Look to the West: Thread III, Volume IV (Tottenham Nil)!
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
- Status
Excellent update; I do like it when you get these purple patches of productivity!
Two things:
1. How does the Manhattan Massacre affect the 'invulnerable' image of armourclads, as was hinted at upthread?
2. I'm guessing, since this update disassociates the European theatres from the Great American War, that the intention is to wrap up the American theatre in this volume, and then open the next volume with the Iberian Revolution/Celle Mutiny/Patrimonic War/Great Jihad/Yapontsi Annexation - unless you go for another 'Wham Episode' like with Update 100...?
Two things:
1. How does the Manhattan Massacre affect the 'invulnerable' image of armourclads, as was hinted at upthread?
2. I'm guessing, since this update disassociates the European theatres from the Great American War, that the intention is to wrap up the American theatre in this volume, and then open the next volume with the Iberian Revolution/Celle Mutiny/Patrimonic War/Great Jihad/Yapontsi Annexation - unless you go for another 'Wham Episode' like with Update 100...?
Thande
Donor
Thanks for the comments everyone!
I am debating with myself at the moment whether to do it that way or possibly another option. I'll decide when I see how much in the way of events the next couple of updates turn out to cover.
I am debating with myself at the moment whether to do it that way or possibly another option. I'll decide when I see how much in the way of events the next couple of updates turn out to cover.
I thought this ever since it was mention that Carolina would not be "whole" after the war.
I wonder what will happen to the Carribean. Perhaps taken over by the UPSA? It'd certainly make it easier for the Combine in the future to exert its influence over Carolina.
Well, you could just go with the sort of awkward middle-way that the Hogwarts Exposed-timeline went for. The guys behind that were really keen on the whole "even chapter number will be super-special-awesome" that they had an awful lot of chapters ending in .5 or .3 or .2, etc.
Anyway, great update as always, even though I really would have liked to have learned a little more about the inner affairs of the Grand Duchy of Louisiana, and the people living there. Hopefully, I'll be seeing more of that soon, since after the rebellion of Jean-Luc I, and the painful partial partition of Louisiana into slices for Carolinians, New Spaniards and even Imperial Americans, surely the French must realize that substantial reform, along with a fair share of greater autonomy is necessary if they want to avoid losing all of Louisiana the next time a conflict in the Americas present itself.
Also (you may have answered this in the past, and then I'm sorry for asking you to repeat it), what is the demographic situation like in Louisiana. Could you provide an estimate of the population numbers? Are they all Francophone?
I would anticipate that the Europeans going there (other than the French of course), would mainly be non-Spanish non-Jansenist Catholics, so would I be right in assuming that they've had some notable inflow of, say, Irish, Polish and Italian immigrants? I do know that the Catholic Church in OTL Quebec was an extremely strong component of the political machinery there, its influence first really beginning to be curbed during the Révolution tranquille in the 1960s, so would I be right in assuming that Louisiana is one of the few Catholic places in the Americas were Jansenism has proven a damp squib and where Papal Catholicism still rules supremely?
Anyway, much look forward to the European theatre of the Great American War. In particular those shenanigans in Scandinavia with the Danes fighting the Billungians! From geographic considerations alone, this would indicate that my native little province of Scania may have a cameo!
Thande
Donor
Louisiana in 1848 has a population of just under a million, about two-thirds free and one-third slave. Eighty percent of the total is francophone, this being effectively all the slaves and a large majority of the freemen. Most of the freemen are more or less ethnically French, although this becomes difficult to define due to the Indian intermixing (Métis). The remainder of the freemen are from Cherokee, Carolinian or New Spanish/Irish backgrounds from the bordering lands who settled there for business reasons. (The New Spanish encouraged Irish immigration to Texas following the potato famine in order to provide a bulwark against further Louisianan expansion). Louisiana itself has remained not particularly open to European Catholic immigration (which has mostly gone to New Spain or the UPSA) due to the French's policy on controlling matters. Because of this you are right to say it is mostly Roman Catholic (indeed, the pernicious influence of Jansenism is one reason why the French have controlled immigration). Most of its population boost came from the American expulsion of many 'Canajuns' from Quebec (as happened in OTL with the Acadians but more so) and then a second wave when Bonaparte threw out a lot of political enemies in 1814 and sent them there, including of course d'Aumont (the father of Jean-Luc) and Barras. A lot of this was covered way back in part #98.
Sorry I just caught something that confused me. Since when are the Tahontaenrat part of the Howden confederacy? I'm guessing that this happened way back in one of the early updates and I totally just missed it until now. It just caught me by surprise when I read it.
I think the reason I was most surprised was because my impression was that the Tahontaenrat ceased to exist as a distinct nation around 1649... My impression was that after 1649 you really couldn't speak of separate nations within the Wyandot confederacy any more. So to see one of them popping up as the seventh nation of the Howden confederacy seemed a little strange to me, especially since the POD was AFTER 1649.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting this reference... Maybe in TTL the term "Tahontaenrat" refers to all Huron-Wyandot people rather just that one nation of the confederacy.... Or maybe I'm just confused, which happens often enough anyways...
I think the reason I was most surprised was because my impression was that the Tahontaenrat ceased to exist as a distinct nation around 1649... My impression was that after 1649 you really couldn't speak of separate nations within the Wyandot confederacy any more. So to see one of them popping up as the seventh nation of the Howden confederacy seemed a little strange to me, especially since the POD was AFTER 1649.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting this reference... Maybe in TTL the term "Tahontaenrat" refers to all Huron-Wyandot people rather just that one nation of the confederacy.... Or maybe I'm just confused, which happens often enough anyways...
