The Story that Set on the Moonlit Shores, a Polynesian Timeline

This seems reasonable - even if the jade-for-rice trade gives the alliance a new lease on life in the west, it will still die out in the places that don't have jade and aren't suited to rice culture. There might be much more of a difference between the western and eastern Pacific IOTL and even between the western and eastern Polynesian cultures, with Aotearoa, Tonga and probably Samoa developing in tandem with Fiji and Micronesia (I'd expect that Fiji, as well as Pohnpei and Guam, will also develop rice culture) while the Society Islands, Hawaii and other eastern cultures will remain "purer."

Will the Tongan Empire still be called that now that the royal family is on Aotearoa? Will the Tongan islands themselves be content under the rule of a royal family that lives elsewhere? Maybe some of those assassinations will take place closer to home than Lau or Futuna.

Also, has contact with the Philippines, and indirectly with China, resulted in any epidemics in the western Pacific? If some Eurasian diseases burn through parts of Polynesia in the 14th century, they'll be in a much stronger position when Europeans make contact.
 
Okay, this post will be split into two parts.

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The first part:

Apologies for not answering these questions and addressing the comments earlier, but here:

This seems reasonable - even if the jade-for-rice trade gives the alliance a new lease on life in the west, it will still die out in the places that don't have jade and aren't suited to rice culture. There might be much more of a difference between the western and eastern Pacific IOTL and even between the western and eastern Polynesian cultures, with Aotearoa, Tonga and probably Samoa developing in tandem with Fiji and Micronesia (I'd expect that Fiji, as well as Pohnpei and Guam, will also develop rice culture) while the Society Islands, Hawaii and other eastern cultures will remain "purer."

I would like to point out that Guam did have their own rice culture, though it was primarily as a luxury good, presumably due to the higher labour cost or something. But other than that, it seems fine. I haven't actually thought that far yet.

Will the Tongan Empire still be called that now that the royal family is on Aotearoa? Will the Tongan islands themselves be content under the rule of a royal family that lives elsewhere? Maybe some of those assassinations will take place closer to home than Lau or Futuna.

The first two questions will be answered in this post, but the assassinations I believe did not take place in Lau or Futuna, since this is the Tu'i Tonga we are talking about. The assassins were merely from these islands; the actual assassinations occurred on Tongatapu itself.

Also, has contact with the Philippines, and indirectly with China, resulted in any epidemics in the western Pacific? If some Eurasian diseases burn through parts of Polynesia in the 14th century, they'll be in a much stronger position when Europeans make contact.

That will be answered in a future post, since a couple of details will need to be sorted out, but yes. I believe there will be various epidemics, since that generally happens when two cultures meet for the first time.

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Second part:

Part five

The breakup part two dated about 1351 to 1366 CE


Si’i pe kae hā.​


-Tongan proverb[1]​


Far Eastern Ocean


By this time, the central island of the Friendly Alliance, Hawaiki, had already lost contact with various fringe islands such as Nga Pito o te Fenua and Hawaiki-roa, and it was in the process of losing contact with Aotearoa. The trade network was built solely on the transfer of obsidian and other rocks to various islands for fashioning into stone tools and the good will of the people, so when the inevitable decrease in the need for this material occurred, the essentially self-sufficient communities would then stop their inter-island travel, and then soon lose their knowledge of building their ocean-going waka and navigating the open ocean.


From this, it is not surprising that the Friendly Alliance was going to collapse; if the Alliance did not collapse from the discovery of the western civilisations, it would have collapsed by some other means. What was surprising was the degree of inter-island contact post-discovery. In fact, the Alliance’s post-collapse influence was so great that, even today, the Chinese word for the people that comprised the alliance’s former territory, 橃, or fá, was named not for the waka that they sailed with, but for the first syllable of the phrase Fakatau Aroha.


