Pecari rex, Equus regina: American Domesticates 3.0

[sarapen]

That justification does not apply yet. Whether or not Japan will close off or become a major player is actually an open question for me at this point (right now, there's a lot of Japanese sailors and mercenaries running around internationally, but they serve foreign masters). ITTL, Oda Nabunaga succeeded in bringing order to Japan, right after European contact with the greater world ended. The Japanese authorities have had time to bring political order into the country, and may not feel threatened by conversions ITTL. In fact, the Shogunate may like having a faction of citizenry who will ignore the rabble-rousing Buddhist priests and don't consider the Emperor a living god. However, fear of Christians acting as a 5th column for European colonizers still exists.

And of course not every threat is about the Europeans. The Dun and second Yuan are both potential threats to Japan. Now that the main source of Columbian silver has disappeared, Japan is the largest producer of silver in the world. We may see a version of Sakoku which sees the Chinese barred and the Portuguese and Spanish welcomed into Japan.

I see. It's been 200 years since unification, though, which is quite a while for a country with large numbers of armed men sitting around to be quiet on the international front. Did the Japanese get their asses kicked in Korea like OTL or are they stuck in a guerrilla war with the Taiwanese natives or something?

Also, in your decision on whether or how sakoku will be implemented in your timeline, you should consider that the other major reason maritime isolationism was enacted was because there were many daimyos who made beaucoup bucks in international trade and the shogunate wanted to erode the daimyos' power base.

 

[twovultures]

I should have written in to mention this before, but I really like your work. I don't really have anything constructive to offer at this point. Just appreciation. I hope that you keep on with this.

Thanks DValdron, that means a lot to me

I see. It's been 200 years since unification, though, which is quite a while for a country with large numbers of armed men sitting around to be quiet on the international front. Did the Japanese get their asses kicked in Korea like OTL or are they stuck in a guerrilla war with the Taiwanese natives or something?

I think I'll find something for them to have been doing between the plagues and the upcoming deflation crisis. After the deflation crisis, they should have more opportunities to get busy given that both Chinas will be weakened.

 

[twovultures]

While the War Raged: The Columbias during the Spanish War of Succession

Multiple major changes occurred in the Columbias while the Spanish war of Succession raged. While the flow of European trade slowed, Tlatokan picked up the pace of its modernization as it created an imperial coast guard to patrol its shores. Modern Tlatokans consider the use of the term “coastguard” a pejorative by the Old World civilizations which denigrates the maritime power that their empire created under the nose of the colonialist powers. The other nations of the Columbias tend to agree with the European claims that the Tlatokan did not have a true navy. The boats they had were modeled off of European and Chinese ones, but they did not have enough to match the naval strength of the Old World countries in contact with them and generally simply kept to the Empire’s territorial waters, with sailors and merchants working on or chartering European owned boats to go further afield.

Whether or not their boats counted as navy or not is perhaps beside the point, since they did do what they were supposed to: control Tlatokan’s ocean borders. Shortly after the War of Spanish Succession, Chinese and European ships found themselves being blockaded in harbors and forced to pay taxes on all “wealth of the earth”-jade, silver, gold and even copper-that they traded. Tlatokan may not have ruled the waves but the balance of power between it and the foreigners visiting it in the realm of trade was shifting firmly towards Tlatokan, which successfully slowed the rate at which specie left its borders.

The Irons would build the New World’s first printing presses, using designs acquired from European Jewish traders. The result was quite unique-printing done entirely outside the context of European power, but still in contact with it. Most of the printing press’ work was turned internally, creating farmer’s almanacs, religious tracts, and entertaining stories. Some, however, was created for outside eyes-calls for a full reform of the Irinakhoiw religion in all places that it was practiced, and a total overthrow of the old order. Other calls railed against the threat of Christian missionaries, often depicting European clergy in a manner that Europeans (and not a few Irinakhoiw) would deem obscene. Rumors that these pamphlets were promoted or financed by the Jewish merchants living among the Ironborn triggered pogroms in Atlantic Europe, driving many Jews eastward to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Most internationally significant was the closure of the Pachayep kingdom due to its greatest mine (OTL's Potosi) running out of silver. It is entirely possible that the mine could have been further exploited had the Pachayep used mercury to refine the remaining silver deposits, but the royal court feared that this lethal method would cause a revolt among the mit’a workers sent in by tributary states and would poison their own citizens.

They could have exploited other nearby silver mines, but they had used all their manpower that wasn’t in the large mine to work on the kingdom’s defenses-a long history of being pushed around by a more powerful empire had made the elites of the kingdom very paranoid, and they sought to create great fortifications for their kingdom.

