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Indeed.
Good Update.
Thank You.
Good to know, and thanks for the cheers.
Chapter II
Expanding the Horizon
On February 3rd 1501, Jonathan Onslow took the 4,000 men he still had after a surprisingly short and harsh winter killed a fifth of his men, and left the New York colony. His intention was this time to head as far inland as he could. There would be no more dallying around on the coast. He would now see how far this new world stretched, or die trying. Eventually, it was his death that made the first real inland expedition turn back, but before it did, new light would have been shed on just how vast an expanse a poor Italian sailor had had named after him.Expanding the Horizon
It was on this expedition that the British would also encounter the first hostile natives. The tribe of the Attawadora refused Onslow’s trade offer when he met them in April. Over the next week, the Attawadora became increasingly displeased with the way Onslow’s expedition treated the area, often destroying wildlife with their methods of research. Finally, the tribe decided it had had enough. They attacked Onslow’s camp grounds, and in the ensuing battle, almost 1,000 tribe members and 200 of Onslow’s expedition died.
As a response, Onslow exterminated much of the Attawadora, and from now on the expedition simply told the natives to trade with the British or stay out of their way. There would be no more peaceful coexistence on Onslow or the expedition’s part. Both sides may be seen as being equally at fault, but it is undoubtedly the British expedition who took it from eye for an eye to outright cruelty.
1. An 18th Century drawing of Onslow offering trade with Britain to a tribe.
The expedition continued its trek deeper into the North American wilderness. When they reached the Great Lakes, Onslow momentarily thought they had found the sea, but as they went further, it became obvious they had simply found a lake so vast that one could not see the other side. In September 1501, Onslow fell ill. The cause of his death is to this day a mystery, but the last obstacle the expedition reached before his death was the wide expanse of the Mississippi River.
Onslow was buried at the highest point the expedition could find, and the memorial, a monument of huge boulders, is there to this day. The Great Expedition turned back, leaving the Mississippi, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to later explorers. While the expedition was gone, the colonies in New England, as it was now known, had expanded to include almost 10,000 people. No more great treks inland would be made for two decades, but merely the knowledge of the size of Britain’s new horizon was enough for many.
In 1503, the pope decided to attempt to get in Edward’s good graces now that Britain seemed poised to conquer the new world. He issued a papal bull known as the Inter Caetera. Edward and parliament, whose relationship with the pope had never been amiable, disregarded the Inter Caetera, which would have essentially given them a papal right to America.
Instead, Edward, knowing that Britain had exclusive access to America anyway for the time being, proclaimed the New World to be up for grabs. Britain would not oppose any attempts at colonization unless it directly threatened the American colonies. The pope was of course furious at this dismissal of his authority, but could do nothing to stop Edward. In the minds of Edward and parliament, the papacy had to pay for supporting Alfonso in the diplomatic crisis of 1475.
2. Urban the Ninth, the pope who issued the Inter Caetera.
Meanwhile in America, the colonies continued to expand, and British settlers had expanded the holdings of the crown from the outskirts of the Delaware to the Petomuhkari up north. New York had become the natural center for New England, and as a result, most trade and bureaucracy ended up going through Manhattan before it made its way to Britain or the rest of the colonies. The city was beginning to reach its capacity to handle the influx by 1508, and London decided to break up the colonies into smaller administrative blocks.
In August, the Commonwealths of New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Pennsylvania were created. Most of London’s administrative traffic would still go through New York, but would now be forwarded to the commonwealth that it concerned after being approved by the Office of American Affairs in New York. The Commonwealths were also each given representatives in parliament, which showcased the main difference between British colonialism in America compared to the efforts of other nations.
The British treated their colonies as business ventures, in which keeping the colonists happy was in the interests of London. To most other countries, colonies meant men for the endless wars wracking Europe, and workers to dig natural resources out of the ground. The British method was much more beneficial in the long-run, but would also lead to a more pronounced self-identity in the colonies.
3. The Commonwealths’ borders upon creation.
The borders of the Commonwealths, and their level of autonomy, would change many times in during their existence, but the basic idea of being a partially sovereign federation would stay as a constant. The Indian empire however, was nowhere near the point where Commonwealths could be considered. The primary reason for this was that the Indian empire was still, and would for the foreseeable future be naught but a trading post in Madurai. In 1508, it was a trading post in a country wracked by civil war.
The war over the rule of Calicut had left local authority weak in Madurai, conquered by the Prince of Calicut three decades earlier. Local rebels, dreaming of restoring the glory of Madurai, rose up and expelled the small force of Calicut soldiers from the city. Faced with either funding the rebels, or risk having their coffers raided, the trading post bought the rebels weapons from London.
When they arrived, the civil war was long over, and order had been restored. The trading post was forced to pay the new Prince of Calicut reparations, or be thrown out of Madurai. This incident caused Edward and parliament to consider declaring war on another nation for the first time since the Orkney War, but lengthy diplomatic talks convinced the Prince to buy the weapons that were meant for the rebels, with the confiscated money.
