The Union of Crowns: A Timeline
- Thread starter Sarthak
- Start date
Fair though they will be come vanishingly rare in the future outside of a few places Galleys aren't really all that great against gun-armed ships.
Huh wonder if Samual Peeps will still exist ittl he did a lot of good for the navy by taking a broom to corruption and standardising a great many practices as well as instituting mandatory tests for Cadets.
Aye thats why I always admire the way Samuel Pepys (realised I spelt his name wrong) took a massive broom to the RN and the corruption in the institute at the time.
James is probably going to try and consolidate his position even more also maybe he will look at strengthening the east India company and other trade or colonial ventures.
Maybe Conquer Jamaica at some point?
Hugh O'Neil is really living up to his OTL nickname 'the great earl' and as someone who's grandparents came from the O'Neil county I can't wait to see how his career will unfold. I assume that he's basically going to be Ireland's equivalent of the duke of Argyll? A kind of go between for the crown and the gaelic lords.
You hinted that his military career is going to come into play in what I assume is the beginning of the 30 years war? I'm guessing since Britain can't afford to fully committ to such a war that they'll send some form of mercenary/expeditionary force over to aid the protestant lords and who better to lead them than Hugh? Seeing as he's probably one of the most experienced commander land commanders in Britain at this time not to mention he has experience with the Spanish.
You hinted that his military career is going to come into play in what I assume is the beginning of the 30 years war? I'm guessing since Britain can't afford to fully committ to such a war that they'll send some form of mercenary/expeditionary force over to aid the protestant lords and who better to lead them than Hugh? Seeing as he's probably one of the most experienced commander land commanders in Britain at this time not to mention he has experience with the Spanish.
While England sat the Thirty Years War out . A fairly large number of Englishmen did fight in the various armies . The surviving English veterans became the backbone of the newly raised Royalist and Parliamentarian armies .
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In hindsight, Britain sitting it out is probably one of the smarter moves Britain could make since it allows for them to play peacemaker, or exploit previous tapped marked and maybe take a few of their colonies if played rather sneaky.
Spain is a little too powerful for England at this time.
partially
Well not O'Neil personally. He is pretty darn old and will be out of military age soon enough to take part in a foreign campaign. The other gaelic Lords on the other hand.........
England staying out of the 30 Years War was a mixed bag of success and failure. They didn't loose life and property yet failed to make their stance properly thrown in for their interests to be secured in Westphalia.
Chapter 6: The Union of Churches
The Union of Crowns
Chapter 6: The Union of Churches
***
From The Union of Crowns by Robert William Johnson
“As Scotland and England veered ever closer to an actual union between their two states, the two countries had agreed to make sure that their currencies would be united, as exchange rates for the Great British Pound for both the English Pound and Scots Pound were created. However without proper central authority to make sure that the exchange of currencies could go on smoothly, the rate of exchange between the two countries continued to fluctuate without proper oversee, which led to severe inflation in some parts of the early modern service economy. As a result, Scottish Banker, and economist, John Byers of Coates, implored the Scottish and English Parliaments to create a central bank, as that was going on in the Dutch Republic and the Italian states. It was a hard ask from both parliaments, however even the parliaments had felt the sting of inflation as both economies felt a downturn after uncontrolled exchanging of currencies, which deflated their overall value economically, and market prices as a result had gone up, leading to some shortages, and protests.
A street in Edinburgh, circa 1605
A commission consisting of 2 Scottish Economists and 2 English Economists – John Byres and Sir William Dick representing the Scots and Barnaby Blackwell and Henry Montagu, the 1st Earl of Manchester representing the English – a commission for creating a central bank representing both Scottish and English economic interests, and to a lower extent, Irish economic interests, was established during the Highlander Wars. On November 27, 1607, the Bank of Oxford was established by the commission to act as the central bank of both Scotland and England, and the newly established bank was given a fourfold task:-
Henry Montagu, the 1st Earl of Manchester
It was essentially the first economic institution that would permanently tie Scotland and England together with one another. The Bank of Oxford was also entrusted with the ability of the country to raise extra-credit monetary resources, which would prove to be extremely useful in times of war, and conflict for many years to come. Ireland was tied to this bank as well, and a branch of the Bank of Oxford was established in Dublin and Cork as well intent on consolidating the economies of all countries involved.
