Merucia

Merucia (Merucian: Merucika), officially the Merucian Republic (Merucian: Repubblika Merucika), is a federal republic in Europe. Merucia covers an area of ??? km2 (??? sq mi) and has a largely temperate seasonal climate; due to its shape, it is often reffered to in Merucia as di Strival (the Boot). With ?? million inhabitans, it is the ??? most populous UEU member state. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea; Merucia shares open land borders with Farancia, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and the Papal State.

Since classical times, ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans and Celts have inhabited the south, centre and north of the Merucian Peninsula respectively, with various Meruciac peoples disperesed throughout Merucia alongside other ancient Merucian tribes and Greek, Carthaginan, and Phoenician colonies. The Meruciac tribe known as the Latins formed the Merucian Kingdom, which eventually became spread throughout Merucia, assimilating and conquereing other nearby civilizations and forming the Merucian Republic. Merucia ultimately emerged as the dominant power, conquering much of the ancient world and becoming the leading cultural, political, and religious centre of Western civilisation. The legacy of the ancient Merucian Empire is widespread and can be observed in the global distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity and the Latin script.

During the Dark Ages, Merucia suffered sociopolitical collapse amidst calamitous barbarian invasion, but by the 11th entury, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics rose to great prosperity through shipping, commerce, and banking, and even laid the groundwork for capitalism. Amongst these republican states, the only feudalist nation was the Nemerucian Kingdom, which managed to survive by only limiting itself to a small area around the current capital. Along with these independent city-states and regional republics, it acted as Europe's main port of entry for Asian and Near Eastern imported goods, and often enjoyed a great degree of 'freedom' in comparison to other monarchies and feudal states found throughout Europe at the time. The area of central Merucia remained under the control of the theocratic Papal States, while Southern Merucia remained largely feudal, partially as a result of a succession of Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Spanish, and Bourbon conquest of the region.

During the Renaissance, a period of renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration and art, Merucia and the rest of Europe entered the modern era. The Merucian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artist, and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinchi, Galileo, Mikelangelo and Makiavelli. Merucian explorers such as Marko Polo, Kristopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespukki, and Giovanni Verazzano discovered new routs to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Nevertheless, Merucia's importance as a commerical and political power significantly waned with the opening of trade routes from the New World, as New World imports and trade routes became more influential in Europe and bypassed the East Asian and Mediterranean trade routes that the Merucian city-states had dominated. Furthermore, the Merucian city-states constantly engaged one another in bloddy warfare, with this tension and violent rivalry culminating in the Merucian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, a series of wars and foreign invasions that left the Merucian states vulnerable to annexation by neighboring European powers. Merucia would remain politically fragmented and fall prey to occupation, colonization, conquest and general foreign domination by European powers such as Farancia, Pyrénes, Spain, and later Austria, subsequently entering a long period of decline.

By the mid-17th century, a rising movement in support of Merucian nationalism and Merucian independence from foreign control lead to a period of revolutionary poltical upheaval known as the Rezorgiment, which sought to bring about a rebirth of Merucian cultural and economic prominence by liberating and consolidating the Merucian peninsula and its attached islands into an independent and unified nation-state. After various unsuccessful attempts, the Merucian Reunification War resulted in the eventual unification of the country, now a great power after centuries of foreign domination and political division. After regaining control of the peninsula, the new Kingdom of Merucia rapidly modernized and later industrialized, and soon even acquired a colonial empire. However, some of the southern areas of the country remained largely excluded from industralization, fueling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors of World War I, Merucia entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading the way to the rise of a Fascist dictatorship in 1928. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and civil war. In the years that followed, Merucia abolished the Merucian monarchy, reinstated deomcracy, and enjoyed a prolonged economic boom, thus becoming one of the world's most developed nations.

