Lands of Red and Gold, Act II

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #87: The Wind That Shakes The Bunya

“Sweet slopes of Neeburra
Where the hills are so green
Sweet slopes of Neeburra
Glad I’m coming home to you.”
- From the chorus of “Sweet Slopes of Neeburra”, an iconic hit song from the band Great Artesians

* * *

History calls it the Darling Downs. A region of rolling hills on the western slopes of the continental divide, covered in abundant pastures and crops. The higher elevation of the hills attracts a decent amount of rainfall by the standards of this continent. Some of this water drains away down the sloping hills to the flatter interior, forming the Darling River that runs far to the southwest to join the Murray and then empty into the sea on the other side of the continent. More of the water sinks underground to be trapped in aquifers that form the world’s largest artesian basin, covering a quarter of the continent. Some of the water that drains into the basin will not return to the surface for two million years.

Allohistory calls it the Neeburra. The headwaters of the Anedeli [Darling Driver], one of the ancient Five Rivers, and a crucial trade route since ancient days. The old trade routes, though, do not follow the main course of the Anedeli. Instead, the trade runs along some of the southern tributaries of the Anedeli, into the northern highlands [New England tablelands] and the ancient sources of tin and gems.

Most of the Neeburra lies north of the main trade routes. To the Five Rivers traders who travel along the waterways, the Neeburra is naught but a backwater. A lightly-settled land filled with poor, backwards peoples who have little of interest. Occasionally one of the Five Rivers kingdoms – Tjibarr, Yigutji or, in former times, Lopitja – sent armies north in conquest. Those conquests never lasted long; they might impose tributary status for a time, but the available resources were few, and transportation difficult. Inevitably the conquests would be abandoned when some other pressing concern further south distracted the kingdoms.

The Neeburra is inhabited by two related peoples, the Yalatji in the north and the Butjupa in the south, divided by what they call the Border River [Dumaresq River, Macintyre River, and Barwon Rivers]. Large volumes of water are often difficult to obtain here, and so the inhabitants live in scattered agricultural communities, with few large towns. Most of their farming regions are surrounded by larger rangelands. The rangelands are managed by regular burning, and provide habitat for kangaroos that are hunted. The dwellers of the Neeburra do have domesticated birds – noroons [emus] and ducks – but they rely on game for much of their meat.

Politically, the Neeburra is divided into small chiefdoms, many of which do not endure for long. This is a region of region of frequent low-intensity warfare, fought over religion or access to water and rangelands. Endemic warfare over religion led to the gradual conversion of both Butjupa and Yalatji to the Tjarrling faith, which depending on who is asked is either a rival religion to Plirism, or a branch of that faith.

The Tjarrling sect (or religion) has much in common with orthodox Plirism, but treats the founding Good Man as a semi-divine figure, and views his spiritual successors as proper rulers. Plirites draws a sharp distinction between secular authority (those who rule) and religious instruction (those who guide individuals). Tjarrlinghi [1] have no such belief; on the contrary, their warrior-priestly caste seeks either to rule directly or to be highly influential advisors to those who do rule. Tjarrlinghi also believe that there should be a single leader to speak on religious matters and make binding decisions, unlike the much more amorphous Plirite religious hierarchy.

The Butjupa and Yalatji gradually adopted Tjarrling, and were converted as much by the spear as by the word. The Neeburra is the heartland of the Tjarrling faith, and every Butjupa and Yalatji chieftain is either a member of their warrior-priest caste, or is strongly guided by priestly advisors.

The Tjarrling faith calls for evangelism as much as does standard Plirism, but the inhabitants of the Neeburra have not been very adept at spreading their faith further. Partly this is because it took a long process of conversion before they were religiously united themselves, partly it is because of the constraints of geography and agriculture, but mostly it is due to the political divisions of the Neeburra meaning that the Yalatji and Butjupa exert little influence outside their immediate region.

To the east and north-east, the Neeburra is bounded by the mountains of the continental divide. To them, the most notable of these ranges are the Korroboree [Bunya Mountains]. The Korroboree contains a large number of bunya trees, which the Butjupa and Yalatji consider sacred. These trees produce nuts prodigiously but irregularly; those times are ones of sacred truce, when the usual raids are put aside for communal feasting. To the south-east are the northern highlands where can be found tin, gems and spices. To the south, the Neeburra is bounded by the Five Rivers, a region of more populous states and sometimes the source of would-be conquerors of the Neeburra.

To the west, the Neeburra is bounded by gradually more arid lands that eventually fade into desert. To the north, the land beyond the Tropic of Capricorn was long-unfarmable by the Butjupa and Yalatji; their staple crops of murnong and red yams did not grow there. So for centuries it marked a barrier to agriculture, with only hunter-gatherers to the north. The gradual spread of new crops – sweet potato and lesser yams – changed that restriction, and some Butjupa and Yalatji migrated further north. This was not a rapid migration, for neither of these peoples were particularly numerous.

Within these borders, the peoples of the Neeburra were constrained. For most of their history, they fought among themselves, and neither knew nor cared much for what lay beyond. Sometimes a particularly successful chieftain would launch crusades against the coastal-dwelling Kiyungu beyond the eastern mountains, or into the tin highlands. Such crusades rarely accomplished anything lasting, for after the death of a strong chieftain the Butjupa and Yalatji usually returned to fighting amongst themselves. Raids into the Five Rivers were sometimes conducting too, but rarely successfully, given that the riverlanders had both more population and often better weapons.

Isolated as they were from so much of Aururia, the Butjupa and Yalatji heard little of the coming of the Raw Men, save as much-distorted, scarcely-believable travellers’ tales. The Old World epidemics afflicted them, though even then the scattered nature of Neeburra communities spared some communities from most of the epidemics. The death toll was high enough, though, that it reduced the number of potential migrants further north. For gems – sapphires and emeralds - had been discovered in the north in 1526, and some miners headed north from the Neeburra in search of the earth’s bounty. Not even the toll from epidemics of unknown origin could completely quell gem lust.

Inevitably, even the relative isolation of the Neeburra could not keep it forever unaffected by the coming of Europeans...

* * *

In the 1640s and 1650s, the Neeburra was affected by three trends: a severe loss of population from fresh epidemics, the emergence of more reliable (if still low-scale) trade links with the wider world, and the arrival of European goods and animals which began to reshape their society.

The red breath [tuberculosis] and the pox [syphilis] continued to spread throughout the Neeburra during the early 1640s. Later in the decade they were joined by another killer: light-fever [typhus]. Light-fever appeared in some communities and inflicted a heavy toll, before vanishing and reappearing elsewhere weeks, months, or years later. The light-fever epidemic did not strike the Neeburra as badly as elsewhere, since it did not spread well in their thinly-populated lands, but it exacted another toll on an already-reducing population.

Of course, the Butjupa and Yalatji had never been completely cut off from the wider world; some trade flowed through their lands. They were the main intermediaries for coral to be traded from the Kiyungu into more southerly lands of the Five Rivers, while the valued drug kunduri was traded in the other direction. Some coral was also traded into the highlands for tin to make bronze; although that trade had recently faded as the Neeburrans began to adopt iron working.

The Neeburra itself produced little that interested the outside world. The most valuable was opals, found in a few places such as Black Eye [Lightning Ridge]. Even opals are not particularly sought after; they could also be obtained closer to the Five Rivers. Apart from opals, a few other commodities were occasionally traded. Parchment from emu or kangaroo hide, which was of less demand to a largely illiterate people, and so more valued in the Five Rivers. Subtropical fruits that did not grow further south, and so were occasionally exportable when dried. Small-scale copper mining to send the red metal to the Kiyungu and tin highlands, to make bronze for peoples who had not yet taken up iron working. Other commodities were of similarly low value. As such, the Neeburra had never conducted trade on a large scale.

The discoveries of the northern gemfields changed this dynamic. Sapphires and emeralds were highly desired in the Five Rivers, both for local use and because the Five Rivers traders had quickly realised how much Europeans valued gemstones. The lure of gemstones brought Tjibarri and Yigutjian traders north into the Neeburra, and with them came much larger quantities of goods to purchase the gems. Some of these were goods were of Five Rivers manufacture: jewellery, crafted objects of gold and silver, kunduri, dyes, incense and perfumes. Some of them were of European goods which were traded on. And a few were European-descended animals.

The introduction of European animals would, in time, change the Neeburra more than anything else. The first horses appeared in the Neeburra in the early 1650s, when Five Rivers traders started using them as transportation when visiting for gems. Inevitably a few escaped, and more were bought by Butjupa and Yalatji chieftains who were very impressed with the prospect of riding them in war and hunting. Cattle followed a few years later, after the Five Rivers traders took to bringing some cattle with them as mobile sources of meat.

Horses and cattle won some notice from the peoples of the Neeburra during the 1650s. But they would make the biggest difference in later decades, as a consequence of other changes. For in the early 1660s, the Neeburra was savaged by the single worst epidemic ever to afflict the Third World: the Great Death [measles]. A quarter of the population died, on top of previous epidemics which had between them killed almost as many people as the Great Death.

The severe toll of the Great Death accelerated the previous changes in Butjupa and Yalatji society. Changes which in time would lead to a transformation of their entire way of life.

Depopulation from the plagues meant the more marginal agricultural lands were abandoned. Fewer people meant less hunting, and thus the kangaroos bred much faster and recolonised the forsaken farmlands. In turn, the lack of labour meant that raising poultry for meat became much more difficult. The herding of noroons [emus] was almost abandoned entirely, with small-scale duck production being about the only surviving poultry farming. The domesticated population of horses and cattle expanded rapidly through natural increase, and the surviving Neeburrans found that horses made excellent aids in hunting kangaroos in the expanded rangelands. Cattle could also be left to graze for all of their food, rather than requiring supplemental feeding from wattles or other cultivated crops.

The Butjupa and Yalatji came to rely increasingly on hunted kangaroos and grazing cattle for more of their diet. Subsequent plagues such as diphtheria, influenza and pertussis (whooping cough) only increased their dependence on herding and hunting, and reduced their remaining agriculture. The peoples of the Neeburra did not relinquish agriculture entirely, but they adopted a more minimalist approach. They relied more on tree crops such as wattles, and almost completely abandoned root crops such as red yams, or anything else which required much digging. They learnt the art of making and storing fodder for reducing the effects of droughts. They did not give up settled life entirely – being protective of their wattle groves – but they became much more horse-riders and herders than farmers.

To support their ever-growing herds of cattle and horses, the Butjupa and Yalatji relied not just on what grew in the soil, but what came up from beneath it: water. The peoples of the Neeburra had long known of the artesian water beneath their feet, discovered when they started to dig deep wells. Access to good bore sites [2] had long been part of their warfare. With the increasing take up of cattle and horses – which needed more water than noroons – they expanded their use of bores. They also started expanding further west than their previous agricultural limits, into lands which were more marginal for agriculture but where horses and cattle could be supported thanks to the fossil water which they drew from the ground.

The spread of domesticated animals happened alongside other social changes caused by the Great Death. The disruption of the plagues encouraged even more internecine warfare amongst the Butjupa and Yalatji, and this only increased as competition for hunting, grazing and water rights became more important. The great dying caused religious ferment, too. The Neeburra had previously seen sporadic religious visionaries who arose to proclaim their interpretation of Tjarrling doctrine and the best way to promote harmony. This behaviour only increased after the Great Death, with prophecies and proclamations about what new actions were needed to restore the balance. The new forms of the Tjarrling faith continued to be proclaimed and reshaped as new chieftains arose based on their own interpretations of religious authority, and as new plagues regularly swept through the Neeburra causing ever more social unrest.

At first, the main impetus of the new religious movements was for internal action. Over time, the Butjupa and Yalatji shifted to more of being horsemen and cattle drivers, which increased their mobility. They also developed ever growing awareness of the wealth of the lands beyond their borders – a legacy of the increasing trade for gems and other products (even dried cattle meat). This meant that they turned more to external warfare as part of their way of life.

By the 1690s, horsemen raids on the fringes of Five Rivers territory had become part of the way of life. In time, they would become much more than that.

* * *

“Be of one people and one vision, that you may conquer your enemies and bring them to harmony.”
- Attributed to The Hunter

* * *

[1] Tjarrlinghi being the anglicised name for adherents of the Tjarrling faith, not the version used in their own languages.

[2] The Neeburrans lack any decent form of pumping technology (such as windmills). As such, they are limited to bore sites which have enough water pressure to bring water to the surface naturally.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #88: Pepper and Gum and All Things Spice

“If a man does not understand your message, is the fault with you or with him?”
- Pinjarra

* * *

Sandstone Day, Cycle of the Rainbow, 426th Year of Harmony (6.19.426) / 28 October 1665
Gogarra [Newcastle, NSW], Kingdom of the Skin

The man who stood before him bowed deeply, lowering his body so much that he went down on one knee. “Be welcome in my abode of business,” the man intoned.

Berree Mudontji, a trading-captain of the nuttana [Nangu merchant association], inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Your hospitality honours me.”

Dalwalinoo picked up the candle that burned beside him, and used it to light two sticks of Yigutji incense. Their fragrant smoke wafted through the room, giving a pleasing scent that Berree believed were sarsaparilla seeds.

The other man replaced the candle in its stand, then smiled. He wore long, flowing, almost-robes, coloured gold and ironwood-green [olive green]; Berree could never remember what name the Patjimunra give to their indolent clothes. The cuffs of each sleeve hung low and loose, and would make any practical work difficult. They proclaimed a man who needed to perform no practical duties himself, and who could rely on others to work for him. The same message was conveyed by the short, conical, almost brimless hat that topped his head. The hat offered no useful shade; it just marked who the man was.

Despite the clothes of indolence, Dalwalinoo had attended to his guest personally. Such was a matter of status, amongst the Patjimunra. To them, a host should personally serve a guest of rank.

Dalwalinoo moved slowly and carefully, belying the awkward nature of his clothes. In fact, it made his steady movements seem part of a ritual. The Patjimunra made most things a ceremony; indeed, they would almost always refuse to deal with outsiders except via ceremony. He gestured to the waiting chairs, and only sat himself after his guest had settled into a comfortable position.

“May I offer you jeeree [lemon-scented tea]?” Dalwalinoo asked.

“That would be welcome,” Berree said, and shook his head. He would have preferred gum cider rather than jeeree, but a man made accommodations with what was available. The Cannon War and the War of the Ear had destroyed much of the cider gum plantations in the Cider Isle [Tasmania], and the Great Death had consumed so many lives that few workers remained to harvest what was left. Gum cider was now found more in memory than on the palate.

Dalwalinoo clapped his hands, and a waiting servant brought in two steaming clay cups. He handed one to his guest, then held the other near his mouth while he inhaled the scent.

Berree did the same. The fragrance had a hint of ginger, as well as the expected aroma of lemon. Sure enough, he saw that the jeeree was coloured red; it had been flavoured with whole ginger [1]. He sipped from the cup, tasting the blend of sweet lemon and sour ginger. “A pleasing calmness,” he said.

“A sip of the lemony peace,” Dalwalinoo said. A ritual phrase; the Patjimunra had many of them. They believed that jeeree invoked serenity in a man [2], and so they consumed it before any negotiations. Not to mention on almost any other occasion when they invoked ceremony.

“Does your tongue feel hunger?” Dalwalinoo said; a phrase spoken in the Nangu language, but of distinctly Patjimunra origin.

“Refreshments would please me,” Berree said. He chose his wording carefully, not saying anything which might be interpreted as a command. The Patjimunra did not take kindly to a guest giving instructions of any form during the greeting ceremony.

Another clap from the Patjimunra merchant, and the servant returned carrying a platter. On it rested an array of dried fruits and cubes of wealth-gum-glazed roast kumara [wattle-gum glazed sweet potato]. Dalwalinoo held the platter out to Berree, who picked up a few fruits and cubes, then took some himself.

The conversation while they ate was a series of polite enquiries about the health of their family and broader kin, and banalities about how their ventures were faring. Such was the expectation for the Patjimunra; no true discussion of commerce while eating or drinking.

They each agreed that all of their living kinfolk were healthy – even those that truly were not – and that their commerce was generally prospering. Among some peoples, making such statements would be foolish, leading only to more vigorous haggling on the grounds that a prosperous merchant could afford to pay a higher price to buy goods. The Patjimunra were not like that; a wealthy man was expected to be open about his success. To them, the art of haggling involved proclaiming that the offered price would be what a poor merchant would accept, not a prosperous one.

When the food was nearly finished, Dalwalinoo said, “Trade flows well; men are beginning to move back and forth again.”

Berree shook his head. “A development which will please all proper merchants.”

To these Patjimunra, a merchant was someone who travelled for trade. Although Dalwalinoo had junior merchants to travel for him for business now, at least if going any further than the capital Kinhung [Maitland]. Not too different a principle from the Nangu, where the greatest elders or senior captains sent out others to do their trading for them.

Berree had taken the time to find out as much as he could about Dalwalinoo, as indeed he did about any potential trading partner. By all reports, Dalwalinoo had been a master trader in his youth, travelling amongst the Patjimunra lands to find the best sources of spices, and even following the spice roads west to sell his spices in the Five Rivers. Still, the greatest part of his success had come recently. Dalwalinoo was simply one of those fortunate not just to have survived the Great Death himself, but to have had most of his junior traders do the same. He had thrived where many had died. Well, if the Balance tilts in your favour for a time, you would be a fool not to take advantage of it.

With the last of the food consumed, Dalwalinoo leaned back in his chair. “Have you brought your usual tohu [sugar] for me, that we can discuss a price?”

“Tohu I have, but more also. Far I have sailed, into the lands of strange stars [northern hemisphere], to the realm called Barrat [India]. Much they make that is strange and wonderful, and samples of two I have brought here.” Together with samples of several more which he would sell elsewhere, such as their exquisite lacquered goods from Coromandel, and saltpetre that commanded better prices in lands which had bought more muskets.

Berree reached down and picked up the larger of the two wooden boxes he had brought with him. “The Barratti have a fibre that can make the finest cloth. Lighter, more comfortable and more magnificent than the best linen. They call it cotton.”

He opened the box and passed across several samples of their woven goods. Then he waited for Dalwalinoo to try them, to feel them, and in one case to wrap it around himself so that he could judge the weight.

“This new fibre may be of some use,” the Patjimunra merchant conceded, eventually.

It would let him sell it for glorious prices, he meant, but Berree knew better than to point this out now. That would be something to say repeatedly once they began haggling over prices.

Berree reached for the second, smaller box. He opened it to reveal an assortment of dried fruit. Red, long and thin, and dried to two thin films of skin. The two sides were almost flat, so much had they shrunk when drying, and they ended in a sharp point. The fruit formed a slight crescent as it stretched from stalk to point.

“This is a new spice, grown in Barrat. Dried, naturally. Fry this spice in linseed oil, or cut it up and eat only small amounts directly. Do not eat too much at once. They are fiercer than the hottest purple peppers.”

Dalwalinoo raised an eyebrow. “I will try them. What are they called?”

“The Barrati call them tjilee.”

“Intriguing goods,” the Patjimunra merchant said. “This Barrat is not a place I have heard of before.”

More likely, a place he had been told about occasionally, but had not bothered to remember, Berree judged. Patjimunra merchants cared very little for where the goods they were sold came from, unless the place was well-known enough that it could be used as a selling point when trading the goods among their own people.

“It is a new place for our nuttana to sail to,” he said. Or nearly new. For too long, the Nedlandj had not agreed to allow any Nangu traders to sail west past Batavia. Not that such restrictions bound the nuttana, in themselves, but few Nangu who sailed further west returned. It had been a matter of much suspicion and debate that the Nedlandj had attacked any Nangu ships they found. The Nedlandj did not like competition.

Now, though, the Nedlandj were in open war with the Inglidj. The two Raw Men powers focused on their war with each other. They had stopped caring much about where Nangu ships sailed, being far too busy with their own battles.

“Since you have brought their goods here, then you must know how much you think they are worth. How much strawberry gun and purple peppers are you asking for these?”

“That is not something we should discuss immediately,” Berree said. And wait until you name the first price. “Have your servants prepare dishes with those tjilees first this evening, and show the cotton to any of your traders you wish. Then we can meet again to consider the price.”

“A good notion,” Dalwalinoo said, after a pause. Doubtless he had been hoping Berree would have been foolish enough to name an immediate price.

I have sailed further and traded in more lands than you riverbound Patjimunra can comprehend. Do you think I am so foolish? Let Dalwalinoo try these goods, think about them, and he would be more interested. Then they would agree on a good price.

A price that Dalwalinoo would believe was good, anyway. The Patjimunra’s purple peppers had been traded for years; the price was high, but not exorbitant. Now, though, Berree believed that purple peppers would soon be worth much more. The Nedlandj and Inglidj had been selling the common peppers in Barrat for several years, but they had only few of the fiercer purple peppers grown here in the Kingdom of the Skin. They did not quite realise how much more the purple peppers could be worth, to the Barratti. With the Raw Men distracted by war, this was the ideal time for Berree to step into that market and sell the purple peppers in far Barrat.

Dalwalinoo stood, and Berree rose a moment later. “I will consider this tonight, and meet again tomorrow. Until then, please accept my hospitality in the rooms which have been set aside for you.”

Set aside, where no Patjimunra would come except servants, of course. But Berree was used to their ways by now. “I am honoured,” he said.

* * *

Serpent Day, Cycle of the Sun, Year of the Flatulent Goanna [3] / 13 December 1665
Kinhung [Maitland, NSW], Kingdom of the Skin

Keduna of Bedooree adjusted the grey, loose-hanging sleeves of his bogwadah [indolent clothes]. The motion was more from habit than from any need, as he awaited the arrival of the judging lord. The grey sleeves contrasted nicely with the white of his main robes; a reminder that the pure white of justice would never be left unstained when touched by mortal hands.

A scarlet-and-gold-clad young man stood in the doorway. He stamped his foot five times on the stone floor, then proclaimed, “He comes! Kneel before the bearer of justice!”

Keduna went down on one knee and bowed, as did everyone else in the room. He did not look up until the scarlet-clad Dhanbang [noble] had strode over to the one chair in the room, taken up the sapphire-topped Rod of Judgement from where it rested on an adjoining table, and placed his ample fundament upon the chair.

The scarlet-and-gold man – a Dhanbang of some minor rank – said, “Hearken to the words of the bearer of justice!”

“Who stands for the aggrieved?” the scarlet-clad judging lord intoned.

Keduna took a step forward. “I, Keduna of Bedooree, Keduna son of Wallanipee, stand for Dalwalinoo son of Moora Koorda, and his associate merchants.”

“So let you swear,” said the judging lord.

Keduna said, “By my blood and spirit, I swear to serve the White God faithfully and truly in all that I say and do in this place, to honour truth, the natural order, and the Skin.”

“Who stands for the retorter?”

Mingeenyu of Gogarra rose and declared that he stood for a great list of people. Keduna did not bother to listen to all of their names; only the first one, Kurragwinya, truly mattered.

After Mingeenyu, too, had sworn to the White God, the scarlet-clad lord said, “The advocates and the scribes will remain. The aggrieved and retorters will leave until they are needed.”

With much bowing, the clients of both sides withdrew. All as it should be. Clients could not be present during a trial except when called to answer any questions from the judging lord. They must not be seen to influence the proceedings by their stature, or lack of same. Their advocates were equal, and so could state their case.

“What says your client?” asked the judging lord.

“Dalwalinoo, my client, is an honoured trader and Paabay [service provider caste], who makes commerce within the lands of the Water Mother and in the Skinless lands beyond. He reached a sworn agreement with Geduna of Awaki [Whittingham] for ten years’ worth of trade, beginning in the Year of the Fortunate Frog [1659 AD]. Geduna expired in the Great Death. Now his heirs, Kurragwinya and his brothers, refuse to honour this agreement. They have sold goods contrary to what was sworn.”

“What was in the agreement?”

“The sworn agreement was for Geduna to supply, from his lands and associates, agreed quantities of whole ginger, lemon verbena, and purple peppers, to be sold to my client at an agreed price in incense, perfume and resin, or for grain and weeping seeds [wattleseeds and weeping rice] in substitute where the aromatics could not be provided. The agreement was that the first quantities of the harvest would be sold to my client, with any surplus free to be sold elsewhere. But Gedunas’ heirs have not sold the agreed quantities to my client for the last three years. He knows that this year and the last, they have sold purple peppers and lemon verbena along the Spice Road and to Skinless sailors.”

“Which Warraghang [priestly caste member] delivered the sworn oaths?”

“Karoon son of Awigee, who also expired during the Great Death. No associate Warraghang were present to witness. Never the less, honoured one, I do have copies of my clients’ records about the quantities of spices which Geduna’s heirs sold-”

The scarlet-clad lord held up the Rod of Judgement. “Not necessary, perhaps. Let me hear first what the retorter’s advocate has to say. Mingeenyu – first, does your client, or rather, clients, dispute that the agreement was sworn.”

The opposing advocate said, “My clients do not disagree that an agreement was reached. Although I note that my opponent has not stated the quantities which were in the agreement. I would ask-”

“Is this a dispute over quantities?”

“It has become so, honoured one. The dispute is not what was agreed at first, but how fairness requires changes to the agreement.”

“Is that so?” the judging lord said, turning to Keduna.

“My client asks simply that the heirs of Karoon follow what was sworn by their father, rather than trying to change a sworn agreement. But to simplify things, honoured one, I have a parchment with the quantities that were agreed.” Keduna handed the parchment to the opposing advocate. “Do you disagree with those quantities?”

Mingeenyu scanned over the parchment, then nodded.

The scarlet-clad lord said, “Let us dispense with the question of quantities, then. Mingeenyu – second, you said that your clients wish to change the agreement. Why?”

“Honoured one, my clients suffered as severely as anyone in the Land from the Great Death. Their lands, and their associates’ lands, cannot produce what they once did, for want of workers and of craftsmen. The agreement was sworn for a more fortunate time, when my clients could expect that their lands would yield higher, given them some spices to sell elsewhere. Fairness requires that the quantity of spices to be delivered to Dalwalinoo is reduced to account for this.”

“Keduna- what says your client to this?”

“Honoured one, there are five things to be said. On the first finger, the sworn agreement contained no allowance for variation. If Geduna had wished changes to be permitted, he should have asked for them before making the agreement. On the second finger, my client has also lost traders and kin from the Great Death, but does not seek benefit from this. He could ask for higher prices for his own goods, but he has kept to what was sworn. On the third finger, my client is not asking the heirs of Geduna to provide spices which they do not have. If their lands do not produce enough, my client asks simply that all the spices which are produced are sold to him, as was sworn. On the fourth finger, the heirs of Geduna ask this not because of lower production, but because purple peppers and lemon verbena now command higher prices in the Skinless lands than when the prices were sworn between my client and Geduna. His heirs seek to breach the sworn agreement for greater profit, under the guise of losses from the Great Death. On the thumb, honoured one, what my client asks is nothing more than justice.”

As he spoke, Keduna watched the judging lord. While he had never appeared before this judging lord before, and thus did not know his name, he had long schooled himself to recognise truth in men’s faces. The scarlet-clad lord’s eyes had widened slightly when he heard about the increased prices that the outlanders paid for spices. While the opposing advocate spluttered and wove his way through a denial of the points, Keduna knew that he had the matter won at that moment.

* * *

The Kingdom of the Skin. The lands surrounding the Kuyal [Hunter River]. The dominion of the Patjimunra, the people divided and united by ginhi [caste], miners of coal, growers of multitudinous spices, and wilfully ignorant of the wider world outside the borders of the fertile valley that forms their homeland (see post #79).

The Patjimunra could not, of course, ignore the European plagues that swept through their lands, claiming an ever increasing toll of their people, and culminating in the Great Death [measles] that took the total death toll to about 45% of their pre-1619 population. The social disruption was immense, as it was throughout most of Aururia; leading to severe shortages of labourers, and a generous measure of social and religious unrest.

The traditional Patjimunra social structure had a role for everyone, and expected that the caste they were born in dictated their station throughout life. The priestly caste supported the division into ginhi – indeed, they were its main advocates. Apart from that, they spent much of their time decrying each other, and had the habit of declaiming long speeches against the Kings of the Skin whenever some natural disaster or another affected the realm.

The Great Death, naturally, led to an increase in denunciations of the King of the Skin. Fortunately for his rule, the priests were mostly distracted trying to prevent too much movement between castes to orchestrate any campaigns to overthrow his rule. For the death toll had been higher in the cities than in the countryside. This led to shortages of workers in many of the urban occupations, those mostly performed by the Paabay [service providers] and Gidhay [higher craftsman] castes. The survivors in the towns made active efforts to recruit Baluga [agriculturalists] to move to the cities to take up the trades.

Despite the denunciations of the priests, many farmers did move to the cities to take up new occupations. Even a few of the more reduced priestly groups found it necessary to recruit (discreetly) a few Gidhay to join their ranks, mostly using the coal-mining subcaste who were viewed as working with the sacred black rock that burns.

The disruption to the occupational codes was exacerbated by migrations of the gwiginhi [skinless] from the south. This process had begun even before the Great Death, when peoples disrupted by the earlier plagues were driven to relocate. The formerly independent Patjimunra city-state of Ghulimba [Morriset / Dora Creek] had been conquered by the Malarri people in 1630, and the migrations meant that the Malarri now formed over half the town’s population.

The Great Death, and other warfare to the south, set off a greater chain of migrations. The Rrunga people had lived in the northern and western parts of what another history would call the Cumberland Plains (Sydney basin). Since 1646, that region had been engulfed in war provoked by the English East India Company (EIC), and the Rrunga were mostly the losers. They were pushed north, and in turned displaced more of the Malarri and Nyabba peoples who lived to their north [the Central Coast, NSW], and those peoples in turn pushed into the southern Patjimunra lands.

Keeping out the migrants was impossible, with the reduced population of the Kingdom of the Skin. Despite the prohibitions of ginhi, there were also those among the Patjimunra who welcomed the idea of additional labour, provided that a place could be found for the migrants. That place was, naturally, at the bottom of the social order.

The migrants were not permitted to own land or to take up the higher prestige occupations. But the Patjimunra already had a lower subcaste of transient workers, itinerants who did not own lands or a business. Many of those workers had found land or roles for themselves as a result of the Great Death. The migrant workers fitted nearly in replacing the missing transients, albeit even further down the social order. The names which the Patjimunra gave to the migrants – variants of outlander (polite) or outcast (more common) – reflected the way the migrants were viewed, but nonetheless the migrants had found the beginning of a place in the social order.

Migrants, of course, were only part of the broader social and religious unrest triggered by the Great Death. This unrest was reflected in the pressures on the ginhi social code, in proclamations by the priests against both breaches in ginhi and of the impiety of the King of the Skin, in some unrest by nobles, and in some religious conversions.

The Dhanbang caste [nobles and warriors] had, of course, a long tradition of challenging royal authority. This was sometimes manifested in bids to unseat the king, and sometimes in Dhanbang seeking to establish independent realms for themselves in outlying areas of Patjimunra lands. Indeed, the Kingdom of the Skin had a long history of losing and then regaining control of outlying regions.

At the time of the Great Death, there were three outlying regions which were independent of the King of the Skin’s rule: Torimi [Corlette] on the northern harbour [Port Stephens], Gwalimbal [Wollombi] in the uplands to the south-west, and Ghulimba on the southern lake that the Patjimunra called the Flat Sea [Lake Macquarie]. Ghulimba had been lost to Patjimunra rule entirely, but the other two remained independent Patjimunra city-states. In the aftermath of the Great Death, several other nobles bid for the crown itself, but were ultimately defeated. Due in part to the threat of migrant Skinless peoples pushing in, no other regions sought to assert independence during this period.

The religious unrest during this period was partly manifested through priestly argument, but was also notable for increased conversion. Plirism had already established itself in the Kingdom of the Skin, spread by Nangu traders, but formed only a small proportion (less than 10%) of the population. The disturbances of the Great Death made Plirism’s message more appealing. The era saw a steady increase in converts who accepted the Plirite message that the discord had been brought about by an impious king and priests – or by the Raw Men – and that proper harmony needed to be restored. In the decade and a half after the Great Death, Plirism increased to nearly 15% of the Patjimunra population.

While the Great Death brought incredible suffering to the Kingdom of the Skin, the surviving Patjimunra had some good fortune when it came to rebuilding their lives. The kingdom received growing wealth in goods imported from the Skinless lands. Their key spices commanded ever-increasing prices from European, Nuttana and Maori traders; the depopulation across the Third World only made the remaining spice production more valuable. This allowed them to reorient the surviving workers toward spice cultivation. The broad-based nature of Patjimunra trade meant that unlike many other Aururian societies (such as the Atjuntja), the wealth from that commerce was widely distributed amongst the survivors.

The Patjimunra were also spared from too much European meddling in their internal affairs, thanks to their studious indifference to any proposed pacts by individual European powers. The Kings of the Skin consistently refused to sanction any trade agreement or permanent trading posts for particular European powers. The monarchs bought some European weapons to defend against the restless peoples of their own lands (and neighbours), and the Pakanga (Maori) raids, but that was the limit of their agreements with the Skinless.

During the Proxy Wars (1640s and 1650s), this practice denied the English and Dutch East India Companies their usual levers for gaining influence over the indigenous powers, i.e. by arming one group and supporting them against their rivals. The small city-state of Torimi held no illusions about its ability to conquer the Kingdom of the Skin, and so the only pacts it concluded with European powers was to act as a resupply point, not as a permanent trade outpost.

Despite the suffering of the Great Death, the Patjimunra gained some additional breathing space with the outbreak of official war between England and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Dutch Wars would continue – with some periods of peace – into the 1680s. This meant that for a time the two leading European powers were far too committed to their own warfare to organise a major invasion of the Kingdom of the Skin. In terms of Patjimunra trade, the main beneficiary of this warfare was the newer French East India Company, which took advantage of the rival powers’ distractions to build up much stronger trading contacts with the leading Patjimunra merchant families. Even then, though, the Kings of the Skin maintained their refusal to countenance any permanent foreign presence in their lands.

So, perhaps more than any other Aururian state, the Kingdom of the Skin maintained its stability and its independence from the Raw Men during the troubled times after the Great Death.

* * *

[1] This “ginger” is the indigenous Aururian spice which is historically called native ginger (Alpinia caerulea), but which allohistorically is most commonly called white ginger. It is a shrub whose fruits, new shoots and tubers produce different varieties of gingery flavours. The flavour used here comes from the fruit. Aururians most commonly use the fruit fresh, in which case they only use the white pulp of the fruit (hence the name white ginger). Sometimes, as here, the whole fruit (including skin and seeds) is dried and ground to use as a flavouring in food and drink. When it does, it lends a reddish tinge to the final product. This means it is sometimes called red ginger, although most commonly the Aururians call it whole ginger.

[2] And the Patjimunra are right to believe that. Jeeree leaves – what is historically called the leaves of the lemon-scented tea-tree (Leptospermum petersonii) – have a mild sedative effect.

[3] The Patjimunra use the same basic Gunnagal calendar (see post #18) that has been adopted by most eastern Aururian farming peoples. That calendar divides the year into thirty 12-day cycles (with several intercalary days), but does not give any standard names to the years. Each Aururian society tends to adopt its own way of naming the years. The Nangu date their calendar from their first year of conversion to Plirism (1240 AD), a practice which has been followed by some societies that have since converted to the Nangu school of Plirism. Tjibarr and the Yadji Empire name their years based on the reigning monarch. The Patjimunra use a complex rotating cycle of mythical aspects to name the years.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #89: Words Yet To Come

“The Tjagarr Panipat was first gathered in Tapiwal [Robinvale] in 1646 as a colloquy of physicians to assess and consider the first typhus epidemic to reach the Five Rivers. Initially the term Tjagarr Panipat referred to the conference rather than the location, with several such colloquies being called in other places in the Five Rivers over the next two decades to assess disease outbreaks.

The Tjagarr Panipat became a permanent institution under the auspices of Lopitja Dalwal [Lopitja the White]. In 1666, he donated his family’s residence in Tapiwal to serve as a permanent library for physicians’ texts, and to provide a meeting hall for physicians to discuss and review cases. That building became the first great hall of the Tjagarr Panipat. It was later demolished to be replaced by the Grand White Hall, which still stands today as one of the central buildings of the Tjagarr Panipat.”
- From the English-language version of a plaque which stands near the entrance to the main Tjagarr Panipat compound

* * *

“The Kurnawal are in rebellion. The Yadji armies are busy in the east. If we declare war on the Yadji now, we will have victory over them. We just must ensure that we do not have complete victory.”
- Lopitja the White (son of Wemba of the Whites), addressing the Tjibarri Council in the Hall of Rainbows, 1673

* * *

“The League’s pleasure, glory and profit are all more advanced by sugar than by any other commodity we deal in or produce, gold and jeeree [lemon tea] not excepted.”
- Titore, An Account of the Growth of the Nuttana, 1715

* * *

“The seemingly endless bounty of Aururia provided a lesson to those who had the wit to learn: mining gold is not the same as mining money.”
- Archibald Simpson-Green: The Foundations of the Modern World, ch. 6 “A Surfeit of Currency”

* * *

“But since the time of Queen Elizabeth there has been only a continual fluctuation in the conduct of England, with which one could not concert measures for two years at a time.”
- Johan de Witt; 1659

* * *

“The Devil hath made too many Dutchmen.”
- William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and former Duke Regent of England, 1665, speaking after the successful Dutch raid on the Royal Navy anchorage at Harwich

* * *

“The Fronde began by breaking windows, but ended by breaking Liberty.”
- Charles de Batz

* * *

“England: the land where every man has as much democracy as he can afford.”
- Antimony Bryant, 1871

* * *

“The history of seventeenth-century Central Europe can be summed up as follows: everybody hates Poland.”
- Lars Løvschøld, The Development of Early Modern Europe

* * *

“In the ride, there is truth.”
- Attributed to the Hunter

* * *

“The Sawtooth revolutionaries speak of making one nation of many. What a travesty of absurdism! Mere vapid slogans cannot unmake the natural order. The nation is the sum of the character and the history of each man. It cannot be altered by a storm of words and a new rectangle of dyed cloth. A new government can declare a new state; it cannot declare a new nation.”
- Lincoln Derwent, from a letter written to Aurelia Swan

* * *

“What misbegotten declaration, that dishonourable fiction propounded in the Commonwealth that all men are equal before the law! The Revolution established that a man could not claim privilege by right of birth, but replaced that with privilege by right of gold. For the fundamental truth is that an advocate, by endless rhetoric, is permitted to rewrite the law in favour of privilege. Just as gravity distorts space, so gold distorts the law. A black hole is where light dies; a gold hole is where justice dies.”
- “Steelfoot” Barker, Battle Call

* * *

“Whereby it is confirmed by His Majesty Nyiragal that the laws of the League [Nuttana] stand in concert with the laws of the land. In all judgements pertaining to men of the League, His Majesty or his chosen judge will take counsel together with a representative of the Nuttana, to jointly determine the proper course.”
- From the treaty signed in 1658 between the Nuttana and the kingdom of Ngutti [Yamba], a breakaway state formed during the Daluming civil war

* * *

“I claim this land in the name of the League and the Six Lords.”
- Karnama Nyawala, after planting the Coral Flag on what he called the Bleak Islands [Kerguelen Islands] in 1692

* * *

“Easy to change a flag. Hard to change nationality.”
- Myumitsi Makan, better known in English as Solidarity Jenkins

* * *

“From Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula] in the west to Kuki Airani [Cook Islands] in the east, from Papua in the north to Maungahuka [Auckland Islands] in the south, nowhere could be considered safe from Pakanga [Maori] raids.”
- Claude M. Overton, A Brief History of Merchant Venturers

* * *

“This much I desire to accomplish in my life: to ride my horse into the sea to north and east and south, and know that I have brought harmony to all the lands through which I have ridden.”
- The Hunter

* * *

“In a free government, we are told, the rulers are the humble servants and the people the proud sovereigns. Which means that under a free government, a man is free only to agree with the people.”
- “Steelfoot” Barker, An Enemy Called Freedom

* * *

“Democracy bestows neither liberty nor sovereignty. If a government created by popular vote determines to tax a man of half his property, how is that different to a bandit robbing a man of half of what he owns?”
- Elliott Moreton (agitator and traitor, or revolutionary and martyr, depending on the perspective of the author), during a speech to the Arborist League

* * *

“The reasons for slavery [1] are deed or contract; the former for war or punishment, the latter for term, life or blood. Plirites may be enslaved for punishment, term or life, while non-believers may be enslaved for any reason. The Flesh-Eaters [Solomon Islanders] are like other non-believers, whether they are Maori, Kiyungu, Bungudjimay, Christian, Motuan [Papuan], or any others who adhere to paganism and do not embrace the Seven-fold Path... This means there is no difference between the non-believers in this respect. Whoever is enslaved in a condition of non-belief, it is proper to own him, whosoever he may be, and no matter whether he may voluntarily embrace the Seven-fold Path afterward. The condition of slavery in the non-believer will continue in the believer, even in the blood if that is in the contract... But where manumission has been granted to a Plirite slave of the blood, it is not proper for any punishment to restore slavery of the blood to that Plirite or his progeny, except where they have forsaken the true path.”
- Wolya gan Moning [Wolya son of Moning], legal interpretation, c. 1696. Wolya gan Moning was a Nuttana priest and jurist, expressing his views on the emerging contract law and practices of Nuttana slavery.

* * *

“Winning a popular vote does not make a tyrant legitimate. It merely makes him a popular tyrant.”
- Antimony Bryant, 1894

* * *

“Old evils never die, they just take on new guises.”
- “Steelfoot” Barker, Battle Call

* * *

“The secret ballot is a licence for men to harm their fellows. It is a breach of solidarity.”
- Spencer Jackson

* * *

“In the world: order and discord. In the mind should be only order.”
- Pinjarra, Aururian social philosopher (among many other things)

* * *

“As the blue gum is cut down but regrows, so must a man rise again after defeat.”

“That which is sprung from the earth will be returned to the earth.”

- From Oora Gulalu [The Endless Road], a text composed in Tjibarr in the fifteenth century, and widely respected by both Plirite and Tjarrling believers

* * *

“Politics consists more in profiting from favourable circumstances than preparing them in advance.”
- Maximilian III, Grand Duke of Bavaria (among other titles), speaking on the eve of the Nine Years’ War

* * *

“Bohemia is the portion of the Habsburg heritage to which we have the strongest claim and which is most suitable for the house of Wettin. It is consonant with justice to maintain one’s rights and to seize the opportunity of the death of Leopold II to take possession. The superiority of our troops, the promptitude with which we can set them in motion, in a word the clear advantage we have over our neighbours, gives us in unexpected emergency an infinite superiority over all other powers of Europe. If we wait until Sweden and Bavaria start hostilities we could not prevent the aggrandizement of the latter which is wholly contrary to our interests. If we act at once, we keep her in subjection...”
- Christian Albert I, Elector of Saxony, memorandum, 1740

* * *

“Now at last we can reveal ourselves to the Raw Men.”
- Gurragang son of Lopitja (grandson of Wemba of the Whites)

* * *

[1] The Nuttana word translated as slavery includes all forms of indentured labour, including that voluntarily entered into for a term of years.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #90: A Matter of Institutions

“Tjibarri lie in only two ways: everything they say, and everything they do.”
- Gutjanal saying

* * *

The arrival of the Raw Men, and the wondrous and advanced goods they brought, gave a clear lesson to all Aururians who encountered them. Here, it was plain, were a foreign people whose marvellous goods would be wondrous to acquire. Raw Men weapons were desirable almost everywhere, and their luxury goods were also keenly sought-after in most regions.

Some Aururians took this realisation further: obtaining Raw Men goods was useful, but obtaining the knowledge to produce those goods themselves would be even more beneficial.

Some Aururian societies which came to this conclusion sought to apply it only in relatively limited ways. That is, they sought to gain knowledge of particular technologies, most notably weapons and domesticated animals. Even where they tried to acquire broader realms of knowledge, they were still quite focused in their aims. For example, the Atjuntja ironsmiths were successful (by 1645) in persuading the Dutch to provide some metallurgists to teach about blast furnaces and related ironworking technology.

A few Aururian societies adopted a broader approach. They sought to acquire not just particular Raw Men goods and technologies, but a wider spectrum of knowledge and European institutions. For different reasons, the Five Rivers states (particularly Tjibarr) and the Nuttana were both well-placed to adopt their own forms of European institutions and technologies. Both these societies were inspired in part by the recognition that in specific areas, they had knowledge better than the Raw Men.

In the Five Rivers, the greatest recognition came from their physicians. Five Rivers physicians had an ancient tradition of medical diagnosis and a system of peer review which encouraged them to pass judgement on their fellows’ practices. This tradition had its own misconceptions, but it was free of some mistaken beliefs found in European medical practices. Five Rivers physicians quickly concluded that in several respects Raw Men medicine was inferior to their own practices. In particular, they viewed European doctors has having a disturbing fixation with bleeding men who were already ill or wounded. Attempts to use this practice on Tjibarri patients led to it being thoroughly condemned by the reviewing physicians. This realisation in turn led to Five Rivers physicians making a critical examination of new European knowledge: they did not simply adopt European practices or technologies directly, but they reviewed what was available and decided what they wanted.

For the Nangu and their Nuttana successors, a similar realisation came from navigational technology. The Nangu had adopted Polynesian navigational techniques via the Maori, and added some shipbuilding refinements of their own. Thus, they had access to an independent navigational tradition to Europeans. Nangu sailors who met the Raw Men quickly realised that despite Europeans’ ability to sail across vast distances, in some respects their technology was notably inferior. This was manifested in some simple ways such as the Nangu technique (borrowed directly from the Maori) of reading the waves to identify when a shore was near and the best places to change direction while sailing. Visiting Europeans could not match this. But the most notable examples were when visiting Dutch sailors were trapped on the Island because they could not reliably sail against the prevailing wind. This meant that the Dutch vessels could not make a timely return west back to the Atjuntja realm, while Nangu ships that used Polynesian-inspired tacking technology could undertake the westward voyage even when the winds were not favourable.

