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While the decades after the Galician War marked a slow recovery from the infamous Grain Crisis, now sparked by increasing demand in the West as well as some producers switching to other production, the economic level of the Lithuanian Empire remained behind the Western countries. Urbanization was not fast enough to give way to an early manufacturing base, and thus Lithuania remained as a mostly agricultural nation, where the majority of the population was locked in villages and manors by serfdom. Sure, there were a number of advancements in the efficiency of farming, and the Pontic Steppe was giving one record yield after another, but agriculture alone was not going to build a powerful, world-tier economy, and this was where Lithuania's illusions of being a world power were starting to hit a brick wall.

A much different view of the world was proposed by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, a movement that has been taking Lithuania by a storm for a while now. Lithuanian Enlightenment thinkers like Valdemaras Chotiškis, Jonas Arbūnas and others, echoing European thinkers and heavily inspired by nature, which they perceived as orderly and the perfect God's work, declared that all citizens of a country must be equal in front of the law, and concepts like slavery or serfdom are unnatural, ineffective and must be swept away to create a better society. After all, animals like ants or beavers do not enslave one another and yet are able to create wondrous constructions, so why should humans be any different? The wish to emancipate the serfs was very controversial for Lithuania in the period (Arbūnas was even once arrested by the Hetmanate for such beliefs), but it was starting to gain traction.

The 18th century marked a development which is often described as The Serfdom Debate. Citizens across the Empire were beginning to discuss and often openly question the long-standing institution of serfdom, whether it was beneficiary or even ethical to hold the majority of the population locked to manors without any rights, almost like slaves. Both sides, the abolitionists and the conservatives, had their own arguments. The reactionary layers of the population believed that only keeping serfdom can preserve the imperial system from a potential revolution, while the abolitionists claimed that the institution and all that comes with it are the primary reasons for the empire's economic downturn, and emancipation will turn out to be beneficiary in the long run. Conservatives feared that emancipated peasants will not wish to serve in the army without a landowner forcing them to do so, while abolitionists rebutted by saying that this will only spark the shift to a modern, professional army. The Hetman and his government didn't make their stance on the issue clear, yet, but whichever path they will take, it will be one of the deciding factors for Lithuania's future.


However, while these internal debates were ongoing, Lithuania was successfully expanding to the East. 1729 marked a diplomatic victory for the Lithuanians, as Sweden and the Hetmanate finally decided on the border between the two nations in Northeastern Europe, a region in which they have been competing for almost a hundred years. King Frederick Charles II and Hetman Algimantas Songaila decided on a border to the White Sea, ceding Karelia and the Kola peninsula to Sweden, but obtaining control over the Nenets and Komi territories further east. With a clear border established, colonization could finally begin, in a similar manner as with the Pontic Steppe - entire villages of serfs getting forcefully relocated to designated territories, which in this case was usually a hillfort near a local river for easier communication. Northeastern Europe was most elusive for the Lithuanians due to the massive supply or rare furs it could provide - while the local Nenets and Komi tribes were surely unhappy with their new neighbours.

This was not the only place where Lithuania solved decades old border conflicts with neighbour nations, although in this particular case, it was solved with blood and steel, rather than diplomacy. Lithuania and Volga Russia both laid claims on the Don region, the land to the east and northeast of the Azov Sea. While Lithuania controlled the river banks, most of the upper river was populated by Russian settlers, and after a series of failed negotiations for resolving the border conflict, Lithuania and Volga Russia officially went to war in 1730. Despite their previous victory in the early 17th century, the Volgaks proved to be no match for the more experienced and prepared Lithuanian army this time, and after two years of conflict, Lithuania seized control of the Don river up to the Don-Volga crossing. Despite it's growing strength, Russia could not challenge Lithuanian military hegemony, yet.

