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A History of the World According to Paradox: A Hands-Off AAR, Part Two

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Cool to see the action that occurred this update. Of the three great powers that took beatings, it looks like Etruria is best placed to comeback and regain its old power and influence - the new nations on their borders are all rather small, and the existential threat that Austria represented has waned considerably. Navarra and Austria, on the other hand, look to be in far more dire straights. Than again, if Mali can come back from the smack down it took so nicely, perhaps the other two can as well.
 
THE NEW WORLD, 1718-1767

In the early part of the 18th century, some of the Native American tribes in North America were able to take advantage of conflicts between the colonial powers to further their own interests. One such example was the Iroquois under the leadership of Bear Paw Schaunactada. After centuries of being ruled by the Huron, they were freed by Leinster in the late 17th century, and remained allied to Leinster. This later enabled them to forcibly vassalize the Hurons, who had chosen the other side in the Anglo-Irish war, and were ultimately annexed by the Iroquois in 1718. Similarly, the Creek were able to retake Apalachee from Sweden in 1723 when the devastation of the Swedish fleet by Leinster left its colonies vulnerable.

But such victories were few, and it was clear that the days of free Native American states were numbered. The Creek were able to hold Apalachee for only three years before Bremen forced them to relinquish it. Despite the fact that only brilliant military strategy and clever diplomacy had enabled High Elder Alexander McGillivray Osceola to take possession of Apalachee in the first place, the failure to hold it caused a crisis in faith in his leadership. Within two years, his government had collapsed and he had been replaced by Miko Malatchee Chebona.

North America in 1727:


The 1730’s saw invasions of the Creek by Bremen and Berry, which ended in the Creek buying their continued survival with gold. Desperate to find a better solution, the tribe collapsed into anarchy, repeatedly choosing new leaders in an effort to find one that could stave off the inevitable. When Bremen attacked again in 1739, the tribal elders thought that the alliances they had fashioned with the Cherokee and Iroquois—who were still friends with Leinster—would be enough to hold them off. But Leinster and its ally Bohemia were still suffering the effects of their protracted wars and the war went poorly. Though the Creek tribe managed to escape without concessions, the Iroquois were forced to give up Oneida to Bremen. For a time, this seemed a recurrent pattern that a war would begin with an invasion of the Creek tribe—by Navarra, in 1745, for example—only to be ended by a territorial concession by one of their native American allies. Navarra took control of Catawba from Cherokee three years after their attack on Creek.

Perhaps it was only the intensity of fighting between the Europeans in the first half of the century which allowed the Native Americans to persist as long as they did. In the 1750’s, the process of European conquest accelerated. The French attacked the Iroquois in 1751, and conquered them before the year was out. Berry’s conquest of the larger and more powerful Cherokee nation took five years, but was concluded with their annexation in 1759. The conquest of the Native American states ended in 1761, ironically in the same way it had begun nearly two centuries before: with Navarra attacking Creek.

North America in 1763:


With the danger of attack from the indigenous people dwindling, the European colonists became more willing to voice their grievances with the faraway central government. In truth, colonial insurrections were by no means new, but in the past the aim had been to either win concessions from the European power or find another European country that was more amenable to the rebel demands. But the 1750’s and 1760’s saw a revolutionary wave sweep through the New World that sought not to change the rules by which they were governed from afar, but to govern themselves.

The first warning shot was fired in 1755 when the discontented landed aristocrats in Hispaniola and Curacao took up arms against the Etrurian garrison and selected Ludovico Ruspoli to rule them as King of Haiti. Three later, a polyglot collection of rebellious colonists from all around the Gulf of St. Lawrence declared themselves the nation of Quebec, renouncing all ties to their various colonial rulers: Etruria, Leinster, Norway, Castille and Toulouse. And while the Haitians had set up a traditional royal bureaucracy based on a European model, the Quebecois had a far more radical agenda, built upon the new theories that had been put forth by enlightened thinkers such as Fredrik Grip, Folquet de Lacaze and Pietro de Podio. The Revolutionary Council of Acadia wrote a constitution defining the rights and privileges of its citizens and defined a process of elections whereby a President of the Republic could be chosen. The first one chosen was Oddmund Amundsen.

The rebellions spread rapidly throughout the hemisphere. The Irish colonies along the eastern coast of North America were inspired by the revolutionary ideas coming out of Quebec. They too rose up in rebellion, and were joined by some neighboring colonies of Norway, Etruria and Navarra, proclaiming themselves “the United States of America”, a nation that stretched from Chesapeake Bay to the Savannah River and deep into the Applachians. The American republic pushed the ideas of liberty even farther than Quebec had, billing themselves the “land of the free”. A revolt flared up in Leinster’s colonies in the central Mexican highlands and spread to the adjoining provinces of Castille. The new Revolutionary Republic of Mexico was modeled on the old Roman Republic in which the aristocratic classes retained political control, and elected a “Consul” to rule them. By the end of 1762, the revolutionary fervor reached the east coast of South America, where the Kingdom of Brazil was created by Austrian, Bohemian , Danish and Berrian colonists, united in their distaste for their colonial overlords.