In these circumstances, people from both Five Rivers and Nuttana societies drew a clear conclusion: the gap between them and the Raw Men was vast, but not impossible to bridge. They concluded that just as they had things which they could teach the Raw Men, so they in turn were capable of following necessary lessons to acquire that knowledge the Raw Men possessed. And in their own ways, both of them set about gaining this knowledge.

* * *

The Five Rivers societies were the oldest agricultural societies on the continent. This meant in turn that they had a long history of technological development and expanding their own knowledge base, independent of Old World models. As part of this, they had their own forms of educational institutions for preserving and extending knowledge. They did not have libraries or universities on the same scale or structure as in Europe. However, they had predecessor social institutions of study such as temples and guild schools, and were at a socio-political level where they could quickly grasp the benefit of developing these further.

Tjibarr became the first Five Rivers state to put this into practice. This process began with convocations of physicians which gathered to treat the outbreak of Old World diseases. The first great convocation was conducted at Tapiwal [Robinvale] in 1646, to study the outbreak of epidemic typhus in the Five Rivers. This convocation endured for so long and produced so much argument that one of the attending physicians nicknamed it “the place of great disputation” – or, in the Gunnagal language, Tjagarr Panipat [see post #75].

The appellation endured. The same name was applied to future gatherings of physicians over the next two decades, as they met to study and discuss treatments of other diseases both foreign and domestic. These assemblages included the traditional Five Rivers’ medical practice of having five-man panels pass judgement on another physician’s treatment of the diseases. They were also supplemented by the collection of medical treatises, both locally written and those imported from Europe, whether available in translation or only in European languages. The physicians studied these texts as part of their discussions.

The convocations were held at several locations over the next two decades, and sometimes in the other Five Rivers states of Gutjanal and Yigutji. In 1666, the physicians’ conclaves received a permanent residence in Tapiwal. This happened when a wealthy Tjibarri land controller [noble] named Lopitja the White donated his family’s Tapiwal home to serve as a library and meeting hall for physicians. He supported this new institution by providing copies of a wide range of European texts that his family had acquired over the previous few decades. Lopitja’s donation turned the Tjagarr Panipat into a permanent gathering that became Aururia’s first institution of higher learning.

The Tjagarr Panipat thus began life as an institution for the study of medicine, among already accredited physicians. Due to its large collection of reference materials, it quickly evolved into an institution for teaching new physicians. At first, this followed the traditional physicians’ model: a student began as an “apprentice” with one physician, progressed to an “initiate” with another physician, and would be declared “accredited” when three other physicians deemed the initiate worthy to progress to a full physician.

However, in time the physicians expanded their knowledge of similar institutions, and they also now found themselves in a situation where each student was in proximity to many experienced physicians. So this evolved into a system where several accredited physicians taught groups of students about different aspects of medicine, generally in those areas where each physician was recognised as being particularly skilled.

In 1682, senior Tjibarri physicians reached an agreement that they would only allow a student to progress through each grade of membership if they had studied at the Tjagarr Panipat. Physicians in Gutjanal and Yigutji were not so strict in their standards, but studying at the Tjagarr Panipat became an excellent way to build prestige for student physicians from anywhere in the Five Rivers. In 1689, this progression of grades (apprentice, initiate, accredited) became standardised in an official roll maintained at the Tjagarr Panipat. Admission onto the different stages of this roll became the Tjibarri equivalent of university degrees.

The Panipat – or so its name was usually shortened – was created to study medicine. However, the European texts provided by Lopitja and other factional sponsors covered a wide variety of subjects. This meant that the great library of the Panipat attracted would-be students in other fields. Those non-medical students came to learn about other European technologies. In time, they also came to discuss these new technologies with other like-minded students who also gathered at the Panipat. The factional sponsors encouraged this form of attendance, since they were also interested in some of these other fields of knowledge.

By a combination of gifts and pressure, the Panipat’s governing council was persuaded to recognise two other disciplines as worthy of study at the institution. The first was a discipline which they called Gambirra. This word can be loosely translated as “engineering”, but which in the Gunnagal language also refers to ironworking, silver and gold smithing, and other metal working. At the Panipat, the study of Gambirra included all aspects of incorporating Raw Men metallurgy and engineering.

The second discipline was Maranoa; a word which can be approximately translated as “chemistry”, but again, the Gunnagal term is broader. Maranoa includes the study of any material collected from plants and animals, which includes the processes of obtaining that material, and thus had some overlap with biology.

This new discipline begun in part by the physicians themselves, since they had begun trying to understand the foreign products referred to in Raw Men medical texts. Under factional encouragement, study of Maranoa expanded to include applications of indigenous products such as incense, dyes, resins and perfumes. It also included wider use of distillation, a technology which in the pre-Houtmanian era had been kept a guild secret amongst physicians and perfume makers. This secret was broken thanks to European knowledge of distillation. So further study included some of the more practical applications of distillation, most notably in methods for maintaining positive spirits among both students and teachers.

Maranoa incorporated study of the most highly desired of all European commodities: gunpowder. However, this was largely a source of frustration to Tjibarri chemists. They had sufficient access to Raw Men texts to know the approximate proportions for gunpowder, but actually producing workable quantities was another matter entirely.

A couple of chemists succeeded in making small quantities of gunpowder-like substances. However, they had severe problems with both purity and scale of production. Producing charcoal was straightforward to a society which had been practicing coppicing for millennia, but obtaining sulphur and saltpetre was much more difficult. Meaningful quantities of sulphur were difficult to obtain. With saltpetre there were difficulties both in obtaining the product and in ensuring purity of what they found. So for a long time, Tjibarri chemists were unable to produce gunpowder except as a curiosity.

From its inception, the Tjagarr Panipat applied strict admission standards for both students and teachers. Five Rivers physicians had long followed rigid methods regarding those whom they would accept as apprentices, largely because their own professional reputations could be affected by those whom they chose as students. As the Panipat evolved into the core institute for Tjibarri medicine, admission became a general process rather than relying on the discretion of individual physicians. The governing council of the Panipat set high merit standards for admission to the roll; this involved detailed oral questioning, and often practical demonstrations of skill.

When the Panipat expanded to include scholars of other disciplines, similar strict benchmarks were established for admission in any capacity. Panipat scholars prided themselves on resisting all outside pressure about who was suitable to study at their institution. Occasional exceptions were known for less capable students who were favoured by a particularly influential factional sponsor – usually involving some expansion of facilities or resources. But on the whole, the institution maintained its extremely high admission standards.

* * *

Where Five Rivers societies developed strong educational institutions, the Nangu and their Nuttana successors adopted strong commercial institutions. The Nangu had been strongly commerce-focused long before contact with the Raw Men; they were the premier traders of pre-Houtmanian Aururia. When European contact made them aware of the broader world, the Nangu were keen to expand their trade networks wherever they saw the chance for profit. Indeed, when they encountered European and Asian goods which were demonstrably superior to local commodities, the Nangu were as keen to go visiting to trade for them as Europeans had been in earlier centuries when learning to navigate to Asia in pursuit of spices.

The Nangu became explorers and traders on a wider scale. They took advantage of European charts or geographical knowledge when it was available, or simply ventured into the unknown when they had no other alternatives. The earliest major examples were the three great voyages of Werringi the Bold (later known as Kumgatu): the first circumnavigation of Aururia (1630-31), the first Aururian voyage to Java (1635-6), and the first Aururian voyage to the Philippines and Okinawa (1643).

As part of his voyages, Werringi pioneered two things which would form much of his legacy. Inspired in part by knowledge of the Dutch East India Company, Werringi helped to negotiate the formation of a great Nangu trading association – nuttana, in their language – for cooperative ventures outside of Aururia. He also established a resupply station at Wujal [Cooktown, Queensland] that would grow into the first of the Nuttana city-states.

The Nangu homeland on the Island, and in turn their entire commercial empire, relied on imported food to prosper. With the plagues and major warfare in the Seven Sisters [Eyre Peninsula], most Nangu had to leave the Island or starve. The largest group of those exiles ended up in the thriving Nuttana lands. From there, they set about expanding on Werringi’s discoveries and building a new commercial empire.

Improvements in Nangu shipbuilding had begun even before the Nuttana was founded. Indeed, part of the motivation for Werringi’s second exploration voyage had been to take advantage of the capabilities of the new ships designed after seeing European examples. Wherever they could, the Nuttana continued to take advantage of opportunities to sail and trade further. They continued to improve their indigenous ship-building tradition, developing larger ships and better navigation. For the most part, they progressed by their own efforts. The only major European contributions were from some early acquisition of charts and tales, the introduction of the compass, and the spread of paper that permitted more convenient chart-making and other navigational record-keeping.

The development of better ships allowed much greater Nuttana exploration. The main part of this exploration was local. The Nuttana began a vigorous exploration and (where possible) establishment of trade contact with coastal societies in northern Aururia, New Guinea and elsewhere in Melanesia, Aotearoa, and nearby parts of Polynesia such as Tonga and Samoa.

Some of this exploration and trade spread much further. Since Werringi’s third voyage, the Nuttana were one of the few societies permitted to trade with Japan, via the subject kingdom of the Ryukyus. This trade was strictly limited and mostly on Japanese terms; the Nuttana bought mainly muskets and sold mainly jeeree [Aururian lemon tea], which had become a desired commodity in the upper echelons of Japanese society. In the 1660s, the beginning of the Anglo-Dutch Wars meant that those countries’ trading companies were much less capable of preventing trade competition from other powers, and the Nuttana took advantage of this to expand their exploration and trading contacts westward into India.

The greatest testament of Nuttana exploration during this period came from the accomplishments of Korowal the Navigator. In 1683, he led the first Nuttana expedition to circumnavigate the southern hemisphere. He led his ships on the circumpolar route that followed the strong winds of the Roaring Forties, visiting all three of the great capes along the way (Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope, and Cape Leeuwin) before returning home to Wujal.

The Old World plagues affected the Nuttana, naturally, but they maintained their population much better than any other Aururian society. Partly this was because their geographic isolation allowed them to make much more effective use of quarantine. Partly this was because many Nuttana had caught the plagues while on trading voyages to the Old World, and so were able to care for the sick during the epidemics. Mostly, though, it was because the Nuttana had built up systems of recruiting labour, voluntary and otherwise, that allowed them to maintain an effective labour force despite the plagues.

Between the 1640s and the 1680s, the Nuttana established a wide-scale commercial empire (and, partly, colonial empire) across much of the Western Pacific. The biggest component of the trading network was in slaves/indentured labourers, and the commodities produced by them. For the Nangu descendants who formed the core of the Nuttana were mostly non-agricultural specialists: shipbuilders, craftsmen, sailors, and traders. The early Nuttana had obtained food by recruiting Kiyungu from the south on five-year terms to work as farmers inland from Wujal. Many of those Kiyungu remained as free farmers afterwards, and in their heritage the Nuttana were almost as much Kiyungu as they were Nangu.

With the population collapse of the plagues, and with desired expansion into new products, the supply of Kiyungu labourers was not sufficient for Nuttana demand. So they turned to new sources for recruiting indentured labourers and, eventually, slaves. Their preferred early recruits were Papuans, who were familiar with growing sugar, and who were mostly immune to Old World diseases. These were supplemented by peoples from Melanesia and Polynesia, particularly the Solomon Islands. Sometimes these labourers were willingly recruited for a term of years, but sometimes they were made slaves by their own people; chiefs were keen to obtain Nuttana goods, but often had few commodities other than people to offer in exchange.

The largest source of slaves, though, came from Aotearoa. The large population and endemic warfare of the Land of the Long White Cloud meant that there was a large supply of slaves available, to those who had commodities which the Maori wanted in exchange. The Nuttana grew sugar in abundance, and when they came to Aotearoa, they often sold the sugar in exchange for slaves who would in turn produce more.

In keeping with Maori practice, most of these slaves were male; female slaves were mostly kept in the home kingdom. The Nuttana did not permit slaves to marry except to other slaves, believing that a marriage between slave and free would bring disharmony. So while Maori made up a large percentage of the Nuttana population in any given year, few of those enslaved Maori would leave descendants.

In their homeland in north-eastern Aururia, the Nuttana used slaves to grow large amounts of sugar, and smaller quantities of jeeree and spices. The sugar was traded across Aotearoa and southern and eastern Aururia. The jeeree was traded into the East Indies, the Ryukyus, and sometimes further afield into India and China; the spices were traded across all of those regions as well as into Melanesia. They sold some iron tools into Papua, and to a lesser degree elsewhere in Melanesia and Polynesia. From Papua they bought some sugar as well, together with bird of paradise feathers and other minor commodities, occasionally food such as sago, but often they bought people. From the rest of Melanesia, they traded for coconuts which became a delicacy in the Nuttana-city states, but the main commodity they purchased was people. The Nuttana sold sugar and muskets further south into Aururia, with the main products they received in exchange being larger supplies of spices and jeeree which they would on-sell into Asia, and sometimes gold when they went far enough south to the Yadji realm and the Cider Isle (Tasmania). In Aotearoa they sold sugar and muskets, and bought rope and textiles of New Zealand flax, as well as a large supply of slaves. From India they brought cotton textiles, gunpowder, and some manufactured goods; from China they bought silk and other luxury goods such as porcelain.

The expansion of the Nuttana trading network brought with it an expansion in influence and informal colonialism. Their Nangu predecessors had developed colonial outposts and in some cases economic hegemony over much of southern Aururia; the Nuttana did the same across much of their new trading network. The Nuttana did not claim formal control over other territories, partly because they were wary of angering the Raw Men too much, and partly in keeping with the ancient Nangu tradition of informal influence. But they established effective client states in some of the northerly Kiyungu city-states such as Quamba [Mackay], and the kingdom of Ngutti [Yamba] that had been carved out of Daluming during the civil war there, and in parts of Melanesia. In Aotearoa, they did not establish client states in the same way, but wielded some influence over the Plirite kingdoms which fought against their traditionalist or French-backed rivals.

The expansion of their trade network, and particularly trade with Europeans and Japan, led the Nuttana to develop new commercial institutions. An early form of this was their development of the Nuttana trading association itself, which was based on their then-limited Nangu understanding of joint-stock European trading companies. With their increasing commercial links and far-flung trade outposts, the Nuttana were quick to take up or adopt other foreign institutions to suit their needs.

The Nuttana were among the first Aururian societies to adopt coinage. They gained knowledge of the principles from European inspiration, and used bullion obtained from their own trade with the Cider Isle and the Yadji. Coinage greatly facilitated trade within the internal Nuttana economy.

Record-keeping had always been an essential part of Nangu commerce, but their methods became much more sophisticated. In large part this was due to knowledge of paper-making, which allowed them to keep much more extensive records. Over time, and thanks to numerous enquiries by inquisitive Nangu, the Nuttana learned about Arabic numerals and European accounting systems, including double-entry bookkeeping. This permitted much more accurate commercial records, and so this, too, facilitated the expansion of Nuttana trade.

In some instances, the Nuttana did not adopt European institutions even when they became familiar with them. For instance, at first the Nuttana had a limited understanding of joint-stock companies, and thus formed their own trading association. However, when they learned more about the European form, they still did not adopt it. The Nuttana had developed their own system of profit-sharing from their trading voyages, where a set percentage of a vessel’s profits went to its crew, and another set percentage to the owning bloodline, while the rest was divided amongst the other five Nuttana bloodlines in specified proportions. As their economy expanded, the Nuttana developed their own system of shared equity and transfer of trading rights or profits between individuals and bloodlines, but they did not adopt any direct equivalent to joint stock companies.

The expansion of equity and profit-sharing systems in turn became part of the broader Nuttana legal revolution. In this case, they were only indirectly inspired by European contact, and more precisely by trading disputes. Other inspiration came from managing the different customs and practices of the other peoples (especially Kiyungu) who were being incorporated into Nuttana society.

Their Nangu predecessors had relied mainly on sworn agreements, with disputes being either mediated by honoured priests or referred to their Council. Such practices became impractical with so many different peoples and customers. Being Plirite they had a keen interest in orderly conduct and resolution of disputes, and so a new field emerging in codifying contracts and other forms of law. Plirite priests developed broader roles as jurists and were heavily involved in developing the new legal codes, including those regarding slavery. The Nuttana legal system had a heavy emphasis on contract law, with harsh penalties for breach of faith or failure to deliver on contract.

Some of the new institutions which the Nuttana developed were industrial, not commercial. From the Javanese and then the Indians, they acquired technology for processing sugar cane: mills for grinding and crushing the sugar cane, then boiling the juice to produce the gravelly sugar that was the foundation of Nuttana wealth. From their contact with China and the tea produced there, the Nuttana were inspired to try new forms of processing jeeree. They developed new flavours by allowing the leaves to fully ferment in a similar manner to the production of Chinese black tea. The new forms of jeeree had both stronger flavours and preserved better than traditional jeeree, which added to the export potential of the crop.

The Nuttana’s new institutions brought them increasing wealth, despite the ongoing problems of Old World plagues. Yet these institutions did not eliminate the threat from foreign powers; in some ways, this made them a more attractive target.

* * *

“Trade involves a constant struggle in peace and wars between the countries of Europe as to who carries off the greatest amount. The Dutch, the English and the French are the main combatants in this struggle.”
- Jean-Baptiste Colbert, memoir to King Louis XIII of France, 1662

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #91: Answers for Gunya

“It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr.”
- Tjewarra (“strong heart”), Atjuntja activist

* * *

From a letter that arrived in London on 29 April 1649:

To His Majesty Charles the Second, King of England, France, Scotland and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, from your brother Gunya Yadji, Regent of the Never-Born God, Sovereign of Durigal, King of Wyelangta, Wyelidja, Wyenambul and Wyeyangeree [1]: May the days of your reign be long and prosperous. May you know good fortune and pleasant company through all the days of your life.

Word has come to me from your servants who are permitted trade with Durigal. They speak of the church that you lead, as the supreme worldly representative of your Divine, that you choose the bishops that guide your church in your stead, and that as Defender of the Faith you are the final arbiter on all decisions involving the church. They speak that much as the men of the Regency do, your church too knows the truth that the end of times will come, and that the world must be made ready for this.

I ask that you choose from among your bishops a man strong of wisdom and understanding of the royal bulwark of faith, and send him to Durigal in your stead, that he may give me more answers about your church and its conduct.

* * *

While not a pious man himself, Gunya Yadji knew that much of his royal authority stemmed from the fervent religious beliefs of his subjects. They believed in the great struggle between the good Neverborn, the god within the earth, and the evil Firstborn, the Lord of Night, the treacherous deity in the sky. The Regent drew his authority, even his usual royal title, from that religious claim.

In most circumstances, these beliefs strengthened the authority of the royal family. Unfortunately, they came with a significant drawback: a large number of often-turbulent priests. Priests were both indispensable and infuriating to the Yadji rulers. Yadji communities were organised collectively, with a form of central planning and communal allocation of resources. The local priest-bureaucrats were the effective administrators of this system, following the broad dictates of the Regent’s policies, but coordinating all local activities. Those priests were regularly rotated between towns or communities to prevent them building up a local power base.

In the capital itself, Kirunmara [Terang], the priests were usually much more turbulent. Senior priests in Kirunmara were traditionally appointed into roles for life, and usually accumulated a great deal of power. In part, this was based on simple necessity. Coordinating the economy of the Empire required a specialised, talented corps of administrators who followed the Regent’s will. Priests were generally more reliable in this role than quarrelsome princes. But part of this was simple religious authority. Priests claimed considerable status, and were often capable of influencing a weaker Regent to follow their lead. In times of unclear succession, they could also play a considerable role in determining the next Regent.

Nowhere were these priests more turbulent than during the events of what the Yadji of the time called the Year of the Twisted Serpent; that is, their civil war of 1629-1638 [2]. The assassination of the mad Regent Boringa Yadji led to a disputed succession between Gunya Yadji and his cousin Bailgu. Bailgu had a greater reputation for piety, and was so favoured by more of the priests. Gunya had a better military reputation, and was favoured by more, (though by no means all) of the other princes.

The succession question was ultimately settled on the battlefield, where Gunya triumphed. During the war, however, he faced ongoing problems with priests who interfered with his authority over those lands he ruled, sometimes overtly, sometimes just by inaction. Being by nature disinclined to tolerate opposition, Gunya had many of the local priests killed where they defied his authority, although the senior priests in the capital were spared.

With the war won, Gunya found that his priestly problems had not been resolved. He still needed new priests to administer the empire’s planned economy. Quite simply, no alternative existed to the priest-bureaucrats for effective administration of the state. So while he had temporarily broken them during the civil war, the priests returned to power afterward. Worse, so did their discontent with his rule. Opposition was much less blatant now that he had been crowned Regent. Yet every plague, or outbreak of flood or fire, led to priestly murmurings about how the Regent had displeased the Neverborn with his lack of piety.

After trade relations with England opened in 1642, word gradually spread about the faith of the Raw Men. Details were scant at first; the English East India Company sent soldiers, not missionaries. But some people asked questions, and in time tales began to filter through to Kirunmara. Gunya Yadji heard about these tales mostly in the context of his senior priests’ dissatisfaction with them; naturally, this meant that he looked more sympathetically upon the Raw Men’s faith.

In time, war returned between Tjibarr and the Yadji Empire [3]. European mercenaries fought in that struggle, led by Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Gunya did not trouble himself to ask mercenaries about their religion; when he spoke to Prince Rupert, he had other matters on his mind, usually about stopping the prince from plundering conquered lands. But this war also brought Dutch raids onto Yadji territory, and other disputes over commerce that needed to be resolved. This meant that Gunya Yadji periodically had EIC representatives brought to Kirunmara to discuss these matters. While those representatives were present, he took the opportunity to ask occasional questions about their religion.

Gunya’s religious questions did not, in fact, usually touch on matters of doctrine. In truth, those concerned him very little. He asked rather more about how the Church of England was administered, and its interactions with the monarchy. The cultural gap meant that Gunya did not fully appreciate much of what he was told, and the message he heard was often not one which the Christians to whom he spoke would have wanted him to conclude.

Gunya heard, and approved, of how Henry VIII had broken with Rome and created a new church when the Pope refused to sanction his view of faith. He heard how in earlier times no less a figure than the head of the Church of England (or so he understood it), the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, had been murdered on the orders of the king. Gunya also heard how the King of England was Defender of the Faith, and he personally appointed all of the bishops of the Church of England; in contrast to Gunya’s own religion, where in practice most religious appointments were carried out by the senior priests.

When he heard enough of these matters, Gunya decided to invite the English king to send a senior bishop to Kirunmara, so that he might hear for himself more about these matters of faith.

* * *

Extracts from the personal correspondence of William Sancroft, a Cambridge Fellow chosen to be among the clerical party sent to support Dr Ralph Brownrigg, Bishop of Exeter, on his mission to Durigal.

From a letter to the Dean of St. Paul’s, after receiving word that his name was being considered among those for inclusion in the party to Aururia:

“I have lately offered up to God the first fruits of that calling which I intend: and if, through your prayers and God’s blessing on my endeavours, I may become an instrument in any measure fitted to bear his name before his people, abroad in the Land of Gold or any most obscure corner of the world, or before his people in England, it shall be my joy and the crown of my rejoicing in the Lord. I am persuaded that for this end I was sent into the world; and therefore, if God lends me life and abilities, I shall be willing to spend myself and be spent upon the work.

If it not be done, I pray, Sir, think not of me before you determine, for that nobody knows of it, I weigh not; for I desire more a thousand times to approve myself to God and my own conscience than to all the world beside.”

*

From a letter from Mr Sancroft to his father, inquiring after his previous letter’s request for approval of his accepting a commission to Aururia:

“Sir,
I wrote to you by Rogers concerning a business of some moment. I doubt not that you have received my letter, and I expect every hour an answer. But having heard now something more concerning it, I thought it my duty to impart it. Mr. Boucher had before given me some intimations of the nature of the place, which I now understand more fully by a letter from himself. ’Tis a rich merchant in London, a friend of his, that would send his son over beyond sea; and Mr. B. hath recounted a tale of a land abundant in gold but deprived of God, ripe to be called to Christendom: a copy of this letter I enclose.

“I was this morning with my Lord of Exeter, and acquainted him with it, who hath enjoined me to attend upon him in the country. I shall have his counsel and direction, and, which is more, his prayers; I have already a promise from him often reiterated, that, if it can be in his power to do me a kindness, he will not forget me...”

*

From a letter to Dr Holdsworth, Bishop of Bath and Wells, expressing his frustration with his own and others’ conduct in Aururia:

“Much honoured sir,
I have formerly troubled you with my desires, and they met acceptance from you. I hope I may now take leave to sigh out my griefs before you, and pour my sorrow into your bosom. You have not thought good, as yet, to give a check to my former impertinencies, and so I dare be confident, your goodness will be a sanctuary for this offence too, which yet, if it must be called so, is no other than an offence of love, or if that be too bold a word, of deepest regard and respect to you.

I live now in a realm in which to speak freely is dangerous, imó nec gemere tuto licet; faces are scanned, and looks are construed, and gestures are made to confess something which may undo the actor; and though the proclamation in this distant realm may be of the name liberty, as the heathens understand it, yet within there is nothing but perfect slavery, worse than Russian.

Woe worth a heart then oppressed with grief in such a conjuncture of time as this. Fears and complaints, you know, are the only kindly and gentle evaporations of burthened spirits, and if we must be bereaved of this sad comfort too, what else is left to us but either to whisper our griefs to one another, or else to sit down and sink under the burthen of them.

I live in times that have, of late, been fatal in abating of heads: the proud Yadji monarch honours the sanctity of those brought with my lord of Exeter, but beheads at a blow other Englishmen who have given offence; my lord’s conduct to those under sanctity brings not beheading at a blow, but ’tis an experiment in the mastery of cruelty. Harsh affliction and punitive correction of error marks greater station amongst these heathens, and a small matter shall prevail in cruelty when it is marked by the Yadji and reported to my lord. Nor need we voluntarily act beyond our station, for to mark his own station is required of my lord to better bring the heathen monarch into the Lord’s fold; to refuse his conduct could be to thwart the hand of God.

I can at least look up through this mist and see the hand of my God holding the scourge that lashes, and with this thought I am able to silence all of the mutinies of boisterous passions, and to charm them into perfect calm. Sir, you will pardon this disjointed piece, it is the production of a disquieted mind, and no wonder if the child resembles its parent; my sorrow, as yet, breaks forth only in abrupt sighs and broken sobs.”

* * *

To Ralph Brownrigg, Bishop of Exeter, the invitation to the heathen Land of Gold offered what seemed a divine opportunity. Here was the chance to create a new Constantine, the prospect of a top-down conversion that would bring Christianity to an entire realm of heathens. Most of the clerics he brought with him to Aururia were of similar mind.

The reality, alas, proved to be far from their expectations. Gunya Yadji met with the Bishop personally, at least, and in what Gunya at least believed was a sign of great clemency, refrained from ordering the execution of another priest who tried to speak directly to the Regent. The Bishop tried to speak of Christ’s sacrifice for all men, of the Gospel that carried his words, and of other articles of the Christian creed. He tried to show Gunya the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Gunya listened politely, but his questions in answer were much more about bishops, appointments, and church hierarchies than the words of the Lord.

The Bishop persisted in his efforts, of course. He endeavoured to understand the Yadji mindset, seeking insights from his interpreters, and holding conversations with Yadji priests. He quickly realised the punitive Yadji approach to any social misdemeanours – which could often have fatal results if a higher-status Yadji felt offended. He gave an explanation to Gunya that he wanted to punish all transgressors personally, and Gunya gave appropriate instructions to his subjects to refer all grievances to the Bishop, and never take personal action. The Bishop adopted this approach to spare the lives of his fellow clerics, but to his disappointment many of them perceived him as having ‘gone native’ when he punished them on behalf of the offended Yadji.

Despite all the Bishop’s careful efforts, he could not induce Gunya to anything resembling conversion. For Gunya’s motivations were, in fact, much more pragmatic than the English clerics realised. He knew that any conversion could cause immense difficulties amongst his subjects, if not carried out correctly. For all of his apparent politeness when listening, Gunya quickly reached the conclusion that his most worthwhile endeavour would be to reform the Yadji religious hierarchy along English lines.

Gunya did allow some scope for a Christian presence in the Yadji Empire. He permitted a translation to be made of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. He allowed the permanent establishment of a small Church of England mission in Kirunmara, to advise the Regent and the royal family on spiritual matters. He forbade this mission from proselytising in the Empire, but sanctioned the English to practice Christianity within their own trading outposts. The Bishop and his fellow clerics thought this was a sign of genuine religious interest, when in truth Gunya simply wanted to keep options available if he ever decided to give more active support to Christianity.

From Gunya’s perspective, however, the more promising outcome from the English clerical visit was his fuller understanding of their church structure. He proclaimed a major restructure of the Yadji priestly hierarchy. The core of this reform was the abolition of most senior priestly offices within Kirunmara itself, save only a handful of roles concerned with broad administrative planning and public religious rituals.

In their place, he established a new priestly rank, conveniently called bittop. Each bittop was responsible for a region of the Empire, and would oversee all of the planning and administrative functions for the communities within their regions. Thus, the centralised planning of the Yadji Empire was partially devolved into regional bittops, with only a much-streamlined central planning group kept within Kirunmara itself. Crucially, these bittops, and the four artbittops of the four provinces, were directly appointed by the monarch. In common with other regional priests, and unlike the previous senior priests of Kirunmara, the bittops were also rotated between regions every three to four years to prevent them building up any regional power base.

This reform was implemented over 1653-1658. It had scarcely been in place for two years before it faced the challenges of managing the Great Death.

* * *

Djargominda: “Sire, I protest. I cannot be removed from my office and turned into a wandering Bittop. Your predecessor appointed me First Watcher of the Dreams [a senior priestly role]. This post has always been held for life.”
Gunya Yadji: “If you wish, that will become true.”

* * *

[1] The rendition of the Yadji titles into English in this letter caused some translation difficulties, partly because the titles were not closely equivalent, but mostly because the translation was being done by a Yadji scribe translating terms into Nangu for a Nangu-speaking Englishman to then render into English. (Learning the Junditmara language was not usually attempted by Raw Men, because it was easy to make mistakes and a sword through the stomach often offends.)

The actual word translated “sovereign” – Pidjupuk – would be more accurately rendered as “emperor”. However, in this era European monarchs reserved the term emperor for those who claimed it based on Roman origin, principally the Holy Roman Emperor, the Tsar of Russia, and the Ottoman Emperors. The translators used the more ambiguous word sovereign to avoid implying that the English monarch was inferior to the Yadji monarch.

The various land-related titles were also rendered somewhat inaccurately. The actual Yadji title is Pidjupuk nyu Durigal: Emperor of the Land of the Five Directions (Durigal). The Yadji divide their Land into four provinces: the Red Country (Wyelangta), the Lake Country (Wyelidja), the Golden Country (Wyenambul) and the White Country (Wyeyangeree) – see post #16. These are simply regions, with no separate kingly title for them. The Yadji scribe who translated the letter apparently used these terms to be seen as equivalent to what they understood as Charles II being king of several different lands – they had no concept of personal union, or that the King of France was simply a dormant claim.

[2] The Yadji use a form of the Gunnagal calendar, with years starting at the southern hemisphere’s autumn equinox. The years themselves are named for the ruling Regent. Without a named Regent, therefore, they had to choose another name for the years of the civil war. They called it the Year of the Twisted Serpent, and it turned out to be longer than the average year.

[3] That is, the war variously called the Great Unpleasantness, Windi Bidwadjari (Bidwadjari’s War), the Musket War, the Fever War, or Prince Rupert’s War (1645-1650).

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #92: A Tale Of Two Lands

“Incens’d with indignation Satan stood
Unterrify’d, and like a comet burn’d
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In th’ arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.”
- John Milton, Paradise Lost

* * *

In one way or another, European contact changed life for everyone in Aururia. The tale of those changes was particularly marked in south-eastern Aururia, in the ancient heartland of indigenous agriculture and aquaculture. In the three states of Tjibarr, Gutjanal and Yigutji (collectively called the Five Rivers), and the fourth state which its inhabitants called Durigal, the Land of the Five Directions, but which to outsiders was most commonly known as the Yadji, after the name of its royal family.

Between them, these four states held a pre-European contact population of about 5 million people; approximately half of the agricultural population of the continent. Their societies had generally proven resilient to earlier plagues and, in the case of the Yadji, the first would-be European invasion. They endured the plagues, and continued their ancient pastime of fighting each other.

However, the Great Death [measles] marked the most severe blow which these states had ever faced. More than a quarter of their population was consumed by the pestilence, disrupting their societies far worse than any previous epidemics. They found themselves tested more severely than ever before...

* * *

In the lead-up to the Great Death, the Yadji state saw both productive reforms and significant challenges. The Regency was ruled by a class of priest-bureaucrats who both oversaw the religious justification for the Regent’s rule, and administered the planning and coordination of resources in their local communities; the Yadji economy functioned in a form of central planning and shared resources, and the priests played a significant administrative role.

Inspired in part by the example of the Church of England, the Regent Gunya Yadji significantly reformed the religious hierarchy. He moved many priests from central planning roles in the capital Kirunmara [Terang] to newly-created regional roles as bittops, where they oversaw the administration of broader regions, rather than the previous practice of priests looking after only individual communities.

The other productive reform which happened during the 1650s was a massive expansion of sweet pepper production. This spice had proven immensely valuable in both Asia and Europe, and so the Regency’s English trading partners greatly desired it. The Yadji planned economy allowed them to greatly increase sweet pepper production over the course of the decade, trading in exchange for ever greater volumes of English firearms, steel tools, textiles, and other goods.

Despite these gains, the Regency faced some challenges during this decade. Rebellions had hardly been unknown in Yadji realm, particularly in the eastern provinces, but this decade proved more than usually troublesome. Some subjects were inspired to revolt by a combination of increasing religious dissent, anger over highlander raids, belief that the Regency’s armies had been exhausted in Bidwadjari’s War, and arms and agents provocateur from the Dutch East India Company seeking to undermine their English rival.

The Kurnawal, in the farthermost east province that the Yadji called the White Country [1], were the first to revolt in 1653, but this was quickly quelled. A more serious revolt broke out in 1656-7, when the Kurnawal revolted again and were joined by the neighbouring Giratji. Several towns had to be besieged, and some sacked, before this rebellion was crushed.

Still, for all of these problems, the time of the Great Death made the volatile 1650s seem like a time of paradise.

The Great Death struck hard in the Regency, claiming a toll of about 27% of the remaining population. The immediate problems were predictable: mass death, psychological trauma of the survivors, social disruption, and competition over remaining resources.

The nature of the Yadji economy made the longer-term effects severe. The temples were responsible for coordinating the activities of their entire community, both the allocation of labour and collection, storage and distribution of resources. With so many priests killed during the Great Death, the Yadji command economy nearly disintegrated due to lack of planning and administration, and unrest amongst the traumatised communities. The recent institution of bittops ameliorated this lack of planning slightly, since a priest could be allocated or support provided from a local bittop rather than needing to send all the way to the capital for assistance. However, the sheer scale of the death toll meant that even the most capable bittops were overwhelmed.

The devastation of the Great Death also led to religious unrest. Or, more precisely, the disillusionment of many subject peoples with the Yadji religion, both in its overall worldview and in its application by local priests who relied on religious authority as part of their management of the community and economy. This did not immediately lead to major rebellion; with the bloody end of the last rebellions so fresh in memory, further revolts were initially limited to local unrest over particularly egregious or incompetent priests. But the dissatisfaction with the Yadji ruling religion grew ever stronger.

As the first hard years passed, the Yadji did what they could to rebuild their economy. New priests were appointed, some more devastated communities were abandoned entirely and their people relocated into more thriving centres, more marginal aquaculture was dismantled as the priests focused their efforts on the most productive activities. Sweet pepper production was largely curtailed; unlike some other Aururian states (such as the Atjuntja), the Regency found European trade goods to be convenient rather than required, and so left the resumption of spice exports until other affairs had been put in order.

While these efforts had some benefits, they were far from universally successful. Many of the new priests were inexperienced, and in some cases simply less competent, but appointed because there was no-one else available. In many communities, the replacement priests mismanaged the economy, and more ominously, were less adept at identifying and quelling discontent.

Inevitably, this meant that further revolts were only a matter of time.

* * *

Despite suffering a similar death toll to Durigal, the Five Rivers societies on the whole coped much better with the consequences of the Great Death. They suffered much disruption, as did everywhere in Aururia, but their economies and social order were more quickly restored to something resembling stability.

In part, this was due to the relative form of their economies. Where the Yadji had the most centrally planned, command-style economy on the continent, the Five Rivers states were much more decentralised. Tjibarr had its factions who competed vigorously with each other for economic and political gain; Yigutji and Gutjanal had no such formal systems of competition, but their aristocrats and mercantile classes were independent economic actors with relatively little central control. The decentralised economies of the Five Rivers were much less vulnerable to the loss of individual planners (i.e. priest-bureaucrats) and the survivors were better positioned to react to the changed circumstances of post-Great Death Aururia.

In part, the Five Rivers also fared better than Durigal because of the relative lack of subject peoples interested in revolt. The Land of the Five Directions had nearly half of its population of subject ethnicities, and many of those were still sullen imperial subjects. In the Five Rivers, the different ethnicities were more closely integrated into the political system, and revolt was relatively rare. Highlanders raided the eastern fringes of Gutjanal and Yigutji territory, and a few hunter-gatherer peoples displaced by the Great Death crossed from the desert into the western and northern fringes of Tjibarr and Yigutji lands. But most of the remaining Tjibarri subject peoples on the Copper Coast [2] were more wary of Yadji than Tjibarri rule, and so did not revolt. The one significant exception was the Abunjay people of the northwest, near Tanderra [Port Germein, SA], who were most distant from Yadji lands and so least concerned by them, but even their revolt was suppressed relatively easily.

The immediate social disruption of the Great Death was inevitably, tragically huge. In Tjibarr, the death toll included many senior aristocrats and other leading figures, although the relatively-new monarch Lyungong IV survived. In the Year of the Great Dying (1661), the Tjibarri monarchy took the unprecedented step of cancelling the annual football tournament, due to the death of so many players and administrators (to say nothing of spectators). But the football tournament resumed the following year; not even the pestilence could long quell Tjibarri football-fever.

The death toll and general disruption meant that the Five Rivers’ production of kunduri was severely reduced for a handful of years. This supply shock had economic consequences that were felt around much of the world; the Dutch, English and French East India Companies had been supplying increasing amounts of the drug into both Europe and Asia. This led to a rise in tobacco prices elsewhere in the world, as the nearest substitute available. The most significant long-term consequence, though, came when the chaos cause by the pestilence, and the additional motivation from supply shortages, meant that the Dutch East India Company successfully smuggled out seedlings of kunduri trees from the Five Rivers, and began cultivation of them around the Cape, in what was the beginning of kunduri plantations in Africa. The Aururian monopoly on kunduri production was broken.

Economically, the collapse in population led to a severe restructure of what remained of their internal trade networks. The Five Rivers economies had long maintained trade links with broader Aururia, but the fundamental strength of their economies had always been internal trade. This trade relied on their reasonably extensive natural waterborne transportation net, with a few supplemental canals, primarily small-scale ones built as part of their aquaculture and that allowed connection to the main rivers. Bulk commodities were not usually transported long distances outside of the Five Rivers, but were important to their local economy.

Of course, the Five Rivers did import and export some goods. They imported gum cider from the Cider Isle (via Jugara), gold from the Cider Isle and the Atjuntja lands (both also via Jugara), spices from the east coast and (to a lesser degree) the highlands. For exports, their main products were kunduri, incense, dyes, resins and perfumes, together with smaller quantities of other commodities and some fine manufactures such as jewellery.

Much of this import and export trade was destroyed by the Great Death, because of both supply problems outside the Five Rivers (such as for gum cider production) and because of the much smaller number of consumers. Overall internal trade also significantly reduced in most areas, although in practice the drop in production was usually balanced by the drop in demand.

The post-Great Death period saw the Five Rivers reorient much of its remaining economic activity on an expansion of kunduri cultivation. The effects of the Great Death had cost the Five Rivers its monopoly on production, but for a long time the region remained the world’s premier supplier. Their existing production, wide variety of cultivars, ideal climate, experienced workforce even after plague deaths, and natural transport network meant that they were much better-placed to ramp up production than any other location in the globe. The collapse of so much other trade meant that the remaining aristocrats reoriented much of their resources and capital to supplying the ever-increasing global market.

The consequences of this economic restructuring could best be summed up by this statistic: despite losing a quarter of their workforce to the Great Death in 1660-1661, by 1671 the Five Rivers were exporting twice the amount of kunduri which they had provided in 1659. Part of this increased export volume was due to lower domestic consumption, but most of it was due to increased production.

However, unlike some other Aururian societies, such as the Atjuntja and (to a lesser degree) the Yadji, the Five Rivers peoples had long learned the advantages of diversified production. In part this was because of their longer history of perennial agriculture and cash crop production, and thus having learned the consequences of relying too much on one crop, in case of drought, flood, fire, overproduction or other calamity. In part this was due to the longstanding commercial and knowledge-based competition between the factions; there was a very strong incentive to adopt any new crop, manufacture or other approach which might enhance one faction’s position over its rivals.

The knowledge-based competition between the factions contributed to the other aspect of the Five Rivers economy that increased after the Great Death: the use of domesticated animals. Horses and cattle, and to a lesser degree donkeys, had been present in the Five Rivers before the Great Death, but their use increased greatly in the aftermath. The abandonment of marginal agricultural lands meant that there were now suitable lands for grazing horses and cattle closer to their riverine transportation network.

The main early uses were for domesticated animals general transportation (both cattle and horses), additional fertiliser (also both cattle and horses), and meat (cattle), but the ever-curious Tjibarri soon found other uses for them. It did not take long for them to learn about cattle-powered gristmills which Europeans used to grind grain, and soon Tjibarri worked with European specialists to develop similar mills to grind wattleseeds.

The other significant use for domesticated animals was in the establishment of a horse-using postal system. Road construction had not historically been a strong practice in the Five Rivers. This gradually changed after contact with Europeans saw trade build up through Jugara from the 1630s onward. Aside from the immediate commercial benefits, this eventually gave access to European weapons and gunpowder.

Being acutely aware that Jugara would be on the frontlines in case of the war, Tjibarr set about building roads to the alternative ports of Taparee [Port Pirie] and Nookoonoo [Port Broughton]; this allowed trade to bypass Jugara, when needed. The original purpose of these roads was to ensure access to imported firearms, not to replace trade with the main port of Jugara. Bulk trade was still largely intended to flow via Jugara, albeit at slightly reduced prices for Tjibarri sellers; long-distance travel of goods across roads was much more expensive.

Once the roads were established, however, the endlessly-competing factions found more uses for them, in the eternal struggle of the Endless Dance. On good roads, horses could be used to bring information much more quickly than previous foot-based travel; this even applied to water-based travel in many circumstances, particularly when going upriver. Knowledge was power, as far as the Tjibarri were concerned. Knowledge mattered both for commerce (prices, relative demand, and other market information) and in competition between the factions.

So factions started establishing their own postal systems, that allowed regular changes of horses. Initially these were just between the new ocean ports and the Great Bend, the location where the Nyalananga [River Murray] turned south, and which had become the hub for ongoing trade with the Europeans. The advantages of the system were obvious, however, and gradually a postal system expanded to link all of the major towns and cities of Tjibarr. The other Five Rivers states also adopted such systems, following the Tjibarri example.

* * *

With the high death toll from the plagues, the economic chaos, and general exhaustion of the 1660s, neither the Yadji nor the Five Rivers states were truly interested in resuming warfare with each other. Some individual factions in Tjibarr were more sanguine, while a couple of religiously-motivated Yadji warmasters believed that the Great Dying marked the end of times, and tried to celebrate this by provoking war with Tjibarr and Gutjanal.

This meant that after 1665, border raids and skirmishes started increasing between Durigal and the Five Rivers. For several years, these did not lead to war between the two lands. The aging but still-astute Gunya Yadji negotiated peace and compensation, where required, to resolve these short of all-out war. On the Tjibarri side, the majority of the factions likewise favoured peace, and King Millewa of Gutjanal was not about to start a war against Durigal on his own.

The primary reason Gunya Yadji was so reluctant to get involved in further warfare with the Five Rivers was because he faced other problems. Some of these threats were external. In 1666, the Pakanga raids took on a worrying new direction when a group of Maori raiders conquered Mahratta [Mallacoota, Victoria]. Previously, Pakanga raids had been for wealth and glory only (in Aururia, that is). Now, a group of invaders had occupied land that was nominally part of the Yadji Empire. In truth, Mahratta was an isolated coastal village where the Regency had not exercised practical control in over one hundred years – and only sporadically even before then. But this attack, combined with ever-bolder raids by restive highlanders, led to a sense of the Regency being incapable of defending its own borders.

Further Pakanga raids followed; the most visible was a great raid by two Maori iwi at Mambara [Lakes Entrance, Victoria] that succeeded in breaking into the local temple and carrying off a wealth of golden tapestries and other treasures. These raids only exacerbated the internal discontent over priestly mismanagement.

The problems came to a head in November 1671. The Bittop of Gwandalan [Bairnsdale, VIC], in the eastern reaches of the White Country, had proven even more incapable than the average new priest, and was blamed for unjust decisions, unfair allocation of labour, and other problems throughout his region. He was assassinated by unknown people who stabbed him while he slept, then escaped into the night. Rather than accept that the murderers were unknown, some local Kurnawal were judged guilty and executed for the murder, on the orders of the remaining senior-most priest in Gwandalan.

The result was a rebellion, the worst which had been seen in within the Regency during living memory. The rebels in Gwandalan started by massacring all remaining priests within the city, driving out the small garrison, and then encouraging their neighbours to join them. The rebels soon found firearms to aid in their rebellion – presumed to Dutch-supplied, although the VOC denied any knowledge – and began to march on other towns. The rebellion spread quickly, with the ruling elite of priests and soldiers being killed or driven out of the eastern half of the White Country.

