Medieval America Mark III

[HonestAbe1809]

Well, that depends on what New England should be. Considering the canon Federal seaboard supremacy and the portrayal in the East Map, I don't think New England in the "present" should be more than an ad-hoc grouping, that is only starting to develop a sense of traditional unity. Its current purpose is probably limited to common interests like collective trade terms/defense against the Canadians/Feds (which would actually require it to meet fairly often, handling war and peace on two fronts) but with the potential to evolve into more.

But then, what kind of iconography should this grouping aspire to?

• Should it be a congress of urban oligarchs, like the Low Countries States-General? Then maybe we go for a variation on Stadtholder, or some similar title that implies important duty without total supremacy/sovereignty. Maybe some old bureaucratic term like "Comptroller".
• Should it be a confederation of military orders, like the Teutonic and Livonian Orders? Then the top dog could be Grandmaster, or an Americanized version of that.
• Should it be a federal initiative to make governing New England easier, by granting one state de jure privileges over the others? Then Governor-General should be the most Baltimore is willing to grant.
• Should it be an extremely loose grouping like the old Swiss confederacy? If so... there may be no leader at all. Areas like Vermont probably already practice this.

The first option sounds more like the New England we know, but since New England is more economically marginal and more militarized the second option may predominate. But it's possible the New England grouping has aspects of both, maybe even a bicameral structure of military and trade interests.

I do like the idea of the bicameral focus on both military and trade, though with military slightly prioritized due to how marginal New England's position is when it comes to trade.

I just want to discuss how the transition from the states/counties only paying lip service to the "Comptroller-General" to the leader wielding actual power would go.

Where would the capital be? One of the major cities under New England control or a new city that arose in the new order?

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

I just want to discuss how the transition from the states/counties only paying lip service to the "Comptroller-General" to the leader wielding actual power would go.

The Stadtholder of Holland managed to become the effective leader of the Netherlands by being the first to declare rebellion against Spain, by leading the rebelling soldiers, and by controlling the province that contributed 60% of the war budget for the Eighty Years' War. But then the Dutch managed to get through two and a half centuries of sovereignty without ever fully making this influential office a proper head of state/government, instead it waxed and waned through periods of relevance and irrelevance.

A particularly ambitious and competent series of Comptrollers could elevate the office's profile during a trying time (but no so trying as to totally destroy/make obsolete the local political/military structures like the Italian Wars). But even attaining sovereignty for New England may not be the end of the story for them.

Where would the capital be? One of the major cities under New England control or a new city that arose in the new order?

The Federal control of the coast takes away a lot of options. What makes a state prosperous or poor may instead be its position on the rivers; by that metric Albany (on the Hudson, can trade with NY-Syracuse and the Great Lakes) and Massachusetts (which, hilariously, has taken Hartford and the Connecticut River from poor Connecticut) should be the leading states. I'm not sure which would beat the other, but Albany and Hartford are IMO the top two picks for the capital. New Hampshire, the only state to possess its customary state capital, probably tries to play tiebreaker/voice of reason, which may catapult it and the city of Concord into some relevance.

 

[tehskyman]

The Federal control of the coast takes away a lot of options. What makes a state prosperous or poor may instead be its position on the rivers; by that metric Albany (on the Hudson, can trade with NY-Syracuse and the Great Lakes) and Massachusetts (which, hilariously, has taken Hartford and the Connecticut River from poor Connecticut) should be the leading states. I'm not sure which would beat the other, but Albany and Hartford are IMO the top two picks for the capital. New Hampshire, the only state to possess its customary state capital, probably tries to play tiebreaker/voice of reason, which may catapult it and the city of Concord into some relevance.

I personally think that most of New England wouldn't coordinate into a united entity. The Federal Government would try to prevent it. Furthermore, Northern Italy never united throughout the Middle Ages. It wouldn't be too hard to believe that a patchwork of little towns and cities and some ecclesiastic provinces constantly feuding with each other at a minor level would occur.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

I personally think that most of New England wouldn't coordinate into a united entity. The Federal Government would try to prevent it. Furthermore, Northern Italy never united throughout the Middle Ages. It wouldn't be too hard to believe that a patchwork of little towns and cities and some ecclesiastic provinces constantly feuding with each other at a minor level would occur.

