Lands of Red and Gold

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Hnau

Banned
Great update Jared! You put a lot of work into that installment! It was the perfect althist to read on the rainy day I'm having. :)
 
* * *

“Everything that belonged to the use and commodity of man was and is there... Nature seemed to make the country [Bohemia] her storehouse and granary.”

Jedidja Frühling-Feld, History of the Twenty Years’ War, 1869.

* * *
...
* * *

“I did not expect to find the kingdom of Bohemia so lean, wasted and spoiled, for between Prague and Vienna everything has been razed to the ground and hardly a living soul can be seen on the land.”
- Swedish Field Marshal Johan Banér to Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, 1635

* * *

I have to say, I find the juxtaposition of these quotes to be one of the most striking parts of this piece. Adds a touch of poignancy, sad music playing...

* * *

"The road to absolutism began with the Twenty Years' War."

- Lars Løvschøld, "The Development of Early Modern Europe"

* * *

...and then, smash cut to black.
 
Wonderful to see this go forward!

Mind you-there are people who say that just looking at a map of the Holy Roman Empire makes their eyes hurt. I just kind of go blurry on it. It's trying to follow the soap opera of the various dynasties that makes my head hurt!:eek:

About the only thing that grounded me was that this time period is roughly the same one in the Grantville ISOT novels of Flint et al, so the characters aren't entirely unfamiliar to me.:eek:

It is beyond me at the moment to guess at the shaping up of the great nation-states that will presumably precipitate out of this dynastic morass. Especially bearing in mind, the two big Aurian plagues have done their terrible work--at least the first wave of it--in Europe. But soon the Aurian crops will start infiltrating. We've seen crops that can revolutionize both the north and the south of Europe. Meanwhile Sweden seems set up to be a big power on a nationalistic basis.

How exactly will the Swedes guarantee their ongoing access to their American colony in OTL-Maine? And by the way, why is Bangor, which is some distance inland, the location of the major Swedish town there and not somewhere on the coast, presumably near or at OTL-Portland? Getting back to the access question, can't the Danes try to cut them off from any access to the Atlantic at all? Will the Danes generally find it imprudent to thus alienate their neighbor-rival, will they get co-opted into some alt-Kalmar union, will the Swedes conquer them outright, or what?

The Stuarts continue to reign in Britain, correct?

Anyway IIRC a number of Aururian crops would do surprisingly well in the near-Arctic latitudes of the Baltic. So if the Swedes can avoid collapsing for a while the demographic basis of the Swedish kingdom/nation should consolidate. As would the Danes to be sure! And the Russians. OTOH Norway might get feisty, drawing the center of gravity of the Danish kingdom north or at least counterbalancing the effect of Denmark's acquisitions in former northern Germany. Or perhaps the Swedes court insurrection there whenever the Danes get too obnoxious about the straits, and this is how a sort of balance of terror leading to an amicable modus viviendi between the two Scandinavian realms evolves?

Now turning down to the Med, Spain looks pretty wasted at the moment, but the main suite of Aururean crops seems likely to revitalize Iberia eventually. Italy too should prosper in the sense of there being more Italians, better fed, though they might still be engaged in political fratricide on a grander scale. But it's been foretold, Sicily is an island to watch.

I'm not an unfan of the Ottomans, but hardly an expert, so I'll let others speculate on what the nadir of the plague and the boost of the new crops will mean south of the Med and its northeast shores from the Balkans east--though presumably the Wittelsbachs, having got a toehold on the Med, will mix into that mess. Unless they are too distracted by Empire politics and Italian politics!

I foresee a considerably more balanced development of Europe on the technical and economic fronts, instead of it being nearly as centered in northwest Atlantic coast Europe as OTL. This is partially because I don't foresee the Stuart-descended British kingdom(s?) being quite so cutting-edge--still innovative on these fronts, but blunted--whereas perhaps Sweden will be more dynamic than OTL in the 18th century which in turn might provoke/enable a somewhat more modern (if on "absolutist" lines!) Poland and Russia. Meanwhile the western Med--Iberia and Sicily but possibly also southern France and the other Med islands--will have a bit of a second Renaissance, a true "rebirth."

So capitalism in particular will probably arise more slowly and more fitfully and more gradually, but on a dispersed basis with strong centers scattered all around Europe's peripheries; parts of the Ottoman realm may participate on a pretty equal basis as well.