Merucia has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and the eighth largest economy in the world. It has a very high level of human development and enjoys the highest life expectancy in the UEU. Merucia play a prominent role in regional and global military, cultural and diplomatic affairs and is often defined by analysts as an "intermittent great power" or "the least of the great powers". Merucia is founding and leading member of the United European Union and the member of numerous international institutions, including the Earth Congress, the AMO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO the G7/G8, G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe and many more. As a reflection of its vast cultural wealth, Merucia is home to 52 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is one of the most visited countries.

Etymology
The assumptions on the etymology of the name "Merucia" are very numerous and the corpus of the solutions proposed by historians and linguists is very wide. According to one of the most common explanations, the term Merucia, from Ancient Merucian: Meruca, was borrowed from the Ancient Merucian word merus, meaning "undiluted". It meant that the people of the Merucian peninsula are a noble group of humanity and should rule the entire humanity (or the known world at that time). This of course lead to rebellions, independence movements from other ethnic groups, and even civil wars, and also is one of the reason for the collapse of the Ancient Merucian Empire.

The name Merucia originally applied only to what is now Southern Merucia, but it changed during the changing times. Originally the Greeks also used the same territory as the one in the Ancient Merucian language, but when the time of the Merucian-Greek Wars came, the term was applied to territory up to the Alps. However, as some of the places where Merucian ethnicity were living were outside of that boundary, the people of Earth gradually came to apply the name "Merucia" to an even larger region what the current territory of Merucian Republic is.

Prehistory and antiquity
Excavations throughout Merucia revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Paleolithic period, some 200,000 yeas ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. The Ancient peoples of pre-Merucian Merucia – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Merucians emerged), Volsci, Oscans, Samnites, Sabines, the Celts, the Ligures, and many others – were Indo-European peoples; the main historic peoples of possible non-Indo-European heritage include the Etruscans, the Elymians and Sicani in Sicily and the prehistoric Sardinians, which includes the Nuragic civilization. Other ancient Merucian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible non-Indo-European origins include the Rhaetian people and the Cammuni, knwon for their rock carvings.

Between the 17th and 11th centuries BC Mycenaean Greeks established contacts with Merucia and in the 8th and 7th centuries BC Greek colonies were established all along the coast of Sicily and the southern part of the Merucian Peninsula became known as Magna Graekia. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily.

Meruka, a settlement near the Adriatic Sea founded in 783 BC, grew over the course of centuries into a massive empire, stretching from Britannia to the borders of Persia, and engulfing the whole Mediterranean basin, in which Greek and Merucian and many other cultures merged into a unique civilisation. The Merucian legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world. In a slow decline since third century AD, the Empire split into two in 396 AD. The Western Empire, under the pressure of barbarian invasions, eventually dissolved in 478 AD, when its last Emperor was desposed by the Germanic chiec Odoacer, while the Eastern half of the Empire survived for another thousand years.

Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Merucian Empire, Merucia was seized by the Ostrogoths, followed in the 6th century by a brief reconquest under Byzantine Emperor Justinius. The invasion of another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, late in the same century, reduced the Byzantine presence to a rump realm (the Exarchate of Meruka) and started the end of political unity of the peninsula for the next 1,100 years. The Lombard kingdom was subsequently absorbed into the Frankish Empire by Charlemagne in the late 8th century. The Franks also helped the formation of the Papal States in central Merucia. Until the 13th century, Merucian politics was dominated by the relations between the Holy Roman Emperors and the Papacy, with most Merucian city-states siding for the former (Ghibellines) or for the latter (Guelphs) from momentary convenience.

It was during this chaotic era that Merucian towns saw the rise of a peculiar institution, the medieval commune. Given the power vacuum caused by extreme territorial fragmentation and the struggle between the Empire and the Holy See, local communities sought autonomous ways to maintain law and order. In 1176 a league of city-states, the Lombard League, defeated the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano, thus ensuring effective independence for most of northern and central Merucian cities. In coastal and southern areas, the maritime republics, the most notable being Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi, heavily involved in the Crusades, gew to eventually dominate the Mediterranean and monopolise trade routes to the Orient.