The first army sent to defeat the rebels was ambushed and routed when travelling along the Royal Road near Yuralba [Moe, VIC] in February 1672. This marked the worst defeat which a Yadji army had suffered at rebel hands in nearly a century, and it only encouraged further rebellion throughout the White Country. Quelling the rebellion clearly required much larger armies than had been anticipated, and the Yadji needed time to mobilise them. The diphtheria epidemic which swept through the Regency in 1672 did not help these preparations.

Worse followed. In 1673, with a large part of the Yadji armies committed to fighting the rebellion – and mostly bogged down in sieges – the much-feared external threat reappeared. Not from Pakanga raids, but from the Five Rivers. For in that year, all three Five Rivers states declared war on the Regency.

The Yadji Empire had never been so hard-pressed; they needed to fight on multiple fronts. The Regency had no time to obtain support from its English allies, and in any event England was busy with warfare elsewhere. While its forces gave a good account of themselves, and some of their fortified towns took time to fall, inevitably the Regency was forced to concede territory.

Tjibarr essentially reversed the result of the Fever War, recapturing the lower Copper Coast and the vital port of Jugara. Gutjanal seized the gold mines around Djawrit [Bendigo], and agreed to provide a share of their gold to Yigutji, in recompense for that kingdom’s support during the war. For the Kurnawal in the east, they achieved half of what they wanted: de facto independence, but not de jure. With his army and economy in disarray from defeats and plagues, in 1674 Gunya Yadji agreed to a seven-year truce with the Kurnawal rebels. This provided no formal recognition of peace, but the Kurnawal were essentially left to themselves in most of the White Country, except for a few border regions where the Yadji retained control.

When it came time to set up their own government, the Kurnawal rebels nearly managed to turn victory into last-minute defeat. The near-annihilation of the previous governing class left a vacuum, and they did not have an aristocracy or other clear successor to rule them. Instead, they had a number of rebel leaders who had attained their rank through force of arms during the rebellion, with half a dozen of them believing that they were the natural choice to rule their new would-be state.

Small-scale skirmishes broke out between the rebels, and could have escalated quickly. Adept diplomacy from Tjibarr and Gutjanal settled the dispute, with the rebels being persuaded to accept a younger prince from the other Kurnawal state, the kingdom on the Cider Isle [Tasmania], to become their king. The new king still faced a difficult task trying to build a kingdom from former rebel leaders who were united only by their hatred of the Yadji, and who had accepted him only because he was seen as less bad as letting one of their rivals take control.

In the Five Rivers, Tjibarr resumed trade through Jugara even before peace had been formally concluded. As part of maintaining their alliance, Tjibarr permitted Gutjanal and Yigutji merchants to ship agreed quantities of kunduri through Tjibarri waterways to Jugara for foreign trade, in exchange for specified tolls, rather then requiring them to onsell the kunduri to Tjibarri buyers. Tjibarr also concluded a trade treaty which permitted some commerce with English merchants. The ostensible reason they provided to their Dutch partners was that the Dutch and English were still at war, and Tjibarr did not want Jugara to become a target of war, since that would disrupt their own commerce. Later, they developed other excuses for maintaining English trade, such as that they were honouring existing agreements. Tjibarr continued to sell the majority of its kunduri and spice production to the Dutch, but they also maintained trade with the English and French.

* * *

“If you shake hands with a Tjibarri merchant, count your fingers afterwards.”
- Pieter de la Court, quoting an anonymous Dutch merchant who had traded at Jugara, 1675

* * *

[1] The White Country corresponds approximately to the historical region of Gippsland, or, very roughly, all the parts of Victoria east of Melbourne and south of the Great Dividing Range.

[2] The fertile stretch of coastal land between Dogport [Port Augusta] and the Bitter Lake [Lake Alexandrina], long contested between Tjibarr and Durigal.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #93: Between The Shadows

“E kore e hohoro e opeope o te otaota.” (A large force is not easily overcome.)
- Maori proverb

* * *

22 August 1666
Mahratta [Mallacoota, Victoria]

Black is the sky above, grey is the water below. The stars glitter above, as they have done since Tāne threw them up to adorn the form of Ranginui [sky father]. The three-quarter moon stands almost directly overhead, spreading monochrome light to illuminate the ocean surface below.

Four waka [war canoes] cut through the swell of the waves. Each main hull has been carved from a single tōtara tree, with a carved upright head added at the prow. No sails have been unfurled, for the waka are being paddled to war. Ten oarsmen sit in each waka, five pushing their oars into the water on each side, driving the canoes onward to the shore.

Quietly they move, as best they can manage, with grey moonlight to guide their path. As they near the shore, they dip their paddles more quietly into the water, pushing forward beneath the waves. Night and silence are their allies, being observed too early is their greatest fear.

When the shore draws closer, the moon’s light reveals land looming to the west, on their left as the waka glide over the waves. Vegetation of some sort covers the land, but in the dimness of moonlight only shadows and occasional treetops can be made out. Ahead looms a pale expanse of stone, rising from near the shore: the walls of a small fortified town.

The paddlers guide the waka along the shore, past the nearer stretch of wall, until an inlet opens up before them. Details are impossible to make out in the moonlight, but the waves break against shallow sand along most of the inlet; the warriors steer their canoes through the one open channel, into the calmer waters beyond. Low-lying islands are on their right, the town on their left as they steer their way up the channel to the docks.

Fortune is with them, or as most of the oarsmen would say, Tūmatauenga [god of war] favours them. The few guards upon the walls look not to the sea, but to the land, where raids of old have come from, be it highlanders from the north or death warriors from the west. The sea is not a place where they expect danger.

The waka ride silently along the water, past the moonlit walls, as the paddlers guide their vessels around a small promontory. The inlet continues upriver, with water that stretches away to fade into the greyness of moon-formed shadows, but the canoes go no further. Here, in the sheltered waters away from the open sea, are berthed a few small boats, though in the grey hours it is hard to judge whether they are for fishing or for ferrying people and goods further up the inlet.

The oarsmen pull the waka alongside the piers. They spring off the gunwales of each canoe, never jumping over the bow or stern, for to do so would be to break tapu [sacredness]. This is the most dangerous part of the raid, and they move quickly though quietly up the short road to the stone walls. Four of the raiders throw up grappling hooks – one needs a second try to secure it to the wall – and climb up the wall. Eight more follow, and then lower the first four down the other side, where they open the gate.

The forty Pakanga [raiders] take up positions, fifteen on the walls above, twenty-five in the gate below. They stand ready to hold the gates open, come what may. They have timed their raid well; scarcely have they gotten into position when the sun’s first rays appear over the waters of the inlet.

The dawn shows three larger ships under sail, navigating their way into the channel as soon as sunlight replaces moonlight. The sight of these ships is an unmistakable threat; shouts ring out across the walls, followed by beating drums that sound the alarm. Mahratta’s guards take up arms now, as do other men inside the walls. But now they find the Pakanga who have already seized the dock gate. No force of arms can push out those Pakanga who hold the gate open. The clash of weapons and cries of battle waft over the town, while outside the three ships pull up to the jetties, and more Pakanga jump ashore.

When those Pakanga reinforcements reach the gate, Mahratta’s fate is sealed.

* * *

The Māori had known of the great western land since Kawiti’s voyage in 1310. Toka Moana, they called it; the Land Ocean, as later Māori interpreted the word [1]. Much had come from there – crops, metalworking, literacy –but mostly it was known as a place of wealth.

The Māori were inveterate raiders, mostly among themselves, but there were always a few willing to share the experience with those beyond their shores. In recent memory, those raids had always been to smaller island groups, such as Wharekauri [Chatham Islands] and Motu Rānui (the island of much sunshine) [Norfolk Island]. Ancient raids had been launched against Toka Moana, but had long been abandoned due to the difficulty of raiding such a distant land, without any advantage in technology or numbers. That belief persisted long after the new crops allowed Aotearoa’s population to boom to a point where the Land of the Long White Cloud held more people than any single state in Toka Moana.

Māori interest in the western lands revived due to three factors. The first was the establishment of Plirism in Aotearoa. This process had begun long before, with the faith spread by Nangu traders, but it was accelerated when a Nangu priest successfully converted the first Māori awiki iwi [king], Arapeta, in 1638 [2]. This conversion was accompanied by an important shift in views of raiding; King Arapeta converted in part to use religious grounds to put a stop to infighting between hapu [clans/subtribes] within his iwi [tribe/kingdom]. Instead of fighting within their own iwi, Arapeta’s warriors now began raid exclusively into the lands of other iwi. This marked the beginning of what would come to be called the Harmony Wars, a time of much-increased warfare between iwi, gradual consolidation into a smaller number of larger states, and religious warfare between Plirite, traditionalist and, later, Catholic groups. Defeated groups of Māori were displaced from their homelands, and often elected to raid overseas targets instead.

The second factor was the spread of fresh technology from Toka Moana. Beginning in the mid-1640s, some of the Nangu who had been displaced from the Island by famine migrated to Aotearoa. Most notable of these was the Kalendi bloodline, who had begun establishing a presence soon after Arapeta converted, and then migrated en masse after 1646, together with some of their political allies. Smaller groups of Nangu migrated elsewhere in Aotearoa during the latter part of that decade and into the 1650s. Many of these groups perforce joined traditionalist Māori iwi, since the Kalendi did not welcome non-allied Nangu, whom they saw as interlopers.

The Nangu refugees brought with them a suite of new technologies, most prominently ironworking and shipbuilding. The Māori had bronze metallurgy, but did not have ironworking because they did not have much contact with the main iron-using westerners. Their bronzeworking had been limited because they lacked local tin sources; while Aotearoa had copper, the tin (or sometimes whole bronze) had to be imported from Toka Moana. Ironworking proved much more convenient since there were local sources of iron available, and the technology spread quickly. Māori society began to be transformed by the spread of iron weapons and tools, sometimes diffused by peaceful trade, but often by war.

The Māori had introduced the Nangu’s forefathers to the arts of Polynesian shipbuilding and navigation. Now, in one of allohistory’s ironies, the Kalendi returned the favour, introducing the Māori to the new shipbuilding techniques and navigational practices that the Nangu had developed, including building ships with metal tools, and chartmaking. The Kalendi also passed on the compass, an innovation which they had acquired from people even further west. Previously Māori waka were capable of making the voyage across the Gray Sea [Tasman Sea], but these new technologies made the journey to Toka Moana much easier.

The third factor which reawakened Māori interest in westerners was the decision by Tjibarr to recruit Māori mercenaries. In 1647, during a lull in the Fever War, Tjibarr sent a diplomatic mission to Aotearoa to obtain guest warriors (mercenaries) to help them in their war. Lured by the promise of wealth, many Māori served in the later stages of that war, and mostly fought well. When they returned home, these veterans told many tales of the wealth of the Tauiwi [3], tales which grew with every retelling. The Māori became ever keener to revisit Toka Moana, the land of glory and wealth.

The combination of these factors led to what history would call the Pakanga raids. Pakanga began as a Māori word for an organised conflict, but evolved into a term referring to going on an overseas voyage to raid for glory or wealth (preferably both). The Pakanga raids were born from the fusion of displaced peoples, improved military and navigational technology, and tales of overseas wealth. The consolidation of Māori iwi led to displaced warriors who needed to find new lands; during periods of peace, this also led to restless warriors who raided overseas for glory and wealth since that was forbidden at home.

Tjibarr’s invitation reopened the allure of Toka Moana as a target for raids. Even before that, some displaced Māori had launched the first overseas raid. A group of defeated Ngati Tumatakokiri warriors launched a raid on Wharekauri in 1645, conquering those islands and settling there after enslaving or consuming the previous inhabitants. This marked the fourth or fifth Māori conquest of Wharekauri, depending on which version of oral history was believed. With the increasing warfare within Aotearoa, further Pakanga raids followed, at first against other island groups, but after Tjibarr’s invitation, against the Tauiwi in Toka Moana.

The early Pakanga raids on Toka Moana were aimed at the smaller Tauiwi polities, on the Cider Isle and parts of the eastern coast; the easiest places for the Māori to sail, and targets which they knew would be less well-defended. In Toka Moana – unlike the smaller island targets – the Pakanga were initially intent on obtaining gold, spices and other plunder, together with proving their mana. This changed with the increasing political consolidation in Aotearoa, leading to ever more displaced warriors who were not trusted in their former homelands, and who were therefore looking for new homes. Exaggerated tales of plague death among the Tauiwi led to the belief that Toka Moana was even emptier than it truly was. Inevitably, this meant that Māori began to look at Toka Moana as a place to settle, not merely raid.

* * *

The town of Mahratta [Mallacoota, Victoria] lies in one of the most isolated regions of agricultural Toka Moana. It is built on the mouth of a large, shallow harbour [Mallacoota Inlet] that has a few other small towns and villages built around its shores. The soils around the harbour are decent if not overwhelmingly fertile; the inhabitants make their living by farming around the harbour, supplemented by fishing. The land beyond the harbour is much less welcoming, however, with rugged, forested terrain that is difficult to traverse and even more difficult to farm. The peoples around the harbour have some access to bronze tools, but ironworking has not spread so far east, and so large-scale forest clearing is impractical.

Mahratta lies in land that is nominally claimed by the Yadji, but in truth, that claim is meaningless. The Yadji claim land much further east than they actually control; the nearest town where the Yadji do have a presence is Elligal [Orbost], nearly 150 kilometres away over the dirt tracks that pass for roads in such rugged country. Mahratta still protects itself with walls, principally against highlander raids, and partially as protection against any would-be Yadji reconquests or other migrating lowlanders. But its main defence has been its isolation and its lack of anything to make it a promising target; there are no spices or other things produced here which cannot be just as easily obtained in other places easier to reach. Gold was discovered nearby over a century ago – which first attracted Yadji interest in the region – but those small deposits have been long since worked out, and most of the gold removed through conquest or trade.

Unfortunately for the native Tauiwi who live in and around Mahratta, this very isolation makes them a target once the Pakanga begin shifting their focus from raiding to settlement. The Māori have long known about Mahratta, and even visited occasionally. They know that the rugged territory makes it difficult for any land-based power to attack. In particular, while the Yadji claim the region, their royal roads are what lets them move troops far and fast enough to be threatening, and the nearest royal road ends far away at Elligal. The highlanders might raid from time to time, but even they are not close enough to be a major threat. There is enough land around the harbour to be suitable for some farming, but not enough to be highly desirable to any other enemy, be they Tauiwi or Kehua [Europeans [4]].

The native Tauiwi who live in Mahratta call themselves the Kanunda, and speak a language related to the Tjunini who live on the Cider Isle. This closeness of language is one reason that the Pakanga choose this town, since some of them know the Tjunini language from trading visits to the Cider Isle. To the defeated warriors of the Ngati Ira iwi, and the few displaced traditionalist warriors from other iwi who join them as Pakanga, Mahratta offers the perfect refuge. Far from Aotearoa and the endless wars, and far from anyone else who might covet it. To them, Mahratta offers land for the taking.

* * *

23 August 1666
Mahratta [Mallacoota, Victoria]

Cerulean is the sky above, crimson is the ground below. A few clouds flutter above, but the children of Tāwhirimātea [god of wind and storms] only passingly interrupting the view of the form of Ranginui [sky father]. The noonday sun stands almost directly overhead, spreading too-bright light to illuminate the form of Papatuanuku [earth mother] below.

Four hundred Pakanga stride through the cowering Kanunda who are prostrate on the ground. Each Pakanga’s face has been carved in ritual moko [tattoos] that mark their status and their mana. No weapons are wielded, for the Pakanga have won their war. Ten times does each Pakanga stride back and forth amongst the conquered, pausing five times on each side of the assembly to shout their triumph on this alien shore.

Boldly they move, as only victorious Pakanga can manage, with vivid sunlight to illumine their conquest. As they pass each other in their crossings over the field of prostrate Tauiwi, they stamp their feet or raise their arms, proclaiming their valour to the sky. Pride and voice are their allies, having their deeds forgotten is their greatest fear.

While the march’s end draws closer, noon’s light reveals land bleeding beneath the Pakanga’s feet, or so it appears. Ankle-high grass covers the land, but under the brightness of noon daylight, patches of crimson colouration can be made out. The source of this hue looms high on one side of the field: the corpses of fallen Kanunda.

The Pakanga march back and forth among women, children, and a few old men who have been spared because they are no longer capable of bearing arms. No men of fit body have been left alive; those who were not killed in the fighting for the town have been brought out here for massacre afterward. The fallen have been dragged to the side of the field, with the bodies closest to the water, and the severed right arms of the fallen collected separately, farther from the water.

Victory is with them, or as most of the Pakanga would say, Tūmatauenga [god of war] favours them. A few of the Pakanga have fallen too, their bodies already interred separately, but most of them have survived. To their way of thinking, so long as they always expect danger, they will be best able to endure it.

One of the elder Kanunda starts to rise, perhaps in challenge, perhaps in plea. No-one will ever know the elder’s intent, for he is offered no chance to speak. The nearest Pakanga thrusts a taiaha [bladed staff weapon] into the elder’s chest, then strides on, leaving the elder to bleed to death on the ground, unregarded. No Kanunda dare come to his aid.

The Pakanga complete their victory crossings and take up positions, one hundred men on each side of the field. They stand ready to hold their ground, come what may. They have placed themselves well; any would-be escapees will find themselves facing warriors wherever they flee, and merely add to the crimson hue that stains this field.

Noon’s light illuminates two new Pakanga men, stepping out from Mahratta’s gate to stand on one side of the field. The rank of these men is unmistakable; their brilliant red and green feather cloaks and jewellery of gold and greenstone show their rank, as does the shouts of acclamation and bows from the assembled Pakanga. One of the new Pakanga speaks, using words that the Kanunda cannot fully understand, but sufficient for them to grasp the essential meaning [5]: the Kanunda warriors have been defeated, their arms will be smoked and eaten for the triumph of the newcomers, and the survivors are now the slaves of the Ngati Ira.

With this Pakanga proclamation, the Kanunda’s fate is sealed.

* * *

[1] “Land Ocean” is not the original meaning of the phrase Toka Moana; it started out as representing a rock that stood firm in even the wildest seas. The meaning of the words evolved to indicate a rock (land) so big that it took longer to cross than the ocean.

[2] See posts #61 and #64.

[3] Tauiwi (roughly, strangers) is the generic Māori name for the people of Toka Moana. It is used either as a catchall for all westerners, or in situations where the Māori do not know the names of the particular peoples who live across the Gray Sea. Generally, the Māori know the names of the three peoples (Kurnawal, Tjunini and Palawa) who live on the Cider Isle, know the Islanders, and sometimes eastern coast peoples, but are not very familiar with the rest.

[4] Kehua (originally meaning ghost or evil spirit) is the allohistorical name which the Māori have adopted for Europeans. The inspiration is because to the Māori, the pale skin of Europeans reminds them of the pallor of a corpse.

[5] The Māori chiefs are speaking Tjunini, one of the languages of the Cider Isle. The Kanunda and Tjunini languages are related, and somewhat mutually intelligible. However, the Māori accent makes some words difficult to follow, and the Tjunini also borrowed substantial vocabulary from the Palawa (the indigenous inhabitants of the Cider Isle), and so the meaning is often unclear.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #94: A Three-Part Harmony

“E tupu atu kūmara, e ohu e te anuhe.” (As a person’s importance increases so do those who seek their favour.)
- Māori proverb

* * *

From: “The World Historical Dictionary”

Harmony Wars: Also known as Rīriri Paliri [1]. A series of internecine wars fought between Māori kingdoms and clans from 1638 to 1684. The wars were initiated by the spread of Plirism and iron metallurgy into Aotearoa. The warfare increased after Nuttana, French and other colonial powers began selling weapons to Māori groups. The Harmony Wars were a continuation of previous Māori inter-tribal warfare, but were fought with increasing ferocity due to the availability of more effective weapons and religious conflict between Plirite, Christian, and traditionalist Māori. Groups of Māori displaced during these wars often fled overseas as Pakanga raiders (q.v.), mercenaries, or colonists.

The Harmony Wars were fought as overlapping conflicts between different Māori kingdoms and clans, rather than as well-established alliances. The warfare was most intense between approximately 1650 and 1670, with some conflicts continuing into the 1680s. The wars led to the consolidation of the Māori political structure into the Ten Kingdoms (q.v.).

* * *

Aotearoa had long been a land where Māori fought Māori; while they used one name to refer to their people collectively, that term represented cultural unity rather than any form of political cohesion. Māori society was divided into three hierarchical groups which were notionally genealogical, based on shared ancestry, although in truth the claimed lineages were often dubious.

The first level was whānau, which represented all of the people who lived in a particular locality. The second was hapū, a term which is usually translated as clan or subtribe, and which refers to a group of whānau who claim a degree of kinship and who are under the protection of a common leader. The third was iwi, which would usually be translated as tribe or kingdom, and which was the closest Māori equivalent to an organised state [2].

Warfare was common between each of these groups. Every whānau had its group of warriors, who had sworn service to the toka atua, the “god stone” that symbolised the local leader’s power. Every ariki (leader) was judged on their mana [prestige, reputation], and had to be ready to defend their mana in war if required.

Part of this process also involved reciprocal loyalties between the leaders at each social level. Each ariki whānau swore service to the ariki hapū, and they in turn swore service to the ariki iwi. The lesser leader offered service, and in turn the greater leader offered protection, both in warfare and (ideally) in the spiritual benefits of their mana. Every ariki was judged not solely on their power in warfare, but also in their conduct. If a lesser leader became dissatisfied with the actions of their superior, then they could change service to another leader. The leader and warriors of a whānau could change to another hapū, and while it was less frequent, a hapū could also change between iwi.

In such a society, raids were commonplace. Often these raids were small-scale, ended after a few ritualised combats. Sometimes the raids were fought simply for destruction, prestige or revenge. Some raids were conducted to obtain plunder (goods, slave labourers, wives). The largest raids were for outright conquest, to destroy or subdue rival groups and acquire their territory.

The cycle of raids marked part of utu, the Māori view of the need for reciprocity and balance. To maintain their mana, any Māori needed to ensure that both positive and negative actions were returned in kind. Many later historians of this period would emphasise the destructive aspects of utu: the seemingly-endless cycle of revenge raids over an initial, usually minor slight. Such historians would largely ignore the positive aspects of utu: gift-giving and good treatment was encouraged and reciprocated as much as harmful deeds. In many cases this applied to kinfolk, but it often applied more widely. For all of the near-legendary Māori hostility to outsiders (which was often exaggerated), they possessed a firm sense of hospitality for those who were admitted. Historians of the Harmony Wars often commented on how a particular taua [war party] might travel for a long time and distance to strike at an enemy, while glossing over how often such a taua would have been hosted peacefully by many of the hapū whose territory it passed through along the way to its target.

The importance of gift-giving and good treatment in traditional Māori culture is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by their ritual saying that was uttered when giving a gift: “Ahakoa he iti he pounamu.” (Although it is small, it is greenstone). Pounamu, or greenstone [jade], is revered in Māori society. In the early years of their settlement in Aotearoa, before bronzeworking became widespread, hard greenstone was valuable for weapons and tools. Even after bronze became more readily available, pounamu was viewed as possessing much mana. Greenstone jewellery would be ritually handed from one generation to the next, together with the tale of its previous owners, and was believed to grow in mana with every generation. So this proverb was ritually uttered whenever giving a gift – although the gifts were rarely of greenstone – and epitomised the significance that gift exchange held in Māori culture.

So hospitality and hostility had both been part of Māori culture for centuries. Some later historians would see the outbreak of the Harmony Wars simply as a continuation of that internecine warfare, while others would view it as a new era triggered by external factors. A variety of external factors would be cited:
- the immense social disruption of Old World plagues, both from the direct effects of population loss, and from the shattering of existing relationships between the ariki, which largely relied on personal loyalty and the perceived mana of a particular leader, so that any death inevitably produced political realignments;
- the spread of new religions, namely Plirism and later Catholicism, which provoked increased religious hostility between the iwi;
- the introduction of Nangu iron-working and shipbuilding technology, which allowed improved tool use, particularly in increasing agricultural productivity, and eased the naval transport of larger groups of warriors and captives;
- the spread of imported weaponry, that is muskets and occasional artillery, which not only facilitated greater bloodshed during warfare, but also required the production of trade goods to obtain both weapons and ongoing supplies of powder. Those trade goods were easiest obtained by plundering elsewhere, or required captive slave labour to produce sufficient supplies of trade goods;
- colonial influence from the Nuttana and the Compagnie d’Orient (CDO) [French East India Company], who encouraged the Māori to fight each other [3] so as to preserve their own spheres of influence in Aotearoa, and also to provide further trade goods (principally slaves) for foreign markets; and
- lesser colonial provocation from the (English) East India Company (EIC) and Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) [Dutch East India Company], who were mostly distracted by the Anglo-Dutch Wars, but who sold smaller supplies of muskets to traditionalist Māori iwi, with the intention to disrupt their rivals’ influence and market access in Aotearoa.

Much ink and many dead trees would eventually be consumed in scholarly arguments about whether the Harmony Wars should properly be considered a continuation or a product of external factors. Suffice it to say that a case could be made for either.

* * *

The conventional date for the start of the Harmony Wars is simple enough: Arapeta, the ariki iwi of the Ngati Apa in the Taranaki region of Te Ika-a-Māui [North Island], converted to Plirism in 1638. He was the first ariki iwi to accept the new religion. After his conversion, he first resolved all disputes within his own iwi, then proclaimed that from this time on, all raiding must be conducted against other iwi; infighting would no longer be permitted. This naturally led to an intensification of raids on neighbouring iwi, and some not so neighbouring, since raiding taua often went for long distances before striking. Inevitably, it also provoked a response from other ariki iwi, who encouraged their subordinate ariki to strike at rival iwi rather than locally. Prohibitions on iwi infighting were less strict amongst traditionalists, but this nonetheless led to a greater sense of unity amongst each iwi. Increasingly, most raids were indeed directed at rival iwi rather than their own.

During the later 1640s, Arapeta began to campaign more explicitly on religious grounds. He proclaimed his own iwi to be more harmonious, his own mana superior, and he encouraged other ariki hapū to join his iwi, voluntarily or by force if necessary. Since he had better access to iron weapons and muskets, many other ariki hapū concluded that Arapeta’s mana was indeed superior [4].

In 1647, Tūhoe, the leader of the Te Arawa iwi, who lived on the western coast of Te Waipounamu [South Island], became the second ariki iwi to convert to Plirism. Tūhoe converted in part to ensure stability amongst his own people, since many of his own ariki hapū were Plirite, and growing increasingly discontented with a traditionalist ruler. However, Tūhoe also hoped that conversion would provide his iwi with better access to Nuttana-traded muskets and iron-working. He was correct in that belief, and the Te Arawa began a similar campaign of religious-driven expansion across Te Waipounamu.

The course of the Harmony Wars became bloodier, and more complicated, when the Compagnie d’Orient started establishing missions in Aotearoa. Relative to other Kehua [European] states, French involvement came late to the Third World. French attempts to exploit the spice trade had begun around the turn of the seventeenth century, but they had been largely unsuccessful, due to Dutch and Spanish competition. Increasing tales of gold and spices, together with the cessation of the great religious wars in Europe in 1638, revived French interest in the Spice Islands. Louis XIII chartered the Compagnie d’Orient in 1642 [5], and the first company ships were despatched to Madagascar in the same year.

The 1640s were the decade when the VOC and EIC began bitterly fighting the Proxy Wars in Toka Moana [Australia], striking at each others’ interests wherever they could. Any fledgling French efforts to establish a presence there would meet a predictable fate. So in the Third World, the CDO first turned to Aotearoa, as the largest area that did not yet have an established Kehua presence.

To Kehua merchants, Aotearoa did not have the same strong lure that Toka Moana offered. It held no kunduri, no large gold haul [6], and many of the more promising spices did not grow there. Still, Aotearoa was not without its attractions. The Māori cultivated common sweet peppers, and in the 1640s the market for that spice seemed limitless. Sporadic reports from the few Kehua who had successfully visited Aotearoa spoke of other plants which were nicknamed “Māori peppers”, and the CDO directors wanted to explore the potential of those spices [7]. Even if those new spices proved worthless, by now the Old World knew of the value of the new kind of flax found in Aotearoa. Ropes and sails from that fibre, together with timber, would allow ships to be repaired and perhaps even built there. At the very least, Aotearoa offered the CDO a base to probe for opportunities in Toka Moana.

So the Compagnie d’Orient made its first visits to Aotearoa during the 1640s. The first expedition, commanded by François Caron [8], arrived in Aotearoa in 1645. Fickleness of weather – that is, a strong south-easterly gale blowing at the crucial time – meant that Caron could not make his planned visit to the western coast of the islands. Instead, he rounded the southern tip of the island chain, and with better winds, sailed up the east coast until he landed at the first good harbour he found.

Caron had landed in the lands of the Waitaha iwi [9], at a place which the local Māori called Ōtepoti [Dunedin]. Here, he found that the Waitaha were cautiously welcoming of visiting Kehua. They had not had any direct contact with Kehua before, but had heard many tales, including exaggerated accounts of thunder-weapons. Caron successfully negotiated to establish a CDO base at what he called Port à Long [Long Harbour], and thus opened French trading relations with the Māori. Following this, he also visited other iwi on his voyage north: the Tainui around Te Whanganui-a-Tara [Wellington Harbour] and Rangitāne at Heretaunga [Hawke’s Bay] [10]. Subsequent CDO voyages converted that initial contact into outposts, too.

Trade with Aotearoa quickly became useful for the Compagnie d’Orient, if not quite as bountiful as the directors had hoped. Māori rope and textiles were everything which had been anticipated. Sweet peppers grew decently in Māori lands, and so were also exported. Māori peppers turned out to be more disappointing; not useless, but of marginal commercial value when compared to sweet peppers. The dreams of easy timber were found partially wanting, for the intensive Māori cultivation of the land meant that in many areas the good shipbuilding timber had already been cleared or was in demand for other purposes (especially fortifications).

Despite some disappointments, the islands of Aotearoa offered enough opportunity to maintain CDO interest. The French trading presence became quickly established in the late 1640s and early 1650s, with muskets and powder being the goods most desired by the Māori in exchange. Thanks to the newly-established French mission society (see below), a French religious presence followed, as some of the Māori converted to Catholicism.

With the Kehua involvement in Aotearoa, the Harmony Wars became both bitterer and bloodier. Introduced weapons led to more Māori warleaders willing to launch raids for glory or plunder, which inspired their opponents to trade for more weapons to respond in kind. This led to a rapidly-increasing spiral of demand both for weapons imports and revenge raids.

The burgeoning export market for slaves played an important role, too. Māori slave labour was increasingly desired by the Nuttana in northern Toka Moana, who used this labour to grow sugar, and then sell some of that back to the Māori. In a perfect vicious circle, the increasing availability of Nuttana sugar led to an increasing ability to purchase ever more Māori slaves, who in turn produced more sugar which the Māori ruling classes were ever keen to buy - and thus raided to obtain more slaves to pay for the sugar. Likewise, religious differences played a role, with a tripartite division into Plirite, Catholic and traditionalist iwi, with each faction using religion to justify raids or conquest of the other two factions.

The combination of these factors made the 1650s and 1660s the bloodiest period of the Harmony Wars, with unstable, ever-shifting alliances and ever more vicious prosecution of raids and conquests to maintain utu. This process can perhaps be best summed up in the words of Haast Eagle’s Julius Vogel: “The moniker Harmony Wars is the greatest oxymoron in the English language: harmony was the quality most readily destroyed by the course of that warfare.”

* * *

In 1622, Pope Gregory XV established the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) to further the cause of Catholic missionary work around the globe, and to oversee ecclesiastical affairs in countries without established Catholic clergy. To further this work, in 1627 Pope Urban VIII created a missionary college within the Propaganda Fide.

Previously, Spain and Portugal had been granted exclusive papal authority to spread the Catholic faith outside of Europe. However, that system had shortcomings due to lack of resources, dependence on the monarchs of Spain and Portugal, and the colonial expansion of the Protestant powers of the Netherlands and England restricting the territories where Catholic evangelism could be conducted. The Propaganda Fide’s activities met with staunch opposition within Protestant regions of Europe; the first missionary was killed in the same year that the institution was founded [11].

With the end of the Twenty Years’ War in 1638, the religious boundaries within Europe were more or less stabilised [12]. The Propaganda Fide began to look to conduct missionary activities in the wider world, and more precisely to Asia, where previous Catholic missionary efforts had suffered reversals due to Dutch and English depredations. Portugal itself was rather less enthusiastic about this prospect, but nevertheless, some efforts continued.

In 1640, Alexandre de Rhodes returned to Europe. He was a Jesuit who had arrived in Southeast Asia in 1619, and conducted evangelical activities in much of what another history would call Vietnam, including writing the first catechism for the Vietnamese. Rhodes worked in Vietnam for ten years before being expelled because the Vietnamese rulers were becoming suspicious of Catholicism [13]. He spent nearly a decade in exile in Macau before he decided to return to Europe to seek papal backing for expanded Catholic mission efforts in Asia, to counter the growing Protestant threat [14].

Rhodes obtained his desired papal support, with the pope agreeing to send both bishops and secular priests as missionaries to the “Orient” – which, by papal definition, included Aotearoa and Toka Moana. Rhodes received vigorous support in Paris, both monetary and organisational, and this led to the creation of the Société des Missions étrangères de Paris (Society of Foreign Missions of Paris) in 1641 [15]. The pope agreed to ordain the chiefs of this mission society as bishops.

By fortuitous confluence, the timing of Rhodes’s call for apostolic volunteers coincided with the formation of the Compagnie d’Orient. The new company’s directors were glad to receive ecclesiastical support [16], and agreed to carry Society missionaries on CDO ships. The major early efforts of the Society were focused on building a presence in Siam, the Southeast Asian state most inclined to tolerate their presence, and closer to Rhodes’s desired target of Vietnam. But, following the trade ships, they also sought to establish missions in Aotearoa.

* * *

To those who view history in economic terms, the Harmony Wars can be described as a struggle over commerce. The colonial powers – the Nuttana and French, with smaller Dutch and English involvement – vied for preferential access to markets, both as buyers and sellers. The Māori fought each other to obtain control of economic resources, including the land needed to produce such resources.

While a great many goods were exchanged, the major commodities that the colonial powers supplied were sugar, muskets, power and iron tools, which were traded for Māori slaves, textiles, sweet peppers and other spices, timber, and naval supplies (principally sails and ropes). Some more macabre, populist writers would describe cannibalism as a major driver of the war, describing it as a “struggle for protein”. This was a myth; while Māori in earlier eras had practiced meaningful cannibalism, by this time the cannibalism was a ritualised part of warfare, nothing more. In truth, the major economic driver was slavery, both directly for trade to the Nuttana slave markets, and indirectly for the production of textiles and spices.

To those who view history in technological terms, the Harmony Wars can be described as greater bloodshed facilitated by improved technology. To foreign eyes, the most notorious aspect of this was the introduction of muskets and powder, together with iron- and steel-tipped hand-to-hand weapons. Certainly, this played a part. The first iwi who had access to “iron and thunder” were more successful in warfare – i.e. killed more of their enemies – although traditional weapons were still deadly. However, firearms and iron both became increasingly available through trade or increased domestic production (for iron), and by the later stages of the Harmony Wars, every surviving iwi used them.

Other technology contributed to the warfare in less visible ways. While the Māori already had bronze metallurgy, iron-working produced a revolution in quantity of available metal. Iron tools supported greater land clearing, more efficient farming, the development of armour, and better craftsmanship (such as in wood-working). The introduction of better shipbuilding technology allowed the transportation of larger groups of raiders further and faster than previously, and equally allowed more effective transportation of captured commodities (slaves, plunder) back to the lands of the victorious iwi.

The Māori also made their own technological innovations during the war. The traditional Māori pā [fort] had been complex affairs, with multiple level terraced earth ramparts, wooden palisades, ditches and other hiding places to allow ambushes, food storage areas, wells or cisterns for water storage, designated locations to allow fighting retreats, and escape passages. With the spread of firearms, the Māori refined the construction of pā. They simplified the multiple levels of palisades, since they were of less use against firearm-equipped enemies. In their place, the Māori introduced innovations such as trenches and other earthworks to protect the defenders, protective Aotearoan flax padding on the palisades to shield the defenders as they fired, and introducing flanking angles to the walls to allow overlapping fields of fire for the defenders [17]. By the later stages of the Harmony Wars, Māori fortifications and defensive earthworks were amongst the most advanced in the world.

To those who view history in socio-political terms, the Harmony Wars can be described as a process which began with the escalation of chronic small-scale warfare amongst decentralised polities but which developed into a process of political centralisation and the emergence of organised states. For during the earlier stages of the wars, most of the fighting was conducted by relatively small taua [war parties] of five hundred to one thousand warriors who might travel long distances before striking. By the later stages of the wars, Māori warleaders were routinely mobilising armies of more than ten thousand warriors and conducting systematic campaigns of conquest.

This social shift is perhaps best demonstrated in the change in meaning for the term ariki iwi. The phrase means literally “leader of the tribe.” While for ease it would usually be translated as “king”, the true level of authority of an ariki iwi varied considerably. In pre-war times, the ariki iwi had immense prestige and influence, but they were neither lifelong rulers nor absolute monarchs. An ariki iwi who was deemed to have lost too much mana [prestige] might find himself removed from office. Less severely, some of the ariki hapū might choose to switch their clans’ allegiances to another iwi if they deemed that the ariki iwi was mana-deficient.

In most iwi, even the transition of leadership from one generation to the next was usually not hereditary. On the death or deposition of an ariki iwi, the various ariki hapū would gather to acclaim a new ariki iwi. Sometimes the new leader would be from the same family of the departed leader, but sometimes the chosen candidate would simply be the current ariki hapū who was deemed to have the greatest mana.

During the Harmony Wars, the ever-escalating pressures of intensified warfare, together with the spread of organised religions that fostered centralisation, led to the consolidation of royal power. In one sense, the tale of these wars, particularly the later stages, is of the emergence of strong central monarchies and the development of a sense of statedom amongst the Māori. Successful ariki iwi expanded their domains, and now needed to exercise effective control over larger areas and ever-growing armies. The worsening toll of revenge raids led to frustration amongst the Māori, many of whom welcomed the prospect of a strong central ruler who could quell the eternal raids. Slavery also played a role here, as a form of political and social control while the more successful ariki iwi expanded their territory and needed to integrate their new subjects and quell rebellious elements.

In short, the Harmony Wars marked a shift in loyalties. Previously the Māori had followed personal loyalty to their leaders, but now they began to shift into a sense of belong permanently to a particular iwi and particular territory. This also marked the beginning of a transition for the lesser ariki, the leaders of hapū and whānau, into bureaucrats who ruled at the ariki iwi’s command, rather than semi-independent rulers of their own.

To those who view history in humanitarian terms, the Harmony Wars were a brutal and largely pointless waste of human life.

* * *

[1] Rīriri is the main allohistorical Māori word for war or warfare. Historically, Pakanga is used as the main general word for warfare (e.g. the Māori name for the Second World War is Pakanga Tuarua o te Ao). In the allohistorical Māori language, pakanga has evolved into a specific word for overseas raiding or raiders, while rīriri has become the general word for warfare or hostility. Paliri is the Māori pronunciation of the Nangu word pliri, “harmony.

[2] The three terms whānau, hapū and iwi existed in historical Māori society too, but had different connotations. Whānau referred more to an extended family than a locality, and hapū generally referred to smaller groups than the allohistorical equivalent; 350-500 people was the norm, although hapū sizes varied enormously. In historical Māori society, it was possible for a person to belong to more than one hapū; in allohistorical Māori society, membership of a hapū is exclusive, although individuals can still change hapū.

[3] Not that the iwi needed much encouragement.

[4] Some concluded this before being conquered, others afterward.

[5] This is 22 years ahead of when the equivalent company was founded historically. Such is the lure of gold. Or perhaps the founders were just influenced by kunduri.

[6] Aotearoa does in fact have gold sources, but the biggest reserves are in lesser-populated parts of the South Island (Otago and Westland), and ideally require ironworking to have sufficient metal tools to extract them, and so are largely unexploited by the Māori.

[7] There are two plants which the Kehua will call “Māori peppers”. One is a small tree which the Māori call kawakawa (Macropiper excelsum), whose leaves are bitter (hence the name, kawa means “bitter”) and used for various medicinal purposes, while its seeds are used as a pungent, peppery spice. Kawakawa is in fact a “true” pepper, related to black pepper (Piper nigrum), and its seeds are flavoured by the same compound (piperine).

The other kind of “Māori pepper” is a shrub that the Māori call horopito (Pseudowintera colorata) whose leaves are also used as a spice (with a hot peppery taste) and for medicinal purposes. Horopito is in fact related to sweet peppers; like them, it is a remnant of the humid Gondwanan flora which was once common across Antarctica, South America, Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand when they were joined into Gondwana. Horopito gets its culinary heat from the same compound (polygodial) that flavours sweet peppers. However, while horopito is used as an occasional spice, for the Māori its primary use is medicinal. This is because by the time the Māori learned about horopito, they had access to domesticated version of Toka Moana’s spices (sweet peppers) that had been bred for higher polygodial content. Both kinds of Māori peppers are in fact cultivated by the Māori as much for medicinal value as culinary appeal. They are unlikely to have much potential as export spices, but the Compagnie d’Orient directors won’t know that until they try.

[8] François Caron was the son of French Huguenot refugees, born in Brussels in 1600. Both historically and allohistorically, he first took service with the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and joined the VOC’s operations in Japan. Historically he worked in Japan from 1619 until 1641 (during which time he married a Japanese woman), and then served in several other high-profile roles before being recalled to the Netherlands in 1651 to answer allegations of private trade (he was acquitted). He later took service with the French East India Company in the 1660s, leading a failed effort to colonise Madagascar and then successfully founding French trading outposts in India.

Allohistorically, Caron’s wife and several of his children died from the Aururian plagues that swept through Japan in 1629-1633. Bereaved, he returned to Europe, and while he made a couple more voyages at VOC behest, he remained based in Europe. Caron is one of a number of French-speaking merchants and navigators whom the fledgling Compagnie d’Orient has lured to serve with them; they have paid high prices for people with knowledge of what they call the Orient.

[9] Historically, the Waitaha were an early (perhaps the first) iwi to settle the southern South Island. Once the moa were hunted out, their population declined, since Māori crops could not be reliably grown so far south. They were then conquered and partially (though not completely) absorbed by later iwi migrating south. Allohistorically, the Waitaha have benefitted from the introduction of crops from Aururia, which can be grown in the South Island (though more marginally south of Oamaru). So while they have been pushed south from some of their former lands, the Waitaha have not been conquered by other iwi.

[10] The areas inhabited by the various Māori iwi are usually different to those which they inhabited historically. While (most of) the Māori iwi that existed historically still live in allohistorical Aotearoa, different histories of warfare and internal migration mean that most of them have ended up dwelling in different regions.

[11] This is as things happened historically; the early years (post-1619) of contact with Toka Moana did nothing to change the course of these religious developments.

[12] Between Catholics and Protestants, that is. Not so much with other religions within Europe (Islam, Orthodox Christianity).

[13] Likewise, this is as things developed historically.

[14] Historically, Rhodes worked in Macau for ten years before returning to Vietnam in 1640 and then continuing further evangelical efforts. He was sentenced to death in 1646 for his efforts, only to have that sentence commuted to exile, and he eventually returned to Europe in 1649. Allohistorically, the depredations of the Aururian plagues, and the greater Dutch and English success in the Far East (due to their exploitation of Aururian resources) leads him to return to Europe sooner to seek more support.

[15] Historically, a similar society was proposed in 1650, but due to vigorous opposition from various groups (especially the Portuguese), it did not begin activities until 1658. Allohistorically, with Portugal busy fighting for its own independence, and with Protestant powers seen as a greater ecclesiastical danger, the society gets founded earlier.

[16] To say nothing of the Paris Mission Society’s funding, of course.

[17] Historically, the Māori came up with similar innovations during the later Musket Wars (1807-1845).

* * *

Thoughts?

P.S. For reasons of length, what was going to be a monster update has been split in two. This instalment has explored the domestic Aotearoan side of the Harmony Wars. The next instalment will explore the conclusion of the Harmony Wars, and how the warfare of the period produced the Pakanga raids and other overseas Māori activity.

P.P.S. For the next segment, I'm also trying to develop a map of Aotearoa after the Harmony Wars. If there's anyone who'd like to assist by designing a map, please let me know.

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #95: Beneath the Long White Cloud

“Kaua e takahia te mana o te tangata.” (Do not trample the mana of the people.)
- Māori proverb

* * *

Rīriri Paliri. The Harmony Wars, to use the closest English translation. The wars that ravaged Aotearoa for nearly half a century. The wars that marked the death of the old Māori social order of personal loyalties and sworn warriors, and the rise of the new order of centralised monarchies and proto-states.

Or as George Cleaver-Burns famously remarked, the wars that marked the “Māori assault on the Pacific.”

* * *

22 April 1653
Namalata Bay, Kadavu Island, Fiji

Scorching sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Rewa’s skin had grown darker during the voyage north from Waitangi [Bay of Islands, NZ]. The accounts of far-sailors had been proven true; the sun indeed grew stronger the further north people sailed. He had not been sure whether to believe those tales, any more than he believed the stories of dog-headed men in Rarotonga [Cook Islands] or giant hopping-rats that carried their babies in pouches in Toka Moana [Australia].

Around the ships, the shores of the bay converged ahead of them. Peaceful waters in this bay, mostly sheltered behind a reef. Most of the shoreline was covered in trees, but there were places safe enough to land. Places safe enough for the Ngāti Mahuta to make their home.

As the ships drew nearer to the shore, Rewa began to take in details. The trees were unfamiliar, though with brilliant hues of green. He caught a couple of glimpses of animals that were more familiar: geese [1], a few chickens, and a couple of pigs snuffling around the base of trees. Those last animals were more trouble than they were worth, in Rewa’s opinion. Too much destruction in what they did. They tasted good, but they ruined the land.

A few Itaukei [Fijians] showed around the shore, too. None of them looked openly hostile, which was good. The ariki whānau’s instructions had been to land, claim to be a trading mission, and then attack when the natives were not expecting it. All the same, Rewa kept alert. No telling what would trigger an attack.

