Nations

What is a Toy Nation?

Terminology born in the Plastic World and from the Army Men, then applied in other worlds, especially in the Real World.

In a broad sense, a nation is any historical and cultural toy community capable of providing individuals with a sense of identity that differentiates them from individuals belonging to other cultures, even if they are of the same type of Toy (different or just like them). Usually it also has a territory that it considers as its own.

In that sense, one can speak of a nation to mean a state, a country, a territory, an Toy group, a town or a race of Toys, depending on the considerations of the case.

In the Plastic Soldiers case, most of the times an Army Men Nation is composed by individuals of the same type/shade of color

Army Men RTS army colors — Colors of nations involved in Army Men: RTS events

What we understand today as a nation (nation-states) emerged together with the homeland and nationalism of the Army Men. Its point of birth is considered to be the First Great Army Men World War, when the absolutism of the Ancient Gray Regime that gave the monarchs absolute power over the Gray Army Men fell.

In contrast, the sovereignty of the Grey citizens (the “people” or “nation” of the Grays) emerged. If before the King was the State, now it is “the Nation”, and therefore we speak of the birth of the nation-State.

With the birth of the nation, the love for it was also born, which is nationalism. This is how the concept of the national was formed, as opposed to the foreign.

In the case of the Army Men, each nation was normally born from a color, although that has currently changed. Originally there were Greys, Reds, Blues and Yellows, with grays being the entire range of shades that ranged from White to Black. Therefore, the colors Black and White were born from the Grays (although these are actually tones, not colors). After Yellow with White and Red, Tan was born. After Yellow and Blue, Green was born, while Orange was born from Red and Yellow. After Blue and Red, Violet and Purple were born. Black and White got independency from the Grey too. Brown was born from Red and Black or mixing them with other colors. Finally, from White and Blue, Light Blue was born (Cyan), and from White and Red, Pink was born.

Elements of a nation:

Every nation, roughly speaking, is made up of the following elements:

– Territory: All nations have, in one way or another, a territory in which they consider their home and in whose land their dead ancestors rest. This is much more complicated to define for certain nomadic Toy nations, such as the Dwarves tribes of the Medieval World, but this is because they maintain a non-agricultural based model of life, and in that sense they do not require a fixed territory, but rather a series of intermittent territories.

– Language: Some Toy nations has an official language different than others, in which its bureaucracy, its legal code and its historical documents are written, and with which its population identifies. In some cases the official languages may be several, given that in the same nation there may be more than one culture or Toy type, but one is always considered predominant, above the others.

– Government: Every nation governs itself or joins a common government together with others (in the case of plurinational States). Said government makes the State function, imposes the legal code and organizes the population, in addition to exercising sovereignty in the national territory on behalf of the members.

– Population: There is no nation without inhabitants who make it up, that is, without members who speak its language, who inhabit its territory and who obey its laws. That is, there are no nations without their members.