User:Chad/Sandbox
History
Cydalia has a long, rich history that is generally divided by modern scholars into two schools: the Minamian (Geological) and the Spenglerian (Sociological) schools, both of which are post-Collapse schools of historical thought. In spite of both being post-Collapse schools of thought, both are named for pre-Collapse scholars. The Minamian school of thought, named after Katsuyuki Minami, generally follows the belief that geography and land creates the majority of history unique to a culture or society living in it. They tend to study how a civilization interacts with the land throughout the course of history. The Spenglerian school of thought, named after Oswald Spengler, believes, on the contrary, that the culture, beliefs, customs, and in some cases race, of a society is what forms the majority of impactful history.
The following history section attempts to merge the two into a history of the country in as seamless a way as it possibly can.
Early History, Native Americans, and the Iroquois
Cydalia was inhabited for millennia before the first arrival of Europeans. Archaeologists generally consider what is now Cydalia to have been first inhabited around anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Closer to the first European settlements, a wide variety of Native tribes lived within the borders of modern-day Cydalia. Within these, there were two main subgroups, both of whom are classified by language. These were the Algonquian speaking tribes, and the Iroquoian speaking tribes. Algonquian speaking tribes, such as the Abenaki, Pequots, and Wampanoag tended to live more towards the Atlantic coastline, though other tribes lived inland. Most Iroquoian speaking tribes lived more inland, around the modern-day Districts of Upstate, Capitol, and Niagra. The majority of these tribes practiced a mix of agriculture, hunting and gathering, and tribes living by larger bodies of water tended to fish. Natives during this time are generally considered to have lived largely "in harmony" with the natural environment. Additionally, the majority of these tribal communities tended to be closely knit together, and were generally made up of a few extended families living within the same area, though this differed from region to region. Algonquians tended to live in wigwams, which were small houses or huts made of bark with buckskin covered doors, and Iroquoian speaking peoples generally lived in longhouses.
Native Americans at this time were, despite vast differences in culture, strikingly similar to Europeans of the time when they arrived. Much like the soon-to-be colonials, Native Americans had tribal conflicts, civil wars, differing spiritual beliefs, different languages, and other differences in overall culture. Likewise, they competed with one another for resources, social clout, trade and economic gain, and military power. Many even formed various confederacies or loose alliances of tribes. These rivalries would persist for decades, even after the arrival of Europeans. In some cases, tribes of both Iroquoian and Algonquian stock had trade routes that could run back all the way to the Dakotas or Rockies, though this was extremely rare.
In Cydalia, the largest pre-European, and for a brief time, post-European political power was the Iroquoian-speaking Haudenosaunee, meaning "People of the Longhouse." It was commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy. The Confederacy was founded sometime between 1150 and 1420, and most Native American myths place this founding as the consequence of a man known as Skennenrahawi, or the "Great Peacemaker." The founding myth generally states that with his allies Jigonhsasee and Hiawatha; a woman who provided free hospitality to passing warriors, and a famous orator of the Onondaga respectively, helped him achieve his vision of a "transcommunity." A "transcommunity" in the Skennenrahawian sense is generally believed to mean a sense of an everlasting peaceful community between all Iroquoian peoples, regardless of any disturbance. It was formed by five tribes, which were the Seneca, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, and the Cayuga. All of these tribes were, according to myth, taught certain spiritual guidelines by the Great Peacemaker, who defied situations that would have killed most people, such as drowning in a river, and successfully predicting a solar eclipse. A sixth tribe, the Tuscarora, would join them in the early 1700s after losing their homes in war. Regardless of what caused them to join up, the Iroquois would expand their territory and dominion throughout Merica, eventually spreading from what is now around Awlbany to Chicagoland and the border regions of even Minasota.
Starting a few decades after the Columbian Exchange, European monarchies sent out explorers and cartographers to scout out new possible lands for colonies and trade routes. These included people like Giovanni da Verrazzano, and Jacques Cartier on behalf of France, along with John Smith and John Cabot on behalf of England. By 1500, Europeans started to trade with the Natives, mainly for beaver furs. Within modern Cydalia, most of the first explorers came from Western and Northern Europe, more specifically England, France, and the Netherlands. Sweden also made attempts at colonization, but these were largely failures. Exploring the Cydalian coastline and making a few incursions inland, no real European settlements of any note were made before the early 1620s. Starting around the 1620s, European monarchies began issuing official charters that would allow their citizens and companies to colonize certain areas of the "New World." The majority of these were established on "sea to sea" bases or those regarding shorelines.
European Colonialism
Two charters were issued for the "Virginia Company of London" and the "Virginia Company of Plymouth" on the 10th of April, 1606. Requiring each company to maintain at least 100 miles of separation from one another, both companies set out to start colonies on the east coast of Merica. Provided that the colonies did not conflict with one another, they had almost limitless reign to settle wherever they pleased. The name "New England" was officially given to the colonies on the 3rd of November, 1620, when the charter of the Plymouth Company was replayed with a royal charter on behalf of the "Plymouth Council for New England," which itself was a joint-stock company that was made to colonize and govern the general region. Established in 1620 by the Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony would become the first permanent settlement in New England.
The Pilgrims, as they are popularly known, were a group of roughly 100 or so English Puritan Protestants who had spent the previous few years in the Netherlands. Originally fleeing English territory due to religious differences, they accepted English rule again provided they were allowed to keep both their culture and their religion, which the English crown accepted. Plymouth Colony would later be absorbed into Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Within the colony, a Puritan society was created, making a politically innovative, deeply religious, and socially tight-knit community. This was in an attempt to create a religious utopia, referred to them as a "nation of saints" or a proverbial "city upon a hill."
Initially, relations between the Colonists and the Native Americans tended to be neutral or positive, though these would quickly sour.
In stark contrast to the Puritans, people such as Roger Williams preached a more liberal and libertarian doctrine of religious tolerance, secular government, and a complete break from the Church of England. For this, he was banished from Massachusetts and led himself and his followers south, where he founded the Providence Plantations in 1636. It soon merged with local settlements to form the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which became a safehaven for religious minorities such as Quakers, Baptists, and Jews. During the Antinomian Controversy, a religious dispute over the covenant of grace, Anne Hutchinson and her followers also moved to the colony. Earlier that same year, the Connecticut Colony received a charter from the crown, and established a government and absorbed the neighboring New Haven Colony. At this time, what were to become the New Hampshire Colony and the future American state of Maine were governed by Massachusetts. New Hampshire would split off multiple times, first in 1629, again in 1679, and finally in 1689.
