The Age of Exchange (The Far Maghreb)
The Age of Exchange is a smaller subsection of the Age of Discovery which saw Western European and Western Arabic influences and colonies spread around the world. The Age of Exchange began in the mid 15th century when Maghrebi explorers sailed westwards following Old Norse rumors of rich and prosperous lands across the ocean, and ended in 1550, after by a series of naval and colonial expeditions by European and Maghrebi powers across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Age of Discovery is often regarded as the transition between the Medieval Period and the Modern Era along the contemporary Renaissance movement.
The Age of Exchange was characterized by a dramatic global shift in trade and knowledge. The contact between West, Middle, and, eventually, East, gave rise to a phenomena known as The Great Exchange: a wide transfer of plants, animals, food, human populations (including slaves), culture, and, to a much lesser extent, communicable diseases, between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. This represented one of the most-significant and sweeping global events with regards to ecology, agriculture, and culture in history. Middle Civilization’s exploration allowed the global mapping of the world, resulting in a new world-view and distant civilizations acknowledging each other, allowing for global trade.
Background:
Irland Hid Mikla
The seeds of The Age of Exchange were planted nearly five centuries prior, at the height of the medieval warming period, with the discovery of Vinland by the famed viking explorer Lief Erikson. His expedition, as well as the nearly contemporaneous one led by Bjarni Herjólfsson, as recounted by the Sagas of Erik the Red and Grænlendinga saga, established small colonies at Straumfjord and Egghamar. The collective area that they colonized came to be known as Irland Hid Mikla.
Lief Erikson’s colony initially struggled, wracked by starvation and conflict with the native Skraelings, but Egghamar thrived and prospered. The flow of riches back to Greenland, Iceland, and Norway quickly prompted more colonists to make the dangerous journey. The most significant of these colonial expeditions was led in 1112 by Icelandic Bishop Eric Gnupson, who led a fleet of thirteen ships across the bay to settle the area eventually known as Jarnlit.
The Norse presence in the West was never very large, and developments in Europe as well as increasingly stormy seas caused by the onset of the Little Ice Age made travel harder and harder, and, in 1346, the last norse ship sailed from Europe first to Greenland and finally to Vinland. This marked the end of Norse colonial efforts, as the colonists in Vinland were left to develop on their own. The Last influx of new viking blood was in 1401, when the Greenland colony collapsed and it’s inhabitants were led by Thorgil to the island of Thorsland to establish a new colony. However, even Greenland hadn’t seen Europeans for over a century. Colloquially, records indicate that the Norse Kingdoms were called Hvitramannaland, or White Man’s land, though that grew increasingly less true as intermarriage with local Innu and Skraeling populations became common.
The Norse Kingdoms a century and a half before rediscovery in 1550
However, the Norse presence in the North-East of the Baid Maghreb had a significant impact on the rest of the continent. The influx of the European Agricultural Package, Steel, and Horses had a dramatic influence on native cultures, but nothing was more integral in reshaping the Baid Maghrebi landscape, and in particular that of Xolal, than the diseases introduced.
Before regular communication had been established between the two hemispheres, the varieties of domesticated animals and infectious diseases that jumped to humans, such as smallpox, were strikingly more numerous in the Middle World than in the Western. Many had migrated west across Eurasia with animals or people, or were brought by traders from Asia, so diseases of two continents were suffered by all occupants. While Europeans and Asians were affected by the Eurasian diseases, their endemic status in those continents over centuries resulted in many people gaining acquired immunity.
By contrast, "Old World" diseases had a devastating effect when introduced to Native Baaidi populations via Norse carriers, as the people in the Baaid Maghreb had no natural immunity to the new diseases. Measles, for example, caused many deaths and the smallpox epidemics are believed to have caused the largest death tolls among Native Baaidi, surpassing any wars and far exceeding the comparative loss of life in Europe due to the Black Death. It is estimated that upwards of 75 percent of the Native Baaidi population died in these epidemics within the first 100–150 years following 1000 A.D..
However, by 1400 A.D., many Native populations had rebounded, and had developed a degree of immunity towards Middle Diseases. The political landscape, however, had been irrevocably altered. While very few written records exist of the Pre-Arabic Xolal, Native legends speak of the rapid ascension of an alliance of three Nahua cities, which quickly conquered its way through Xolal. This is has been dated to approximately 1200 AD.