Henry Montagu, the 1st Earl of Manchester was invaluable for cementing the future of the economies of Great Britain. England did have a manufacturing industry, with wool and clothes exported all throughout Europe, however they paled in comparison to the smooth Chinese silk that made its way into Europe, and the Turkish tailors could outbid any and all attempts by the English to expand their markets. Meanwhile Scotland and Ireland had no manufacturing industry at all. With the natural resources of Scotland and the vast agricultural resources of Ireland, as well as the untapped manufacturing capability of England, Manchester knew that Great Britain was a source of untapped economic resources. In late 1607, he was also appointed the Economic Commissioner of Great Britain by Parliament of England and Scotland, and he began to start his work. He began to increase incentives for shipowners, giving them lowered taxes in return for more construction of ships and navigation and sailor guilds were also subjected to lowered taxes on the account of increased navigation rights for the Royal Navy. As a result, the manufacture of English ships skyrocketed as all English shipping companies began to compete with one another for increased lower taxes by building more and better ships. In Scotland, mineral owners were given the same incentives, and this spurred on more mineral research for the Scots, and after a few years, Scotland would have one of the better mineral industries in Europe during this time period. Ireland was a little trickier, however his policies did allow the foundation of Ireland transitioning from a subsistence agricultural economy to a commercial based agricultural economy. The market radius of regional markets were increased on the condition that yields were made higher, encouraging private Irish farmers to start increasing yields from the subsistence amount for more money and market regulations were eased by the government to makes sure that the countryside and hinterlands of Ireland would be able to coalesce a proper agricultural economy that was integrated with the national market. Enclosed property was introduced into Ireland, allowing for more productive farms to be cultivated in small territories, and the English Poor Laws of 1597 were also translated into the Irish Poor Laws of 1609 which allowed the government of Ireland to subsidize farmers who weren’t doing all that well.
A depiction of the English Poor Laws being implemented in Ireland.
With all of these economic activities going on in the country, James I/VI then borrowed around 650,000 British Pounds from the Bank of Oxford on January 27, 1608, wherein he created the Trust of Britain, which was basically a reserve of money held in trust jointly by the Monarchy and the Parliaments as the monetary reserve of the newly forming nation.”
***
From Honorable or Dishonorable? The British Empire in India by John MacDonald [2]
“Every overseas empire had to begin somewhere and somehow. A flag had to be raised, a territory had to be claimed and settlement (whether of colonial type or of loyal populace, both can take place). In the dimly perceived conduct of a small band of bedraggled pioneers, stiff with scurvy and with sand in their hose, it is difficult to determine to what extent these various criteria were met. There might, for instance, be a case for locating the genesis of the British Empire in the West Indies, Virginia, or New England. But there is a less obvious and much stronger candidate. The seed from which grew the most extensive empire the world has ever seen was sown on Pulo Run in the Banda Islands at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago. As the island of Runnymede is to British constitutional history, so the island of Run is to British imperial history.
English ships outside of Pulo Run
How in 1603 Run’s first English visitors ever lit upon such an absurdly remote destination is a cause for wonder. To locate the island a map of no ordinary dimensions is needed. For to show Pulo Run at anything like scale and also include, say, Johor and Jakarta means pasting together a sheet of room size – and still Run is just an elongated speck. On the ground it measures two miles by half a mile, takes an hour to walk round and a day for a really exhaustive exploration. This reveals a modest population, no buildings of note, and no source of fresh water. There are, though, a lot of trees amongst which the botanist will recognize Myristica fragrans. Dark of foliage, willow-size, and carefully tended, it is more commonly known as the nutmeg tree.