Full New England unification would probably require a collapse/severe contraction of the Federal Government, both to remove an obstacle and to supply additional reasons for unity.

Even if we take the Netherlands and Italy as opposite examples of successful vs failed confederation, the two examples are closer to each other than they seem. Northern Italy had the nearly century-long political alliance of the Lombard League, and the disunity after that is more because of the strength of local states (Venice and Genoa with their oceanic empires, and the Papal states had a different kind of strength on top of their military capacity) and their capacity to wage meaningful rivalry, rather than foreign interference (at least until the Italian wars). Meanwhile, over the course of the Dutch revolt Holland left economic rivals like Flanders and Brabant to the mercy of Spain or even sabotaged their economies itself, so that there would be no room for Venice-and-Genoa-scale rivalry in its custom-built confederation.

There's a range of paths New England could take going into the 3000s AD, with unification being one outcome (but maybe even then political circumstances turn it into a partial unification with important bits missing). Its states are closer in size to Italy's but none of them have Venice or Genoa's strength, and may be more interdependent economically.

 

[Flashman]

I personally think that most of New England wouldn't coordinate into a united entity. The Federal Government would try to prevent it. Furthermore, Northern Italy never united throughout the Middle Ages. It wouldn't be too hard to believe that a patchwork of little towns and cities and some ecclesiastic provinces constantly feuding with each other at a minor level would occur.

Well in the case of Medieval Italy, there was a theoretical Kingdom of Italy that only really began to totally decline and lose relevance i n the 12th century - maybe in the present day of Medieval America that degeneration is taking place.

In terms of titles, I think that it should be something along the lines of "Lord-Protector."

And in terms of what the US Varangian guard equivalent: I think "Minutemen" is the obvious candidate.

re: Unification - I think the relatively uncomplicated geography of New England south of Maine makes true unification sort of inevitable in the medium to long term, though certainly not only totally friendly terms. Though the issue of aine is a very interesting one - it'll be a perennial problem child of New England, isolated and often resentful coastal enclaves that are under constant threat from interior peoples of both rancophone and anglophone origin. Separate from the artifice of the United States, aine will more or less merge with the maritime provinces - perhaps that was part of the American rationale for its conquests there, that since the Mainers were as good as Maritimers that made the Maritimers as good as Mainers which, in turn, makes the whole lot as good as Americans

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Separate from the artifice of the United States, aine will more or less merge with the maritime provinces - perhaps that was part of the American rationale for its conquests there, that since the Mainers were as good as Maritimers that made the Maritimers as good as Mainers which, in turn, makes the whole lot as good as Americans

An uneasy land of turmoil, of dark forests and icy oceans, where fortified villages can't stop people from disappearing into the night... sure fits the whole expanse of Maine, southern New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Just one constant low-level Battle on the Ice.

 

[tehskyman]

So I traced over the borders of New England from the eastmap onto a Satellite map from Google Earth (btw, the base map is not great, it's distorted)

It seems like New England isn't quite so dis-unified as we've been making it out to be. Some of these states are pretty big

I propose that the USA created a "Lord Protector of New England" title when it was disintegrating. This went to the Governor of Massachusetts. Maybe at one point Massachusetts managed to hold sway over much of New England. By the time the rump USA came back, Lord Protector of New England was just a title that the Governors of Massachusetts held. However, the American's have managed to coerce Massachusetts into becoming a vassal again, and have given the Governor of Massachusetts free reign to wage war against the independent counties of New England and bring them back into the fold.

The State of New Hampshire and Maine (along with other coastal counties) are probably nominal vassals of the USA as well.

 

[tehskyman]

And if we are ok with retconning some things, we can give "Lord Protector of <insert region here>" to various other places too. A Lord Protector of Canada to the Premier of Ontario and Lord Protector of the Midwest to the Governor/President of Ohio (probably dropped this title because it implies fealty to the President in Baltimore).