Rewa kept his taiaha [bladed staff weapon] close, if not obviously visible. Having that weapon gave him some pride; the blade was iron, not bronze or stone. He wished he could carry a musket, even if he knew it for a futile hope. Even back in Aotearoa, back before their defeats, the Ngāti Mahuta had not obtained enough muskets for every warrior. For this Pakanga voyage, only the experienced warriors of the taua [raiding party] possessed them. None would be provided to an inexperienced warrior like Rewa, who had fought in only one outright battle and two handfuls of raids.

If you had sworn service to the Ngāti Raukawa, they would have given you a musket, a small voice whispered inside him. Most of the hapū submitted. Only two hapū refused at all, and even then, many of the warriors left them. The Ngāti Raukawa would have accepted you as a warrior.

Rewa did his best to ignore that voice. Young he might be, having only been granted permission to wear moko [tattoos] after his last battle, but he was still a sworn warrior. He had pledged obedience to Wharerahi, his ariki whānau, and that service he would keep, or what was his mana worth? He would follow Wharerahi to Viti [Fiji] in the chief’s search for a new home far from the old wars. He would follow Wharerahi anywhere, so long as the ariki continued to act properly.

As the ship drew ever nearer to the shore, a question occurred to Rewa. He turned to the more experienced warrior next to him. “Why have the Kehua [Europeans] not conquered Viti before us?”

Āpirana, the warrior sitting beside him, clutched a musket. He certainly qualified for a musket; the tale of his deeds and raids would last most of a morning [2]. “The Kehua have visited Viti, I hear, but have not sent a taua to rule. They think that the Itaukei are too warlike and troublesome to be worth conquering [3].”

The elder warrior chuckled, and so did Rewa. “Who can understand how ghosts think [4]?” The Kehua had more muskets than any Māori. They had iron, and steel, and cannon. Why would they be so troubled by warlike Itaukei that they would be afraid to attack them?

The Māori had long known of Viti and the Itaukei, of course. Long before the Kehua reached them. For himself, Rewa had never seen one of them before this voyage. But his father had spoken of a couple of Itaukei ariki who had come to sell slaves to the Māori in exchange for bronze, clothing and sweet peppers. What had become of those slaves, Rewa had never found out.

Bronze. They think that bronze is worth trading slaves for! Bronze was old. Bronze was the weak metal. Now, the Ngāti Mahuta had iron and thunder.

Now the Itaukei would feel that thunder.

* * *

To the Māori who suffered through them, the Harmony Wars seemed endless. Raid after raid, repeated cycles of revenge over almost-forgotten slights, progressing to mobilisation of ever-growing armies. Defeated groups pushing into new territory, causing even more strife, or sometimes striking overseas, only to return to raid once more.

The wars started with those iwi who possessed new weapons striking at those who lacked them. But the wars continued even when all iwi had firearms and iron. The wars continued despite wave after wave of Kehua plagues striking at Aotearoa. The wars continued despite the severe decline in population both from plagues and from unceasing raids. The wars continued despite increasing fortification which meant that it was said, with only mild exaggeration, that every hill in Aotearoa had its own pā [fort].

In time, of course, all things end. So the Harmony Wars ended, too. Two main factors were at play. The first was simple consolidation. The wars drove increasing centralisation, with victorious iwi conquering and absorbing their rivals. This centralisation came hand in hand with a reduction in the independence of the lesser leaders, the ariki hapū and ariki whānau. The ariki iwi became increasingly kinglike, at first discouraging and then ultimately preventing their lesser leaders from launching independent raids. With the scale of armies that could now be mobilised, even a small raid risked provoking a larger war. And while the ariki iwi had not sworn off war, they wanted such larger wars to be conducted at times of their choosing, not provoked by subordinates. The consolidation into a few larger iwi also meant that eventually there were not any suitable small targets left: any attempted conquest would have to become a major war of conquest.

The other factor that ended these wars was changes in motivation for the external trading powers. The Nuttana and the Compagnie d’Orient were the two principal powers who supplied arms and who conducted commerce with Aotearoa, but they had done so in large part due to the power vacuum left by the Dutch and English being busy fighting with each other. By the late 1670s, with the Anglo-Dutch Wars drawing to a close, the Nuttana and CDO became more inclined to encourage stability within their own areas of influence. They deemed it better to preserve their exclusive market access in stable regions rather than risk ongoing war which would give the English and Dutch more incentive to intervene.

So the amount of warfare during the Harmony Wars started to decline after 1675, as the iwi increasingly converted into established proto-states who had a common interest in ending the warfare. At least until they had time to recover and rebuild.

The last campaign which would be considered part of the Harmony Wars concluded in 1684. In that year, in southern Te Ika a Maui [Wellington/Hutt Valley, North Island], the traditionalist Ngā Rauru iwi had had their armies swelled by displaced warriors from further north who had refused to convert to Plirism, and their weapons supply increased by VOC traders. The Ngā Rauru turned their armies against the French-backed, mostly Catholic Taunui and conquered them, completing their conquest of southern Te Ika a Maui, and unwittingly marking the end of the Harmony Wars.

After that, the surviving iwi had become proto-states, and with the general war exhaustion, a period of relatively stability followed. Low-scale tit-for-tat slaving raids were never completely stamped out, but the ariki iwi and Nuttana between them sought to prevent those from turning into all-out warfare. Likewise, there were a few holdout areas, particularly in the highland regions of Te Waipounamu [South Island], where displaced warriors had established themselves and sometimes raided into the lowlands. But on the whole, when compared to the previous five decades, the early Ten Kingdoms period was a time of peace.

At the end of the Harmony Wars, Te Ika-a-Māui [North Island] was divided into seven iwi. These iwi were:

- the traditionalist, sometimes Dutch-backed Ngā Rauru iwi in the region they call Te Upoko [5] [Wellington, Hutt Valley and Manawatu];
- the Nuttana-backed, Plirite Ngāti Apa iwi at Taranaki [Taranaki and much of Wanganui]
- the French-backed, mostly Catholic Rangitāne iwi at Heretaunga [Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne];
- the Nuttana-backed, nominally Plirite Ngāti Maru iwi at Te Moana-a-Toi [6] [Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, and parts of Taupo]]
- the traditionalist, expert at gaining firearms from both English and Dutch Waikato iwi, in the eponymous region [Waikato]
- the Nuttana-backed, largely Plirite Ngāi Tara iwi in the region they call Tāmaki Makaurau (usually shortened to Tāmaki) [Auckland and southern Northland]
- the traditionalist, sometimes English-backed Ngāti Raukawa iwi in the region they call Te Hiku [7] [Northland].

Likewise, at the end of the Harmony Wars, Te Waipounamu [South Island] was largely divided into three iwi, although some alpine areas and the south-western extremities [Fiordland] were in practice uncontrolled [8]. The three iwi were:

- the Nuttana-backed, mostly Plirite Te Arawa iwi in the region they call Te Tai Poutini [West Coast, Nelson];
- the traditionalist, sometimes English-backed Te Āti Awa iwi in the region they call Wairau [Marlborough, northern Canterbury]; and
- the French-backed, notionally Catholic Waitaha iwi in the region they call Otago [southern Canterbury, Otago, Southland, Stewart Island].

* * *

In the time before the Harmony Wars, the Māori tradition of warriors held that they must swear service to the toka atua (god stone) of their local ariki (leader), thereby binding themselves to their leader and his [9] mana. In most circumstances, a sworn warrior would be expected to follow their ariki unto death; to abandon their leader would be seen as the grossest breach of fidelity and would strip the warrior of all mana. The only generally accepted reason for abandonment of service (unless discharged by the ariki) was where the warrior judged that the ariki had lost mana, and switched service to another leader as a result. Sometimes a warrior might genuinely believe that their leader had lost mana, and other times may simply have presented this to avoid stating their real motivation, but any warrior who publicly stated any other reason for leaving service risked being ostracised.

As the Harmony Wars raged, there was a gradual consolidation of central power within an iwi, considerable social breakdown from the plagues, and a gradual reduction in the expectation of personal loyalty to the lesser leaders, the ariki hapū and ariki whānau. Switches of allegiance became much more frequent, particularly to leaders of conquering iwi, where warriors could plausibly claim that the new ariki iwi had shown greater mana.

Naturally, this consolidation did not merely happen at the level of individual warriors. Throughout this era, diplomacy continued alongside warfare. Successful raids and conquests raised the prestige of the victorious ariki iwi. Sometimes this led to whānau or entire hapū switching to a new iwi, where the ariki hapū and ariki whānau recognised the greater mana of the new ariki iwi.

Such switches of allegiance were not universally welcomed. Disaffected warriors who rejected this change of iwi often chose to leave. Such groups often roamed around Aotearoa for a considerable time. Hospitality mattered, and so they often found refuge, for a while. Sometimes, other iwi might take in these displaced warriors to fight back against their former iwi. But in many cases the displaced warriors were mistrusted, and encouraged to strike out overseas.

The other main source of displaced warriors came from the conclusions to sieges of enemy pā. Where possible, raiding warbands tried to capture a pā by stealth, treachery or surprise attack. When this could not be managed, sieges could become lengthy. During these sieges, surrender would often be negotiated. The usual terms would be that the sworn warriors – and ariki, if present at the siege – would be given safe-conduct, provided that they promised to quit not just their own lands, but any lands claimed by the attacking iwi. Otherwise, conquest of a pā usually meant massacre and ritual cannibalism of the sworn warriors, and enslavement of everyone else who lived in the territory. These displaced warriors, too, often found temporary hospitality elsewhere, but usually elected to pursue opportunities across the waves.

In other words, they became Pakanga.

* * *

“From Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula] in the west to Rarotonga [Cook Islands] [10] in the east, from Papua in the north to Maungahuka [Auckland Islands] in the south, nowhere could be considered safe from Pakanga raids.”
- Claude M. Overton, A Brief History of Merchant Venturers [11]

* * *

Pakanga was the word used for those who went to make war overseas, for glory, wealth, land or ideally all three. Raiding overseas had been an occasional Māori practice since long before the Harmony Wars began. The Pakanga raids were distinctive not because they were new, but because the combination of large numbers of displaced warriors and improved shipbuilding techniques (borrowed from the Nangu) meant that raiding became a much more large-scale activity.

Early Pakanga raiders were armed mostly with traditional Māori weapons of stone and bronze, since the early defeatees were those who lacked the new technologies. However, with the spread of ironworking and muskets, soon even the defeated warriors who fled overseas were armed with the “iron and thunder” that was so notoriously associated with the Pakanga. The Pakanga usually crossed the seas in twin-hulled, lateen-rigged ships of Nangu inspiration, though coastal raids were often carried out by paddled waka (canoes) that could be used to approach shores more stealthily.

The devastation delivered in Pakanga raids varied considerably. Smaller raids might be conducted simply for plunder and glory. The largest raids could become outright conquests accompanied by massacres and enslavement. Pakanga would routinely kill opposing warriors – even prisoners – as demonstration of their power, and then consume them in ritual cannibalism. Other men were often massacred or sold as slaves to the Nuttana or back to Aotearoa, with wives being taken from the defeated peoples.

The first raid that can be considered a Pakanga raid was the conquest of Wharekauri [Chatham Islands] in 1645, by defeated Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri warriors who sought refuge there, and killed or enslaved the previous inhabitants. Other early raids hit nearby island groups such as Motu Rānui [Norfolk Island] and Maungahuka [Auckland Islands], locations which like Wharekauri had been previously invaded by several waves of Māori conquerors.

From these small beginnings, Pakanga raids quickly escalated in both scope and frequency. The Pakanga ranged across much of the western Pacific, in Polynesia and Melanesia. The first conquest of part of Fiji was in 1653, and many more raids followed. Attacks on New Caledonia became almost annual events during the late 1650s and throughout the 1660s: Fiji was repeatedly attacked; there were three invasions of Tonga between 1658 and 1671; and many more distant Pacific islands were also attacked.

In the 1650s, the Pakanga started to raid Toka Moana. Their early raids were directed at those regions of the continent they were most familiar with: the Cider Isle and parts of the eastern coast. The early raids on Toka Moana were for wealth and glory only; those seeking permanent land to settle went to small island groups instead. This changed during the later stages of the Harmony Wars, with Mahratta [Mallacoota] conquered in 1666, rapidly followed by a similar conquest of Maliwa [Eden, NSW] in 1667.

These two successful conquests prompted both more attempted invasions, and raids even further into Toka Moana. Some of the Pakanga ventured north into the warmer regions of Toka Moana. Raids here sometimes obtained considerable wealth, and a few bands of Pakanga established themselves as itinerant pirates, but permanent settlements proved impossible. These were spice-producing regions, where the Kehua had a stronger interest and sought to force out any would-be Pakanga settlers, while further north still the Nuttana hunted down most Pakanga pirates who tried to operate out of the many coral cays along the northern reefs [Great Barrier Reef].

While the northern conquests largely failed, the Pakanga had more success nearer their original targets. The islands of the Narrow Sea [Bass Strait] [12] were conquered by 1669, and used as bases for raids further west, such as in coastal Durigal, and even to Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula]. The most intense raids and would-be settlement were on the Cider Isle during the 1670s, to such a degree that it appeared for a time that the Māori might conquer the island entirely. The raids were vigorous enough that they inspired something never seen before: Tjunini and Kurnawal cooperating against outsiders.

Pakanga invaders did conquer some further, smaller eastern coast polities, although these conquests were often temporary. For instance, Yurra Marang [Ulladulla, NSW] was conquered in 1672, but Dutch-backed locals forced the Pakanga occupiers to flee in 1677. Other conquests endured, such as Wanderribee [Narooma, NSW] which was still under Pakanga rule at the end of the Harmony Wars.

Of course, not all of the Māori who went overseas as Pakanga did so as pure raiders. Often they ended up serving as mercenaries instead. That tradition began when the first Māori were recruited as mercenaries to fight for Tjibarr in Toka Moana, in 1647. Others followed this inspiration, preferring the relative certainty of employment as mercenaries to the uncertain fortunes of raiding.

For instance, the second attempted conquest of Tonga in 1664 failed largely because there were also Māori mercenaries fighting to defend the islands. These mercenaries had originally been engaged by one of Tonga’s kings to conquer his local rivals, and continued to serve when the islands came under renewed Pakanga assault. Māori also found further employment as mercenaries in Toka Moana, such as when Tjibarr renewed war with the Yadji in 1673. Māori fought each other on Toka Moana, too; in the great invasions of the Cider Isle during the 1670s, some Māori fought on the side of the Tauiwi [Aururians], largely because they came from iwi who were longstanding enemies of the iwi conducting the invasions, and so chose to fight against them.

Hiring Pakanga mercenaries sometimes posed a threat to the hirer, for if dissatisfied, or if they believed that their hirer had lost mana, they could turn on their employers. Some Māori had found service with the chiefs of Samoa, but after disagreements over their rewards – that is, what they viewed as insufficient gift-giving by the Samoan leaders – they revolted and conquered the islands in 1668.

Some Māori even served as mercenaries in places further afield than those touched by Pakanga raiders. Māori warriors found employment by the Dutch in far western Toka Moana during the 1670s. Some Pakanga even joined as mercenaries in Asia. During the later parts of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, both the English and Dutch found it useful to recruit Māori mercenaries for their Asian operations. For instance, the Dutch recruited Pakanga to defend Formosa from both Southern Ming raiders [13] and an English attempt at conquest.

Pakanga activities, both as raiders and mercenaries, continued as long as the supply of fresh Pakanga was maintained by the Harmony Wars. These wars gradually declined in intensity during the 1670s, with the final conquests in the early 1680s.

Raids continued for a couple of more years after that, until most of the displaced warriors were absorbed within Aotearoa. The last few dissatisfied holdouts struck out for new overseas lands. Maungahuka [Auckland Islands] was conquered (again) by Taunui warriors, the survivors of the last iwi to be defeated during the Harmony Wars. Other groups of displaced warriors conducted further raids on New Caledonia, some migrants crossed over into eastern Toka Moana, and some particularly adventuresome Pakanga had a brief but eventful career as pirates in the coral islands off Nuttana territory.

The Pakanga raids were, for now, over.

* * *

[1] The Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis novaehollandiae) native to Toka Moana, domesticated there, imported to Aotearoa by the early Māori, and then traded to a couple of other Pacific islands relatively recently.

[2] Māori warriors have an account of their deeds, describing their raids, battles and other accomplishments, which is traditionally recited at important events.

[3] Historically, the first European to visit Fiji was Abel Tasman in 1642-1643. Allohistorically, the greater Dutch presence in Toka Moana has meant that some of them have explored more of the south-western Pacific. Dutch ships that visited southern or eastern Toka Moana usually needed to sail north around the east coast rather than try to sail west against the strong winds of the Roaring Forties, and some of these ships (briefly) visited Fiji.

[4] Kehua, though the Māori word for Europeans, also means “ghost” or “spirit’; the paleness of Europeans was one reason that Māori adopted that name for them.

[5] Te Upoko (literally, “the head”) is the most widespread, shortened version of the name for this region. The full name is Te Upoko o te Ika-a-Maui, “the head of Maui’s fish”. The Māori call the North Island Te Ika-a-Maui, “the fish of Maui”, and so refer to the southern part of the North Island as the head of that fish.

[6] Te Moana-a-Toi (the Bay of Plenty) means “the sea of Toi”, and was named for Toi-te-huatahi, an early explorer of the region.

[7] Te Hiku is again the popularised, shorter version of a name. The full name is Te Hiku-o-te-Ika, “the tail of the fish [of Maui]”, referring to its position at the tail of the legendary fish that Maui was said to have brought to the surface to form the North Island.

[8] There are two reasons why there are more surviving iwi in the North Island rather than the South Island. The first is that the North Island had a higher starting population, since the longer growing season allows for higher yields of Toka Moanan crops, particularly red yams. The second is that the competing North Island iwi were generally more successful at attracting foreign arms suppliers, and were thus able to defend themselves rather than being absorbed by better-armed rivals.

[9] Or, at least, in most cases the leader was male. In very rare circumstances, generally when there were no other suitable kin available, a woman who was already a priestess might be accepted as an ariki.

[10] Rarotonga is the name of the largest of what are historically called the Cook Islands; allohistorically, the name is also used to refer to the entire of the Cook Islands group. Within the islands, Rarotonga is often referred to as the Big Island (similarly to how Hawai’i is referred to historically).

[11] This quote has been used previously (post #89) but has been reiterated here.

[12] That is, islands such as King Island and Flinders Island in Bass Strait, which are Tjunini polities.

[13] Allohistorically, China is divided into two dynasties during this period, the You dynasty in the north and a surviving Ming dynasty (southern Ming) in the south. (See post #51).

* * *

Thoughts?

P.S. A map of Aotearoa is pending, but being rather graphically challenged, it’s taking me a while to come up with something suitable. It will be posted when it’s ready.

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #96: Footnotes of History

“Easy to condemn a man as evil for what he does, but oft better to know a man as evil for what he fails to do.”
- Attributed to Pinjarra

* * *

Note: The following excerpts contain two kinds of footnotes. The first kind is those which are notes or annotations in the original allohistorical text, and these are marked with square brackets and initial letters FN, e.g. [FN1]. The second kind of footnotes is those added by the historical author, and these are marked simply with square brackets and the relevant number, e.g. [1].

* * *

From “Incredible Life: Immortal Clements”
By C Ashkettle (1916) [1]. Cumberland [2]: Smith & Weston [3].

Pinjarra [FN1] was dignified and well-proportioned, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms. His skin was dark for a man of the Five Rivers, his hair thick and curly, and he wore one of the longest beards I have ever seen on a man. He wore an anjumi like a Yadji [FN2], all checked with squares of lime green and carmine, and he wore a pendant of Mutjing jade [4].

Pinjarra habitually dressed to match the old depictions of the Good Man: a black-collared, grey tjiming that fitted loose around his neck, long sleeves with wide cuffs that hung low beneath his wrists, while the main bulk of the garment was wrapped twice round his torso and held in place with an azure sash, with a hem that just covered his knees [FN3].

* * *

From: “Together Apart”
Karl Steinmann’s [5] classic 1944 translation [6] into English [7] of Pinjarra’s [8] original work Majura Namatji [9]

A ruler [FN4] is not a governor. A ruler watches, considers, and steers, but does not govern. A ruler’s role is to choose the right people to govern, those with the best knowledge, character and insight. A ruler should appoint their chosen governors, then leave them to act in accord with their talents.

Consider Weemiraga of the Old Empire [FN5]. A monarch of renown, of undoubted ability that men still remember and revere, six grosses to the year after his death [FN6]. Yet in truth Weemiraga’s accomplishments were as a general, not a monarch. As a conqueror, he was unrivalled, gaining new lands for the Empire, and earning such recognition that he was adopted into the imperial family, and in time chosen as emperor [10].

For all his military talents, Weemiraga failed to understand the difference between commanding an army and ruling an empire. He governed the Empire as if it were an army, giving orders based on his own understanding, expecting them to be obeyed, but never giving proper heed to the beliefs of others. His administration weakened the Empire while he ruled, through revolt and mismanagement, and provoked ruinous civil war after his death.

For it is truth that no one man can form a true government. No individual man can know everything, nor understand everything, nor rule everything. A single man must always rely on others to inform him of the many contradictory desires of the people, and in turn to implement his decisions. A ruler who tries to govern alone will weaken the people he rules.

The better role of the ruler is to appoint men to govern, watch them, and understand when to intervene and replace them. But the replacement must never be by direct government from the ruler. Everyone who governs must be overseen, and must be judged. If the ruler governs, then who can judge him? Who can stop the ruler from weakening the state, save by revolt which will only accomplish greater weakening?

In short, a ruler should bring marang [11] to the state, not govern the state.

* * *

[FN1] While Pinjarra is more associated with where he dwelt in later life, he was born in 1675 in Natta [Goornong, VIC], a small town in what was then southern Gutjanal. The town often changed hands between Gutjanal and the Yadji, most recently a year before Pinjarra’s birth.

[FN2] An anjumi is a kind of headband that formed part of the traditional costume of men and women under Yadji rule from about the fourteenth to the late seventeenth century. An anjumi had a variety of patterns and decorations which conveyed information about a person’s place of residence and their social rank. While Clements never discussed this with me, other sources indicate that Pinjarra developed the habit of wearing an anjumi during the time he lived in Wingan [12].

[FN3] The tjiming was part of ancient, traditional costume in the late Imperial era and in its successor kingdoms, particularly Lopitja [13]. Clements described it to me as part of ancient history, but for all his recollection of the past, he did not take much notice of how it has undergone a recent revival.

[FN4] The term which Pinjarra used for ruler was ariki, which he borrowed from Māori. He appears to have wanted a neutral term for leader which did not have any previous associations of king, emperor, or priest. This was a linguistic innovation; no previous examples have been recorded of ariki being used in such a sense, although the usage was adopted by many who were influenced by Pinjarra [14].

[FN5] Weemiraga ruled the Watjubaga Empire [15], as it is most commonly known in modern times, from 838 until his death in 853 AD. The year of his birth is not certain, but is thought to have been about 780. First a general and then an emperor, many anecdotes of his life survived during Pinjarra’s time, and some still persist until modern times. Pinjarra used tales of Weemiraga in many of his works, not just Together Apart. His referral to it as the Old Empire was a personal affectation, since Pinjarra usually referred to the Yadji as the New Empire [16].

[FN6] During Pinjarra’s era, as now, native Gunnagal and Wadang speakers counted using a base-12 system. To Pinjarra and his original intended audience, six grosses, that is, six dozen dozens, had a similar symbolic significance as six centuries would to native English speakers.

* * *

[1] Carl Amodius Ashkettle (1868-1935), a famous writer, actor, philanthropist, and chronicler [17].

[2] Cumberland is the allohistorical city that occupies roughly the same region as the historical city of Geelong, Victoria.

[3] Smith & Weston is a publishing house that mainly produces travelogues, natural histories, and biographies. Their decision to publish Ashkettle’s controversial biography created something of a stir [18].

[4] Mutjing jade is what the later seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Aururians call a form of nephrite jade mined near Munmee [19]. While this gemstone was locally known and mined during the pre-Houtmanian period, it became much more well-known because of the actions of Marulan, a Black [20] merchant from Tapiwal [Robinvale] in what was then the kingdom of Tjibarr. In 1676-77, Marulan pulled off one of the greatest commercial coups in history. He recognised that the Mutjing gemstone was related to the much-desired jade of the Old World. Marulan forged a commercial pact with the Tjula and Mudontji bloodlines of the Nuttana to purchase all available jade from the plague-ravaged [21], traumatised Mutjing who were still suffering under Dutch rule, and then sell it in Cathay and China for immense profits [22].

[5] Karl Gottlieb Steinmann (1899-1972), besides being an accomplished translator of Aururian and Cathayan texts, was also an accomplished poet in his own right, together with running a highly successful import/export firm.

[6] That is, the most recent classic translation. There have been many translations of Pinjarra’s works into Indo-European languages; the earliest translation of Majura Namatji into a European language (French) was completed in 1726 [23]. The most influential English translation (before Steinmann’s) was published in 1794 as part of the Magna Meliora [24], but by Steinmann’s era that translation was considered venerable at best and archaic at worst. Other, more recent English translations of Majura Namatji exist, but Steinmann’s version remains the most influential.

[7] Pinjarra knew six languages to varying degrees: Wadang, Gunnagal, Junditmara, Dutch, English and Latin [25]. His books were primarily written in Wadang or Gunnagal, as with this volume. However, he was familiar enough with the remaining languages to include apposite quotations in each language in some of his works. Some of his personal correspondence is written in Junditmara or Dutch, but no surviving correspondence was composed in English or Latin.

[8] Pinjarra (1675-1746) was an Aururian social philosopher, chronicler, historian, advocate, geologist, and visionary (among other things). By ethnicity he was a Yotjuwal [26], but there is no reliable surviving evidence to suggest that he ever spoke that language. He was born in a land which historically had been fought over by Gutjanal, the Yadji and occasionally Tjibarr, and he appears to have learned the languages of those realms rather than the then-dying Yotjuwal language. During his life he moved between the Five Rivers and Durigal several times, and almost never went outside of those realms, except for a relatively brief time as a captive of the Hunter’s forces. Some consider Pinjarra to be the progenitor of panollidism [27], although most consider him simply as part of the intellectual tradition which led to it.

[9] The phrase majura namatji was originally a Tjibarri expression but was borrowed verbatim into the languages of neighbouring states (Yigutji, Gutjanal, the Yadji and the Seven Sisters). A direct translation of the phrase is almost impossible; various translators have rendered the phrase into English in ways such as “Contrary Interdependence”, “Together Apart”, “Mutual Individualism”, or more liberally as “Uncommon Purpose”. In more recent scholarship, it is most common simply to use the phrase without translation.

[10] Weemiraga conquered the areas around historical Melbourne, Victoria and the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. See post #9 for more information.

[11] Marang is the Nangu (and hence Plirite) word which means “balance”. Here, Steinmann has actually translated Pinjarra’s original term into marang, which started as the Nangu word for balance but is now known more widely.

[12] Wingan is the allohistorical name for the town known historically as Daylesford, Victoria. Wingan is a highland [28] town near the continental divide, which was usually under Yadji rule but was occasionally captured by Gutjanal. Wingan had some gold mines that were mostly exhausted before European contact, with the excavated areas being flooded to support traditional Yadji aquaculture. Wingan was more noted for its abundant mineral springs which the Yadji emperors (among other, more recent inhabitants) believed to possess healing and restorative properties [29].

[13] Lopitja [Wilcannia, New South Wales] was the capital of a short-lived kingdom of the same name along the Anedeli (River Darling). Lopitja was founded during a period of aberrantly wet, cool climate which meant that the Anedeli’s environs became fertile, and in that time it grew to become a powerful kingdom. Lopitja was abandoned when the climate reverted to the drier norm. In modern times it is mostly remembered for being the birthplace of the Good Man, the founder of Plirism.

[14] And in one of allohistory’s little ironies, Pinjarra had adopted a Māori word to mean a neutral term for ruler at just that time when the Māori sense of the word ariki was shifting from a general term for leader to becoming synonymous with “king”.

[15] Watjubaga – in its native tongue, the Five Rivers – was Aururia’s largest pre-Houtmanian empire, at least in terms of area. (Estimates vary for its total population, although it was probably the largest in that category, too.) Watjubaga had long vanished by the time of European contact with Aururia, but it remained part of the historical memory of most of its former subject peoples. It left a considerable legacy, perhaps the most obvious aspect of which is that its core territory was still known as the Five Rivers for centuries afterward, up to and after European contact.

[16] However outdated such a term may have been by the time of Pinjarra’s death.

[17] Chronicler is an allohistorical term which is roughly equivalent to reporter or journalist.

[18] Some might even say that it had an explosive outcome [30].

[19] Munmee is the allohistorical name for the city which historically is called Cowell. During the Seven Sisters period, Munmee was one of a number of city-states which were ruled by local monarchs but which were under the broad hegemony of the Nangu on the Island. With growing Dutch influence, Munmee became an effective subject of their rival state of Luyandi [Port Kenney] in 1648, and part of a Dutch protectorate in 1659.

[20] i.e. Marulan was a merchant from the Blacks of the Dead Moon [new moon], one of the eight endlessly-competing factions in Tjibarr.

[21] That is, the diphtheria epidemic which went through Aururia during the early 1670s, with the Seven Sisters suffering its highest toll in 1672, and the pertussis (whooping cough) outbreak which struck several Mutjing cities and towns in 1674 [31]. This does not refer to the later outbreak of smallpox that reached the Seven Sisters in 1682 [32], or to the influenza which struck in the 1690s [33].

[22] The nation formerly known as China was split into two competing states during the 1630s, as plagues and famines weakened the authority of the ruling Ming dynasty. The new You took control of northern China, while the surviving Ming fled south and became known as the Southern Ming. Once they became aware of the division, Europeans gradually revived the name of Cathay (which was fading, but not quite lost) to refer to the You, while preserving the name China to refer to the state ruled by the Southern Ming.

[23] That is, only nine years after Majura Namatji was first published in 1717.

[24] A Latin phrase which means approximately “greater, better things”. A term used by later scholars to refer to a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century European intellectual movement which initially studied comparative religion, and thus translated Hindu, Buddhist and Plirite texts into European languages. Some Magna Meliora scholars expanded their translations to related philosophical texts such as Majura Namatji.

[25] Wadang is the language spoken by the dominant ethnicity in the kingdom of Gutjanal (as it existed at the time of European contact). Similarly, Gunnagal is the language of the largest ethnicity in the kingdom of Tjibarr, while Junditmara is the language of the ruling ethnicity in the Yadji realm (Durigal).

[26] The Yotjuwal are a people who lived along parts of the continental divide (Great Dividing Ranges), roughly between historical Seymour and Bendigo. Caught between the Five Rivers kingdoms on one side and the growing Yadji realm on the other, and relatively few in number compared to either, the Yotjuwal never formed a major state of their own. With the development of more organised states on both sides, some of the Yotjuwal were gradually assimilated into neighbouring peoples, although many of them retained a separate sense of identity even where they did not preserve their language.

[27] The term panollidism is derived from two (slightly misused) Greek roots, pan (all) and aollidin (in a body, together), with the later root being elided to form panollidism.

[28] Highland by Aururian standards, that is; its elevation is about 600 metres.

[29] And they were occasionally correct in those beliefs. The mineral springs around Wingan are rich in mineral salts, and so for any visitor who happened to be deficient in those minerals, Wingan water could provide some health benefits. On most occasions, however, the only benefits that Wingan water provided were as a placebo.

[30] Although others would say that anyone who makes a pun that bad should have their artistic licence revoked.

[31] Unlike many other epidemics, the quarantines imposed by Dutch, Nangu and Tjibarri authorities meant that this pertussis outbreak was contained within the Seven Sisters. Even some parts of the Seven Sisters were spared from pertussis.

[32] This smallpox epidemic first appeared in Narranuk [34] in 1681, and reached the Seven Sisters the following year. This marked the third time that smallpox had reached Aururia, but the first time it became a continent-wide epidemic. Smallpox had previously appeared twice in Wujal [35] in 1657 and 1673, after being carried on Nuttana trading ships (once on infected bedding, once spread between crew members). However, these outbreaks did not spread rapidly throughout the city, since many of Wujal’s inhabitants were already immune to smallpox, either those who had previously contracted it while sailing to the Old World, or Papuans who had survived it in childhood. Wujal’s leaders imposed efficient quarantines until the smallpox outbreaks subsided, and so they did not spread any further. A similar practice meant that an earlier outbreak of diphtheria (in 1663) had also been contained within Wujal. Smallpox and diphtheria only spread continent-wide after they appeared in other ports which were less efficient at imposing quarantine.

[33] Influenza outbreaks had happened in parts of Aururia before the 1690s, principally on the northwest coast where they were carried by Portuguese traders. However, a combination of the lower population density there (non-agricultural peoples, plus the death toll from previous plagues), more familiarity with epidemic diseases meaning that some peoples avoided contact with carriers, and the relatively rapid onset of influenza meant that these epidemics burned out before reaching the main agricultural parts of the continent. The first exception was Teegal [36], which suffered its first outbreak in the 1680s. Influenza finally spread into south-eastern Aururia in the 1690s after it was carried there by a Nangu trading ship which had been visiting Witte Stad [37] and returned home to the Island [Kangaroo Island].

[34] Narranuk is the allohistorical city which occupies the location that would historically be called Taree. Narranuk is the capital of a small kingdom inhabited largely by the Loomal people. During the Proxy Wars (1642-1661), the Dutch East India Company secured an exclusive trade deal (arms for spices) which turned Narranuk into an effective VOC protectorate. Narranuk was occupied by English, Dutch and (once) French forces [38] at different times during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, but at the end of those wars it was restored to Dutch control.

[35] Wujal is the allohistorical name for the town which is historically called Cooktown, Queensland. Founded in 1634 as a resupply station, Wujal grew quickly due to the exodus of Nangu from the Island during the 1640s and 1650s. For several decades it was the premier Nuttana trading port, although by the 1680s the other main Nuttana ports of Dangelong [Cairns] and Nerridella [Townsville] were growing into rivals.

[36] That is, the former Atjuntja lands (see post #97). Teegal is the Dutchified version of the Atjuntja name for their lands, Tiayal (the Middle Country).

[37] That is, the great city of the Atjuntja, which they call the White City [Albany, WA], and which has been translated into Dutch as Witte Stad.

[38] Or more precisely, by English, Dutch and French-backed forces. The troops used in such conquests were recruited from a wide variety of places, mostly in the Third World or Asia; the single largest group was always Pakanga (Māori) mercenaries.

[39] There is no footnote 39.

* * *

Thoughts [39]?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #9: The Mirror of Mists

This special gives an overview of how Hallowe’en may be seen through this distorted mirror of allohistory. As with all special posts, this chapter should not be treated completely seriously.

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From: Dictionary of Fable and Fiction

Troll:

In Scandinavian mythology and folktales, a troll is an otherworldly creature, a being of myth and sometimes inspirer of fear. Trolls feature in many tales, often with contradictory aspects, but they are typically depicted as dangerous, distinctly non-Christian, frequently strong, and generally residing far from any human habitation, often in mountains or caves.

The physical appearance of trolls is one of the major points of discord amongst tales. In some depictions, trolls are grotesque, stupid, slow, but gigantic creatures, often preying on humans, mostly old, and sometimes turn to stone if touched by the sun’s rays. In other depictions, trolls are physically similar to humans, though still possessed of immense strength, and still dangerous creatures due to being non-Christian.

In the modern corpus of romance [1], trolls have emerged as popular literary beings. They first appeared in the works of Scandinavian or Scandinavian-influenced authors, but were subsequently borrowed by many other writers. While there had been some previous depictions of trolls, the first significant emergence into English-language writing was when trolls featured in the works of Henry Gyldendal [2], whose classic nineteenth-century romance The People Are The Enemy included villainous trolls.

As romance literature and related media evolved, two parallel traditions of trolls emerged, based on mythological antecedents but shaped by successive generations of literary development. In one conception, most influentially shaped by Gyldendal but with many literary descendants, trolls featured as the hulking beings popular in some elements of Scandinavian folktales: large of stature, massive of muscle, venerable in age, but bereft of brains and lacking in speed. They shared the folklorish trolls’ aversion to frequent human contact, preferring to dwell in out-of-the-way areas. These trolls often preyed on passing travellers, seeing humans and other smaller beings as delicacies to be consumed. These hulking trolls usually needed to be defeated by being outwitted, or sometimes by lightning or loud noises.

The depiction of hulking trolls gradually evolved as later authors explored several re-imaginings. A common trend was to make hulking trolls more misunderstood than malicious; not smart, but not ravenous. Trolls would sometimes feature as helpful creatures: anyone who could charm a troll would find their immense strength useful.

The rival tradition, which would become predominant in the later part of the twentieth century, described trolls in terms of the other aspect of Scandinavian folklore: otherworldly creatures which in appearance were no different to humans, but which dwelt on the fringes of human society. These trolls were invariably depicted as dangerous, for one reason or another, although the causes varied considerably more than for hulking trolls: strength, mischievousness, magic or rage. Of these, the last has gradually become predominant in modern popular culture. An early representation of humanoid trolls was offered by KG Bahdjoon, whose Worlds in Collision series featured several novels in which humanoid trolls appeared, though seldom in major roles [3].

Humanoid trolls usually lived in isolated regions, but featured some interactions with humans. In most depictions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, humanoid trolls posed a danger to humans through magic or mischief. Capable of normal speech, and as smart as people, they too needed to be outwitted. A common early literary device, inspired in turn by folktales, was to present a troll as dwelling on a bridge, with travellers needing to bribe or persuade the troll to let them pass. Subsequent settings for trolls became more widespread, such as in caves, narrow gorges, and other wilderness regions, but also sometimes in urban areas, often underground.

As romance literature evolved over the twentieth century, the depictions of humanoid trolls became more prescribed. The varied dangers posed by trolls became narrower, focusing on rage and strength. Trolls had previously been depicted as both strong and easily enraged, but the trend (starting with Stephen L Roberts in Doppelganger) was to show trolls as dichotomous creatures: human-appearing, generally pleasant beings until something triggers their anger, turning them into raging, devastatingly strong creatures. Martin Stanley’s Abomination was the first to describe trolls as turning green when they become enraged, a depiction which has become near-ubiquitous in the modern canon.

In most recent depictions of trolls, their rage is triggered by appetite. Earlier depictions showed trolls as becoming angry when denied food. This trope was reversed in the classic romance film Spiff and Tracer, which showed trolls becoming dangerous when they eat: the iconic scene in Spiff and Tracer showed a troll which ate a single noodle and then went in a hunger-driven, devastating rage throughout the town. Allusions to this scene in popular culture refer to it as the ‘noodle incident’.

The attributes of humanoid trolls have thus become extremely strict in recent romance: human-appearing beings who turn green and go into a devastating rage if they consume a single morsel of food (or occasionally, if thunder rumbles). Hence the sign which has appeared beside many a bridge in recent novels, films, and games: DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.

* * *

Taken from The Player Guidebook (Second Edition), a compendium used in the game Wizards & Warriors

After obtaining the attributes and inclination of their character, a player can then elect the race of the character. In a standard game setting, a player can choose from the following races: Human, Satyr, Arimaspi, Vorn, Bucca, Shulin, Juntee and Half-Juntee [4]. Each race has distinctive characteristics, with positives and negatives for each. Note that depending on the conditions and environment that the Lore Master has set for the campaign, some of these races may not be available...

Satyrs

Satyrs are naturalistic humanoids who in outward appearance are half-human and half-animal, but in truth they are a different, fae-born race. The upper half of satyrs appears largely human, though with some animal features (horns, antlers or ears), while the lower half is in the form of an animal, including a tail. Satyrs are divided into several kinds; of these, horse-kin and goat-kin can be chosen as player characters.

The race of satyrs usually dwells in forested, hilly or mountainous areas. Mystical and pleasure-driven by nature, satyrs have an affinity for music and dance. They are particularly fond of flutes or pipes, and if forced into battle prefer to have their pipers accompany them. Satyrs are also particularly fond of wine, and will usually be benevolent to anyone who offers that to them [5]. For full information about satyrs, see The Monstrous Sourcebook.

A satyr character may choose from the following professions: warrior, archer, naturale, shaman or wizard. A satyr character may also choose to double-class in the following combinations: warrior-archer, warrior-naturale, archer-naturale, naturale-shaman (horse-kin only) and naturale-wizard.

Satyr characters have 80% imperviousness to enchantment and divination spells. Satyr characters also have innate ability to sneak, if not carrying any items that would make excessive noise (such as full-metal armour). When moving through woodlands, hills or mountainous areas, satyr characters can use their natural affinity to spot any potential ambushes (4 in 6 chance).

If fighting while musical instruments are being played, satyr characters add +1 to their combat rolls when using any swords, daggers, spears (both held and thrown) and javelins. Satyrs are traditional enemies of elves, and add +1 to any combat rolls when fighting elves (this is cumulative with any bonus for fighting while music is being played).

Goat-kin satyr characters add +1 to any checks when casting naturalism spells. They also add +1 to any stamina checks.

Horse-kin satyr characters add +2 to any stamina checks, and add +1 to any allure checks involving mammalian, avian or fae-born creatures.

Satyr characters add 1 to their Agility attribute but subtract 1 from their Power attribute.

* * *

Taken from Intellipedia.

Juntee

This article refers to a type of mythological being. For the football team, see Luyandi Juntees. For other uses, see Juntee (disambiguation).

Originating in Mutjing mythology, a juntee is an otherworldly being that dwells in or near water, and is variously associated with floods, fishing, fortune, foresight, and fecundity. Juntees are often described as looking mostly human but with a bluish or greenish tint to their skin. Although tales vary [clarification required].

Etymology and Related Constructs

The Mutjing noun juntee was directly borrowed into Dutch, and then into a variety of other European languages (including English). It has cognates in many other Gunnagalic languages, such as Gunnagal tjunda (also a kind of water spirit), Patjimunra junkee (a small, mischievous forest spirit [6]), Kurnawal dyinti (ghost) and Raduru dundee (a solitary, wandering hunter). The Wadang word yinga (flood, rising water, chaos) is also related, but no longer refers to an otherworldly being. These words are believed to be descended from the reconstructed Proto-Gunnagalic root *tjinta-, meaning “spirit”.

Mythology

Juntees featured significantly in traditional Mutjing mythology. They were described as the original inhabitants of the Seven Sisters [this term has been disputed; see discussion on the talk page], before humans emerged to occupy the land. Some versions of mythology described them as fleeing when the forefathers of the Mutjing arrived, and choosing to hide in the sea. Competing versions say that the juntees lost interest in the land, preferring the water, and so invited humans to immigrate to the land instead [citation needed].

They are described as lithe, swift-moving, apparently human creatures which are able to breathe water as easily as air, though they did not have any features such as gills. Juntees feature in both traditional tales and more recent folklore, and are regarded as beings that can be both beneficial and malevolent. They have powers to bring good or ill-fortune to those they encounter. Floods were sometimes described as being triggered by juntees. They were mostly, but not always, described as nocturnal beings who rarely came ashore during daylight hours. They also sometimes gave gifts and advice, but were particularly regarded as needing to be propitiated for women who were unable to bear children. Plus they sometimes ruined crops. And were fond of gemstones. Except opals [citation needed].

Folktales of juntees were particularly common, often associated with particular locations where the juntee or juntees who dwelt there were individually named.

Juntees were said to be extremely dangerous if angered to warfare, and to possess a horrifying battlecry which inspired fear in all who might come against them. They were said to wield harpoons which they would use to pin their targets, then strike them with short-swords or daggers. But green ones used tridents [flagged for potential vandalism].

They were said to use birds to watch the surface world for them. Black swans on fresh water, and white-bellied sea eagles on or near salt water.

Similar beings to juntees appear in other Gunnagalic mythologies, but they do not have the some connexion of being ancestral inhabitants.

Adaptations

Juntees began to become incorporated in Dutch-language literature by Mutjing poets such as Gunai in the late 1600s and early eighteenth century. Gunai borrowed from the then-extant Dutch literary genre of writing pseudo-histories, often in poetic form, and most notably created Zeven Zusters Schijnen (Seven Sisters Shining), a Dutch-language epic history poem about the Mutjing history. As the original inhabitants of the Seven Sisters, juntees featured in this epic. Gunai’s writings, and other similar treatments by the Luyandi poetic school, were available in the Netherlands proper, although apparently not widely-read for many decades. They became more well-known with the spread of Aestheticism [7] in the Netherlands, where juntees began to be included as exotic creatures that were part of some fantastic tales, about a distant and largely mythical treatment of Aururia. Although sometimes they featured in tales set in the Netherlands proper.

These influences became more widespread by what would become a defining work of classical romance, and which popularised juntees throughout the wider world. This was the Heroes of the Frisii by Maurits van Focquenbroch, the first edition of which was published in 1781: set in a richly-described if largely imaginary heroic era of the Frisii dwelling in the lands that would in time become the Netherlands. Focquenbroch created an invented world that freely mixed pseudo-history with fantastical tales; he described the Frisii as dwellers in the low-lying islands, tidal marshes, and peat bogs north of the Rhine, at the boundary of Roman occupation. These lands, near the waves, and gradually sinking beneath them as the climate changed and storm surges swept in, were where the heroes of the Frisii dwelt, and they fought heroically if ultimately unsuccessfully against the tyranny of Rome. In such a low-lying land, much of it sea, Focquenbroch included juntees as creatures of a fantastical past that interacted with the Frisii, sometimes as allies, sometimes living alongside and even interbreeding, but sometimes hostile and fighting against both the Frisii and Rome [8].

