Remember, Remember, the Third of October...

[Mumby]

Eleuthera

One of the early problems with the British colonies in North America was in many cases their religious nature. While most of these religious settlers had come to the colonies to escape intolerance in the motherland, it wasn't long before they began imposing their own form of religious intolerance. This was most obvious in Massachusetts Bay, where the Puritan colonial order brutally imposed a form of theocratic government that didn't tolerate Britannicism or other Dissenter sectaries. In fact almost all the colonies with the exception of New Hampshire which was itself merely part of the wider colony of Maine, adopted some sort of religiously isolating legislation.

Obviously as many other colonists came due to economic interests rather than religious ones, it wasn't long before hopeful colonists began to consider alternatives. While tolerant, New Hampshire wasn't a wealthy colony, with little economic prospects in the short-term. Colonies like Nova Scotia and Christinia while more tolerant were still relatively restrictive and not open enough for these new colonial entrepreneurs.

But far to the south of the traditional British colonies were the new Caribbean colonies which had been reclaimed from Spain. These colonies were relatively empty, lacking European settlement and had been purged of natives by the Spanish. These colonies were already notorious for a freewheeling lifestyle, combining the indenture plantations and the piracy. A perfect place for these religious outcasts to plant themselves, first on Virgin Island, and then in the Bahamas.

The most important of these new settlements was Eleuthera named for the Greek word for freedom. This colony was founded by Neo-Dissenters from the New English colonies, who didn't agree with the theocratic disposition of the colonies and had set out to build a more tolerant culture. This long island soon became a hotspot for British colonisation. While it attracted planters, like any other British Caribbean colony, those in charge felt distinctly uncomfortable with the concept of unwaged labour, and drastically reduced the time that servants could be indentured for. Because of this, Eleuthera also became home to increasing numbers of slaves fleeing oppression.

Eleuthera's unique position as an ad hoc colony with no charter was rectified in 1639, when Emperor Charles officially sent a colonial charter to the colony. The charter essentially made Eleuthera the only official colony in the Bahamas and thus made it the centre of the colonial administration there. In time, power would shift to the larger islands and settlements but the legacy of Eleuthera's liberal foundation would always cling to the Bahamas.

 

[forget]

Thanks for the update Mumby.
The Caribbean even today is an interesting legacy of the Cromwell period.

 

[Unknown]

What was the death toll in Great Britain from the Triplicate Wars?

Good TL.

 

[Mumby]

What was the death toll in Great Britain from the Triplicate Wars?

Good TL.

To be honest, I haven't got a number at the moment. It is however, considerably higher than OTL's Wars of the Three Kingdoms, though most of the death toll occurred in England, with only some moderate fighting occurring in the Scottish Highlands, and very little fighting taking place in Ireland outside Ulster.

Thanks for the update Mumby.
The Caribbean even today is an interesting legacy of the Cromwell period.

Thanks for the encouragement.

 

[Mumby]

The Rise of Mazirin

Out of the Twenty Five Years War, a man emerged who would take his place at Richelieu and Louis XIII's side. France had devoted much of its war effort to fighting in the Rhineland, but later in the war, they became deeply involved in Italian affairs, battling ineffectually against a newly united and determined Spain. While Spain lost land to France, in Italy her generals performed well.

Mazarin was a Roman, sent by the Pope to treat between the two sides. He aquitted himself well, and managed to weight the results in favour of the French. The success of the legation despite the lack of success in the battles themselves impressed Richelieu and the King, who invited Mazarin to join them in Paris.

For the next few years, Mazarin would find himself drawn into the powerplays between Richelieu and the King's mother, between the Gallicans and the Catholics and it was here that his steel was forged. Mazarin was a skilled diplomat and was determined to become a cardinal, eager to serve both his new country and his church. While at first he sided with Richelieu in his arguments with the King over the position of the Church, in time, Mazarin would become a committed Gallican seeing that by nationalising Catholicism, the power of the Church as a political force could actually be increased.

