OOC Notes:
The aerial shot of the New City is actually an image I found online. It apparently represents how Fascist Italian city planners imagined rebuilding Addis Ababa into the center of their East African holdings. Typically fascist, it emphasizes monuments, rigidity,control, and segregation of populations and functions. The idea was to create a gleaming faux-italian modern city center for the whites and colonial government, with strictly controlled suburbs for the Ethiopians who would, of course, do all the actual work. Thankfully, they got their asses run off the continent before they could implement it.
The postcard is actually a painting of the 1911 World's Fair in Turin, Italy. Since Italy never formed in game, and I know I had the World's Fair and Olympic events at least once (and the other fair and exhibition events many times) I figured I'd appropriate it.
I did have two nobel winners, one medicine, one either physics or chemistry. I did indeed get the polar exploration events. While the white folks beat me to the north pole, I got the south, and rejoiced in the sheer absurdity.
Interestingly, I also got the "search for the source of the nile" events. I sponsored the expedition, but was not successful. This is despite the fact that the source of the Nile is, you know, inside my own country. Somehow the Brits still beat me too it. How embarrassing!
Though I'm an especially pasty Irish-American myself, I got thinking about the impact a wealthy, powerful African great power in the world might have impacted afro-american culture in the US. This was after all the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance, and even in our own time line many black thinkers looked to Ethiopia for inspiration. I imagine that having a black Great Power to look to- and a population of wealthy black aristocrats and industrialists to hit up for patronage- might well have amplified this. Of course, the Empire has its own ethnic and racial lines, and the Imperial Elite wouldn't necessarily care about white/black, but with Haile Selassie as Emperor and Pan-Africanism in vogue politically (more on that later) , I imagine black American artists would find a welcoming audience in Gonder- at least until fashions change.
The aerial shot of the New City is actually an image I found online. It apparently represents how Fascist Italian city planners imagined rebuilding Addis Ababa into the center of their East African holdings. Typically fascist, it emphasizes monuments, rigidity,control, and segregation of populations and functions. The idea was to create a gleaming faux-italian modern city center for the whites and colonial government, with strictly controlled suburbs for the Ethiopians who would, of course, do all the actual work. Thankfully, they got their asses run off the continent before they could implement it.
The postcard is actually a painting of the 1911 World's Fair in Turin, Italy. Since Italy never formed in game, and I know I had the World's Fair and Olympic events at least once (and the other fair and exhibition events many times) I figured I'd appropriate it.
I did have two nobel winners, one medicine, one either physics or chemistry. I did indeed get the polar exploration events. While the white folks beat me to the north pole, I got the south, and rejoiced in the sheer absurdity.
Interestingly, I also got the "search for the source of the nile" events. I sponsored the expedition, but was not successful. This is despite the fact that the source of the Nile is, you know, inside my own country. Somehow the Brits still beat me too it. How embarrassing!
Though I'm an especially pasty Irish-American myself, I got thinking about the impact a wealthy, powerful African great power in the world might have impacted afro-american culture in the US. This was after all the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance, and even in our own time line many black thinkers looked to Ethiopia for inspiration. I imagine that having a black Great Power to look to- and a population of wealthy black aristocrats and industrialists to hit up for patronage- might well have amplified this. Of course, the Empire has its own ethnic and racial lines, and the Imperial Elite wouldn't necessarily care about white/black, but with Haile Selassie as Emperor and Pan-Africanism in vogue politically (more on that later) , I imagine black American artists would find a welcoming audience in Gonder- at least until fashions change.