The fate of the Frisii and the juntees was ultimately to go down to defeat, as described by Focquenbroch later in Heroes of the Frisii (English translation):

“Courage marked the Frisii, determination and steadfastness against enemies, unrelenting against foes both Roman and Nautical. Where Rome advanced, in blood they paid, and while cold iron would in time conquer the Sea-Land, it never defeated the courage of the Frisii. Defiant to the last, they fell undaunted on the field of battle or drowned while holding fast in their homes against the surging waves. Death may have claimed them, but their courage never abandoned them, a legacy that filled the soil for those who would come in later times. Steadfastness, too, they gave to the Juntees who were both foe and friend, a heritage in the blood that mingled between Land-Men and Sea-Men, and which lived on in the Juntees who retreated to live e’er beneath the waves.”

Focquenbroch’s work was widely translated into many European languages and into English, and became influential in the evolution of romance as a form of modern literature. Juntees were among the concepts spread as part of this growth, and have become widespread in the modern romance corpus of literature, media and games.

Focquenbroch also introduced the concept of juntees riding dolphins, which became widely-known and almost iconic in later conceptions of the creatures, but which has no part of the original Mutjing mythology [citation needed].

* * *

[1] In the allohistorical twentieth and twenty-first century, “romance” refers to a broad literary corpus of works which feature fantastical (e.g. legends, magic, fairy tales) and/or invented settings and technologies (e.g. invented worlds, invented technology, invented history). The literary genre of “romance” developed based on a Gothic-style revival, not unakin to that which happened historically in the mid-eighteenth century, based in turn on the earlier medieval romances. The meaning of the word ‘romance” continued to follow its medieval sense of fantastical adventures, rather than shifting toward romantic love.

In the allohistorical modern era, romance thus incorporates what are historically a broad range of genres: fantasy, science fiction, horror, paranormal romance, science fantasy, alternative history, and so forth. Its closest historical equivalent would be the term “speculative fiction”. The historical romance genre is allohistorically known as erotica [9].

[2] Henry [Henrik] Gyldendal was a (mostly) nineteenth-century Anglo-Danish writer. In his youth he was a pioneering romance author who wrote novels and short stories that drew largely on Norse (and sometimes broader Germanic) mythology, set in both modern times and an invented semi-mythological past. In later life, after fleeing Copenhagen and coming to London as a refugee, he started to write English-language works which used romance as allegory or satire of both political developments,and technological and social changes. The People Are The Enemy was an early English-language example of the transition between his two styles of writing.

[3] KG Bahdjoon was a nineteenth-century Durigalese author who wrote a wide variety of “pulpy” romance, adventure tales, pirate stories and the like [10]. Worlds in Collision was a long cycle of short stories and serialised novels set in a fantastical 1860s-1880s which had its central premise that the “old worlds” – that is, the separate mythologies of Old World, New World and Third World – were coming back to life and waging war on both each other and the modern world. Trolls featured as one element of Norse mythology which re-emerged in the 1860s.

[4] Satyrs are ultimately derived from the classical Greek mythological creatures, but the W & W conception of them is most heavily influenced by how they were presented in Francis Arnold’s Novatlantis trilogy: Father, Son, and Holy Goat [11]. In that setting, Arnold largely conflated the Greek satyrs (part-horse creatures) with the Roman fauns (part-goat creatures), as well as adding some reinterpretations of his own.

Arimpasi are a race of one-eyed humanoids from Greek mythology. Vorns are a reptilian (vaguely lizard-like / snake-like) race. Shulin are a cat-like humanoid race. Bucca are miners/underground dwellers ultimately named after a creature from Cornish folklore. (Juntees are covered later in this instalment.)

[5] But whether drunk or sober, anyone who says “hoof it” to a satyr is liable to be given an opportunity to check the contents of their intestines.

[6] More precisely, a creature with an insatiable addiction for sweet peppers.

[7] Not closely related to the historical art movement of the same name. Aestheticism was an intellectual, literary, musical and artistic movement that had focused on subjectivity, naturalism, free expression of emotions, and which had broader social and political consequences. Its closest historical equivalent was Romanticism, although parallels should not be too closely drawn.

[8] Historically, the Frisii were one of several Germanic peoples who dwelt in parts of the modern Netherlands up until around 300 AD. A combination of sea flooding and Roman pressure saw them displaced, with some survivors believed to have been forcibly resettled in Flanders and Kent. The latter Frisians were named for the region where the Frisii dwelt, but are not believed to be descended from them. No surviving historical records mention juntees.

[9] Which leads to an odd example of “false friends” for allohistorical linguistics. Allohistorically, “erotic romance” refers to a genre which is mostly closely related to paranormal romance, although it also broadly includes some other examples of love stories set in fantastical, science fiction, or alternative history settings. (What erotic romance means in a historical context is left as an exercise for the reader.)

[10] Bahdjoon is the closest allohistorical equivalent to Edgar Rice Burroughs, although the analogy should not be stretched too far.

[11] And famously parodied in Fiddler & Turner’s Satyr Satires.

* * *

Thoughts?

P.S. In the changed circumstances of the world of Lands of Red and Gold, the equivalent of modern fantasy fiction has developed without any analogue to JRR Tolkien. Even historically, of course, Tolkien was not the only fantasy author of his era; there was also Mary Shelley, Lord Dunsany, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, CS Lewis and Ursula K Le Guin, to name but a few. But no-one else popularised the genre in quite the way that Tolkien did, and so his distinctive influence was marked across much of fantasy literature during the second half of the twentieth century. (And even, to a lesser degree, today.)

Here, without an analogue to Tolkien, ‘romance’ literature developed quite differently. Rather than one overwhelmingly influential author in fantasy, a wider variety of authors, settings and themes were present and explored through the somewhat broader romance category.

This has led to a wide variety of changes. For instance, romance does not have the same dominant, quasi-medieval setting as its preferred background for invented worlds. In so far as there is a predominant background, it is more influenced by classical Greco-Roman mythology rather than medieval society or Tolkien-style Germanic mythology. So in romance there are more legions, theatres, republics and democratic city-states, fewer knights and castles, less conceptualisation of monarchy as an ideal state of government, more satyrs, dryads, nymphs and centaurs, and fewer elves, dwarfs, goblins and trolls.

Even then, romance literature here draws from a much larger base of mythologies around the world. Germanic mythology is present, but only as one element among many. Celtic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Aururian mythologies or settings are all relatively more common in romance literature.

Also, from the early days of allohistorical romance literature, there was a widespread style of depicting romances as set in the modern world, with fantastic elements being introduced. Sometimes this meant horror or dark fantasy styles, but often it just meant the equivalent of urban fantasy or general fantastical themes included in a mostly-modern world. In turn, there was less of the Tolkien-esque anti-industrialisation, idealised rural idyllic lifestyle. For a large part of allohistorical romance literature, guns, advancing technology, the printing press, industrialisation and so forth were common alongside more fantastic themes. For example, something similar to the historical planetary romances written by Edgar Rice Burroughs (set in Mars or Venus) would in allohistorical terms be considered a quintessential part of romance literature, but with a common depiction being that some of the alien races would come back to Earth.

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #97: The First Pearl Shatters

This post continues more or less straight on from post #85.

* * *

“To the Raw Men, nations are either players or game pieces.”
- Wemba Dalwal (Wemba of the Whites), 1660

* * *

[21 January 1673]

To his exalted majesty the King of Kings, from your servant Mittaba Gabi, Chief Watcher of the North and Fourth Councillor of Star Hill [1]. May the wanderers [planets] grant you fortunate aspect and the honoured stars grant you insight. May you know your path as it stretches out before you in this life, your lives past, and your lives yet to come.

Let your exalted majesty hear and be aware: nine nights previously, a new star has joined the heavens in the River Guardian [2], a new reflection shines in the great water’s eternity. Know this to be true: a great kuru wields its influence on the mortal lands, the greatest since the daytime kuru that brought the Raw Men to the Middle Country [3]. Consider and understand: this marks a time of great disturbance, where the Guardian stands aside and the millions of kuru stir. The newcomer will incite many existing kuru to create strife in the mortal realms.

The portents are clear. This time of great dying has not yet concluded.

* * *

Summer, 5th Year of King of Kings Walliac Tjaanuc [February 1673]
Milgawee (White City) [Albany, Western Australia]
Tiayal (the Middle Country) [western coast of Australia]

He stands atop the highest level of the Palace of a Thousand Rooms, in front of the elaborately-carved, forty-petals-opening flower that is called the Petal Throne. The Source stands directly overhead, with all of the force of high summer behind it, driving all mischievous or malevolent kuru to seek refuge from the light. He stands atop the Palace, which stands atop Un Koit [Mount Clarence], which overlooks all of the White City, the beating heart of the Middle Country, the greatest city in the world.

He can see much from here, most of the White City and its environs. Source-light glints off water to east and north-east and south, from the Sea Lake [King Georges Sound] and its two inner harbours; the nearest intrusion of the great liquid harmony that drives the cosmos. Ships are anchored in the inner harbour, Nedlandj ships. Here to trade slaves and steel for sun’s blood [gold] and peppers. Here to mark the authority of the Nedlandj Councillor who has more power in the Middle Country than any of the thirteen kings who elect the King of Kings. The sight of the Nedlandj ships is an unwelcome one, and so he looks elsewhere.

To the west, he can see the great limestone steps leading down from the Palace and forming the great Walk of Kings that stretches across the White City to Un Bennan [Mount Melville]. Here, the Source’s light shines on the great jarrah trees that shade the Walk, and on the fountains, columns and statues that mark the many triumphs of the Atjuntja over the centuries, before and after they united the Middle Country. Here, he can see the luscious expanse of the Garden of Ten Thousand Steps, halfway along the Walk, where all of nature has been arrayed in its place and season, for all visitors to be amazed with each step. The Garden is a rarity, one place which has been improved by the new plants brought by the Nedlandj [4]. Here, he can see the House of Songs, where musicians learn how to perform properly, and the Mammang, the great place of learning where the sons of the kings and other high men learn how to follow in their fathers’ footsteps.

Here, most of all, he can see the House of Pain at the far end of the Walk, with the great arena dedicated to the Lord, and the private chambers behind built into the rock of Un Bennan. Here, he can see where the Appeasers should be placating the Lord, drawing His gaze away through proper sacrifice so that the Middle Country can be spared His full attention.

Here, he can see where the Appeasers have failed.

When he looks over the White City, he sees no signs of malevolent kuru, but he knows that is merely a temporary abeyance delivered by the Source overhead. Malicious kuru are in the City, as they are in all of the Middle Country, and for now they merely shelter until the light recedes. They have been troubling Tiayal for far too long.

He has no real memories of his grandfather, merely of a distant figure who occupied the Petal Throne or commanded the Palace. Yet every tale recounts that in his grandfather’s time, the Appeasers succeeded in their duty. The pain and blood they inflicted was sufficient to placate the Lord, and He drew the malicious kuru back to Him, rather than allowing them to roam the mortal realm.

Now, no matter how determined or skillful the Appeaser, no sacrifices worked. The Lord advanced and the Lady retreated, all across the Middle Country. Plague had followed plague: the little death, the pox, the red breath, the blister-rash, the light-fever, and then the Great Death. Where disease came, famine followed, from lack of workers or the rats and mice that were overrunning the land. Proper order was threatened, by rebellion after rebellion, by disturbers of custom who had abandoned the worship of the Lord and Lady to follow foreign cults.

People wait in attendance around him, barely in his awareness, wary of disturbing his contemplation. When he does notice them, it is only to note a change which has occurred within the time of his own recollection, not his grandfather’s. His father said that the White City used to be much fuller, with many more people dwelling here. Now, not only are there fewer people serving in the Palace and the wider city, many of those who do so have the curly hair of Malaga [Malagasy] slaves. He had seen the first Malaga arrive at the White City himself, ten years before, and many more had followed. Maintaining the White City, and indeed the proper operation of the whole Middle Country, would be almost impossible without the Malaga.

He looks out again, over the bulk of the White City, over the people walking its streets, who from this vantage look like ants. The emptier White City, since the Great Death and all the problems that preceded it. The City relies on the wider Middle Country to supply it, and the Country is weakened. Worse, now the Watchers of Star Hill warn of danger to come.

Walliac Tjaanuc, the King of Kings, is afraid, and he does not know what he can do to quell the fear.

* * *

Summer, 5th Year of King of Kings Walliac Tjaanuc [February 1673]
Fog City [Walpole, Western Australia]
Tiayal (the Middle Country)

Fog City lived up to its name; despite the calendar marking the hottest season, early morning mist rose off the Outer Water [5], shrouding the Source and obscuring any glimpse of the far shores. A couple of fishing boats were anchored at the nearby jetty, but any others further out were impossible to see. Even the city walls were difficult to make out, despite being only a few steps behind him.

Nyanderra, third son of Yalambie Kywong, King of Fog City [6], thought the fog a fitting marker for a day such as this. The previous evening had brought bad news and worse. A new plague had broken out in the White City, a plague of grossly swollen throats that made men cough themselves to death [diphtheria]. This was a misfortune. The King of Kings had called for volunteers to be sacrificed to the death to appease the Lord. This was a calamity.

His father Yalambie had acknowledged the message, which naturally had been announced where all of the noble sons present could hear it. Yalambie had not asked for volunteers himself yet, but then he did not need to. Nyanderra knew the curse of the third son; too far from the throne to be likely to inherit, but close enough to the firstborn to make a meaningful sacrifice.

So in the misty morn, Nyanderra had come outside the city to contemplate the future of his existence, and his role in the great cycle driven by the ever-ocean. Or more precisely, whether he would have a future. No word or hint had been delivered to him yet about his own sacrifice, but he knew it would come. In this plague, or the next, or the one after that.

Pestilence had followed pestilence in the Middle Country, and no number of sacrifices had changed it. Instead, the plagues had grown worse, one after another. The Great Death had been harsher than anything before it, so severe that his family had abandoned the comforts of the White City for this backwater village. Now, how much deadlier would this bloat-throat be?

As he stared out across the misty water, the nearest finger of the ever-ocean, Nyanderra could find no answer to that question. But in contemplating the potential for sacrifice, he also realised that sending him to his death in the House of Pain would not change the outcome of this latest plague. If the Lord had not been appeased by so many sacrifices over so many plagues, why would He bestir himself now?

Perhaps the followers of the Seven-fold Path held more truth than the King of Kings wished to acknowledge. The Middle Country faced ruination, and appeasing the Lord did nothing to change that. So it could be that the discord had another source: the rule of the King of Kings, his bureaucrats, and perhaps even the Raw Men who backed him.

Nyanderra could not be sure whether the disciples of the Good Man had the right of it. But one thing he knew for sure. “I will not be sacrificed for no gain. Let the King of Kings order what he wills, but I shall not accept it.”

* * *

Ever since Frederik de Houtman had first brought his ships to Tiayal in 1619, the King of Kings’ rule over the Middle Country had been threatened. The ever-mounting death toll from the plagues, culminating in the Great Death (measles), had severely tested the existing social, religious and economic structures. Contact with Europeans had brought some economic benefits, but also disrupted the old regulated trade networks, and led to the Atjuntja aristocracy reorienting their efforts to resource extraction of spices and dyes. Revolts had become widespread, if rarely coordinated. Severe labour shortages in the post-Great Death era were only partially alleviated by the importation of slaves from Madagascar.

By 1670 the King of Kings, via his network of governors at garrison-cities across the Middle Country, had started to restore some measure of stability, though not prosperity. The religious revolts and labour unrest of the previous decade had been largely quelled. The Great Death had claimed many experienced governors and administrators, but their replacements had begun to learn their crafts or been replaced by those who could perform. The people, while far from happy, were not entirely angered, either.

Tragically, the era of Old World plagues had not yet ended.

Aururians referred to the 1660s, 1670s and early 1680s as the Time of the Great Dying. The era opened with the Great Death (1659-1662), the deadliest individual plague to strike the Third World. The 1670s saw the spread of diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough), together with several smaller recurrences of older plagues that struck those too young to have immunity to them from previous outbreaks. Smallpox (Variola minor) spread across Aururia during the early 1680s, and in Tiayal, this period also saw a simultaneous outbreak of influenza.

All in all, the Time of the Great Dying was a bad time to be a ruler anywhere in Aururia, but particularly in the Middle Country.

Diphtheria (bloat-throat, neck-cough) appeared in the Middle Country in February 1673, presumably spread by a visiting Dutch or Nangu ship [7]. The epidemic did not spread quite as rapidly as some previous plagues, but the death toll still mounted quickly. The King of Kings made a (predictable) call for sacrifices to appease the Lord – and this is where events turned against the Atjuntja monarchy.

When the call for sacrifices reached Fog City, Nyanderra Kywong refused to become a volunteer. Refused very publicly, in fact. He announced his refusal to his father in the very public grand chamber of the family residence, where noble sons and indiscreet servants could hear it. And repeat it.

Discontent over the failure of sacrifices to prevent the plagues was not new, of course. It had occurred several times before, particularly during the epidemics of light-fever (typhus) and the Great Death. Rarely had such sentiments been expressed publicly, however, and never by so prominent a figure as a leading son of a king.

Inevitably, Nyanderra’s claims provoked religious unrest. Revolts had broken out over religion before, naturally, but those had attracted little in the way of aristocratic support. The plague of diphtheria changed this. Nyanderra publicly proclaimed his rejection of any call for sacrifices, ever, and thus condemned the religious foundation of the rule of the King of Kings. News of this proclamation spread very quickly.

Such a proclamation could not go unpunished, or Nyanderra’s father would lose all of his own authority. Yalambie Kywong disowned his son very publicly later the same day, only to have Nyanderra plot revolt as soon as he was out of his father’s sight. Soon enough, Nyanderra ruled Fog City. Word of this spread very quickly, too.

Revolts followed over much of the Middle Country. Whether through genuine religious opposition or opportunism – after all, any noble who did not follow the Atjuntja faith could also claim to be exempt from their demands for tribute, too – many other aristocrats took up Nyanderra’s cause. The result was the most serious rebellion which the King of Kings had ever faced, even worse than Nyumbin’s great rebellion which first handed the Dutch influence in the Middle Country [8].

This was a true nightmare for Walliac Tjaanuc, the King of Kings. His family’s rule had only survived the decade after the Great Death because of two great advantages. The first was that their opponents were disorganised, and so the imperial armies could suppress one rebellion at a time. The second was that the imperial government retained exclusive control over trade in slaves; the last true trade monopoly they had, due to previous concessions to the Dutch. Access to slaves was vital both for maintaining support from most aristocrats, and threatening to cut off the supply to potential rebels.

With fresh plague-induced panic, these advantages had both evaporated. For the moment, the aristocrats cared little about slaves and more about survival and opportunity. Even if their revolts were not truly co-ordinated, they had erupted close enough together that the King of Kings could not hope to suppress all of them at once. He did not even dare to send his armies on the relatively short march to Fog City [about 120 km] to suppress the most notorious rebel. Too many had flocked to Nyanderra’s banner; deploying enough force to conquer him would leave the White City exposed to raids from other rebels.

The King of Kings played for time, sending a smaller force to relieve the siege of the nearby garrison-city of Gidjee [Jerramungup], hoping that triumph there would provoke other rebels into negotiation. Gidjee was relieved, at a small but acceptable cost in soldiers. Alas, the other rebels remain defiant, and crushing all of them was impossible. Negotiations were also effectively impossible, since it would mean conceding the religious authority that underpinned the entire rule of the King of Kings.

In desperation, Walliac Tjaanuc turned to the only other source of soldiers he could find: the Dutch. The Dutch government was itself preoccupied trying to win a war against both France and England, but the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie was glad to prop up the Atjuntja monarchy. For a substantial price.

The King of Kings was prepared to pay a massive amount of gold, of course. The Dutch Councillor Gerard Pieterszoon Hulft, however, demanded much more. He offered to provide the Atjuntja with as many mercenaries as could be found. This would be a substantial number, for there were plenty of Pakanga [Māori] mercenaries available the endless civil war in Aotearoa, together with smaller numbers of European veterans from the Polish and Baltic wars. The Councillor even generously offered to arm them.

In exchange, the Councillor demanded many concessions. The first and most humiliating was extra-territoriality: any accusations against Company employees or Dutch citizens were to be judged by Dutch courts, with the final right of appeal resting with the resident Councillors, not the King of Kings. Hulft also demanded that the lifting of the slave trade monopoly; the Company should be free to sell as many slaves as it wished to whomever it wished within the Middle Country. The Councillor could appoint a representative to act as a permanent advisor to the King of Kings. Complete freedom of movement for all Company employees throughout the Middle Country. Finally, Hulft required that the King of Kings formally declare that the Company had a complete monopoly on trade with the Middle Country; no other trading partners were to be permitted [9].

The King of Kings did his best to bargain from a very weak position. He succeeded in exacting some concessions of his own. Star Hill, the sacred oracle of the Middle Country, was to be excluded from Dutch access. He granted a monopoly of all trade from European powers to be conducted via the Company, but insisted that the traditional trade with the Nangu and Nuttana must continue.

The Councillor was prepared to make these concessions. Star Hill meant nothing to him, since it was not a centre of trade. The few Nangu who still came to Tiayal mostly traded in goods which the Company cared little about, such as gum cider; prevention of European interlopers mattered much more to him. With that secured, Nulft swore on behalf of the Company to deliver the required soldiers.

In 1673, Aotearoa was in the closing years of the Rīriri Paliri (Harmony Wars); recruiting warriors was cheap. With these mercenaries supporting them, the King of Kings’ armies began a series of campaigns to suppress the rebellions. This turned out to be far bloodier than had been anticipated, to the point where Walliac Tjaanuc deemed it more pragmatic to offer amnesty to some of the rebellious aristocrats rather than conquer everyone. He ordered his soldiers to make some bloody examples of a few more prominent rebels – Nyanderra being prominent among those – but negotiated for some other rebels to be spared. With much greater reluctance, he also permitted quiet toleration of the growing Plirite and pseudo-Calvinist cults that were spreading across the Middle Country; suppressing them risked touching off even more revolts.

By 1676, a measure of peace had been returned to Tiayal. The Middle Country was emptier still, with more victims of diphtheria, warfare, and the famines which followed them. However, many of the more rebellious aristocrats had also been removed from power, leaving more authority for the King of Kings.

If diphtheria had been the last Old World plague, matters might have ended there.

* * *

Second Harvest Season, 9th Year of King of Kings Walliac Tjaanuc [November 1676]
Milgawee (White City)
Tiayal (the Middle Country)

Another season, another plague striking down these heathen Atjuntja. Whooping cough, this time. Councillor Gerard Pieterszoon Hulft wondered, not for the first time, what made them so weak against common maladies. Perhaps God was punishing them for their abhorrent human sacrifices. He had explicit orders from the Governor-General in Batavia not to interfere with the Atjuntja superstitions, unless they tried to inflict them on Company employees, but maybe God had taken matters into His own hands.

No matter. If God or fate had handed him an opportunity, he would seize it. On behalf of the Company, of course. And his own glory, and in time, his own profit.

Now he stood before the Atjuntja Emperor. Alone, naturally. No courtiers present, no-one except two bodyguards. The Emperor would not want anyone else to hear this.

Hulft kept his face as calm as he could, while the Emperor stumbled through a long-winded, circuitous explanation in which he never quite said that his empire faced collapse unless the Company gave him aid. Again.

At last. Some of his fellow Company officers had suggested making this demand when the last plague blazed through the White City, but he had counselled caution. Heathen he might be, and semi-literate savage he might be too, but the Emperor still had his pride. Better to wait until the Emperor realised himself that he could not survive without the Company’s protection.

When the Emperor finished, Hulft said, “On behalf of the Lords Seventeen, may I extend my sympathies for the difficult times which have struck Teegal.”

“Sympathies are welcome, but I need... something more tangible,” the Emperor said.

“Soldiers?”

The Emperor shook his head. With some lesser Atjuntja, Hulft sometimes struggled to interpret that gesture, since some of the Atjuntja knew that the Dutch interpreted it to mean no, and so adjusted their nods and headshakes accordingly. Other Atjuntja did not bother, which led to many misunderstandings. For this Emperor, though, there was no possible confusion; he would not bother to make any accommodations to foreigners.

“Again?” Hulft said. “Speaking for myself, I would be glad to give you aid, but it would be expensive. The Lords Seventeen would be reluctant if I overstepped my authority. War threatens again back in Europe.” The Republic was again threatened by treacherous Englishmen. Perhaps the war had already broken out, but word had not yet reached the Great South Land.

“If it is a matter of gold, that can be provided.”

“My concern is that aid will be required again, and again. Paying soldiers would be expensive.”

The Emperor muttered something in his own language. By now, Hulft knew enough of the Atjuntja tongue to recognise it. “What isn’t expensive, with you Raw Men?” Aloud, the Emperor said, “Ongoing payments can be-”

“Two parts in five of all gold mined everywhere in Teegal, to be paid to the Company, now and for all time,” Hulft said.

“That is... a strong demand.”

“It would be required, to pay enough soldiers, to be stationed here permanently,” Hulft said. “Bringing men across half the world, sparing them when needed in other wars, requires suitable encouragement.”

The Emperor said, “Would that be all of your... requests?”

“No. There is more. Teegal needs soldiers stationed here permanently. Such a perpetual commitment on the Company requires acknowledgement. I must ask, as the Lords Seventeen would require, that Teegal accept the protection of the Company. That you place yourself and your Empire under our formal protection, which is provided by our soldiers.”

The Emperor was silent for a very, very long time. Did tears glisten in his eyes, unshed? Perhaps. It was hard to be sure. Hulft believed he had judged his moment well, though. Surely the Emperor could see that it was better to have a throne under the Company’s protection than to have no throne at all.

“So be it,” said the Emperor, and bowed his head.

* * *

“Seven pearls strung along a necklace of gold
Shining afar in the red land e’er-old
Jewels unknown beyond the girting seas
‘Til pale men sailed in on fallen trees

Name all the pearls, you who have ears to hear
Spinners of words, who argue but ne’er fear
Hoarders of severed heads and brilliant glass
Weavers of gold, obsessed with doom and class

People of the skin, those who look within
Stalwarts true, care for aught but kith and kin
Mavens fickle, who dwell ‘midst fire and flood
Lords of the beard, bringers of knives and blood.

Ruined by plague and war, the necklace burst
Pearls cast asunder, the lords shattered first..."

From Tjanja Concord Pindeera’s epic poem Euchambie, published 1927

* * *

[1] Star Hill is the Atjuntja name for the region which is historically called Boorabin. The Watchers of Star Hill have built an observatory on a desert plateau there, and have a long history of watching and recording the heavens. Their astrological interpretations are highly valued throughout the Atjuntja realm.

[2] This new star is a nova which appeared from 12-21 January 1673 (historically it was observed by Richer). The River Guardian is a constellation which comprises most of the Western constellation of Puppis, and parts of Carina, particularly Canopus (which they see as the head of the Guardian). The River refers to is the Milky Way, which passes through Puppis. The Atjuntja see the Milky Way as a great river through the heavens and the constant source of rejuvenation of the great water’s eternity (they see water as the driving force of the cycles of eternity, i.e. time). The Guardian is thus an extremely important figure in Star Hill astrology; any new star which appears there is considered extremely ominous.

[3] The daytime star is how the Atjuntja have interpreted Kepler’s Supernova, which appeared in 1604 and was visible in daylight; they view it as the agent which brought the Raw Men to Aururia.

[4] Especially tulips, for some reason.

[5] Fog City (Walpole) sits alongside two inlets. The smaller upstream one which the Atjuntja call the Inner Water (Walpole Inlet) is extremely shallow – less than 1 metre deep – and usable only by the smallest boats. The larger downstream inlet which the Atjuntja call the Outer Water (Nornalup Inlet) is usable by larger vessels – it is up to 5 metres deep – although it is effectively only visited by specialist shore-hugging craft, since the Outer Water is both extremely shallow and difficult to navigate for larger ocean-going ships.

[6] The Atjuntja have thirteen “kings” who in turn confirm (elect) the King of Kings. Each of the kings notionally lives in one city or another scattered across the Middle Country, though in practice they almost all live within the White City. The Kywong family relocated to Fog City in the aftermath of the Great Death in the (forlorn) hope that this would safeguard them from future plagues.

[7] No French or English ship would have dared visit the White City during this period, since this was the time of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

[8] See post #31.

[9] The VOC already had such a de facto monopoly anyway, but the Councillor wanted to make it official.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold Interlude #10: A Most Orthodox Christmas

This instalment gives a flavour of how another history might view a more obscure piece of AH.com culture. This chapter is in time for Christmas; that is, Orthodox Christmas. As with all special posts, this should not be treated in an overly serious manner.

* * *

Taken from intell.allohistory.com

Allohistory.com: The Series was an episodic series, officially weekly but in practice by a timeframe known as Whenever the Writers and Editors Get Something Finished. The series followed the meanderings of the Nulliverse Exploration Ship Allohistory.com and its mostly-dysfunctional crew, as they ventured between alternative universes.

Under the command of Brother Uno, the ship and its crew often fought the Fishers, that is, when the crew were not fighting each other. The crew’s explorations were bound by a slightly modified version of the Time Directive:

“No reference, identification or explanation of ship or mission to the mono-universally aware. No interference with the social development of any alternative universe. No references to multiversal space or the fact that that there are civilizations in other timelines. These restrictions are absolute unless they hinder the crew from obtaining porn, booze or just having fun.”

Allohistory.com: The Series was originally created by Pasture, but was expanded by many writers and optimistic contributors over the last few years. Various spin-off series were often talked about, but like an Aururian meet-up, never seemed to come to fruition.

Crew Members of the NES Allohistory.com

BROTHER UNO – Ship commander, whenever he can be bothered. Often nicknamed “Number One” [1]. Possessed of incredible charisma, he would have the pick of otherworldly women on different timelines, if not for LADY POTTER’s tendency to catch his eye at the appropriate moment, while casually holding some pruning shears or similar gardening implement, while murmuring “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.” Not noted for skill with conventional weapons, but has the unerring ability to convert everyday objects into weapons at need, even if the damage they inflict is mostly psychological. Keeps a journal of his daily life [2], the Liber Mortivita. Ship’s rumours are that any mere mortal who opens the Liber will find their skin shrivelling at the touch, and that anyone other than Br. Uno who reads more than a few lines will die screaming. No-one knows if this is actually true, but so far no-one has been keen to find out, either.

PIPER – Overly ambitious ship first mate. Often nicknamed Number Two, to his good-natured disgust, or Brother Dos to the multilingual. Wears an eye patch, perhaps as a fashion statement or to look more like a pirate, since he has two perfectly functional eyes. Catchphrase: whenever given a compliment, he responds: “Is that good enough to get me promoted?”

CALCULATION MACHINE – Ship computer (allegedly). Capable of making the most advanced computations of any artificial thinking machine in existence – in its own words, as smart as 6000 difference engines. Notoriously temperamental, and will abuse crew members it dislikes, or make them lodge any questions via punch cards or in pure binary. Catchphrase: “It doesn’t work that way, tyllau tin.”

Has peculiar obsessions, such as mocking all republicans, and criticising any timeline that the ship visits which does not have a unitary British Isles. Do not, under any circumstances, refer to an Irish-centred pan-Celtic movement in Calculation Machine’s presence. Once when the ship visited a timeline where Ireland and Brittany were united, Calculation Machine locked down the ship completely and refused to let anyone out for three weeks. The ship’s crew once started abbreviating its name to Calmac, but this merely meant that it became obsessed with a united Scandinavia rather than the British Isles, so they went back to calling it by its full name.

TULLY – Ship pilot. Hails from, well, that’s a good question, really. Continuity is not always a virtue when writing an episodic series. According to one version of his backstory Tully first joined the ship when his homeland was being overrun by prospectors who had heard rumours of a second gold rush. (Or as some called it, Cali-fornication). According to another version, he is the commander of the forces of an unnamed Grand Duchy. According to yet a third version, he is a Kogung whose hometown is unspecified.

Alarmingly competent most of the time, but as is typical with the series, his level of ability varies depending on the writer and the needs of the plot. Once piloted the ship to conquer North America by accident, although in keeping with the writers’ approach to continuity, this event was never referenced again. Chose the ship mascot, a gray goose, a fact which keeps him in perpetual argument with STRAW MAN.

WERRUNG – Ship co-pilot / morale officer. Originally hails from a backwater part of Durigal, possibly Tarra Borun [Mornington Peninsula, VIC], although he has always been evasive about exactly where he lived or what he did before joining the ship. Tries to achieve inner peace and clarity of thought, and encourages other crew members to do the same, usually without success. Is sometimes accused of trying to use logic, but is usually persuaded not to bother. Cultivates an aura of balance, most of the time, but has a few berserk buttons, particularly any suggestions that chimes should be involved in Christmas.

GUUNAMA – Security chief. Says little, hence is very popular with those Series writers who are uncomfortable with dialogue. Master of all known weapons, except halberds, which by sheer narrative coincidence means Guunama is regularly locked in rooms full of halberds and no other weapons. Takes his name from the end of days (aka the Cleansing) from the ancient Yadji religion, which is a good indication of what happens when he finds a good weapon. Catchphrase: “Want this <gun/cannon/effing big gun/current weapon of choice> to be the last thing you ever see?”

BEENY – Security goon. Always assigned to any planet-based missions, and is almost inevitably the first to die after landing, in a variety of unexpected and sometimes entertaining ways [3]. Fortunately, Beeny learned very quickly that death is not permanent so long as you’re wearing a red shirt, and so is never seen on planetary visits without one.

STRAW MAN – Security goon and Noroonist [emu-ist] priest. Theoretically works as a member of the security crew, but in practice spends more of his time in the Temple of the Holy Noroon (all hail her beak). When not converting other crew members to the true faith, he tries to find timelines where Teegal is part of a unified Aururia. Has a prosthetic leg (and scars in the other) from an unknown war injury, but refuses to admit that his leg is fake.

PASTURE – Security goon and ship mechanic/engineer. While he hails from London, he is actually half-Danish. This would be a useful skill when the ship travels into regions where Danish is spoken, if not for the fact that most of the time the inhabitants of other timelines can mysteriously all communicate in English. Notionally responsible for ship maintenance and engineering, though in practice this usually involves creating the problems rather than fixing them. More time is spent arguing with STRAW MAN and BEENY (until Beeny inevitably dies) about nuances of Noroonism – or about just about anything else. Catchphrase: “You keep using the word radical, but I do not think it means what you think it means.”

JOHANNES CHIMPO – Ship librarian and archivist. A member of the genus Pan, which coincidentally is exactly what you will get hit with if you point out this fact. Excels at finding out all kinds of interesting facts, which are usually obscure and entertaining, though not necessarily helpful for the mission, or relevant to the question asked. Theoretically also responsible for recording the ship’s adventures for later reference [4], though no written evidence has yet been provided to confirm that he has actually kept any records.

Being a non-human anthropoid, Johannes is not strictly capable of much human speech. While perfectly able to communicate in writing if he wishes, whether for reasons of amusement or spite, he prefers just to speak by saying “Jo! Jo!” and expecting crew members to understand what he means. Mostly, they’ve gotten into the habit of understanding him, if only because the alternative is worse.

LADY POTTER – Ship communications. Also doubles as researcher and historian whenever the ship’s crew is having more than the usual trouble in making sense out of JOHANNES CHIMPO. Quick-witted and a logical thinker, which can make her quite out of place when interacting with the typical ship crew member. On one occasion, persuaded Number Two (aka PIPER) to steal Johannes’ mojo, in an effort to force him to speak normally. Alas, he simply started saying “Mojo, mojo” over and over instead, so BR. UNO made Number Two give Johannes back his mojo.

CICI – Ship mechanic [5]. Excellent at repairing all manner of problems on the ship, including improvising with unorthodox materials, or at building new devices needed for ship missions. Seldom seen without holding a tool of some description. Once repaired a leak in the ship’s hull using nothing but Jell-O and a nine-volt battery. But if you value your life, no matter what you do, when you are in her hearing don’t mention the war.

CANG – Ship physicist. Hails from Lancashire. The only crew member who understands multidimensional physics; unfortunately, the other crew members are less capable of understanding him. Uses his knowledge of advanced physics to get the ship and its crew out of many predicaments, although there are lingering doubts as to whether this is by good skill or good fortune. In practice, this means that whenever an enemy plan is foiled, Cang gets the credit, even if it is not obvious how he helped.

ALLOANTHRO – Ship doctor. Originally hails from <CENSORED>. Graduated from <CENSORED> University with degrees in <CENSORED> and <CENSORED>. Has a pet wolf named <CENSORED>. Has more of a graveside manner than a bedside manner, but mercifully is nonetheless masterful at medicating the myriad mysterious maladies manifest in multiversal meandering. Catchphrase: "This won't hurt a bit. Would I lie to you?"

SHAVED APE – Ship cook. Variously claims to hail from Aotearoa, Indus and Aururia, despite none of those lands being noted for the presence of native pongids. Capable of cooking anything that a person asks for, provided that the person asks for spicy sausages. Joined the ship’s crew so that he could search for spicy food throughout the multiverse. Noted for trying any food ever found, particularly if it makes his face go red, eyes water, or in extreme cases breathe a fire hot enough to reignite the ship’s engines. Catchphrase: “Mmmm, spicy.”

CAXTON – Ship cultural attaché. Lives in perpetual hope that the rest of the ship’s crew will never work out that this is a useless non-job like, as he would point out, most politically-appointed roles. Has a habit of reminding the crew of all of the famous people he has met while visiting other timelines, and can consume a limitless amount of alcohol, provided that the alcohol is real ale. Adores Schwenck & Seymour operas, and seeks out their counterparts across timelines. Possesses encyclopaedical knowledge of witenmagemotary and parliamentary trivia. Catchphrase: “But that’s not real ale.”

A_MUNOZ – Ship cartographer. Spends most of his time trying to find a way to render the multidimensional perambulations of the ship’s voyages into an intelligible two-dimensional format. Guards his role as cartographer carefully, and does not welcome any interlopers. As he once remarked: “I owe it to candour and to the amicable relations existing between the ship’s crew members to declare that I should consider any attempt on other crew members’ part to extend their own system to any portions of this ship’s cartographies as dangerous to our peace and safety.” Also noted for confiscating the drawing implements of anyone who produces an allohistorical map with that damned Teegalese border.

DOUBLEALEPH – Ship cat. Possesses an unerring ability to identify any onboard guests who are allergic to cats, and accompany them constantly. For a few episodes, CALCULATION MACHINE was sulking and refused to give access to the ship’s weapon systems, so CICI rewired all of the ship’s guns so that their controls were linked to a ping-pong ball on a string, and DoubleAleph chased the ball so that the guns could fire on targets. Otherwise does very little, but does that very photogenically. Catchphrase: “Screw your Mitsubishi, I've a horse outside”.

LOST SHAOLIN – General layabout. Originally joined the crew as a refugee from a timeline where Shaolin monks colonised Saxony, for reasons which no-one has ever fully understood. According to rumour, his true name is Aazeonzaajyutjaan, which may be why he goes by his new moniker. With his old order destroyed, his new mission in life seems to be loaf about life in as much comfort and with as little effort as possible. Appears to possess an inexhaustible supply of blue wine, although he is less inclined to share it with the rest of the crew; perhaps one the reasons that they tolerate him is because they are always looking for ways to steal it.

QUASAR6000 – the ship’s battle computer. Took over the ship once when it felt that the series was in danger of turning too serious. Alas, Quasar6000 spoke only in quips, which made it impossible for the crew to work out what was going on. The crew arranged for CALCULATION MACHINE to take back over through a complicated scheme involving a toothbrush, a fossilised dinosaur egg, a cabbage, a cloned credit card, and the Blacks football team.

Non-Crew Member Main Characters

MONTY – The owner and publican of the Axis Bar, at the centre of the multiverse. Slow to anger, and usually extremely tolerant of the antics and variable-competence of the ship and its crew members. But if he ever gets truly angry, you never want to see him pick up a weapon: no-one ever survives the full monty.

THE LIGHT SCOUNDREL – Bouncer in Axis Bar. Well, mostly a bouncer. (Sometimes they splat.) He has a girlfriend. Once worked as a crew member on board the ship, but chose to leave after too many crew members expressed irritation about his tendency to remain calm under pressure. He has a girlfriend. When not on duty at Axis Bar, he is also the warden of the Pond, where all of the Fishers and other worst villains of the multiverse – okay, the worst who were captured – are kept. (Good thing he enjoys fly fishing.) He has a girlfriend.

* * *

[1] Although the script-writers simply shorten his name to Br. Uno when writing it down.

[2] And death, according to some rumours, though if so, the afterlife has turned into an interesting party.

[3] Except, strangely enough, if the ship goes anywhere on Christmas Day (New Style and/or Old Style).

[4] Although why anyone would want to revisit the typical ship’s adventure is a question which never seems to get answered.

[5] In this allohistory, mechanic has kept its broader nineteenth-century meaning of anyone who is skilled in the use of tools, machinery, or other specialised equipment; it is something of a cross between engineer and artisan.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #98: When Cider Over-Ferments

“Useless – nothing but a land of ice and mice.”
- Bangalla, Nuttana explorer, during his first (and only) visit to Penguin Island [Macquarie Island] [1]

* * *

Tjul Najima, it was once called. The island of bronze, in the Nangu tongue. The richest source of tin known to the ancient Aururian peoples, with a supply so abundant that Tjul Najima’s inhabitants continued to use bronze despite contact with iron-using peoples.

Tjul Duranj, it became known. The island of (gum) cider, in the Nangu tongue. The exclusive source of the eponymous beverage, made from the fermented sweet sap of the cider gum. An island where valiant Tjunini battled with crafty Kurnawal, while the wild Palawa roamed the hills and raided where they wished.

New Holland, or so it became christened by François Thijssen, commander of the first European (Dutch) expedition to visit the island. An island whose peoples had no proper appreciation of the most valuable commodity their island produced: gold.

* * *

* * *

The Cider Isle had once been connected to the mainland of Aururia, until it was cut off by the rising oceans. For nearly ten millennia, the hunter-gatherer Palawa occupied the island without any contact with other humans. Isolation ended in the early ninth century AD, when two groups of Gunnagalic-speaking farmers began migrations to the island. These became the Tjunini and the Kurnawal.

The Tjunini and Kurnawal fought a long series of wars, beginning with the War of the Princess sometime during AD 1060-1080. This process led the Tjunini to establish themselves along the northern coast of the Cider Isle, while the Kurnawal occupied the east coast. The Palawa had some intermingling with the newcomers, particularly the Tjunini, but in time were pushed into the interior of the island.

The Tjunini were usually politically divided into small kingdoms, and periodically united under the rule of a high king, the so-called Nine-Fold King. The Kurnawal formed a mostly unitary state, with occasional breakaway cities. The two peoples fought numerous wars over the centuries, a process which continued even after Thijssen’s voyage. The Palawa had taken up a hunter-gardener lifestyle in the interior, and regularly raided into the lands of both of the more agricultural peoples.

At the time of European contact, the Cider Isle still supplied duranj and gold to the larger states of the mainland, while tin and bronze were exported to the Māori of Aotearoa, and to some east coast peoples. In addition to imported mainland domesticates, they also farmed a local species of goose, a grazing bird [2] whose manure helped to fertilise their fields better than the practices of most mainland peoples. The fertility of Cider Isle agriculture was noted on the mainland, although popular belief there was that the Cider Isle soils were richer because they were regularly fertilised with blood because the three peoples fought each other so often.

Wars were indeed common between Cider Isle peoples. That had been traditional for centuries. The first contact with Europeans did nothing to change that practice. War broke out again between Tjunini and Kurnawal in 1629-1637, ending due to blister-rash [chickenpox] and with a result that favoured the Tjunini. Further waves of Old World diseases did not do much to prevent new wars; the Cannon War (1645-1648) resulted in a strong Kurnawal victory, while the War of the Ear in 1657-1658 ended in bloody stalemate.

It seemed that nothing could break the Tjunini and Kurnawal hatred and their endless cycle of wars. Until, at last, something inconceivable happened: the Tjunini and Kurnawal found a common foe.

* * *

The stormy, treacherous, often-shallow waters of what the local inhabitants call the Narrow Sea [Bass Strait]. Ten thousand years ago most of the Narrow Sea was dry land, a shallow plain with abundant wildlife and verdant vegetation, in the cooler, wetter climes of the last Ice Age. The rising seas had swallowed those former plains, for the most part, though they left plenty of small islands and semi-submerged rocks to form shipping hazards in later times.

The highest parts of those former plains remained above the waves, forming habitable islands. The largest islands were Benowee [King Island] in the western end of the Narrow Sea, and a cluster of islands near the eastern end, the largest of which was Tavaritja [Flinders Island] and the second-largest was Truwana [Cape Barren Island] [3]. These islands held refugee populations for millennia, until the vagaries of changing climate, and inbreeding among small populations, meant that those peoples died out.

The Narrow Sea islands were then uninhabited until they became stepping stones for the migrating Tjunini and Kurnawal on their first voyages to the Cider Isle. While the main groups of migrants moved further south, small but viable populations remained behind. Benowee had always been settled by the Tjunini, while Tavaritja and its neighbouring islands were eventually conquered by the Tjunini, who thus ruled all inhabited Narrow Sea islands at the time of European contact.

In one of allohistory's reversals, this time those Narrow Sea islands would be used to attack the Tjunini and Kurnawal who had once used them to attack the Cider Isle.

* * *

6 January 1671
Bountiful, Tjul Duranj / Cider Isle [Scottsdale, Tasmania]

Symbolism mattered. Narawntapu, King of the Kurnawal, Sovereign of the Great Island, knew that to be true in most circumstances, but nowhere was it more meaningful than here. Narawntapu stood outside the walls of Bountiful, the most ancient capital of the Kurnawal. The accurséd Tjunini had ruled it for so long, until the great triumphs of the Cannon War let the Kurnawal regain it, avenging the ancient defeat [4]. Now, when a bargain needed to be struck, what better reminder to the Tjunini than this incontestable testament to Kurnawal prowess?

Narawntapu stood surrounded by ten hand-picked, valiant warriors, each of whom had personally killed at least one man in the last war. The number of warriors was on of the many terms which had been carefully negotiated before this meeting. The Tjunini scouts could check the terrain as much as they wanted, with any number of scouts, but only ten warriors on either side could remain when the kings drew near. The location was within sight of Bountiful’s walls, naturally – Narawntapu would not pass up such an opportunity – but carefully out of bowshot or musket fire. Narawntapu had guaranteed safe-conduct, and even meant to honour it, but apparently the Nine-Fold King possessed little trust in such assurances.

