Bovido nationalism

**Bovido nationalism** is a form of religious nationalism, cultural nationalism, and ethnic nationalism most commonly identified with the countries of Bovido Has and the later Bovido Imperium, which is centred around the two main faiths to stem from the Final Testament, that being the St Joseph's Devotees and the Faith. First espoused by the theologist Ismachiah Joash in the early 19th century, the concept of Bovido nationalism began to openly flourish in the 20th and early 21st centuries as the Cold War and Has Wars enveloped the country of Bovido Has, before the establishment of the Bovido Imperium in 2028 led to a revival of the concept of Bovido nationalism once more.

## History

### Early Roots

Following the exile of the early Confides of St. John to the island of Belitung in the 17th century, the religious group began to form increasingly radical ideas revolving around the arrival of a second coming of Christ in the form of a "holy warrior destined to lead his devotees to paradise on Earth". This new sect of Christianity began to devote itself to achieving pureness of faith, undergoing a substantial revolution of culture and language in the mid 18th century as the teachings of the religious sect began to be compiled into what became known as the Final Testament upon the orders of a new organisation known as the Templars, only further spurring on the dogmatic fanaticism which had radicalised the island's religious population. Around the turn of the 19th century, the mysterious theologist Ismachiah Joash had become a leading figure within the Templar clergy, encouraging a drive towards violent militancy to overthrow the Japanese guards who governed the island; in 1809, Joash led the people of Belitung to revolution and established the state of Bovido Has, meaning *Holy Lands* in the regional dialect of a resurgent Latin language. Under this new regime, a theocratic government was slowly established with Joash at it's head, espousing teachings and decrees to steer the nation in his chosen direction; most notable of these decrees was the Decree on the Bovido Has, which stated that the people of the Templars had a holy duty to spread the faith of the Final Testament to the world, a decree which would later form the basis of Bovido Hassian expansion for two centuries.

### Expansion

As the state of Bovido Has began to develop strong military capabilities by the mid-1800s, the regime embarked on a conquest of expansion across Asia under the guidance of the Holy Clergy of Bovido Has, the successor church to the Templars, and it's leader Mattathias Jude; under Jude's reign, the Bovido state began to use guerrilla warfare to inflict significant damage on the British, Russian and Japanese empires and liberate large swathes of land, including in the middle east, northern Russia and the Indo-Pacific. Under the control of the Holy Clergy, the Bovido Hassian empire began to instigate a mass programme of cultural and ethnic genocide alongside it's forceful imposition of the Faith upon conquered peoples as part of a drive to homogenise the populations of the empire into a singular religious and cultural group devoted to the Final Testament. In formerly conquered regions such as the Russian Federation, the Persian Republic and the Libirachi Administrative Zone in the Pacific, the Bovido ethnic and religious genocides have had a lasting impact upon demographics, with many formerly large religious groups such as Muslims in the middle east having been virtually eradicated from the areas in which Bovido Has once ruled supreme; at the same time, Bovido settler colonialism saw white populations of European descent massively expand in conquered regions, whilst restrictive and deeply racist ethnic cleansing strategies saw indigenous populations being restricted from reproduction, whilst also simultaneously being systematically persecuted. In formerly Bovido ruled regions, ethnic makeups have been massively impacted by this programme and indeed has led to ethnic tensions in certain regions, between indigenous and ethnically Bovido populations.

### Ideological Rivalry

By the start of the 20th century, the concept of Bovido nationalism had come into direct ideological rivalry with the Libirachi belief of exceptionalism, with the two nations each viewing the Asian continent as their rightful imperial domain; such rivalry for the Asian continent spawned from the Bovido Invasion of Asia, but would grow to become a Cold War between the two global superpowers. In 1938, boarder skirmishes saw the boarders between the two nations redrawn, leading to a resurgence in Bovido nationalism and the deposition of the then Bovido Hassian Archbishop Caanan Ujung. Though contest between the two nations became fraught during the mid-20th century, following the appointment of Peter Purba as Archbishop in 1967, a brief period of détente between Bovido Has and the Libirachi Empire existed until the death of Libirachi president Xi Kanna in 1970. As relations soured once more, Purba began to revolutionise the regime and shift away from the old clerical structures of the regime to instead focus power on his title as Emperor of Bovido Has; following Purba's death, the separate nationalistic and religious drives of the nation came into conflict with each-other, although the Holy Clergy of Bovido Has was able to come out on top and installed Michael Ezra as the nation's new leader. Under Ezra, nationalistic beliefs once again became deeply wrapped in ideas of religious supremacy and piousness as the regime struggled to economically and militarily modernise, instead whipping it's population into an ideological frenzy as a form of human deterrent to prevent the technologically superior Imperial Republic of Libirachi from invading. Following Ezra's death in 2018, a second thaw in relations took place as Archbishop Hazael Buller and Libirachi President Nathan Jackson began to seek an end to the economically draining Cold War, but these efforts were once again cut short by the deposition of President Jackson in the 2019 Libirachi Coup d'état; under the new Fox Dynasty, the rivalry between both nations was once again made stark as Libirachi armed forces began to congregate on the Bovido boarder, leading to the establishment of armed local militia groups determined to protect their religious beliefs from invasion.