Norse Depiction of a victim of smallpox
However, by the mid 1300s, that Empire had collapsed, wracked by disease and by rebellion from within, as well as the advent of steel and horses from the north (The Norse Agricultural package only arrived piecemeal to Xolal, as many of the important niches were already occupied by Maize, Beans, and tomatoes.) By 1421, Xolal was dominated by a large number of independent city-states.
The Age of Exchange
Arab Explorers
The first wave of Middle Expeditions to the West came from Morocco.
The reasons for the Arab expedition are twofold. First, the newly united Kingdom of Spain had recently made significant gains in Al-Andalus, causing a burst of migration into Northern Africa. Secondly, the young Sultan Jafar Ibn Harun of the Zidanid dynasty was greatly taken by the viking Sagas, which had been recently translated into Arabic. Putting much of his fortune into this expedition, he imported skilled Arabic and European shipwrights, and put them to work building an exploration fleet. Jafar argued that the tales spoke of riches beyond measure, and that the gains of the expedition would be well worth the costs.
On August 3rd, 1421 AD, ten ships set sail under great pomp and circumstances, instructed to find the lands to the west for the glory of Allah. The ships were commanded by Muhammad the Explorer, a cousin and childhood friend of the sultan, and carried aboard a number of scholars, teachers, and sages, tasked with recording everything they saw, and a number of colonists, tasked with building a colony.
Modern reconstruction of one of Muhammad's ships
On the 12th of October, land was spotted. Setting ashore, it was determined that these lands were inhabited by tribes of semi-sedentary people who referred to themselves as the Taino, and the island on which they lived as Ayiti. Determining that the Taino had no kings, nor knew of the Allah, Muhammad’s expedition claimed the Island for the Sultan and for Allah, and set the colonists ashore to build the first Arabic Colony, Baaid Tangeirs. Muhammad stayed with the colony for a year, exploring and claiming the larger islands of Al-tain’i, Boriken, Xaymaca, and Al-Carib, for the Sultan, before taking five ships and sailing back to Morocco.
Over the next years, numerous colonies were established, repatriating both Moroccans and Andalusians, while the wealth of the Baaid Maghreb flowed back over the ocean. The Sultan even visited in 1436, and the local populations of Carib or Taino were either assimilated or eradicated, depending on their disposition towards the arab explorers.
Modern reconstruction of a pre-exchange Taino Village.
In 1441, however, contact was formally made with the Baaid Maghrebi mainland. An expedition led by Hassan Ibn Fadlan landed in Tampico, in the kingdom of Tamaholipa. Shocked to find stone buildings, horses, and steel weaponry, he quickly realized that the usual Arab methods of imposing their power over the natives would likely not work. He did note that many of the Native’s faces were pocked with the scars of the pox. Exchanging gifts and promises of friendship with the Tlatoani of the city, Cacama, Hassan established the Arab protocol for interacting with the powerful cities of the mainland.
By 1500, Arabic had become the de jure trade language of Xolal, and the written alphabet of the Nahua and Maya languages. A number of Arabic colonies had been established on the mainland, on land bought or leased from the various local powers. There were mosques in most cities of Xolal, with the grandest being the Great Mosque of Lakamha. Arabic Fashions had swept the elite of Xolal, while Xolal fashion had become extremely popular in the courts of Morocco.
Moroccan Colonies in 1550
European Expeditions:
The discovery of Baaid Maghreb by the Moroccans did not go unnoticed. Though many European powers initially dismissed the Moroccan expeditions as fanciful rumors, eventually the wealth of the Morrocans became too obvious to ignore.
Spanish Expeditions:
With the focus of Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean, the last muslim strongholds in Iberia fell in 1487 to the armies of the United Kingdom of Spain. This left Spain with a disaffected population of former soldiers who had never known anything but warfare. In 1493, King Eduardo II of Spain sent an expedition with a task to claim some of the Baaid Maghreb for the Spanish Crown. Settling in the relatively resource poor Santo Domingo Islands, the colonists regularly raided Arabic naval convoys.
Settlement of the Santo Domingo Islands by former Spanish Soldiers
Later Spanish expeditions tended to be more peaceful in their early days, and the Colony of Trinidad even cooperated with the nearby Arabic colony of Nicahira in the Kiche war to expel the foreigners in 1521.
In 1535, the Maimi, inhabitants of the mainland under threat by a growing Calusa Empire in southern Pahayokee, petitioned the Spanish crown to be admitted as subjects. The Crown accepted, so long as Maimi convert to christianity, and named the area in which the Maimi lived San Antonio. Locals still referred to it as Maimi, and do so to the present.
