Excerpt: Blackpowder Empires: The Early Modern Age - Guigues Montpelhier, Epic Libropress, AD 1996
The years following the First Succession Debate would lay the groundwork for the Asmarid Empire's entry into an age of change, one in which Moorish economic dominance of global trade lanes would no longer be undisputed. Even as the debate was ongoing, Christian kingdoms across Europe were beginning to make moves beyond their borders, pushing the frontiers of their trading universes beyond the Cape of Storms and over the Atlantic Ocean to delve into Hindustan and the Farthest West.
In some respects, the new maritime push out of Europe was a consequence of the Cantabrian Wars and the collapse of the remaining Christian kingdoms in Iberia. Most common people in the former kingdoms of Santiago and Navarre had stayed put, lacking the means to emigrate following the conquest of the north by Al-Nasr and the Asmarids. Rich merchants and noblemen, however, had the means and the wealth to leave the Iberian Peninsula. These men and their families scattered throughout Christendom, bringing with them knowledge gleaned from centuries of close contact with their Moorish neighbours. While this knowledge would contribute in areas such as culture and medicine, the most immediate effect was on shipbuilding and navigation.
The sudden glut of experienced Iberian merchant captains in ports from Italy to Norway provided both new insights into shipbuilding and new revelations on areas of the world theretofore little known by Christians, save the pioneering Anglish and their existing ventures in King Robart's Land, Helenia and St. Albans. Further impetus to explore beyond Europe came from tales carried from the
hajj of Muhammad Mahbat, laying the foundation for the myth of the fabulously wealthy Far West. More and more, Christian rulers were inspired to join the Anglish in maritime ventures, no realms moreso than Denmark and Romania.
The Danish and Romanian kingdoms had made initial strides around the time of Muhammad Mahbat's
hajj: That same year, the Danish navigator Anders Thordssen had reached Kilwa on the eastern coast of Sudan, while the Romanian Ramon de Seta and the Santiagonian exile Balduino of Coruna had made landfall on the islands of Setania in the Far West. It would be the Danish who would mount the most ambitious push in the wake of these decisions, funding an ambitious second voyage by Thordssen in 1487. This voyage would stop in Zanzibar before pushing across the sea to reach the Maldive Islands and on to Hindustan before returning to Denmark once more.
In 1493, the Danish sought to capitalize on their discoveries by establishing their own trading post route to Hindustan, circumventing Bataid tariffs that made trade with the East by land a challenge. An expedition led by the
søfarer[1] Markus Simonssen - in fact a Normando Santiagonian named Marco Jimenez - traveled to the Thordssen Channel[2] with intent to establish a waystation for ships passing to Hindustan. The four-ship venture settled on the offshore archipelago now known as the St. Ansgar Islands[3] as an ideal spot to build, well away from potential hostilities from Bantu tribes on the mainland. A location was selected on the west-central cape of the largest island, given the name of Dragenland[4], and ground was broken on the trade hub of Stenby. The Christian church still visible at Cape Stenby is considered the oldest European Christian building in the Sudan.
Danish efforts to establish
makzan-style tributary ports in the cities subject to Kilwa would bear far less fruit - the sultanates along the coastal Sudan were wealthy and well-equipped, and trade with Maghrebi and Andalusi merchants had accustomed them to dealing with outsiders - but the hub at Stenby would prove valuable enough to launch Danish trading ambitions further eastward, into cities along the Hindustan coast. By 1496, another Danish expedition had cut a deal with the Hoysala officials around the city of Kochi, then a thriving hub of the spice trade and a frequent stop for Moorish traders. The city's rulers gave permission for the Danish to erect a fort at what was then a small fishing village outside the city itself. That fort would grow into Fort St. Lucius, the centrepiece of Denmark's trading effort in Hindustan and a particular flashpoint for future grievances between Moorish and Danish mercantile interests.[5]
Danish efforts in the Far West were no less engaged, particularly when scholars of history began to compare their maps to charts brought north by Iberian seafarers and discovered that some of the old sagas about "Heavenland" might have some basis in fact. A Danish expedition had nosed around Barshil in the 1460s, a few years after the visit of Galin Keats on behalf of the Anglish, but the
søfarer Emil Kroon - or rather, Emilio of Coruña, an Iberian - made the first in-depth exploration of Alasca on behalf of the Danish crown.
Kroon's expedition went beyond known Anglish territory to the south, instead pushing into the gulf south of Barshil and north of Elderbeve - the body of water known today as Assumption Bay, named for Kroon arriving on the Christian solemn day of the Assumption.[6] The expedition traveled a ways down the Great Assumption River[7] and made landfall in a few places, most notably at the site marked by Kroon as Fyrland.[8] The landing party found local Innu seal hunters operating out of the area, managing a peaceful exchange that saw the Danish expedition return home with a modest cargo of seal furs.