Dutch Colonies were also established, although this was brief. Henry Hudson departed Amsterdam on April 4, 1609. He reached the Hudson River by September of the same year. He sailed upwards to Albany, and his voyage was used to establish Dutch Colonies and trading claims in the Upstate District for the fur trade. Albany, or present day Awlbany, was established sometime around 1614 under the command of Hendrick Christiaensen. New Netherland, as it was called, would be conquered by British soldiers after a war in 1664. Lenient peace treaties kept further conflicts from breaking out between the English and the Dutch. New York City, then Nieuw Amsterdam, was renamed to "New York City." Beverwijck was renamed to Albany. Both of these were named after King James II, who was Duke of both York and Albany in the British Isles.
Most of Northern and Northeastern Cydalia was settled by Viking explorers from Scandinavia around 1000 AD. The L'Anse aux Meadows settlement was dated by archaeologists to around that time, and despite being in Newfinlan, it is likely that further incursions into modern Cydalian borders were made. Viking and Native sources from the region tell of battles between Vikings and "Skraelings," and genetic testing of archaeological remains show that some native Beothuk had Nordic admixture, and Viking weaponry and tools.
Centuries later, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano, working on behalf of England and France, were the first Europeans to sail inland around the Maritimes. Several Portuguese explorers such as Diego Homem documented them as well. The first Europeans to explore them in depth was Jacques Cartier and his crew, who made the first detailed exploration of the region a few years later. Claiming the land for France, Cartier was followed by others who established the second permanent European settlement at the time in 1604. One of these, Samuel de Champlain, went on to become the founder of New France's province of "Canada," which includes modern day Longshore, Shortshore, and Qadia.
James II of England became worried of the increasingly independent ways of the Colonies, such as their own self-governing charters, Navigation Acts, and increasing local military power. Declaring the Dominion of New England in 1686, he combined all of New England's colonies alongside the Province of New York and the Province of New Jersey, which were added within two years of it being founded. Proving highly unpopular at the time due to it taking away the local government leaders elected by the Colonists, the Connecticut Colony refused to deliver their charter to the Governor of the dominion, Edmund Andros. When King James was removed from power in 1689's Glorious Revolution, the city of Boston revolted against Andros' rule and arrested him. Andros was sent back to England in chains, though he would later be sent back to administer other parts of England's colonies.
British Colonies
By 1700, the majority of what would become Cydalia was under British rule. New England, Pennsylvania, and the Maritimes were undoubtedly under British Command, with Upstate New York being ruled by the Haudenosaunee and the Districts of Longshore and Shortshore being under French rule as parts of Québec. With the exile of Governor Andros, Massachusetts was reorganized into the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Dominion of New England was abolished. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Nova Scotia would break off and form their own separate colonies under the British crown by the end of the decade.
Due to the revolt against Andros, colonial military and militia defenses were withdrawn from the frontiers of the region, and in turn, they suffered a long series of raids from French forces and their Native allies, mainly coming from Canada and Acadia. Queen Anne's War broke out in 1702, over the European War of Spanish Succession, and lasted until 1713. Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley played a major role in organizing colonial defenses, and the number of raids, even during the war, dropped significantly. Dudley launched military expeditions into Acadia in 1704, 1707, and 1709. The first two of these three proved successful, while the last one was called off. Troops were called up to serve again in 1710, and the Acadian capital of Port-Royal was captured.
At this time, the colony had issued a paper currency. Due to the wars, the value of said currency was constantly in decline leading to a number of financial crises. Attempts to create a bank were made, but Governors Dudley and Samuel Shute were opposed to the idea. All governors during this time tried to convince the general courts both in England and the Colonies to fix salaries for officials appointed by the British Crown. During the reign of Governor William Burnet, he held a provincial assembly in session for six months, moving it twice during session attempting to force the wage issue.
He was unsuccessful.
Starting in the 1720s, raids yet again began to hit frontier villages in Massachusetts, encouraged by the French. The proprietors of these raids were primarily the Abenaki and allied Native tribes. They were stopped by Governor William Dummer, and most of the Abenaki retreated from New England into Canada, not to return until after the Collapse centuries later.
During the 1730s, Governor Jonathan Belcher disputed the legislature's power to make direct appropriations of property and funds, and vetoed bills that didn't give him the freedom to pay out money how he wanted to. The provincial treasury of Massachusetts Bay was usually empty due to this. Belcher permitted the Board of Trade to accept grants from the legislature in lieu of fixed salaries, and the currency crisis flared up again during his aministration, resulting in the "Land Back Proposal" which Belcher personally opposed. Belcher's personal opponents in London schemed to have him removed and established a bank, but it died soon after due to an act of British Parliament dissolving it without question. Because of this, a number of the Colonial elite and landed gentry began to turn against the crown, and turn against the British Parliament was well.
Minor wars and skirmishes happened quite often throughout the British and French colonies throughout the 1730s and 1740s, and this would come to a head in the early 1750s. The French and Indian War began in 1754, and would last until 1763. This was, at the time, the largest conflict on the Merican continent. This war formed a major chapter in the imperial feud between Britain and France that had lasted for centuries. French expeditions into the Ohio River valley brought French merchants and soldiers into regular conflict with British colonialists, mainly from Virginia, and their native allies. The French would build Fort Duquense around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It became an incredibly strategic foothold and fought back multiple British assaults. Initially, the French and their Native allies won a long, brutal series of military victories against the British during the first years of the war, going so far as to kill the leader of all British forces in Merica -- Edward Braddock. Alongside Edward Braddock was the young George Washington, who would go on to become the first president of the United States of America. Braddock's successor, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley, was also defeated. Due to concerns about the loyalties of French speaking Acadians in Nova Scotia were with France and not Britain, Governor Shirley expelled thousands of Acadians to other British colonies throughout the course of the war and the years following. Those who remained would become the founding stock of today's Qadians. During the first few years, the British military efforts were in complete shambles, suffering defeat after defeat due to a myriad of reasons. These were due to poor command, lack of interest in Britain, France having more Native allies, rivalries among British Colonies, and an extreme lack of monetary support.
Britain would declare war on France officially in 1756, starting the European theatre of the war, called the Seven Years' War. The new British commander in Merica, Lord Loudon, also suffered numerous defeats. This began to change in 1757 because William Pitt, Britain's warmaster, devised a plan to tie down French forces in Europe whilst British troops took as many French colonies as they possibly could. He believed that colonial conflicts such as these were the key to building a worldwide British Empire. Paying off Prussia and other German States to fight France in Europe, the French military was soon tied down as Pitt had planned. The first major British victory came in 1758, when they took Louisbourg at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river. By the year's end, they took Forts Frontenac and Duquense. British General James Wolfe and the French General, the Marquis de Montcalm, were fatally wounded in the British victory on the Plains of Abraham in September 1759. The Battle of Quebec and the ensuing siege and taking of Montreal in the following year resulted in the complete loss of Canada by the French. Spain joined the European war against Britain, and they too began to lose colonial territories at the hands of the British.