 

[Flashman]

I'm not settled on "Lord-Protector" exactly - the Lord is very problematic, I'm not really sure how that could emerge naturally. I meant it for New England just because I think nomenclature there should have an old world, rather Puritan English feel to it.

Also, the presence of a state corresponding to the northern Berkshires in Western Mass/Green Mountain National Forest in southern Vermont is quite interesting - probably quite the relative backwater, not along any major trade routes really. Perhaps a crusader state to stem the tide of the Quebecois?

 

[tehskyman]

I'm not settled on "Lord-Protector" exactly - the Lord is very problematic, I'm not really sure how that could emerge naturally. I meant it for New England just because I think nomenclature there should have an old world, rather Puritan English feel to it.

Also, the presence of a state corresponding to the northern Berkshires in Western Mass/Green Mountain National Forest in southern Vermont is quite interesting - probably quite the relative backwater, not along any major trade routes really. Perhaps a crusader state to stem the tide of the Quebecois?

Protector General?

Probably, similar to Albany in that sense. Though it might just be a backwater because the Invasion route along the Connecticut River isn't as convenient as the Lake Champlain-Hudson Valley route.

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

I'm not settled on "Lord-Protector" exactly - the Lord is very problematic, I'm not really sure how that could emerge naturally. I meant it for New England just because I think nomenclature there should have an old world, rather Puritan English feel to it.

I'm thinking the legal precedent is derived from Reconstruction military districts, or modern Army areas of responsibility. So the Fed-granted title is something like "Theater Commander". But tbh I'm still attached to the idea of the New England bloc being a more homegrown structure.

A different method of Fed intervention could be call periodic "Conventions" [in reference to the Constitutional one] where the New England lordships take their cases and arguments to be resolved under Federal oversight, reinforcing Federal supremacy symbolically. But then the Feds make hosting each Convention into a privilege to be earned. The League of Mayapan did something similar with the "Seat of the K'atun" where they shuffled around the site of the dedication of the new twenty-year calendar around the various Yucatan Maya cities.

Maybe we go for some mix of both of these structures until, during a time of anti-Federal agitation and possibly even religious reformation, finally some state gets to be Seat of the Convention while its leader is Theater Commander...

And if we are ok with retconning some things, we can give "Lord Protector of <insert region here>" to various other places too. A Lord Protector of Canada to the Premier of Ontario and Lord Protector of the Midwest to the Governor/President of Ohio (probably dropped this title because it implies fealty to the President in Baltimore).

It would be interesting for whatever structure emerges in New England to have actually been the Federals' plan for all America, but then everywhere outside of New England the states are just too large and unpredictable to be dealt with like this

Also, the presence of a state corresponding to the northern Berkshires in Western Mass/Green Mountain National Forest in southern Vermont is quite interesting - probably quite the relative backwater, not along any major trade routes really. Perhaps a crusader state to stem the tide of the Quebecois?

Some other states as drawn (rump Connecticut, the upper-Delaware state just west of it) also don't seem to have any major cities. They might still have a person in charge but politics probably has more to do with balancing the interests of more-or-less independent villages and clans
Novo Giorsi is probably trying to influence that upper-Delaware state, only makes sense to try and put forts up there to protect the Delaware river valley

 

[Richard Drummond]

Personally I like to imagine that New England was united for a century or two during the 2300s-2500s period. But the region would only be united again.

i also don’t like Lord Protector as a term. It doesn’t feel America. Comptroller would be better imo. I am also a fan of keeping New England disunited

 

[Flashman]

i also don’t like Lord Protector as a term. It doesn’t feel America. Comptroller would be better imo. I am also a fan of keeping New England disunited

Comptroller is something that would be more appropriate for something like the Great Lakes region, who's mercantile culture borrows a lot from old world corporate terminology. For New England, in my opinion, requires something more old worldy. Not explicitly comedic and tongue-in-cheek, but something stern and puritan and old world.

That said, I absolutely agree that Lord-Protector doesn't make sense, there would be no way for that title to emerge and it doesn't really fit with America, as you said, I only meant it as an indication of the direction we should be going in. I like the suggestion of Protector-General.