*
Romanian interest in the Far West was driven in large part by an influx of Basque whalers and merchants out of Navarre. Gascony had maintained strong ties of language and culture with the Navarrese realm, and merchants leaving newly-held Moorish territory found themselves at home in centres like Bordeu and Baiona, where many of them could carry on previous occupations with little other change. Some of these emigrants found opportunity by lending their navigational skills to the Romanian crown, which built on the discovery of Setania by pressing westward to further scour the coast of northern Alasca.
The 1492 expedition of Olivièr de Baiona saw a group of four Romanian ships explore the edges of the Pearl Sea and the mainland in the wake of the Meridian War. De Baiona, a veteran of the Battle of Santa Maria di Leuca a few years prior, had picked up a broad selection of good sailing practices from Moorish, Basque and Venetian mariners during the course of his duties, and he'd parlayed that knowledge into service to King Guilhem's cause. His expedition scouted the eastern coast of the Kharshuf Peninsula[9] and continued north from there to chart the coast of the land he (somewhat ephemerally) called New Rome as far north as Guilhem Bay.[10]
De Baiona's notable landing was at the site of present-day Romulus on Saints Victor and Corona Bay, at the confluence of the rivers named for those two martyrs.[11] While he didn't establish a settlement there, De Baiona marked the site with a large stone cross engraved with the New Rome appellation and the name of King Guilhem. A follow-up expedition in 1495 by Romieu Tierrès would further explore the tip of Kharshuf and scout the Andalusi-controlled islands of the Pearl Sea, stopping first at Mansurat al-Gharbiyah on Al-Gattas, then at Ekab in Al-Quwaniyyah, before looping back around Al-Gattas en route back to Romania proper.
Anglish and Danish interests in the Farthest West placed greater emphasis on the north, where Andalusian sailors had been reluctant to expand past their enclaves in Barshil for fear of the cold climate. Sailors from Denmark and the north of Angland were far more accustomed to sailing in cold waters, and they translated those proclivities into a preference for exploring cool-temperate areas the Moors largely overlooked. Gascon and Basque sailors, on the other hand, were more likely to visit slightly warmer areas and notable fishing and whaling grounds already favoured by Moorish anglers, whalers and merchantmen, and their loose alliance with the Asmarids gave them more freedom to co-mingle with Muslims in the Farthest West without issue. Explorers under Romanian contract were thus more free to probe the southern reaches of North Alasca, trading more regularly with Far West Moorish communities and relying less on piracy and more on mercantile activities.
Romanian exploration efforts shared a commonality with the Danish in that both kingdoms were in no rush to begin large-scale overseas conquests or settlement efforts. Denmark, a smaller kingdom, didn't have the capacity to bankroll sending armies or vast numbers of settler expeditions overseas, nor the budget to maintain huge distant colonies. The Romanian concern was more martial: King Guilhem seems to have preferred to keep his men closer to home in the hopes of staving off potential wars with France and the Holy Roman Empire, particularly with territorial claims in Italy and the Arelat continuing to worsen relationships with the German Kaiser. Both powers, in other words, had every incentive to pursue overseas policies similar to those the Hizamids had pioneered generations prior: Setting up coastal trading post empires to swap goods with native populations.
The Romanians' search for wealth to bankroll future campaigns against their continental rivals would make it all the more vital for them to connect with the prosperous Asmarid-controlled trade networks in the Pearl Sea rim. As such, while the coast of New Rome would see some attention, Gascon sailors continued to largely operate from Setania, establishing the trading station of Saint Saturnin[12] to support ships coming and going into Asmarid-controlled waters.
One key advantage enjoyed by the Romanians was easier access to the southern half of the Far West. Most Christian exploration had stayed in the Pearl Sea region or further north along the Alascan coast, but in 1496, the navigator Berenguer Marcès traveled much of the southern half of the supercontinent, reaching lands discovered 150 years prior by Ziri ibn Abbad but not truly explored or settled. Marcès' first expedition took him along the coast of Ibn Abbad's Ard al-Wasu[13] and its associated bay. The expedition had access to Moorish charts, but few expeditions had explored much inland following Ibn Abbad's trip, a trend reflected in local placenames: Marcès identified the lands he discovered as part of "Vaçeu," but the bay itself was renamed Princess Isabeu Bay in honour of King Guilhem's oldest daughter.