The rise of Mazarin in the court of Louis, with patronage separate from Cardinal Richelieu, was secured by forging a powerful alliance with the Queen. Anne of Austria was a foreigner in Louis' court as was Mazarin, and the generous, diplomatic churchman struck a chord with the Queen.

Richelieu was moulding Mazarin into his heir as chief minister to the King, and as the 1630s came to an end, so the time of Richelieu and Louis XIII was beginning to wane...

 

[Mumby]

The centralisation of the domains of the Spanish Crown that took place in the 1630s came up against a big stumbling block in 1640. At the end of the Twenty Five Years War, a chunk of northern Catalonia had been ceded to France. This made Spain vulnerable as the great bulwark of the Pyrenees no longer stood squarely in front of any French invasion. Catalonia became heavily occupied by Castillian troops, who were quartered in Catalan homes. At the same time, Catalonia's autonomy was being drawn to Madrid, and this bred resentment in the homes of ordinary Catalan citizens.

The rebellion was bloody, fired with the words of God, Country, and King. Louis XIII considered an intervention, that some have speculated may have exacerbated the parlous state of affairs in the Spanish Empire at that time, have delivered all of Catalonia into French hands. But as it was, things took a turn for the farcical. A groups of particularly zealous Catalan patriots crossed the border into French Catalonia, with ambitions of liberating all of their motherland. The French reaction was brutal, and all hope of French assistance to the rebellion was cruelly reversed.

Instead, the French leaned their support to the Spanish authorities. The Catalan Revolt was crushed, and any hope of autonomy permanently relegated. A rebellion in Naples was nipped in the bud, and the rebellion used as an excuse to further centralise power into Madrid. But at the same time, Spain was sorely aware of how vulnerable it was in terms of which side France chose if there was another Catalan rebellion. So a measure of autonomy was granted to Aragon and Naples, though the two realms were treated as little more than extensions of Castille.

This era is known as the Spanish Crisis, as not only these main rebellions occurred. Revolts and rebellions occurred throughout the Spanish Empire for the next ten years, but the militarisation that Spain underwent in order to maintain itself prepared it well for the coming trials ahead. It is notable for a complete readjustment of power in the Spanish Empire, characterised by centralising power in Spain's European/Mediterranean territories, while granting more autonomy to its colonies outside its core.

 

[Mumby]

Louis XIII died in 1643, having laid the seeds for French domination of Western Europe. His son, Louis, was only five years old. Richelieu had died mere months before, and his appointed successor, Mazarin had yet to entirely solidify his control over the reigns of state. With the monarchy inexperienced, and central government weak, the nobles who had resented the centralisation of power into Louis XIII's hands but had remained quiet since he and Richelieu had exiled Marie de Medici had their chance to reclaim their lost rights.

Mazarin was struggling as a Rome-friendly foreigner to deal with the deeply Gallican church bureaucracy that Louis XIII had built to replace the largely noble bureaucracy that had gone before. When the Fronde began, it was by the Paris Parlement against the imposition of taxes which they saw as infringement on their traditional noble rights. It was not long before this simple refusal to cooperate began to form a coherent opposition with objectives of their own. In this first stage, Mazarin used the army forged under Louis XIII and his father to throttle the rebellion in its cradle. The ringleaders of the Parlement were placed under arrest, and Paris was put under martial law.

This latter was a poor decision, as it seemed to many provincial nobles that Mazarin had overstepped his duties and responsibilities and he was setting a dangerous precedent for tyrannical rule. Rebels fled Paris into the countryside where they stirred the nobles into rebellion against the Crown. The most radical called for re-ordering the Kingdom into a Republic along the lines of the ancient Romans. Mazarin and the young Louis XIV were spoken of as latter day Tarquinius Superbi, and the blood of France's aristocracy was up.

Mazarin commanded little loyalty from the French princelings, and relied on mercenary commanders from the Twenty Five Years War to command his armies, and on the commonfolk for support. On the other hand, he had the Church on his side.

