Assyria and Her Possessions in 1817
Beyond metropolitan Assyria in the Middle East, Nineveh also ruled a large colonial empire stretching across the Indian Ocean world including lands in Africa, India and the Indies. While the metropolitan Republic had a population of 15.4 million, a further 7,681,145 lived in the colonies. Of these, around a fifth were Nestorian Christians – making up a quarter of the total Nestorian population under Assyrian rule – while the absolute majority, 4.2 million in all, were Muslim. The entire empire was largely controlled by a small minority of a little under 600,000 settler creoles of Middle Eastern origin who lorded over the various indigenous peoples as masters.
This empire could be divided into four distinctive sections: Al-Opheeria and the East African Littoral, Malabar, Sumatra and the Indies.
There were distinctive forms of government in each of these colonies. Al-Opheeria and Sumatra, both home to powerful creole populations with distinctive political inclinations, had significant self government through elected assembles and wider autonomy on most domestic issues. Malabar had somewhat weaker control over its own affairs while the Indies were ruled directly as colonies by Nineveh.
Al-Opheeria
Ethnicity | % | Number |
Al-Opheerian | 19.7 | 166,055 |
Bantu | 36.9 | 311,037 |
Swazi | 31.7 | 267,205 |
Khoisan | 11.4 | 96,092 |
Mzungu | 0.3 | 2,529 |
| | |
Total | | 842,918 |
Denomination | % | Number |
Nestorian | 38.1 | 321,152 |
Pagan | 29.7 | 250,347 |
Sunni | 20.5 | 172,798 |
Catholic | 3.7 | 31,188 |
Greek Christian | 2.6 | 21,916 |
Other Christian | 2 | 16,858 |
Zikri | 1.2 | 10,115 |
Protestant | 1 | 8,429 |
Jewish | 0.9 | 7,586 |
Shia | 0.3 | 2,529 |
| | |
Total | | 842,918 |
Al-Opheerian 19.7% (166,055)
The Al-Opheerians were the descendants of the Middle Eastern settlers who had been migrating to Southern Africa since the end of the sixteenth century. Initially predominantly Nestorian with a substantial Muslim component – largely derived from Babylonia and Arabia – a variety of Christian and Jewish minorities had joined this multi-confessional and multi-ethnic creole population over the generations. Although religiously diffuse and with mixed backgrounds, the settlers had formed a cohesive common culture, identity and language based on a mixture of Syriac and Arabic known as Al-Opheerian.
They had been drawn to the country by the promise of land and riches, particularly gold that had been plentiful aroun the South African Cape in the two centuries after their arrival. As they later began to push inland, their true ethnogenesis as a nation occurred during the Swazi War when they fought in absence of serious support from the Assyrian army to defeat the Swazi Confederation that sought to push them from Africa and enslave their enemies. Since then, they had developed into an infamously reactionary bulwark within the Assyrian world – aligning closely with counter-revolutionaries during the Revolutionary Civil War and being the last holdout against the Federal Republic.
Within Al-Opheeria, the creoles were most concentrated around the Cape, where their oldest communities lay. There, they formed around a third of the population, but could be found throughout the colony as a ruling caste.
The Al-Opheerian population was also inclusive of the settlers of the East African Littoral islands of the Seychelles, Comoros, Mauritius and the Mascarene Islands. These islands had been settled at the end of the fifteenth century, a full century before the Cape, and had been uninhabited before the arrival of the Assyrians. All developed similar societies based on plantation agriculture and slavery, with Black slaves making up 30-40% of the population on each island. Unlike the mainland Cape, the settlers of these islands were far more homogeneous. During their initial colonisation, the right to settle had been limited to Nestorians and restrictions on migration from those outwith the religion remained in place for generations, leaving them largely empty of religious minorities.
Bantu 36.9% (311,037)
The Bantus were a large collection of ethnicities and nations living across Southern Africa who spoke related Bantu languages. Their greatest tribes included the Zulu, the Xhosa and the Sotho. These tribes were all distinguished in that they were free from slavery, and largely lived distinct from the areas of Al-Opheerian settlement. They were the clearly majority of the population across the colony outside of the area around the Cape itself, and a minority there.