For the nutmegs (i.e. the kernels inside the stones of the tree’s peach-like fruit) and for the mace (the membrane which surrounds the stone) those first visitors in 1603 would willingly have sailed round the world several times. Nowhere else on the globe did the trees flourish and so nowhere else was their fruit so cheap. In the minuscule Banda Islands of Run, Ai, Lonthor and Neira ten pounds of nutmeg cost less than half a penny and ten pounds of mace less than five pence. Yet in Europe the same quantities could be sold for respectively £1.60 and £16, a tidy appreciation of approximately 32,000 per cent. Not without pride would James I come to be styled ‘King of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Puloway [Pulo Ai] and Puloroon [Pulo Run]’. The last named, thought one of its visitors, could be as valuable to His Majesty as Scotland.
True, the island never quite lived up to expectations. Indeed it would become a fraught and expensive liability. But as it happened, the importance of Run for the East India Company and so for the British Empire lay not in its scented groves of nutmeg but in one particular nutmeg seedling.
A peculiarity of the Banda islands at the beginning of the seventeenth century was that thanks to their isolation they owed allegiance to no one. Moreover, the Bandanese recognized no supreme sultan of their own. Instead authority rested with village councils presided over by orang kaya or headmen. In the best tradition of south-east Asian adat (consensus), each village or island was in fact a self-governing and fairly democratic republic. They could withhold or dispose of their sovereignty as they saw fit; and whereas the inhabitants of neighbouring Neira and Lonthor had already been bullied into accepting a large measure of Dutch control, those of outlying Ai and Run had managed to preserve their independence intact.
One of the many banners of the Mughal empire, The Hegemon of India during this time.
And this made the islands incredibly well suited for English commercial interest, without the Dutch to intervene, as the Dutch still needed English aid if they were to stand a chance against the Spanish. Soon commercial interests of the English and British soon gave way to the fact that the Indian subcontinent was the largest market for the nutmeg industry, and that the local merchants told the English merchants that India would be the place to go, if they truly wished to have a true commercial venture in South Asia.
In Late 1605, James VI/I instructed Sir Thomas Roe, and Admiral James Lancaster to seek the court of the Mughal Emperor to make sure that the English would be able to open trade on the Indian subcontinent. Sir Henry Middleton was also instructed to be a part of his diplomatic meeting of epic scales. Travelling across two oceans, the five warships that had departed from Dover reached the shores of Bengal in early 1607. Mughal naval authorities were perplexed by the arrival of Englishmen on their shores. They of course knew who the English were, the Mughal’s extensive trade with the Safavids and the Ottomans made that knowledge well known among the upper Mughal class, however England was still leagues away and they were awed to see an Englishman on their shores for the first time. Sir Thomas Roe asked to meet the Mughal Emperor for he was there for a diplomatic meeting. In August 1607, he was in Delhi where he and his small diplomatic core were given their audience with the Great Moghul, Jahangir, the 4th Mughal Emperor. Sir Thomas Roe, who was learned in Persian and Farsi, spoke with the Great Moghul in the great Iranian tongue that both knew how to converse in.
a painting depicting Sir Thomas Roe speaking with the Great Moghul.
The English showered the Mughal court with gifts, with tobacco, turkey, glass and silverwares, and gold from the new world that they had taken from the Spaniards, alongside precious silver and diamonds they had stolen from the Spanish treasure ships. India was of course rife with riches at this time, and they weren’t swayed by the normal gifts and riches, however things like tobacco and turkey impressed them immensely. Jahangir was so impressed that he allowed the two countries to open diplomatic relations, with the East India Company’s Chief Minister in India to become the official English diplomat in the Mughal court. Jahangir also allowed the construction of 3 factories in Bengal.
A factory was basically an early entrepot – which was essentially an early modern form of a free trading zone for transshipment point. At a factory foreign merchants and local inhabitants would interact with one another and trade with one another freely. These factories were small villages in and of themselves, consisting of markets, warehouses, residential quarters and a small port on the banks of a river or ocean.
