense as the Heart of Texas, has become internationally known as a centre of not only cinematic production but of a highly popular Brazorian country music and several television shows as well. No large production firms exist in Brazoria, as do in its neighbour Sierra, the country from which the majority of highly popular films in Brazoria are typically imported. The Brazorian state-funded television company, BMNB, is the largest producer of both television shows and films in the country. The Ministry of Culture and Sport is the primary national agency concerned with the endowment of the BMNB, and the Ministry also commonly gives endowments to Brazorian content production through smaller television networks, such as IBBN and Bravos, as well as at the request of independent filmmakers.

Beyoncé is widely regarded as the most internationally successful Brazorian musical artist.

Brazoria began to develop its own literary tradition before the foundation of the nation itself. Garrett Langley, widely considered to be one of the quintessential founders of the nation, was a well-renowned revolutionary poet that fought during the Texas Revolution and later became the President of the Republic of Texas. During the 1840s and the 1850s, many English-speaking poets and novelists were inspired by Langley's own work and coalesced together as the beginning of the distinctly Brazorian literary tradition, namely with the authors Gordon O'Reilly and Preston Johnson and the poet Elizabeth Flores. Mass immigration in the later part of the 19th century contributed critically to continental European influence in Brazorian literature and thought, directly leading to the popularity of famous authors and speakers such as Otto Koch and William Bowers. Samantha Weiss is considered the key transitional figure of Brazorian literature into literary modernism; famous postmodernists dating after Weiss include Daniel Pitz and Walter Bransen. Brazorian authors have contributed to many of the most popular literary genres, the most prominent in the areas of Literary realism, Western fiction, Science fiction, and Literary fiction.

Brazoria has a bustling domestic music industry which encompasses a variety of different genres, including, but not limited to, Brazorian country music, Alternative music, and Brazorian hip hop. Austin is called by many the Live Music Capital of the World, with more live music venues per capita than any other city in North America. Many internationally well-known music festivals are also held in Austin, including South by Southwest and Austin City Limits. Austin is well known for its contributions to both the country and alternative genres, while Houston is widely known for its hip hop music production. San Antonio is widely regarded as the world's leading producer of Tejano music, and the city is also contemporarily experiencing a rise in the number of locally successful reggaeton artists.

Cuisine

Chicken Fried Steak is an example of the fusion between German and Southern Anglo-American cuisines in Brazoria.

Brazoria has a diverse culinary scene traditionally dominated by influences from three primary cultural groups: Northern Mexican peoples, German peoples, and Southern Anglo-American peoples. Soul food and Mexican food combine in Brazoria to form one of its most defining culinary traditions, known as Tex-Mex. The word Tex-Mex comes from the names Texas and Mexico; the dated term Texas is used because the food was developed when the region was still called by its original name. Tex-Mex was formed in part by the arrival of African-American slaves in the Nueces valley in the early 19th century, where traditionally Southern methods of cooking were used on the Mexican-derived food crops that were prevalent in the region at the time. By the middle of the century, Tex-Mex had become widely popular throughout Brazoria, and it became regarded as the national cuisine of the country. The arrival of German immigrants in the later part of the 19th century contributed towards the development of a secondary cuisine in the country, a combination of traditionally Southern Anglo-American barbecue with German cuisine which is today known as Roichecue. Roichecue comes from a combination of the German word räuchern, which refers to the culinary process of smoking, and the English word barbecue. Roichecue and Tex-Mex developed over time into the two definitive culinary traditions of the country, with both being famous internationally for their unique flavours and cooking methods.

Dishes considered characteristic of the cumulative Brazorian tradition include, but are not limited to, steak, brisket, sausage and bratwurst, burritos and chimichangas, tacos, guacamole, chili con queso, chicken fried steak and chicken fried chicken, étouffée, and boiled crawfish. Many of these dishes are found in other cuisines around the world, particularly though in the aforementioned regions which have contributed to the development of Brazoria's contemporary culinary tradition. Beer is the most widely consumed alcoholic beverage in the country, though Brazoria is also well known for its vodka and tequila. Dr Pepper is the most popular brand of soft drink in Brazoria; its domestic consumption is triple the amount of all other soft drink brands combined. Brazorians drink coffee five times more than tea. The most popular method of brewing coffee is through the use of the Moka pot, which was brought back from Italy by Brazorian soldiers after the Second World War and became widely popular during the 1950s.

A burrito with rice, a staple meal of Tex-Mex cuisine.

Like most other Western countries, Brazorians typically eat three primary meals throughout the day alongside one smaller supplementary meal. Breakfast in Brazoria is typically small, consisting for most people of a serving of cereal, oatmeal, or taquitos with one or two fruit items and a serving or two of coffee. Lunch is the largest meal eaten by most Brazorians, a tradition which became popular in the later half of the 20th century as Latin American cultural norms swept the country with immense popularity. Lunch is typically eaten with one's family or a group of very close friends, and it is considered so important that schools and businesses in the country typically close for one or two hours in the middle of the day to allow people sufficient time to socialise and eat a large lunch. The merienda is the supplementary meal eaten between lunch and dinner; this snack-like meal was originally eaten after the traditional siesta during the time before the invention and widespread use of air conditioning, and, although the siesta has generally fallen out of mainstream practise, the merienda is still largely consumed as a small, sweet snack with an accompanying coffee. Dinner is eaten at least four hours after the merienda, typically several hours after the sun has set as a way to hold people over until the morning. Dinner in Brazoria is typically quite small, usually consisting, unless it is the day of a special occassion, of only a sandwich, salad, or bowl of soup.

Holidays and sport

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

The Brazorian government recognises two different forms of holidays celebrated throughout the year. The first class of holidays are known as Nationally-Observed Holidays, which includes the following holidays; New Years Day on 1 January, Independence Day on 2 March, Easter which is typically held in April, Memorial Day on the third Monday in April, Labour Day on 1 May, Dia de los Muertos on 31 October, Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Monday in November, Christmas Day on 25 December, and Boxing Day on 26 December. Nationally-Observed Holidays mandate that all non-essential government buildings must be closed on those dates, including schools, governmental offices, and other government institutions. The national government actively encourages private businesses to close on these days, mandating that any employee working on a Nationally-Observed Holiday must receive their daily wage at twice the normal amount. Nationally-Recognised Holidays are the second class of holidays in the country; these holidays do not warrant the additional payment of employees in the country and are mostly cultural celebrations that are acknowledged as significant by the government, with the holidays included ranging from Lent to Oktoberfest.

The three major sports with the most popularity in Brazoria are association football, gridiron football, and baseball. The premier Brazorian league of association football teams, the Lone Star League, is the second most valuable association football league in North America after Mexico's Liga MX, with an average yearly overall attendance of 7.31 million people visiting the stadiums of the LSL's 14 teams. Brazoria's men's national team has won the CONCACAF Gold Cup four times, in 1991, 2002, 2005, and 2013, and the team achieved Runners-Up status in the FIFA World Cup twice, in 1992 and in 2014. Professional gridiron football in Brazoria is largely dominated by the North American Football League, in which Brazoria participates through three teams; the Houston Oilers, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Denver Broncos. Baseball in Brazoria, like association football, is organised domestically through the Brazorian Baseball League, which is composed of 12 teams from across the nation. Other team sports are popular in Brazoria but do not hold the same level of national attention as the three aforementioned do; these sports are basketball, rugby, and lacrosse. The city of Houston will also host the Olympic Games in 2028, a monumental achievement for Brazoria, who hope to show their development in the event.

See also

Attribution notices
Wikipedia logo This page uses material from the Wikipedia page History of Texas, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).
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