They could have continued to allow trade, but they were fearful of the intentions of Christian missionaries, the behavior of Christian merchants, and perhaps most surprisingly were being given reason to close off the country by a foreign religious movement.

Tlatokan sailors had increasingly found employment on European and Chinese boats involved in the silver trade, and they had introduced the cult of Tonantzin to the Pachayep people. The commoners eagerly embraced this religion, seeing the goddess as an incarnation of their own Pachamama. The movement demanded a greater redistribution of wealth to the commoners from the nobility, and part and parcel with these demands were xenophobic cries to end trade with the foreigners that were taking the country’s wealth, when the citizens deserved it more. With silver running out, the government was willing to listen.

In 1706 AD, the Pachayep expelled all Catholic clergy. The priests who were kicked out moved to San Francisco or the far eastern colonies of Britain and Portugal, where communication problems caused by war resulted in their messages failing to reach the ears of the Pope and the European monarchs.

In 1709 AD, the Chinese were expelled. The Dun officials in the Arponaz (OTL: Galapagos) Islands had seen this coming and used it as a pretext to further curtail the privileges of the independent merchants. Trade with Tlatokan and with other kingdoms for silver and jade would continue, but would be limited to government-owned boats. The freebooter merchants scattered, a diaspora that would settle all along the Pacific.

In 1710 AD, a crew of Tlatokan merchants who had arrived to the Pachayep on a chartered Portuguese boat were told that the silver was gone and the kingdom was closed to business. The Pachayep would retreat to behind the fortifications at their borders and gave the silver workers the chance to either return to their homes or stay as citizens and mine for tin so the kingdom could make cannons. Quite a few of the workers chose to stay-their communities had forced them into the mit’a because they were pariahs (some were literally slaves captured from lowland communities in the scrublands and jungles and given in lieu of labor tribute) and the thought of being clothed, fed and have freedom to wander most of the year was quite attractive.

And so the Pachayep entered its age of splendid isolation, the tales of its cities lined with silver and precious jewels and the Spartan, military discipline of its people becoming cliched legends in the literature of both East Asians and Europeans.

 

[Corsair_Caruso]

Very excited to see this back up!

 

[Harald Sigurdson II]

Are the Europeans actually settling in their Columbian colonies? If so, are they forming their own societies like with the 13 colonies or mixing with the natives like Quebec? I'm quite interested in the Portuguese settlement who's name my 2 AM brain cannot remember.

Also, how are the Danes doing in Vinland? I think that's they might call it if they can remember the Sagas.

 

[twovultures]

Are the Europeans actually settling in their Columbian colonies? If so, are they forming their own societies like with the 13 colonies or mixing with the natives like Quebec? I'm quite interested in the Portuguese settlement who's name my 2 AM brain cannot remember.

They are now-see update!

With larger numbers and a better military position, we'll be seeing settler/native relationships more like those in Quebec or New Zealand than OTL in the Americas.

Also, how are the Danes doing in Vinland? I think that's they might call it if they can remember the Sagas.

Vinjarland ITTL. Thus far the Danes are more active in what Lief dubbed Markland and Helluland than in Vinjarland, they don't really have the military power to brute force their way into the land with strong Indigenous agriculture right now.

Very excited to see this back up!

A little late for my response, but thanks!

 

[twovultures]

The Americas After the Spanish War of Succession, 1715-1730

Settler Colonies

Almost as soon as the Spanish War of Succession ended, the Europeans flooded back into the Americas like flies to honey-this time would see the creation of the first settler colonies, where wealth for the European colonizer was not expected to be created by natives but by settlers from the motherland. Henry I of Spain would lead this by granting land titles from the area around Puerto Patos (OTL: Porto Allegre) to Spanish nobles and Dutch Staadtholders, and allowing poor farmers from Holland, Castille and Granada to settle (but not own) the land in 1715 A.D. Reeling from potato blight, Dutch farmers were especially eager to try the new land. This wave of immigrants would introduce measles to the southern cone, where previously the great plains and scrublands of South Columbia had acted as a filter for it.

The mass deaths of Columbians in response to this new disease would allow the colony to thrive-the weakened Mapuche towns around Puerto Patos did not have the strength to repel the invaders, and fearful of the powerful alliances to their south (such as Puelco’s anti-Spanish alliance) decided that keeping the iron and guns of the whites close by could be useful if they were ever invaded by these potential rivals.

Fearing that the Spanish colony would overwhelm them, the British began a similar policy in 1720 A.D. The blight that had ravaged the Netherlands had by then jumped into southeast England, and the crowded farms without food resulted in many peasants fleeing to avoid starvation. [1] The land itself was gifted largely to Anglo-Irish nobility, who sought to create great plantations for themselves using the lessons they had learned conquering the hapless Scots on Native Columbians and southern English immigrants alike.