Jahangir also wrote a letter, which was translated into English by Sir Thomas Roe, to the English and Scottish monarch. The letter roughly translates into:-
‘Upon the assurance of your royal love, I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominion to receive all merchants of the English and Scottish nations as the subjects of my friend; that in what place soever they choose to live, they may have free liberty without any restraint; and at what port soever they shall arrive in, that neither Portugal nor any other shall dare molest their quiet unless they wish to face the wrath of my dominion; and in what city soever they shall have residence, and I have commanded all by governors and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires, to sell, buy and to transport to their country at their pleasure. For confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in ships of all sorts of rarities and goods that befit my palace; and that you be pleased to send me your royal letters by every opportunity; that I may rejoice in your health and prosperous affairs, that our friendship may be interchanged and forever eternal.’ – Jahangir in letter to James I/VI. [1]
While the two countries didn’t know it, the foundation for the British dominion over India started with this letter.”
Jahangir, the Great Moghul. ***
From Great Powers of the North African Region: The Saadi Empire by Ali Al-Mabri
“The death of Ahmad Al-Mansur in 1603 left the Anglo-Moroccan Alliance in tatters and the country of Morocco fell into a general civil war. Al-Mansur’s designated successor, his eldest son, Zidan Abu Maali was attacked from all sides, as tribal warlords of the Sahel tried to re-assert their independence and warlords such as Ahmed ibn Abi Mahalli and Sidi al-Ayachi all tried to assert power in the Moroccan country. The Anglo-Moroccan Alliance was always made with Spain in mind, however both had created ambiguous terms regarding the domestic situation, mostly because the Christian English didn’t want Moslem Moroccans interfering in English affairs domestically and the Moslem Moroccans didn’t what the Christian Englishmen interfering in their domestic affairs either. So when Abu Maali asked for English aid in 1607 against the domestic warlords, it certainly came forward as a surprise.
Ahmad Al-Mansur, the man who revitalized Morocco as a regional powerhouse.
Abu Maali wasn’t asking for military aid, however monetary aid. He needed money and desperately as al-Ayachi had plundered Al-Mansur’s treasury taking all the money of the Moroccan nation. It is here that the idea that James I/VI was a pacifist monarch becomes discredited once again. A strong Morocco was in the interests of England, as a deterrent against the Spanish, and as a result, James I/VI allowed the Moroccans to take a loan of nearly 100,000 pounds from England, and English privateers roamed the entrance of the Mediterranean and Moroccan coastlines, specifically targeting the shipping of the enemies of Abu Maali. English guns entered the army of Abu Maali and a few English supervisors were sent to the country as well.
The Spanish were caught off guard by this development, as they wanted to seize the cities of Larache and Al-Mamura in the ensuing chaos in Morocco, which they coveted with all they had however the English meddling in Morocco changed the situation entirely for the Spaniards. They had just made peace with the English and they could not afford to restart a new war with the English when one war seemed to become more and more likely in Central Europe as the Protestants and Catholics continued to clash with one another.
A depiction from a propaganda poster from the era showing Welsh, Enlish, Scottish and Irish mercenaries loaned to the Moroccans by James I.
With the aid of their English allies, the armies of Abu Maali drove the Sahel tribes back into the interior and defeated the pretenders in Fes. It would prove to be the first real test of the Anglo-Moroccan alliance, and much like the Anglo-Portuguese alliance which was restored upon Portuguese independence, the Anglo-Moroccan Alliance would soon prove to become extremely long lived and both countries would prove to be a thorn in the side of the Spanish during the first Albionic-Spanish War.”
***
From The Church of Britain: An Illustrious History by Griffith ap Owain
“On February 12, 1608, after around five years of hard work, and extreme religious compromise and discourse, the government of James I of England and VI of Scotland called for the conference of the Kirk and the Church of England with the Parliament of Scotland and England in attendance. Everyone knew what this was supposed to be. Several nobles and aristocrats travelled from Scotland and England all the way to Berwick, where the Conference of Berwick began.