The rest of the war would be relatively uneventful in Merica. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in the February of 1763. Britain took Canada and Florida from France and Spain respectively and swapped around some Spanish and French colonies. They also arranged to allow for further British expansion inland. For the most part however, the war was somewhat pointless regarding the losses of France and Spain, who would spend the time up until the Napoleonic Wars trading the same colonies with one another. The British debt doubled during the war. Due to this, the amount of taxes that British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies had to pay was increased by a massive amount, and King George III installed British military units in the Merican colonies. Both of these increased the financial stress that the Colonists had to pay out, exponentially so. In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which was the first tax levied on American Colonists specifically by Parliament. It was met by strong resistance, and, despite this, the British Parliament increased the amount of taxes. These included the Tea Act, which required Colonists to buy tea from only British merchants, and the Townshend Acts. The Townshend Acts increased taxes on lead, tea (which was in popular demand but limited supply), paint, glass, and paper. Additionally, it made it legal for British soldiers to search Colonial homes and businesses without warning. All nations in Merica today may have abandoned money, but this was simply not the case back during the Colonial period. Simply put, these acts, in the eyes of the Colonists, were destroying entire livelihoods and families via economic warfare.
As is common in societies facing oppressive governments, social strife, and other forms of constant stress, political radicalization became more and more common. The "Sons of Liberty," a "classical liberal" organization, was founded in 1765. They were a secret society and a revolutionary group that was created in British North America to advance the rights of white, European Colonists and to fight the new taxes that they saw levied upon them. It officially disbanded after the repeal of the Stamp Act a year later in 1766, but the name was used by successor groups and secessionist groups in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. The most important thing that the Sons of Liberty did, according to modern Cydalian historians and scholars, was provide a unified front for both democratic/republican thought and secessionist movements, alongside forming a sense of unity amongst the Thirteen Colonies.
One of the worst political incidents regarding British rule was the Boston Massacre, which began as a fight between several Colonial civilians and a single British soldier, and soon escalated into a group of British soldiers firing on civilians in public, killing five and wounding many more. The ensuing media debacle lasted months and stirred up tensions for a long time, and ended up with Colonials being incredibly angry at local British officials, and with British soldiers increasing efforts within the local countryside.
For the next few years, Colonials, especially those in cities like Boston, would spend their free time openly harassing British Government officials. In the countryside, tax collectors were commonly abducted, stripped of clothes, and had hot tar poured over them, followed by feathers. "Tarring and feathering" was a practice that could easily result in serious, life threatening injuries, and in many cases, death.
The largest response to British tax policy came on December 16th of 1773. That night, in Boston Harbor, members of the Sons of Liberty dressed up in Native costume and stormed British ships, breaking crates of tea and throwing them into the harbor. The "Boston Tea Party" as it came to be known, was the boiling over of Colonial resistance. Feeling that their rights as Englishmen were being violated then, and were in jeopardy of being further violated by unjust taxes (the cry "no taxation without representation" was reportedly a slogan used by some Sons of Liberty Groups), the Colonials and many of their supporters spoke out in favor of the Tea Party, citing it as a form of protest. The British Government, in turn, responded with the Coercive Acts, or, in the Colonies as they were known, the Intolerable Acts. One such part of the Intolerable Acts permitted the stationing of British soldiers inside Colonial households without asking for any permissions of their own citizenry. The Intolerable Acts took away any rights that Massachusetts had, and it additionally took away all self government the Colony had. Hoping to isolate Massachusetts and prove an example of it, the plan backfired when essentially every other British Colony in the Thirteen Colonies stood in solidarity with Massachusetts. To this day in Cydalia, every major public blunder, government scandal, or argument by groups of people or individuals where all are seen by the majority to be morally in the wrong is affectionately referred to as a "Tea Party."
American Revolution, Half-Independence
In response to the Intolerable Acts, Colonial delegates from every Colony except Georgia (Bermuda was included) joined in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in September of 1774 in an attempt to create a unified voice in their problems against the British. The "First Continental Congress," as it was known, didn't demand independence from the British. It's grievances consisted mainly of the stationing of British soldiers in the Colonies without the consent of the Colonials, and the higher taxes without corresponding political representation within British Parliament. Using British law as a base, the Congress issued a statement that declared "rights due to every citizen," such as life, liberty, property, trial by juries of peers, and assembly. This proved absolutely useless in persuading the British. Congress moved and voted to meet again later in the spring of the next year, though this meeting never happened.
In late 1774, local leaders created the Suffolk Resolves in an attempt to resist British power over Massachusetts in the wake of the Tea Party. Local assemblies responded by creating a Patriot led-provisional government known at the time as the "Massachusetts Provincial Congress." It began training local militias in the possibility of British retaliation, and in February of 1775, Britain declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion, and began increasing the numbers of troops deployed to the Colony.
In the early morning hours of April 19th in 1775, a few hundred British soldiers, mainly from the 52nd Regiment of Foot, marched towards Concord, Massachusetts. Reportedly, an arms cache was stationed in Concord, and Colonial militia was preparing it to use against the British. Colonial militia from Concord and nearby towns were quickly alerted by riders and couriers who informed them to organize and stand their ground against the British. A few hours later, the local militias met the British soldiers on the Lexington Common in the morning. With around 100 people gathered to watch the spectacle before them, Colonial Militia came out from a local tavern and met the British at sunrise. Standing each other down, the Colonists began to disperse when a single shot rang out, and British troops opened fire. Eight militiamen were killed. The "shot heard 'round the world" played a major role in the American Empire's founding "mythos."
Lexington and Concord formed the first battle of the American Revolution. Compared to the eight deaths suffered by the Colonists, the British only took one casualty. Outnumbered, the militia retreated while the British pushed onward to destroy the weapons. In Concord, around 400 Colonials met 100 British at the North Bridge, and exchanged fire. Both sides took losses. With their search for supplies having been "completed," the British began to fall back to Boston. Due to the actions of the messengers, what was initially a small group of militiamen soon grew rapidly to around 4,000 soldiers that harassed and opened fire on the British all the way back to Boston. When in Boston and Charlestown, the Colonials, heavily outnumbering the British, began to lay siege to the city. The battle marked the beginning of the American Revolution.