King Sugar

Despite their foray into settler colonies, the British were eager to to use more ‘traditional’ methods of gaining wealth. The price of sugar had risen greatly in Europe due to the war, and in 1717 AD would escalate even further with the Egyptian Revolution. When Ottoman landlords attempted to evict tenant farmers to take advantage of higher sugar prices by creating even larger plantations their tenants banded together and simply attacked their landlord’s overseers. Copts in the cities and even the lower officials of the Ottoman Empire also began to fight as the rebellion grew in strength up and down the Nile.

While Egypt burned and the Ottoman Empire fumbled as it sought to keep control the British and French began to try to get in on the sugar trade that the Dutch had started, continuing the importation of slaves from the mainland to the Lesser Antilles. Chagrined that the French had kept the islands of the Lesser Antilles they had captured, Henry I refused to grant them favored trade status and in fact encouraged the Dutch to try and get the English and French in bidding wars for Columbian slaves.

The Amerikaaner faction did him one better. From their remaining stronghold on the island of Drievuldigheid (OTL: Trinidad) they began to switch up their payments with some of their allies near the American river, buying sugar instead of slaves from them. These independent kingdoms would stop selling off slaves, and instead force each other and their more inland neighbors to provide labor corvees for the local sugarcane fields. The resulting production was not as intense but was, from a European perspective, a lot cheaper than bringing slaves to the small islands and training them, even if it took direct control of the sugarcane fields out of their hands.

The Portuguese would attempt to perform a similar trick in Africa, but the poor soils there did not support widespread sugarcane production. With their focus on the East, the Spanish would leave their islands in Macaronesia less developed agriculturally, with the dwindling (but wealthy) sugar plantations in the hands of mulattos born on the islands. The African slave trade would shrink at this time, with the African kingdoms themselves scrambling to find new goods they could trade or putting more emphasis on creating their own products for internal markets.

The Pacific Fur Trade and Silver Trade

While their attempt to turn their allied African kingdoms into contractors of sugar production failed, the Portuguese’s further attempts at exploring the Americas were proving fruitful. With the aid of Baa’aute [2] guides from the land that would never be called Los Angeles, the Portuguese sailed northward along the Martial Coast, going as far north as the Potlatch cultures. They found a little gold that the Potlatch were willing to trade for the usual metal weapons and farming tools, but they also found fur bearing sea otters and seals. These valuable pelts would keep the Portuguese trading in the area, establishing small forts along the Martial coast. Although apprehensive about once again providing arms to Columbians, they had no choice. The inland tribes had become well armed through trading and raiding Tlatokan territory, and in order to gain the alliance of the coastal tribes the Portuguese had to either arm them or provide material military support.

They also sailed south, bypassing the old Pachayep kingdom and reaching the Calchaqui people. Long isolated by the Atacama desert and the rough mountains to its east, the Chalchaqui had never before been involved in long term trade with Europeans. Some European goods had already filtered to them through trade with the Tehuelche, and intrigued by these goods they would allow the Portuguese to establish a factory in their land. Silver flowed to Portuguese coffers, with trade more strictly controlled than the Pachayep trade. That kingdom’s sudden closure had showed the Portuguese how tenuous control over wealth could be in a world where their colonies were scattered, small, and insecure. Very little Calchaqui silver was diverted over the Pacific, directly contributing to the Chinese Silver Crisis.

The Tonantzin and the Prophet

While the European powers squeezed their coils tighter around the continent, the Great Plains of North Columbia would see the clash of 3 different major indigenous faiths.

The Great Plains had become disrupted by the presence of Shiwi’ma refugees from the southwest. Where they could, they fit into the farming and herding societies they encountered as best they could, many accepting lowly positions within those societies. Where they couldn’t, they rode off with horses or hunted game, daring the local peoples to fight them.

Into this toxic mix stepped the members of religious societies among the Plains Columbians who worshipped Tlatokan’s Tonantzin and missionaries of the reformed Irinakhoiw religion, which had recently converted the Hoceangh and Mnekota peoples and was drifting even further westward. They both competed to prove their religion worthy by taming the “savages” who sought to bring war to the plains. At first the Tewa refugees were fearful and hostile-but in a strange land and on the razor’s edge of starvation, they could not refuse help when it was offered. They listened to sermons in exchange for blankets and other provisions, and as the winters rolled in and out more and more agreed to serve the religious in exchange for protection, accepting a similar position that they had under Po’pay and his religious elite.