The Stuart Royal Family during the Union of Churches
In it, James I/VI as head of the Kirk and Church of England dissolved both institutions as independent church bodies, and the Church of Britain was established in accordance with the York Confession of the Faith. The Britannic Communion was formed between the two churches, and the religious authorities of the two countries were united into one. Richard Parry, the Bishop of St. Asaph, who had been extremely important in the work of the union of churches in Wales, and translating the new authorized bible into Welsh, was chosen as the First Archbishop of Mann.
The union of the churches would prove to be the first hard step forward, for the Union of the Kingdoms.
***
----
[1] – real quote from Jahangir. (From Wikipedia)
[2] - several quotes in this segment from the Honorable Company by John Keay in this chapter are present.
Chapter 6: The Union of Churches
***
From The Union of Crowns by Robert William Johnson
“As Scotland and England veered ever closer to an actual union between their two states, the two countries had agreed to make sure that their currencies would be united, as exchange rates for the Great British Pound for both the English Pound and Scots Pound were created. However without proper central authority to make sure that the exchange of currencies could go on smoothly, the rate of exchange between the two countries continued to fluctuate without proper oversee, which led to severe inflation in some parts of the early modern service economy. As a result, Scottish Banker, and economist, John Byers of Coates, implored the Scottish and English Parliaments to create a central bank, as that was going on in the Dutch Republic and the Italian states. It was a hard ask from both parliaments, however even the parliaments had felt the sting of inflation as both economies felt a downturn after uncontrolled exchanging of currencies, which deflated their overall value economically, and market prices as a result had gone up, leading to some shortages, and protests.
A street in Edinburgh, circa 1605
A commission consisting of 2 Scottish Economists and 2 English Economists – John Byres and Sir William Dick representing the Scots and Barnaby Blackwell and Henry Montagu, the 1st Earl of Manchester representing the English – a commission for creating a central bank representing both Scottish and English economic interests, and to a lower extent, Irish economic interests, was established during the Highlander Wars. On November 27, 1607, the Bank of Oxford was established by the commission to act as the central bank of both Scotland and England, and the newly established bank was given a fourfold task:-
- To ensure that the money entrusted by the citizens to the bank remained stable in value.
- To solve the domestic revenue problem
- To facilitate international payments and trade through an adequate supply of monetary resources such as coins and a book entry transfer system
- To ensure that the bank’s foreign exchange reserves were to be protected from the influx to lighter currencies to make the new Great British Pound stronger in value.
Henry Montagu, the 1st Earl of Manchester
It was essentially the first economic institution that would permanently tie Scotland and England together with one another. The Bank of Oxford was also entrusted with the ability of the country to raise extra-credit monetary resources, which would prove to be extremely useful in times of war, and conflict for many years to come. Ireland was tied to this bank as well, and a branch of the Bank of Oxford was established in Dublin and Cork as well intent on consolidating the economies of all countries involved.
Henry Montagu, the 1st Earl of Manchester was invaluable for cementing the future of the economies of Great Britain. England did have a manufacturing industry, with wool and clothes exported all throughout Europe, however they paled in comparison to the smooth Chinese silk that made its way into Europe, and the Turkish tailors could outbid any and all attempts by the English to expand their markets. Meanwhile Scotland and Ireland had no manufacturing industry at all. With the natural resources of Scotland and the vast agricultural resources of Ireland, as well as the untapped manufacturing capability of England, Manchester knew that Great Britain was a source of untapped economic resources. In late 1607, he was also appointed the Economic Commissioner of Great Britain by Parliament of England and Scotland, and he began to start his work. He began to increase incentives for shipowners, giving them lowered taxes in return for more construction of ships and navigation and sailor guilds were also subjected to lowered taxes on the account of increased navigation rights for the Royal Navy. As a result, the manufacture of English ships skyrocketed as all English shipping companies began to compete with one another for increased lower taxes by building more and better ships. In Scotland, mineral owners were given the same incentives, and this spurred on more mineral research for the Scots, and after a few years, Scotland would have one of the better mineral industries in Europe during this time period. Ireland was a little trickier, however his policies did allow the foundation of Ireland transitioning from a subsistence agricultural economy to a commercial based agricultural economy. The market radius of regional markets were increased on the condition that yields were made higher, encouraging private Irish farmers to start increasing yields from the subsistence amount for more money and market regulations were eased by the government to makes sure that the countryside and hinterlands of Ireland would be able to coalesce a proper agricultural economy that was integrated with the national market. Enclosed property was introduced into Ireland, allowing for more productive farms to be cultivated in small territories, and the English Poor Laws of 1597 were also translated into the Irish Poor Laws of 1609 which allowed the government of Ireland to subsidize farmers who weren’t doing all that well.