In the wake of the battle, practically every member of the Thirteen Colonies expelled royal officials and formed a loose coalition of states allied to the rebel cause. With Boston under siege, American expeditions to the north were met with mixed results. An incursion into Québec and Canada as a whole proved fruitless and disastrous, but Vermont was taken and Fort Ticonderoga in Upstate New York was raided for artillery, which proved incredibly successful. During this time, the Continental Congress met again and attempted to make peace with the Crown, though this proved futile. The Colonists sent their artillery back from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, where the shelling of the city and the surrounding area resulted in a slow evacuation from the city.
The neighboring Haudenosaunee, at the time, attempted to remain neutral at the time. Christian missionaries within their borders attempted to sway individual tribes to go to one side or another, and eventually a 4/2 split was reached. The Tuscarora and the Oneida sided with the Americans, while the the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca sided with the British. The main reason as to why the Haudenosaunee couldn't remain neutral was simply due to their proximity to the conflict, and the fact that occasional skirmishes were breaking out between Colonists who, now seeing themselves freed from British law, decided to encroach on Haudenosaunee land.
One of the most pivotal battles was the Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place in Boston. Colonial forces stood up against an assault from British soldiers, and though it was technically a victory for the British, they took more than double the losses of the Colonial militia, and additionally suffered a heavy loss of their officers, who were targeted by the militias to disrupt command.
By April of 1776, most British forces had fully evacuated from Massachusetts and other areas of New England, but they remained in the Maritimes. After regrouping in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the British began launching a series of counter offensives in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In July of 1776, the Continental Congress signed a universal Declaration of Independence, which was regarded by most Western scholars as the official date of the United States of America. British counter offensives continued throughout 1776 and 1777. In the late summer and early fall of 1777, Philadelphia was captured and abandoned by the British twice, and the Americans were forced to relocate their capitol from Philadelphia.
During this time, the British launched what is now referred to by historians as the Saratoga Campaign. Attempting to gain control over the large and maneuverable Hudson River valley in upstate New York (present day Upstate, Haudenosaunee, Capitol, and Niagra Districts), the British and the majority of the Haudenosaunee met around Saratoga Springs. A brief skirmish occurred in September, resulting in a British victory. However, the next month, the two sides met again and a resounding victory was had for the Americans, and the British army in the area surrendered to them. The Battle of Saratoga is generally regarded as possibly the most important battle in the entire war itself, due to the resulting geopolitical impacts that it had on the wider revolution as a whole. Until this point, foreign intervention on the side of the Americans was minimal with the exception of a few military advisers from Poland, France, and Prussia. The British, on the other hand, used a large amount of German mercenaries, commonly referred to as "Hessians," to provide extra troops and firepower in addition to local loyalists. Because of the resounding victory at Saratoga, both the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Spain, major European powers on the continent, decided to help out the Americans with both troops and materials.
In both Saratoga and Bunker Hill, the more agile, Native inspired, and hit-and-run guerrilla tactics used by the Colonists proved incredibly effective when combined with their more drab, casual style clothing and uniforms. The British generally stuck out due to their red uniforms, meaning that it was much easier to hit them in forested and more natural environments with adequate cover.
In more northern regions of modern Cydalia, privateers working on behalf of the Americans, such as John Paul Jones, launched regular raids and expeditions into Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (New Brunswick was not created until the war was over), and additionally made frequent attempts - generally successful - to turn the local Natives against the British. The most notable of the tribes that ended up supporting the American cause were the Maliseet and the Mi'kmaq, though the Mi'kmaq were known for their dubious loyalties to either side. During the course of the war, thousands of Loyalists to the British crown would emigrate from the Thirteen Colonies to the Maritimes due to their close proximity, and also due to the amount of open territory due to the deportation of the Acadians.
In addition, despite being outnumbered, the British government in London came under heavy scrutiny and public ridicule due to the public opinion that the British Army under General Burgoyne had surrendered too quickly and without putting up much of a fight, if any, at all. Additionally, other states such as the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Mysore started to help out the Americans with what little they could, as they were already tied down in other conflicts against the British at the time. King George III largely ignored American issues while Britain was involved in European wars. Failing to find allies on the continent to engage France and Spain, he tried in vain to sway the Dutch, but due to public opinions, the Dutch not only turned down the British offer, they began to aid the Americans. The British would declare war in 1780. Furthermore, in America, many of the Native allies of the British deserted, declared peace with the Americans or neutrality, or turned on them. The Haudenosaunee had basically collapsed in certain regions of upstate New York, resulting in the entire confederation being damaged politically.
The defeat at Saratoga spelled the collapse of most British and allied efforts in the north. As a result, the remainder of the war would be fought mainly in the Mid-Atlantic and the Southern Colonies. The British would suffer a final defeat at Yorktown in Virginia in 1781, and a peace treaty was officially signed in 1783, with the Americans gaining almost all the territory east of the Mississippi River.
As the war continued on, the Iroquois officially broke their union after centuries of collective government and solid unification. At the end of the war, fears that the Colonists would not hear out the Iroquois became manifest. The cause of this is generally regarded to be the four-and-two split between the Iroquois support, though it is equally likely that this ensuing series of events would have happened regardless. The Americans did not find the Haudenosaunee trustworthy after the war, even the two tribes that had decided to support them. With the end of the war in 1783, the Treaty of Paris dictated peace between the Americans and Europeans - all native powers were left out and the Americans were able to do whatever they saw fit to do in regards to treatment of the Natives.
Most of Northern and Northeastern Cydalia were still under British rule, though a small series of conflicts would erupt over the border of the US state of Maine up until the 1840s.
Industrial Era
What is now Cydalia was a very early center of the industrial revolution. Until the late 1700s and early 1800s, most industry in Cydalia was done either in small workshops or at home. Because of this, overall industrial output was rather limited, though most of the artisans involved in production of goods became highly skilled in their individual trades. In the late 1780s, areas of southern and eastern New England began to see weaving and textile mills begin to take off, with the first cotton mill being founded in Beverly, Massachusetts (near Boston) in 1787 to great success. More continued to be established in urban areas, and then in 1794, the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. The invention of the cotton gin made preparing and processing cotton very efficient, making the already rich and profitable cotton and textile trades into massive international industries.
In 1812, America and Britain went to war yet again, this time over the impressment of sailors and minor border disputes. The British won the majority of the battles in the conflict, and almost every important battle within modern Cydalian borders resulted in a resounding American defeat. In addition, New England, feeling somewhat "left out" due to America due to the negative view of the War of 1812, began to construct a sense of regional identity.
Cotton and other textile mills continued to be set up in and around the Boston area, and eventually spread to other urban areas of New England. By the early 1800s, many towns such as Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts, Manchester in New Hampshire, Woonsocket in Rhode Island, and Lewiston in Maine had all become industrial centers full of textile mills. Following models from the Slater Mills and the Beverly Cotton Mill, they quickly and efficiently put out as much cotton products as they possibly could.
