Affiliated States of Boreoamerica thread
- Thread starter False Dmitri
- Start date
It's still hazy.
Venusian Si made a really interesting proposal about a monarchist Mexico that conquers its Northwest by giving free land to the peasants to homestead. It's in my PMs from nearly a year ago, Let me see if I can contact Venusian Si to discuss it again.
Under Venusian Si's idea, California would be part of Mexico, but various powers colonized ports and cities throughout, almost like China. I don't think we discussed that line of thought beyond the year 1900 or so.
In the northern Great Plains, it has been suggested that there are a number of small states associated with or protected by either Mexico or the ASB. There is likely a Lakotah state, and the Mormons probably have something in or around Nebraska or Kansas. Upvote Anthology is I think interested in exploring Rupertsland as a federalized British dominion.
All of those ideas are strong and fit with this world, but they're underdeveloped.
Then up in the far Northwest, Russia was the dominant power. Oregon and Alaska are both part of the Imperial Commonwealth, the modern form of the Russian Empire. Oregon was never actually a colony, but was a confederation or alliance of Northwestern settlements that accepted Russian protection. The Tsar there has the title of Hyas Tyee, "Great Chief." Alaska was a colony that includes the Yukon as an autonomous area. Russia also colonized California's North Coast from OTL Fort Ross up to Cape Blanco, Oregon, as one of many powers to seize small pieces of the region.
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Upvoteanthology
Donor
I believe it is.
I really want to add in the "International Syndicates of Tanganyika" (ISOT) sometime. Yeah, the two worlds are quite compatible and have the same basic style. Merging them just made sense.
Actually, anyone interested in thinking up wacky big complex confederations for other parts of the world, feel free to submit ideas.
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Wait! I just realized I have Indian Stream on the Canadian side of the border. Hm. I will need to do something with this.
Yeah, this is basically the attitude in OTL that French officials, traders, and missionaries adopted. Some English/British officials did, too, like in Pennsylvania a lot of the time, but a huge population relative to their rivals, and a culture of hungry land acquisition, meant it did not last in OTL.
Minor point, the Three Fires was made up of 3 ethnic groups, yes, but they were not coherent entities with single leaders. Real power was in the hands of village chiefs, and villages more often than not had members of more than one ethnic group. So "Onontio's Children" were all the local chiefs who accepted the leadership of the governor of New France ("Onontio"). The villages of the Three Fires tribes were Onontio's most powerful Children in the western Great Lakes, but the alliance also included Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples around Erie and Ontario and, less consistently, south into the Ohio Country. (This is all OTL, as well as TTL.) In TTL, the Ojibwe/Chippewa, Potawatomi, and Odawa/Ottawa tribes have for the most part merged into a single Anishinaabe ethnic group. Some people might know which of the three tribes they descend from, but most just think of themselves as Anishinaabe (or Anishinaabe-French-German, etc. etc.).
OK, here I actually would prefer that the Congress of the Indies evolve in the opposite direction. It starts maybe in the 1750s or 60s as a diplomatic meeting among the French and Spanish colonial governors around the Caribbean. Then, as society in Louisiana or the Floridas liberalizes, leaders of the Free People of Color in New Orleans and St. Augustine start showing up to the meetings to air their grievances. At some point they go even further and start hearing leaders of other nonwhite groups, like the Maroon communities of Cuba descended from Mateo's slave revolts.
That's a good way to put it. I'll add that diplomacy with Indian peoples, especially the Iroquois, was one of the main reasons that Congress first came into existence. (As it was in OTL with the Albany Congress.) Cooperating diplomatically with Indian and European powers was a big part of what kept it going in TTL. So was sorting out "weird" areas like Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, as you say.