Of course, given the previous wars, he may have some grounds for mistrust. A salient reminder, that, of the problems that needed to be overcome this day. Too much could be lost, if today’s negotiations failed.

Soon enough, the Tjunini monarch arrived. Wurangkili, son of Dharug, King of Dawn Dunes and Nine-Fold King, cut an impressive figure. Tall and broad-shouldered, as far as could be seen beneath the cloak that was wrapped around him and hung low to cover most of his legs. A cloak dyed royal green [5], but trimmed around the edges with genuine thread-of-gold. That cloak would be extremely heavy, and surely took strong shoulders to wear comfortably. Doubtless it was a special commission from the Yadji; the weavers of gold were unrivalled in their craft.

Apart from his green and gold cloak, Wurangkili’s most notable feature was a beard which would make an Atjuntja jealous, with black-and-grey hair stretching far down his chest. Looped gold earrings, bracelets and nose-stud marked the ornamentation of a man who demanded loyalty from many subject kings.

In contrast, Narawntapu wore little adornment. His trousers and yamadi [6] were of undyed grey. He had no neck-rings, ear-rings, bracelets or other jewellery. The only mark of his royalty was the brass mace – its hilt surrounded by three bands of gold – that he carried in his left hand [7]. Narawntapu had always mistrusted the Tjunini love of ostentation. Any proper Kurnawal knew better than to adopt adornment for its own sake; wit was always more important, and no amount of decoration could make up for a lack of cunning.

When the Tjunini king drew near, Narawntapu waved for most of his warriors to step back, save for his most trusted bodyguard who remained standing on his left side. Likewise, only one bodyguard accompanied Wurangkili as he made the last few steps. The words to be said today were for kings alone, not for common warriors.

Wurangkili inclined his head in what was not quite a bow.

Narawntapu returned the gesture, as equally as he could. He did not bother to proclaim any greetings or welcome to Bountiful; that would have made his message rather too blunt. The Nine-Fold King understood now about the strength of Kurnawal arms. What mattered was finding common purpose for both Tjunini courage and Kurnawal craftiness.

“Did you ever think you would see a day such as this?” Narawntapu asked. “A day when Tjunini and Kurnawal might consider standing together against a common foe?”

“I never thought I would see a day where I would need to answer the question can I trust a Kurnawal?” Wurangkili said. “Until now, that question never needed answering, because the reply was always no.”

“Never was a Kurnawal born who lacked craftiness,” Narawntapu said. “Yet for all of your declarations of honour, never did a man rise to become Nine-Fold King without understanding the dance of politics, either.”

“True enough,” the Tjunini monarch said, acknowledging with a shake of his head. “But what concerns me more now is how we manage the dance of war.”

“The isles of the Narrow Sea have fallen,” the Kurnawal king said. “Now they are havens to allow the Pakanga to raid where they will. This harms both of our peoples, yes, but yours suffer more for it.”

“What do you offer, then?”

“It is not what I offer, but what I suggest would help both of us,” Narawntapu said. “First, an acknowledgement of peace, proper peace, between us.”

“You truly think we can have an endless peace?”

“Death and war are the only two certainties in life, as the poets say.” He shrugged. “Our differences will not be forgotten, of course. We have hated each other for so long, I doubt we will ever have a permanent peace. But we must put our hatred to one side, for now. Time enough to resume our conflicts when the Pakanga have been driven off.”

And if the endless plagues do not swallow us all, Narawntapu mentally added, but that was a fear for another day.

“And second?”

“Second, where we can do so, working together to repulse any Pakanga conquests on the Great Island. No matter where they occur, they must be pushed back. Bad enough that these Māori renegades hold the lesser isles. If they establish themselves properly on the Great Island, then we will have great difficulty in ever driving them out.”

“That much trust could be shown, perhaps.”

Narawntapu was briefly surprised at the quick semi-agreement, until he realised that the Nine-Fold King had had much time to consider the situation he faced. The other king’s home city of Dawn Dunes [Bridport] was doubly exposed to danger. The city was not too far to the north of here, after all, and had the Pakanga threatening by sea and a potential Kurnawal advance by land. Wurangkili must have been at least considering the notion even before Narawntapu had first requested this parley. It took no genius to realise the danger that the Pakanga posed.

Just the latest danger. Every plague has been worse than the one before. The Great Death took so much from us. So much of what we built has been brought to ruin.

“Do you propose that any peace we make should include the Palawa?”

“The Palawa have suffered even more from the plagues than your people or mine.”

Narawntapu did not bother to add that some of his subjects had chosen to flee inland from their former coastal homes. Away from Pakanga raids, into former Palawa lands, where they could farm more securely. They feared the Pakanga much more than the reduced threat of Palawa retaliation. There would be more land to occupy, later, if the Pakanga could be driven back, and if the plagues did not swallow all potential settlers. Perhaps Tjunini had made similar migrations in their own land, but if not, Narawntapu did not want to give them ideas. The Pakanga were the great threat for now, but he still would not trust the Tjunini any more than he had to.

“Few the Palawa may be, but they could still be a dagger in our backs, if they see us weaken our inland garrisons to fight Māori.”

The Kurnawal king shook his head. “It is something to consider for later, but not yet, I think. The Palawa do not even have any king to negotiate peace with; it would be an endless discourse among their surviving clans. For now, I think, we must talk about how we will make peace.”

“Yes, I think we should,” Wurangkili said, with the hint of a smile on his face.

* * *

The Māori had spent centuries waging war against their bitter enemies the Māori, but the Harmony Wars still marked a great change in Aotearoa, with the introduction of new weaponry and the consolidation of political power [8]. A great many warriors were displaced during this warfare, and many of them opted to become Pakanga and raid overseas. As a major trading partner and fabled source of wealth, the Cider Isle was naturally a prime target for these raids.

The first small-scale Pakanga raids on the Cider Isle began in the early 1650s. These were groups of raiders driven by desire for wealth and glory, and they mostly struck coastal targets, killing people they found, stealing what they liked, and sometimes carrying off slaves. Pakanga who came to the Cider Isle during this period were looking to regain their mana by valiant deeds, which would let them reclaim a place in Aotearoa; they did not seek to conquer lands or settle permanently.

This gradually changed during the following decades, as the combination of increasing numbers of Pakanga and greater political consolidation in their home islands meant that for many displaced warriors, returning was not possible no matter how much mana they earned. So Pakanga aims began to move more toward conquest and permanent settlement.

The Māori were extremely familiar with the geography of the Cider Isle and its surroundings, since they had been trading there for centuries. So they quickly identified the most vulnerable targets for conquest: the Narrow Sea islands. Tavaritja [Flinders Island] and Truwana [Cape Barren Island] were invaded and occupied by Pakanga raiders in 1667. They were briefly liberated by Tjunini soldiers the following year, but then recaptured by a fresh wave of Pakanga. Benowee [King Island] fell in 1669, completing the Māori conquest of the Narrow Sea.

In themselves, the Narrow Sea islands could not sustain large populations. They were too small, the soils mostly infertile, and they held limited permanent water. However, as bases for raiding parties, or even for wars of conquests, they were ideal. Seizing these islands let the Pakanga stage ever more attacks on both sides of the Narrow Sea, but most of all on the Cider Isle. The threat was obvious and ever-growing, and serious enough that the Tjunini and Kurnawal agreed, for the time being, to put aside their ancient hostility.

The 1670s were the time of the greatest Pakanga assault, when attacks seemed an almost weekly occurrence, and the numbers of Pakanga raiders seemed endless. At one time or another during this decade, they attacked more or less every coastal town on the Big Island. Pakanga raiders even struck at the surviving Nangu colony of Yellow Pine [Strahan] inside its difficult harbour, though so many Pakanga ships were wrecked during that raid that they never tried to return [9].

The most vigorous conquest attempts were directed at the closest ports to the Narrow Sea islands, and in one case, the most vulnerable port. The Tjunini cities of Dawn Dunes [Bridport], Wukalina [Tomahawk] and Kwamania [Smithton], and the Kurnawal cities of Larapuna [Ansons Bay] and Orange Rock [St Helens] were repeatedly targeted, because of their proximity to the Narrow Sea islands.

Joint efforts by Tjunini and Kurnawal repulsed the first attack on Dawn Dunes in 1671, but this attack would be followed by many others. Wukalina fell in 1672, the first mainland city to be occupied; close to Truwana, and with difficult hills separating it from other cities, it was easier for the Pakanga to occupy than for others to defend. The same fate befell the small Kurnawal city of Larapuna in 1673. In the same year, the isolated Kurnawal city of Jangani [Cockle Creek] fell. This was a strongly-fortified city held by a renegade group of Kurnawal who did not acknowledge their king. It had proven impossible for the Kurnawal monarchs to re-establish control, over several decades, but the Pakanga conquered it by stealth, as they so often did.

The Pakanga assaults grew ever stronger throughout most the decade. Beleaguered, often attacked, and difficult to reinforce, Dawn Dunes eventually fell in 1675. Some other coastal Tjunini cities were captured for varying periods – Kwamania fell twice – but were recaptured in time. For the Kurnawal, Orange Rock was occupied for several months in 1674, and again for a few months over 1675-1676, although they eventually recaptured it on both occasions. While some cities could be reconquered easily, Dawn Dunes, Wukalina and Larapuna proved impossible to reconquer for a long time, since they were too easily reinforced by Pakanga.

The plagues, the many scourges of the Time of the Great Dying, continued even during the worst of the Pakanga raids. Bloat-throat [diphtheria] burned through the Cider Isle between 1673-1674, followed by an outbreak of death-cough [pertussis / whooping cough] in 1676-7. In what they did not realise was a stroke of great fortune, the relative handful of people who later died from scar-blister [smallpox, Variola minor] in 1682-3 were far fewer than those who would have been killed had the Cider Isle’s first outbreak been the deadlier variant [Variola major] of the disease.

Between the plagues and the seemingly-endless Pakanga raids, the Tjunini and Kurnawal found themselves severely short of manpower. By 1676, their position looked dire. The northeast of the island was firmly under Pakanga rule – Orange Rock had not yet been reconquered – and every month seemed to bring more Pakanga across the Gray Sea [Tasman Sea]. In desperation, Kings Wurangkili and Narawntapu turned to new sources of manpower: the Pakanga themselves.

The Pakanga were not a united group, being divided both by old inter-iwi hatreds and more recent religious wars between Catholic, Plirite and traditionalists. The occupiers of the Narrow Sea islands were traditionalists, and most of the Pakanga who raided the Cider Isle were of the same faith, together with smaller numbers of Catholics. The Tjunini and Kurnawal monarchs chose to recruit Pakanga of their own, preferably Plirite, to aid them in their struggles against the would-be conquerors [10].

Some of these recruitment efforts involved promises of land grants for the new Pakanga. This marked the true level of desperation amongst the Cider Isle’s peoples, for they traditionally viewed their land as sacred and not to be given to any other people but their own. Under this pressure, however, the Kurnawal offered land grants around Orange Rock to Pakanga mercenaries, so that they could recapture the city and then defend it afterward. The Tjunini offered similar land grants around their most hard-pressed cities of Kwamania and Hope Hill [Stanley], in exchange for defending against other raiders. In other cases, Pakanga were recruited simply as mercenaries, lured both by pay and by careful choice of iwi that were rivals to those now threatening the Cider Isle. At various times, the Dutch, British and Nuttana all assisted in transporting Pakanga to aid the Cider Isle’s defenders.

With some Māori also acting as defenders, the Pakanga raids into the Cider Isle were much less successful. The Pakanga did occupy some cities at times, but they did not make any further ongoing conquests. While raids continued into the 1680s, the actual Pakanga settlements were limited to the north-eastern corner of the Big Island, together with distant and resilient Jangani in the south. During this time, the Harmony Wars were gradually ending in Aotearoa, which cut off the supply of fresh Pakanga raiders.

By 1685, it appeared that the external Pakanga threat was finally over. Launching a full reconquest of the new Māori regions, however, would prove to be more difficult. With the foreign menace receding, neither Tjunini nor Kurnawal properly trusted the other to cooperate in expelling the interlopers, fearing betrayal. The Kurnawal did succeed in expelling the Pakanga from Jangani in 1687, with some of the defenders betraying their comrades in exchange for land grants, and the rest of the defenders sold as slaves to the Nuttana.

In 1688-9 the Tjunini and Kurnawal finally launched a joint reconquest of Dawn Dunes. When the city fell, King Wurangkili proclaimed that the city had to be restored to him as his ancient birthright. King Narawntapu responded by negotiating vassalage for the remaining Pakanga in Wukalina and Larapuna; recognising that since those towns had been flooded by Pakanga driven out from Dawn Dunes, reconquering the region was a practical impossibility anyway. The Kurnawal monarch had himself declared the ariki iwi of the Māori in the north-east, and recognised the rule of the ariki hapū beneath him.

With these events, the immediate dangers had gone, but the peoples of the Cider Isle had been gravely weakened by plague and warfare, and vulnerable to further pressure from abroad.

* * *

In the wider world, the 1660s and 1670s (and early 1680s) were marked by the Anglo- Dutch Wars, struggles that were fought principally in Europe but with conflicts that touched much of the globe. These struggles gave the indigenous peoples of the Third World some respite from the colonial pressure that had applied in previous decades.

By the end of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) and East India Company (EIC) had tacitly agreed to partition much of the Orient into spheres of influence, where they would not interfere with each other. The East Indies went to the VOC, while India and the whole subcontinent (except for a Dutch presence in parts of cinnamon-rich Ceylon) became the preserve of the EIC. Each company allowed the other a free hand in their allotted regions. The previous four decades of official and unofficial warfare had led the Lords Seventeen and Court of Directors each to judge that partition and steady if not overwhelming profits was better than squandering endless resources fighting each other.

In those allocated regions, the VOC and EIC focused their attention on curtailing the influence of the other colonial powers which had emerged (or re-emerged) while the Dutch and English were locked in the massive struggles of the Anglo-Dutch Wars: the French, the Portuguese, the Danes, and the Swedes. Where not combating those colonial rivals directly, they sought to re-establish their influence and trading connections with the local powers.

No such partition agreement applied in Aururia. Aururia had become the most valuable prize in the Oriental struggles of the two great trading companies. Gold, silver, kunduri, jeeree, and an abundance of novel spices ensured this competition. The best of those spices, sweet peppers and lemon verbena [lemon myrtle], were so valuable that they could even be traded to elsewhere in the Orient for greater profits; from the European perspective, much better than having to supply bullion from Europe. In such an environment, the Dutch and English made every effort to fight each other and gain control of the resources of the Third World.

This struggle played out in the Cider Isle as much as anywhere in the Third World. With the Anglo-Dutch Wars over and the Pakanga threat subsiding, the VOC and EIC resumed their struggle for influence in the Cider Isle, with the Compagnie d’Orient (CDO) [French East India Company] running interference. These companies’ determination grew ever greater with the weakening population; so many of the existing peoples of Aururia were declining with the Great Death and the plagues that followed during the Time of the Great Dying.

For while the population of the Third World was collapsing, the companies’ desire for trade goods was ever-expanding, particularly in sweet peppers which were required in ever-greater numbers to sustain their trade in the Orient and burgeoning European demand. The pre-contact Third World would have been capable of supplying any conceivable volume of European trade demand, but the ravages of plague and war had reduced most of that population, leading to huge foreign pressure on those who were left to supply this and other spices.

The Cider Isle had an excellent climate for growing the common varieties of sweet peppers; here the crops required little if any irrigation, unlike most of the accessible mainland areas [11]. As such, the VOC and EIC wanted to take as much control as needed to ensure that the survivors re-oriented their economy into production of spices, together with gold mining. The much-reduced population of the Cider Isle could not withstand this foreign influence. No formal protectorate may have been declared, but by 1690 the Kurnawal kingdom was an EIC client state in all but name. Likewise, the VOC sent enough arms and mercenaries to the Nine-Fold King that he became not only their effective vassal, but so that he could also break the old Tjunini political structure. Before, the Nine-Fold King had simply been the most prominent ruler but with vassal kings; under King Wurangkili and (after 1692) his son, the Nine-Fold King became the genuine ruler of all the Tjunini.

In such an environment, the old gum cider production almost, but not quite, vanished. The native peoples might still refer to their land as the Cider Isle, but this was not matched by their actual production, where it would have been more accurate to rename their homeland as the Pepper Isle. In such an environment, with European companies promoting production and mercenaries on hand where needed, the Tjunini and Kurnawal also sought to curtail destructive Palawa raids, and to expand their control into fresh fertile soils beyond their coastal territories. The few remaining Palawa retreated into the rugged terrain of the interior, where digging them out was more trouble than it was worth, unless the Palawa provoked retaliation through raids. (They mostly didn’t.)

As for the Tjunini and Kurnawal, despite their weakened population, despite further infighting risking direct European control, they did not stop fighting each other. Hostilities resumed in 1694-6, in what would be called the Unmaking War. This ended in a Kurnawal victory, allowing them to recapture Dawn Dunes. Of course, given the many wars between the two peoples, the odds were that the Tjunini would recapture the city soon enough.

* * *

[1] The mice that Bangalla refers to were in fact kiore, Polynesian rats, deposited there by previous Māori visitors to Penguin Island.

[2] That is, the Cape Barren goose (Cereopsis novaehollandiae), a grazing bird which is a useful source of both meat and eggs.

[3] The names for both Tayaritja (Flinders Island) and Truwana (Cape Barren Island) were in fact borrowed from the names which the Palawa gave to those islands. The Palawa still knew of those islands, even though they did not inhabit them.

[4] i.e. the War of the Princess, a struggle immortalised in song, and which possibly holds an elemental of historical truth. See post #13.

[5] This comes from a process using native indigo (Indigofera australis), a relative of true indigo (I. tinctoria). The Aururian species of indigo produces a similar blue-purple dye to true indigo, but with further treatment fibres that have already been dyed blue can be modified to a brighter green shade. To the Tjunini, this is the most valuable colour, royal green.

[6] A yamadi is a kind of collarless, V-neck shirt that is a common dress item amongst urban Kurnawal (and some Tjunini), but which is much plainer that would traditionally be worn by nobility, let alone royalty.

[7] The Kurnawal royal mace is not the only potential regalia they use, since the king also wears a plain gold coronet in formal settings. Having a mace made of brass is a sign of considerable wealth, since unlike their common bronze, brass must be imported, ultimately from the Tjibarri desert mines of Silver Hill [Broken Hill, NSW].

[8] See posts #94 and #95.

[9] Yellow Pine [Strahan] lies inside a large but shallow harbour that the Nangu call Timber Haven and which historically was called Macquarie Harbour. As could be guessed from the name, the Nangu use it as one of their main sources of timber for shipbuilding. The entrance to Timber Haven is extremely dangerous for visiting ships, since it is a narrow, shallow channel with dangerous currents, and whose depth often shifts depending on the deposits of sediment from the rivers that flow into the harbour. In this Pakanga raid, many ships were lost trying to get into and out of the harbour.

[10] The Tjunini and Kurnawal are themselves largely Plirite, having been converted by Nangu priests, although they retain some syncretic beliefs. This common religion has never stopped them from fighting each other.

[11] Sweet peppers (Tasmannia spp) are naturally alpine or cool temperate crops which require very high natural rainfall. Being further south, the Cider Isle is usually cool enough to sustain these crops even in coastal areas. The alpine areas of the mainland are equally capable of growing sweet peppers without needing irrigation, but these are far enough inland (and have poor roads) that transporting the crops to ports is much more difficult.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #99: Making Black of White

“And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.”
- Revelation 6:4, King James Version

* * *

“So small a thing, to bring the ruination of a kingdom.”
- Reputed words of Sultan Pangeran Ratu (also known as Abdul Kadir Kenari), after tasting the first sweet pepper sold by Dutch traders, circa 1625. He was the ruler of Bantem, a sultanate in western Java and eastern Sumatra which depended on exporting (true) peppers for much of its wealth.

* * *

“The most vivid memory of Witte Stad [the White City] is in the approach, sailing with a fine breeze amidst clear skies, beneath the strength and light of the South-Land sun. First one sees the calm waters of the triple harbour, the grand expanse of the outer waters and then the sunlight glinting from the waters of the inner haven. As the ship draws nearer, one glimpses the two mountains that make up the heart of Witte Stad, colossal buildings gleaming white under the still-burning sun. Draw close to the docks, and one sees the giant statues and great-boughed trees that flank the wide boulevard, and one knows that one has come to a place of marvels...

Witte Stad is a pearl among cities, a place of grandeur and magnificence, despite being built by heathen hands. The streets are broad and clean, washed and fragrant, accompanied everywhere by the sound of rushing water [1]. The gardens, the buildings are erected on a grand scale, and impress with their majesty even when they distress with their pagan rituals. Everything appears to be as if newly-built, or at least well-repaired, and workmen are always on hand to keep the great city functioning [2]...

No other place in the world can compare to Witte Stad in the image it creates. For all of their pagan beliefs, the Atjuntja are masters of craftsmanship. Only Rome comes close as a city of marvels, and Rome is far dirtier and more crowded by far...”

- From Au sud des Indes [South of the Indies] by Jacques-Théodore Albert (often nicknamed the Marco Polo of Aururia). Au sud des Indes, first published in 1683, was a widely-circulated account of his travels in the Third World, in service with the Compagnie d’Orient [French East India Company], then with the Svenska Ostindiska Companiet [Swedish East India Company], and then as a Nuttana trading-stockholder.

* * *

Renewal Season [3], 25th Year of King of Kings Walliac Tjaanuc [September 1692]
Milgawee (White City)
Tiayal (the Middle Country)

Walliac Tjaanuc, King of Kings, Voice of Divinity, waited alone in the Hall of Lorikeets, apart from his usual collection of bodyguards. Such had become his customary practice when meeting with Nedlandj representatives. Most of the men in the Middle Country who mattered already knew of the extreme influence that the Nedlandj wielded, but no reason to make that fact too blatant.

Banribeek [Abraham van Riebeeck] entered the Hall. Councillor of the Indies, so he had been dubbed, in the Nedlandj style. King of Fort Nassau [Fremantle], so he had been acclaimed, in the proper way, to make him a member of the blessed, and able to speak freely to the King of Kings [4].

For fifteen years, Banribeek and his predecessors had been aiding the Middle Country with soldiers and in maintaining stability, which was good. For fifteen years, he and his predecessors had sought to give commands phrased as advice, which was much less good. They sought to interfere with everything, with the collection of tribute, with the management of crop production, with the assignment of labour, with the distribution of slaves, with the mining of gold. Most of all, they tried to interfere with the worship of the Lord.

Polite greetings took up some time, with Banribeek offering best wishes for the King of Kings’ health, of his surviving wives and sons, compliments on his just rule, and so forth. All appropriate and well-phrased, though Walliac wondered how much sincerity there was behind it. This Councillor was more polished than his predecessors, but even the most diplomatic of Raw Men struggled to conceal that they viewed all proper Atjuntja as their inferiors.

In time, Banribeek got around to his usual final compliment. “The Middle Country fares well under Your Exalted Majesty’s rule, and is beginning its recovery from the great-sleep.”

Walliac shook his head in acknowledgement. The great-sleep [influenza] had taken its usual toll in lives, but this latest plague had seen little of the unrest and discontent that followed the previous plagues. Perhaps the people had become inured to the endless misery, perhaps most of the would-be rebels had died in previous epidemics... or perhaps the Lord was finally heeding the Appeasers.

“I would offer advice on how best to foster that recovery,” Banribeek said. A slight rewording of his usual declaration where he would move to giving his instructions and interference.

“Would this be your usual advice to disregard the ancient tribute systems to the favour of your Company, or your usual advice to abandon the work of the Appeasers?”

Banribeek paused for a long moment, doubtless surprised by such unexpected bluntness. The King of Kings had always needed to choose his words carefully, before, but the latest events had given him more confidence.

In time, the Councillor said, “The Appeasers cause much distress, it is true. But–”

“The Appeasers have proven valuable, in finally turning the Lord’s attention away, and ameliorating the great-sleep [5].” Walliac did not know how true that was, but he knew that he could proclaim it loudly across the Middle Country. That should weaken the influence of any would-be rebels or the unfortunately many people who had turned from the worship of the Lord and Lady and hearkened to foreign cults. It should also weaken his reliance on the Nedlandj, their ever-interfering Councillors, and their ever-growing appetite for sun’s blood [gold].

“Did your rituals prevent great-sleep altogether? Or bloat-throat [diphtheria], or death-cough [pertussis/whooping cough] or all of the plagues before that?”

“Suffering is a part of life. It will never be removed entirely. Appeasing the Lord merely minimises the suffering,” the King of Kings said. Perhaps the Lord had truly been satiated by better sacrifices, or better volunteers, where before He had been disappointed. Perhaps even He had simply had enough of suffering. It mattered not. What did matter was the opportunity to restore more of his control over the Middle Country.

Banribeek showed more wit than his predecessors, recognising when he would not gain by pursuing one topic. “Then let us consider other matters where I can advise–”

“Yes, you can advise. Your Company is my firm ally, which I respect. I will consider any advice you offer. But you are not my sovereign. I rule the Middle Country. That is what you must remember.”

“What do you mean, Your Exalted Majesty?”

Walliac smiled. “Your Company always makes requests. Today it might be a request to limit the Appeasers. Tomorrow it may be a request to intervene in trade because an Atjuntja merchant has insisted on terms which do not favour your Company. The day after it may be a request for more sun’s blood for providing the same number of soldiers. Always requests, always meant as demands.”

“We do not demand, we–”

“You make requests while gripping a musket,” the King of Kings said. “This must end. I will consider all requests you make. I will consider all advice. But the decision belongs with me, not with you.”

“I have heard Your Exalted Majesty’s words,” Banribeek said, speaking slowly, as if considering his own words, not just those of the King of Kings. “I remind Your Exalted Majesty that for our aid in the time of the death-cough, you agree to place the Middle Country under the protection of the Lords Seventeen.”

“You protect, but you shall not control,” Walliac said. “And do not press me too far. I welcome all that your Company has done to aid my throne, but you do not occupy my throne. I remind you, and your Lords Seventeen, that you are not the only Raw Men traders. The Drendj [French] and Inglidj [English] would welcome contact with us.”

“You have approached them?” Banribeek asked, with his voice containing a hint of iron for the first time.

“I have not. Not yet. But do not anger me.”

Banribeek bowed his head. “I must consider your words further, and discuss them with Batabya [Batavia / Jakarta]. May I have your permission to depart?’’

The King of Kings waved a hand in acknowledgement, and watched the Nedlandj Councillor walk away with his head bowed.

* * *

“We protected this heathen Emperor. Now let him see if his savage god can protect him from us.”
- Reputed words of Antonie Gerritsz Tasman, Governor-General of the (Dutch) East Indies, 1692, after hearing of the King of Kings’ bid to restore part of his sovereignty

* * *

May 1693
Fort Zeelandia [Geraldton, Western Australia]

“The great-sleep has been harsh in these lands, has it not?” said Cornelis Janssen, who rejoiced in the official rank of onderkoopman [Underbuyer] for the Company, but whose practical role was much more flexible.

Yutamay inclined his head slowly in clear agreement. That proved two things. Firstly, he had enough experience dealing with Dutch traders to know to reverse his usual gestures. Second, that Yutamay remembered that he was wearing his overly large headdress, and so needed to move carefully. Probably moving quickly while wearing such a bloated decoration was the kind of lesson which a man only needed to learn once.

“Workers are ever fewer.” Yutamay spoke the Atjuntja language fluently, which was fortunate; Janssen would never trouble himself to learn the local dialect.

“And tribute demands do not decline in proportion, if I understand matters correctly,” Janssen said.

“The King of Kings has his needs, and will meet them as he sees fit,” Yutamay said. His tone was neutral, and his words could be taken two ways, of course. A clever man, this one, and cautious besides. He dressed like an over-stuffed peacock, but then that was the common practice of aristocracy here.

Yutamay was a noble of the subject people called the Binyin, who lived in this part of Teegal. One of the two or three greatest magnates among the Binyin, though it was hard to judge exact wealth when every aristocrat here sought to outdo every other in terms of ostentation and conspicuous celebration. Yutamay earned his wealth trading in white ginger and indigo rather than the more usual sweet peppers, but that had not stopped him being an astute trader.

“His Majesty’s needs grow ever greater, yes.” Janssen looked the noble directly in the eyes. “But that is not what the Company would ask of you.”

“So you say,” Yutamay said. Again cautious, but that fitted with his reputation.

“So I do. The Company would buy from you, but not command you. We have no need to demand labourers to work in the White City. The profit we would make from selling dyes and spices is all that we ask for.”

Yutamay leaned forward. “Tell me more.”

* * *

First Harvest Season, 27th Year of King of Kings Walliac Tjaanuc [15 October 1694]
Milgawee (White City)
Tiayal (the Middle Country)

Ships crowded the inner harbour of Witte Stad. Dutch ships, only; a dozen ships of the line and many smaller vessels converted for war. The smaller Atjuntja boats, such as they were, had been captured and burned, or fled out to sea. The few Nangu ships, and one wayward storm-ravaged French vessel, had wisely retreated to the northern harbour, out of immediate danger.

Abraham van Riebeeck [Banribeek] stood at the end of the dock, a dozen musket-carrying soldiers surrounding him, and a boat behind him, tied to the dock. An Atjuntja herald stood in front of him, also with a dozen musket-wielding soldiers around him. Van Riebeeck had not bothered to ask the herald’s name, but he wondered idly whether the Atjuntja soldiers had any powder left for the muskets. They could not have much, if any.

Pushing such thoughts to one side, van Riebeeck adopted his most formal tone. “My demand, on behalf of the Lords Seventeen, is that the King of Kings must restore all privileges of the Company, as they were at the start of the twenty-fourth year of his reign, and then abdicate his throne. If he refuses in any particular, he and all of this city will feel our thunder.”

If the herald was cowed at all, he did an excellent job of concealing it. “The King of Kings is confirmed by the thirteen kings and appointed by the Lady. He will not yield to mortal weapons or the demands of distant rebels. On his behalf, I order you to recognise his sovereignty, or quit the Middle Country for all time.”

“I have heard your words. Our response will come... shortly.” Van Riebeeck climbed back down into the boat, and his soldiers followed. The Atjuntja made no effort to stop them, and they began to row back out to the Dutch flagship, the Ridderschap van Holland.

Soon enough, the boat reached the flagship. Van Riebeeck gave brief orders, and then signal flags ran up on the mast of the flagship. Soon after that, the dozen ships of the line were surrounded by rising smoke as the first broadside of cannon balls landed on the White City.

* * *

From: “The World Historical Dictionary”

Black City

A widespread although unofficial nickname given to Witte Stad under Dutch East India Company (VOC) rule. The name developed as a reference to the notorious sack of the city in 1694 by a VOC fleet under the command of Philips van Almonde.

Popular reports at the time by Nangu and French observers led to an enduring historical myth that Witte Stad had been struck by a massive naval bombardment that ruined the palace, statues, boulevards and temples which had been celebrated in travellers’ accounts for decades. In truth, the naval bombardment was largely symbolic. Only shore-facing statues and other nearby targets were seriously damaged by the bombardment, since the cannon of the era lacked the range or firepower to damage most of the city. Most of the destruction was performed by VOC soldiers using shore-based cannon, deliberate demolition using explosives, or other land-based action.

The obliteration of large parts of pre-colonial Witte Stad led to widespread condemnation across Europe and Aururia. VOC directors were rebuked privately by the Stadtholder for excessive and wanton destruction. The notoriety of the action led to Witte Stad being long popularly referred to as Zwarte Stad [Black City] or equivalent names in other European languages.

* * *

“Thank the Neverborn that Kirunmara is not built by the sea.”
- Regent Djirbal Yadji, 1695, after hearing of the sack of the White City

* * *

Sugar, Spice and All Things Rice: The Story of the East India Companies
By CW Penner (1996). Cumberland [Geelong, VIC], Durigal: Chelsea Todd.

While initially appearing in the Orient as traders, before long the Companies starting establishing permanent control of small regions, and in time became fully-fledged colonial powers.

The VOC was initially the most assertive of the Companies, actively seeking to create tributary states and protectorates, and in some cases assume direct rule. To this end, it intervened in local disputes, and often provoked them, to further its own influence. In Java, the VOC slowly expanded its direct-ruled territory, and extended protectorates over those regions outside of its formal control, such as taking advantage of a succession crisis in Banten in 1668-72 to take over some territory and make the rump sultanate a protectorate.

In Teegal, the VOC first invoked formal protection over the region in 1676 and then forcibly deposed the Emperor in 1694 when he tried to re-assert some independence. While one of the Emperor’s sons was placed on the throne as nominal Emperor, the protectorate continued, and in truth all power resided with the VOC. Actions such as these marked the transition from a multinational trading corporation to a territorial administrator and colonial ruler.

* * *

Kookaburra Day, Cycle of Clay, 5th Year of His Majesty Guwariyan the Second (2 December 1694)
Jugara [Victor Harbor, SA]
Kingdom of Tjibarr

Roemer Huygens, one of many Nedlandj who rejoiced in the title Councillor of the Indies, looked displeased. “Why have you called me here so urgently? What do our actions in restoring our protection in Witte Stad matter to you?”

Lopitja son of Wemba, called Lopitja the White by those who did not know him well, kept his expression neutral. It was an art at which he had much practice. Not for the first time, he concluded that these Nedlandj had no subtlety. Why open a conversation with such pointless aggression? Anger had its uses, in the right time and place, but there was never a place for letting anger control you.

“I called you to deliver, in friendship, some insights into the problems which your Company has caused itself with its deeds,” Lopitja said.

“We have fixed a problem, not created one,” the Councillor said.

Yes, lacking in subtlety indeed. Lopitja occasionally thought that the Drendj had some insight. At least they tried to understand the local people they dealt with, even if only to better manipulate them or convert them. Other Raw Men mostly lacked insight. “You have solved a problem in a way which breeds a dozen more.”

“The Atjuntja Emperor sought to break the agreements he had sworn with us. We reacted to preserve our agreements. I do not see how any of this matters to Tjibarr.”

“It matters greatly,” Lopitja said. He allowed a slight tone of anger to enter his voice. “We have agreements with your Company, too. How can we trust you now, after you sack cities for no good cause? What worth is your protection, if you will turn on the people you claim to protect?”

“Those barbarians sacrifice people to their god,” Huygens said.

“You knew about their beliefs when you offered your protection,” Lopitja said calmly. In truth, he found the Atjuntja human sacrifice as detestable as the Nedlandj did, but admitting that would only distract the Councillor from the important message. “You call them barbarians, but who other than barbarians would destroy such a grand city? Battles will be fought, but they should be fought between armies, not by bombarding cities.”

“You say we should have done nothing?” Huygens sounded pained. “Their Emperor had threatened to seek protection from England or France.”

Lopitja started to nod, then, remembering who he was dealing with, shook his head instead. “That was a negotiating tactic, not a genuine threat. Surely your Governor-General was astute enough in matters political to recognise it for what it was. Your Company’s hooks are dug deep into the Middle Country; they could never abandon you for another. All you needed to do was tug on one of those hooks, not drive a spear through their heart.”

“We did what we needed to regain control.”

“You used a cannon to kill a rat,” Lopitja said. “The rat is dead, but you ruined the house to kill it.”

“I still don’t see why–”

“How can you not see? All of the Great South Land will hear of this, as we have, and they will know it for the abomination that it is. Their trust will be hard to regain.”

Many of the peoples in Aururia would not have heard of the sack of the White City yet, particularly the backward peoples of the Sunrise Lands [east coast]. But they would hear. Lopitja and the Whites would make sure that the tale of the sack was told everywhere, through suitably exaggerated rumour. The more mistrust there was of the Nedlandj, the better.

Huygens said, “Are you suggesting that you, too, want to revoke agreements?”

“I suggest nothing,” Lopitja said. “I simply wanted to advise you of the blunder which was made, in the hope that you do not weaken your Company any further.” And with any luck, to spread some confusion and dissension within the Nedlandj Company’s ranks.

Lopitja shrugged, then continued, “But if you ask about trade, I can only speak for the Whites, of course. We do not plan to change any of our trade agreements with you. We value our bargains.” Including the bargains which the Whites had made with the Drendj and Inglidj, though they sold by far the greatest part of their goods to the Nedlandj. For the moment.

Huygens was silent for a long moment, considering. Even if lacking in subtlety, the Councillor appeared to possess the wisdom to recognise good sense when he heard it. Just so long as he did not have the insight to look deeper; there was more than one game being played here.

“Thank you for the advice, then. What made it so urgent, though?”

“Only that you might have had plans for other actions which would blacken your Company’s name even further,” Lopitja said. And so that the Nedlandj Company’s officers noticed the mistrust that would soon be spreading across Aururia, once rumours of the sack were given life. Let them see their influence weakening elsewhere, and with any good fortune, the Inglidj or the Drendj replacing Nedlandj influence amongst one or two of the Sunrise Landers. Let the Nedlandj believe ever more that they needed Tjibarri goodwill, to maintain their position in Aururia.

With the Nedlandj now in firm control of the Middle Country, they were one step closer to becoming the dominant Raw Men power across all Aururia. That could not be permitted. What the Whites needed, what Tjibarr needed, was the Raw Men to continue competing amongst themselves in Aururia, but with none of them ever winning a decisive victory in that struggle.

We do not need Jugara to be turned into another Black City.

* * *

“Never will I make a peace of trade [commercial pact] with the Nedlandj.”
- Dimbhula, King of the Skin [King of Hunter Valley], 1695

* * *

[1] The White City, along with many other Aururian cities, is a clean place by European standards. This is because sanitation is something which most European cities of this era did very poorly, despite being an ancient technology; the Minoans and Harappans had better sanitation in 2000 BC than most European cities had in AD 1650.

[2] Even with the much-reduced population from the endless plagues, labour draftees and slaves kept the core parts of the White City well-maintained during this era. The outlying regions – where Albert did not venture much – were less adequately looked after.

[3] The Atjuntja divide the calendar into six unequal seasons. First Harvest (mid-September to late October) is when they harvest early-flowering wattles. Second Harvest (late October to mid-December) is when they harvest late-flowering wattles. Summer runs from mid-December to the end of February. Third Harvest (March to late May) is when they harvest root crops such as yams. War Season (last few days of May until first week of August), or roughly southern hemisphere winter, is the down-time for crops and when most wars are conducted, together with labour drafts. Renewal (second week of August to mid-September) is when plants begin to regrow and replacement crops are planted if required (often not needed, for perennial crops).

[4] To the Atjuntja, the King of Kings is divine, and even to hear him speak is to commune with the divine. Only those who are “blessed” are permitted to hear the King of Kings’ voice. This status applies to most of the nobility as a matter of course, and to palace servants and bodyguards for whom it is impossible to prevent them occasionally hearing the King of Kings speak, but otherwise it is a rare honour.

[5] Great-sleep (influenza) is the last major virgin-field epidemic to strike the agricultural areas of Aururia during the Time of the Great Dying, appearing during the late 1680s and early 1690s. (Smallpox and typhoid both appeared earlier in the 1680s [6]). Influenza had struck more northerly regions earlier, but the rapid progress of symptoms, plus already lowered population from previous epidemics, meant that it did not spread south before this time. While the death rates are still high from this plague, the presence of a related disease (blue-sleep) means that the death toll has not been quite as severe as the toll that influenza caused in virgin-field epidemics elsewhere in the world. From here on, the Aururian population will still decline until approximately the 1740s, due to recurrent epidemics, wars and other consequences of European contact, but the population decline will be more gradual.

[6] While both smallpox and typhoid caused considerable death, neither were devastating epidemics on the scale of some previous diseases such as measles. For smallpox, this is because the first continent-wide epidemic was the less deadly Variola minor, while for typhoid, it caused epidemics in some regions but was less universal. The appearance of smallpox, typhoid and influenza means that all the major Old World epidemic diseases that are likely to appear in the Third World during this era have already done so. The remaining diseases that are unlikely to appear include bubonic plague, which historically did not appear in Aururia until the steamship era and which will be similarly constrained here, and cholera which historically did not spread out of the Indian subcontinent until the nineteenth century.

* * *

Thoughts?

P.S. And with this, I’m hoping to get the pace of Lands of Red and Gold moving faster. Act II has taken much longer to write than I had planned, but hopefully things will be quicker from here. Post #100 will be a general overview and bringing things up to date to 1700. From there, events will move on to the great crusades (1710s/1720s) and then the Nine Years’ War: Aururian Front (1740s/1750s) which will conclude Act II.

P.P.S. The Turtledoves are now open, and Lands of Red and Gold is a contender for the Continuing Ancient Timeline category. The poll is up here. Vote early, vote often (and even, if you feel like it, vote for LoRaG).

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #100: Eighty Years After

Reminder: Scarecrow has prepared a map of south-eastern Aururia at this point in the timeline, which is available here.

* * *

“To understand a state, you must first understand the true source of its government’s authority.”
- Pinjarra, Majura Namatji (1717)]

* * *

“No matter what the soil beneath his feet, no matter what the flag flying above his head, wherever a Congxie goes, he is still a member of the Congxie Nation.”
- Myumitsi Makan, better known in English as Solidarity Jenkins, addressing a Congxie labour rally in Irving [Columbus, Georgia]

* * *

In 1619, Europeans first made contact with Aururia when the ships of Frederick de Houtman encountered the Atjuntja. In 1699, as the world nears the eighteenth century, much has changed in the Third World.

The starkest change in Aururia has come about due to the grim parade of introduced diseases which struck the continent. The pox [syphilis] and the red breath [tuberculosis] appeared with de Houtman’s second expedition to Aururia in 1620. Swelling-fever [mumps] soon followed in 1626, and blister-rash [chickenpox] appeared in 1632. The most severe disease so far, light-fever [epidemic typhus], first appeared in 1643 and then spread over the continent over the next few years.

While the previous plagues had taken a severe toll, the worst period for foreign diseases was the era which the Aururians called the Time of the Great Dying, from approximately 1660 to the early 1690s. This was when the grimmest wave of new plagues struck, together with recurrent outbreaks of previously-seen epidemics.

The first disease to strike in this era was the worst; what the Aururians called the Great Death [measles] first appeared in about 1660, spread quickly, and claimed a quarter of the surviving population of the continent. Other epidemics followed. Bloat-throat [diphtheria] took a considerable toll in the early 1670s, while death-cough [pertussis / whooping cough] inflicted much deadly suffering as it spread more slowly through Aururia in the second half of the decade. The one stroke of (relative) good fortune which the Land of Gold had during the Time of the Great Dying was that the epidemic of scar-blister [smallpox] which appeared in the early 1680s was the milder version of the disease [alastrim, Variola minor]; while it claimed some lives, the alternative [smallpox, Variola major] would have been much worse.

Lightless-fever [typhoid] had been present in parts of Aururia since at least the early 1670s. Records survive of Tjibarri physicians who described localised outbreaks in the ports of Jugara [Victor Harbor] and Taparee [Port Pirie]. The physicians recognised the similarities to the earlier epidemic which they called light-fever; this new disease lacked the sensitive to light, but otherwise had similar symptoms of delirium and fever, and hence they named it lightless-fever [1].

Other outbreaks must have been present in other Aururian states around this time; lightless-fever does not spread as quickly as most of the previous plagues to strike the Third World, so it must have been present for some years. However, the lack of suitable medical personnel, plus confusion with light-fever epidemics, meant that most regions did not have clearly-documented outbreaks recorded until the 1680s.

The first major outbreak that was unambiguously lightless-fever appeared in Gurndjit [Portland, VIC] in 1679, but other outbreaks appeared in the Five Rivers, Seven Sisters [Eyre Peninsula], Cider Isle [Tasmania] and Sunrise Lands [east coast] too rapidly to have been directly connected to the first outbreak in Gurndjit. In fact, lightless-fever spread so far simply because the disruption of the Great Dying saw many people displaced from their homes and moving into new lands, which included many asymptomatic carriers of lightless-fever.

Lightless-fever took its toll on the population of Aururia, but on the whole much less than the plagues before it. The disease was spread by contamination of food and water from the faeces of an infected person, and spread fastest in crowded regions with poor sanitation. Aururian cities on the whole had good sanitation – particularly the Yadji cities – so lightless-fever did not spread as readily as in some other parts of the world. In the Five Rivers, the physicians had long prescribed a primitive form of oral rehydration therapy for any diarrhoeal diseases – in their case, using a mixture of salt and wattle-gum mixed with water – and this treatment worked reasonably well against lightless-fever.

After lightless-fever, the last great plague to strike Aururia was great-sleep [influenza]. Aururia had its own form of this plague, blue-sleep, which had struck the Old World about a decade after contact with the Third World. Great-sleep, however, was much slower in moving the other direction. This was because great-sleep was an extremely quick-spreading respiratory illness and in longer voyages usually spread through a ship’s crew and burned out before the ship reached its destination.

The first transmission of blue-sleep to Asia had come from a short Portuguese missionary-exploratory voyage from Timor to north-western Aururia and back again; quick enough for blue-sleep not to burn out before reaching Old World shores. European voyages to Aururia were generally aimed at the agricultural regions, which required much longer voyages, and so great-sleep inevitably burned out. The Portuguese explored northern Aururia occasionally over the next few decades, and established a few missions. Great-sleep in time came to these missions (the first in 1655), and occasionally to Nuttana outposts, but the lower population density in already plague-ravaged Aururia meant that these epidemics did not spread south to the main agricultural regions.

Improving sailing technology and the ever-increasing volume of ships meant that, in time, outbreaks of great-sleep lingered in some ships long enough to become established in Aururia’s agricultural regions. The first such outbreak was in Tiayal [Atjuntja realm] in 1686, where the disease then became endemic, since its rapid evolution each year was enough to prevent the Atjuntja from developing immunity. From there, great-sleep inevitably spread east; the speed of Nangu trade-ships in the strong winds of the Southern Ocean meant that in 1692, a Nangu vessel carried the disease to the Island, from whence it spread rapidly across the agricultural regions of south-eastern Aururia.