The industry in New England grew rapidly, causing a shortage of workers. While initially limited to only local women, mill agents and advisers hired recruiters to hire young women and even children from the countryside to work in textile factories. Where previously women would work on the farm alongside the rest of their families, thousands of farm girls and children left rural homes and farmsteads in New England and in some cases places further away to work inside textile mills. While most hoped to aid their families with their pay, others wanted to save up for marriage or widen their horizons for other limited careers in the future. The majority of the textile mill workers were women. Originally, almost all came from original British-New England stock, though as the industrial revolution increased, the amount of workers of Irish descent increased dramatically due to immigration.
Many of the industrial mills ended up using a model similar to the industrial model used by Samuel Slater and his first mills. In the model, entire families were invited to work in the urban towns and cities that hosted the mills. Housing and apartments would be built for the workers and their families, alongside company stores and company-built civic buildings. Later on, industries other than the textile and cotton trades began to spring up. These included shoemaking, machinery, firearms, watches, shipbuilding, and musical instruments. The concept of "Yankee ingenuity" became a common stereotype in New England.
Of note, however, is the quality of life in the mills. Work in the textile mills and other factories was often cruel and relatively unrewarding. Few wage and labor laws existed, meaning that women and children would often be required to work long hours for little pay. Depending on the industry, accidents, injuries, and even deaths were common. Insurance didn't exist, meaning that any worker who was injured either had to continue working, find a substitute, or risk losing their job. Additionally, bosses could fire and lay off entire groups of workers at their digression, meaning that workers who were injured were generally fired. Additionally, being fired risked not only the individual worker losing their home and their livelihood, but their entire families losing their home and livelihood.
Meanwhile, in the Northern and Northeastern Districts, the capitalist economies of the Canadian Maritimes experienced a "Golden Age" during the middle of the Industrial Revolution. Economic growth was massive, and the region had one of British North America's largest and most extensive sectors of manufacturing. Additionally, they had a large shipping industry that moved products all over the British Empire and the world at large. This "Golden Age" lasted until unification with the remainder of Canada. During this period, the Maritimes experienced a period of rapid technological development regarding the production of goods and their ship-based transport methods.
American Civil War
Golden Age of America
World War One and the Interwar Period
Great Depression
World War Two and the Postwar Boom and Bust
The Great Depression in the United States of the 1930s hit the region hard, with high unemployment in the industrial cities. The Democrats appealed to factory workers and especially Catholics, pulling them into the New Deal coalition and making the once-Republican region into one that was closely divided. However, need for war materials such as munitions, ships, electronics, and uniforms during World War II caused a burst of prosperity in every sector. In Canada, much of the same happened as well. In both areas, the then-declining textile industry experienced a boom as the need for bandages and uniforms increased exponentially.
Every single region of Cydalia participated in the war, with the then-Canadian provinces entering the war alongside Britain in 1939, with the American states joining in late 1941 and early 1942. Soon after, most of the region was acting as a staging ground for both troops and convoys being sent to the Western European and North African theaters of combat.
Throughout the War, hundreds of thousands of Americans and Canadians fought under their respective banners and their Allies against the combined powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and minor Axis nations. Though separated by an ocean on either side, the North Americans involved in World War Two had a massive effect on the overall war effort. For example, Leonard Warren Murray was a Canadian Naval Officer from Granton, Nova Scotia (sunk) who was the only Canadian from World War 1 or World War 2 to command an Allied Theatre of operations. Additionally, Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, from Northumberland, Pennsylvania, was the last surviving member of the crew of the Enola Gay. He participated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the subsequent end of World War 2 in the Pacific Theatre, fighting against the Empire of Japan.
Other groups that what is now Cydalia contributed to the war effort would be the 26th US Infantry Division, nicknamed the "Yankee Division." The 26th played a role in liberating the Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp, where between 123,000 and 320,000 Nazi political prisoners and other prisoners were executed via forced labor between the Anschluß (Anschluss) of August 1938 and the end of World War 2 in April-May 1945. According to historical documents, the actions of the Yankee Division prevented the Waffen-SS from burying thousands of prisoners alive.
With the end of the war in the European theatre, most Canadian and American soldiers were sent home to North America.
The 1950s saw a massive economic boom for the nations of the United States and Canada. The predominantly Anglo-cultured population was convinced that, with the end of the war, there would only be peace and prosperity. For the most part, they proved to be correct. Though there were conflicts in Korea and in parts of Africa, for Merica, no major conflicts occurred from 1945 until the 1960s. The capitalist economy boomed, the population grew, and the overall culture also grew immensely. American culture started to dominate the west through their economic and military power, and even previously culturally independent nations such as Mexico, Britain, Canada, and France began to take after the United States in culture.
Cold War
Most factories in New England started to go out of business during the 1930s because of the Great Depression, but World War Two and the postwar boom managed to hold this off until the 1960s, when the job losses and economic stagnation resumed. With the factory economy essentially gone, New England towns and cities fell into a long, painful, economic decay. The textile mills were mostly all out of business by the 1970s, with the last major ones closing the the mid and late 1980s. With the closure of each mill, hundreds to thousands of jobs were lost.
All that really remained of the New England and Maritime economy was primarily service, agriculture, and then a widely different variety of high end technological manfucaturing. Weapons such as nuclear submarines, jet engines, and robotics were made for the United States and Canadian militaries, while medicine also experienced a large boom, with some major medical advances being made in southern New England. Additionally, MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) invented the pre-Collapse format for university-industry job relations in high tech fields. Many computer businesses and resulting computer products were the direct result of this. Certain cities during this time were slowly adjusting to a new, service based economy. In spite of this, New England proved to be some of the richest regions in America, and certain regions of the Maritimes were also incredibly rich.
Additionally, the Cold War saw a myriad of social changes in American and Canadian cultures. Civil rights, the sexual revolution, the Second Vatican Council due to the regions's large Catholic populace, and the political conflict between the American and Soviet Empires brought wide amounts of conflicts across the world. In now Cydalian territories, the most pressing issues were that of feminism and race-based civil rights. In Boston, the city experienced months of unrest due to school segregation and school bus segregation.
In 1963, many Blacks in New England joined civil rights movements regarding the status of Blacks, which they viewed as still being second class citizens subject to racism, though being removed from the more openly racist states in the Southern United States. Inspired by Civil Rights movements from the south, Black Bostonians and New Englanders used mass demonstrations and nonviolence to attempt to overcome racial differences. In the end, the protesters and anti-Segregationists won, and, despite it taking a while, Boston schools and school buses were desegregated.