The Order of the Knights of the Four Saints.
The Order of the Knights of the Four saints were a Knightly Monastic order with it’s roots in the crusader orders of England. In 1499, Representatives from the Orders of Saint George, Saint Andrew, Saint David, and Saint Patrick approached the Pope for a charter to protect the innocent souls of the Western World from corruption by the Heathen Arabs. Incorporating the Four Orders into the new Order of the Knights of the Four Saints, the pope granted the charter, and offered funding to the knights to purchase ships and supplies.
Additionally, the pope granted the many of the Knights dispensation from celibacy, though the Grandmaster and many higher officials were still expected to maintain their oaths.
In addition, the Order of the Knights petitioned the Kings of England and Scotland for funds, and both agreed, understanding that the loyalty of the Order was first to the pope, and second to the British Isles, and that many rich rewards would flow back to Britain.
In 1508, the Knights set sail aboard a fleet of twenty ships, packed full of all that was needed to start a colony. Landing North of Xolal and the Arab colonies, the Knights built the city of Castle Lionheart at the mouth of a river they named the Thames. over the next forty years, the Knights expanded rapidly, seamlessly exploiting and manipulating the network of Alliances that bound the native people together.
By 1550, the Knights controlled four Bishoprics, with a European population that numbered well into the thousands and a native population in the tens of thousands.
The Holdings of the Order of the Knights of the Four Saints in 1550
The End of the Age of Exchange
1550 (Somewhat arbitrarily) marks the end of the Age of Exchange, as in that year, the Albani, or Irland Hid Mikla was rediscovered by the English explorer Jonathan Drake, sailing to find lands for an English colony.
Xolal at the time of the end of the Age of Exchange.
Global Impact
The Age of Exchange marked a dramatic reshaping of the world order, as well as shaping the methods used by future great naval powers in interacting with natives of other regions of the world. The Flow of ideas, goods, and people would only continue to increase. Europeans brought cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep to the West, and received tobacco, potatoes and maize. Other items becoming important in global trade were the sugarcane and cotton crops of the Baaid Maghreb, and the gold and silver brought from the Baaid Maghreb not only to Europe but elsewhere in the Middle and Eastern World.
The Age of Exchange is a smaller subsection of the Age of Discovery which saw Western European and Western Arabic influences and colonies spread around the world. The Age of Exchange began in the mid 15th century when Maghrebi explorers sailed westwards following Old Norse rumors of rich and prosperous lands across the ocean, and ended in 1550, after by a series of naval and colonial expeditions by European and Maghrebi powers across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Age of Discovery is often regarded as the transition between the Medieval Period and the Modern Era along the contemporary Renaissance movement.
The Age of Exchange was characterized by a dramatic global shift in trade and knowledge. The contact between West, Middle, and, eventually, East, gave rise to a phenomena known as The Great Exchange: a wide transfer of plants, animals, food, human populations (including slaves), culture, and, to a much lesser extent, communicable diseases, between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. This represented one of the most-significant and sweeping global events with regards to ecology, agriculture, and culture in history. Middle Civilization’s exploration allowed the global mapping of the world, resulting in a new world-view and distant civilizations acknowledging each other, allowing for global trade.
Background:
Irland Hid Mikla
The seeds of The Age of Exchange were planted nearly five centuries prior, at the height of the medieval warming period, with the discovery of Vinland by the famed viking explorer Lief Erikson. His expedition, as well as the nearly contemporaneous one led by Bjarni Herjólfsson, as recounted by the Sagas of Erik the Red and Grænlendinga saga, established small colonies at Straumfjord and Egghamar. The collective area that they colonized came to be known as Irland Hid Mikla.
Lief Erikson’s colony initially struggled, wracked by starvation and conflict with the native Skraelings, but Egghamar thrived and prospered. The flow of riches back to Greenland, Iceland, and Norway quickly prompted more colonists to make the dangerous journey. The most significant of these colonial expeditions was led in 1112 by Icelandic Bishop Eric Gnupson, who led a fleet of thirteen ships across the bay to settle the area eventually known as Jarnlit.