The next seven years were relatively quiet. The population and area of Britain’s colonies slowly expanded, as did the capacity of parliament’s coffers. Then, in March of 1515, a priest in Germany, sick of the papacy and Rome’s perceived excess and indulgence in earthly matters, nailed a declaration to the door of his church. Martin Luther had unwittingly set off a chain of events that would destroy the one thing the pope had still got going for him, a unified bloc of the world’s most advanced nations at his theoretical defense.
Excellent read. I'm just sorry that it took me so long (ten days) to find your ARR.
I'll be following along.
I'll be following along.
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A believable and thoroughly enjoyable alternate history.
With France and the Iberian nations out of the colonization picture, I suspect Britain is well on its way towards total dominance of the globe. Paint the world red, I say!
How do you plan on dealing with colonial revolts?
With France and the Iberian nations out of the colonization picture, I suspect Britain is well on its way towards total dominance of the globe. Paint the world red, I say!
How do you plan on dealing with colonial revolts?
Glad to see you have tried your hand at EU3, at long last! I've never played MEIOU, but I know it shares some common elements with MM, and of course it's got all those gorgeous flags/arms.
I'm enjoying your take on England/Britain--and yes, once you get a pile of them, beware large-scale colonial revolts.
I'm enjoying your take on England/Britain--and yes, once you get a pile of them, beware large-scale colonial revolts.
Nice update!
Thank you.
You shall soon see.
No need to apologize. Just good to know you're following.
Thank you.
Your word is my command.
Well, I want an independent US by 1800, with relatively historical borders, so I'll let them run half-loose. As for everyone else: I'm not sure. Probably death.
Glad to have tried it. I'm not entirely acquainted with MEIOU/MM similarities, but the flags/arms are indeed gorgeous.
Thank you, and I'll take note of the possibility of revolt.
Just FYI, I'm not religious, nor have I studied the rise of Protestantism too much, so the following chapter's Anglicanism-Catholicism-Lutheranism bits shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Chapter III
Falling from Grace
The Swiss, wishing to become a neutral player in European politics, were the first to officially adopt Lutheranism, aided by the fact that the majority of their population had quickly turned to Luther’s church because of a general disillusionment with Rome. For almost a century, the pope had sat idly by, and once even joined in, as the North Italian and South German nations savaged the alpine nation in hopes of gaining easily defensible land to draw back to in larger wars. The 6 Cantons that were left also officially renounced acts of war along with their renouncement of Roman Catholicism on August 3rd 1515.Falling from Grace
In the Holy Roman Empire, numerous member states followed Switzerland’s example, although less as a measure to distance themselves from the pope. For Hesse, the first duchy to declare its Lutheran faith, there were the dual motives of appeasing a populace that had quickly latched on to the 95 theses, and a desire to distance themselves from Emperor Wladyslaw of Bohemia. Throughout the 1400’s, Bohemia’s wars and conquests in the Balkans and Northern Germany had alienated much of the Empire, and by 1515 it had gained Holstein and most of Moldova through conquest.
In Britain, Edward and parliament for the first time saw the option of leaving the church instead of having to deal with the relationship of mutual hatred between Britain and the papacy. The isolation from Orthodoxy had kept joining the other side of the Great Schism off the cards, but Lutheranism added the facet of simple disagreement with the papacy, as opposed to leaving on the basis of small differences in style of belief. The only question was what to do after abandoning the pope, adopt Lutheranism or one of the many other Protestant religions springing up in Luther’s wake.
1. Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism.
Eventually, in January 1516, Edward and parliament came up with their own solution, Anglicanism. The main idea of the church was that it would retain most Catholic traditions, but with one major difference. The pope was not the only man who could receive the message of God, but instead it was within the reach of each and every soul who believed in the creator. For this reason, Anglicanism was branded by the pope as “the Christianity of the selfish” when he heard the news in February that Britain had renounced the Catholic Church and its “denial of the lord’s eternal love for all his creation”.
At first glance, this may look like a progressive and extremely modern view on Christianity, but in fact Edward and parliament were simply looking to gain the approval of the common man. They knew that the clergy did not hold the sway in Britain that they did elsewhere in Europe, and thus would not have to pander to priests and bishops. The nation’s “Men of God” would grudgingly accept the new divine hierarchy of a man and his God, where the priest was simply a teacher of protocol, or risk humiliation and social banishment.
The clergy did adjust relatively quietly to the new order, but the government had left them the gargantuan task of turning a vague policy statement into an actual organized church of its own. It would take years, and a significant divergence from the tenet of Catholic traditions being kept, but Anglicanism would eventually be one of the largest Protestant sects. In Europe however, it would stay largely confined to the Isles.
Pope Innocent the Eighth was furious with the sudden influx of “heretics and fools” leaving Catholicism. In 1517, he finally took his frustration with the situation to its logical conclusion, and declared war on Switzerland to force a return to Rome’s sphere, which he hoped would encourage Hesse to return peacefully. Innocent hoped that this would lead to a chain reaction which would eventually bring Europe’s financial behemoth, Britain, whose contribution to papal influence Innocent and his predecessors had not noticed until Edward and his money were gone, back into the fold. It is clear that such thinking was a hopeless fever dream.