However, the Eurasian steppe was far from the only region that was embroiled in conflict. After the end of the Sengoku period, the united Toyotami Japan rapidly grew in strength due to it's recovering economy and population, as well and adaptation of some Western technology from the Dutch, and feeling confident, the Shogun began to flex his nation's muscles. In 1724, Japan annexed the Kingdom of Ryukyu, which had broken away from Chinese influence after the fall of the Ming dynasty, and their next target was Joseon Korea - but this is where the Shun dynasty, fearing a breach into their sphere of influence, stepped in. The next nine years were marked by what is known as the War of the East China Sea. Since both sides were separated by a large body of water (it's in the name, after all), almost all of the battles of the conflict were duked out in the sea. The Japanese fleet was eventually defeated and destroyed by combined Korean and Chinese efforts, but neither side had the capability to land troops on the other, so a peace was signed with no territorial changes. Japan was not defeated, but it's expansionism was stopped.

An another region that lit up in flames around this time was a surprising one - North Vespucia. Tensions between New Netherland and Luisiana, colonies of the Netherlands and Spain respectively, over the rights to the region between them finally reached a breaking point when the Spaniards incited a number of native Vespucian tribes in the area to rise up and attack Dutch settlements nearby. Much like the War of the East China Sea, the Spanish-Dutch War was inconclusive, because both powers lacked the power projection to force the other side to surrender. Eventually, the two colonial empires were forced by France to enter the negotiations table, and the conflict region was partitioned, although the hostility remained. This war was also very important for the Dutch in that it marked a significant cooling of relations between the metropoly and New Netherland, or just Dutch Vespucia. As time went on, the Free State's profits from trade shrank because of the mercantilist policies employed by many European nations, so the Dutch were hurrying to integrate New Netherland into the country in order to be able to rip more taxes from the rich colonisits. And the Vespucians themselves hated this. It should also be noted that the composition of New Netherland was far from homogenous - outside of Dutch settlers, the land was inhabited by Frenchmen, Englishmen and other refugees from Europe, and also native Vespucians, which forged a far different culture from the one present in the metropoly. During the Spanish-Dutch War, the Netherlands were facing serious financial problems, and thus in 1733, the Staathalter proposed what is now known as the Rotterdam Compromise. New Netherland would gain seats in the Dutch Estates-General if they agreed to additional "war taxes" being levied in the colonies - and the colonial assembles surprisingly (and paradoxically) refused, citing that "New Netherland shall not become a mere state in order to be robbed by the Dutch barons. The compromise is only a step to integrate the colony and strip it of it's autonomy - there will be no taxes and no representation".

Of course, war and conflict wasn't the only thing happening. 1731 was marked in history by the publishing of the "Three Pillars of Government" by the French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Yves Pascal. It is famous in the world today for being one of the first to formulate the concept of separation of powers into different systems - the legislative, executive and judiciary function - that balance the other two out to make sure none get too powerful and thus undermine a country's democracy. In addition, spoken law or basic codification is not enough for the laws and basic concepts of a modern nation, and the philosopher believed that they need to be codified into a single document. Later philosophers and writers expanded on his ideas. Pascal was a notorious supporter of French republicanism, but his work was deemed quite controversial in his nation. While the reigning Reds saw this idea of separation and codification as an attack towards the French system and were for the most part sceptical, the Blues added the application of many of Pascal's ideas into their program.

Much like 1731, 1734 also went down in history, but for far different reasons. The idea of the existence of a sixth continent, separate from both the Old World and the Vespucias, had been postulated since the 17th century, and there had already been some evidence backing it up - for example, there were reports of a Portuguese galleon straying off it's course and reaching an unknown virgin land to the south of Indonesia during the East Asian War - but they were never confirmed, until that day. A Dutch fleet, led by the explorer Huibert van der Pols, explored the waters south and southeast of the Moluccas, discovering a vast new continent located on the western shores of the Indian Ocean. The expedition examined and marked over 300 miles of coastline, and the Netherlanders also sent an expedition led by van der Pols to the continent itself. In his diaries, the captain described the land as "lifeless, coarse and rough. If this is Terra Australis, then there is a reason why we never knew about it before". The captain himself named the land Oceania, noting the fact that it was surrounded by oceans, and this name stuck.

But what's there of use in that dead land?