The Norse presence in the West was never very large, and developments in Europe as well as increasingly stormy seas caused by the onset of the Little Ice Age made travel harder and harder, and, in 1346, the last norse ship sailed from Europe first to Greenland and finally to Vinland. This marked the end of Norse colonial efforts, as the colonists in Vinland were left to develop on their own. The Last influx of new viking blood was in 1401, when the Greenland colony collapsed and it’s inhabitants were led by Thorgil to the island of Thorsland to establish a new colony. However, even Greenland hadn’t seen Europeans for over a century. Colloquially, records indicate that the Norse Kingdoms were called Hvitramannaland, or White Man’s land, though that grew increasingly less true as intermarriage with local Innu and Skraeling populations became common.
The Norse Kingdoms a century and a half before rediscovery in 1550
However, the Norse presence in the North-East of the Baid Maghreb had a significant impact on the rest of the continent. The influx of the European Agricultural Package, Steel, and Horses had a dramatic influence on native cultures, but nothing was more integral in reshaping the Baid Maghrebi landscape, and in particular that of Xolal, than the diseases introduced.
Before regular communication had been established between the two hemispheres, the varieties of domesticated animals and infectious diseases that jumped to humans, such as smallpox, were strikingly more numerous in the Middle World than in the Western. Many had migrated west across Eurasia with animals or people, or were brought by traders from Asia, so diseases of two continents were suffered by all occupants. While Europeans and Asians were affected by the Eurasian diseases, their endemic status in those continents over centuries resulted in many people gaining acquired immunity.
By contrast, "Old World" diseases had a devastating effect when introduced to Native Baaidi populations via Norse carriers, as the people in the Baaid Maghreb had no natural immunity to the new diseases. Measles, for example, caused many deaths and the smallpox epidemics are believed to have caused the largest death tolls among Native Baaidi, surpassing any wars and far exceeding the comparative loss of life in Europe due to the Black Death. It is estimated that upwards of 75 percent of the Native Baaidi population died in these epidemics within the first 100–150 years following 1000 A.D..
However, by 1400 A.D., many Native populations had rebounded, and had developed a degree of immunity towards Middle Diseases. The political landscape, however, had been irrevocably altered. While very few written records exist of the Pre-Arabic Xolal, Native legends speak of the rapid ascension of an alliance of three Nahua cities, which quickly conquered its way through Xolal. This is has been dated to approximately 1200 AD.
Norse Depiction of a victim of smallpox
However, by the mid 1300s, that Empire had collapsed, wracked by disease and by rebellion from within, as well as the advent of steel and horses from the north (The Norse Agricultural package only arrived piecemeal to Xolal, as many of the important niches were already occupied by Maize, Beans, and tomatoes.) By 1421, Xolal was dominated by a large number of independent city-states.
The Age of Exchange
Arab Explorers
The first wave of Middle Expeditions to the West came from Morocco.
The reasons for the Arab expedition are twofold. First, the newly united Kingdom of Spain had recently made significant gains in Al-Andalus, causing a burst of migration into Northern Africa. Secondly, the young Sultan Jafar Ibn Harun of the Zidanid dynasty was greatly taken by the viking Sagas, which had been recently translated into Arabic. Putting much of his fortune into this expedition, he imported skilled Arabic and European shipwrights, and put them to work building an exploration fleet. Jafar argued that the tales spoke of riches beyond measure, and that the gains of the expedition would be well worth the costs.
On August 3rd, 1421 AD, ten ships set sail under great pomp and circumstances, instructed to find the lands to the west for the glory of Allah. The ships were commanded by Muhammad the Explorer, a cousin and childhood friend of the sultan, and carried aboard a number of scholars, teachers, and sages, tasked with recording everything they saw, and a number of colonists, tasked with building a colony.
Modern reconstruction of one of Muhammad's ships
On the 12th of October, land was spotted. Setting ashore, it was determined that these lands were inhabited by tribes of semi-sedentary people who referred to themselves as the Taino, and the island on which they lived as Ayiti. Determining that the Taino had no kings, nor knew of the Allah, Muhammad’s expedition claimed the Island for the Sultan and for Allah, and set the colonists ashore to build the first Arabic Colony, Baaid Tangeirs. Muhammad stayed with the colony for a year, exploring and claiming the larger islands of Al-tain’i, Boriken, Xaymaca, and Al-Carib, for the Sultan, before taking five ships and sailing back to Morocco.
Over the next years, numerous colonies were established, repatriating both Moroccans and Andalusians, while the wealth of the Baaid Maghreb flowed back over the ocean. The Sultan even visited in 1436, and the local populations of Carib or Taino were either assimilated or eradicated, depending on their disposition towards the arab explorers.
Modern reconstruction of a pre-exchange Taino Village.