During this time, the Republican Party in the United States began to shift politically from the left to the right, and began using the "solid south" as a political strategy. Due to this, New England switched from a Republican to a Democratic stronghold, mainly due to a large urban population and many liberal arts colleges and pro-liberal intelligentsia. Compared to other regions of America and Canada, New England and the Maritimes had a higher support of left wing variants of socialism and communism, with professor Noam Chomsky being a prime example.
Internet Era
After the collapse and fall of the Soviet Empire, the United States of America was left as the world's dominant, and only standing superpower. During Bill Clinton's presidency in the mid-1990s, American political discourse focused mostly on domestic issues. While the early 1990s saw the US economy mired in recession, a recovery began starting in 1994 and began accelerating thanks to a boom created by technology. The Internet and related technologies made their first broad penetrations into the economy, prompting a Wall Street technology-driven bubble, which Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan described in 1996 as "irrational exuberance". By 1998, the economy was booming and unemployment below 5%.
The United States was the world's dominant military power and it's puppet Japan, sometimes seen as the largest economic rival to the U.S., was caught in a period of stagnation. China was emerging as the U.S.'s foremost trading competitor in more and more areas. Localized conflicts such as those in Haiti and the Balkans prompted President Clinton to send in U.S. troops as peacekeepers to disastrous results, reviving the Cold-War-era controversy about whether policing the rest of the world was a proper U.S. role. Meanwhile, Islamic radicals overseas, mainly in the Levant and Africa, loudly threatened assaults against the U.S. for its ongoing military presence in the Levant, and even staged the first World Trade Center attack, a truck bombing in New York's twin towers, in 1993, as well as a number of deadly attacks on U.S. interests abroad.
Immigration, mainly from Latin America and Asia, swelled during the 1990s, laying the groundwork for disastrous changes in the demographic makeup of the U.S. population in coming decades, such as Hispanics replacing African-Americans as the largest minority. Cydalia, however, managed to avoid most of these factors due to geographic factors. Despite tougher border scrutiny after the September 11 attacks, nearly 8 million immigrants came to the United States from 2000 to 2005—more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history. Almost half entered illegally.
Additionally, the United States continued to grow both domestically and abroad in influence until the 2008 recession. Despite this, on the morning of September 11, 2001, four airliners were hijacked by 19 members of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. This is generally considered to be the first major moment in the fall of the American Empire. The first hijacked airliner struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 A.M. in New York City; with a second striking the South Tower less than twenty minutes later at 9:03 A.M., resulting in the collapse of both 110 story skyscrapers, and the destruction of the World Trade Center. The third hijacked plane, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, demolishing a section of the outer southwest facing wall. After discovering that their plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was going to be used as a missile, passengers attempted to regain control of the plane which had been redirected towards Washington, D.C. However, after regaining control from the hijackers, the plane crashed near a rural community near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In total, the attacks killed 2,996 people—2,507 civilians, 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers, 55 military personnel, and the 19 terrorists. The 9/11 attack was the single deadliest international terrorist incident and the most devastating foreign attack on American soil since the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It refocused American attention to a long war on terrorism, beginning with an attack on al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan.
After the September 11th attacks, the American Empire played directly into the hand of al-Qaeda's strategy, which was to essentially bleed the United States dry and cause civil strife and unrest at home. Over the next 30 years, the United States would continue to do this, getting involved in numerous Levantine and African conflicts. Additionally, the American Empire soon found it's massive, globalized world economy found itself under much stress due to a massive recession in 2008. The Great Recession stemmed from the collapse of the American real-estate market in relation to the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 and the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 to 2009, though policies of other nations contributed as well. According to the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of U.S. recessions), the recession in the U.S. began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, thus extending over 19 months. The Great Recession resulted in a scarcity of valuable assets in the market economy and the collapse of the financial sector (banks) in the world economy; some banks were bailed out by the U.S. federal government.
Over the next decade, a mix of poor recession management alongside a continuation of foreign interventions in the Levant, Asia, and Africa began to show the wear and tear on American society. With the general populace becoming more and more distrustful of the ruling elite and the system put in place, the election of Donald Trump into the Presidency of the American Empire in 2016 was a very big upset for the system in place. The Trump government was met with incredibly mixed results at the time, due to in part, both Donald Trump's volatile personality and his populist conservative and capitalist beliefs. The 2016 presidential campaign was, according to historians, one of the "dirtiest" campaigns in American history, not seen since the elections of 1828 or 1964. During the election, the internet played a large role, with many disenfranchised and politically "angry" or nihilistic people, mainly young white men, giving Donald Trump free press, making memes in support of his campaign and additionally slandering his opponents in both the Republican and Democrat parties. During his administration, Trump proved to be much like past presidents. He did not live up to many of his social and policy promises. In the eyes of many Americans on both the right and the left, Trump may have fixed a capitalist economy, but he still got the Empire into foreign wars. He deployed United States troops to Syria and, in late 2019 and 2020, Iraq after a long series of proxy conflicts with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Trump government faced many scandals regarding other nations such as Russia and Ukraine, which led to an impeachment hearing over foreign interference in the 2016 election and political meddling in the 2020 election, and the government also got America involved in the internal issues of other nations, such as Venezuela and Bolivia.
From the left, Donald Trump was criticized for actions such as a "Muslim Ban" regarding immigration alongside comments on women and minorities. From the right, Trump was also criticized for his defense of Israel and pandering to certain minorities. From the center, Trump was criticized mainly for being "mean." Trump would go on to lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Biden would die in 2024 on the re-election campaign trail, leaving the campaign and subsequent terms to his Vice President, Pete Buttigieg.
Second American Civil War
In 2028, the American political scene had devolved into two radically opposed groups: the liberal Democrat majority and the conservative Republican minority. After the impeachment and subsequent loss of Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2020, American society saw a rapid change both in values and in demographics. While most of the original details are still considered fuzzy by most scholars, most agree that the situation was somewhat inevitable, with the 2008 recession and the political ramifications of it in the years later causing an environment perfect for civil strife.
The Second American Civil War started on July 4th, 2029, about a week after protesters and counter-protesters clashed in the streets of Seattle, Washington. After 12 years, various far-right groups in the United States held a second "Unite the Right" rally in Seattle's downtown on June 27th, despite a ban from the city council. Met with resistance from far-left counter-protesters and Antifa, after about an hour of street fighting, police that were called in to manage the situation were fired upon with military grade assault weaponry, resulting in the deaths of five officers. While it is unknown which side began to fire upon the Seattle Police Department first, be it far-right, far-left, or an independent actor, the resulting chaos caused a three-way battle between the far-right militias, far-left militias, and the Seattle Police Department. In the aftermath, around 200 people, including 77 civilians, died.