Through this method, the Tewa were integrated into the societies of the Great Plains, and in this integration greatly strengthened the presence of these foreign religious movements. The refugees would promote synchronization between the movements that courted them, as it is the Tewa who are credited with saying that Tonantzin was the mother earth of the Irinakhoiw creation myth, killed by the birth of the Bad Brother but resurrected by the Creator after 3 days-thus integrating a third religion into their belief system.

[1] The agricultural practices that made blight so devastating in 19th century Europe IOTL haven't yet developed, so the blight will not move past northwest Europe.

[2] The "Water Yuts", the descendants of OTL's Chumash partially assimilated into TTL's version of the Ute peoples.

 

[twovultures]

The Chinese Silver Crisis and Japan

By the end of the the Spanish War of Succession, both the Dun and the Yuan were hurting as silver depleted-the Dun hurt more since the government and imperial clan had become heavily reliant on its importation, but trade with the Dun[1] was the Yuan’s main source of silver too. The two nations would jostle to attempt to control the world’s second greatest source of silver: Japan.

Over the course of almost 200 years the fortunes of Japan had waxed and waned. It had done well playing the rival dynasties against each other, but the Oda Shogunate had never quite grasped the power it sought and periodically had to fight to reassert control over the country. As one of the Serene Mountain Emperor’s advisers had put it in a letter to the Portuguese, “every generation, the Japanese attack their neighbors. Every two generations, they fight among themselves.” This was largely true; a few decades in the wake of baba had seen the Imjin War, when the Japanese attacked Korea and were repulsed by the Yuan; the War of the 7 Samurai, when large portions of the Samurai class had risen up against the Shogunate only to be beaten down by the Shogunate’s guns and commoner troops; the Formosan War, when the Japanese attacked Taiwan and the Ryukuu Islands, only to be repulsed by the Dun navy; the Amur War, when they attempted to occupy the Amur River, temporarily succeeded, but then attempted to attack Manchuria and were crushed (again) by the Yuan; the Sakhalin War, where they successfully defeated the Yuan and claimed the island of Karafuto (OTL: Sakhalin); and the War of the 47 Ronin, where soldiers and civilians rebelling under the influence of Pure Land monks were put down by the Shogunate with the aid of the Samurai class. The Oda Shogunate’s “200 Years of Peace” were very largely an exaggeration. However no war they lost did long term damage to Japan’s military, and even the war of the 47 Ronin did not do irreparrable damage to Japan’s economy. So when the Chinese were thrown into disarray by the drop in silver supply Japan was able to take advantage of this situation.

Japan’s participation in global trade increased dramatically as foreign commodities poured into the country. Particularly notable was jade, brought by Yuan freebooters from Antarctica and Dun naval ships from the Columbias. However other goods such as European clocks and other mechanical objects filled the country. This wealth flowed in a little too fast the shogunate’s taste, especially considering how fast the silver had to flow out of the country to sustain imports. This lead to Japan’s ban on the export of silver in 1731 AD.

This ban was actually met with approval by the European powers that traded with Japan. Both Britain and Portugal were trying to control the flow of silver from their trade with Tlatokan and the Calchaqui respectively, and having Japan cut out of the market made it harder for their subordinates to smuggle silver and made the silver of their treasuries more valuable. The Spanish were happy to see Japanese silver leaving the market, as they hoped it would increase demand for their gold[2] in East Asia. It was only the Chinese powers and their allies who reacted negatively.

The Dun tried to embargo Japan almost immediately, but freebooters serving the Yuan Empire continued to trade in hopes of persuading the Japanese government to re-open the silver trade. This did not work, and the Dun decided that where Yuan diplomacy failed their military power could work. In 1734 AD, the Dun launched a naval war against Japan. Not long ago, the Dun were the greatest maritime power in East Asia and the idea that the small island nation of Japan could have withstood them was laughable. However, in asserting political control over their ships the Dun had driven most of their merchant fleet away-and these merchants were almost obscenely eager to avenge themselves against the dynasty by signing on with Japan as privateers. Their crews contained some of the fiercest fighters that could be mustered in the east: former native auxilliaries of British Luzon; the Batam fighters who had chased off the Spanish; Maori and other island fighters; and, of course, Japanese samurai who would join the fighting under the orders of their Shogun.

