Part 5 - Danger and Opportunity
“About seven P.M. on the 10th of April, three distinct columns of flame burst forth, near the top of Tomboro mountain, all of them apparently within the verge of the crater; and after ascending separately to a very great height, their tops united in the air in a troubled confused manner. In a short time the whole mountain next Saugar appeared like a body of liquid fire extending itself in every direction.
The fire and columns of flame continued to rage with unabated fury, until the darkness caused by the quantity of falling matter obscured it about eight P.M. Stones at the time fell very thick at Saugar; some of them as large as two fists, but generally not larger than walnuts. Between nine and ten P.M. ashes began to fall; and soon after a violent whirlwind ensued, which blew down nearly every house in the village of Saugar, carrying the tops and light parts along with it. In the parts of Saugar adjoining Tomboro, it’s effects were much more violent, tearing up by the roots the largest trees and carrying them into the air, together with men, houses, cattle, and whatever else came within it’s influence…”
An eyewitness account of the eruption of the Tambora volcano, as recorded in “Memoir of the life and public services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles” by Lady Sophia Raffles published in London, 1835.
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Perhaps the most important event in the early history of the Welsh colony happened, not in Britain or South America, but almost nine thousand miles away on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies.
The eruption of Mount Tambora is now recognised by geologists as being the most violent in recorded history. The sound of the explosion was heard on Sumatra, over 1,600 miles away, ash fell on Borneo over 800 miles away, and skies were pitch black for up to two days after the explosion up to 370 miles away. The human cost will never be known, but respectable estimates start at at least 10,000 immediate casualties and tens of thousands more in the aftermath from associated disease and starvation.
This is all very tragic, but the careful reader may well be asking by now what exactly this has to do with New Wales. The simple answer is that the effects, disastrous as they were, were not confined to the East Indies. In New England snow fell in June, and crops were destroyed by frosts in July; in China, rice harvests were either lost to frost or swept away by torrential floods caused by a disrupted monsoon; in India, the monsoon was both late and catastrophically heavy in scale, causing amongst other things an outbreak of cholera that would sweep as far as Moscow before burning out - the first time the disease had spread outside the Indian sub-continent.
And in Europe, crop failures followed by food riots spread across Germany, France and the United Kingdom, famine swept Ireland claiming 100,000 souls and in Wales agricultural families who had always lived close to starvation were forced off the land to wander the roads begging for food. The Welsh-American Company, which up to this point had found itself struggling to recruit colonists, was suddenly overwhelmed with desperate refugees begging for a way out.
The effort almost bankrupted the company. It’s wealthy backers were suffering themselves and in little mood to extend credit and the poverty stricken would-be colonists could rarely afford the full cost of their passage even when forced to sell everything. The colony itself was forced to make up the difference - shipments of leather and rhea feathers provided a trickle of income, and on two occasions the successful sale of a consignment of Patagonian grain on the Amsterdam market at a price of over £20 a ton allowed the company to pay off accumulated debts. By 1821 however as the climate began to recover over 3,500 colonists had been shipped to Patagonia and the Company was still just about afloat.
As for the colony itself, the growth in numbers forced it to make some drastic adjustments. The vision of the initial settlers - of an arcadian paradise in virgin land that barely needed government - did not survive the need to maintain order as population surged.
For the first couple of years the colony had been run on an informal basis via public meetings moderated by the Civil Administrator, who put his name to such formal decisions as needed to be made. As the Colony grew beyond a size where this was practical, John Evans called together a selection of trusted figures from across the colony to come together and draft a constitution that could put the government of a growing colony on a more formal basis. These worthies for the most part took their roles seriously and debated ideas from a variety of sources - the more traditionally minded of them looked towards English law, some of the more radically minded were impressed with the ideas of the French Revolution, some looked towards the United States for inspiration, and one antiquarian even proposed the colony adopt the Cyfraith Hywel in full with only such modifications as were needed for a modern age. The worthy gentlemen debated for over three months through the winter of 1818 and considered dozens of submissions from across the colony before promulgating a text (which had been printed on a press- the first in the Colony - acquired for the purpose) to be discussed in a series of Colony wide meetings to take place on November 22nd (so chosen because it was a Sunday and most of the Colonists would be at Chapel and could stay behind to discuss the draft).
When this process was completed with no major problems being identified, the Civil Administrator announced that the new Constitution would formally come into effect from January the 1st 1819. The main provisions of the new Constitution where -
The name of the Colony was confirmed as Cymru Newydd (New Wales).
Welsh was decreed the sole official language of the Colony.
The government of the Colony was to be vested in a Senedd with twelve members, elected at large by secret ballot. The Cadeirydd (Chairperson(1)) of the Senedd was ex-officio the Civil Administrator.
To qualify for the franchise, a potential voter had to be over 21 years of age, resident in the Colony continuously for at least one year and a head of household which was defined to mean someone who owned their own property and sufficient land or other assets to support their family and other dependents.(2)
While the constitution formally decreed New Wales to be a Christian nation, it also formally decreed that the state had no role to play in matters of theology or belief and therefore freedom of worship for all faiths was a matter of fundamental right.(3)
Because freedom of worship was impossible without freedom of speech, the constitution also decreed this to be a fundamental right.
A court system was set up. The right to trial by jury was guaranteed for all criminal cases.(4)
It was also announced that the first elections for the Senedd were to be held on March 1st 1819 (St David’s Day), to the surprise of no-one, the first 12 members were all veterans of the Constitutional Convention.
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Author’s notes:
(A grateful shout-out to Corditeman who reviewed this for me.)
The memoir quoted at the head of this section is an OTL publication available on the Gutenberg Archive.
Cyfraith Hywel - Law of Hywel, the native Welsh code of law as drafted in the 9th Century and used in some respects until the adoption of the Laws in Wales Acts in the reign of Henry VIII.
(1) Chairperson - not so much a matter of political correctness as an acknowledgement that in Welsh -ydd is a gender neutral suffix.
(2) The last two of these conditions in particular were pretty blatantly aimed at ensuring recent, landless immigrants did not vote.
(3) Though overwhelmingly protestant and non-conformist, there were many different flavours of non-conformism represented in the Chapels of the Colony, and one of the few things they all agreed on was that none of them wanted any of the others to be picked as “official”.
(4) The first important case the court settled on concerned the election, when two widows from an outlying region of the Colony presented themselves at a polling station and claimed the right to vote as heads of household. The presiding officer allowed them to cast votes, but stored their ballots separately while he requested a ruling as to whether they should be counted. The court ruled that it was not it’s role to add restrictions to the franchise above those defined in the constitution and ordered the votes to be counted.
And finally a plea for help - this has been probably the first post where OTL has been a hindrance rather than a help. I've read a summary of the constitution adopted by the OTL colonists in the 1860's, but unfortunately it reads like it was written by a Chartist (which it may well have been) - secret ballots, votes for women, annual elections, the lot - far too radical for the first quarter of the century. I've therefore had to wrack my brains somewhat to come up with something that would be more realistically progressive by the standards of the time. Any opinions as to whether I've hit the mark or suggestions as to changes that need to be made would be very welcome.