MotF 235: This Is Our Land

[Kaiphranos]

MotF 235: This Is Our Land

The Challenge

Make a map showing a native population which has survived contact with an invading force and become a nation.

The Restrictions

There are no restrictions on when the PoD of your map should be. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed.

If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me or comment in the main thread.
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Entries will end for this round when the voting thread is posted on Monday, May 17, 2021 (extended by a week).
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PLEASE KEEP ALL DISCUSSION ON THE CONTEST OR ITS ENTRIES TO THE MAIN THREAD.
Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread, you will be asked to delete the post.

Don't forget to vote on MotF 234!​

 

[Prince di Corsica]

Anderida, a pocket of Celts just to the south of London

Since the lore is included in the map (I just found my lore too fun not to include in the overall work), I'll just comment quickly how much fun I had working on this idea. It was like my third plan, which I stumbled unto after thinking of doing a more-generally Celtic Britain, a project I eventually abandoned in favour of this more controlled piece, but one that nevertheless seems more interesting, if only for its oddness.

And yes, the moment I thought of this idea, I imagined Tolkien would have to be involved. It was far from an afterthought. Having Robin Hood, the Lollards and the Diggers involved were just extra pleasures that I indulged in.

Anyway, I hope you like it, because it was an idea that enchanted me from the moment I thought it up.

​

 

[Kaiphranos]

Although archaeological evidence points to occasional contact with various peoples of the Mediterranean and North Africa, in our world the Canary Islands remained mostly isolated until the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, when they were invaded first by various adventurers and later by the Castilians. They ended up being an important stepping-stone in the Age of Exploration, particularly once the Americas were discovered.

In this world, things went a little differently: around 1380 a Genoese trader named Giacomo Fontarossa makes a trip to the islands, hoping to acquire some of the local dyestuffs. In the process of this, he comes in contact with the mencey (chief) Tinerfe of Adeje, who has been gradually conquering the island of Achinet. The two of them hit it off, and Fontarossa assists Tinerfe in his expansion in exchange for favorable trading rights.

Once all of Achinet is under control, Tinerfe begins further expanding his kingdom to the western islands. On Fontarossa’s advice, he converts to Christianity, and writes to the Pope, presenting himself as king of the islands and requesting missionaries to bring the new religion to his people. The Pope is somewhat bemused but agrees; the missionaries end up introducing many agricultural improvements as well. Various European would-be adventurers are co-opted by Tinerfe and his successors, or played off against one another. Some of them end up as part of the local nobility, but for the most part it is made up of previously independent chieftains like the dukes of Galdar and Telde - the island of Tamaran is the last to be incorporated into the kingdom - or descendants of Tinerfe. (Achinet is divided up among his children, but the ruler of Adeje remains the paramount mencey, and the western islands remain as royal possessions.)

As a relatively unified and nominally Christian polity, the Seven Isles of this world will not end up as a Spanish colony but as a trading partner with the kingdoms of Iberia and North Africa. There are long-term consequences as well, particularly in attitudes towards native states and rulers, which are more generally seen as equivalent to European ones. Both the King of Setigcett and the Manikongo are treated on par with European royalty, and when explorers reach the Western Hemisphere they will take their cues from those examples...

 

[RedBeret]

The year is 1000 AD, and against the forces of colonialism and foreign influence, Bùlièdiān (or "Britannia", to use their native tongue) stands strong and alone in Europe. The Empire of the Romans is but a vassal, the Empire of the Abbasids shattered into a dozen lesser kingdoms, all under the thumb of the Middle Kingdom. The Empire of the Franks has been brought to heel, and the other myriad kingdoms of Western Europe all brought under the domain of the mighty industrial powers of the east. For over two centuries now, the history of Europe has been a history of weak and technologically inferior powers coming under the political and economic domain of the colonial powers of Asia. Such has been the arc of history since the rise of the Xian Dynasty, since the Industrial Revolution of the 7th Century.

Only the fractured kingdoms of Britannia, of Bùlièdiān, stand free from this influence, or at least, as free as can be. As the Asian powers worked to extend their spheres of influence on the European continent, the isles of Britannia remained just out of reach. Yet they too were influenced in these days. The warring native kingdoms of Britain came to be avid customers of Xian traders, who could provide steel weapons and armour of unmatched quality, at remarkably cheap prices in considerable quantity. Those who had the chance and could afford to outfit their armies fastest became the new great powers of this age, rapidly accumulating and consolidating power. Gunpowder was rarer, but with it, fortifications could be destroyed with far greater ease than it took to construct them – there was little power in standing firm, using fortifications and defensive lines to bleed out the enemy. He who had the greatest army, won the day. Thus it was that, by the midpoint of the 9th Century, the six great kingdoms of Britannia had been formed, each large and powerful, yet none of them enough so to conquer the others.