This part of the Fronde can be divided into two phases. The first went poorly for Mazarin, and the princes looked to be in a commanding position. However, as Mazarin liberalised the ability of soldiers and officers to rise through the ranks, common born men of great skill rose to positions of authority, displacing aristocrats and mercenaries. In this final stage, Mazarin secured his position, using his army to crush dissent, purge the aristocracy, strip estates from those who particularly disloyal to God and King, and generally reshape France according to his vision. By 1649, he had centralised France as never before.

With most of France under martial law, and his commanders fiercely loyal to him, Mazarin had a chance that Louis XIII and Richelieu never had. The regional parlements were purged or abolished, and key powers centralised to Paris. Taxation was reordered and attempts to restart the Fronde were brutally crushed. With much of the central bureaucracy focussed on Paris and its environs, he turned several regional cities into small loci of central power. The church was elevated into a superior position to the aristocracy whose role primarily became an economic one, as they were the largest landowners.

Louis XIV was to inherit a state more centralised and absolute than that of his father, and with it he would achieve great things. But it would all have been impossible if the rebellion against him had been able to gain any great advantage in Paris early on and win over the Parisian mobs.

 

[Mumby]

The English Jamestown settlement had been founded shortly after the Conflagration, and in the chaos of the Triplicate Wars had been abandoned. The English settlers had been forced to rely on the Powhatan natives for survival. With access to superior weaponry and technology, and with several possessing knowledge of agriculture, the Powhatan Confederacy had centralised, around a new capitol focussed on the starfort built by the colonists. The smallpox had ravaged the population, but with Europeans distracted by war in Europe, the Powhatan had time to recover and build their strength. The European numbers had dwindled, but they had left their legacy in a small English-speaking community, an advanced warrior class, advanced agriculture, and a larger number of mixed youngsters. With superior technology and greater access to food than their neighbours, the Powhatan expanded their realm.

By the 1630s however, the war in Europe was over. And the Irish had sent settlers to Virginia. While this colony was ultimately left to rot, with resources sent to the Barbary Coast and India, as well the Caribbean colonies, that didn't stop Irish colonists travelling to the fishing communities of the Grand Banks, seeking fame and fortune. Poverty and overpopulation drove Irish conquerors onto the mainland, where they sought to carve out their own domains. This was the Golden Age of Virginia, and the colony reached its height as small groups of brutal men established themselves as god-kings over fearful natives.

In the early 1640s, these Irish conqueror-settlers met the Powhatan. Unlike the diseased, poorly nourished tribes they had previously encountered, the Powhatan were a centralised, advanced kingdom. But they didn't see that. All they saw was more riches for the taking, and a greater empire to rule as their own. Vernon Curthoys was different. He was a low officer within a battleband determined to conquer the Powhatan. After his superiors lead them into a series of poorly executed battles, he formulated his own plan.

This far from Ireland, the real power in the land were not the pitiful towns of the Grand Banks, or the Marcher Kingdoms of the Irish conquerors. The real power was the great city of the Powhatan. True glory could be seized by aligning with the Powhatan. While they had well-trained and brave warriors, the Powhatan lacked numbers, and a new wave of disease was wracking the population. Curthoys convinced his men of his plan, and deserted in the night. It was 1645.

He surrendered to the first Powhatan scout they could find, and demanded an audience with his superior. The scout was alarmed by the prospect of guiding three dozen heavily armed Irishmen into the interior of the Confederacy. But after Curthoys' men had handed over their weapons, they gained their audience. Curthoys explained his plan to the Powhatan officer. He and his band of men would travel amongst the demoralised Irish troops, spreading the word, organising a colossal mutiny. Overnight, vast quantities of soldiers would pledge loyalty to the Powhatan. With the Powhatan they would then march on the Irish colonies and their brutal buffer states. The Powhatan Confederacy would be vastly enlarged and the greatest threat to their existence neutralised.