This is a good idea for a transition between the Anglo Congress and the Congress of the Nations. The League would have been instrumental in creating some key features of the ASB. It would have organized the State of Poutaxia (northeastern Pennsylvania in OTL) in territory that was disputed between Pennsylvania, New Netherland, and the Iroquois, as well as independent communities of Shawnee, Lenape, Susquehannock, etc., and a growing population of Metis who felt loyal to the idea of a peaceful North America but not loyal to any particular side. That group would be the natural leaders of the new state. And Poutaxia would set the template for creating states out of other disputed areas, namely Allegheny, Ohio, the Upper Country, Dakota, and West Florida. The cumbersome way of voting is a sensible transition between the old ways (Congresses for the whites, diplomatic councils for the Indians) and modern equal representation.
I would say that they sort of subsumed them rather than got rid of them. Both the Covenant Chain and the Anglo Congress probably still were understood to exist, and probably even met occasionally, even in the early years of the ASB.
Another short-lived body was the Confederation of New England, which formed in the 1770s from the states that rebelled against English rule. Massachusetts dominated the Confederation so thoroughly that it drove Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth to quickly secede; eventually they actually rejected the revolution and re-joined the Dominion. The Confederation continued to limp along with just two members, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and off and on Vermont. Once the Anglo-American Congress was revived, the Confederation basically ceased to exist.
Let's give it a different name, but I'm liking where this is going. I had not done much with the core French states because I've been indecisive over how to handle French history, whether the colonies rebelled to win independence or achieved it gradually, and whether France itself is still involved somehow. Having France go through an overseas imperialist phase, at a time when in OTL it got itself bogged down in Europe, is an interesting beginning. Let's see how it takes shape.
The Iroquois would have already been members, I think. They would have been essential members of that League of the Atlantic between the English and Dutch. Cherokee, as a Carolina protectorate, would also be a relatively early member of the proto-ASB. During this later period I think you'd see the other southern tribes come into full participation.
April 1, 1841 is a fine choice for Affiliation Day! I think that as in all things in this world, it involved a lot of continuity as well. The Congress of the Nations probably existed as some kind of diplomatic body at least from the 1830s, maybe meeting irregularly even earlier; but the permanence that comes with a Name would be a later creation.
Creating a Parliament would be a truly bold step, but probably an essential one as the population grew and the economy became more interconnected.
OK! We have a framework! The dawn of the ASB is quite a bit less mysterious.
Next state should be southern Missouri. I'm from Springfield. You should name it Ozarkia.
Springfield is actually out in the Beyond. Not sure what's out there, but I'm not interested in extra states anymore. Additional states would mess up TB's Parliamentary math, for one thing.
SW Missouri is either part of the bigger Mexico, or else one of the small nations in the Great Plains that is associated with the ASB, or with Mexico, or with both.
Upvoteanthology
Donor
I might do some writing about that, if it's okay with you. Maybe an anti-French migrant state of some sort?
That's fine. Just leave room for Mexico to have noticeably more space than OTL. They got all Manifest Destiny at one point, though they didn't have the resources of OTL's United States.
I'd like it to be. If others feel that the PIC world is too completely bonkers to merge completely with this one, it's something we can discuss - I could either adjust the PIC or make it only a kind of partial merger.
All we have is the filler blue flag I use for wikiboxes. FD haven't came up with a real one yet.
In modern times the entire thing is a Commonwealth, not an empire; so today Hawaii is an independent kingdom with the Tsar as its king.
In the past, Hawaii was considered a colony, but in many ways it operated more like a protectorate. The ruling house was deposed but the institutions of the kingdom continued under Russian supervision. Hawaii was one of the first of the colonies to break free and achieve coequal status within the Commonwealth.
Several other members of the Commonwealth were never colonies at all, such as Oregon (a protectorate), Manchuria (basically a puppet empire), and the little German principalities (personal union with little interference from the center). The Commonwealth began taking shape in the late 1800s when the governments of the East Asian and European states that were in personal union began to cooperate on a formal basis. Hawaiian self-government was acknowledged at the start of the 20th century, which touched off a wave of similar movements throughout the Russian Empire; since c. 1970 Russia has not directly ruled anything but the core Russian lands. However, Russia definitely still considers the former colonies to be within a sphere of political-economic-cultural-military influence, and any commonwealth realm that tried to outright leave would be in for some trouble. Unlike the ASB, the PIC is definitely based on the idea of jealously guarding every square inch of conquered land.