Not all these nations were fated to succeed. Haiti, perhaps due to its island location and because it faced only one colonizing nation, was able to retain all the lands the revolutionaries claimed. The others had made many enemies and in some cases, they were forced to cede territory to the opportunistic allies of their enemies as well as the original colonists. Mexico relinquished its western coast to Bohemia. Quebec lost much of its territory to Bremen and Sweden, as well as giving up the island of Newfoundland to Castille. Brazil, too, was only able to retain a fraction of the lands that had risen up in revolution; Berry, Denmark and Bohemia regained the rest.

Perhaps the harshest fate of all fell to the most ambitious and radical of all the nations, the Americans. Not only did they lose much of their land to Etruria and Navarra, but Berry’s armies occupied their entire nation, forcing them to become a protectorate in 1767. To be in effect a subject people was a bitter pill to swallow for a nation founded on the principles of freedom, but at least they retained autonomy within their internal affairs.

The European nations had beaten back but failed to crush the rebels. New ideas about the ‘rights of man’ and ‘social contracts’ and different ways of governing were spreading not only in the Americas but filtering back to Europe. As disappointing as the Treaty of Powhatan had been to the American revolutionaries, it seemed unlikely to defuse the spirit of the new era.

The New World in 1769:
 
It's a shame that the revolutionary zeal faltered but I suppose it probably would've happened like that in real life if colonisation had been that fragmented.
 
Do half of these countries even exist kn Vic 2?
 
On that map, probably only Berry and Gotland don't have good counterparts, but there will probably be enough empty German/Italian minor slots to fit them. We'll probably have Leinster to Ireland, Navarra to Spain, Etruria to Tuscany, etc. for a lot of countries.
 
I think the converter mod for Vicky 2 is supposed to convert all the countries with their correct names. I don't think it works with HOD yet, so I may have to go on hiatus for a while because I do want to use HOD.
 
magritte2 said:
I think the converter mod for Vicky 2 is supposed to convert all the countries with their correct names. I don't think it works with HOD yet, so I may have to go on hiatus for a while because I do want to use HOD.
Click to expand...
With the converter mod, though, instead of just the converter by itself, African colonies usually have "noculture" minorities.
 
THE BRITISH ISLES AND THE GREAT WESTERN WAR, 1748-1773.

The first half of the 18th century had not been a happy one in England. Widespread revolts in South America, the Scottish Revolution, and unsuccessful wars with Leinster were the legacy of the English line of the von Chelyabinsk family, which died out in 1734. A lengthy regency period followed as they awaited the coming of age of Henry IX Alfieri, a cousin of Mariano VIII of Sardinia.

But by 1748, the country was at last on a stable footing, the English fleet had been rebuilt, and Henry IX had proven himself a skilled diplomat and showed promise in the art of war, as well. Seeing that Leinster’s principal ally, Bohemia, had been drawn into another war with Frankfurt, Henry recognized an opportunity to punish his Irish rival. His own ally, Jean V de Broye of Berry eagerly joined in the war effort, in the hopes of capturing Leinster’s holdings in Brittany. Bohemia was in no position to defend its ally and did not make the attempt, but the Sardinians did rally to Leinster’s defense, despite being Henry’s kin.

Berry crushed both the Irish forces in Brittany and Sardinia’s attempt to invade from the south , while the English fought the war overseas. Though Leinster prided itself on its technologically advanced and glorious navy, the English had far more large ships which gave them the flexibility to occupy Leinster’s holdings in the Caribbean, South America and the Indian Ocean. After two years, The Lord Protector Cadwgwan O Diubhgeannain saw no choice but to cede the province of Vannes to Brittany.

Despite the untimely death of young Henry IX, the war with England raged on and Leinster found itself in a stifling naval blockade that it did not have enough ships to break. The only thing that kept the war going as long as it did was that the English navy was heavily biased toward two-deckers, and could not transport sufficient troops to Leinster’s homeland to take on the 40,000 Irish troops stationed in Ireland. But by 1756, all of Leinster’s possessions in North America were under British occupation.

The regency council offered harsh terms in the peace agreement. England recaptured two provinces in South America, regaining control of the Andean passes, as well as taking back western Cuba and the Turks Islands. The most severe penalty incurred was the release of the eastern Irish province of Kildare as the Kingdom of Tyrone, a vehicle by which the English hoped to extend their influence in Ireland.