That was, until Cuthbert the Great. Born in the Kingdom of Mercia around 854, the third son of his father, he would spent his youth touring Europe as a mercenary, hiring out to what were generally Asian colonial powers, or their local proxies. This would persist until 881, when Mercia collapsed into civil war – King Egbert, the eldest brother of Cuthbert, had died, and a dispute over whether Egbert's own son, Wilfred, or younger brother, Harold, should inherit had taken a turn for the worst. Into the fray entered Cuthbert: younger (and technically with a lesser claim) than either, but with an experienced and well-trained mercenary band behind him, and indeed an overall greater degree of grounding in tactics, not to mention genuine personal skill, it would be he who, in the year 883, was crowned king of Mercia.

Over the following 20 years, the Kingdom of Mercia would explode like a supernova over Britannia. Cuthbert was a man with experience and grounding in forms of organised warfare simply unknown in Britain at the time, even with the influx of Asian goods, and moreover, his various connections on the continent allowed him to call in favourable trade deals, aid, and of course the converse for his enemies. This was the time in which Mercia came into its own, dominant over not just a chunk of Britannia but the entire island, all six kingdoms at last united under one king.

And yet, it was also the time in which the island was most vulnerable to foreign takeover. Men like Cuthbert had existed in the past, ambitious pawns for eastern colonial powers to use, consolidating power under on figure, who the Asians could then take into their own fold – or replace with someone more favourable. And with Cuthbert, King of all Britannia at the dawn of the 10th century, it appeared as though it would be little different. In 906, the Xian Dynasty extended its arm of influence in requesting of Britannia tribute, just a request mind you. But the now-aging king knew these tactics, knew what they would come to. He had seen enough of colonial Europe to know where that path led. And so, he did something that none had expected: he refused.

None had expected the King of all Britannia to refuse. But what fewer still expected was the consequence of the punitive war that came shortly thereafter. The army sent by Xian was without question technologically superior, and they combined that with efforts to destabilise the situation within the Kingdom, taking on alliances and relations with his own vassals and relatives in exchange for offers of kingship, wealth, high-positions under colonial administration. Even as it was, it was a hard-fought war of over 10 years, but in the end, it was two key advantages that allowed Cuthbert to emerge victorious.

First, was how early the war took place. In most similar situations, by the time such actual conflicts emerged, they were more rebellions than wars, Asian influence having seeped for years upon years into their society and state. But here, the conflict emerged only a matter of years after full unification, and at a period wherein the Xian Dynasty had had little time to entrench itself into its enemy. Even they hadn't expected it to come, and hence their attempts at subverting Cuthbert were less effectual, and his own starting position stronger, in comparison to other similar situations.

The second was Cuthbert's own tactics. He saw well enough that a single, decisive victory against the invaders was impossible. What he used his skill and home-front advantage for instead was a protraction of the war, dragging the conflict out and bleeding away the forces of the Xian Dynasty. Oh they could've won eventually, drowned out the enemy with raw, brute force and numbers. But by its tenth year it was already proving a far longer and costlier war than envisioned, advantageous to no side. The Empire had other problems to face, and an island at the far-end of the world, more cost and trouble than it could possibly be worth, would simply have to go by the wayside. Over the 910s, they withdrew, and Cuthbert the Great emerged victorious.

Cuthbert would die in the year 923 AD, at the venerable age of 69 years old, and was succeeded by his son, Edmund. Though his father may have forged the Kingdom he ruled, it was the myriad reforms instituted by Edmund that turned it into the Bùlièdiān known today. The administration was reformed into a new form, quite ironically, based along the lines of the colonial powers of the east: an Imperial state, comprising six lesser kings, all under the sovereignty of the Emperor who ruled in London. More significantly however, the isle was placed under a strict system of isolation: no one entered the island, and no one left, the only singular exceptions to this rule being the trading towns of Pensans and Cair Colun. Britannia was an island true, locked away from the influence of external powers for good.

Still, though insular, in the year 1000 AD, the Empire remains a changed place. Its isolationist monarchs understood the threat that the colonial powers posed, and more importantly, understood the great power of their industry and technologies. The most obvious effect of this is in the railroads of Bùlièdiān, constructed with the aid of hired Chinese experts, under strict control and oversight. Where travel times for armies, messengers and noblemen between the political centres of the Empire could once have taken a week or more, now they could be traversed in but a single day, less even. Since the days of Cuthbert the Great, the power of the monarch in London has grown significantly as a result, the kingdom centralised on a scale not seen even in the days of the Romans. The regional capitals have grown, and trade towns spring up all along the railroad tracks to take advantage of the fast rate of travel they permit.

Will the Imperial State continue to progress, to enter into an era of industry and progress just as the powers of Asia have done? Its power is centralised yes, and its armies able to travel from one end of the isle to the other in a mere day, but though they may ride trains, they remain medieval armies, armed and outfitted with steel and chainmail. Towns grow along the rails, and yet it remains as a whole a rural island of farmers and peasants. The hierarchical system of feudalism has not faded, but if anything grown stronger with the ever-rising absolute will and power of its lords and kings.

But no matter what, where the rest of Europe has fallen under colonial rule, Britain persists. ​