On July 4th, 2029, various factions of the United States military -- around two-thirds of it -- alongside various lone-wolves and far-right militias mobilized by social media, rose up across the nation. Most of the American Midwest, Rockies, Appalachia, and South joined the cause as well. Montana, Idaho, and Alaska gave unilateral declarations of support for the nationalist movement. As for the Federal Government in Washington, it was mainly supported by New England, the Mid-Atlantic, California and the rest of the West Coast, Florida, Hawaii, the areas surrounding the capitols, and the mayors of various cities such as Chicago and Denver both voiced their support for the Federal Government. Foreign responses depended heavily on the country, though most of the American Empire's proxies, namely those in NATO, supported the Federal Government. Within days, various far left forces rose up in response, mainly in cities, California, Chicago, New York, and rural areas of New England.
Within days, far-right militias, believed to be from the group known as "Atomwaffen," had taken down both the eastern and western power grids of the United States. The resulting lack of communications effectively split every major faction into hordes of smaller armed groups and militias fighting both each other and local government forces. The only grid that was not taken down was the Texan INTERCOT Power Grid, which was attacked two weeks later on July 20th, but Atomwaffen militiamen were routed by Texas National Guard troops. Backup generators proved to only be semi-effective, and it is estimated that during this time, even with government and foreign aid, over a million civilians -- mainly those in hospitals -- died from lack of power.
Communications proved to be a massive issue during the early stages of the war due to the lack of electricity. With the internet and most other forms of mass communication down, both right and left wing militias fired on each other, and Federal Government units had issues discerning friendly from enemy soldiers. One prime example of this was the Battle of Kingsport, in which Federal Government forces attacked a mobilized division of Tennessee National Guard soldiers who they believed to be members of either an America First or Christian Identity Militia. Kingsport was shelled by Federal Artillery, resulting in the death of around 9,000 to 11,000 civilians alongside half of the Tennessee National Guard soldiers defending the city. In the wake of the battle, around 40% of the Federal Troops deserted the army over the next month, and most of the officers in charge of the battle were fragged by their own troops. The state government of Tennessee declared unilateral support for the America First movement, which in turn caused anarchist militias to storm police stations in Nashville and attempt to take the city over. They would be beaten back by a mix of Tennessee National Guard, America First, and National Socialist Movement militiamen.
Over the next few months as power was restored and battles began to be fought, four main sides in the conflict began to emerge. These would be the Right Wing forces, which included the Gilead Compact, America First, Identitarians, Traditionalists, White Nationalists, Paleoconservatives, Libertarians, and various forms of Fascists. Their beliefs ranged anywhere from Paleoconservatism to various forms of Religious Fundamentalism and Neo-Nazism. The left wing forces that arose in response to them included the CPUSA, "Antifa," DSA, and a wide variety of sectarian Socialist, Communist, and Anarchist movements. The Federal government maintained the majority of centrist Republicans and centre-left Democrats. The remaining side was essentially a mix of local militias determined more on defending their homes than anything else, though the term "fourth side" can also apply to various Anarcho-Primitivist movements such as the Stars or Kaczynskists.
What became Cydalia was still divided up into the Canadian territories, the Maritimes; and the American territories, or New England. New England was, at the beginning of the war, all states in New England declared unilateral support for the Federal Government, and the Government of Canada additionally declared support for the Federal Government. While the Federal Government slowly got pushed out of California, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest, the Federal Government began to fortify the mid-Atlantic and New England as Canada was swarmed with refugees from the United States.
The war would continue until 2036 with varying levels of intensity. After the Peace of Des Moines, the Federal Government fell into anarchy and held territory within only coastal New England and within a 150 mile radius of Washington D.C.
The Great Climate Collapse
With America having been essentially destroyed during the Second American Civil War, any hope at an American and Western-led environmental stoppage had been completely destroyed as Canada and the European Union devolved into isolation. With most pollution being made in China, Africa, and India, most political and economic leverages against them for climate change were also destroyed. Over the next few decades, with the exception of China and India, the world would continue to pollute at a slightly higher rate compared to the past few decades.
Due to the lack of America as a global power and the EU proving generally powerless to stop them due to domestic issues, both the Republic of India and the Peoples' Republic of China sought to replace the United States and Europe as the dominant world powers. Even before the Second American Civil War, India and China had been increasing production of essentially everything they could, from domestic consumer products to military arms. Due to this arms race between the two powers, the amount of pollution that they -- already the main polluters -- put into the atmosphere increased dramatically. Without the political or economic leverage of the West to contain them, the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere caused significant damage to the planet, speeding up climate change for a time.
Lack of resources, combined with social strife and a constantly worsening climate caused, in most places, a partial collapse of society. In places such as the Levant, India, and parts of Latin America and Africa -- a complete collapse of the then-current social order.
Terrorist groups, both on the far left and far right, took up the mantle of environmentalism and began staging attacks on places all around the world. The most important attack was carried out by the AnPrRF (Anarcho-Primitivist Revolutionary Front, commonly called the "Stars" due to their usage of Patrick Star as a mascot) on the 15th April of 2049, in which using stolen nuclear weaponry from the United States and Pakistan, the Yellowstone National Park was bombed in such a way that caused the Yellowstone Supervolcano to erupt, causing billions of deaths and centuries of damage on a global scale. Ironically enough, an eruption of such a magnitude is widely regarded by most climate scientists to have put a pause on global climate change feedback loops, essentially saving humanity from a runaway greenhouse effect.
New Dark Ages
Immediately after the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the world was plunged into a mixture of nuclear and volcanic winter. Temperatures across the planet cooled off, and the melting of the ice caps stopped completely, and in a few places, even receded. Billions died across the globe, mainly due to the ensuing nuclear winter causing famines. In modern Bharat and Zhongguo, the same anarco-primitivist movement responsible for the nuclear detonations at the Yellowstone National Park caused a nuclear exchange between the Republic of India, the Republic of Pakistan, and the Peoples' Republic of China, which caused roughly 200 million deaths in the first 3 hours of the conflict.
In the United States and Canada, the majority of the continent was under some form of ash cover that stretched from sea to sea. Most of Cydalia was dusted with a light coating of under half an inch of ash and dust. Closer to the volcano, especially in areas of modern day Deseret and Colorado, up to 40 feet of ash cover was common. The main issue, however, laid in the usage of nuclear weapons alongside the volcano. While certainly not responsible for the causation of most of the deaths and long-lasting medical issues for the survivors, it is widely regarded by scientists that some of the ash put out by the eruption was certainly radioactive. This is generally backed up by statistics showing non-respiratory forms of cancer increasing worldwide for the next 150 years, though lung cancer was the most common form of cancer developed, especially in Merica.