 

[Flashman]

Bringing things back to the West Coast for a minute...

An image of the many great cities and regions of the SALISH SEA, including those two mighty cities SEATTLE and VANCOUVER, who it is known to all have harangued the merchants and sailors of our Great City many times over.

This map is presented to his Eminence Mayor Brin, Chosen of the People, Dedicated Roadie of the Buddha and Nirvanna, Lord of the Valley

-------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: None of the minor place names are set in stone,

 

[Rob Bartlett]

New England's main exports seem to be books, sheep, and textiles. While it's definitely not the industrial power it was in the 1800s, I don't think it would be a complete backwater either. Besides being a halfway stop on the U.S.'s trade route, as the location of six Non-Denom headquarters, these people are major voice in Church matters. Also, with the locations all being pretty close to each other, there's probably a fairly frequent amount of back and forth, mini-pilgrammages, and all that, roadside industries like forresters, innkeepers, carpenters and stonemasons can probably find pretty steady work. (I think New England is the new "Bible Belt", not so much pejorative about them being fundamentalist Christians, but that the most common books would be religious texts, and which would be most common in New England.)

It's rather unclear which borders Boston and Providence fall under, but even if they're politically part of the vestigial United States, culturally they're probably New Englanders and consider themselves such. (As anybody garrisoned or appointed from the Chesapeake would be a overwhelmingly small part of the population, probably 1%)

 

[LostInNewDelhi]

Besides being a halfway stop on the U.S.'s trade route, as the location of six Non-Denom headquarters, these people are major voice in Church matters.

That may be true, but I think there's a factor which may work out to the New Englanders' disadvantage.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed already, but Baltimore and Washington D.C. are very Black cities, 63% and 45% of population respectively. For comparison New Orleans is 60% Black, so on the race map the Federal Core ought to be much closer in skin tone to New Orleans. Granted, it's been 900 years and race as such matters a lot less but regional differences certainly do, exaggerating and playing with regional differences basically underpins the entire worldbuilding philosophy. So I think a situation where the population of the Federal Core is unambiguously "culture_group_southron" and the Church hierarchy is swamped by northerners is something the Feds would try to avoid, because that's a very stark regional divide plus visible difference in skin tone. And so there'd probably be some measure to at least keep the church hierarchy within the Federal Core, which also happens to include the most important Church positions, at an even 50/50 or a forgivable 60/40 (not counting clerics from the Great Lakes and Mississippi basin). The Federal project for unity may constantly be accompanied by a tacit recognition of how different Americans have become.

Besides that, who knows what heights people of mostly African ancestry may have achieved in the Federal state and society? It is possible that the decaying Regression-era US government and army committed horrific crimes against the populations closest to their ever-shrinking control, whether out of a simple need to crush revolts or a conscious policy of white supremacy. And so maybe due to all that + resettling refugees from elsewhere, people of mostly-European descent end up as the majority/dominant caste in the 2900s Federal Core. But on the other hand, ~40% of the US military are composed of minorities who probably wouldn't take that lying down. And was it ever specified which race George Washington II, renovator of the Federal state and exemplar of its ideology/self-image, actually was?

It's possible that the majority of the President's feudal levies, the majority of his commanders, or even the Presidential dynasty itself are Black. Which is a similar irony to "East-Anglian New Englanders as Norman-style raiders," but here the expectations being subverted are founded in American history. In some ways I guess it's also like the Greeks taking the political claims and universal ambitions of Rome as their own, long after the acknowledgement of a profound difference from the Latins

 

[Richard Drummond]

A

It seems that the United States presidents would be primarily white though there would be a number of Black presidents. Regarding the black population, it seems it is the Deep South which is Afro-European since White makes a big deal out of the mixing in the South. Plus, let's remember that a large amount of the black population is in the cities and thus would probably experience huge population drops meaning they would have less influence in MedAm than we would expect them to have based on modern populations. They are, after all, only 13.4% of the population.