Even so, it would not suffice to talk about the Alliance as a whole after this point, so here is a summary of the effects of the Discovery of the West on the former Alliance’s constituent islands, as well as other islands with a dominant Duebarche population.


Ngapito


From the Incident, the Ngapito were left alone to deal with its rapidly decreasing resources, splitting off into two tribes. There was also a change in religion as the belief in Tangaroa waned and the belief in his contemporary, Makemake, grew.


Rarotonga


Presiding over an archipelago that essentially was half Tonga and half Tahiti, Rarotonga and its neighbours seemed to be the perfect mediator between the two great ocean powers. The representative of Te Ao-uri had hailed from Rarotonga when the Alliance still functioned, and even now, trade to and from Tahiti was required to go through this almost insignificant island for safety reasons. It was from this symbolic chokepoint that Rarotonga would soon become one of the richer islands in the Far Eastern Ocean.


Rotuma


As one of the two islands that began the Fakatau Aroha, Rotuma was admired greatly by the people of Hawaiki. However, like its admirer, it soon became a backwater island in the Tongan Empire. This was an island where people were born to leave, with nothing of note happening here. Rotuma had their own chiefs, and were generally left alone by the Tongans.


Samoa


After the people of Savai’i and ‘Upolu ousted the Tu’i Tonga from the islands, Tonga still maintained fairly good relations with them. That is, until Takalaua decided to conquer the islands, starting with ‘Upolu. Of course, under the control of the malietoa, the people of ‘Upolu repelled the invasion, and the Tongans were repulsed once again. From this victory, the Malietoa, in order to increase his legitimacy among the other chiefs, Tu’i Atua and Tu’i A’ana, decided to invade their attempted invaders, organising an invasion party en route to the island of Tongatapu.


As the Tu’i Tonga moved his palace to Aotearoa, Tongatapu was pretty much easy pickings for the invading party, with only the unnaturally bloodthirsty governor, Kau’ulufonua [2], putting much of a fight. Now the ruler of the original capital, Mu’a, the Malietoa proclaimed himself the Tu’i Tonga, though the Tongans in Aotearoa would soon call them Tu’i Kanokupolu [3].


Tahiti


Due to its relatively large size, the island of Tahiti was split into various territories headed by ariki, or chiefs. However, even with this fundamental division, the influence of Tahiti had grown enough that before the disintegration of the Fakatau Aroha, the island was considered the counterpart to the Tongan Empire. However, when the Fakatau Aroha did dissolve, Tahiti lost its prominence, due to its distance from the Duebarche’s trading partners.


Tahiti’s main exports was the pearl.


Tokelau


As a set of three related atolls in the middle of nowhere, Tokelau was most definitely not noticed by any of the main powers of the Far Eastern Ocean, except possibly as route between Tonga and Tahiti. This would have made Tokelau fairly rich due to the increased traffic, but all that extra food and items go immediately into the survival of the population.


Tonga


As arguably one of the most powerful islands on the Far Eastern Ocean, Tonga’s realm of direct influence ranged from Rotuma in the west to Niue in the east at its greatest extent in 1351.[4] Soon after contact with China and its tributaries, however, life in the empire became more chaotic. In an effort to increase their own prestige among the rest of the ocean, the then-current Tu’i Tonga, or chief, Takalaua, ordered for the creation of rice farms on the biggest islands within the empire, where land was not at a premium: nowhere. Though Rotuma and Tongatapu were fairly large by Tonga’s standards, the land was not enough for the creation of the rice fields ordered.


So, after executing all those who failed him, Tu’i Tonga Takalaua organised an invasion party to retake the recently independent Samoa, after his ancestor, Tu’i Tonga Talakaifaiki, lost it in his old age. Unfortunately, the gift of gunpowder had not truly arrived on the Tongan shores, mostly because of the slightly undeveloped nature of those weapons. This meant that, after over a year of fighting, Takalaua withdrew his forces and forced him to find new lands to plant his precious rice.