Under the tutelage of Japanese generals who created new manuals and guides for marine warfare, the freebooter boats prevented the Dun from ever fully engaging the Japanese fleet. The Japanese fought a defensive war for 4 years while the freebooter fleet ground down the Dun navy ship by captured ship. In 1738, the Shogunate declared that they would take the offensive, and attack the ‘traitor kingdom’ that had aided the Dun against Japan. How exactly the Ryuukyuu islanders had ‘betrayed’ Japan was never explained, but with the Dun navy weakened the Japanese were finally able to successfully invade and occupy the islands after 200 years of being beaten back by the Dun. At this point the war effort stagnated as the Japanese Shoguns tried to assert greater control over the privateer fleet only to have multiple privateer captains mutiny against this attempt to assert control. However, their show of power had impressed the Dun dynasty, which felt it had no choice but to appease the Shogunate to bring lasting peace. In exchange for the end to the war, the Dun Empire would give the Arponaz Islands (OTL: Galapagos) to the Japanese, in exchange for their leaving the island of Taiwan [3] alone. The Japanese had seized the Chinese toehold in the New World without meaning too, and while they eagerly grasped for it they did not quite know what to do with it once they had it.

[1] The Yuan, of course, call this trade ‘tribute’
[2] Gained by trade with African kingdoms
[3]Or more accurately, the Chinese settlements on the coast of Taiwan since the Dun government doesn’t really care about or does much to bother the aboriginal population inland.

 

[twovultures]

No China after the Yuan

The Dun dynasty’s humiliation at the hands of the Japanese coincided with the beginning of the Yuan’s downfall. When their diplomacy failed to crack Japan, and the Dun declaration of war soured the desire of the Japanese government to have anything to do with China, the Yuan dynasty decided to try to tackle the silver crisis domestically.

Unlike the first Yuan dynasty, the second allowed the Chinese to climb socially through the state-sponsored Gelug Buddhist monasteries. In theory, these monasteries provided a meritocratic place for advancement, with monks allowed to sit for official examinations no matter their background. Of course, the requirement for celibacy kept families of nouveau riche from developing, and many monasteries had their own problems with nepotism. Nonetheless they were a great source of talent for the Yuan and the source of its greatest attempt to create a permanent solution to silver deflation.

The practice of earlier dynasties to print paper money had almost always failed due to inflation. But if the value of paper money was tied to silver by a government which kept silver reserves and printed out money in lieu of distributing specie, then this problem could be avoided. This was the solution proposed by Qi Sidao, an abbot serving in the far west who had spent a great deal of time trying to apply principles of Buddhist life to practical, day to day living.

The idea had merit, but the government took it a step too far. To gather the silver necessary to back up their paper currency, the Yuan ministers decreed that private ownership of silver was now outlawed and tried to confiscate all private stores of silver. This prompted the Great Ocean Rebellion, as the merchants and privateers who had served the Yuan simply sailed away, preferring life under the Chinese ‘exile kingdoms’ of Southeast Asia such as Maynila[1] or even life under European, Columbian and Japanese rulers rather than to lose their silver. With this example set, the southern border of the Yuan dynasty exploded into war as the people there-rich after years of trade with the Dun-buried their silver and executed tax collectors.

Once word got out that the Chinese were rebelling, other ethnicities in the empire joined in. The Jurchens [2] and Chinese settlers in the northeast revolted, their leaders declaring that the two peoples should act as one due to their shared heritage as “subjects of the Jin Dynasty”[3]. Tributary kingdoms that weren’t subjects of the Yuan would attack the greatest symbol of Yuan authority on their soil, which was often the Gelug monasteries. In Tibet, Gelug estates were attacked by nobles affiliated with rival Buddhist orders, while the Turkish peoples denounced the order as an enemy of Islam and the leader of Yuan imperialism. They sacked the temples and monasteries, enslaving the monks and nuns or sending them beaten and bloodied back to Yuan land.

Violence against the Gelug would spread from Central Asia back into China, where the order was denounced as the worst example of ‘foreign Buddhism’ by Taoists and Confucionists, and as a ‘perversion of true Buddhism’ by Pure Land and Zen monks. Many of these latter would actually lead mobs to loot Gelug monasteries where confiscated silver wealth had been stored by tax collectors.

As with the original Yuan dynasty the Second Yuan did not technically fall-it just lost control of China. The imperial family fled to Mongolia during the unrest in the year 1748 AD, trusting their generals to bring order to their land. The generals formed a junta which supposedly was made to fulfill the will of the Emperor, but in practice served the generals who bickered and purged each other rather than try and resolve the problem of the Yuan state being torn down by the people. By 1757 A.D., the general Jia Xhiaozhou declared that he had the Mandate of Heaven and exiled or executed the remaining Yuan loyalists. Jia founded the Shun Dynasty and took over northern China, bordered by the Dun Dynasty to the south, the Kingdom of Tibet and the Turkic tribes to the west, the Eastern Jin in the northeast, and the continuing Yuan Dynasty to the north which still claimed hold over the Mongols and Oirats of Central Asia.