Being both fast-spreading and highly contagious, once great-sleep had reached the agricultural regions, it infected the large majority of the population and inflicted a substantial death toll: later estimates ranged between 6-10% of the population. Severe as this toll was, in comparative terms, the Aururian peoples had fared better than most peoples who were exposed to virgin-field epidemics in other parts of the world; the presence of the related blue-sleep meant that there was better resistance than in entirely unexposed peoples.

Although Aururians did not know it, great-sleep marked the last virgin-field Old World epidemic that would appear during this era.

* * *

Eighty years after, the cumulative effect of the plagues has been horrific. Aururia had a pre-European-contact agricultural population of about 10 million. The waves of epidemics, together with wars, famines and introduced pests such as rats, have reduced the agricultural population of the Land of Gold to about 4 million people. Worse, the population is still declining, due to recurrent epidemics striking those who are too young to have immunity from previous outbreaks, or who were otherwise missed during the first waves of these new diseases. There has been some population recovery in between waves of epidemics, but the overall trend in population growth remains negative, and will remain so for some decades until enough of the population develops natural resistance to the imported plagues [2].

The population decline has been severe across all of the 1619-vintage agricultural regions. The hardest-hit areas include Tiayal, where the epidemics were exacerbated by population concentrations in the White City, a road network which allowed wide dispersal of the diseases, and regular post-epidemic revolts which caused further death. The Cider Isle [Tasmania] suffered badly too, with most of the population crowded into the agricultural regions of the northern and eastern coast, which meant epidemics spread rapidly.

Of the existing agricultural regions, the Five Rivers states (Tjibarr, Gutjanal, Yigutji) fared best. Their medicine was amongst the most advanced in the world, allowing effective imposition of quarantine that reduced the spread of some diseases, and a couple of their treatments (most notably oral rehydration therapy) reduced the mortality rates for some diseases. The advantages of geography and relative political stability also meant that the Five Rivers heartland has been relatively unaffected by destructive warfare, with the notable exception of Prince Rupert’s destructive raids into Gutjanal during the 1640s.

One significant exception existed to the demographic disasters of seventeenth-century Aururia. One society which not only maintained, but grew in population over this period: the Nuttana.

The Nuttana’s survival was in part because very few epidemics were genuinely virgin-soil for them. Since their sailors were often exposed to those diseases while visiting overseas, and they had some foreign workers who were already either immune or resistant to the new plagues, the Nuttana had people around to provide care to the sick during the critical days, which saved many lives. So, too, to the Nuttana’s effective imposition of quarantine, which limited the progress of some (though certainly not all) epidemics.

The greatest factor in Nuttana population growth, however, was simply that the Nuttana continued to recruit more people to work for them, whether willingly or unwillingly. The founding Nuttana had used Kiyungu as farmers, and many more Kiyungu were recruited over the course of the seventeenth century. Some further Nangu émigrés from the Island also boosted the Nuttana’s numbers. So too did Papuans as slaves, guest workers or permanent migrants, a great many Māori slaves, and smaller numbers of slaves and recruits who were Flesh-Easters [Solomon Islanders], or from Kanakee [New Caledonia] or further-afield Pacific islands. The Nuttana included a smattering of Bugis recruits, and even had the occasional European or Bengali joining them.

Apart from the Nuttana, the massive population decline and associated warfare severely weakened the social fabric of most Aururian societies. Some societies were annihilated completely, either completely destroyed by plagues or with a few traumatised survivors absorbed into other societies. This fate befell several smaller eastern coast societies and various hunter-gatherer peoples; they simply ceased to exist as distinct groups, as their few surviving inhabitants sought refuge amongst their neighbours, or occasionally were simply conquered by them.

For instance, the English established a trading outpost at Port Percy [Sydney, NSW] in 1646. Over the early 1650s, English agents ventured inland, seeking out potential trading partners and allies. In the region they called the Blue Highlands [3] to the southwest of Port Percy, they found three farming peoples living there: the Naimurla, the Brataumunga, and Daroogatta. These peoples grew small numbers of sweet peppers, but the ruggedness of the terrain and better sources elsewhere meant that the English did not bother to maintain trade contact. Four decades and several plagues later, returning English agents found only the Brataumunga; the other two peoples had vanished or been absorbed.

In some cases, the displaced peoples fled into regions where there was still relative stability. Take the ancient Kingdom of the Skin [Hunter Valley]. Apathy about outside matters lent the Kingdom stability; the European companies found it difficult to interfere in the internal politics of a state which simply granted equal trade to all visitors and refused any other form of contact.

So the Kingdom remained relatively stable in its own borders, but had to manage the ever-growing numbers of migrants into their lands as first light-fever and then the Time of the Great Dying displaced so many people. Despite their traditional scornfulness of outsiders, particularly amongst the priestly caste, the severe shortage of labour meant that the Patjimunra, the People of the Skin, found a place for the new migrants at the bottom of their social hierarchy.

So, in a smaller way, did the Dutch colony of Hammer Bay [Jervis Bay]. The colony was initially established as a resupply station in 1649. The VOC soon became more heavily involved because they backed their local allies, the Yerremadra, to conquer their neighbours in what came to be called the Tea-Tree War. When the VOC developed an interest in exporting what they called “lemon tea”, and which was known in English as jeeree, Hammer Bay was selected as the principal area of cultivation. The VOC invested considerable effort in keeping the region secure and stable during the Proxy Wars and Anglo-Dutch Wars. This stability was also attractive to displaced peoples who would accept the indignity of working as a Nedlandj jeeree farmer in exchange for safety from other displaced raiders, privations, or uncertain migration into less welcoming lands.

Elsewhere in the Sunrise Lands, the English took advantage of the disruptions to use their trading post at Port Percy as a base for the colonisation of the surrounding plains [Cumberland Plains / Sydney basin]. The English aim was to use their new lands for the cultivation of the same kinds of spices that were grown slightly further north in the Kingdom of the Skin. This effort largely failed, since much of the soil was not suitable, and the climate around Port Percy was just far enough south to be vulnerable to occasional frosts, which killed many of the young spice trees (except sweet peppers). Despite this, the English have retained control of their Port Percy colony, and keep actively searching for other ways to turn a profit from the land.

The disruptions also gave the Compagnie d’Orient [French East India Company] their first opportunity to establish their influence on the Aururian mainland. The homeland of the Jerrewa people [Batemans Bay NSW and environs] was in the more southerly part of the Sunrise Lands; too cold to grow the most attractive eastern spices. The climate was still suitable for jeeree and sweet peppers, but those spices could be grown equally easy in many other places. So neither the Dutch nor English had shown more than a cursory interest in the region.

With the spread of the plagues through the Sunrise Lands, by the 1680s the much-reduced Jerrewa were fighting amongst themselves and suffering from migrations by other displaced peoples from further south fleeing the establishment of Māori colonies at Mahratta [Mallacoota, VIC] and Maliwa [Eden, NSW]. The CDO used the disruption to establish a factory [trading post] there, which they called Yerowa [Batemans Bay] in a mispronunciation of the name of the local people. Thus far the trading outpost has not returned any significant profit for the CDO, but French prospectors venturing into the surrounding countryside have become the first Europeans to see the very large flightless birds which the Jerrewa call muwa.

Even the larger agricultural societies were not immune to disruption. The population collapse meant that frontier and marginal agricultural lands were largely abandoned by farmers, as the remaining agriculturalists concentrated on the more productive lands. The empty lands were attractive to hunter-gatherers who were themselves often displaced, and who saw the now-vacant lands with a boom in animal life as nature reclaimed them. Hunter-gatherers moved into the frontier areas of Tjibarr, Yigutji, the Seven Sisters [Eyre Peninsula] and Tiayal. While none of these societies stopped claiming this territory, in practice their states were now shrinking.

* * *

When Europeans first reached Tiayal, the Middle Country, they found the Atjuntja ruling the second-largest empire in Aururia. Inventors of ironworking, master road builders, rich in gold and sandalwood, in Tiayal the King of Kings had absolute power of life and death over all his subjects.

Eighty years after, Tiayal has been broken, the King of Kings reduced to a puppet. A series of plague-inspired revolts and the breakdown of the old economic system led to increasing Dutch influence over Middle Country, culminating in the sack of the White City in 1694 and the effective puppetisation of the Atjuntja monarchy.

The sack and subsequent Dutch suppression of the Atjuntja cult of human sacrifice means that both the King of Kings and his royal governors have lost any semblance of authority. The Middle Country still has a large class of merchant-aristocrats, many native Atjuntja, some from the semi-assimilated subject peoples. These aristocrats stepped into the vacuum of power left after the sack, and started exercising local authority. Many of these aristocrats had been Dutch-backed rebels in the days before the sack; others simply took advantage of the opportunity.

For their part, the Dutch exercise effective rule over the White City, the gold mines, and a few key trading hubs. The rest of the Middle Country is effectively ruled by the aristocrats. The Dutch tolerate this, because even if they could break all the aristocrats successfully – an uncertain proposition – it would be more expensive than it is worth. Provided that the aristocrats sell their cash crops – spices and dyes – to the VOC and do not openly revolt, the VOC governors are minded to leave well enough alone.

* * *

At the time of European contact, the greatest empire on the continent was the one which called itself the Regency of the Neverborn, after their prime deity, or sometimes Durigal, the Land of the Five Directions, but which its neighbours named after their ruling family: the Yadji. This was an autocratic and theocratic state which regimented and planned most aspects of its citizens’ life via its priestly hierarchy. Pioneers of aquaculture and hydraulic engineering, they made effective use of the arable land in Durigal; a quarter of Aururia’s farmers lived and died under the Regents.

Eighty years after, the Yadji state still endures, but it is beleaguered, much-diminished, and surrounded by enemies. The plagues have cost them much, as did the civil war which they called the Year of the Twisted Serpent [1629-1638] and would-be conquistador raid of Pieter Nuyts. Highlander and Pakanga raids have inflicted considerable damage, as has some subject peoples’ rebellions.

Yet the biggest threat has been its northern rivals, the kingdoms of the Five Rivers, particularly the largest state, Tjibarr. The Regency has fought many wars with the Five Rivers’ kingdoms over the centuries, but had always been fortunate that those kingdoms fought almost as much amongst themselves. Since the 1640s that has no longer been the case; fear of the Yadji and their foreign backers, plus access to imported European weapons, allowed Tjibarr to establish a triple alliance with Gutjanal and Yigutji. This alliance has creaked occasionally, but so far has not broken, to the great detriment of the Regency.

The war which the Yadji called Bidwadjari’s War (1645-1650) saw them gain territory off both Tjibarr and Gutjanal. Unfortunately, that marked the last significant territorial gains for the Yadji during the seventeenth century. Pakanga and highlander raids weakened the authority of the Regents, and matters worsened when the subject Kurnawal in the east launched a major rebellion in 1671. The Five Rivers states declared war again in 1673, and the resulting War of Night and Day (1673-4) saw the Regency lose its gains from Bidwadjari’s War, and worse, forced to unofficially recognise the independence of a new Kurnawal state in the east.

Since the disasters of the 1670s, the Regency has tried to rebuild its much-damaged social and political fabric, with some success, and to restore its external prestige, with little success. Internally, the long-lived Regent Gunya Yadji (reigned 1638-1683) and then his son Djirbal Yadji (reigned 1683 to the present day) have implemented a variety of administrative reforms, most notably a massive restructure of the priest-governor hierarchy, and an expansion of their road network and post system using imported horses to facilitate transport. The Church of England has been permitted a small presence in the Yadji capital Kirunmara [Terang, VIC], including religious advisers to the royal family, but the ban on proselytisation remains.

The Pakanga raids subsided during the 1680s, which the Regents proclaimed a sign of their power but which in truth was due to changing internal circumstances in Aotearoa cutting off the supply of fresh Pakanga. Other external threats remained. Twice the Regency has tried to reconquer the Kurnawal, but on both occasions, when events moved past a border war, the Five Rivers intervened, and the death toll forced the Regency to abandon the efforts at reconquest.

The Kurnawal have established their independent homeland, which they call Tiyanjara, and for all that the Regents refuse to admit it, in fact this is a sovereign state. Tiyanjara has the unofficial backing of the Five Rivers states, who like the leverage which an independent Kurnawal state brings them. The capital is at Gwandalan [Bairnsdale, VIC], a port that has been built on one of the several interlinked lakes and rivers on the coast [Gippsland Lakes]. The Kurnawal had long grown jeeree for their own consumption, and have now turned to extensive cultivation of that crop along those lakes and rivers, where bulk production can be conveniently exported. They sell the jeeree to Europeans, mostly Dutch and sometimes French, in exchange for weapons.

For the Yadji, with external prestige restricted, they have done their best to maintain stability in their remaining territories. The state-directed economy has allowed them to adopt some new crops and European technology on a large scale, although the best efforts of the Regents have still failed to produce significant supplies of home-produced gunpowder, largely due to difficulties with effective saltpetre production. With the still-declining population, the Regency relies ever more on its English allies. For the English, in turn, their alliance with the Yadji is central to their position in Aururia. The Regency’s gold and other resources are valuable, and it is also the best Aururian market for English-shipped textiles, both woollen broadcloth made in England and cotton textiles from India.

* * *

The Cider Isle looked mostly inward for centuries before Europeans came. Divided into proud warrior Tjunini, crafty Kurnawal and hunter-gardener Palawa, the peoples of the Cider Isle fought each other and did not trouble themselves too much with the world beyond their island. They welcomed trade, exporting tin, bronze and gold, together with their famous gum cider, but that trade was largely conducted by foreigners, the Nangu and Māori.

Eighty years after, the Cider Isle is broken, at near-ruin. Proportionately, the plagues have taken the heaviest toll here of any of the farming peoples of Aururia. Warfare continued amongst the three peoples even in the midst of the time of the Great Dying. The Cider Isle was the greatest Aururian target for Pakanga raids, and those came close to overwhelming the native peoples.

The Cider Isle still remains under the rule of the local powers, but ever more precariously. Both Tjunini and Kurnawal were forced to grant land to some Pakanga in exchange for fending off other raiders, but now there are established Māori on the Cider Isle; while they acknowledge the rule of the native kings for now, Māori in other lands have been known to overthrow their rulers if they deem those rulers too weak. The Tjunini are effective VOC clients, albeit with some recent murmuring due to the sack of the White City, while the Kurnawal are mostly backed by the EIC, and partly by the CDO.

* * *

For long before European contact, the Sunrise Lands were divided by geography into many smaller polities; unification was much more difficult with the rugged terrain and smaller population base. Only two states arose on the eastern coast, the head-hunting Bungudjimay created the kingdom of Daluming, while the insular Patjimunra created the Kingdom of the Skin. The laidback Kiyungu further north had a common cultural area and a loose confederation, but did not form a full state. Each of these peoples, and several less numerous ones, cultivated the spices which were about the only eastern products that interested more westerly peoples.

Eighty years after, the spices of the Sunrise Lands are desired by powers based far beyond Aururia, and the eastern coast is now the main ongoing battleground. Throughout much of the continent, the Dutch and English have tacitly recognised spheres of influence where each would find it difficult to displace the other. The Sunrise Lands, with their smaller and more fragmented population, and highly desirable spices, are another matter; conflict between European powers – and others – is ongoing.

Daluming was the most populous state on the eastern coast, but was also a prime target for European invasion. The toll from the plagues was only worsened when the EIC launched an expedition in 1648 with two-fold purpose: to avenge the earlier death of Englishmen and to force open access to the spice markets. This expedition was co-opted by the Prophet, who precipitated a three-way civil war within Daluming. This ended with the majority of Daluming back under the rule of an English-backed monarch, but with a breakaway kingdom at Ngutti [Yamba] that was Nuttana-supported. The Dutch attempted invasions of Daluming during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, often using Pakanga mercenaries, but never successfully dislodged the EIC. In 1699 Daluming, much reduced in population, remains under English influence, and is subject to ever-increasing demand to produce more spices with fewer workers.

The Kiyungu were the most numerous people in the Sunrise Lands, if never united, and were expanding northward themselves during the first few decades of the seventeenth century, thanks to the introduction of new tropical crops. The plagues curtailed the direct expansion, but many more Kiyungu have continued to migrate north nonetheless. At first these Kiyungu came as farm workers for the Nangu who had established their own outpost in the far north, but in time, the migrant Kiyungu and Nangu merged to create a new people, the trading syndicate called the Nuttana. A steady stream of Kiyungu have continued to head northward to join the Nuttana.

Warfare took longer to touch the Kiyungu; their location at the fringe of Aururian agriculture gave them some protection from raiders both over land and over sea. So too did the Nuttana supply of firearms (mostly Japanese-made) and gunpowder (mostly of Indian origin). While there were some occasional Daluming raids and pressure from displaced peoples, the Kiyungu were largely safe from foreign intervention until Pakanga raids stepped up during the late 1660s. The main Pakanga raids had largely subsided by the mid-1680s, but peace did not remain for long, since the horse-riding Butjupa and Yalatji began to raid from across the western mountains.

The single greatest threat to Kiyungu sovereignty came in 1692. The Compagnie d’Orient had repeatedly tried to gain preferential access to the eastern coast spices, without much success. The CDO’s only exclusive trading port on mainland Aururia, Yerowa, was too far south to grow the most desired spices. French traders were able to buy some spices from the Kingdom of the Skin, but there they were merely one trading company among many.

Despairing of gaining any trade monopolies via diplomacy, the CDO resorted to force. They did not dare to strike directly at the Nuttana, since that would bring swift Dutch and English intervention. Instead, the French decided to attack the Kiyungu and try to force open their markets for spices. Using a large mercenary force, mostly Pakanga, the French attacked the Kiyungu city-states around Quanda Bay [Moreton Bay]. The attack was bloody, but eventually repulsed; the Kiyungu defeated the mercenaries while the Nuttana burned the supply ships. All the CDO accomplished for their efforts was to push the Kiyungu further into the Nuttana orbit, and allow the Nuttana more opportunity to sell firearms to the Kiyungu.

The Kingdom of the Skin, too, suffered a European-inspired Pakanga assault. The Kingdom had been mostly stable during the long eight decades after European contact, principally because they refused to make any exclusive trade pacts. Change came when word spread of the Dutch sack of the White City. Dimbhula, King of the Skin, then swore that he would never make a commercial pact with the Dutch. This proclamation was largely for his internal audience – as with all such Patjimunra matters – to assure them that he would not invite destruction at Skinless hands.

However, the VOC took Dimbhula’s proclamation as a sign that they had little further to lose. So they bribed a group of Māori to attempt a conquest of the Kingdom of the Skin. The VOC never openly admitted involvement, hoping that if the invasion succeeded, then they could establish a monopoly on Patjimunra trade in the aftermath. The conquest failed, largely because of the advantages of geography. The Māori raiders were not familiar with the treacherous sandbar that blocked the mouth of the main river in the Patjimunra lands [Hunter River], and several of their ships were trapped on that sandbar. The remaining ships tried to launch an invasion by using a nearby sea-connected lake [Lake Macquarie], but they had lost the element of surprise. The Māori overland assault failed, and so the Kingdom of the Skin remained sovereign eighty years after.

* * *

At the time of European contact, the Neeburra [Darling Downs] was a backwater by Aururian standards. With relatively low rainfall and north enough to be marginal for Aururian agriculture, its population density was always low; unlike most farming peoples, the Butjupa and Yalatji still hunted game as a significant part of their diet. Like the Kiyungu to their east, the Butjupa and Yalatji had also started migrating north with the introduction of new tropical-suited crops.

Eighty years after, Butjupa and Yalatji society has been transformed almost beyond recognition. The plagues have not struck them quite as badly as most, due to the lower population density. The Neeburrans have taken up European domestic animals with great enthusiasm; horses let them hunt across their rangelands for kangaroos, while herding cattle required less labour than farming noroons [emus]. There are fewer Neeburrans left, but they can now move around much more rapidly; while they have not given up agriculture completely, they are mobile much of the year as they move their cattle from one pasture to another. They also fight with each other; the Butjupa and Yalatji are adherents of the Tjarrling sect, related to Plirism, and the disruption of the plagues has produced an endless series of visionaries who seek to persuade the Neeburrans to follow them.

The northward expansion meant that in 1626, the Neeburrans discovered the gemfields around Namala [Emerald, QLD]: an abundant source of rubies, sapphires and emeralds. These allowed extremely profitable trade, at first with the Five Rivers to the south, but in time with Europeans to the north. For the Dutch and English had both spurned the northern Aururian coast as holding nothing of interest, but the Portuguese had set up a series of missions there. In time, Portuguese explorers started venturing into the Aururian interior, on horseback and then on camelback. They reached Namala in 1670. Here, the Butjupa and Yalatji were not all interested in Catholic missionary efforts, but they were keenly interested in European goods, particularly firearms. A small but extremely profitable trade has developed, with occasional Portuguese camel caravans travelling between Namala and their northern port of Rramaji [Karumba, QLD]. Firearms are now commonplace in Neeburran society. The Butjupa and Yalatji often use those weapons on each other – as a kind of punctuation in their religious arguments – but they sometimes raid their neighbours, too.

* * *

At the time of European contact, the northeastern coast of Aururia was inhabited only by hunter-gatherers, while the forefathers and foremothers of the Nuttana still lived amongst the Nangu of the Island and the Kiyungu of the Coral Coast.

Eighty years after, the Nuttana have emerged in the region which they call the Tohu Coast [Sugar Coast]. In a sense they are a product of European contact; awareness of European existence was what inspired the first Nangu explorers to venture out into the broader world. The Nuttana have developed their own form of shipbuilding and navigational technology – based around large catamarans rather than single-hulled vessels – which gives them ships capable of sailing around the world. And they have done this; first circumnavigating the southern hemisphere in 1683, and then venturing into the Atlantic during the 1690s. The Nuttana have visited North America and Europe, in search of prospective trading partners, although thus far they have had only limited success. A more profitable though still-infrequent Nuttana voyage is to collect kunduri or spices from southern Aururia and then sail directly around the Southern Ocean until they arrive in Cape Town, and trade there with the Dutch.

The Nuttana trade in a great variety of commodities – spices, kunduri, jeeree, dyes, slaves, textiles, and firearms, among others – but the foundation of their wealth was sugar. Slave-grown sugar, produced in their new tropical homeland. On a continent where the best natural sweetener was wattle-gum, sugar was highly desirable, and allowed them to purchase many other Aururian (and Aotearoan) commodities that were so desired in the wider world.

The Nuttana have a considerable trade network of their own, throughout Aururia, Aotearoa, New Guinea, Oceania, India, Japan, and China. The main reason why they have thrived, however, is their role as intermediaries in trading with European companies. The Nuttana sell many spices, kunduri and jeeree to the Dutch in Batavia (and occasionally the Cape), and considerable quantities to the English in Indian trading ports. This is valuable from the European perspective because it saves sending as many ships through the longer voyages to Aururia (particularly eastern Aururia), and gives them indirect commercial access to some markets which are otherwise closed to them. This also means that the Nuttana are valued enough trading partners that both the English and Dutch prefer leaving them independent than attempting to conquer them, since any failure would certainly drive the Nuttana into the hands of their rival. Similarly, the English and Dutch both have an interest in preventing any other European powers from conquering the Nuttana; this has helped dissuade the French and Portuguese from any thoughts of direct conquest.

While the Nuttana do not have a colonial empire in the same sense as the European companies, they do have growing informal influence over a wider area. In the Sunrise Lands Ngutti [Yamba] is a Nuttana protectorate in all but name, and the Kiyungu are likewise part of their sphere of influence. The Nuttana have a lesser degree of influence over several Aotearoan states, and trading posts further afield, such as Hanuabada [Port Moresby], Tulagi [in Solomon Islands], and Chandernagore [Chandannagar, India]. The Nuttana have also established Plirite missions in some areas that they do not find it worthwhile to trade with, such as the Tanimbar Islands.

* * *

For centuries before Europeans arrived, the Five Rivers was the economic heart of Aururia, containing a quarter of the continent’s agricultural population and rather more of its economic activity. It was the exclusive producer of the drug kunduri, home to the best metalworkers on the continent, and with a good natural transportation network which facilitated internal trade. The three states of the Five Rivers exported a considerable volume of commodities across the continent; kunduri was the biggest export, but they also sold perfumes, incense, resins, dyes, jewellery, and fine metalworks.

Eighty years after, the Five Rivers is still the economic heart of Aururia, but a heart which beats much more slowly. Many of their old export markets have been shattered by the plagues and warfare, to say nothing of the heavy toll amongst the Five Rivers peoples themselves. At first the Five Rivers plutocrats reoriented much of their remaining agricultural production into kunduri, which was valued throughout most of the world. However, in the early 1660s the Dutch succeeded in smuggling kunduri seedlings out of Tjibarr, and began kunduri production at the Cape. It took the Dutch (and eventually others) several years to become familiar with the best methods of cultivating kunduri, and longer to expand their production, but by eighty years after, the Five Rivers now faced considerable competition in the kunduri export business.

Five Rivers aristocrats, particularly those of Tjibarr, had long experience in diversifying crop production, and did their best to seek out alternative crops to compensate for the declining kunduri revenues. One crop they turned to was jeeree. While jeeree was grown elsewhere in Aururia, European demand was booming; so too, in a smaller way, was Asian demand. Other new crops were not native to Aururia; the Five Rivers had already had considerable success importing European domesticated animals (horses, cattle, donkeys), and naturally experimented with European crops. Hemp grew well in the Five Rivers – but then, it grows well over much of the world – and became a good general-purpose plant fibre for textiles and cordage. Some Five Rivers merchants have also arranged the importation of cotton and silkworms, although the cultivation of both of these has proven troublesome so far.

In foreign and economic policy – the two often run together, in the Five Rivers – Tjibarr is considered by Europeans to be a Dutch client state. In practice, Tjibarr has fought wars when it suits their purposes, not the Dutch. They do sell the majority of their commodities to the Dutch, but they have also found endless excuses to sell smaller quantities to the Nuttana, English, French and occasionally Swedes and Danes. The inland Five Rivers kingdoms – Yigutji and Gutjanal – do not have any formal trade or political relationships with European powers. However, several Tjibarri factions make pacts to onsell Gutjanal or Yitgutji products to European powers – for a modest cut of the profits – and these deals can be with any European power who visits. Indeed, often those deals are the excuses which Tjibarri factions offer for selling to Europeans other than the Dutch.

* * *

In 1619, Europeans had only the vaguest notion that the continent of Aururia existed, and no knowledge at all of the agricultural peoples in the southern half of the continent. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) – itself only seventeen years old – had landed occasional ships on some parts of the continent, but nothing more. The English East India Company (EIC) – barely older than their Dutch rival – knew nothing of consequence. The Portuguese, who had been present in the East Indies for much longer, also had no meaningful knowledge of Aururia.

Eighty years later, Aururia has become one of the prime battlegrounds in the rivalry between the world’s first multinational corporations. The VOC and EIC have been involved most heavily in the Land of Gold, sometimes tacitly agreeing to divide the continent into spheres of influence, while at other times engaging in warfare (declared or undeclared) over the Third World. The Compagnie d’Orient (CDO) [French East India Company] has grown into their strongest commercial rival in the agricultural areas of Aururia, while the Portuguese have established some influence over the northern fringe of the continent. The Swedish and Danish trading companies have no exclusive trading posts anywhere on the continent, but conduct occasional trade with some of the peoples, particularly Tjibarr and the Kingdom of the Skin.

The history of Anglo-Dutch relations in Aururia can be divided into tacit toleration (1635-1642), undeclared war (the Proxy Wars, 1642-1659), open warfare (the Anglo-Dutch Wars, 1660-1682), and limited competition (1683-onward). By the end of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the EIC and VOC had informally recognised that many parts of the continent were part of each other’s sphere of influence. While either the VOC or EIC would take advantage of a major opportunity which arose anywhere, if it meant displacing their rival, each was no longer actively seeking to undermine the other’s influence in those regions.

Thus, the Dutch were recognised as having Tiayal, the Seven Sisters and Tjibarr in their sphere of influence, while the English had Durigal. The Island was also considered under Dutch influence, although no formal protectorate had been declared. The Dutch restraint was purely to avoid needlessly angering the Mutjing of the Seven Sisters, who retained a strong affinity for their co-religionists on the Island, and had set one of their conditions of becoming a protectorate that the VOC would take no offensive action against the Island.

Outside of these recognised spheres of influence, the VOC and EIC – and, to a lesser degree, the CDO – continued to compete for control of regions, sometimes through negotiation with the local peoples, and sometimes through small-scale warfare. The Cider Isle was one zone of competition, but the main region was the Sunrise Lands.

Eighty years after, the European companies had done their best to obtain exclusive trade access and strong influence over all of the agricultural peoples of the continent, with considerable but not complete success. Several major societies still retained meaningful sovereignty: the Five Rivers states, Durigal, the Kingdom of the Skin, and the Nuttana and their allies. Others were under either effective European control or very heavily influenced: Tiayal, Daluming, the Seven Sisters, and the Tjunini and Kurnawal of the Cider Isle. Interior peoples, such as the highlanders and the Butjupa and Yalatji, retained their sovereignty simply because they were out of reach of the European powers. So did some of the coastal peoples in the southern Sunrise Lands, simply because they had none of the spices which attracted European interest.

Contact with Aururia had other effects on the operations of these multinational corporations, less obvious than the ongoing rivalry over particular markets, but more meaningful in the longer term. When the companies were first formed, particularly the VOC, they developed business models which relied on transporting high-value, low-volume goods; spices were the prime example. The immense value and low bulk of spices allowed the European trading companies to receive massive profit margins while using only a relatively small number of ships. This also meant that their relationship with the local peoples could often be one of building factories (trading posts) primarily, rather than seeking outright conquest. While certainly not averse to conquest if a profitable opportunity arose, their main focus was on profitable trading outposts and securing exclusive access to markets.

The resources of Aururia challenged the VOC’s business model. Prior to Aururian contact, “true” peppers made up more than half of the spice trade by volume (though not always by value). The VOC practice had been to ship just enough peppers to keep the price sufficiently low that competitors did not find it worthwhile to break into that trade, without encouraging over-production and depressing prices further. Aururian sweet peppers broke this policy completely; they became more desirable than true peppers in Europe, and were even worthwhile shipping into Asia, unlike most other spices. Sweet peppers were so widely available in Aururia and Aotearoa that it was impossible to monopolise their sale. In turn, this meant that the only way to make decent profits from them was on volume, and this required increased shipping both for the intra-Asian trade and back to Europe.

Shipment of other Aururian commodities, too, encouraged a shift in business practices. Jeeree was not a replacement for traditional tea – in fact, the two products were often complementary – but it also had growing desirability in both Asia and Europe. Kunduri was initially exported as a high-profit, low-volume commodity, but increasing supply and the impossibility of preventing English access meant that it moved to becoming more of a bulk commodity. Many of the commodities shipped into Aururia were also bulk commodities, such as firearms, textiles of silk, cotton or wool (the first two mostly from India), raw cotton or wool, and (most horrifically) slaves.

European tastes were also changing. Spices (both traditional and new) were still desired, but other commodities were also being sought after: sugar, tea, coffee, finished silk and cotton textiles, raw cotton, and indigo dye. The EIC was the first of the trading companies to diversify into these commodities, and the VOC, somewhat reluctantly, followed [4].

Accommodating such a change in tastes required increased shipping, both in number and tonnage. In turn this required a substantial influx of capital. Each of the European trading companies looked for appropriate sources of capital. For the VOC, they used the vast gold reserves of Aururia, principally from Tiayal, with lesser amounts from the Cider Isle [5]. Any threat to this supply of bullion was deemed a mortal threat to the success of the VOC, which was why they over-reacted and sacked the White City. The EIC also relied on bullion from Aururia, in their case gold from Durigal and the Cider Isle. The Portuguese did not have any access to gold, and their network of missions across northern Aururia returned negligible wealth in themselves. However, the gems they traded in the interior paid for everything else.

The Swedes and Danes found the capital for expansion from royal revenues. In the aftermath of the Twenty Years’ War [*Thirty Years’ War] both the Swedish and Danish crowns had gained considerable new lands within the Holy Roman Empire, and control of several river mouths which won them considerable income from tolls. Much of these new royal revenues went into investment into each country’s trading companies.

The CDO obtained a small amount of gold from Aururia, thanks to some of its commerce with the Kurnawal on the Cider Isle. More came from Aotearoa, where the CDO’s Waitaha allies in Otago [southern South Island] discovered alluvial gold in 1688, and with some French input, set about exploiting it.

Unlike its competitors, the CDO also experimented with cultivating the rarer Aururian spices (verbenas) in other French colonies, hoping to establish production in regions which were both more secure and closer to Europe. These experiments were not notably successful; the spices proved harder to cultivate than the French had expected.

However, a former CDO employee noted the experiments, and made some rather more accurate inferences of his own. When he returned home to Brittany in 1695, he planted some sweet pepper seeds which he had obtained on his voyages. This proved to be a spectacular triumph: the common sweet peppers grew very well and very quickly [6]. The CDO was far from pleased to have sweet peppers growing outside of its jurisdiction, but by then it was too late. Breton sweet peppers were established as a new source of supply. Having production within Europe also meant that farmers could harvest both the pepper berries and the pepper leaves. The CDO and other companies had not bothered to ship the pepper-leaves from the Third World, using only the much stronger and more compact berries. With the sweet pepper trees within Europe, however, harvesting the pepper-leaves was viable, and this added even further to the supply.

Eighty years after, in 1699, the VOC has grown into the largest, richest multinational corporation in the world. It owns over 350 merchant vessels and 90 warships, employs over 100,000 workers, and maintains a private army of 20,000 soldiers and nearly 10,000 auxiliaries. The other trading corporations are neither as wealthy nor as large, but still extremely profitable, particularly the EIC.

All of the trading companies – though not the Portuguese – are by now diversifying into higher-volume, lower-margin commodities. This is accompanied by a massive growth in investment, both in seeking to store and ship the new commodities, and in some cases ensure production (particularly sugar, slaves [7] and jeeree). In turn, this also means that the companies are now seeking to ensure stability and firm control over their markets. They are moving from a system of trading outposts and warehouses to a preferred system of direct control or extremely strong influence over the local peoples.

In this push for control, the VOC has taken the lead, both in Aururia and in the East Indies, while the EIC is not far behind. In their planning, the trading companies look to each other as the rivals that they need to defeat to gain not just trade access, but control over the vital regions of Aururia.

It is unfortunate, perhaps, that the biggest threat to the Europeans’ position in Aururia will come from a direction that none of them expect.

* * *

Many days of questions and note-taking have passed since Carl Ashkettle first met the man who calls himself Clements. Many days of more facts and details – or perhaps, of creations by the world’s most accomplished imaginer – since Ashkettle first stood atop Gerang’s Falls and heard Clements proclaim a life that had reached the triple century, and a few famed men he had met.

Ashkettle has exercised patience in that questioning. In so far as he can, he has kept the tale in broadly chronological sequence. If he jumps around too much, the already-difficult-to-manage process will become impossible. So while he has found it frustrating, he has never brought up the most intriguing of those famed men, until they reach that event in its proper order.

Ashkettle says, “Today, let us talk about your time with the Hunter. As I recall, on our first meeting you said that you rode with him on the great crusades.”

Clements smiles. “Indeed. One of the more eventful times in my life, I must say.”

“So you rode with his armies against your homeland, then?”

“So I did. Among many other places that were targets during the crusades.”

“You thought it worth joining an army would besiege your home city, nay, destroy your home city?”

Clements gives him a long look. “At the time I believed it worthwhile, yes. With the vantage of years, it is harder to judge.”

“That is something I struggle to comprehend. Why would you, of all people, willingly risk your life in war? However long you might have lived, even immortality cannot protect you from a sword blow through your neck.”

“Because I have lived for three centuries. I have known a myriad of men, great and small, proud and humble, balanced and pagan, brave and cowardly. Yet in three hundred years, never did I meet anyone who had such a gift for making people follow him. For making life seem so much worth living.”

Ashkettle raises an eyebrow. “The Hunter had that much charisma?”

“Let me put it like this,” Clements says. “That era was ripe for heroes. A time of great troubles, such as never was since there was a nation, to borrow the Christian phrasing. Plagues, famine, and war were rife. No-one knew whether he would live to see the next summer. The old ways crumbled, everywhere.”

“I’d heard of the great plagues before I met you, but hearing your descriptions has opened my eyes all the same,” Ashkettle says.

“Quite. Now, consider. In times such as these, of course there will be many visionaries who want to make men follow them. Whose dreams of divine inspiration or personal revelation lead them to proclaim their ambitions to the world. There were hundreds of such men in that era, if not thousands. Most of them failed so comprehensively that I never heard their names at the time. Even those I met, I would struggle to recall their names now. But where all of those men tried, the Hunter succeeded. Men followed him gladly, and in great numbers.”

“He certainly attracted many followers.” As he has done for several previous time periods, Ashkettle has tried to read about the era before the time comes to discuss it with Clements. Historians argue endlessly about the Hunter, but his valour and piety in the crusades live on even in the popular imagination. “He called himself the Hunter, didn’t he? I mean, he chose the name, he did not inherit it as a title, nor did his followers ascribe it to him.”

“His choice, yes. He never explained to us his reasons for making the change, although some of them were easy enough to deduce.”

“For making the change? Wait... you knew his original name?” No history book which Ashkettle could find records the Hunter’s birth name, despite plenty of guesses.

Clements nods. “I know it, yes. Few men did, even at the time. Those of us who did honoured his wishes never to put it in writing or pass it on.”

“What was his true name?”

“The Hunter.”

“That is what he called himself, but what was his real name?”

“The Hunter.”

“He may have made that his title, but what was his birth name?”

“Once he chose the Hunter as his true name, then it became his birth name as well. You are a pagan. You would not understand.”

“I am a Christian, thank you,” Ashkettle says stiffly. “C of D, in fact.”

“A pagan, as I said.” Clements takes in his expression, and chuckles. “Never mind the religious arguments, then. You are not Plirite, not of any sect. The Tjarrling hold to that just as much as the orthodox schools, and even those half-Plirite Tametja in Teegal. You don’t realise how important the choice of a name is.”

“Enlighten me, then.” Ashkettle has heard this before, but has never understood it.

“The name a man chooses for himself is his name. What came before does not matter; it does not exist any more. That tradition goes all the way back to the Good Man, who forsook his old name. Nameless was the same when he converted Aotearoa, and so are many others. So it was with the Hunter. The Hunter was not a name he chose, that was what he became.”

“So he chose that name to symbolise his aims?”

“For more reasons that that, but if simplifying it that way makes it easier for you to understand him, then yes.”

“So if called himself the Hunter because of his aims, and from the vantage of two centuries later... do you think he succeeded?”

Clements shrugs. “It’s too early to tell.”

* * *

[1] The similarity in symptoms between typhus and typhoid gave the latter its historical name; typhoid means “typhus-like”. The Gunnagal physicians are simply noting the same similarities.

[2] Some level of natural resistance, that is. Achieving a measure of natural resistance to a new epidemic disease typically takes about three generations of regular exposure, although it depends on the malady. So by 1700 the Aururians are starting to develop natural resistance to some of the earlier plagues (syphilis, mumps, tuberculosis), but not yet much to the later plagues (measles, diphtheria, smallpox). Great-sleep (influenza) will see natural resistance emerge more quickly, due to previous exposure to a related disease. However, such natural resistance is still far from complete; historically, indigenous Australians remain more vulnerable to most Old World diseases despite two centuries of exposure.

[3] This is the region which historically is called the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, around the historical towns of Mittagong and Bowral. It is called southern with reference to historical Sydney. Allohistorically, the term southern highlands, or more commonly southern pepperlands, refers to the larger highland areas further south (the historical Monaro and Errinundra plateaus) whose inhabitants are so fond of raiding into nearby lowland agricultural regions.

[4] A similar shift in tastes and commodities happened historically (without Aururian resources, naturally), but the VOC took until the 1680s to start to transform its commodities, and did not make a thorough shift until the early seventeenth century. This delay was one of several reasons why the VOC went into stagnation during this period, historically. Allohistorically, the effects of Aururian contact have primed the VOC to make such a shift, and it starts earlier (1660s) and is better-funded, allowing the VOC to continue a significant expansion.

[5] Historically, the VOC managed their expansion because at this time there was an influx of capital which allowed borrowing at low interest rates, but this was still restrictive because they needed to repay the debt eventually. Allohistorically, the capital provided by so much gold is much better for the VOC’s purposes, although it has considerable broader consequences within Europe; in the short-term, the most notable effect is massive inflation.

[6] Brittany is not the only part of Europe which is well-suited to growing sweet peppers. Historically, common sweet peppers (Tasmannia lanceolata) were imported into Cornwall and grown as ornamental plants. Some of them went wild and spread across much of Cornwall (particularly south-facing regions), where in time the local Cornish people forgot that they were imported. The leaves of sweet peppers were later adopted into Cornish cuisine as “Cornish pepperleaf”, without realising that they were in fact an imported plant.

[7] For a given value of production, in the case of slaves.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #101: Let the Hunt Begin

“In the ride, there is truth.”
- Attributed to the Hunter

* * *

The Neeburra. So it is called by both its inhabitants and its neighbours, although another history will call it the Darling Downs. A land of rolling hills and abundant rainfall (by Aururian standards). A land long at the fringes of Aururian agriculture, marginal for their traditional crops, and thinly-populated when compared to its neighbours to south and east.

Two related peoples dwell in the Neeburra: the Butjupa and Yalatji. Politically divided into many small chiefdoms, for centuries their main hobby had been fighting amongst themselves. They had gradually converted to the Tjarrling faith, an offshoot of orthodox Plirism; a process which was much of the reason they had perfected the art of civil war. (And sometimes uncivil war).

The Neeburra lay off the main trade routes for most of its history, and so was viewed by its neighbours as a backwater. That isolation became partially eroded when some Butjupa and Yalatji migrated north to discover new gemfields; discoveries which allowed them to trade for many new things, particularly horses, cattle, guns, and other weapons.

Despite the changes in trade, their neighbours continued to view the Neeburra as a backwater. Over their long history, bold religious visionaries had occasionally emerged who led raids against their neighbours, particularly the Kiyungu of the Coral Coast. On the whole, though, other Aururians had the untroubled belief that the Butjupa and Yalatji were too busy fighting amongst themselves to significantly trouble the rest of the continent.

That belief, alas, would be proved wrong.

* * *

The following excerpt is taken from Bareena Uranj, a Tjarrling religious tract which is usually known in English as the Orange Bible, although that is not a translation. Bareena Uranj was composed circa 1750-55 by Weelungmay son of Munginday son of Ilangi, a man of Bungudjimay heritage, who compiled a variety of oral sources into an account of the Hunter’s life and times. Weelungmay was familiar with the Christian Bible, having read the translations created during the short-lived Prophet’s rule of Daluming. As with most Bungudjimay, he preferred the Old Testament to the New, and many parts of Bareena Uranj show an unmistakable similarity in language with parts of the Bible.

Chapter 3: [1]

1. This was the time of upheaval, of death and plague, when much of what was old became lost, and much came that was new.

2. In this time men of insight needed to sift through the endless novelty as a panner sifts through the riverbed for gold, finding the flecks of great truth amongst the mass of the profane.

3. For the Warego [visionaries/heroes] were on the world in those days, and afterward, and they were the heroes without rival, men of renown, forged in adversity, who found insight through suffering, who knew sorrow but gained wisdom [2].

4. The Men of the North [Yalatji] and Men of the South [Butjupa] had been the first to follow the wisdom of the Heir. Much had been given to them in insight in the time since, and it was inevitable that greater wisdom would be found above the sacred soil of the Neeburra [Darling Downs].

5. It came to pass that in the five hundredth and thirtieth year after the Heir succeeded the Good Man [3], two men were born in the lands of the North.

6. Burren and Tjuwagga [4] were brothers of spirit; they were one in wisdom, and each loved the other as himself [5].

7. Burren was a Priest [6], the son of Jakandanda the son of Mutjigonga, born in Cankoona [Toowoomba] in the summertime when the riders moved their cattle to the higher lands in the summer heat.

8. Tjuwagga was born at a time out of season, when the rarest of frozen snow touched the high country above Cankoona. Rare was his birth, and whether through fortunes of time or strength of mind, he gained insight.

9. Tjuwagga was not born a Priest [7], but from his youngest years all who knew him noted his perception beyond his years, his courage, and his determination. Tjuwagga was fostered with Burren from a young age, and all who encountered them assumed that they were both Priests, for they both showed knowledge more than would be expected from children.

10. Burren lived in devotion, and followed the diet of a Priest from the moment he could speak to make his purity known. Never did he touch meat or complete egg, save at the most pressing need [8].

11. Tjuwagga chose to follow the same limits, to honour the brother of his soul.

12. Burren and Tjuwagga were schooled in all the manly fields for Apostles: letters, prayer [9], riding, courtesy, swords, guns, and cooking.

13. From the youngest of ages Burren displayed a gift of calmness, of bringing to balance the most disturbed of animals. Most keenly did he display his gifts with horses, of which he was always fond.

14. It was said before his fourteenth birthday that Burren could calm any horse, no matter how wild or unfamiliar with men, and break it to his will. So it was that men called him the Horse Brother.

15. Tjuwagga learned the craft of riding, as all men should, but in his youngest days he pursued more knowledge of swords, guns and letters than he did of horsemanship. Out of love for his soul-brother, he became a rider.

16. In the five hundred and forty-third year after the Heir succeeded the Good Man [i.e. AD 1694], Tjuwagga took a ride on a black horse, whose name is unknown, but which had a wild heart. The black horse panicked and fled, with Tjuwagga atop and in no control, and with death awaiting if he fell.

17. Burren alone claimed another horse, and chased after the black horse and its rider. While riding alongside, he spoke words of purity and balance to the black horse, calming it sufficiently for Tjuwagga to regain control. Thus did Burren save the life of his soul-brother.


Chapter 4.

1. The days of the Warego were a time for heroes, the days when no man could hope for the sanctity of peace or the surety of tenure [i.e. of land].