Religiously, the Bantu tribes were split between those who adopted Christianity, particularly common in the south, the numerous Muslim communities in the north and along the coast who had come under Swahili influence over the centuries and Pagan tribes in the interior who held on to traditional African beliefs.
Their relationship with the settlers was traditionally tense and typified by occasional violence, varying levels of exploitation and friction with both local elites and the Assyrian state.
Swazi 31.7% (267,205)
The designation 'Swazi' originated in the aftermath of the Swazi War of the late seventeenth century when the AL-Opheerian creoles crushed the Swazi Confederation and enslaved their entire nation. Such were the numbers of the enslaved, that 'Swazi' came to be used as a byword for any black slave throughout Southern Africa. The nineteenth century Swazis included people drawn from dozens of different peoples across Africa, who had all been brought to the colony to live as the slaves of the creoles. Al-Opheeria possessed one of the largest slave populations of any part of the Assyrian empire, with the enslaved forming close to a majority in some parts of the country, especially in the south around the Cape were settler control was at its greatest. Indeed, while Al-Opheeria had a smaller population than Philistia, it contained a third of all the slaves in the Assyrian Empire. They formed the central component of the Al-Opheerian economy – working in the mines, fields, in workshops and as domestic servants.
Khoisan 11.4% (96,092)
The Khoisan were the indigenous people of the South African Cape, who had lived in the region prior to the migration of Bantu-speaking people into the area. They held a distinctive position within the racial hierarchy of Al-Opheeria. Lighter skinned than the Bantu, generally more placid and less warlike and less technologically advanced, the Khoisan maintained happier relations with the creoles than their fellow native Africans. Indeed, as the historic population around the Cape, many Khoisan tribes had negotiated treaties and privileges with the Middle Eastern settlers in the first decades after their arrival in Africa, rights that remained largely respected so long as they did not interfere with creole demands for access to the most valuable land and resources.
Mzungu 0.3% (2,529)
Mzungu was derived from a Swahili term for foreigner. In Al-Opheeria it was used to refer to communities of white Europeans, mostly Scots, Italians and Greeks, who had settled in the eponymous city of Al-Opheeria on the Cape. There they formed an influential and distinct community of trades, often looked upon suspiciously for their wealth and as a source of foreign influence.
Malabar
Culture | % | Number |
Nasrani | 56.7 | 757,581 |
Hindu | 25.3 | 338,038 |
Moors | 17.6 | 235,157 |
Assyrians | 0.4 | 5,344 |
| | |
Total | | 1,336,120 |
Nasrani 56.7% (757,581)
The Nasrani, as the knew themselves, or the St Thomas Christians were the faced Nestorian Christians of India. With ancient roots reaching back Thomas the Apostle's travels to India, and connections to the Church of the East from the earliest years of its existence they had spent many centuries as a distant and exotic connection to the Syriac world. From the Middle Ages, they emerged as the subject of intense spiritual important among Nestorians – who saw in them a link to the Apostles and a defiantly Christian community on the edge of Pagan barbarism. This fascination was truly born under the legendary King Nahir the Bear who led the First Malabar Crusade at the beginning of the thirteenth century, establishing the Malabar Raj that would last until the end of the century before being reconquered by native Hindu Tamil powers. The area was later subjected to the unsuccessful Second Malabar Crusade in the sixteenth and the victorious Third Malabar Crusade in the Seventeenth century – which led to the territory's present borders.
The centuries of Assyrian involved in the region had allowed the Nasrani community to grow significantly since the High Middle Ages. While only a majority within the borders of Assyrian Malabar, there were significant numbers of Christians in northern Malabar – which remained under Tamil rule – and smaller communities scattered around India, especially in the south.
Unlike other parts of the colonial empire, the ruling class of Malabar was largely made up of native Nasrani – who were respected as an equals by pious Nestorians in particular. As a community, the Nasrani had historically been somewhat detached from the internal struggles of Assyrian political life, even as they enthusiastically supported their presence in India as the guarantor of their power and security. Religiously, they were noted for their conservatism within the Church of the East and had been staunch supporters of the Old Nestorian Patriarchate during its exile following the eighteenth century schism.