[1]Conquered by pirates in the decades after the time of baba. The kingdom has expanded only recently in response to the British colonization of Luzon, as Malay kings who don’t like the British or their allies agree to pay tribute or otherwise submit themselves to Maynila in exchange for protection.
[2] OTL Manchus-my earlier references to “Manchuria” seem to have been an anachronism, as the person who coined that term was butterflied away by this timeline's events.
[3] A Jurchen dynasty which ruled northern China and was replaced by the first Yuan empire.

Map to follow, after I finish the update for the New World from 1730-1750.

 

[Corsair_Caruso]

Damn, the Mongols just can't get a fleet into Japan in ANY timeline, can they?

With the Chinese burying silver and killing tax collectors, and Chinese merchants becoming Japanese privateers, and then leaving Japanese service when the Shogun gets too bossy, you've got a very strong independent streak in China right now. Such independence in the middle-classes might lead to a revolution, maybe?

 

[Sian]

Emperors lack respect for us, the lifeblood of the nation, and military leaders ain't much better. Viva le revolution for the People's Republic of China

 

[twovultures]

Damn, the Mongols just can't get a fleet into Japan in ANY timeline, can they?

I guess that is a cliche I wrote in Still, it serves as a caution to the people who keep posting AHC: Ming colonize everything questions. Just because China has a great fleet doesn't mean that they can control it outside of China proper.

With the Chinese burying silver and killing tax collectors, and Chinese merchants becoming Japanese privateers, and then leaving Japanese service when the Shogun gets too bossy, you've got a very strong independent streak in China right now. Such independence in the middle-classes might lead to a revolution, maybe?

IIRC the CIA IOTL actually disbelieved that the Chinese could ever go Communist because it was common knowledge that the Chinese people were just too individualistic to adopt such an ideology. But it seems that no matter the universe, the Chinese people are very capable of revolution.

Emperors lack respect for us, the lifeblood of the nation, and military leaders ain't much better. Viva le revolution for the People's Republic of China

I think the Chinese are willing to give the whole dynasty thing ONE last try. If it doesn't work out this time, well...TTL's version of the Guillotine may very well be named the Zhu...

 

[masterspore]

I have, over the past few days, been reading this entire TL, and I have to say, it is absolutely fantastic. Everything is extremely enjoyable, and seems realistic to me (I am not a history buff, so I'm no expert). That said, I'm saddened to see no updates since July, but I understand that grad school is more important. Good luck with it, and I hope to see what else you have in store.

Also, as John Smith warned Belair, he would he have been shouting "The British are coming, the British are coming!"

 

[twovultures]

I have, over the past few days, been reading this entire TL, and I have to say, it is absolutely fantastic. Everything is extremely enjoyable, and seems realistic to me (I am not a history buff, so I'm no expert). That said, I'm saddened to see no updates since July, but I understand that grad school is more important. Good luck with it, and I hope to see what else you have in store.

It's been a hard, long slog so far and is liable to be harder and sloggier going forward. I do have an update I've been painfully working on, and I hope to get it and a map out by the end of the month. And I'm glad you've enjoyed this timeline!

Also, as John Smith warned Belair, he would he have been shouting "The British are coming, the British are coming!"

There will be a lot of beats reflecting our world going forward, even if they do have that PRER twist to them

 

[twovultures]

The Princess

Salan Sen forced a smile at the man who stared coldly down at her from behind the table.

Strictly speaking, he was dressed in Tugal[1] clothing, but he did not wear them like a European. A tailcoat, split in two, cut up, and then stitched back together, created a loincloth better suited for this hot tropical port than trousers. He had a button-down shirt made in the European style, but the light green color indicated that this was a handwoven shirt of native cotton, probably gifted from his relatives upcountry-the ocelot skin ruffle of his shirt marked him as an aristocrat, and even if he earned a salary harassing foreigners in Tampico, he at least had cousins and in-laws who commanded land and labor somewhere deep in Tlatokan. His hat was a top hat, the sort that she had seen the Tugal passengers in the upper decks wear, but he had brightly colored feathers stabbed through the brim.

His minions, broad men who wore simple white cotton shifts ransacked her trunks, turning over clothes, books, and trinkets before slamming the mahogany doors down and speaking dejectedly to the official. These were port men, Americans whose ancestry was clearly mixed with that of Tugal and Africans. One dark-skinned one even wore his hair in the forward tuft of a Wolof child, and she had tried to greet him with a friendly ‘Na nga def’ but had received only a cold shoulder.