Takalaua did not give up in his folly, however. He got his explorers to find a new land for him to plant his rice, and when they did find a plentiful land in the south, Takalaua moved the capital and his palace to that new southern land. Unbeknownst to him, the new land that Takalaua would settle was also Aotearoa.


Tuvalu


The eight islands of Tuvalu were very important for the discovery of the world west of the islands of Tonga, being the western frontier of the Empire. It was because of Tuvalu that Tarawa and Nan Madol were discovered by the Fakatau Aroha, and it was because of Tuvalu that there were Duebarche populations in


Wa’ab (Yap)


The Western concept of using a third-party item to simplify trade was not new to the island of Wa’ab, as they have used large stone circles, known as rai stones, in their transactions. However, since these people had no writing at all, these transactions were recorded in oral history. Also, since these rai stones soon became too large to carry around comfortably, these transaction were also only performed like so:


Person A: I would like to trade your stuff for my rai stone that fell in the sea because the sailors crashed or something.

Person B: Alright. The ownership of the rai stone in the sea has now transferred to me. Here’s the stuff.


Ultimately, when the idea of currency was introduced to the rest of the Far Eastern Ocean, it would be attributed to the people of Wa’ab.


Wahipounamu


The Turehu, or Waitaha, nominally controls the entirety of the island, and that was what they told the Westerners. However, in reality, the Waitaha control reached only the East Coast, where most people lived, as well as small pockets of the West Coast, where various rocks, such as nephrite jade, were being mined.


Due to the practically impassable nature of Raukawa, all those seeking to go between the east and west coasts had to go through the actual land of the Turehu. That was what the northerners called themselves possibly as a sign of solidarity with their southern cousins. The Waitaha were having none of it. Sure, they needed the Turehu’s services for a safe travel, but that did not mean that the Waitaha had to be friends with them.


[1] This is actual OTL Tongan proverb, again killing some butterflies. It means roughly: Though our island is small, we are still great.


[2] Kau’ulufonua (the First) IOTL was the Tu’i Tonga that succeeded Takalaua after his successful assassination that was unsuccessful here. It was said that he chased the assassins in an inter-island chase, before killing them on Mu’a after arresting them on ‘Uvea or Futuna.


[3] This IOTL was the name of the third and current Tongan dynasty, and means Flesh of ‘Upolu. This was so named IOTL because a Tongan noble married a Samoan woman.


[4] This is assuming that there were about three Tu’i Tonga every hundred years instead of four, as is current thinking.
 
So the Tongan islands are now ruled by Samoa, and the Tongan empire has relocated entirely to the North Island (ironic given what "Tonga" means in Maori). The Tongans may actually have more room to grow on Aotearoa than in their former home islands, though it's strange to think of Tonga becoming a primarily land-based empire.

I'd imagine that the peoples of western Polynesia are learning of Chinese coins (which were known in the Philippines at the time) at much the same time they learn of the Yapese rai stones. I wonder what they'd make of the fact that both have holes in the center - maybe this would make the Chinese coins more recognizable as money, and there might be a distinction between sacred money and trade money.

Also, might islands like Rotuma retain religious significance despite being economic and political backwaters?
 
So the Tongan islands are now ruled by Samoa, and the Tongan empire has relocated entirely to the North Island (ironic given what "Tonga" means in Maori). The Tongans may actually have more room to grow on Aotearoa than in their former home islands, though it's strange to think of Tonga becoming a primarily land-based empire.

Though this is what happens in practice, what the people think is kind of different. What happened is that the administrative centre of the Tongan Empire was moved from Mu'a to *The Bay of Islands. The malietoa, since it was not as recognised as Tu'i A'ana and the other main chief of 'Upolu, decide to conquer Tongatapu both as revenge and as a way to increase legitimacy in the eyes of the other chiefs. The rest of the Tongan Empire, being closer to Tongatapu than *The Bay of Islands, would still give tributes to Tongatapu, making it seem like the malietoa had control of the Tongan Empire. However, the Empire centred in Aotearoa still maintains that they are the true Tu'i Tonga, while they call the Tongatapu government Tu'i Kanokupolu.

