History of Gapla/Lesson 1

Warning:

While Wyatt Baek is recognized as the founder of modern Gapla, Ian Shin was the dominant figure in Gapla-Phoenix, serving as its first President.

Gaplan Prehistory (2015–2018)

1.1     The Establishment of Gapla-Phoenix

United Republics of Gapla and Phoenix     On 24 August 2015, two first graders at Cypress Village Elementary School, Wyatt Baek and Ian Shin, founded the first known predecessor of the Federated States of Gapla, the United Republics of Gapla and Phoenix (comonly known as Gapla-Phoenix). Gapla-Phoenix was established in "Room 0"—an oddly numbered classroom—and was declared an "imaginary country," as the Wyatt and Ian were unaware of micronationalism. At the time of Gapla-Phoenix's establishment, Wyatt and Ian were good friends, and the country was split into the Republic of Gapla—Wyatt's province, the etymology of which is unknown—and the Republic of Phoenix, —Ian's province, deriving its name from the mythical bird of the same name.

The Local Context     Cypress Village Elementary School was located in Irvine, California, an affluent, mid-sized suburban city in the United States. In 2015, the city had a population of approximately 250,000. New communities within the city (known locally as neighborhoods) consisted of small parks, apartment complexes, business centers, and schools, and were rapidly being developed during the 2010s to accommodate for the city’s increases in population. One of the newest communities of Irvine at the time was Cypress Village, and its elementary school witnessed the establishment of Gapla-Phoenix in its second-ever school year.

A Serious Project     Despite the clearly fictional nature of Gapla-Phoenix and the young age of its founders, Wyatt and Ian took their project very seriously, and did not treat the project as simply a game of “make-believe”, where actions did not have real-world consequences. They called Gapla-Phoenix an imaginary country as they recognized that it had fictional elements and were unaware of micronationalism or the micronational community, not because they lacked seriousness. Gapla-Phoenix was more advanced than any game of “make-believe,” and conflicts within Gapla-Phoenix would lead to real-world consequences for its members and its competitors. What began as a childhood project was taken seriously by its members and, in retrospect, represents the first serious predecessor to the modern Federated States of Gapla, now a thriving new country project by the Danube.

1.2     Operations and the Secret Base

The First Territories     Gapla-Phoenix’s claimed territory combined the imaginary and the personal: three fictional islands, a Secret Base on the school grounds, and the birthplaces of its two founders.

The Secret Base     The Secret Base was a small, unsupervised corner of Cypress Village Elementary School, and was the central physical location of Gapla-Phoenix. It was a remote area with large stone walls and scattered electrical equipment, remote enough that most students and many staff did not notice it. Within the Secret Base, Gapla-Phoenix held daily meetings, stored documents, planned activities, and  manufactured official documents, such as I.D. cards, currency, maps, and laws.

I.D. Cards and Currency