France might not be the only country with mind-bending governance. Hume claims that "involuntary intercourse is rare" between the constituent nations, which seems impossible in a federation as we would understand it-- does one part never use its demographic clout to vote for measures of which the other disapproves? On the whole he discusses commerce as a pan-British force a lot more than he does law, and almost regards questions about legal linkage with distaste. So just how decentralized can a state become when it's deprived of its claims to represent a nation? And just how does the Commonwealth build consensus between all its member nations on revolutionary pan-island changes like abolishing burghs and shires soon after its establishment-- or, as Hume darkly implies, its "imposition, nay, installation"? Of course, Mr Hume might just be idealizing the system that governs his "fair and glorious realm," things might be a little more chaotic/less libertarian than implied.
Good questions. There's a fair bit to unpack here, including some bits which it would be too spoilerific to answer in detail.
I can give part of the answer, though. Mr Hume, Eʃq. stated that "The ʃyʃtem of burghs and ʃhires did not long outlaʃt the eʃtabliʃhment of the Common Wealth". The timing is important here. The Commonwealth is stated as being formed a long time ago while the office of "King of the Scots" was at some unclear time more recently, though probably not within his lifetime as he would remember that (he's got that sort of memory). In other words, the burghs and shires were probably abolished before the King of Scots was re-established. Given that some of the burghs (though not all) were established as royal burghs, and the Commonwealth is described as abolishing the crown, that may give some slight hints as to the motivation behind the abolition of the system of burghs and shires.
In other words, the "modern" (1960s) status of Scotland with a Scottish Nation - sorry, a Scottiʃh Nation - may be part of the legacy of a reaction to the actions of the early Commonwealth and how things get resolved down the track.
Also, if nations are truly decoupled from states, then there can be no good reason to change borders-- if a national group is divided by a state border, the response should be for each "segment" to seek full national status within its "home" state, not to seek the transfer of territory to a more deserving state or the establishment of a new state as a "national home". After all, a Scot is a Scot no matter where he is. But sooner or later someone will point out that the status-quo states aren't value-neutral: they came to exist through campaigns of conquest and associated injustices/atrocities. Why should nations torn asunder by strong states not seek the establishment of one of their own, especially if their rights as a nation cannot be satisfactorily guaranteed by the existing states?
For border changes, there is also the question of whether federations or different levels of states and governments can arise across different regions. While the timeline proper hasn't really progressed to the point where I can show it, in the previous commentary I've noted that the question of what counts as sovereignty is much more complex ITTL, so a nation which is trying to improve its sovereignty may have more options than just trying to shift borders around between states.
That said, I'd also note that since back in the early days of the Christmas specials, there was a reference to a
freedom fighter terrorist group which was seeking a Congxie "homeland" as one of its aims. So even amongst the Congxie, who are the prototypical idea of what counts as a "nation" ITTL, there is at least one group who is trying for border changes instead.
Though the long-term plan is probably the opposite, I can't help but see panollidism as the probable "imperialism with a human face" ideology, while anticolonialism takes a more
irredentist tack reminiscent of Risorgimento ideology and its successors.
Well, I'd note that panollidism is not in itself either colonial or anti-colonial; rather, it could be exploited for either purpose depending on the nature of the regime. Its counterpoint is monism, which again could be exploited for either colonial or anti-colonial purposes. It can get quite complex.
The other point I'd note from the previous post is what was said here:
Mr Hume said:
the fundamental truth is that myriad interactions between men of all ʃtates and all nations are ʃuch that they cannot be ʃeparated entirely one from another, and that the deeds of men in one corner of our azure and white globe reʃonate to all the other corners
That is a very Plirite thing to say. It could quite easily be said by a seventeeth-century Nangu (well, if they had learned English and adopted the long s(ʃ)). Yet it is being espoused by someone who is proudly and emphatically Christian and who states that he tries not to interact much even with other kinds of Christians, to say nothing of non-Christians. That suggests that at least some Plirite concepts have permeated the broader global culture far more than Plirism itself might have.
Great Timeline!!! What's happening with West Africa? What's happening with European arts and culture? Is technology going to be very steampunk?
Thanks for the praise. In terms of your questions, I've provided some very general answers below, but note that for Act II of this timeline, I've very deliberately focused on Aururia and Aotearoa itself and shown only glimpses of the rest of the world, usually through Aururian eyes. This is a deliberate choice to keep the timeline focused, otherwise I'll probably end up like the last timeline I wrote before that where I ended up getting sidetracked into different parts of the world and the timeline took forever to get to the end. (And that was with a more recent divergence; with this one being a bigger and older divergence, things would get even worse.
1. West Africa was hit by Aururian diseases and the slave trade got slowed down as a result. There is some state called Benin. Kanem-Bornu exists. Portugal has a SoI along the coast going from somewhere in Angola through Equatorial Guinea. There are British, French, Dutch and Portuguese forts along the coast north/west of that. Other than that, West Africa has not been addressed ITTL and will not be until Jared has researched it more.
2. I think that that answer would be better addressed depending on the regions. Regional cultures have been affected, but Europe as a whole has not.
3. Probably not. IIRC, Jared does not do steampunk.
For West Africa, there are two key changes:
- Less European involvement, due to a smaller European and European-descended population meaning that there are not as many of them seeking slaves (smaller number of sugar plantations and others in the Americas)
- Changes to West African societies due to the impact of Aururian diseases.
I really don't know enough about West African societies in that era to speculate on what the social changes would be, though I'd welcome some input from someone who knows them in more detail. For the European aspect, it means fewer efforts at setting up trading posts and the like, though I haven't specified exactly which European power has trading posts where. (I imagine that the locations of trading posts would frequently change anyway, given that Europeans are fighting each other and probably some actions by West Africans to kick Europeans out at various times and places.)
In terms of how European arts and culture have changed, again this is a massive topic and I haven't gone into much detail. There will be some snippets when I finish the travelogue sequence of posts of an Aururian visiting Europe. That travelogue sequence is still in the works, but delayed due to various other LoRaG writing commitments which I've been working on and will make an announcement about in this thread in due course. I can say that some of the broader European cultural impacts have been an earlier and strong shift toward absolutism, with the power of the aristocracy being curtailed due to various economic impacts of Aururian contact (higher inflation being the biggest) and also some of the political changes of the alt-Thirty Years War.
Kunduri has also been very influential in several senses of the word.
In terms of steampunk, it's not really my thing, although I will be exploring alternate technological paths a fair bit in the alt-nineteenth century. One of these may involve a more workable analogue to Babbage's engines. It's not really steampunk though, either in aesthetics or in steam engines (since they use Stirling engines).