The officer was uncertain of Curthoys' loyalty, after all he was a mercenary soldier, and a mutineer at that. So he took him and his soldiers all the way to the capitol of the Powhatan itself. Curthoys was presented before the Dark Majesty of the Freckled Queen herself. He presented his plan again, but she demanded a test of loyalty to her realm and her anointed son and heir. He and his men were deliberately exposed to smallpox. A bizarre development had occurred in Powhatan culture over the years. The Christian faith had been absorbed into Powhatan tribal beliefs and lead to a codified religion of which the Freckled Queen was head. Key amongst the tenets was a belief that smallpox was a test sent by the gods to the sinner. Those who survived proved their inner purity. While over half of Curthoys' men died, he was fortunate in that he had contracted cowpox as a child and so was a immune to smallpox. This small twist of fate put him within a trusted circle of the Freckled Queen's aides.

Carrying the banner of the Powhatan, Curthoys and his small band of men spread word amongst the rank and file of the Irish soldiers who were demoralised after fighting and losing against people they thought of as barely human savages. In a great mutiny, the officers of the Irish army were slaughtered. The Freckled Queen's son lead an army south and joined the army now lead by Curthoys. One by one, they invaded and squashed the Marcher Kingdoms, leading the oppressed tribes in a revolution against the brutal conquerors. Curthoys was careful to ensure that when the towns of Irish colonies were seized they were not treated too roughly. He had plans yet to complete, and they would be key.

The short-lived Irish experiment on the North American continent had been wiped out. And Curthoys was now master of those former colonies. Carefully, he placed his trusted lieutenants as head of the more loyal former Marcher Kingdoms, those he did not trust as heads of the more rebellious and bloodthirsty tribes, and put Powhatan men he needed to ally with over the Irish settlements. Slowly put surely, he was building a powerbase within a much enlarged and unstable Powhatan Confederacy. He encouraged the growth of a form of warrior cult, born out of the Powhatan faith and Catholic ideas.

The Freckled Queen was aging, but her son and heir was hot-headed and did not trust the scarred and ambitious Irishman. It would not be long before he would ascend the throne as King of all the Powhatan, and head of a greater realm than his grandfather could ever have dreamed of. He disliked the warrior cults which were emerging, believed they were heretical.

As the 1640s came to an end, Curthoys was ready to make his move. A move which would ensure his name in the history books. In 1649, the Freckled Queen, now simply Matoaka, died. Wahunsenacawh now took her place as King. The King's position was weak. The newly conquered territories remained restive, partly at Curthoys' connivance, as he used his influence to put disloyal commanders in positions where they were more likely to die. Wahunsenacawh moved to cripple Curthoys' position and secure the realm for himself. But Curthoys moved first. Calling up his army from the estates he had granted to them, along with natives loyal to him, he marched north. Importantly, he used the docks of the Grand Banks settlements that he had kept unmolested to transport soldiers on fishing boats to attack the Powhatan in their coreland.

The blood soaked warrior cults had drive and morale that the soldiers loyal to the King could not resist. The capitol was seized, and Wahunsenacawh imprisoned. For a time, Curthoys used him as a puppet king, but the nobles of the Powhatan were appalled by the weakness of a man who had inheritted a great empire and had been squashed overnight. They murdered the King in his sleep. Curthoys took this as an excuse to thoroughly purge the nobility of the Powhatan Confederacy. The idea that the Kingdom was a Confederacy became a fiction, and Curthoys became Regent and then King. To legitimise his rule, he married the niece of Matoaka. He set about completing his domination of the Powhatan by removing and executing the commanders of the restive regions, and conciliating those parts. In this way, he was seen less as a usurper and more as a peace bringer.

In time, the former Irish colonies would become well integrated into the Kingdom, but the Powhatan would become steadily Gaelicised, and the coronation of Vernon Curthoys would be only the start of a new era full of problems and troubles.

 

[LancyIain]

A powerful Gaelic-Native kingdom in North America? That's a very interesting development. I wonder how they will interact with the other people's of North America and the nations of Europe.

 

[Kolade]

The Gealic-Native Kingdom is a stroke of genius. Can't wait for the next update.

 

[Mumby]

A powerful Gaelic-Native kingdom in North America? That's a very interesting development. I wonder how they will interact with the other people's of North America and the nations of Europe.

The Gealic-Native Kingdom is a stroke of genius. Can't wait for the next update.