Thande will doubtless corroborate or correct this, but essentially the Howden and Huron went to war again in the mid-18th century as British and French allies/proxies respectively; the Howden defeated the Huron so completely that the latter confederation was utterly broken, and its people scattered. The Tahontaenrat approached the Howden and requested membership of their confederation, which led to its reform from Five Nations to Seven.
As to the other members; some fled west and eventually joined the Seven Council Fires, while the Attignawantan ended up on the northern edge of French Louisiana as a buffer against the Virginians. The relevant stuff is in Update #30 - it was also detailed in Nugax's epic map from a few years back, but I can't seem to find that on here any more, alas...
Thande
Donor
Ed Costello is correct (except it was from six to seven, as the Howden had already taken in the Tuscarora. If the specific tribe Tahontaenrat is an anachronism here I can always retcon it to another, any suggestions?
I just realized that too of what Telynk brought up. After the collapse of the Huron/Wendat's own league, the Christian half of the tribe moved east under the protection of the French, ending up with a reserve near Quebec City.
The other half joined the Peten, until the Huadenosaunee destroyed the Peten and Erie. All these survivors would go on to form the Wyandot(which is pronounced the same as Wendat, it's just been recorded different in English for some reason I can't recall at the moment). They would further go onto form the three bands of the tribe in the States, with reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma; and an unrecognized band in Michigan.
For both groups of Huron, even before contact, the tribes that made up the league were much more intermarried and living intermingled than the neighboring Iroquoian leagues. So by the POD of LTTW those identites would have been subsumed into the greater Wendat identity. For a retcon, the Catholic Wendat probably would have went down to Louisiana, while the western Wendat/Wyandot would have been the ones to join the Houdenosaunee/Howden and the Thirteen Fires.
Last edited:
Thande
Donor
OK, that makes sense. I will bear that in mind and retcon accordingly.
Speaking of retcons, I decided earlier that I'm going to move the setting of the TL back to 2019 - the only reason I moved it to 2015 was because I thought I'd messed up earlier, but I'd got my dates confused. (And obviously this gives me more time to finish before the 'now' year comes up
)Well the comment I was making was not about specifically the tahontaenrat but about the Huron confederacy in general after 1649. After 1649 (the year when the wendats [Hurons] were displaced from wendake [the Huron lands at the time of contact with Champlain] by war with the haudenosaunee), most wendats were living as refugees. One group settled around montreal and Quebec city while another fled west and eventually ended up in the Midwestern US. I had always heard these group referred to as just "Hurons" (in quebec) or "wyandots" (in the Midwest), without reference to the original four nations that had made up the original confederacy. My assumption was that historical sources had failed to distinguish between the four nations after that point because they failed to be socially relevant any more as the four nations no longer had their own seperate villages. My gut is telling me that any war after 1649 which split the wendat confederacy into different groups wouldn't do so along the lines of the original four nations (I think any split would occur between those who followed one chief and those who followed another, and that by the 18th century the four nations had lived together long enough that those splits wouldn't occur solely along tribal lines), but that it isn't inconceivable that some of the resulting groups would name themselves after the original nations/tribes, or that Western scholars would refer to them by names they no longer used for themselves.
Also, feel free to take everything I say with a grain of salt as I have been researching the wendat BEFORE 1649 for my TL, so the books I have read tend to stop before 1700.... For all I know there could have been another social change after 1700 that I didn't know about.
Glad to help again. It was something I missed too way back when I read it. For some reason I thought the Wendat were defeated much later in the 17th century, and so would still have their separate tribal identities. Usually on here my people get mentioned a lot with the ARW, so my memory is a lot more sharper for that period then during the Mourning/Beaver Wars.
Speaking of retcons, I decided earlier that I'm going to move the setting of the TL back to 2019 - the only reason I moved it to 2015 was because I thought I'd messed up earlier, but I'd got my dates confused. (And obviously this gives me more time to finish before the 'now' year comes up
I remember thinking about that earlier this year, that we were catching up with the future date of LTTW's ending, and the TL's only half way through the 19th century. Going off what you and Makemakean said earlier, it's good to be more indepth at time, especially when you want to justify the plausibility of events and see the small intricacies of history that color a TL better.
Last instalment was as engrossing as alawys, Thande. That said, I have to nitpick - you shouldn't have used launching when refering to Lord Hamilton, as launching refers to the moment when ship clears the slipway. As it was said that there was boiler running, fuel and some ammo on board, the ship must have been after launching (you don't put fuel and ammo on ship before launching, as it adds unnecessary weight and just asking for disaster), but before commisioning (that is - being put into service).
Thande
Donor
I was thinking along those lines myself: it may be one of those frustrating things that only a real scholar could answer for sure, or may not be known at all. I will leave it as-is for now but perhaps add more justifying text when I eventually revise the earlier chapters.Glad to help again. It was something I missed too way back when I read it. For some reason I thought the Wendat were defeated much later in the 17th century, and so would still have their separate tribal identities. Usually on here my people get mentioned a lot with the ARW, so my memory is a lot more sharper for that period then during the Mourning/Beaver Wars.
Thanks.
Ah, I always get those mixed up. Will correct it when I get a moment.
- Status