Well given that the glaciated sierras do serve as a natural water reserve of sorts, I can imagine things being fine even during droughts.
Certainly looks like it. Whoever is the first to get Aururian crops to the Central Valley is going to really find them useful.
On the topic of soil, drainage and the like in NZ/Aotearoa, here are some general over-view links
Wow. That's extremely useful, and gives me a lot of things to work in when I'm mapping how the Maori have adapted to *New Zealand.
I would imagine that mid Cantebury (Ashburton area) may possibly be appropriate - being a little warmer than further south, high sunlight hours, with drainage that can be improved by human agency.
That part of the country gets incredibly dry on a regular basis (well known for droughts), in part due to the Southern Alps and much of their current productiveness is due to intensive river or aquifier sourced irrigation.
Prior to about 5-7 years ago, before hill side deployable low pressure irrigation systems became common, the landscape used to look rather strange, with deep green flatland pastuarage and then dry brown hills. Now, not so much. Prior to the construction of the big irrigation schemes of the 1970s onwards the whole area used to be incredibly dry too
It certainly looks like an area where Aururian crops will grow well. Any problems with drainage can be corrected, particularly in the hills. (Terraces are one obvious solution.)
Why these ATL Southerners are shorter than that Afro-Amerindo-Aururian hybrid that is called Congxie? In OTL at least, Dixielanders were among the best-fed and healthiest peoples on the Earth.
In some times and in some places, yes. Not always, though. In particular, when their diet relied too much on maize, they were prone to pellagra.
Also, maize itself is rather low in protein, and so causes problems unless there's other decent sources of protein - usually meat. This wasn't usually a problem in OTL, since meat consumption was extremely high, but there were some circumstances where people couldn't get meat. ATL, there will be a few more, but the biggest contributor is that the Congxie themselves are healthier.
The Congxie, on the other hand, live in somewhat worse conditions, being cut-off from best lands by colonists, and their ancestors included malnourished, overworked and highly disease-prone slaves from sea coast plantations. Hybrid vigor may be an explanation, but is it enough, especially some generations after the most active phase of hybridization ended?
There's a few factors at work here.
Firstly, the Congxie have only recently been evicted from their best lands, which included lowland areas of *Alabama. (Hence the
unega's comment about "This is Alleghania now".) So for most of their history, they've been farming the ideal locations.
Secondly, the Congxie don't really live in bad conditions. They don't have all of the technology of the
unegas, of course, but they can work iron and so on, they are literate and organised, and they are (after the first generation or two) generally doing quite well for themselves.
Thirdly, whether their original slave ancestors were malnourished or not doesn't really matter by now. The effects of malnutrition can certainly last for a generation or two, but by this point the Congxie have been living free in North America for well over a century (barring the minor genetic contributions of runaway slaves). Any nutritional problems would have to be more recent than that to really matter.
As it happens, most of the Congxie's ancestors were first-generation slaves born in Africa, and so the effects of malnutrition weren't as severe anyway, but even if they had been American-born slaves, it wouldn't really be relevant by now.
Fourthly, and most importantly, the Congxie actually have a very good diet, using a diverse range of crops which is better than the common Cavendian agricultural package (ie more than just maize). This was referred to in passing in the post, where the comment was that the diverse crops of the Congxie were being replaced by cotton monoculture.
More specifically, the Congxie use a mixture of New World and Third World crops that gives them a very good nutritional profile. Their main crops are maize, squash, beans, wattles, and lesser yams (and murnong in some highland areas).
From their Cherokee and Creek ancestors, they learned about nixtamalization, which prevents pellagra. More importantly, though, they use wattleseed as a major component of their diet, which is one of the best sources of vegetable protein around (and makes up for the maize). From lesser yams (and also, in part, from wattleseeds), they also have a very high folate intake, which prevents folate deficiency with some of its associated problems (eg low birth weight and, ultimately, reduced height and health).
The Congxie don't have a wide variety of domesticated animals - mostly pigs and chickens - but as happened in OTL during the nineteenth century, rural populations get a considerable amount of meat from game and fish. This supplements their diet quite well.
In short, the Congxie are pretty well-fed, although this is changing with the Alleghanian westward expansion and the theft of their best agricultural land. (The rural survivors still won't do too badly, since wattles and lesser yams can survive on poor soils, but those survivors who migrate into Alleghanian towns will have problems.)
Ah, blood feud, I presume? Nations and cultures might be quite different, but some traditions of Appalachia came to exist in the LoRaGverse, too.