The Tongatapu government calls themselves Tu'i Tonga and the government in Aotearoa Tu'i Turehu. Samoa does not actually have control of Tongatapu; the only connection with Samoa was that the malietoa was Samoan, so Tongatapu began to have more Samoan elements.

I'd imagine that the peoples of western Polynesia are learning of Chinese coins (which were known in the Philippines at the time) at much the same time they learn of the Yapese rai stones. I wonder what they'd make of the fact that both have holes in the center - maybe this would make the Chinese coins more recognizable as money, and there might be a distinction between sacred money and trade money.

This most likely would happen, though not for a while, since there was no metal yet discovered by the *Polynesians. I'm going to build on the belief that they would start with the rai stones because, despite their large size, they were easier to create than metal discs and small stones were easily manufactured. However, they would come to realise that rai stones could be used for everyday exchanges as well as the big ones. When someone discovers metal, preaumably in Te Wahipounamu, since that was where the Gold Rush occurred IOTL, metal coins would soon become the norm as well.

Also, might islands like Rotuma retain religious significance despite being economic and political backwaters?

Rotuma would only hold about the same amount of religious significance as the Tahitian legend would imply: it was the other member of the Fakatau Aroha, but no one really cares about it outside of that.

Please correct me on any of this, anyone.
 
The Chinese connection of the Philippines would be on Southern Luzon and Sulu, the Polynesians need to access those markets..

They can also trade Nutmeg and Spices..
 
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Apologies for the late post, but I've been moving. Here is my first foray into actual history, so please say something if something makes no sense.

***

Part six

The breakup part three dated about 1351 to 1366 CE


广交友,无深交​


—Chinese proverb [1]​


The following is a summary of the effects on the non-Duebarche populations, since what are the Duebarche to interact but with other people?


China


These were the last days for the Yuan Dynasty, and Toghon Timur knew it. The lands were experiencing some economic difficulties, as the farmers had not been able grow as much food as they were in prior years. Members of the White Lotus had been organising rebellions for about twenty years, and it all coming to a head with what some call the Red Turban Rebellions.


This, however, did not stop the Chinese exports from being any less valuable to outsiders, nor did it stop the Chinese merchants from being discerning about who they were selling their goods to. In fact, the merchants seemed to be more discerning about that, especially due to their foreign rulers. This is not so prevalent in the overland trade routes, as none of the major players in this trade route have changed, and none of them seemed particularly Han enough for their ethnicity.


This was not the case for the less prominent maritime trade, if only due to the introduction of the Duebarche peoples. The Chinese, by this time, placed much importance on jade, believing it was a sign of prosperity and good fortune. The Chinese merchants had therefore associated traders with jade in their possession with reliability and good practice, and would then conduct more business with them. It also helped that these people were generally Chinese, since the state of China did not generally import or export jade.


Cebu


The first people to encounter the Duebarche, they were also their main traders. This was for a few reasons. The first was that the Rajahnate of Cebu was the first state to encounter the Duebarche, so they would have fairly good relations with the newcomers due to the established familiarity that comes with this. The second reason was more racial in nature; the people of Cebu looked remarkably like the Duebarche except with a shorter stature. This also contributed to the familiarity between the two peoples, as well as granting them near exclusive trading relations with the Duebarche due to the fact that most merchants that frequented the lands southeast of China did not look particularly like the Duebarche.


This was an advantage for the Rajahnate of Cebu, because, other than the Chinese, the Duebarche seemed to be the only providers of jade, albeit of the softer variety. This meant that the Rajahnate’s citizens could enjoy better business with the Chinese, which meant that more goods get shipped to the Rajahnate and fewer would get traded with its rivals.