Not for the first time, Salan wished that she could speak the strangely lyrical American languages. She knew multiple Tugal dialects-once you learned one variant of Latin and Germanic, you knew them all-but the American languages were a mystery, except for those Islanders whose language was half Iberian anyway. It made her very nervous to not know what they were looking for.

It should be impossible for them to realize what she was doing, of course. Even if they thought she was up to something, how could they connect her to the Akan? She had never spoken to directly to any agent of that government, and even if they had somehow accessed the letters she had left on the ship and broke the cypher, her instructions used euphemisms. She was just another spare princess from a minor kingdom, niece to a king’s dead brother, whose time was frittered away on little goodwill trips like this one in the Caribbean instead of going to great foreign universities like Timbuktu or Paris. But what if they did know her purpose? What if they knew were to look, find an excuse to take her hostage and extract some great fine from her uncle? The thought almost sent her into a cold sweat.

She tried to keep herself composed, imagining how she appeared to this man, mentally checking herself to not give any offense or cause for suspicion. She wore no furs or feathers, nothing that could be seen as restricted to the native upper classes. Her jewelry was gold, with no jade or turquoise-a commodity a Tugal woman had confided often saw jewelry demanded as a bribe. She wore an ankle-length serr whose colors were bright and cheerful, matching the wrap on her head.

How strange did that look to him? The Tugal women on the ship used parasols in the daytime. The American women did not seem to wear hats at all, simply putting on facepaint to block out the sun. Perhaps that seemed strange to him? If he asked to search her, took the wrap, instead of putting the attention to her bags…

“Put the thought out of your head,” she said to herself. “You must not worry about what you cannot control.”

The last trunk slammed shut. The official looked at her with disdain. He pulled a small pipe from a pouch on the table, and lighting it, dismissed her with a gesture.

Suddenly developing the ability to speak Islander Iberian, his minions agreed to help her carry her trunks to the ship in exchange for an exorbitant fee. It took almost the last of her money, but she didn’t mind. After Tampico, the ship turned back, would stop in the Azores, and there she would meet the agent and make the exchange. The Akan government liked to be generous with its gold when buying friends, and she had no doubt she would be gifted a generous purse.

In the privacy of her room, the colorful headwrapping came off. Beneath it were the long, tightly coiled braids that had provoked so much admiration and curious glances from Tugal and American alike. She unwound them bit by bit, and finally pulled out the contraband that she had feared would get her into so much trouble.

The grey vine had no leaves, and it had left a trace of its sticky white sap in her hair that would probably necessitate cutting her braids off to get rid of, but that didn’t matter now-she didn’t need them, and the vine could be safely wrapped and put in her luggage. The Tugal did not take women as seriously as the Americans, and she had no doubt that she could flatter her way past the Iberian officials.

What a curious item it was, this white gold that came from the rubber vine. But if the Kongo were making so much money off of it, well, why shouldn’t the Akan? Why shouldn’t the Serer, for that matter?

Salan Sen studied the vine, wondering if she could sneak a piece off of it for her own people.

[1]Term generically used for Europeans by Sene-Gambian peoples, from their first contact with Europeans being Portuguese explorers.


Excerpts from “The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of the World System”, by Maynard Acemoglu

While the factors that set the rise of industrialization were complex and multifactored, the immediate desire that led to the tipping point is painfully obvious to any parent who has let an infant unsupervised in the pantry: the human sweet tooth.

Despite the massive productivity (at a staggering human toll of tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands of African lives) of the Macaronesian [1] sugar plantations, this model could not be replicated elsewhere.

Most of Africa’s farming land was not good for sugar; the powerful states of the Americas and Asia, while they could be pushed around on the seas by European mercantilists, would resist the faltering early attempts to expropriate their land for plantation agriculture. The Martial [2] Islands were conquerable, but the distances involved meant that getting supply chains set up for armies that could challenge the indigenous chiefs and their legions of fighting men took a long time.

By the time the infrastructure necessary to duplicate the Macaronesian system was set up in the Martial ocean, an equally efficient and thankfully more human alternative had been discovered. Applying the steam engine-a design known since the time of the Ancient Greeks-to solving the problem of squeezing juice from vegetables, the engineer Marc de la Motte from French Flanders created the formula to produce sugar on an industrial scale using not human labor, but machines.

Within a century, fields from Ireland to Chornarusk abounded with sugar beets, destined to be plucked and sent to the juice grinder in new factory cities. These machines burned a lot of energy, and very quickly after their creation the power of steam was turned to pumping out coal mines and transporting large amounts of coal to the factories. Europe was in full swing of its industrial revolution, and the European mercantile empires that had nibbled at the edges of American, African and Asian lands would quickly drag these nations into the new industrial world system.