Marcès would return in 1498 with four ships and a charter from Guilhem, establishing the first permanent mainland trading post in the Far West: The city of Sant-Laurenç, overlooking Princess Isabeu Bay. The settlement continues to be populated today, but its earliest days saw it existing primarily as a Romanian trading post and timbering station where ambitious traders could gather Pernambuco wood and dye for sale back on the continent. Romanian attention would remain closely focused on the Pernambuco-wood trade, with Vaçeu becoming their main centre of new settlement and expansion.
As for Marcès, his charts of the coast would prove far more accurate than Ibn Abbad's. His exploration of the region was so thorough, including a third voyage further south, that the southern half of the Far West eventually came to bear his name: Berengaria.[14]
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The Anglish would remain the most potent rivals of the Asmarids in the Far West, largely owing to their combination of funding, manpower and a lack of major continental rivals ready to go to war with them on a lark. Anglish ambition in the west brought them into contention not only with the Asmarids, but with Romania and, later, with other powers with eyes on Atlantic Continent territory. Tensions with Romania emerged as early as 1494, when the Archbishops of York and Roskilde ratified the Treaty of Granham, an agreement between the Anglish and Danish monarchies to divide Alasca between them. Danish claims to the continent north of Helenia were recognized, with the Anglish granted the right to claim all land from a line equidistant between Elderbeve and Helenia on south to "the lands settled by the Mohammedans" - a claim which ignored De Baiona's claims in territory the Treaty ceded to Angland.
The Treaty of Granham would be one of many wedges that would widen the growing fractures in Christian unity, testing the concepts of council ecumenism introduced following the Council of Imola. The Pope himself would weigh in on behalf of Romania in the matter: The bull
Inter alia res, issued in 1496, recognized the Anglo-Danish dividing line but acknowledged Guilhem Bay as the northern bound of a Romanian claim, while putting off claims in the south of the new continent to a future council. Clergy in most of Mediterranean Christendom accepted the bull as valid, but ecclesiastical councils in Angland and Denmark issued their own rulings declaring the Pope's ruling invalid in the face of the preexisting Granham accord.
Irrespective of Romanian and Papal complaints about Granham, the Anglish continued to press their interests in the Far West. Their initial settlement at King's Town[15] had struggled in its first decade, but new settlers began to arrive in the 1490s, helping to grow the fledgling colony from a simple pirate base into a trading post dealing particularly in furs. The most notable infusion came in 1496, when 1,000 Anglish soldiers arrived following an attack on King's Town by the Wampanoag the year prior in which several settlers had been killed or captured.
Tensions with the native peoples of the region had run high almost since the Anglish settled. While initial trading relationships had been fairly cordial, native groups like the Wampanoag and Narragansett were heavily afflicted by diseases introduced by the Anglish settlers, and disputes between the two sides increasingly tended to end with the Anglish demonstrating the considerable advantages brought by steel and blackpowder weapons. The 1495 attack was apparently sparked by a severe outbreak of disease among the Wampanoag, which tribal leaders blamed on the Anglish. The arriving soldiers established a garrison outside King's Town - the fort of Prince Edgar - and proceeded to mount a punitive campaign against the Wampanoag.
The Anglish campaign was short and brutal. Disease had taken its toll on the Wampanoag already, and the professional Anglish troops arrived with modern armour, horses and blackpowder arms. The bloodiest battle of the conflict - the Battle of Arvid's Hill, against the Assonet clan - saw nearly 500 natives slaughtered at a cost of just twelve Anglish. Before long, the settlers had forced the surrounding tribes to humiliating submission agreements, obliging them to abandon ancestral hunting grounds to Anglish settlers and traders. New farming settlements began to grow as Anglish settlers moved into these newly-conquered lands, solidifying the Anglish presence in the region.
More directly concerning were continued Anglish pushes into trade lanes controlled until then almost exclusively by Asmarid-chartered merchants. In 1494, an Anglish expedition led by Darwin Kennericksson reached Warsheikh. The following year, a force of six Anglish skenes ambushed several Andalusian trade ships in the area before making landfall at the River Pra, establishing the first Anglish fort along the Sudani coast: Fort Darwin.[16]
In Berengaria and the Pearl Sea, meanwhile, the sugar plantations established by John Robinred at St. Albans would spur further colonial interest, while driving Anglish interests in the slave trade. Robinred's operation was the first to begin importing slaves from the Sudan, first via Muslim traders, later coming through traders operating out of Fort Darwin. The profits realized through the sugar trade spurred more Anglish efforts to explore the Berengarian coast, scouting for areas sufficiently outside the Asmarid patrol routes that new operations could be settled there.
*
In mid-August of 1494, two years after the First Succession Debate,
hajib Al-Nasr finally died in his sleep. The seeds he'd sown in the Debate did their job: Abd ar-Rahim was appointed the new
hajib the next day without contestation, though contemporary histories report that Tashfin withdrew from court life thereafter before sailing overseas to pursue his fortune in the sugar industry on Al-Gattas.