A depiction of the English Poor Laws being implemented in Ireland.
With all of these economic activities going on in the country, James I/VI then borrowed around 650,000 British Pounds from the Bank of Oxford on January 27, 1608, wherein he created the Trust of Britain, which was basically a reserve of money held in trust jointly by the Monarchy and the Parliaments as the monetary reserve of the newly forming nation.”
***
From Honorable or Dishonorable? The British Empire in India by John MacDonald [2]
“Every overseas empire had to begin somewhere and somehow. A flag had to be raised, a territory had to be claimed and settlement (whether of colonial type or of loyal populace, both can take place). In the dimly perceived conduct of a small band of bedraggled pioneers, stiff with scurvy and with sand in their hose, it is difficult to determine to what extent these various criteria were met. There might, for instance, be a case for locating the genesis of the British Empire in the West Indies, Virginia, or New England. But there is a less obvious and much stronger candidate. The seed from which grew the most extensive empire the world has ever seen was sown on Pulo Run in the Banda Islands at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago. As the island of Runnymede is to British constitutional history, so the island of Run is to British imperial history.
English ships outside of Pulo Run
How in 1603 Run’s first English visitors ever lit upon such an absurdly remote destination is a cause for wonder. To locate the island a map of no ordinary dimensions is needed. For to show Pulo Run at anything like scale and also include, say, Johor and Jakarta means pasting together a sheet of room size – and still Run is just an elongated speck. On the ground it measures two miles by half a mile, takes an hour to walk round and a day for a really exhaustive exploration. This reveals a modest population, no buildings of note, and no source of fresh water. There are, though, a lot of trees amongst which the botanist will recognize Myristica fragrans. Dark of foliage, willow-size, and carefully tended, it is more commonly known as the nutmeg tree.
For the nutmegs (i.e. the kernels inside the stones of the tree’s peach-like fruit) and for the mace (the membrane which surrounds the stone) those first visitors in 1603 would willingly have sailed round the world several times. Nowhere else on the globe did the trees flourish and so nowhere else was their fruit so cheap. In the minuscule Banda Islands of Run, Ai, Lonthor and Neira ten pounds of nutmeg cost less than half a penny and ten pounds of mace less than five pence. Yet in Europe the same quantities could be sold for respectively £1.60 and £16, a tidy appreciation of approximately 32,000 per cent. Not without pride would James I come to be styled ‘King of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Puloway [Pulo Ai] and Puloroon [Pulo Run]’. The last named, thought one of its visitors, could be as valuable to His Majesty as Scotland.
True, the island never quite lived up to expectations. Indeed it would become a fraught and expensive liability. But as it happened, the importance of Run for the East India Company and so for the British Empire lay not in its scented groves of nutmeg but in one particular nutmeg seedling.
A peculiarity of the Banda islands at the beginning of the seventeenth century was that thanks to their isolation they owed allegiance to no one. Moreover, the Bandanese recognized no supreme sultan of their own. Instead authority rested with village councils presided over by orang kaya or headmen. In the best tradition of south-east Asian adat (consensus), each village or island was in fact a self-governing and fairly democratic republic. They could withhold or dispose of their sovereignty as they saw fit; and whereas the inhabitants of neighbouring Neira and Lonthor had already been bullied into accepting a large measure of Dutch control, those of outlying Ai and Run had managed to preserve their independence intact.