Hence I guess the more quilted nature of European colonialism in North America.

Again my head hurts when I try to envision what happens in the center of Europe.:eek:
 
The second in the "Fighting Men of Pre-Houtmanian Aururia" series, a Biral soldier from imperial era of Watjubaga, around 850 AD. He is armed with a pike and equipped with a hardened leather breastplate and bronze helmet, shield, and greaves. (The last of which are not visible, being hidden behind his shield...)

Watjubaga.png
 
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Interesting update, but:

1. Prussia was a Polish fief until 1657 OTL and I don't see how it'd be different ITTL, so it can't be given to Courland - by anyone that's not Poland that is. More likely, if history of Polish-Lithuania takes more-or-less the same road as OTL, by 1634 there'd be plans to annex Prussia directly into Poland. So it's quite possible that in ATL 1634 Prussia would end up as a integral part of Poland.
2. Looking at the map - there are a number of somehow Swedish enclaves in non-HRE Pomerania (Lebork & Bytow) and in Courland. OTL they were Polish after the death of last Pommeranian Griffin duke (1637) until 1657 (the former) and under Polish-Lithuanian rule from 1562 till 1795 (latter).
 
Good update, am I correct in assuming that French expansion eastwards has not started yet TTL, when it started OTL as a result of French intervention during the thirty years war?

An Hohenzollern Lorraine will be a major barrier to French expansion eastwards too.
 
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Great work (again), Jared!

Now Sweden seems to have more Germans than Swedes in its borders. I wonder how things will turn out in the long run.
 
Great Timeline! I have a question regarding Bremen.

Will there be resistance in Bremen against the Danish? Somehow like the 2 wars against the Swedes?
Bremen is of course not strong enough to actually win on their own, but the city was basically a fortress so they could try resistance if they see a chance of some allies.

Well I'm from Bremen so I just would like to know.
 

mojojojo

Gone Fishin'
The second in the "Fighting Men of Pre-Houtmanian Aururia" series, a Biral soldier from imperial era of Watjubaga, around 850 AD. He is armed with a pike and equipped with a hardened leather breastplate and bronze helmet, shield, and greaves. (The last of which are not visible, being hidden behind his shield...)
Another wonderful illustration thanks:):)
 
Good stuff, and interesting. No big fight between the Danes and the Swedish will have some important effects on the Norwegians at least.
 
Wait, what? So, now Danes aren't going to hate Swedes?

What a sick, sick world you've crafted. I like it.

:D

That aside, just... Wow. I'd like to offer more constructive comments than that, but I'm afraid I can't quite parse this well enough - It's quite the humongous piece of well-written literature to swallow. The only thing I can add at current time is that I'm sure glad I won't be having a history examination: People tend to look at you in a peculiar fashion when you elaborate on the elaborate cultures of pre-contact Australia.
 
While I agree that Bohemia will be even more Germanized ITTL because of greater population losses in this alt-Thirty Years' War, I would think that Pomerania and Silesia might develop in the exactly opposite direction.

In the time, peasants in both regions were still heavily (if not predominantly) Slavic-speaking, while nobles and burghers were of German descent or already Germanized, with state and church speaking only German or Latin.

Now, with the power of nobles having been crushed by the Swedish government, and the Swedish language being slow to establish itself in these new provinces (especially as Sweden has become very much a multiethnic empire, with the Swedes in minority now), Slavic dialects might stand some chance to recover the lost ground.

Of course, it is possible that Swedish policies in Pomerania and Silesia will be much like those in Livonia and Estonia, where local Germans maintained their domination over the Estonians and Latvians unbroken despite being subjected to Sweden themselves.

But still, absence of German national state formation in the Pomerania and Silesia means that Germanization will have less support from the very top.

On the other hand, Sweden might lose its German dominions to a German national state later on, or even become a German national state itself.
 
Part three: Warriors of the Cider Isle! From left to right, we have a Tjunini, a Kurnawal, and one of the native Palawa with his longbow of Tasmanian myrtle. The latter has his hair done up with red ochre, as some OTL Tasmanians apparently did and some Africans still do.

Again, clothing styles are conjectural; these guys are dressed slightly differently than both the mainlanders and each other. Given the differing origins of and longstanding animosity between the Tjunini and the Kurnawal, I figured they'd probably look pretty distinct from each other.

CiderIsland.png
 
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