In 1441, however, contact was formally made with the Baaid Maghrebi mainland. An expedition led by Hassan Ibn Fadlan landed in Tampico, in the kingdom of Tamaholipa. Shocked to find stone buildings, horses, and steel weaponry, he quickly realized that the usual Arab methods of imposing their power over the natives would likely not work. He did note that many of the Native’s faces were pocked with the scars of the pox. Exchanging gifts and promises of friendship with the Tlatoani of the city, Cacama, Hassan established the Arab protocol for interacting with the powerful cities of the mainland.
By 1500, Arabic had become the de jure trade language of Xolal, and the written alphabet of the Nahua and Maya languages. A number of Arabic colonies had been established on the mainland, on land bought or leased from the various local powers. There were mosques in most cities of Xolal, with the grandest being the Great Mosque of Lakamha. Arabic Fashions had swept the elite of Xolal, while Xolal fashion had become extremely popular in the courts of Morocco.
Moroccan Colonies in 1550
European Expeditions:
The discovery of Baaid Maghreb by the Moroccans did not go unnoticed. Though many European powers initially dismissed the Moroccan expeditions as fanciful rumors, eventually the wealth of the Morrocans became too obvious to ignore.
Spanish Expeditions:
With the focus of Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean, the last muslim strongholds in Iberia fell in 1487 to the armies of the United Kingdom of Spain. This left Spain with a disaffected population of former soldiers who had never known anything but warfare. In 1493, King Eduardo II of Spain sent an expedition with a task to claim some of the Baaid Maghreb for the Spanish Crown. Settling in the relatively resource poor Santo Domingo Islands, the colonists regularly raided Arabic naval convoys.
Settlement of the Santo Domingo Islands by former Spanish Soldiers
Later Spanish expeditions tended to be more peaceful in their early days, and the Colony of Trinidad even cooperated with the nearby Arabic colony of Nicahira in the Kiche war to expel the foreigners in 1521.
In 1535, the Maimi, inhabitants of the mainland under threat by a growing Calusa Empire in southern Pahayokee, petitioned the Spanish crown to be admitted as subjects. The Crown accepted, so long as Maimi convert to christianity, and named the area in which the Maimi lived San Antonio. Locals still referred to it as Maimi, and do so to the present.
The Order of the Knights of the Four Saints.
The Order of the Knights of the Four saints were a Knightly Monastic order with it’s roots in the crusader orders of England. In 1499, Representatives from the Orders of Saint George, Saint Andrew, Saint David, and Saint Patrick approached the Pope for a charter to protect the innocent souls of the Western World from corruption by the Heathen Arabs. Incorporating the Four Orders into the new Order of the Knights of the Four Saints, the pope granted the charter, and offered funding to the knights to purchase ships and supplies.
Additionally, the pope granted the many of the Knights dispensation from celibacy, though the Grandmaster and many higher officials were still expected to maintain their oaths.
In addition, the Order of the Knights petitioned the Kings of England and Scotland for funds, and both agreed, understanding that the loyalty of the Order was first to the pope, and second to the British Isles, and that many rich rewards would flow back to Britain.
In 1508, the Knights set sail aboard a fleet of twenty ships, packed full of all that was needed to start a colony. Landing North of Xolal and the Arab colonies, the Knights built the city of Castle Lionheart at the mouth of a river they named the Thames. over the next forty years, the Knights expanded rapidly, seamlessly exploiting and manipulating the network of Alliances that bound the native people together.
By 1550, the Knights controlled four Bishoprics, with a European population that numbered well into the thousands and a native population in the tens of thousands.
The Holdings of the Order of the Knights of the Four Saints in 1550
The End of the Age of Exchange
1550 (Somewhat arbitrarily) marks the end of the Age of Exchange, as in that year, the Albani, or Irland Hid Mikla was rediscovered by the English explorer Jonathan Drake, sailing to find lands for an English colony.
Xolal at the time of the end of the Age of Exchange.
Global Impact
The Age of Exchange marked a dramatic reshaping of the world order, as well as shaping the methods used by future great naval powers in interacting with natives of other regions of the world. The Flow of ideas, goods, and people would only continue to increase. Europeans brought cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep to the West, and received tobacco, potatoes and maize. Other items becoming important in global trade were the sugarcane and cotton crops of the Baaid Maghreb, and the gold and silver brought from the Baaid Maghreb not only to Europe but elsewhere in the Middle and Eastern World.