Thanks for the compliments. I'll just point out that while the Powhatan have had some successes, this doesn't necessarily mean that they will be a permanent feature of the North American continent. After all, their wars in the south will have distracted them from the more determined colonial effort being carried out by the Swedes just north of them.

 

[Kolade]

Thanks for the compliments. I'll just point out that while the Powhatan have had some successes, this doesn't necessarily mean that they will be a permanent feature of the North American continent. After all, their wars in the south will have distracted them from the more determined colonial effort being carried out by the Swedes just north of them.

Still the fact that an European power and a Native power cooperate is interesting. It should have benefitted the Irish in trade and knowledge of the area.

 

[Mumby]

Still the fact that an European power and a Native power cooperate is interesting. It should have benefitted the Irish in trade and knowledge of the area.

The Irish government didn't really co-operate with the Powhatan. Curthoys' rise to power is largely accidental, and not necessarily stable. The Irish simply don't have the strength to regain the Virginian colonies, and have more valuable colonies that they would rather concentrate on.

 

[Mumby]

Rebellion in Ottoman Europe

In the 1640s, a new phase of the Ottoman Reckoning began. The various Christian nations conquered by the Porte rose in rebellion. The Janissaries formed an alliance with these rebels, and began to secure Ottoman Europe for themselves. Meanwhile the Safavids were crumbling before the Uzbek-Mughal onslaught. There was the very real danger that Osman II would be able to join up with his brother in Anatolia and the Levant. For now the Safavids still held Mesopotamia, and with Constaninople ravaged by war, Murad had no way to link up with his allies in the East. Not only this, but a new Uzbek king came to the fore, a man who saw little profit in the collapse of the Safavids if it simply meant that the Mughals would have a doorway to Central Asia.

The northern khanates at this point sought to assert their independence from the Porte, and most obvious was the rebellion of the Cossack Hetmanate. The Cossacks, lead by Bohdan Khmelnytsky had been waiting for an opportunity to rebel for a long time. In the rebellion, they won over the Orthodox native aristocracy which had been subordinated to a foreign Turkish Muslim nobility. The rebellion also targetted the Jews who had been seen as enablers of the unpopular 'Turkish tyranny'. The Poles leaned support to this rebellion.

However it was at this point in 1649 that the turning point of the war came. The Poles while supporting the anti-Turk risings in the Turkish vassals were not supportive of the Jannissaries. The determination of the Janissaries to rule, the fact they were of military stock, and the foundations of a republic that they had built disturbed the monarchy of Poland. The power of the Sejm was what had caused the paralysis in Poland in the beginning, and the reforms carried out had been unpopular but necessary. If the Janissaries created a lasting state, their ideas could catch on amongst the resentful Polish aristocracy who had lost out to the growing merchant class, and lead to the Wurtemmburg monarchy losing another throne.

So the Poles with their Cossack allies came down on the side of Osman II and Murad, against the Janissaries. The rebels against Ottoman rule shifted their loyalty from the Janissaries to the Pole-Cossack army storming down into the Balkans. Rumania was united under a Polish-supported King, and the Bulgars founded a Principality. The Austrians got in and reclaimed former Hungarian territories.

Murad lead a newly trained army and retook Constantinople. He agreed a border with the Bulgars, then proceeded south and crushed the rebellions in Greece, Illyria and Serbia. The hardwon Caucasus vassals were secured but the Krimea was lost. The Uzbeks changed kings, again, and relaunched their invasion of Persia. With peace restored in the House of Osman, the Safavids were pushed out of Mesopotamia, and Persia was reduced to a rump dominated jointly the Ottomans, Uzbeks and Mughals.

