Oceania is just England...Ok so we’ve all heard this theory a million times. That Oceania is just England or the UK and Eurasia and Eastasia don’t really exist. It’s probably the most popular interpretation of 1984. We only ever get a glimpse of things through Winston’s extremely limited perspective, and there’s not a ton of hard evidence anything outside of airstrip one is part of Oceania. I’m not interested in examining the plausibility of this theory because I know going over the book with a fine tooth comb has been done before ad nauseam? and that wasn’t the point Orwell was trying to make. That being said, suppose that this theory is correct and Oceania is just a little North Korea. What else is going on in the rest of the world? Is it like V for Vendetta (the original comic) and everything else is an irradiated hellscape? How is the ministry of plenty able to avoid starvation? Are there other countries? Are they better than Oceania? Worse? The same? What do you think is out there?

Background: the world of 1984 has three superstates . 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.

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.

tl'dr Oceania is the absolute weakest of the three super-states.

Reposted with permission from here

Much has been written about the epilogue of 1984 which seems to imply that oceania did eventually collapse, source:

https://qz.com/95696/you-probably-didnt-read-the-most-telling-part-of-orwells-1984-the-appendix/

Here, I am going to explain how it is not just the epilogue, but in multiple places in the rest of the book where orwell has given us plenty of clues that oceania was on the verge of collapsing during Winston's final days, perhaps even shortly after his execution. and that clue is this:

Bad news of the African front was allowed to be broadcasted: for those with a sharp eye, you would notice how unusual this is, given that big brother and the ministry of truth NEVER allowed bad news of oceania ever. For example, in the earlier part of the novel, we are told how big brother made a wrong prediction of Eurasia attacking India, when in fact they attacked North Africa. the ministry of truth then went to great lengths to alter the historical record, altering big brothers original prediction to a prediction of Eurasia invading Africa instead.

Furthermore, any bad economic news was scrubbed. For example, if less than the quota of bootlaces promised was produced, the ministry of truth would suppress the news, replace it with a falsified news report and arrest anyone who dares to claim differently.

However, after Winston came out from his arrest and torture, everything changed. the news reported a steady stream of bad news for what seems to be the first time in oceanian history.

This is a sign that the system was buckling. What seems to be quite obvious is that the inner party (the elite) realised that the situation was very dire and had to make emergency changes to stave off the collapse. Here is a flow of events based on my detective work of the clues left by orwell in his novel:

1. Late1983: Eurasia attacked the African front. Big brother (BB) suppresses the news as usual. This is the same event described in Winston's account of them altering the historical record to make it appear like BB predicted the eurasian invasion (to my knowledge)

2. 1984: The war goes badly. Eurasia is cleaning house with oceania and oceania is fighting a long retreat all the way to South Africa. The dictatorial system of press control by oceania is contributing to oceania's defeat, in that any general or officer that dares to speak of oceania's dire situation is carted off as a thought criminal. Therefore, only inexperienced officers are left in charge of Oceania's beleaguered forces. The inner party is hoping that eastasia, their allies, would attack Eurasia and release oceania from pressure.

3. Late 1984: Eastasia betrays oceania instead and allies with Eurasia, gobbling up oceanian territories from India eastwards. the news is greeted with alarm by oceania. This event coincides with the hate week event in 1984 where an emergency announcement is made that eastasia is now the enemy.

4. 1985: Winston is arrested. War continues going badly in Africa and Asia for Oceania. Oceania is being smashed by Eurasia and Eastasia on all fronts, contributed nonetheless by oceania arresting its own officers for criticising or trying to advise the party on military policy as "thought criminals" almost as fast as they were being cut down by eurasian and eastasian bullets.

5. late 1985: Winton is released from prison. Oceania has now been pushed to the very tip of South Africa, Johannesburg remains the only city on the African continent still under oceanian control. The inner party can see the writing on the wall, and realises, too late, that control of the press is leading to their demise. They realise that without accurate information, oceania would not be able to win. The inner party than reverses policy for the first time in 25 years, they allow the ministry of truth to publish the truth about the African front. They hope that the new media transparency would allow the oceanian power structure to have the correct information necessary to turn the tide of battle (similar to how the soviet union tried using glasnost and perestroika to save its economy in the final days). This coincides with the event at the end of the book where Winston is watching the worrying news

6. 1986: Despite the new policy, Oceania is defeated in Africa. Johannesburg falls to eurasian forces. The party publishes a fake news piece about oceania winning the war, but it is all a sham. Oceania is cut in two, a situation which was predicted in gold steins book as a condition for collapse (which is why all 3 powers avoided it). oceania collapses by the end of the year, shortly after Winston's death. a new democratic government, led by the proles, is established, and Winston's diary becomes the most significant historical work on the oceanian era for the next few centuries.

Note: It is also amazing how orwell not only predicted how the Soviet Union would be run, but also how it would eventually end, decades after he had died. The Soviet Union did indeed realise the importance of media transparency in the late 80's, and tried using it in the form of glasnost and perestroika to save the Soviet Union, but it was a little too late, and the Soviet Union fell shortly after.