Cusco


Most likely the only growers of the makihakiha [potato] in the world, the people of Cusco were isolated from the rest of the world, with the only outside contact coming from the near north and the surrounding areas. By this time, the Sapa Inka had already begun expanding Cusco’s influence beyond the valley in which it was founded, and it seemed that there was no end to the rampage in sight, as the Chanca fell to Cusco. However, the conquests of Cusco would not stop there.


Europe, rest of


Like Venice, the Mamluk Sultanate and the Roman Empire, this region of the world was plagued by the Black Death in the early 1350’s, with about 70% of the population dying from this plague. However, this did not seem to stop the nobles from doing what nobles did: becoming more powerful and not caring about the populace. They were also at the edge of the trade network that spanned the entire continent, so most of what occurred in the East barely affected the day to day business of these states. Sure, the price of spices, such as pepper, became more expensive due to decreased traffic in the Indian Ocean, but the prices had always been prohibitively expensive that the only people that could have been affected were the rich.



Mamluk Sultanate


The peasantry of the Sultanate was in the process of succumbing to the Black Death in the beginning of this period, with multiple outbreaks occurring during this time. However, like most places, despite the high death toll, trade went on as usual, with many luxury goods being transported through the empire, like spices from the east, and decorative vases from the west.


However, with the arrival of the Duebarche, and the subsequent monopoly on Chinese goods by the Rajahnate of Cebu, business had declined somewhat. With less business, there came to be less money for the merchants. Poorer merchants meant that the Sultanate got less taxes. This was not good, to say the least.


Thankfully, out in the east, there were rumours of a group of Duebarche on their southern outskirts who never really liked the other Duebarche. And so it came to be, 767 years after Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Medina, the Mamluk Sultan ordered an expedition to the east.


Byzantine (Roman) Empire


It was well know that the Roman Empire was on its deathbed, having only reclaimed its capital, Constantinople from invaders. However, after this reclamation, the empire soon faced many troubles from Bulgaria to west as well as from the Ottomans in the east. Soon, the empire became nothing more than a glorified city-state centred around its capital Constantinople. However, due to its location at the chokepoint between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, the Empire was still a power to contend with, even if that power was weak and corrupt.


Majapahit Empire


By this time, the Majapahit Empire has just reached what seemed to be its greatest extent, with its influence ranging from Sumatra in the west to Makassar in the east. Even the Kingdom of Tondo in the north was subjected to the empire’s power. This state of affairs was how the empire was able to accumulate more wealth.


See, the main ethnicity of the empire’s holdings was quite similar to those of the Rajahnate of Cebu, which meant that the Duebarche soon became well acquainted with the citizens of the empire. This meant that the Majapahit Empire would also gain the same advantages as the Rajahnate of Cebu and other kingdoms in that feneral vicinity.


Maya


The Maya had since experienced a decline over three hundred years prior to this moment, and by this time, Maya cities rose from their ashes, with the most prominent being the great city of Mayapan. Each city would act as if they were city-states, and they would initiate a trade network between these cities, spanning from one ocean to another.


Venetian Republic


The Republic of Venice generally had amicable relations with the main seabound entrance to the Mediterranean, the Mamluk Sultanate. This meant that most seabound trade went through Venice, which meant that this Republic became fairly wealthy. However, the Mamluk Sultanate’s poor business in recent years meant that less money had come through into the Venetian economy. This meant that, even with a decreased population, fewer people had enough surplus money for the purchase of luxury goods.


Genoese Republic


Genoa, through its conquest of Kaffa, seemed to have a monopoly on the so-called Silk Road, since almost all trade with Europe over the much safer Mongol-ruled lands was conducted there. This monopoly would soon change with the collapse of the Mongol empire. It was most likely through here that the Black Death spread to the rest of Europe.


[1] Means “friend to everyone, friend to no one.”
 
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