One of the many banners of the Mughal empire, The Hegemon of India during this time.
And this made the islands incredibly well suited for English commercial interest, without the Dutch to intervene, as the Dutch still needed English aid if they were to stand a chance against the Spanish. Soon commercial interests of the English and British soon gave way to the fact that the Indian subcontinent was the largest market for the nutmeg industry, and that the local merchants told the English merchants that India would be the place to go, if they truly wished to have a true commercial venture in South Asia.
In Late 1605, James VI/I instructed Sir Thomas Roe, and Admiral James Lancaster to seek the court of the Mughal Emperor to make sure that the English would be able to open trade on the Indian subcontinent. Sir Henry Middleton was also instructed to be a part of his diplomatic meeting of epic scales. Travelling across two oceans, the five warships that had departed from Dover reached the shores of Bengal in early 1607. Mughal naval authorities were perplexed by the arrival of Englishmen on their shores. They of course knew who the English were, the Mughal’s extensive trade with the Safavids and the Ottomans made that knowledge well known among the upper Mughal class, however England was still leagues away and they were awed to see an Englishman on their shores for the first time. Sir Thomas Roe asked to meet the Mughal Emperor for he was there for a diplomatic meeting. In August 1607, he was in Delhi where he and his small diplomatic core were given their audience with the Great Moghul, Jahangir, the 4th Mughal Emperor. Sir Thomas Roe, who was learned in Persian and Farsi, spoke with the Great Moghul in the great Iranian tongue that both knew how to converse in.
a painting depicting Sir Thomas Roe speaking with the Great Moghul.
The English showered the Mughal court with gifts, with tobacco, turkey, glass and silverwares, and gold from the new world that they had taken from the Spaniards, alongside precious silver and diamonds they had stolen from the Spanish treasure ships. India was of course rife with riches at this time, and they weren’t swayed by the normal gifts and riches, however things like tobacco and turkey impressed them immensely. Jahangir was so impressed that he allowed the two countries to open diplomatic relations, with the East India Company’s Chief Minister in India to become the official English diplomat in the Mughal court. Jahangir also allowed the construction of 3 factories in Bengal.
A factory was basically an early entrepot – which was essentially an early modern form of a free trading zone for transshipment point. At a factory foreign merchants and local inhabitants would interact with one another and trade with one another freely. These factories were small villages in and of themselves, consisting of markets, warehouses, residential quarters and a small port on the banks of a river or ocean.
Jahangir also wrote a letter, which was translated into English by Sir Thomas Roe, to the English and Scottish monarch. The letter roughly translates into:-
‘Upon the assurance of your royal love, I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominion to receive all merchants of the English and Scottish nations as the subjects of my friend; that in what place soever they choose to live, they may have free liberty without any restraint; and at what port soever they shall arrive in, that neither Portugal nor any other shall dare molest their quiet unless they wish to face the wrath of my dominion; and in what city soever they shall have residence, and I have commanded all by governors and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires, to sell, buy and to transport to their country at their pleasure. For confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in ships of all sorts of rarities and goods that befit my palace; and that you be pleased to send me your royal letters by every opportunity; that I may rejoice in your health and prosperous affairs, that our friendship may be interchanged and forever eternal.’ – Jahangir in letter to James I/VI. [1]
While the two countries didn’t know it, the foundation for the British dominion over India started with this letter.”
Jahangir, the Great Moghul.