For the next few years, the English focus shifted toward developing its colonies in the Pacific, which were proving a useful place to alleviate the overcrowding in English prisons at home, while Leinster struggled to contain rebellions in its colonies. But in 1764, the young King Edmund af Plasencia turned his sights toward Ireland, much as his uncle had sixteen years before. Hoping to gain a permanent foothold on the island, he declared war on the prosperous and progressive Republic of Connacht. Lord Protector Cathaoir O Caoindealbhain had guaranteed Connacht’s independence, and had no real choice but to oppose the naked imperialist ambitions of England.

Unlike his uncle’s war of 1748, the English invasion of Connacht led to a much larger European conflict when Karl Theodor VI von Oldenburg of Frankfurt decided to attack Berry the following spring. As if the might of Frankfurt was not imposing enough by itself, he called on his allies in Denmark, France and Greece among others to join in and divide the spoils. But King Charles VI of Berry had allies as well, England, naturally, but also Etruria. The conflict grew still more complex later that summer. Though Denmark had the largest fleet in the world, King Gustav IV von Rheinfleden of Sweden did not think they were strong enough to defeat the combined navies of Berry, England and Etruria. When he heard word that the Danes would be sending most of their troops to western Europe, he invaded Denmark and persuaded his allies in Castille to attack them from southern Iberia. Navarra attempted to reconquer its possessions in Iberia that had been lost to Berry. When you added in the many sattelite states of the major powers, most of western Europe was aflame.

The English diplomatic situation in 1766:


The war was not confined to Europe, but fought around the world. The French fought the English in southern South America while the Danes attacked the colonies of Berry, England and Etruria in the eastern part of the continent. In Africa, the Danes attacked the Etrurian colonies in West Africa, while Etruria invaded Danish North Africa and England attacked Denmark in the South.

The terrifying scale of the conflict--involving more than 700,000 men and 300 warships--caused many of the combatants to try to reduce the scope of their involvement through separate peace agreements. Within a year, Leinster and Berry had agreed to peace without terms and Gustav IV had gotten cold feet and pulled out of his war with Frankfurt and Denmark. France agreed to surrender the eastern coast of southern South America to England and retain only its holdings in the southwest.

But the winter of 1767-68 brought another combatant into the fray when Charles VI convinced the Holy Roman Emperor, King Jiri de Sens of Bohemia that Frankfurt—which had been the scourge of his nation for two centuries—was overextended by its invasion of Berry. Fearing that Bohemia would bring in a wide swath of Holy Roman Empire members into the war, after forcing Ansbach to become a vassal, Frankfurt agreed to peace with Berry despite the considerable gains he had made. This did not end Berry’s difficulties however, as it still faced a Navarran invasion from the South. But when Berry occupied most of Navarra’s possessions in North America, they chose to make peace rather than fight on without Frankfurt’s assistance. Elsewhere, the Danish-Frankfurt side of the war seemed troubled as the English had taken several Baltic provinces, and Etruria occupied all of Greece.

In 1769, Leinster saw an opportunity to buy its way out of the war with the cash-strapped English with a small sum of gold. The conflict that had begun the war was over, and Connacht remained independent, but the other sides of the war raged on until 1773, when the Danes agreed to stop interfering with Gotland’s politics and pay a small sum of gold in return for peace with England. Soon afterward, Frankfurt and Etruria made peace, though only after Frankfurt had annexed Brandenburg.

Thus, the Great Western War of 1764-1773 ended rather inconclusively. Perhaps the largest effect was that the heavy taxes imposed by all the combatants inflamed revolutionary movements in many of their possessions. The colonists on the west coast of North America, fed up with England, Castille, and Sweden, banded together and formed the United Provinces of California (UPCA). Bohemia’s lucrative holdings in South America declared independence as Peru. Normandy reasserted its independence from Frankfurt, while rebels in the north of Denmark changed their allegiance to Gotland.

Northwestern Europe in 1775:


The Western New World in 1775:
 
Oof, the loss of the old Incan lands must sting Bohemia's income and pride. I too wonder at how the UPCA ended up in California. I guess some rebels of their stripe got lucky there. Denmark doesn't seem to be aggressive/stubborn enough to be a true world leader. Rich, yes. Large military, yes. Political will to use both, no. Leinster is incredibly lucky to be escaping the attention of the English so easily. But I think their days are numbered.
 
If you think the location of the UPCA is odd, just wait till you see where Venezuela and Louisiana appear. I have no idea how EU3 creates nation tags.

@TSSL, Sibir suffered a major revolt in the old Burgundian provinces, which went to Baden.

@EtzelHoveri, Hungary has little hope of becoming a colonizing nation except through conquest, and it doesn't have much of a navy. Their naval tech isn't that high (29), and they haven't any naval or colonial ideas, so the only available colony within range for them is Sierra Leone.
 
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