But without painful gas from lactose intolerance, and the accompanying suspicion of poisoning.
The Dream of Iolo Morganwg: An alternate history of Welsh Patagonia
- Thread starter RPW@Cy
- Start date
Not so...
...The way I understand it is that she tasted the stuff first. Harry Harrison made it into ice cream in his 'The Technicolor Time Machine', Slithey Tove (actress) gets the confidence of the CD who are needed as extras in a film called (wait for it...) 'Viking Columbus'. Just bought the Kindle (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Technicolor-Time-Machine-Harry-Harrison/dp/0812516079)...
...The way I understand it is that she tasted the stuff first. Harry Harrison made it into ice cream in his 'The Technicolor Time Machine', Slithey Tove (actress) gets the confidence of the CD who are needed as extras in a film called (wait for it...) 'Viking Columbus'. Just bought the Kindle (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Technicolor-Time-Machine-Harry-Harrison/dp/0812516079)...
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Didn't change a thing. I bet the loncos were having fun with him.
"You want to be our king? Sure pal! Wake us when it means something"
Interesting update.
And in interest of spreading puns: I always read Tehuelche as Teh Welsh
Indeed. One of the reasons, believe it or not, I've mostly been going with Aoniken (which teh interweb leads me to believe is their name in their own language)
The other of course being the one Petete referred to...The number of Welsh speakers in the old Wales might decrease as a consequence of the Welsh colonization of Patagonia, though... Welsh in ATL Wales could end up just like the Gaelic languages of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.
Huge numbers went to the United States - over 20,000 in the 1870's alone, or almost 4% of the population. In fact, so many went that parts of Pennsylvania remained Welsh speaking until about the 1950's, I'm hoping to do more along the lines of redirecting OTL flows rather than increasing absolute numbers. That said, my personal headspace has pencilled in 1960 or so as being the approximate date when the number of Welsh speakers in Patagonia exceeds that in Wales.
Please God no more thanksgiving!!! Save us from the Yanks and their obsession with that bloody holiday!
Absolutely love this TL btw, can't wait for more
Please God no more thanksgiving!!! Save us from the Yanks and their obsession with that bloody holiday!
Absolutely love this TL btw, can't wait for more
Do not fear the turkey dinner. It means you no harm. Really.
Anyway, I would think this would give Britain more incentive to secure the Falklands than OTL. Though on the other hand if Buneos Aires gets worried about British people settling don there they may be more vigorous on the issue as well.
Another name for the Falklands?
Maybe New Anglesey isn't so bad. All those sheep might suggest a sheep-raising part of Wales, though - Anglesey is agricultural and the breadbasket of North Wales. (In Cymraeg) New Powys or New Gwynedd might be suitable.
Maybe New Anglesey isn't so bad. All those sheep might suggest a sheep-raising part of Wales, though - Anglesey is agricultural and the breadbasket of North Wales. (In Cymraeg) New Powys or New Gwynedd might be suitable.
Google translate offers Ynysoedd Y Malfinas as an optional translation...
I'm still not sure what to do with the Falklands. I was originally trending towards letting Argentina have them (on the basis that a presence on the mainland will make them seem less important to Britain), but as everybody on this thread, including our Argentinian posters, seems to think it's still more plausible for them to be British I'm starting to consider alternatives.
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.
---
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.
---
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.
“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.
---
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.
---
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.
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Looks decent to me, RPW. You did miss an opportunity to bring back the old laws, though.
What? All that barbarous nonsense like rights for bastards and easy divorce?Looks decent to me, RPW. You did miss an opportunity to bring back the old laws, though.
I think you hit the mark pretty well (the women voting thing is IIRC more or less what the formal legal position was in Britain at this time OTL, though they usually sent someone else to vote on their behalf - this was changed in 1832, and apparently seen as tidying up a loophole more than anything else).
One thing I'm not sure about is the voting mechanism, which you seem to have be similar to modern Britain - I think general practice in Britain was an informal Iowa caucus type thing, followed by adding one's signature to a list under the name of the candidate you supported if a formal vote was necessary.
I *so* wanted to go with that - unfortunately I suspect the chapels wouldn't wear it...
Thanks, this is what I was a hoping for. Being constitutional should make it harder to dismiss as a loophole though.
It is secret ballot. This is one of the French revolutionary influences I mentioned (the constitution of 1795 introduced it). Being an at large election (for the moment, anyway) means everyone gets a ballot paper with all the candidates listed on it and the 12 with the most votes become Senedd members. This will doubtless swiftly become hopelessly unwieldy and promote moves to a constituency based system...
The big problem for Argentina effectively colonizing the Falklands is their internal instability - unless their problems closer to home are solved faster, I can't see them establishing (and holding) a colony on the Islands. (The reason why Argentina lost its colony on the Islands OTL is because the government who backed Vernet's colony effort lost the civil war, so when the US Navy came to Buenos Aires asking "is this Vernet guy really the governor of your colony", the government in place said "nope, he's nothing to do with us, we have zero interest in those Islands", so the US navy went and bombarded the colony and arrested Vernet for piracy, thus opening the way for Britain to re-found their colony without complications.)
Even if Argentina were able to catch a break from civil war, wars with Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia long enough to get a solid colony on the Islands, I doubt that would stop Britain from founding their colony on the other island (the first British colony on the Falklands was on West Falkland, and I could see them founding a naval base on West Falkland, even if they decided to leave the Argentine colony on East Falkland in peace). The British could also try to buy out a stronger Argentine colony.
fasquardon
Could you elaborate on why it was called a Senedd? I hear there were a myth that Owain Glyndŵr called a Senedd, and that led to the present Assembly building being called the same, but it's all terribly unclear, with information a bit difficult to find.
IIRC Senedd was pretty much always the Welsh translation of Parliament, and therefore that was what the campaign was for, but it ended up being an Assembly or Cynulliad instead to distinguish from Westminster. Dafydd-El then got the building called the Senedd as a "Fuck You" to this (Taid's still a bit annoyed over that).
TTL they're presumably using it in the same way other colonies used Parliament.
That's one thing I did borrow from the OTL colony - as to why they did it I'm not sure, Glyndwr is possible, so is US influence (quite a few Welsh people who went to the US re-emigrated to Patagonia).
Hmm, so is Cymru Newydd officially independent right now? With the framing of a constitution and an influx of immigrants will Buneos Aires and London start to take notice?
No, officially it's a British colony owned and operated by the Welsh American Company on a similar basis to which the Falkland Islands Company or Hudson's Bay Company or various South African enterprises worked OTL (the EIC is too sui generis to count as much of a model). It's too small, remote and obscure for London to pay much attention to at the moment so a lot of this is happening under the radar, so to speak. As far as London is concerned, the Civil Administrator is still the ultimate source of authority in the Colony - that he has chosen to allow the locals to elect advisors is hardly their concern, if they've even noticed.
A common development for these sort of enterprises is for London to restrict the company's autonomy once the colony got large enough and successful enough to be noticed and appoint a governor of their own - that's the point at which relations with London have the potential to become interesting.