Yes, fleeing a vendetta over a father who was viewed as a collaborator. An Appalachian tradition in OTL; in TTL, they've also inherited the Nangu-Nuttana tradition of feuds and vendettas, which is similarly painful for all involved.
Rather beside-the-point question here, and pardon me if it's been answered already, but how does one pronounce "Congxie"?
I've been mentally reading that as "Kong-zee," which is probably not right--if the 'x' were supposed to sound like a 'z,' it would probably be a 'z'...
Kongshe?
I reflexively pronounce it as a Pinyin word, even though it's obviously way off the mark.
That's what I've been doing too... But I'm sure that's not right.
Good point; I never explained that one, did I?
The first syllable (Cong) sounds much as it would in English - compare it to the name of the River
Congo, more or less.
The second syllable is more complicated.
The "x" in Congxie represents a "ts" sound, not the "ks" sound which is most common in OTL English. It's the same sound as in English words such as ea
ts and (most) pronunciations of pi
zza. (The sound came into Congxie from Cherokee, where it's common, including in one of their names for themselves, Tsalagi.)
The "ie" digraph is more complicated still, because it depends in which timeframe you're talking about. During the initial stages of the formation of the Congxie language, it started as a dipthong pronounced as in English l
ied, and this was rendered into English as Congxie. Over the course of the nineteenth century, though, the pronunciation shifted so that it was just pronounced as a long e, as in t
een.
Do I sense a war brewing?
Not exactly. The war (or wars, as the case may be) have mostly already happened. The Congxie have been pushed out of their best lands, or at least subjugated in how they work them.
That doesn't mean that the Congxie will accept being made second-class citizens, of course. There's more than one weapon in a struggle, as Plirities would say.
So even in TTL the Deep South ends up with racial segregation. Some places simply are cursed.
It does, although not as bad as it was in OTL. I figured that with a slave-based plantation culture almost inevitably developing in *South Carolina-Georgia, and given the general racial attitudes of most British colonies, that what happened ITTL wasn't going to be nice, either.
That said, it's not really much like the OTL South either. The dividing line between slave and free is much further south. Virginia is free farmers, as has been described in previous posts, and the Congxie character is careful to draw a distinction between Cavendians (ie *South Carolinians/Georgians) and other people from Alleghania. Note, also, that there's no suggestion of turning the Congxie into slaves, although it hasn't been specified what happened to the slaves already kept by the Cavendians.
What's interesting is that the chapter doesn't give any date, so all we can guess is that this is sometime in the 19th century. The first industrial revolution is underway but the second one hasn't come up yet.
The date has been left unspecified because of a broader issue - I'm not sure how much the speed of technological progress will be affected ITTL. There's factors which may slow it down, and other factors which may accelerate it, and so specifying a year is hard to do until I've worked out all of those details.
In general, though, yes, this corresponds with OTL nineteenth-century industrialisation, and is set in the era when the various colonies around the eastern and southern seaboard of North America are starting to press into the interior. Of course, the path which the Industrial Revolution follows ITTL won't be the same as it was in OTL, either, but somewhere around the equivalent of 1850 or so would be a decent approximation.
And on another note, the fate of the racial segregation may not be as successful as the
unegas want, anyway. This is the second instalment in which Myumitsi Makan has been mentioned - some of his quotes were mentioned in post #50:
Jared said:
“Society unravels in this modern age. As we learn to do more with machines, we forget more of what it means to be men.”
“A mill [factory] is a means for concentrating the labour of many into the wealth of one.”
“A man who works for wages is scarce more than a slave. A farmer finds food, hearth and home on his own land. An artisan works for himself. Yet a labourer in mill or workshop serves at the bidding of another. If he is fortunate, he will be given enough coin to survive, but not to thrive. If he is unfortunate, he will be cast aside, bereft of food or shelter.”
“Alone, a wage-labourer weeps at a world which is cast out of balance. Never can a man in cloth cap stand equal to a man who wears a ruby. Only when the labourers stand together can harmony be restored.”
- Myumitsi Makan, better known in English as Solidarity Jenkins
What this could mean for the fate of Alleghania is, I presume, obvious.
Great update Jared. And a question, what is the fate of the Thylacine in this timeline?
I think he has already said it will be gone before the Europeans even see it, due to an earlier introduction of dogs to Tasmania
Sadly, yes. I don't know exactly how long it took for the thylacine to be out-competed - the evidence in OTL is vague - but once the dog has made it to *Tasmania (c. 800 AD), the thylacine's fate is only a matter of time. The same also applies to the Tasmanian devil, alas.