From Great Powers of the North African Region: The Saadi Empire by Ali Al-Mabri
“The death of Ahmad Al-Mansur in 1603 left the Anglo-Moroccan Alliance in tatters and the country of Morocco fell into a general civil war. Al-Mansur’s designated successor, his eldest son, Zidan Abu Maali was attacked from all sides, as tribal warlords of the Sahel tried to re-assert their independence and warlords such as Ahmed ibn Abi Mahalli and Sidi al-Ayachi all tried to assert power in the Moroccan country. The Anglo-Moroccan Alliance was always made with Spain in mind, however both had created ambiguous terms regarding the domestic situation, mostly because the Christian English didn’t want Moslem Moroccans interfering in English affairs domestically and the Moslem Moroccans didn’t what the Christian Englishmen interfering in their domestic affairs either. So when Abu Maali asked for English aid in 1607 against the domestic warlords, it certainly came forward as a surprise.
Ahmad Al-Mansur, the man who revitalized Morocco as a regional powerhouse.
Abu Maali wasn’t asking for military aid, however monetary aid. He needed money and desperately as al-Ayachi had plundered Al-Mansur’s treasury taking all the money of the Moroccan nation. It is here that the idea that James I/VI was a pacifist monarch becomes discredited once again. A strong Morocco was in the interests of England, as a deterrent against the Spanish, and as a result, James I/VI allowed the Moroccans to take a loan of nearly 100,000 pounds from England, and English privateers roamed the entrance of the Mediterranean and Moroccan coastlines, specifically targeting the shipping of the enemies of Abu Maali. English guns entered the army of Abu Maali and a few English supervisors were sent to the country as well.
The Spanish were caught off guard by this development, as they wanted to seize the cities of Larache and Al-Mamura in the ensuing chaos in Morocco, which they coveted with all they had however the English meddling in Morocco changed the situation entirely for the Spaniards. They had just made peace with the English and they could not afford to restart a new war with the English when one war seemed to become more and more likely in Central Europe as the Protestants and Catholics continued to clash with one another.
A depiction from a propaganda poster from the era showing Welsh, Enlish, Scottish and Irish mercenaries loaned to the Moroccans by James I.
With the aid of their English allies, the armies of Abu Maali drove the Sahel tribes back into the interior and defeated the pretenders in Fes. It would prove to be the first real test of the Anglo-Moroccan alliance, and much like the Anglo-Portuguese alliance which was restored upon Portuguese independence, the Anglo-Moroccan Alliance would soon prove to become extremely long lived and both countries would prove to be a thorn in the side of the Spanish during the first Albionic-Spanish War.”
***
From The Church of Britain: An Illustrious History by Griffith ap Owain
“On February 12, 1608, after around five years of hard work, and extreme religious compromise and discourse, the government of James I of England and VI of Scotland called for the conference of the Kirk and the Church of England with the Parliament of Scotland and England in attendance. Everyone knew what this was supposed to be. Several nobles and aristocrats travelled from Scotland and England all the way to Berwick, where the Conference of Berwick began.
The Stuart Royal Family during the Union of Churches
In it, James I/VI as head of the Kirk and Church of England dissolved both institutions as independent church bodies, and the Church of Britain was established in accordance with the York Confession of the Faith. The Britannic Communion was formed between the two churches, and the religious authorities of the two countries were united into one. Richard Parry, the Bishop of St. Asaph, who had been extremely important in the work of the union of churches in Wales, and translating the new authorized bible into Welsh, was chosen as the First Archbishop of Mann.
The union of the churches would prove to be the first hard step forward, for the Union of the Kingdoms.
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[1] – real quote from Jahangir. (From Wikipedia)
[2] - several quotes in this segment from the Honorable Company by John Keay in this chapter are present.
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So James has finally united Great Britain, it was easier than I thought but definetly harder than it could have been.
Also those economic reforms will come very handily in time as Great Britain will have a massive amount of industry and wealth.
Also those economic reforms will come very handily in time as Great Britain will have a massive amount of industry and wealth.
Well no he has United the churches. The actual union has still not happened.
A Union of the two Churches further cements the future political Union.
I do hope that Britain keeps all of British North America in this timeline, they could potentially dominate the whole continent. Also perhaps more Anglo settlement in South Africa?
Africa is in the colonial backburner for the moment. No interest during this era