1984 is one of the most famous books in history. It is read in schools and for pleasure, it has sold untold millions of copies, and people make references to it whenever an even slightly controversial law is passed. It has been extensively studied by thousands of scholars and millions of students, its themes, setting, symbolism and most relevant to this article its world have been pored over.
One of the main warnings in 1984 is about a “super-state”, a nation who possesses everything it could ever need in its borders, has complete control over its land and possesses a near god-like hold over its people. The world of 1984 has three. Eurasia, which comprises the whole of Europe and the northern Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania, which comprises the Americas, all Atlantic islands and great Britain, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa. And lastly Eastasia, which comprises China, Central Asia, the Japanese islands and a large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and South Asia.
In this article I will analyze why, despite it being the main setting and the largest of the super-states, is the absolute weakest of the three.
1.The Alliances
It is common knowledge to those with even passing knowledge of the books that the three superstates exist in a perpetual state of war. Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia constantly switch allegiances, backstabbing one another in sneak attacks and throwing aside whatever agreements they have every few years or so.
However, within this constant change of alliances is a strange question: Why has Eastasia and Eurasia never ganged up on Oceania? This is of course ignoring the commonly accepted fan theory that Oceania is fabricating the existence of the entire war. If anything, if they are making everything up it would be far easier to simply have the two states gang up on them to present the Party as the only stabilizing beacon in a hostile world, a tactic that past dictatorships like the Nazis have used to great effect.
Assuming that the war is real, it seems unlikely that the two states have not attempted to team up against Oceania. If anything, Oceania’s much larger land area, the massive border Eurasia and Eastasia share and sheer statistics would dictate that at some point they would likely align themselves against Oceania.
Therefore, the easiest conclusion to make is that the three super-states, who have an unspoken agreement to maintain a balance of power, never gang up on Oceania because it would be counterproductive to do so. The most logical reasoning would be that Oceania is so weak that even a mild effort by Eastasia and Eurasia would lead to it suffering catastrophic defeats, upsetting the relatively even balance of power between the three.
2.Population size
According to Winston, the population of Oceania is 300 million. Yet later, it is described that Germany and France alone number roughly 100 million. These two states currently comprise about 20% of Europe’s population, which would mean that assuming the ratio is preserved, Eurasia has 500 million European citizens alone, ignoring all her citizens in Central Asia and Asian Russia. In fact its likely that the rest of Europe has even more, as a nuclear war would likely target these important countries over say the Balkans, ballooning Eurasia’s population even more.
Eastasia has likely even more citizens, as her greatest natural defense is explicitly stated as fecundity of her citizens, which means at worse she has roughly equal to her opponent’s population squeezed into a smaller area, but more likely than not that she has even more people.
All of which means that Oceania has the smallest population of the three.
3.Natural defenses
Last but not least, we have Oceania’s natural defenses. A curious decision is the description of Oceania’s natural defenses. To quote the book:
Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants.
Why is Eurasia described as defended by her oceans? Her American land alone outsizes the real-world Soviet Union, Eurasian’s predecessors by 20 million square kilometers, and this does not take into account her millions of square miles in Australia and millions of square miles more in South Africa.
Now, to play Devil’s Advocate, it could be that the only main difference between Oceania and Eurasia is an enormous ocean, both of them having enormous territories and less industrious civilians than Eastasia, and thus leading to the description. But even so, there are severe differences between the two in terms of habituality of land and geography that could have been highlighted.
Therefore, for some reason or another, Oceania’s roughly 60 million square kilometers is much easier to conquer than Eurasia’s 25 mil, which means that pound for pound, Oceania is once against the weakest.
Conclusion
By itself, any one of these points would not be enough to prove anything. All the super-states have disadvantages. But adding them all together, we can come to the conclusion that Oceania is the absolute weakest of the three super-states.