New Rodack

Confederacy of New Rodack
Flag
Anthem: Centuries Ago
Capital	Hupruck
Largest city	Vermesa
Official languages	English
Religion	57% Orthodox Christian - 29% Pagan - 8% Jewish - 6% Protestant Christian
Demonym(s)	New Rodackian
Government	Confederal Presidential Republic
• President	Garfield Mayweather
Legislature	State Collective
Establishment
• The Colony of New Rodack Founded	January 31st-February 5th, 1398
• The Confederacy of New Rodack Proclaimed	June 11th, 1546
GDP (nominal)	estimate
• Total	$2,326,183,492,981.51
Currency	Duck (DUK)

The Confederacy of New Rodack is located in the Rodack peninsula of the northern most continent.

The Colonial Era of New Rodack

New Rodack was founded by northern settlers during the late 1300s, running from the growing threat of the Sutranovkan people they sailed around the continent and landed in Hupruck. Led by Nicholas Nikov, a successful fisherman and expert ship maker, the colonists struggled at first due to lack of support from any home country. Nicholas attempted to bind the settlers together by forging a new identity, and a new nation with it which would be unlike the oppressive regimes and tribes of the past. Nicholas' leadership helped New Rodack establish itself and prevent starvation, foraging and hunting for every scrap of food in the name of "Faith, Brotherhood, and Community"; the three principles Nicholas had taught the settlers to always follow. When Nicholas eventually died of starvation the colony entered severe stagnation and decline, teetering on the brink of annihilation. However, the settlers made first contact with friendly local tribes in 1469, and eventually learned how to more efficiently hunt and grow crops in their new homeland. This saved New Rodack from dying out, but the colony would accomplish little of note until 1546, when the confederacy was first proclaimed.

The Birth of the Confederacy and Expansion

The confederacy was founded in 1546 by powerful farmers who had gained large swaths of territory for their own private use. In order to maintain their land and wealth they agreed to create "states", each farmer would be the governor of their own state and would economically and politically aid the rest. This set the foundation for the modern confederacy as power shifted from local farmers to political leaders who gained power through popular vote. Eventually a presidential position was also created with little powers as a symbol of Rodackian peace and unity, although the states would continue to act almost entirely independent from the president for several more centuries. New Rodack steadily grew throughout the 1500s and 1600s with little incident, with more states joining the confederacy as settlers began to expand northwards into native territory. This increased expansion and assimilation of the natives led to a unique language being developed with New Rodack's already unique dialect of northern mixing with the native tongue. New Rodack had stagnated during the 1700s but experienced an unprecedented rise in wealth and immigrants in the following years, but came with a new problem. Due to the unique language many immigrants had trouble assimilating into Rodackian culture and more importantly experienced difficulties trading and working in New Rodack. This led to an event known locally as "The Great Tongue Twist", in order to address the language issue New Rodackian governors met to discuss adopting a new foreign language easier for foreigners to learn. They went with the most obvious choice, English, since many world leaders and peoples already spoke it to communicate with each other. To encourage the use children aged younger than 9 years old would be given free education if they took a special language course that taught exclusively English, and if the student failed to meet requirements during the course they would be forcefully dropped from the free educational program. This effectively killed New Rodack's previous national language but proved far more fruitful in convincing foreign nations to trade and immigrate to New Rodack.

The 1800s

New Rodack had remained a very isolated nation until the 1812 Treaty of Commerce saw expanded trade with foreign nations and expansion of agricultural subsidies to meet foreign demands. Soon an influx of immigrants followed, increasing the demand for larger farms and more output of wheat and meat. This increased demand soon led to slaves in the inner states being overworked with no increase to their minuscule pay and led to the 1836 slave revolt, 3,000 slaves were killed or re-captured but hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage and missed production quotas caused an economic downturn throughout New Rodack. The economic disaster following the revolt led to the near complete abolishment of slavery in New Rodack, the only remnants being trophy slaves. Still bitter of the loss of profit after the slave revolt and numerous modernization's and living wages now being paid to regular workers, the state governors decided to meet with their southern neighbor for the first time. The meeting led to a treaty on April 4th, 1890 between New Rodack and Rome which set up a toll in the Rome-Rodack pass forcing merchants and military ships to pay for access under the guise of protection from pirates. This however angered the international community of Ridgefield who later formed a "Anti-Roman Piracy" coalition consisting of Judea, Bretislavia, and Antarcticao. Rome eventually backed down and with New Rodack lacking the naval power to uphold it alone followed suit, but the international stunt had strengthened the newly formed bonds between the two nations. Seeing an opportunity to secure an economically and politically crucial alliance with Rome, New Rodack signed the "Roman-New Rodackian Friendship and Mutual Cooperation Treaty" which formed joint military training exercises and negotiated the trade of luxury items from Rome to New Rodack in return for essential items such as wheat and timber, and an added clause of unrestricted Roman trading rights to New Rodack.