It would fall to Abd ar-Rahim to manage the complexities of these new challenges to heretofore-uncontested Asmarid mercantile monopolies, but he had the advantage of doing so with the support of the greater bulk of the court and the public behind him. Most histories reflect on Abd ar-Rahim as less dynamic and transformative a
hajib as Al-Nasr, interpreting his rule primarily as a period of stable governance by a steady hand - itself a remarkable situation given the tendency of governments to weaken substantially following the death of a great ruler. The fact of Asmarid stability and unity in the wake of the First Succession Debate speaks to the success of Al-Nasr in pulling the teeth of potential succession disputes, albeit at the cost of giving the
Majlis a louder voice in the affairs of state.
Abd ar-Rahim responded quickly to word of Anglish piracy extending into the coast of Binu by sparking the micro-conflict known as the Pepperbight War. A fleet of twenty safinas was dispatched to the Sudani coastline, and a new Asmarid
qasbah was set up at Mushtari on the island of Mihwaria, transforming the long-standing waystation and
makzan into a major Asmarid holding in the region. The newly-established Mihwaria flotilla engaged about a dozen Anglish ships at the Battle Off Adoakyir, sinking several of them and scattering the rest at a loss of two safinas. The force sailed on to attack Fort Darwin, but the Anglish held out despite losses and damage to their fleet, ensuring that the fort would remain a nuisance in the region. A subsequent agreement signed in 1498 saw the Anglish pay a nominal sum of gold in exchange for losses and agree on paper not to plunder ships on the Sudani trade routes, but in practice no pirate alive was going to give much respect to the paper agreement, and Anglish freebooters continued to harass Asmarid (and increasingly Nasrid, Simala and Romanian) ships - a trend of piracy which drove further growth to Mihwaria to support the naval garrison.
[1] Seafarer.
[2] The Mozambique Channel
[3] The Bazaruto Islands, off Mozambique.
[4] Bazaruto Island boasts a large population of crocodiles.
[5] This fort is named for Pope Lucius I. His relics wound up in Denmark in this timeline, too.
[6] The Gulf of St. Lawrence.
[7] The St. Lawrence River, of course.
[8] The area of Tadoussac, at the confluence of the Saguenay and St. Lawrence Rivers. The name means, roughly, "pine land."
[9] Florida.
[10] The US Atlantic coast roughly from northeast Florida to Onslow Bay, North Carolina.
[11] Charleston, South Carolina. The rivers in question are the Ashley and the Cooper.
[12] St. George, Bermuda.
[13] Coastal Bahia, Brazil, centred on the site of Salvador.
[14] The Atlantic Continent is divided into two halves in Christian telling: Alasca in the north, Berengaria in the south. The Cawanian Isthmus connects them.
[15] King's Town is a trading post located roughly at the site of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
[16] Not far from the OTL Portuguese fort at San Sebastian.
SUMMARY:
1487: The Second Thordssen Expedition reaches the Maldives and mainland Hindustan.
1488: The Kroon Expedition sails down the Great Assumption River and mounts the first serious exploration of Fyrland, marking first contact with the Innu.
1493: The Danish establish the ship servicing hub of Stenby on Dragenland Island near the Thordssen Channel.
1494: The Anglish establish Fort Darwin near the Pra River in the coastal Sudan.
1494: The Treaty of Granham divides Alasca between Angland and Denmark.
1495: The Battle Off Adoakyir sees Asmarid ships operating from a new qasbah at Mushtari score a naval victory over Anglish freebooters. They are, however, unable to dislodge the Anglish from Fort Darwin.
1496: The Danish break ground on Fort St. Lucius near Kochi, establishing their central spice-trading hub in Hindustan.
1496: The Anglo-Wampanoag War sees Anglish troops brutally put down unrest among the disease-ravaged Wampanoag of Helenia. The resulting massacres and concessions push Wampanoag tribes out of prime hunting land and create new growth opportunities for Anglish colonists.
1496: The Pope, supported by Romanian bishops, issues a bull nullifying the Treaty of Granham and recognizing Romanian claims in Alasca. The Anglish and Danish clergy proceed to nullify the bull through their own ecclesiastical councils.
1498: The Pepperbight War concludes with the Anglish paying out paltry reparations to the Asmarids and agreeing (with firmly crossed fingers) to be very good boys and not engage in piracy in the Sudan anymore. No pirate alive listens.
1498: The Romanian Berenguer Marcès founds the Pernambuco wood trading post of Sant-Laurenç on the Vaçeu coast.
It's why I've got a bunch of internal lists.