 

[Rob Bartlett]

More than half Medieval America seems to be what might be considered a "people of color", though almost half of that would be people who could probably "pass" as white in recent times. The shrinkage of cities definitely mitigates the diversity, although the absolute vastness of urban sprawl in the mid-Atlantic means even smaller communities would have a more diverse gene pool to draw from. (And the southern states have large Black populations even outside cities. In fact, Mississippi is both the Blackest state and almost the least urbanized) That said, even if the feudal core was largely mixed, it's unlikely any animosity towards New Englanders would be based in some kind of restorative counter-white supremacy. It seems the applied troubleshooting to racial tensions has been to broaden the definition of "White", and generations proving they could assimilate. Cowboys to the west and the Voodoo Secretaries to the south prove more of an existential problem, so what people all the way in new Hampshire even look like is probably not something Southrons busy themselves with.

 

[tehskyman]

That may be true, but I think there's a factor which may work out to the New Englanders' disadvantage.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed already, but Baltimore and Washington D.C. are very Black cities, 63% and 45% of population respectively. For comparison New Orleans is 60% Black, so on the race map the Federal Core ought to be much closer in skin tone to New Orleans. Granted, it's been 900 years and race as such matters a lot less but regional differences certainly do, exaggerating and playing with regional differences basically underpins the entire worldbuilding philosophy. So I think a situation where the population of the Federal Core is unambiguously "culture_group_southron" and the Church hierarchy is swamped by northerners is something the Feds would try to avoid, because that's a very stark regional divide plus visible difference in skin tone. And so there'd probably be some measure to at least keep the church hierarchy within the Federal Core, which also happens to include the most important Church positions, at an even 50/50 or a forgivable 60/40 (not counting clerics from the Great Lakes and Mississippi basin). The Federal project for unity may constantly be accompanied by a tacit recognition of how different Americans have become.

According to the original, most people in cities, especially ethnic minorities were killed off / genocided in the Regression. However, because of the numbers in the Northeast, their influence might extend down to the present day.

So according to the map, the people of the Mid Atlantic (DC, Maryland, New Jersey) would be darker than the average Euro-American is today. They would look like light skinned blacks of America. People like Steph Curry and Patrick Mahomes who would probably be considered white in other countries but are black in America.

Besides that, who knows what heights people of mostly African ancestry may have achieved in the Federal state and society? It is possible that the decaying Regression-era US government and army committed horrific crimes against the populations closest to their ever-shrinking control, whether out of a simple need to crush revolts or a conscious policy of white supremacy. And so maybe due to all that + resettling refugees from elsewhere, people of mostly-European descent end up as the majority/dominant caste in the 2900s Federal Core. But on the other hand, ~40% of the US military are composed of minorities who probably wouldn't take that lying down. And was it ever specified which race George Washington II, renovator of the Federal state and exemplar of its ideology/self-image, actually was?

It's possible that the majority of the President's feudal levies, the majority of his commanders, or even the Presidential dynasty itself are Black. Which is a similar irony to "East-Anglian New Englanders as Norman-style raiders," but here the expectations being subverted are founded in American history. In some ways I guess it's also like the Greeks taking the political claims and universal ambitions of Rome as their own, long after the acknowledgement of a profound difference from the Latins

The race of George Washington II hasn't been specified. That's because Medieval America has no concept of "race". Instead they see ethnicity. Southerners in general are darker than northerners. TBH as a poor man from the Chesapeake Bay area, he would have had some Black ancestry in him.

See this page from the original

 

[tehskyman]

In the South, you'd see "Black" people killing other "Black" people because they worship different gods. I.e. Voodoo vs Non-Denom. And in the North you'd see the same but with "White" people killing other "White" people. This time Non-Denom vs Catholics or New Israelites.

Except the thing is, they dont see each other as "White" or as "Black". They would view it as Non-Denom/ People of the Constitution vs Heretics and Infidels. Or perhaps as "Loyal Lancers of Alabama" vs "Heretic Pagans"

Side Note: As Christians in Europe once viewed themselves as collectively as "Christendom", Non-Denom people might refer to themselves as "People of the Constitution" or "Constitutionals"