It would be a Eurocentric mistake, however, to imply that the rest of the world was only passively moved by Europe. The Chinese Reunification War is often pointed to as the prime example of a nation taking control of its destiny in the industrial world, with the mercantilist southern regime invading the north to seize access to coal mines for industrialization, triggering a wave of internal unrest that would finally result in the imposition of a written constitution on the beleaguered emperors. Often overlooked but equally interesting is the Trans-Atlantic Rubber War.

When rubber’s practically magical properties came to the attention of industrialized Europe, it became one of the most valuable world commodities, and controlling the rubber trade soon became the major concern of economic elites the world over. Indigenously found in the tropical Americas and Africa, powerful actors such as the kingdoms of Tlatokan and the Kongo quickly acted to seize and control access to rubber. The Kongo famously invaded the Katanga region, while Tlatokan imposed a strict military regime over the previously autonomous Gulf region.

But these attempts at state control would be constantly circumvented by other actors. Smugglers turned shipments of rubber away from official channels. Indigenous rulers from lesser powers collaborated with European companies to establish rubber plantations. And areas with poorer access to rubber began to innovate so as to improve the material.

The surest sign of the rise of a modern, interconnected world system that had grown beyond the sail-powered trade routes created or conquered by early modern Europe was the creation of grafted rubber. The discovery that bark from South American rubber vines could be grafted onto African rubber trees to make the plant more productive was made in the early 20th century, and soon provoked a scramble for plants against the monopolizing powers.

The exact circumstances by which the kingdoms of the Bight of Benin gained rubber vines for grafting with are still in dispute; but given that rubber was the most controlled commodity (aside, perhaps, from gold) in both European outposts and American polities, it is most likely something that was deliberately and very carefully smuggled. Most put Nana Ata Panyin Kwaku III as the first African to oversee the creation of grafted rubber plantations, a move that made his kingdom very rich. But events would soon supercede his plans to become the ‘African King of Rubber’....

Back on the Boat

Robert Stetson placed his pipe to his lip, puffing pensively as he thought of the strange and exotic people you met on these passenger cruises-and the questions they aroused.

He did not quite know what to make of it when an African woman marched onto the ship like a general leading troops into battle, a gaggle of struggling dockworkers following her, laden with voluminous trunks.

There was something about her that he found fascinating. The captain had teased him, claiming “number two has a little coup-de-foudre for our African princess”, but it wasn’t that. It was that she combined the high-handedness of an aristocrat with the air of someone being on a cunning plan. He had watched as she entered the room, and left a short while later to mingle with the other passengers of the upper deck. From the corner of his eye, he noticed how she always seemed to keep one eye on her door, and the other on the docks, almost scanning as if something was going to happen. And, he swore that when they cast off, she had breathed a sigh of relief-and after the ship reached international waters, she had once again gone into her room, only to re-emerge with a bottle of good rum to share with her fellow passengers.

It was interesting to think about what might be going on that had created the nervousness she was obviously trying to cover with her imperious facade. A tryst? A theft? A feud?

But, ultimately, as interesting as the idea was, it wasn’t his business as first mate.

“After all” he thought to himself, “you’re a sailor, and you know that the world is big-big enough for all of us, Europeans, Africans and Columbians to have our own stories to ourselves. No sense butting in where it’s not your business.”

[1]Cap Verde, the Canaries, the Azores, and Sao Tome

[2] Pacific, ITTL

 

[Zireael]

Whoa, it LIVES!!!!!

And that's one interesting use for rubber....

 

[twovultures]

Whoa, it LIVES!!!!!

And that's one interesting use for rubber....

Sadly, it dies as well-I think that industrialization is a good point to end the timeline, which is de facto dead. But I wanted to give it an actual ending, rather than having it trail off.

As for the rubber, this is actually based on a real experience-the Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia actually grafts the bark of South American rubber vines onto African rubber trees to increase productivity.

 

[Deleted member 147978]

Bruh what?
I though this TL was long dead.

 

[Ikny]

Great to see an update even if it is just to give an ending. Thank you for all your writing and the effort, especially for writing a per-Columbian part instead of just skipping to the European contact.

 

[twovultures]

Bruh what?
I though this TL was long dead.

That is not dead which does dreaming lie
and with strange aeons, even death may die

Great to see an update even if it is just to give an ending. Thank you for all your writing and the effort, especially for writing a per-Columbian part instead of just skipping to the European contact.

Thank you. It has been a wonderful (and continuing) journey to learn about the pre-Columbian cultures. As with most things, the more I learn the more ignorant I feel.