... Anyway, that's how I imagine the PIC.
I had played with many turtle designs to represent the continent, but nothing looked right. Now I'm thinking that something simple and geometrical makes the most sense.
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Pennsylvania and Poutaxia, finally mapped with some precision.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn in 1681 via a royal grant from King Charles II. The grant gave Penn and his heirs tremendous freedom to govern the colony as they saw fit, and they took advantage of its terms in order to basically ignore English rule after the Jacobite Wars. The Penns had Jacobite sympathies, and they and a few other leaders in the colony helped prop up Maryland and the Bahamas after they took the side of the Pretender in the years around 1700.
William Penn's commitment to a free and pluralistic society attracted people from across Europe and America. The greatest landowners were Quakers like Penn, but they were joined by Lutherans and Moravians and Mennonites from Germany, Baptists and Methodists from England, Huguenots, Jews, Irish, American-born children of mixed-race marriages... This motley collection of peoples soon made the colony an economic and demographic force to be reckoned with. The Pennamites, as they became known, emerged as a distinct group, speaking mostly English but also some German, spreading far into the Alleghenies and the Ohio Country, and taking up a considerable portion of the Caribbean carrying trade.
When Virginia and Massachusetts declared independence from England, war again erupted all along the line of English colonies. This time it would not be possible to stay ambiguous toward England: Pennsylvania was forced to choose a side, and it chose independence. Pennsylvania avoided direct battles with English troops, but Pennamites fought New England Loyalists in confrontations all across the west, from the Delaware to the Detroit. The Pennamites themselves caught the spirit of republicanism as well, and the Assembly declared Pennsylvania a Commonwealth and wrote a new, republican constitution. The Penn family was not completely gone - their cooperation was needed, if not their enthusiastic support - but the power they had enjoyed for a century was ended. The Penns thenceforth would have to defer to the Assembly and accept subordination to an elected Governor who would be the chief executive. The office of governor was thus separated from Proprietor, and the Proprietor's role was reduced to reviewing legislation before passing it along to the executive: in essence, a "House of Lords of one."
Pennsylvania, though small in size, has exerted much political, economic, and cultural influence on the ASB. Together with New Netherland, Pennsylvania can take credit for the confederation's tolerant, pluralistic attitude toward culture and religion. Much of Ohio, Allegheny, and the western states were settled by Pennamites. The state was an early leader in North America's industrialization, so Pennamite companies and products were widely used all over.
The State of Poutaxia
Poutaxia takes its name from the Delaware River. The Lenape call Delaware Bay the Poutaxat, and the name was easily transferred to the river. The English use both names; the Dutch likewise call it both the Poutaxat and the South River. In the 18th century it was a neutral ground between three strong regional powers: Pennsylvania, New Netherland, and Iroquoia. Besides people from those three places, Lenape, Shawnee, Germans, and Yankee settlers inhabited the area. These diverse groups co-existed or fought as the situation called for. By the 1780s and 90s a new class of Mixed local merchants, at the same time White and Indian, had emerged as the key local leaders. They organized the first regional meetings and began to create a Poutaxian identity. When the Anglo-American Congress merged with the Iroquois-Dutch Covenant Chain in 1795, it cleared the way for a final settlement regarding Poutaxia. The alliance worked with the locals to create a state government. The capital since its founding has been the Yankee town of Wilkspar in the Wyoming valley.
Poutaxia from the start was poorer than its neighbors. Coal and oil brought boom times to the state in the late 1800s, but like other industrial areas the state today struggles economically.