The papacy had burned its bridges to Britain decades ago, and paid the full price in 1517-18. The pope had expected support for his crusade from the Empire and Western Europe. Instead, France allied with the Swiss, and Bohemia and Spain stood back and let the French destroy the papacy. The reasons for the reaction to the Swiss War were clear; the powerful of Europe did not wish to set a precedent for the pope to be allowed to violently intervene in worldly affairs. If there was to be a counter-reformation, it would come by the hand of kings, not clergy.
2. The Battle of Viterbo, which destroyed the Papal Army and effectively ended the Swiss War.
The pope lost more than half of his Italian land to the French in the peace settlement, as collateral to assure the papacy would no longer attempt to create empires that were not theirs to create. With the pope incapable of, and the powerful clearly unwilling to, enforce Catholicism, more of the Empire turned to Lutheranism. France, Bohemia and Spain however, all stuck to Catholicism for the time being, out of tradition, and in France for fear that further confusion over the stance of the government on religion might cause instability.
Across the Channel, in February 1519, Britain signed into law a Bill of Religious Rights, protecting all sects of Christianity from prosecution by order of Parliament. The main purpose of the laws was to avoid the religious unrest that had begun to flare up in certain parts of the continent where the new minorities, be they Catholic or Protestant, would resort or be subjected to violence as a “defensive” mechanism by the government or people. When the slight signs of such unrest evaporated in the isles, the British policy proved to be the best of the few that had been tried so far.
The end of the government’s transition to Anglicanism allowed parliament to refocus on the New World. In July 1519, Alfred Carr’s expedition of 5,000 men set out from New York with the intent of charting the coast of the New World as far as possible. When they returned in 1524, battered, bruised, reduced to a fifth of their original strength and without Carr, the expedition would have charted most of the land below the Great Lakes. In 1519 however, their main objective was still the Florida Keys, found six months earlier by a Royal Navy squadron while chasing three pirates ships who had raided the town of New Haven.
3. Alfred Carr, “The Eastern Explorer”.
Carr’s expedition crossed the Potomac in late August, becoming the first Europeans to do so, and headed southwards. During their trek down to Cape Hatteras, Carr wrote numerous letters describing the peculiar shape of the coast of what would later become the Commonwealth of Virginia. The sheer amount of bays, inlets and river mouths awed the expedition, who had at most seen the Mouth of the Thames before they came to America. The road to Florida however, was much more challenging the further down the coast they came; with the heat forcing the expedition to effectively abandon much of their heavier gear.
Once they reached Florida, the expedition set up camp for the winter, expecting the temperature to change more dramatically in the tropical climate. In the end, more than 700 men from the expedition succumbed to disease by February 1520. The death toll would have been higher, but the local tribes were generous in their trade of treatment for promises of trade and alliance. Carr’s expedition left Florida in March, heading up the peninsula and then west, crossing the Mississippi in July.
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An ealier Reform in England, the Pope humbled and a Carr that looks a bit like Hernán Cortés. Good, good.
Now I am curious to see how badly the Pope got mauled, and if the French have kept their Italian provinces. You must give us a map of Europe!
The resemblance to Mr. Cortés was entirely intentional. Glad to know you like it.
Thank you.
Thank you to you too.
I don't know when exactly the French gave their Italian conquests back, but here's a map of Europe from 1536 (apparently don't have pics of the entire continent between 1500 and 1536):
PS. I haven't really had time to get to MEIOU till today, so I'll play forward for a while to see what happens, and should have an update by Saturday-Sunday.
I like how you basically 'start' the AAR as the British settling the New World! It makes it quite unique compared to most other AARs, and top notch as always from you, BBB
Look forward to seeing how this is going, and would love to hear what you think of my own MEIOU AAR which started with England as well but goes in a different direction...
Look forward to seeing how this is going, and would love to hear what you think of my own MEIOU AAR which started with England as well but goes in a different direction...
Is that the Teutons in Finland? Wow, they are doing really well for themselves... Usually they get double-teamed by Poland and Lithuania. Or triple-teamed by them and the proto-Russias.
Yup. I was surprised too. They've been in an on-and-off war with Sweden for a century now. And since that pic was taken, Smolensk has grown more, making me think they'll probably become TTL's Russia.
I like how you basically 'start' the AAR as the British settling the New World! It makes it quite unique compared to most other AARs, and top notch as always from you, BBB
Look forward to seeing how this is going, and would love to hear what you think of my own MEIOU AAR which started with England as well but goes in a different direction...
Thank you.
As for the Plantagenet Empire, I think it's a very interesting idea, and am intrigued to see where you go.
I'd say Poland is a disgusting mess. The rest is okay if you cut off those Polish tentacles.
Finally, an update is ready!