Hindus 25.3% (338,038)
The ancient faith of India that remained dominant across the subcontinent in the early nineteenth century. Although speaking a shared Tamil language, the Hindus saw their community as highly distinct from the Christians and Muslims of Malabar – being more truly Indian and Tamil. For centuries they had engaged in ethnic rivalries with the Christians, persecuting them with great regularity during the Medieval and Early Modern period prior to the Assyrian re-conquest of Malabar. After the restoration of Christian Malabar, the tables were turned and the Hindus came under significant suspicion for their real and imagined sympathies and connections to the Tamil empires beyond Assyria's borders. In 1817 they were an unhappy and restive people who dreemed of driving the Assyrians out and restoring Hindu rule to Malabar.
Moors 17.6% (235,157)
Islam had been present in southern India since the seventh century, brought to the region by Arab traders. Like the Hindus and Nasrani, the Malabar Moors were of largely indigenous Indian ethnic stock, speaking the same Tamil language as their neighbours. However there mix did include an Arab element that had merged into the wider Indian population over time. Within Malabar, the Moors had faced historic hostility from both Hindu and Christian regimes over the centuries, often caught between them in their struggles for power – at times aligning with the Hindus against the Christians and at others joining with the Nasrani against external Hindu Tamil empires.
Assyrians 0.4% (5,344)
A small population of ethnic Assyrians lived in Malabar. Many belonged to religious communities, with dozens of monastic communities and shrines doting the area while others served as economic and administrative elites seeking to secure wealth and the power of the Assyrian empire in its Indian foothold.
Sumatra
Ethnicity | % | Number |
Alsharqian | 12.2 | 373,115 |
Malay | 61.3 | 1,874,750 |
Pribumi | 22.1 | 675,889 |
Asians | 2.5 | 76,458 |
Black | 1.9 | 58,108 |
| | |
Total | | 3,058,320 |
Denomination | % | Number |
Sunni | 65.9 | 2,015,433 |
Hindu | 19.8 | 605,547 |
Nestorian | 9.9 | 302,774 |
Buddhist | 2.2 | 67,283 |
Other Christian | 1 | 30,582 |
Other Muslim | 0.9 | 27,601 |
Jewish | 0.3 | 9,100 |
| | |
Total | | 3,058,320 |
Alsharqian 12.2% (373,115)
Like the Al-Opheerians, the Alsharqians were a creole population consisting largely of a blend of Semitic settlers from the Middle East – Christian, Muslim and Jews. This community was as much as a century older, having emerged from the elites of the Malaccan Trading Company who had first established forts, plantations and mines on the island. Over time, more and more Middle Easterners made the island of Sumatra their permanent home, building a self confident and highly developed society.
The Alsharqians had a number of key differences with the Al-Opheerians. They were notably wealthier, with the immense riches of Sumatra and the Indies outweighing those of South Africa. They were also generally more urbanised, had never developed a similarly intensive slave holding tradition, had much healthier relations with the indigenous population and were a somewhat less pious society. The Sumatran creoles were also far more liberal. Indeed, the failed Sumatran Revolution in the late seventeenth century acting as something of a precursor to the later Assyrian Revolution, while in that great conflagration Sumatra firmly supported the Republicans, even freeing its own slaves.
Within the colony, the Alsharqians were most numerous in northern and western Sumatra, being much weaker in the south and east of the island and on the Assyrian enclave of peninsular Malaya.
Malay 61.3% (1,874,750)
The Malays were the majority population of Sumatra and Malaya and exerted significant cultural sway across Maritime South East Asia. Indeed, the Malay language operated as a lingua franca throughout the region, while ethnic Malay communities peppered the islands to the east, in particular Borneo. Having adopted Islam during the Middle Ages, the Malays spread their faith eastward to the islands of Borneo, Sulawesi and the Tagalog Peninsula, outcompeting the traditional dominance of Indic Hindu religion in the region, even as Hinduism retained its grip over the populous island of Java as well as the southern quarter of Sumatra itself.
Within Sumatra, the Malays were largely a peasant class with creoles and Asians serving the colony's upper and middle strata. Nonetheless, the Malays were regarded as more civilised than most of the other peoples of the region by the Assyrian elite and were more closely integrated into modern society.