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This map shows Poutaxia and Pennsylvania and their neighbors. I have labeled Poutaxia's seven traditional provinces. Poutaxia's flag represents interweaving belts of wampum, a symbol of the alliance of different White, Indian, and Mixed peoples who created the state. Pennsylvania still uses the Penn family arms as its flag, a nod to the Proprietor who still has a big office in the Capitol and who remains an important figure in the state.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn in 1681 via a royal grant from King Charles II. The grant gave Penn and his heirs tremendous freedom to govern the colony as they saw fit, and they took advantage of its terms in order to basically ignore English rule after the Jacobite Wars. The Penns had Jacobite sympathies, and they and a few other leaders in the colony helped prop up Maryland and the Bahamas after they took the side of the Pretender in the years around 1700.
William Penn's commitment to a free and pluralistic society attracted people from across Europe and America. The greatest landowners were Quakers like Penn, but they were joined by Lutherans and Moravians and Mennonites from Germany, Baptists and Methodists from England, Huguenots, Jews, Irish, American-born children of mixed-race marriages... This motley collection of peoples soon made the colony an economic and demographic force to be reckoned with. The Pennamites, as they became known, emerged as a distinct group, speaking mostly English but also some German, spreading far into the Alleghenies and the Ohio Country, and taking up a considerable portion of the Caribbean carrying trade.
When Virginia and Massachusetts declared independence from England, war again erupted all along the line of English colonies. This time it would not be possible to stay ambiguous toward England: Pennsylvania was forced to choose a side, and it chose independence. Pennsylvania avoided direct battles with English troops, but Pennamites fought New England Loyalists in confrontations all across the west, from the Delaware to the Detroit. The Pennamites themselves caught the spirit of republicanism as well, and the Assembly declared Pennsylvania a Commonwealth and wrote a new, republican constitution. The Penn family was not completely gone - their cooperation was needed, if not their enthusiastic support - but the power they had enjoyed for a century was ended. The Penns thenceforth would have to defer to the Assembly and accept subordination to an elected Governor who would be the chief executive. The office of governor was thus separated from Proprietor, and the Proprietor's role was reduced to reviewing legislation before passing it along to the executive: in essence, a "House of Lords of one."
Pennsylvania, though small in size, has exerted much political, economic, and cultural influence on the ASB. Together with New Netherland, Pennsylvania can take credit for the confederation's tolerant, pluralistic attitude toward culture and religion. Much of Ohio, Allegheny, and the western states were settled by Pennamites. The state was an early leader in North America's industrialization, so Pennamite companies and products were widely used all over.
The State of Poutaxia
Poutaxia takes its name from the Delaware River. The Lenape call Delaware Bay the Poutaxat, and the name was easily transferred to the river. The English use both names; the Dutch likewise call it both the Poutaxat and the South River. In the 18th century it was a neutral ground between three strong regional powers: Pennsylvania, New Netherland, and Iroquoia. Besides people from those three places, Lenape, Shawnee, Germans, and Yankee settlers inhabited the area. These diverse groups co-existed or fought as the situation called for. By the 1780s and 90s a new class of Mixed local merchants, at the same time White and Indian, had emerged as the key local leaders. They organized the first regional meetings and began to create a Poutaxian identity. When the Anglo-American Congress merged with the Iroquois-Dutch Covenant Chain in 1795, it cleared the way for a final settlement regarding Poutaxia. The alliance worked with the locals to create a state government. The capital since its founding has been the Yankee town of Wilkspar in the Wyoming valley.
Poutaxia from the start was poorer than its neighbors. Coal and oil brought boom times to the state in the late 1800s, but like other industrial areas the state today struggles economically.
----
This map shows Poutaxia and Pennsylvania and their neighbors. I have labeled Poutaxia's seven traditional provinces. Poutaxia's flag represents interweaving belts of wampum, a symbol of the alliance of different White, Indian, and Mixed peoples who created the state. Pennsylvania still uses the Penn family arms as its flag, a nod to the Proprietor who still has a big office in the Capitol and who remains an important figure in the state.
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