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The Grand Duchy of Pallamara is a sizable island, roughly 1,000 miles off the coast of India, (replacing Diego Garcia) settled in the 1600s under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company. It's people are a mixture of Dutch, French, and German, with a recent influx of Afrikaaner, and other white African immigration.
The origins of the name are obscure, but are attributed to the Italian navigator Piccolo Palamara, who may or may may not have discovered the island in 1527 while working for the Spanish. During the Eighty Years War, the fort on the island was seized by the Dutch, the island eventually becoming the domain of the VOC in 1627. There were no indigenous peoples on the island, but indonesians were imported to the islands to work the plantations, but after the disasterous Smallpox Epidemic of 1645, their numbers were much reduced, along with the Dutch population. Shortly after this date, one of the VOC directors hit upon a plan to settle the island with German refugees displaced by the Thirty Years War in 1649, offering cheap passage. By 1675, over 60% of the Island's population was German. From 1687 these were joined by French Hugenots displaced by the Edict of Fontainbleu, who came to constitute the other major ethnic group of the island. By the Mid 1700s the island was turning into a prosperous colony, a bit of Europe transplanted to the Indian Ocean. For the most part, the colonists preferrred to work their own farms and plantations, disliking the importation of Indian or Indonesian workers, and soon, the island was beginning to gain its own identity. When the Dutch Republic was overthrown by French Revolutionary forces in 1795, Pallamara refused to recongnize the ensuing Batavian Republic or the later Kingdom of Holland, fighting against the French alongside British forces. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the island's independance as the Grand Duchy of Pallamara was established. In 1820, the first of the present house of the Von Ravensbergs, a cadet branch of the Habsberg dynasty came to the throne through marriage, and have ruled the island in an unbroken line of succession to this very day.
During WWI, Pallarmara was neutral, despite the largely pro-Central Powers attitude among the populace, and continued this policy of neutrality during the beginning of the Second World War. When Japan invaded the Netherlands East Indies, however, the Grand Duchy formally declared war on Japan, with Pallarmaran submarines and aircraft being a thorn in the side of Japanese operations in the Indian Ocean. Pallamaran ground forces fought in India, Burma, and New Guinea. During this time, the Grand Duchy formed its first close ties to the United States and Austrailia. After the War, the island once again experienced another wave of immigration, this time from Dutch colonials from the Former Netherlands East Indies after it became independant from Dutch rule. In 1962, large offshore oil deposits were discovered which provided a major economic boosts to the island, and futher large deposits were discovered in 1978, 1983, and 1987, though the most recent of these is also claimed by Indonesia.
Though some American administrations were cool towards the monarchist government, the Von Ravensbergs were staunchly anticommunist, and this, combined with the nation's growing importance as a strategically located, oil producing nation ushered in a wave of military cooperation which peaked during the Reagan Administration as the island became a major bastion of American influence in the Indian Ocean, with American air and naval assets operating out of several Pallamaran bases to dominate the region. At some point during the 1960s, the Grand Duchy began a secret nuclear program in cooperation with the South African government, and later Israel, during which time an unknown amount of Uranium was shipped to the island, which commissioned its first nuclear power plant in 1972. Details of the nuclear program were kept secret until the early 1990s, when it was revealed that the United States had also cooperated in the nuclear program, seeing the nation as vital to American interests in the area. Tests in the Indian Ocean took place in the 1970s and the early 1980s, with the latest round occuring in the late 1990s.
The final wave of immigration, which continues to this day, occured from white Africans as the end of European rule wrapped in Africa, as thousands of whites from Kenya, Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, and other former European colonies immigrated to Pallamara who eagerly welcomed them. When South Africa transitioned to ANC rule in the early 1990s, another landslide of immigration was triggered, as Afrikaaners joined the already diverse European ethnic mix.
The nation remains an absolute monarchy, despite some calls for a switch to a more constitutional form of government. The monarchy has ruled with a firm but mostly fair hand during the island's history and continues to do so. Being surrounded by populous nations of noneuropean descent and of Hindu or Muslim pursuasion has created a fortresslike "us and them" mentality among Pallamarans, especially those hailing from Africa or the former NEI, and this segment of the population is where the Monarchy draws its strongest support. Historically, the nation has had a very strict immigration policy that some accuse of being rascist motivated, but Pallarmarans deny this, pointing to laws that forbid discrimination and intolerance, saying the immigration policy is necessary to preserving the nation's unique heritage.
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