The results of the end of the long term era of instability called the Reckoning is many. The Middle East was stabilised, as a newly centralised Ottoman Empire was reunified under a diarchy of Osman II and Murad IV. While they had lost their northern buffer states, they had gained control of the Caucasus mountains and ended the threat to the East. The Mughals had regained a door to Central Asia, and were nowing vying with the Khanate of Khiva who through their occupation of northern Persian provinces were now in the ascent as a great Central Asian power. In Europe, the Turks had been ended as a major threat to any of the capitols of the Great Powers, and Austria could now devote herself entirely to centralising the Holy Roman Empire around them. Most importantly was the expulsion of the Jews from the Cossack Hetmanate. They fled north to Poland, a country they were used to thinking of as friendly. But the country had grown anti-Semitic under their German kings, and so they were forced to find a new home, far from the Kievan lands of their birth...

 

[Mumby]

The British Radicals

British political thought in the aftermath of the Twenty Five Years War was radical by any traditional European standards. The efforts that the government went to to repair the damage of the war was extraordinary. The application of Baconian principles alongside this also radically altered the vision of the state. This had lead to a growing schism between Crown and Parliament as Charles and the imperial family wanted to use the new centralisation of power to secure more power under the throne, whereas Cromwell and Parliament wanted there to be strong safeguards on the limits of monarchical power.

But beyond this small zone of political argument which was essentially over who was in charge rather than over big philosophical questions, arguments were taking place between philosophers and ideologues from across the whole empire. One of the biggest contradictions of the new British order was how power had become arranged at the local level. Due to the decapitation of central government in the Conflagration, power had been seized by Justices and Lord Lieutenants in most cases. But in the East Midlands and the Southeast, these power brokers had been destroyed, and power had devolved to a parish level. Something similar had occurred in Wales, as power was stripped from locals and put in the hands of the Irish occuppiers.

The result was that power was arranged very differently in different parts of Britain. As this mess was sorted out, new people found themselves in positions of power, and old people were summarily removed. New ideas and excitement abounded, as well as bitterness and jealousy and in this atmosphere, along with the growth of education, learning and academic thought, philosophy enjoyed a massive revival.

While those in power in central government were mostly concerned with where power lied, the thinkers on a more local level, were thinking about the nature of power and where it ought to lie. Most of this talk was reasonably conservative, as power was resolidified along county lines. Many wanted power to be liberated from central government and taken back to a local level. The largest and best known group were the Communites, the heirs to the Communes set up in the East Midlands in the early stage of the War of the English Succession. The believed power should exist on a local level with minimal oversight from central government. The more extreme believed all land ought to be held in common, and though a lot of land had been made common, they disagreed with the Lord High Commissioner's policy of taking land from old Elizabethans and then giving it to those loyal to him.

The Communites were part of a larger and disparate movement known as the British Radicals. Many of the groups had little in common except their common belief that power in society was structured wrongly and ought to be radically rearranged. The Communites wanted power to be taken to a local level. Others wanted to centralise all power to the new capitol of York, as far as was possible. Some wanted to open up the franchise to more people. Others wanted to return the monarchy to the status of an absolute monarchy, or enlightened despot. Some wanted to separate church and state. Others wanted to unite the two implicitly.

Some were successful, others fell by the wayside. Cromwell had secured his power base extraordinarily successfully. While he was willing to listen to this new generation of philosophers and thinkers that his policies had bred, they would only cling to power with his say so. Notably, the radicals he most sympathised with were those who wanted to centralise power, but maintain some form of elected government at local and central levels. Ultimately, he sympathised with moderates.

The writings of the British Radicals would prove deeply influential, forming the basis of many ideologies, which would come to change the face of Europe and the world.

 

[Mumby]

Before the Ottoman Reckoning and the Persian War in which the Safavids were broken and essentially divided between the Turks, Moghuls and Uzbeks, the Persians had planned a campaign into Central Asia. The back and forth war over Mesopotamia wasn't going anywhere fast, and the Safavids felt they could win back some prestige if they attempted to emulate the successes of the Timurids of old. They had a willing collaborator in this planned conquest of Central Asia in the form of the Muscovites. With access to the Baltic and the Black Seas no longer a possibility, the Muscovites looked to Central Asia as a possible outlet for expansion. With the fall of Persia, Muscovy's planned division of Central Asia fell apart.