2. In the elder times before the plagues, society had much order. No harmony is perfect, then or ever, but men followed their Apostles and the proper rules of society and land. War was known, as it will ever be known, but a man could reasonably hope to live out the measure of his days without seeing war too often.

3. Since the days when the red breath [tuberculosis] first reached the Neeburra, order vanished. Harmony became a ghost of times forgotten, something looked for but never seen.

4. Thus marked the days of the Warego, when war, abandonment of land, plague or famine could strike down a man at any time. No longer could men rely on living their lives with surety, for that had vanished, feared never to be re-seen.

5. Tjuwagga learned of this history with his letters, and he said, “In a time when men cannot rely on order or security without, they can only conduct themselves with honour, courtesy and dignity within.”

6. In this time the Warego arose, heroes who through privation and struggle gained reverence, who knew not peace but were masters of war.

7. Burren and Tjuwagga were born in this time, knowing from their earliest moments the struggle of raid and warfare, both by their own people and on their own people.

8. In their fifteenth years Burren and Tjuwagga were first permitted to ride forth on raids, with Jakandanda their father leading a raid into the lands of the South where they claimed cattle and wealth, and Tjuwagga killed his first man.

9. Tjuwagga said, “There is no order or security except that which we ourselves create.”

10. For three years Burren and Tjuwagga conducted raids, first under their father’s guidance then, from their seventeenth year, under their own command. To north, west, south and east they raided, most times within the North and the South but once over the Korroboree [Bunya Mountains] to the Coral Coast, and twice to the south into the Mountains of Tin [Northern Highlands, NSW].

11. In their boldness and far-ranging raids, Burren and Tjuwagga were without rivals [i.e. heroes], and all the Men of the North and the South knew their names.

12. In the Year of the Heir 548 [AD 1699], Burren and Tjuwagga led a bold raid south, into the lands of the River-Men [10]. They came to a village on the River Gurrnyal [Lachlan], marked from afar by a tower with spinning blades [windmill].

13. Tjuwagga led most of the horsemen to circle around the village and strike from the farther side, while Burren waited with the remnant to capture any River-Men who sought to flee with their goods.

14. Tjuwagga led his riders with courage and boldness, setting fire to the blades as they spun, driving the River-Men to flee quickly, leaving their houses and goods free for the plundering.

15. Only when Tjuwagga had set his riders to loot did he look past the village and see the smoke of battle [i.e. smoke from gunpowder]. He rode his black horse with all haste through the village, but the deed had been done.

16. Tjuwagga found his soul-brother bleeding on the ground beside his fallen horse. He wrapped him in the grey banner which they used to signal to their soldiers, but the blood could not be staunched. Burren died there beside Gurrnyal; a Warego [hero] fallen.

17. Tjuwagga wept long and honourably for his fallen soul-brother, between the water and the burning tower. Some say that he spilled so many tears there that he used up his life’s allotment, and never again would he weep for the span of his days.

18. When his last tears were spilled, Tjuwagga unwrapped the banner from around fallen Burren, and saw the bloodstains which marked an irregular pattern. He said, “In memory of Burren, I mark this as my banner from this day forward. My brother’s blood is spilled, but not lost. Under the banner of blood, will fresh blood be spilled. Under this banner, I will conquer.”

* * *

[1] Chapters 1 and 2 of Bareena Uranj give a brief account of the Good Man and how he passed his wisdom to Tjarrling (“the Heir). They also contain a condemnation of orthodox Plirite schools and exaltation of the Tjarrling sect (or religion, depending on the perspective of the commentator).

[2] A passage where Weelungmay’s language was clearly influenced by Genesis 6:4.

[3] That is, they were born in 1681. The Good Man died in 1151, although the exact year of his birth is disputed (probably 1080).

[4] The name Tjuwagga is a Yalatji word which means approximately “seeker” or “hunter”, with connotations of being a person in constant pursuit of their chosen aim. This name was in fact a title which Tjuwagga chose for himself, rather than being the name he was given when born. In keeping with Plirite and Tjarrling practice, this title became in effect his true name, and they would usually translate the word into its closest equivalent in other languages, rather than transliterating it. Tjuwagga was most widely translated into European languages as de Jager (in Dutch) or the Hunter (in English).

[5] Another passage where Weelungmay’s language was clearly influenced by his exposure to Biblical tales, in this case the story of David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18:1).

[6] That is, Burren was a member of the semi-hereditary class of warrior-priests that the Tjarrlinghi view as spiritual successors to the Heir and the Good Man. English translations of Bareena Uranj often render the original Tjarrlinghi term (Wirrulee) inconsistently as Priest, Warrior or Apostle, depending on context.

[7] The text is notably silent on the name of Tjuwagga’s father. This is because he later took a new true name which meant that he was remembered for himself, not his ancestry; even if they knew the name of his father, Tjarrlinghi would not pass it on.

[8] Many (though not all) Tjarrlinghi priests believe that consuming meat induces disharmony, since it brings a life to an end sooner than its natural time. They likewise avoid “complete eggs”, that is, eggs where a male duck may have been in contact with the female and there is therefore a possibility that the eggs could have been fertilised. For those who follow these dietary restrictions, they should only be avoided at a time of most pressing need, i.e. when it is a matter of life or death.

[9] Meaning the knowledge of the forms and times for ritualised prayer which Tjarrlinghi and Plirite priests are expected to perform on behalf of the population.

[10] That is, the Five Rivers. The kingdom of Yigutji was the most frequent target for Butjupa and Yalatji raiders during this era (as here), although Tjibarr was also targetted.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #102: Under the Blood-Stained Banner

“Be of one people and one vision, that you may conquer your enemies and bring them to harmony.”
- Attributed to the Hunter

* * *

August 1699
Cankoona [Toowoomba, QLD], the Neeburra [Darling Downs]

Jakandanda, son of Mutjigonga, priest, father and sometimes war-leader, sat on his priest’s chair where it had been placed atop the ridge. Such had been his habit for the last few winters. Let the younger men see to the cattle, horses and ducks that needed to be grazed and watered. Here, amidst the heights, he could pray and contemplate, if he chose, or just watch the land, which he often preferred.

Much of the land around was pasture dotted by occasional trees, kept as open country by regular burning during the spring and autumn fire seasons. To the north-west, below the ridge, was a great expanse of swamp, dotted with reeds. He always found that sight soothing; a reminder that not all water needed to be drilled for beneath the ground, as was so common nowadays. The swamp teemed with birds – he saw several in flight as he glanced over – watered the horses and cattle when needed, and in dire times the women could harvest the reeds for food [1].

From his vantage, Jakandanda was naturally the first to see the riders approaching. Twenty or so men on horseback, with a greater number of riderless horses trailing behind. Good news, then; twenty-two riders had set out to raid the far south, and most had returned. With both North-Men [Yalatji] and South-Men [Butjupa] growing fewer every year, losing any rider was a setback. A raid where even five riders died was a tragedy, no matter how much plunder it brought back; good men were all but impossible to replace. With true fortune, all raiders would be returning, and the missing two men were merely guarding the rear.

As the riders drew closer, Jakandanda recognised the figure of Mowarin at their head. Easy enough to spot; no-one else rode quite like that, or had such height and bearing. What he could see of the other horses looked promising, too. The saddle-bags looked fuller than they should be, since the provisions would have been used during the raid. Given how long the raiders had been away, the saddle-bags must be full of plunder, not food. So the raid on Yigutji, on the River-Men, must have been a triumph.

When the riders came closer still, Jakandanda felt a twinge in his stomach. Mowarin appeared bereft of life. Solemn; a word which had never fit him before. Was this the same bold, life-filled youth who set out on this raid, as he had set out on so many others before? Where was the smile that could bring courage to a man’s heart and desire to a woman’s?

When the first riders dismounted, Jakandanda asked, “Where is Burren? Is he guarding the rear?”

Mowarin bowed his head. “Alas, father of my heart.” The life had gone from his voice, as it had gone from his face. “The Horse-Brother, the brother of my spirt, has fallen. The River-Men slew him.”

The twinge in Jakandanda’s stomach turned into an iron ball. Cold iron. Tears followed, openly, forthrightly. Some priests claimed that men should be dignified even in grief, but Jakandanda had always rejected such nonsense. Holding grief in or adopting some so-called proper image only created greater disharmony later.

Amidst his tears, he eventually saw Mowarin holding forth an urn made from unglazed clay. “Your eldest son’s ashes, wirrulee [priest/warrior].”

Even with grief assailing him, Jakandanda could not help but study Mowarin. The youth had always had such a talent; when he was nearby, everyone and everything else seemed to become part of the background.

Solemnity remained in Mowarin. Perhaps quiet resolve, too. No sign of his usual joy or smile. Nor any sign of tears, either. Maybe he had exhausted all of his grief on the journey home, too. Or maybe part of him had forever died along with his soul-brother.

Witnessing Jakandanda’s gaze, Mowarin bowed his head again. “My soul-brother has passed, but will not be forgotten.” He waved a hand, and one of the other riders approached. The rider unfurled a banner, grey but with irregular patches of dark crimson. Of blood.

“This banner wrapped your son in his passing. It will become his remembrance. Soon, it will become a banner that the Horse-Men fear. All of them. This I vow.”

“A bold plan,” Jakandanda said, approval in his tone.

* * *

March 1701
Gundulla [Condamine, QLD], Neeburra

Occasional bursts of smoke wafted up from the blackened ground to the south. Blackened ground, that is, but not completely-burnt vegetation. The upper parts of the trees were still green. A mark of carefully controlled fire; the beaters had done an excellent job of steering it in the right direction. Cold fire, to use the word which his father’s father had used, although nowadays Jowarra did not think in such terms.

The land needed to be managed, and small fires were a part of that. Left untended, the land would overgrow; too much greenery, to the point where a fire could be large enough to kill all in its path, with no chance of outrunning it. That would be deadly for men, horses and cattle. Jowarra had enough troubles these days protecting his clan and livestock from human raiders; he did not want to have to fight the land itself, too.

A scout rode in, his horse’s flanks heaving from the gallop. “Strange riders to the north, near the river!”

Jowarra shouted quick orders, summoning all of the men –and the couple of fighting women – to their horses. Then he ran for his own horse, pausing only to pick up the musket that rarely left his side.

His clan knew their business; most of them were already on their horses before he reached his. Forty-three men and two women; most of his clan’s strength. The others were too far away to help. Jowarra sent two outriders ahead, then led the rest behind them at a quick trot. Soon enough they reached the pasture to the north, where the nearest cattle-herd grazed. Several armed herdsmen should have been here, but they were gone – fled or captured.

The raiders formed a line on the far side of the pasture, just in front of the few trees. Thirty or so of them, waiting on their horses. Odd. Why had they not moved to secure the cattle, at least?

Wait for the charge, or try to scare them off? The decision took only a moment. Jowarra shouted, “Dismount and form line!”

His riders raced to follow his instructions, one in six leading the horses behind while the others formed a line and loaded muskets. This was always one of the more difficult judgements when responding to a raid. Muskets were too difficult to reload reliably while mounted, but a line of men on foot could fire them effectively. At least, effectively enough to inflict more casualties on raiders than they would want to bear. Better to scare them off this way than remain mounted and guarantee a fight which would be bloody regardless of who won.

A horn sounded behind him, blowing long and loud. He turned, involuntarily. Another group of riders had appeared behind them. More than thirty, in his judgement. “How in the name of the Heir...?”

One of the riders unfurled a banner, grey background with a strange pattern of crimson in its centre. That rider and the man next to him took a few steps forward.

“Fight or wait, warego [hero]?” one of his riders asked.

“Wait,” Jowarra said. Surrounded and outnumbered, that was not really a choice. But perhaps he could strike a bargain. His men had muskets ready, and striking at them would still cost lives. Perhaps some of the cattle could be offered; a severe blow to his clan, yes, but cows were easier to replace than men.

Jowarra called for his own horse, motioned the nearest rider to accompany him, then rode out to meet the chief raider.

The raider and his bannerman waited about halfway; he was polite, at least.

When they got close enough to see the raiders, Jowarra had to stop himself from staring. The leader looked as if he had not seen twenty winters! This youngling had deftly outmanoeuvred him?

Jowarra halted his horse a couple of paces short.

The youngling inclined his head. “I am Mowarin.”

Polite, yes, to introduce himself first rather than make me do so. Jowarra gave his own name, then said, “Impressive, to have brought your horses behind us unawares.”

Mowarin grinned. A pleasant sight. “Few men bother to watch burnt ground, thinking that the openness and lingering coals makes passage impossible. In truth, it is just a matter of watching where your horse steps.”

“And where did you learn such tricks?” Jowarra said. “I do believe my son is older than you.”

Mowarin’s grin just widened. “And does that mean you can’t learn from him? Young I may be, but I have commanded raids across the Horselands and beyond. And on every raid, on every day, I am always learning.”

“Wise to know that you still have much to learn,” Jowarra said.

The youngling shrugged. “Better to be a seeker after truth than one convinced he has already found truth.”

Jowarra laughed, almost against his will. “That, at least, I cannot dispute. And now, what have we to talk about? My cattle, doubtless.”

Mowarin’s grin vanished. “I am not here for the cattle. I could have taken them from you already, if I wished.”

“What, then?”

“I am here for the men who protect the cattle. I want your clan to join under my banner.”

Jowarra could not stop himself from staring. “You think a well-timed raid gives you that right?”

“Better to follow a leader who can command men well than one who cannot, would you not say?” Mowarin said.

“Better still to protect one’s own lands with one’s own clan.”

Mowarin raised an eyebrow. “You think your lands are protected, then? I could destroy your clan, if I wished, but that is not why I am here. So far west, you may not have heard, but already twenty clans follow my banner. I came here because I had heard that you were a man of both honour and good sense, who would look for the best way to protect his clan.”

“Since I live so far west of you, what protection can you offer me here?”

“I offer protection in my lands, not here,” Mowarin said.

“You cannot expect me to order my clan to abandon our lands.”

“Why not?” Mowarin’s calm tones sounded out of place on one so young. “So many have died in these hard times that much land lies empty. Now, land is not what brings worth. Land is everywhere. It is men and horses who bring worth, and the protection they provide which lets the herds increase.”

“Some truth in that,” Jowarra said. Good land was worth much, but in times of so few men, perhaps it was the men who were worth more.

“Good to know that I can sometimes find what I seek.” Mowarin’s grin returned. “But now I must ask that you decide. You may join me, or oppose me. I would prefer that you join me, but the choice is yours. Which will it be?”

Jowarra said, “I will join you.”

* * *

Taken from: The True History of the Yalatji: Translation and Commentary, Heron Publishing, 2nd edition.
English translation by IM Donne.

Introduction by CWJ Fowler III

The True History of the Yalatji is the oldest surviving literary and historical work written in the Yalatji language. Earlier Yalatji works are solely religious texts, since amongst pre-Hunter Yalatji society, literacy was the exclusive preserve of the priesthood. The True History was composed for the Warego ruling class by an unknown author circa 1740 and describes the life of the Hunter and his successors until 1735. While some sections contain clear bias, overall the True History is considered to be the best primary source of the life and times of the Hunter...

The True History is divided into thirteen books (sometimes called chapters). Book 1, largely considered to be fabricated, contains a description of the largely mythical genealogy of the Hunter, including supposed supernatural ancestors such as Crow and the Man of Bark. Some of the more recent named ancestors are considered possibly genuine. Notably, while most of the Hunter’s ancestors are given names, his immediate progenitors are called simply Tjuwagga’s father and Tjuwagga’s father’s father.

Book 2 describes the Hunter’s early life (until age 18), including some probably-fabricated anecdotes, and some plausible ones. Many of the details provided in the True History contradict other primary sources such as the Orange Bible and The Chronicle of Tjuwagga the Unbeliever [2].

Books 3-4 depict the Hunter’s unification of the Yalatji and Butjupa of the Neeburra in a series of conquests, alliances, and arrow-tip negotiations (1609-1708). These books also describe the first stages of the military and societal reforms which the Hunter enacted, as he deliberately broke down the clan- and family-based social structures. These new arrangements began the process where different clans were deliberately mixed to break down their old loyalties to their immediate leaders, and where military units were likewise composed of mixed groups and headed by leaders chosen for loyalty and ability, not family ties or social status. These two books of the True History are a particularly vital primary source, since they offer by far the most comprehensive account of the unification of the Yalatji and Butjupa...

* * *

November 1706
Cankoona, the Neeburra

Mowarin. The name had become a talisman among the Horse-Men. Most Horse-Men, that is. Some clans, particularly among the South-Men [Butjupa], used the name as a curse instead. The holdout clans were in the minority, and growing fewer every month, if the tales held truth.

Mowarin had vowed to bring every clan of the Horse-Men under his blood-stained banner, and he had done well, very well, so far. Well enough that word of his name had reached far to the south amongst the Bogolora, to where Kullerin dwelt [3]. Kullerin was a man in need of a talisman, of a leader worthy to be followed; his life had been adrift for far too long.

So far, it looked as if he had found the leader he sought. Mowarin sat on the ground, amidst a cluster of his high-ranking attack leaders and priests. Many more men and women stood further back, listening as best they could to hear Mowarin’s words. Kullerin stood among them, closer than most, glad to hear anything.

One of the ranking men, a priest judging from his lack of battle-scars, said, “The Kiyungu League has sent another group of envoys. All priests this time. Plirite priests. They say they bring words of peace.”

Mowarin laughed. “But of course. They are weak. Lacking in decisiveness. What else would they do, those who claim to follow the Good Man but have failed in the third path [4]? Only declare peace, peace, always peace, and never know when it is time to conquer.”

A white-haired, scar-faced veteran – probably Jowarra, if the tales were right – said, “Plirites always advocate doing nothing.”

The priest said, “Not so. They think that each man is his own judge of what is best for him. That each man should be counselled, but never told how to act.”

Mowarin spat at a flower, with perfect accuracy, then said, “A belief of nonsense. Not all men are equal in wit and understanding. They need men who can guide and advise them, and instruct them if required. They need leaders, men of better wisdom, who can guide their people, and ensure that what needs to be done, is done.”

The priest said, “And yet the Islanders and their followers have brought many peoples to Plirism. Not quite the true faith, yes, but part of the path to understanding.”

Mowarin did not show any sign of discontent at the disagreement. Which also fit with what Kullerin had heard in the tales, of what made him a leader worth following. Mowarin did not command obedience or agreement. He let people speak, and then used his own gifts of speech and reason to convince others to follow him.


Mowarin said, “They have brought a few people to the Seven-fold Path. A few people, in centuries of sailing hither and yon, speaking to people, hoping that they will accept. Speaking and hoping! They want people to listen and accept, without ever truly showing them what it is like to live in a land ruled by the true faith. A people cannot be shown the true path to harmony unless they are ruled by those who know about the balance.”

The priest said, “You cannot force a person into harmony.”

Mowarin’s voice grew more confident with every sentence. “Force men into harmony, no. Make them act properly, yes. Show them what it is like to live under a ruler with true harmony... yes.”

He paused, looking around in each direction, as if a new thought had come to him. “That is how it must be. The peoples who surround us are out of balance, and their imbalance brings discord even to us. They must be shown the true path. They will not be forced to follow it, but they will be forced to witness it... from their new rulers.”

A couple of the attack leaders started to shout in acclamation, then fell to silence as they witnessed Mowarin staring at the ground.

Mowarin looked down for a long time, contemplating. At length he looked up again, and ran his gaze around the circle of those seated with him, then to the broader circle of witnesses beyond. “This much I desire to accomplish in my life: to ride my horse into the sea to north and east and south, and know that I have brought harmony to all the lands through which I have ridden.”

* * *

[1] This swamp is in what historically the centre of downtown Toowoomba, and was drained during the founding of the town so that the land could be used for grazing. This had the unfortunate side-effect that Toowoomba’s centre is in the middle of a flood-zone, and is extremely prone to flash-floods. Allohistorically, the Yalatji simply view the swamp as a convenient source of water; they have plenty of other pasture for their needs without having to drain wetlands.

[2] See post #101 for more information about the Orange Bible. The Chronicle is an account by Gorang of Kabeebilla [Caboolture, QLD], a Kiyungu author who was a Yalatji captive for a time, and who as a Plirite viewed the Hunter (a Tjarrlinghi) as an unbeliever.

[3] The Bogolara are a loose confederation of chiefdoms in the western parts of the Northern Pepperlands (northern highlands of New South Wales), based around Toodella [Inverell, NSW.

[4] Plirites and Tjarrlinghi both follow the Seven-fold Path laid down by the Good Man, although they disagree on many aspects of how to follow those paths. The third path is the path of decisiveness, which is often paraphrased as “no half actions”. This path is often interpreted to mean that often inaction is the best way of maintaining harmony, but that when action is required, it should be decisive. See post #17 for more information.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #103: Di Meliora

Life has kept me fairly busy lately (and likely to be busier soon), but in the meantime, here’s a brief update.

* * *

“War is no innate instinct of man. It is a pernicious offspring of ancient education... War is simply the name given to theft when conducted by a sufficiently large robber band.”
- Benjamin Maimon, The Dissent of Man

* * *

26 August 1708
Yigutji [Wagga Wagga], Kingdom of Yigutji

The herald struck a mallet against the gong. The sound of vibrating brass filled the throne chamber.

Puckapunyal, King of Yigutji, Lord of Summer, Eagle of Heaven, Master of the Land, Son of the Sun, waited just out of sight at the monarch’s entrance. The sounds of conversation faded as the courtiers heard the gong.

The herald gave the gong a priming strike, deftly keeping it inaudible, then struck the gong again, this time making a much louder boom across the hall. Voices fell silent completely.

Only then did Puckapunyal enter the chamber. Ancient etiquette dictated that no-one could speak in the monarch’s presence until the monarch had spoken himself. The royal privilege of first address went back to the long-vanished days of the Empire. He had always insisted on maintaining it, at least for public meetings. If he lost the royal privilege, he would weaken the court’s respect, for they would see a man rather than a monarch. If he lost too much of their respect, the loss of his throne would soon follow.

The men of the court wore robes of a range of bright colours, all topped with the decoration that current fashion dictated: a pointed headdress and symbolic wings rising from their shoulders. It resembled an eagle taking flight, as it was meant to; a mark of the royal bird. The women of the court wore elaborate, colourful headdresses and shoulder ornamentation of many sticks spread out in a semi circle, with vivid fabric between them; the mark of the rising sun [1]. The greatest finery by those who could afford even in these troubled times, but then Puckapunyal had always insisted that appropriate clothing should be worn in the monarch’s presence.

So it had always been. Yigutji was a realm which preserved proper etiquette and dignity. Even when his ancestor Larrakeya overthrew the last of the decadent Emperors in Garrkimang [Narranderra], he did not remove the proper forms of conduct which had been maintained by the dying imperial realm. Dignity and restraint were the best form of life; something which over-loud, argumentative Tjibarri had never grasped, and something even Wadang [2] often forgot.

After Puckapunyal had settled himself on the throne, he signalled for the Sunbearer [3] to approach. In a loud, clear voice which was designed to carry throughout the throne chamber, the king said, “Tell me how fares the realm.”

Karrakatta, the Sunbearer, spoke in a similarly loud voice. All as had been intended. This news was meant to be heard by the nobles, or else Puckapunyal would have organised to be given it privately.

The Sunbearer said, “Twenty years have passed since great-sleep ravaged the Land and killed so many of Your Majesty’s subjects. Twenty years since the last great plague. Some have died since then, from smaller plagues and from the last war, but the numbers of Your Majesty’s subjects now grow for the first time in living memory.”

“No more plagues?”

“The physicians, who have studied the writings of the Raw Men, say that almost all of the bushfire diseases [epidemic diseases] which are described there have now reached the Land. Those which remain are largely maladies of warmer lands, or so I am told. If Fortune favours the Land, then no more new maladies will afflict Your Majesty’s realm. The plagues remain, but they claim fewer subjects.”

“And what of other causes?”

“War and raids remain, as they have always done. But in the last days, they have not cost the lives of so many subjects as in the earlier times of constant struggle, when the Time of the Great Dying consumed both by disease and war.”

Of course war has reduced, since we made the pact with the Gunnagal. The triple alliance between Yigutji, Tjibarr and Gutjanal was more than sixty years old, now. No alliance between all three kingdoms had ever lasted for more than half of that time, before. Puckapunyal’s predecessors had gladly made that alliance all the same, and kept to it. Recognising the need was simple enough: greater foes now troubled the Five Rivers, powers whose threat meant that the three kingdoms needed to band together out of mutual need.

And, it must be said, because obtaining the new weapons needed Tjibarri goodwill. So it was, and so Puckapunyal had held to the alliance the previous kings had made. For now, he would continue to hold to it, too. The need remained; the Land had much recovering to do before war with Tjibarr or Gutjanal could be contemplated once more. Of course, he did not make the mistake of trusting Tjibarr, even now. Never trust a Gunnagal, or so the maxim went. Princes did not have friends, only ambitions, and if ever the Tjibarri thought that their ambitions would best be served by fighting Yigutji, then war would resume. The kingdom needed to remain ready for that.

“After so long, perhaps the Time of the Great Dying is over,” Puckapunyal said. “Perhaps the Land will finally recover.”

* * *

From an article which appeared in the Daily Intrepid, an English-language newspaper published in Tapiwal [Robinvale], 21 September 1996

Today In History

Battle of Bundaroo

Two gross years ago today [4], at the Battle of Bundaroo, the Hunter scored a resounding victory over an alliance of his enemies, and changed the course of Aururian history.

For such a climactic battle, we know surprisingly little about how and where it was fought. In Lawrence Hardy-Wrethe’s memorable phrase, the Battle of Bundaroo is “the most significant battle in Aururian history about which we know nothing certain.”

Literary sources for the battle are blatantly contradictory, save for a general agreement that the Hunter won by flanking the opposing forces at least twice. The numbers given for each side do not match: the four main accounts of the battle found in the True History of the Yalatji, the Orange Bible, The Chronicle of Tjuwagga the Unbeliever and The Lord of the Ride have no agreement on the quantity of forces on either side. Even the location of the battle is uncertain. Each of the four main sources gives detailed descriptions of the battlefield, and none of those are fully compatible. Four possible sites for the battle remain in serious contention amongst archaeologists and historians.

What is certain is the outcome of the battle. Before Bundaroo, the Hunter led a coalition which controlled perhaps two-fifths of the Yalatji and Butjupa manpower. He was opposed by an alliance of all of the other significant warleaders, under the nominal leadership of one Yongalla. After that battle, the Hunter was the undisputed warleader of both peoples; the Great Hero, as his title can best be translated.

After the battle, with no internal foes remaining, the Hunter turned his attention outward.

* * *

[1] Puckapunyal is not familiar with the bird, but if he had seen it, the current style for Yigutji noblewomen would remind him of a peacock.

[2] Wadang is the dominant ethnicity in the kingdom of Gutjanal, the third Five Rivers kingdom.

[3] In the Yigutji court, the Sunbearer is the head of the officials responsible for record-keeping, censuses, archives and related matters. In essence, the Sunbearer reports to the king on the status of the realm. Finances and military matters are handled by separate officials. The Clawmaster (a shortened version of Keeper of the Eagle’s Claws) coordinates finances while the Lord of Winter is responsible for reporting on military matters, organising defensive fortifications and the like (but not commanding armies, which falls to the king or various nobles).

[4] i.e. 288 years ago. While this newspaper is written in English, Gunnagalic readers would still view that as a significant number of years, since they count in a base-twelve number system and would find two grosses as symbolic as two centuries (or three centuries) would be to native English-speakers.

* * *

Thoughts?

 

[Jared]

Lands of Red and Gold #104: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Note: there is a map at the end of this post which will make the geography much clearer. Many thanks to Cochlea for designing this map.

* * *

“A foe should be given only one opportunity to surrender.”
- Attributed to the Hunter

* * *

The people who called themselves the Kiyungu inhabited the north-easternmost corner of farmable Aururia; the region which another history would call south-eastern Queensland. They called their ancient homeland the Coral Coast [1], and were content largely to fish and farm, dive for coral, and lie in the sun. The peoples of the Coral Coast were divided into city-states that squabbled among themselves, but the twin barriers of distance and mountainous geography meant that they were largely insulated from the wars and other affairs of the far south. As one historian famously remarked, “history mostly passed them by [2].”

Isolation was never complete; the Kiyungu were troubled occasionally by headhunting raids from Daluming to the south, or religiously-motivated raids from the Yalatji and Butjupa to the west. Occasional contact with the Māori was enough for the Kiyungu to learn how to make better ships; not enough to undertake oceanic voyages, but sufficient to sail long distances up and down the coast for coral-diving, exploration or, in time, settlement.

The Kiyungu’s ancient homeland was limited in the north by barriers of agriculture; the existing native Aururian crops could not grow reliably past the Tropic of Capricorn. A combination of Māori contact and new indigenous crops changed this. New crops of sweet potato, lesser yams and tropical wattles allowed the Kiyungu to begin a northward expansion after AD 1450. They moved north into desirable ports, establishing new city-states there and gradually pushing the indigenous hunter-gatherers away from the colonised regions. Since the expansion was by sea, there were still coastal hunter-gatherers left in some regions which the Kiyungu deemed unworthy. This expansion continued even after European contact; at that time, the northernmost major city-state was at Quamba [Mackay].

Politically, the Kiyungu had never been united. For most of their history they were never organised beyond the city-state level. In the late sixteenth century, due to the growing threats of Yalatji missionaries-by-force and Daluming raiders, the southern Kiyungu city-states banded together in a loose alliance which they called the League. This had no central government, but was a council of rulers who acted to ostracise or threaten any city-states which acted too independently. However, the northern Kiyungu city-states remained without any form of supra-metropolitan allegiance.

After European contact, the plagues reduced the rate of northern expansion, but did not stop it entirely. Some displaced southern Kiyungu still found the north more attractive. A greater disincentive to Kiyungu expansion came from the Nuttana, whose pact with the Kiyungu drew away much of the surplus population. (And, in fact, some of the not-so-surplus population). Even this pact did not cease Kiyungu expansion entirely; a new Kiyungu city-state at Menitjing [Bowen, QLD] was founded in 1655.

Only the Time of the Great Dying truly stopped Kiyungu migration. During that time of great plagues and warfare, the surviving Kiyungu were too busy trying to hold on to what they already had to undertake further northern expansion. The only Aururians who could expand much during this time were the Nuttana; with their population boosted by migration and slave labour, they continued to grow even during the worst of the Great Dying. The Nuttana expanded south even when the Kiyungu had stopped moving north, but their southernmost outpost at Nerridella [Townsville] was still comfortably north of any independent Kiyungu territory.

During and since the Time of the Great Dying, the Kiyungu preserved their formal independence. They did not make any further territorial expansion; the Nuttana continued to absorb any immigrants, and indeed continued to develop their more southerly outposts in large part due to continuing Kiyungu migration. In the Coral Coast, the League remained effectively in the Nuttana sphere of influence. Europeans were able to buy some spices and other products, but all attempts to obtain more formal influence – both diplomatic and military – had failed.

Even into the early years of the eighteenth century, the Kiyungu remained part of the Nuttana informal colonial empire. Their population had been much reduced, but the League continued to maintain relative peace amongst the city-states of the Coral Coast.

The Kiyungu of the League did not give much heed to the rise of the man they first knew as Mowarin, and later as the Hunter. Previous warleaders had successfully united some groups amongst the Yalatji and Butjupa. Some had even gathered enough numbers to raid into Kiyungu territory from time to time. Ultimately, all of these warleaders had been defeated by internal divisions, a fact which the Kiyungu had noted.

Right up until the time of the Battle of Bundaroo, the Hunter’s forces were outnumbered by rival Tjarrlinghi groups. The emergence of an alliance against him was what the Kiyungu had expected. The Hunter’s smashing victory at Bundaroo caused some concern, but even then most Kiyungu assumed that his alliance would fall apart, as others had done before.

Unfortunately, as the Kiyungu would soon discover, this would be one time when history did not pass them by.

* * *

After the turmoil of the Great Dying and the worst of the plague era, the League continued to rule the southern Kiyungu. The League consisted of eleven major city-states, not counting a variety of satellite towns and their surrounding rural inhabitants [3]. The position of most populous and influential city-state changed regularly, due to the usual low-level squabbles and vagaries of plagues. As the first decade of the eighteenth century neared its end, Kabeebilla [Caboolture, QLD] was the most influential city-state, although no single city-state could be considered predominant.

Reliable population figures for seventeenth and early eighteenth century Aururia do not exist, outside of the few large states: Durigal, Tiayal, Tjibarr, Gutjanal and Yigutji. Even the Nuttana, so organised in other ways, did not bother to conduct formal censuses.

So historians and anthropologists have only educated guesses for the population of the post-Great Dying southern Kiyungu. Most population estimates range between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand people, with lower figures being preferred within that range. Certainly, however many inhabitants the League had, it still outnumbered the combined Yalatji and Butjupa forces by a significant margin, probably at least double their population.

Unfortunately, the Tjarrlinghi cavalry would prove to be a devastating force multiplier.

* * *

From The Man From The Neeburra, a celebrated epic by the Kiyungu poet Yukoo Laylee, describing the Great Ride that the Hunter led through the lands of the Kiyungu League

There was movement in the Nation, for the word had passed around
That the Hunter had declared to ride their way,
And would bring the wild Horse-Men—their fury had no bound,
When all the bolds would gather to the fray.
All the feared and fabled riders from the daunting Neeburra
Had mustered to ride for his grand delight;
For the Horse-Men love hard riding whether to land near or far,
And the warhorse snuffs the battle with delight. [4]

* * *

27 August 1709
Kabeebilla [Caboolture, QLD]

Gorang had attended the royal court for most of his adult life. As one of the most senior scribes, he had been privy to many secrets, to many things which should have surprised him. He had thought that he was a man not easily shocked. Yet never until now had he found it so hard to maintain his composure in front of his Younger Brother, Prince Muggawurun.

Kabeebilla had been considered the paramount city in the League for most of his life. Yet nothing which Kabeebilla could deploy, not even if every man was levied and given a spear, could match the display of might now being provided before him.

Gorang had seen horses before. The Nuttana and Inglidj had traded a few to Kabeebilla over the years. He had heard, too, of raids against other League cities by Tjarrlinghi unbelievers, carried on horseback.

But never, in all of his days, had he imagined that there were so many horses in the world.

Gorang stood on the walls of Kabeebilla, the prince by his side. The walls were crowded with townsfolk and those who had fled ahead of the rumours of oncoming Tjarrlinghi raiders. Now they came, but they were not raiders. Or not precisely raiders.

A great column of Tjarrlinghi rode around the city walls. Rode. On horseback, at a steady pace. Four abreast they marched, in a great loop around Kabeebilla, keeping carefully out of range of bowshot or musket fire. The head of the column had already passed halfway around the city, and the last horsemen had yet to reach the city. Thousands, to be sure, although Gorang knew no way to estimate their true numbers.

They had done this at Mullumba [Petrie] and other cities further south, if the rumours had told true. Never bringing battle unless they were attacked, but riding deep into the lands of the League. Much further than raiders usually came.

“What brings these Horse-Men this far? And what shall we do about it?” Prince Muggawurun asked.

Unfortunately, Gorang had no idea how to answer either question.

* * *

From Bareena Uranj, a Tjarrling religious tract which is usually though inaccurately known in English as the Orange Bible:

Chapter 9:

1. And it came to pass that the Men of the North [Yalatji] and Men of the South [Butjupa] were united under Tjuwagga and followed the blood-stained banner.

2. His companions asked him if the coming together of North and South meant that this would now be a time of peace, a time when there was no need for Warego [heroes/visionaries].

3. Tjuwagga said, “A land cannot be brought to harmony alone, for no land is truly in isolation. No ruler, even be he most astute and insightful, can prevent discord from spreading beyond his borders.”

4. Tjuwagga said, “This, then, is the need for Warego: the Neeburra has been set on the path to harmony, but those lands outside know not the true path. They must be shown this, in a form they cannot mistake.”

5. North and South had been divided of old into families [5], whereby each man fought for the leader of his blood and kin.

6. Tjuwagga said, “The Warego are men of vision, and they will lead those who show the heathens the true path.”

7. It pleased Tjuwagga to arrange the men of North and South into new armies commanded by the most renowned of the Warego.

8. Tjuwagga said, “Let men of many families follow one Warego, that they may learn from his vision.” [6]

9. It pleased Tjuwagga to move the Warego regularly to new armies, so that the men of North and South could learn of many visions and thus gain greater understanding [7].

10. Tjuwagga told his Warego, “Choose your leaders from those who show skill or vision, not men of family.”

11. And this was done.

12. Tjuwagga said, “All that can be done to reduce discord to the lands within has been done. Now the time has come to bring harmony to the lands without.”

13. Tjuwagga told his Warego, “Now we ride.”

* * *

Had the Hunter been to the lands of the League in his youth? How much did he know about the lands which he intended to conquer?

That is a matter for much disputation amongst surviving sources. The Bareena Uranj (Orange Bible) reports that the Hunter had raided into the Coral Coast in his youth. The True History of the Yalatji claims that the youthful Hunter was part of a peaceful religious mission where he argued with Plirite priests about the best ways to bring harmony to the chaotic world of the Time of the Great Dying. Gorang’s Chronicle of Tjuwagga the Unbeliever explicitly denies that the Hunter had ever been to the lands of the League before leading the Great Ride. The Lord of the Ride does not mention any raids into Kiyungu territory, despite giving detailed descriptions of many other raids which the Hunter undertook during his youth.

Regardless of what he may have done personally, though, the Hunter certainly had access to other Yalatji and Butjupa raiders who were familiar with the general geography and divisions of the lands of the League. He put them into good account when planning the first great accomplishment which brought him to the attention of the wider world: the Great Ride.

In so far as it can be gleaned from the surviving sources, the Hunter’s intention for the Great Ride was to intimidate the League into submission, or at least to create enough fear to make it easier to obtain submission later. Certainly it was consistent with his previous actions to first attempt a manoeuvre which would conserve the lives of his own men; always a consideration for a person who intended to launch a broader campaign of conquest. He may also have believed that it would create less discord if he could subdue some or all of the League cities without direct conquest.

The Hunter ordered the Great Ride to begin in the winter of AD 1709. He assembled several thousand Yalatji and Butjupa riders to take part in the non-raid, although again sources conflict about the exact numbers. His instructions to his followers were simple: demand food and water as you wish, but fight only if attacked.

The Great Ride entered nominal League territory when it crossed the pass which the Yalatji called Coral Gap [8]. From there, they proceeded roughly east to the League city-state of Butjira [Nerang]. The shock of their appearance caused the Kiyungu to flee inside their city walls, as they usually did when faced with raids. This left the Horse-men free to ride once around Butjira’s walls, then ride north to the next League city, Gunowa [Upper Coomera]. They performed a similar manoeuvre at Gunowa, and proceeded north through most of the League cities as far as Munyiratta [Nambour]. (See the attached map for the exact route of the ride). After Munyiratta, the Hunter led the Great Ride to return home through an inland route, rather than risk ambush by angered Kiyungu.

For such a large-scale military manoeuvre, the Great Ride produced relatively little bloodshed. In most cases the Kiyungu followed their usual practice of withdrawing within city walls, and the Hunter’s orders were to leave them there rather than settling into siege. A few clashes occurred where Kiyungu refused to hand over provisions or allow watering rights; a few more occurred where overeager Horse-men treated disobedience as attack and struck down those responsible. Yet on the whole casualties were light.

Of course, just as the Great Ride did not cost the lives of many Kiyungu, it also did not produce much communication. On the few occasions when heralds from one Kiyungu king or another reached the Hunter, his message was simple: submit to my rule and adopt the true path. Unsurprisingly, the Kiyungu monarchs rejected such demands.

Unfortunately, the Great Ride was not the end of the Hunter’s ambitions.

* * *

These two letters are translated from surviving copies preserved in the literary collection of Henry Theophilus Clinton, 12th Earl of Lincoln. They were discovered there after his death in 1874. No surviving records describe how Lord Lincoln obtained them. However, his grandfather Alexander Clinton, 10th Earl of Lincoln, was a noted orientalist (as the term was then used) and participant in the Magna Meliora, a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century European intellectual movement which studied comparative religion and philosophy, and in the process translated many Hindu, Buddhist and Plirite texts into European languages. These letters may have been obtained as part of that study. Considerable scholarly analysis has been conducted on the letter attributed to the Hunter, since if it is genuine it represents one of only three surviving documents composed directly by him. There has been no definitive consensus, although the majority of scholars have concluded that it is authentic.

1st Letter

To Tjuwagga Tjarrlinghi, Lord of the Horse-Men

I, Kallangur, king of Kabeebilla, champion of the League, write to you in the name of all of my allies: the kings of the League cities of Mundarrona, Munyiratta, Kutjigerra, Kabigara, Mullumba, Nyandra, Mungaree, Gunowa, Woginee and Butjira; the kings of the Coral cities of Quamba, Gularee, Yilangu, Tjeeladi, Nguwanna, Tukka Nyukka, Beyral, Mambu Gama, Ooneerraba, Kunnamara, Menitjing and Mandankaiyal [9]; and the Six Lords [Nuttana] of Dangelong [Cairns], Nerridella [Townsville] and Wujal [Cooktown].

All the League has seen the ride which your followers made around our cities. We commend you for your boldness, for only a man of decisiveness would venture to send his followers so far so fast. While you and I differ in much of our understanding, we still both know the Seven-fold Path and how it guides every man’s life.

Yet for all of your courage, we counsel you not to bring war upon the lands of the League. Your riders are determined, but they are few. Our people are far more numerous, and our soldiers are well-armed. Our friends of the Nuttana have supplied us with muskets and cannon from their own forges and from their traders across the far seas in Yurrup and Nhippon.

We hope for peace, but are prepared to make you pay the price if you declare war.

Kallangur, king of Kabeebilla.

2nd Letter

To Kallangur, king of Kabeebilla

You name your allies in this city and that city as if such a long list will bring me fear. But I thank you for this, for now you have chosen my targets for me.

My land is vast, far larger than you who are cramped between the mountains and the sea. The rolling hills of the Neeburra are home to the finest horses and the finest men. If we do not name this city or this town as our homes, it is because our land yields what we need, where we need, and does not bind us to the one place. So I need sign only one name for my people’s land, and you can know that the one name Neeburra is worth more than your two dozen and two names.

No man worthy to lead the Warego could bow to any demands, let alone your insignificant mewling. I shall do as seems best to me, for the betterment of the North-men and South-men and the greater harmony of the world.

Tjuwagga of the Neeburra

* * *

The Great Ride made a strong impression in Kiyungu lands, and not just the impression of millions of hoofprints. The display of Tjarrlinghi might certainly made many of the Kiyungu people, and several monarchs, uneasy. Yet it was unsuccessful in forcing immediate submission.

As such, the Hunter proclaimed what he called the Yaluma. This was a Yalatji word which could variously be translated as search or struggle, with connotations of being a religious endeavour. English speakers, though, would apply a word with which they were more familiar: crusade.

The Hunter assembled an army larger than that which had taken part in the Great Ride, and sent the first elements east from his current semi-permanent capital at Cankoona [Toowoomba], down the nearest river valley [Lockyer Valley] into League territory. Skirting the north side of the Riversea [Brisbane River], they arrived to besiege the first chosen target: Nyandra [Indooroopilly].

The Tjarrlinghi did not have much experience of siege or knowledge of siege equipment. But they were experienced fighting both on horseback or using horses to arrive at the battlefield (dragoons, in effect). So they established siege forces around Nyandra.

The League amounted to nothing if it failed in its pact for mutual defence. So, naturally, the king of Nyandra called for aid, and most of the other League cities responded. Woginee pleaded the need for defence against troubles from further south, while the most northerly city of Kabigara experienced a great many inconvenient delays in assembling its forces. The remaining cities established combined forces which marched to relieve Nyandra, coming from both north and south to attack the besiegers.

Unfortunately, that was their greatest mistake.

* * *

[1] The Coral Coast includes approximately the regions which would historically be called the Gold Coast, Moreton Bay and Sunshine Coast. Its major cities stretch from Woginee [Tweed Heads] in the south to Kabigara [Noosa Heads] in the north.

[2] For more details about the Kiyungu, see post #45.

[3] The major city-states were: Kabigara [Noosa Heads], Kutjigerra [Maroochydore], Munyiratta [Nambour], Mundaroona [Caloundra], Kabeebilla [Caboolture], Mullumba [Petrie], Nyandra [Indooroopilly], Mungaree [Meadowbrook / Daisy Hill], Gunowa [Upper Coomera], Butjira [Nerang], and Woginee [Tweed Heads]. See the attached map for an overview of the geography of the Coral Coast.

[4] Any similarities to the most famous poem of Andrew Barton Paterson are purely intentional.

[5] The Yalatji word which is translated here as family refers to extended family, since the Horse-men were divided into social groups of extended family (or those adopted into their family). Depending on the size of the group, this could be a genuine extended family, or people who followed a particular warleader out of personal loyalty. The latter could also be referred to as clan, but the Yalatji language at the time did not distinguish between the two.

[6] And also, incidentally, mean that now Horse-men warleaders could not rely on family/ clan loyalty for their warbands, which made it much harder for any of them to rebel against the Hunter.

[7] And which had the convenient benefit of limiting other commanders’ ability to build up personal loyalty from their soldiers, against the Hunter.

[8] Known historically as Cunningham’s Gap. It is one of the major passes across the continental divide between the well-watered coastal fringe occupied by the Kiyungu, and the drier highlands of the Neeburra (Darling Downs).

[9] The Coral cities are the cities of the northern Kiyungu. There is no geographic or status order to Kallangur’s list of these cities; apparently he simply added them in the order he received confirmation of their support. In geographical order (south-north, the northern Kiyungu cities are: Tukka Nyukka [Maryborough], Ooneerraba [Dundowran / Hervey Bay], Beyral [Buxton], Kunnamara [Elliott Heads], Gularee [Bundaberg], Mambu Gama [Tannum Sands], Yilangu [Gladstone], Nguwanna [Rockhampton], Mandankaiyal [Yeppon], Quamba [Mackay], Tjeeladi [Cannonvale], and Menitjing [Bowen].

* * *

Thoughts?