Pribumi 22.1% (675,889)
The 'first to the soil', the Pribumi was a collective term for the constellation of indigenous peoples of the Indies regarded as less civilised by the Assyrian ruling class. On Sumatra these varied from tribal communities living primitive lives deep in the jungle and mountain of the interior to peasant communities from minority groups. With such a broad range of groups, there was no single experience among the Pribumi but they generally had a looser relationship with the state and the creole caste than the Malays, tending to live in less accessible and isolated parts of the colony. Religiously, they were disproportionately Hindu – having resisted the waves of proselytising that had swept the East Indies in the preceding centuries. However their numbers also included many Muslims and smaller groups of Christians.
Asians 2.5% (76,458)
The Middle Easterners were not the only settler community in the colony, but were joined by a number of Asian communities – principally Buddhist Koreans, but also Hindu Bengalis and Chinese. These groups had arrived during the rule of rival colonial powers, forced out of Sumatra by Assyrian arms but remained in place – acting as the upper caste in parts of eastern Sumatra and Assyrian Malaya.
Blacks 1.9% (58,108)
The Sumatran Blacks were among the first significant slave population to be freed in Assyria. With the plentiful nature of low cost indigenous labour, African slavery had played only a minor part in the history of Sumatra and the Indies. Unlike their fellows in metropolitan Assyria, the Sumatran Blacks had avoided the fate of ghettoisation but instead lived similar difficult lives tied to labour in mines and plantation by all-controlling employer masters.
The Indies
Ethnicity | % | Number |
Pribumi | 93 | 2,272,722 |
Malay | 4.6 | 112,414 |
Alsharqian | 1.5 | 36,657 |
Asians | 0.5 | 12,219 |
Blacks | 0.4 | 9,775 |
| | |
Total | | 2,443,787 |
Denomination | % | Number |
Sunni | 71.6 | 1,749,751 |
Pagan | 19.4 | 474,095 |
Nestorian | 7.7 | 188,172 |
Other | 0.8 | 19,550 |
Buddhist | 0.5 | 12,219 |
| | |
Total | | 2,443,787 |
Pribumi 93% (2,272,722)
The rest of the Indies had never been subjected to the same level of settlement as Sumatra – with efforts at doing so attracting scant success. Equally, there was no single dominant or even leader ethnic group like the Malays among a scattering of islands that was home to dozens of smaller indigenous ethnicities. All broadly of a shared Austronesian culture and heritage, these communities varied across island and region, including hunter gathers in the jungle interiors and peasant masses cultivated advance export-orientated spice economies. Religiously, Islam was the dominant force across the Indies, but there were sizeable numbers of Pagan believers in traditional religions.
Malays 4.6% (112,414)
Beyond their homeland in Sumatra and Malaya, there were Malay communities scattered across the Indies – particularly on the island of Brunei where they occupied many coastal regions. Throughout the region they tended to have stronger relations with the Assyrian state than other native populations – with the creoles often being more familiar with Malay speech and regarding them as being more civilised and therefore more willing to employ them commercial and administrative roles. As such they were a cornerstone of Assyrian rule in the Indies.
Alsharqian 1.5% (36,657)
There had been very little creole settlement in the Indies, and what there had been was focussed on the island of Sulawesi, which had spent the longest period under Assyrian rule and was the centre of the regional spice trade. The island had been the base of the Moluccan Company, the less successful rival to the Malaccan Company of Sumatra and had been the subject of largely unsuccessful attempts to stimulate a settler colony on the Sumatran model. Its creoles were culturally heavily influenced by the larger population to the west and shared.
Asians 0.5% (12,219)
As was the case in Sumatra, there were small communities of Asians operating largely as commercial and property owning classes throughout the Indies. These included groups of Chinese, Japanese and some Koreans.
Blacks 0.4% (9,775)
The Blacks played an even lesser role in the life of the Indies than they did on Sumatra. There was only a very small population living mostly on the island of Sulawesi close to the Alsharqian settler communities who had brought their ancestors to the region. Like their fellows in Sumatra, they were freed from slavery during the Revolution although had enjoyed little advanced in social status since.
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