Disclaimer: Past the Past, a quarterly journal on history, would like to remind our readers that the information in this piece was put together from sources found in various places after the The Great Conflagration of 2207. The world order described here is still a matter of speculation and is being analyzed and discussed in earnest by historians. Because all digital sources of information were erased during The Great Conflagration, the only sources for the information provided below come from the Hamburg Manuscript, found in the ruins of the University Library in Hamburg, the handwritten Paris Declaration, discovered in a garret apartment in Paris, and what has been named the Athens Codex, a collection of various unsigned typewritten and handwritten papers which were gathered loosely into a manuscript. Some were in English, some in Greek, and one report of 7 pages in length was in what was then called Modern Hebrew.
Definition: Pax Americana, a state of comparative tranquillity throughout what has come to be regarded as the Modern Era. The Pax Americana encompassed the continental United States, Europe, Asia and most of the rest of the world. The Pax Americana was thus named because after the Second World War it was the United States that maintained peace and world order through its dominance—both economically and militarily.
Although the world was engaged in war until the capitulation of the Nazi regime in 1945, and was followed by a period known in history as the Cold War, peace was generally the state of the world until 2014 and the first invasion of Ukraine.
There had been wars on the periphery of the American Empire (now known as Oceania) and after the accession of Czar Vladimir I, wars of consolidation in Eurasia (formerly Russia) during the Pax Americana, however the three great powers, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia did not engage in direct conflict with each other, knowing that to do so would most probably end in a nuclear holocaust from which none of them would ever recover.
After 2014, the world split into three, as predicted by novelist George Orwell in his seminal work, 1984. (The book in its original version—not the redacted and rewritten New Baptist version from 2031—is available from our library in Alexandria, Egypt.) War had been general and continuous, and mostly conventional, in the regions that could be considered as “soft” borders to the three great empires, as well as in the mineral-rich regions of Africa and South America, where the three great powers vied for control of resources.
Emperor Xi of Eastasia was able to play friend to Oceania or to Eurasia, as the political climate or the economic opportunity dictated. His clever maneuvering prevented a total dissolution into war on every front—i.e. every actual territorial borderline area between the three great powers.
On April 1, 2026 the three powers, headed by King Donald of Oceania, Vladimir I of Eurasia and Emperor Xi of Eastasia, met at the Great Iaorana e Maeva Conference in Papeete, Tahiti and pledged to refrain from direct territorial conflict. They proclaimed that this agreement was in perfect accord with the Capitalist Manifesto, which was the basis of competition and technological advance in each of the three empires and would ensure that all their people would benefit.
In addition to the Capitalist Manifesto (Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler), the Big Three (as they were known) also decided to adapt the Laws of Manu to fit the modern social structures in their three realms.
In the territory of Eurasia, society was divided into Oligarkhi, Soldaty, Rabochie, Zveri (Oligarchs, Soldiers, Workers, Beasts). The religious leaders—Sviatye, a caste of their own—were commanded to preach the Evangelie Prevoskhodstva Belykh (Gospel of White Supremacy). From time to time, under the reign of Vladimir I, human sacrifices of the Sveri were carried out, especially in the aftermath of the First Ukrainian War, which ended in 2025 with the Armistice of Christiania, when 365 captured Ukrainian soldiers were crucified in Red Square during the Orthodox Easter service presided over by the Patriarch and Vladimir I himself.
In Eastasia, the Xi dynasty enacted a law that split society into the Guardians of the Empire, Guardians of Business, Guardians of Work. After the capital was moved to Shanghai in 2027, a fourth class or caste was described in official documents as the Unproductive Subversives. People in this caste were officially excluded from all social benefits, including healthcare, credit, public housing and licensed employment. A strict 70/30 ratio male child law was enacted in 2031, and at the age of 7, those female children who exceeded the 30% limit for their year were sent to work in African colonies where they extracted minerals in the mines until they died from exhaustion. Some reports say that many of these women escaped into the densely forested areas near the mines, established centers of resistance, bred with locals and convicts that had escaped from the mining operations of the other empires and survived the Great Conflagration. No verified claims have come to light so far, although there are rumors of a tribe known as Crypto-Han who occupy an area near what was once called Lake Victoria.
In Oceania the three classes had been separating from each other for quite some time but the ultimate separation was finally encoded in law by the Supreme Court in 2027 in a 9-0 decision in the case Braun vs. Swift. Male dominance was enshrined through this law. All financial gains made by any woman in any capacity were declared null and void, unless she was married. Then her earnings would automatically go to her male mate. In the Braun vs. Swift case it was ruled that since at the time of her earnings Swift was not married, all her earnings automatically belonged to her manager and the facilitator of her work, Braun. Thus the decision also specified the three classes: Male Alpha 1, also known as the Oligarchs, Male Alpha 2, known as the Entrepreneurs, and Male Alpha 3, known as the Toughies. Females were relegated to what was commonly described as the Gene Pool. Females in the Gene Pool were not allowed to resist advances made by Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 males, but if they were able to defeat a Toughie in hand-to-hand combat, then they were gifted to an Oligarch for his own personal Gene Pool.
Common to all three realms was a ban on the practice of any religion associated with Mohammad or his teachings. People caught with the book or caught practicing the religion in any of the three empires were executed on the spot. In Oceania, the realm of King Donald, a fundamental version of Christianity was declared the religion of the empire. In Eurasia, an orthodox version of Christianity was declared the religion of the realm, and in Eastasia, worship of the emperor, known as Xi-ism, became the standard.
More information about this era in world history is being uncovered through archeological remains that are being discovered on a regular basis. We expect to be able to update this general history of the Modern Era in the next edition of Past the Past, your history journal.