However, new possibilities arose in the aftermath of the Persian War. The Moghuls had conquered Balochistan, and their eyes had been drawn northwards. They planned to do what the Safavids had failed to do, and emulate their dynasty's founder Babur and conquer Central Asia. Their erstwhile ally, the Kokand Khanate stood in their path. Their successes in the Persian War had made them the dominant Central Asian power. A three way contest for power in Central Asia had begun.

But the Uzbeks had less ability to digest their conquests, and unlike the Muscovites and Moghuls, they could not negotiate with one side or the other to maintain power. Both powers could only gain by dividing the Uzbek Empire between them, and with that the rest of Central Asia. However, neither power had the strength or resources at this time to launch a campaign into Central Asia. Muscovy was dealing with rebellions in her Caucasus territories, and spillover from the war in the Cossack Hetmanate. The Moghuls were still digesting their winnings from the Persian War and solidifying her position in the Persian court, hoping to ultimately expel Uzbek influence from the Shahdom and use Persia as a proxy to help fight its war against Kokand in the future.

So while the 1640s were broadly peaceful in Central Asia, it was but the calm before the storm...

 

[Mumby]

The Moghul conquests in the Persian Gulf, and her designs on Central Asia, lead to a certain amount of distraction from any further plans to extend her empire in India. This came at a bad time. Under Akbar the Great, the Moghuls had expanded massively across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, extending into Bengal and Assam. Hindus and Sikhs shifted uneasily under the avowedly Islamic Moghul Empire. To the south was a string of paranoid Hindu principalities, who began to move towards forming a united front against any future Moghul expansion. They weren't to know that the eyes of the Moghul Dynasty had turned northwards and westwards towards Persia and Samarkand.

As well as the independent Indian states marshalling against the Moghuls, the threat of Europeans was growing. While they predominantly traded with the weaker, smaller Indian states in the south, or built their trading factories in the East Indies, the Portuguese, Dutch and Irish maintained large factories on Moghul land, and their influence was growing. While the Portuguese were removed with ease from Bengal, Shah Jahan did not wish to antagonise the white traders any more than was necessary, not wanting war with Europeans to distract from is plans for Central Asia.

 

[Alternate History Geek]

Map please?

 

[Mumby]

Ask, and ye shall receive...

 

[Mumby]

The Covenant Chain was a series of treaties established between the Dutch settlers of the New Netherlands, and the Irokez, the natives who dominated the colonies. The New Netherlands was where most of the prospective settlers of the United Provinces ended up, the early 1630s had seen not only the United Provinces secure its own survival, but explode across the planet, laying seeds everywhere from North America to India. While this was where most settlers ended up, the Dutch were spread thin, and unlike the British who concentrated their efforts almost exclusively in the Atlantic, the Dutch had serious shortages of settlers, particularly as the Dutch had suffered little war damage from the Twenty Five Years War.

The Dutch settlements relied on the Irokez for supplies. The few wars they fought with them resulted in loss of life that the small colony could not withstand. Unlike the British settlements in New England who could afford to squash most tribes, the Dutch were forced to co-operate. The Covenant Chain was the start of the real success of the New Netherlands, and had a massive influence in the United Provinces herself. The Irokez's own constitution was combined with ideas from the Dutch themselves, and formed the foundation of a republican constitution. The Dutch were primarily traders, but found that the Irokez were a vital ally in expanding their influence into the interior of the continent. Essentially, the Irokez wars of conquest would be aided and abetted by the Dutch, who of course got a cut of the deal by building trading posts on Irokez land. Over time, the Irokez policy of assimilating conquered tribes to replace comrades lost through war and disease, along with the ongoing waves of Dutch migration would turn the New Netherlands into a stable, hybrid colony.

The republican ideas growing in the New Netherlands soon reached the Old Netherlands. The relatively democratic ideals of the Irokez appealed to the liberal thinkers of the time, who shifted uneasily under the powerful Orange dynasty of stadhouders. Politics in the nation increasingly divided between the republicans, known as the Chainmen (after the Covenant Chain which was their inspiration), and the supporters of the stadhouder, known as the Orangists.