Within Cydalia, the effects felt by this was fast. The newly established Provisional Government of New England and the Maritimes, which already had a tenuous hold over the region, essentially collapsed overnight.
- temperatures dipped
-nuclear winter
-not fun
Neo-Renaissance
Re-Industrial Era
Modern History
The "modern" period of Cydalian history covers the time after the Ceasefire of 2231. In the wake of the Merican Skirmishes, Cydalia, and especially it's frontiers, were given ample time to rebuild as the nation recovered from the mutual destruction brought upon it by neighboring nations, and Cydalia's neighbors were able to recover from blows given to them by Cydalia.
Starting with a "9 Year Plan" in 2231 during the months leading up to the Ceasefire, King Gerald I elected to re-vitalize the damaged Cydalian infrastructure via massive public works projects with extensive use of automation to compensate for the lack of manpower available. Over the course of the first nine years, from 2231 to 2240, Cydalia gradually rebuilt itself, starting from the outskirts of Qadia, Deitschland, and Scosha and gradually worked inwards where there was less damage. The first three years of the plan dealt with gross war damage to major cities and border regions, and cities like Sherbrooke, Saint-Quentin, and Halafacsur were almost completely rebuilt from the ground up. Prewar city plans were drawn up in an attempt to restore as much of the original cities as possible, though the worst affected regions, such as around Saint-Quentin, had to construct mostly new buildings. Today, around 70% of all buildings in Saint-Quentin were built after 2235. The next three years of the plan, from 2234-2237, dealt with revitalizing the overall infrastructure of the nation. Roads, railways, harbors, and subways were built in all major cities and gradually expanded outwards into more rural areas. Though Phase II of the plan began in 2234, most transport systems weren't fully completed until 2240 itself, and a few more isolated areas weren't linked until early 2242. The third phase of the plan was dedicated to "finally fixing the populace." Given six years to already recover, the years of 2237-2240 were dedicated to boosting Cydalia's depleted population and damaged environment.
Phase III consisted of government incentives and propaganda dedicated to encouraging families to have children, and for Cydalians who were currently in the process of dating to get married and to start having children. Around this time, the overall birthrate of Cydalia doubled in most places, and in a few areas, tripled or even quadrupled, though the more extreme outliers quickly diminished. The amount of children in Cydalia's school system put considerable strain on the education system, leading to the government allowing homeschooling in certain areas, mainly urban areas. Where possible, children from urban communities were sent to schools in suburban and rural communities.
With the population issue being solved, the environment could be focused on. Trees were replanted in war-torn zones, with roughly 125 million trees being planted over the course of the next decade. Hydroponics facilities were built in urban areas in an attempt to provide both food for the populace at large and so that trees could begin to be replanted down the line. Efforts to both preserve and restore different biomes across the nation increased exponentially, and to great success.
In addition to King Gerald's efforts, many don't ignore the contributions that Pahlament Speaker Jonathan Cromey had on getting the motions approved by Pahlament, and his effects on motivating the populace alongside his work with King Gerald. Jonathan Comey would die in office in 2244, leaving him the longest serving Pahlament Speaker in Cydalian history, from 2219 until 2244, a total of 25 years.
To this day, the 2230s and 2240s are regarded as some of the most industrious decades in Cydalia. With the advent of the 2250s, the strains on Cydalia's education and medical syndicates began to wane, and by the 2260s, with most of the post war boom babies being adults -- Cydalia set out on making the best out of a world where nations would, until further notice, attempt to ignore one another. King Gerald I died in 2262, leaving King Eliab I in his stead. Pahlamentary appointments under King Eliab proved to be somewhat unsuccessful at first, with the first Speaker appointed by him, Lewis Gryf, dying in a boating accident before being able to implement any meaningful policy. His second appointment, Cydalia's first Steadfast Speaker, Godwinn Cao, proved to be successful in both implementing policy and in helping King Eliab with expanding Cydalia's horizons.
Also of note was the efforts of King Gerald I to restructure the Cydalian government in the wake of the warring. During his reign, the government became much more centralized and less "elitist." Most notably was the change in personality from Kings Gerald to Eliab. Gerald spent most of his childhood raised in and around the Cydalian government and was brought up mainly around government and military advisors. Due to wars causing security and personnel concerns, King Eliab was brought up around the average Cydalian populace, forgoing tutors for the public education system. Being seen as much more of a "Common Man" while still being King was seen as something respectable by the populace, who found Eliab's more "down to Earth" personality and contempt of elitisms alongside a more working class group of friends and confidants being met with praise by most people. Because of this, Kings since Eliab have been raised in a similar way.
While most nations in Merica, in accordance with the Ceasefire, attempted to either begrudgingly get along or attempted to ignore each other all together, Cydalia decided to set its sights outside of Merica, and it began to develop foreign relations with Europans, Africans, Suramerican, and Ceanian powers. While trade proved limited as always, Cydalia began to solidify the new Merican order as one meant to last for the time being by interacting with other powers in a positive way. Over the 2260s, media and Cydalian culture as a whole had a golden age, with movies, video games, television, books, and philosophy developing. Cydalia's government, during this time, established permanent relations with major Europan powers such as France, Deutschland, Nederland, the EC, and Iberia. In Afrika, Cydalia found a fast friend and ally in Sénégambie and another in the East African Commonwealth. King Eliab I would visit Afrika, being the first Cydalian to do so. During his time in Afrika, he would help smooth out a political crisis between the EAC and Ityop'p'ya, leading to a relatively positive view of Cydalians in West Afrika and East Afrika. Attempts at establishing relations with the ultranationalist and ethnonationalist South Afrikan states proved less than fruitful. The Boerstaat and Kleurlingstaat turned down any diplomatic relations, and, due to being almost completely cut off on the continent, any diplomacy with the Zulu proved relatively useless.
King Eliab would establish friendly relations with the Ērānshahr and the Marāṭhā Saṅgharājya. Attempts at formalizing relations with Zion would be ignored until King Franklin II did so in 2284. In Europa, all previously mentioned nations were visited, and Cydalia established especially warm relations with the EC and Iberia. With relations warming up between Cydalia and other states, King Eliab would return to to the homeland after roughly a year and a half travelling the world.
Cydalian media exploded, with many modern day film and television classics being created. The Algonquian language "western," Kwaskwai Paskwak (Exactly at Noon) was released in theaters and streaming services in 2268, and is regarded by many today as the best film to come out of Cydalia in it's history.
Heavy religious influence in the media was common, and the Cydalian government made sure that both the church and itself were present. Pro-Cydalian messaging was common, and many movies featured Cydalians as "keepers of the peace." Throughout the late 2260s and 2270s, this same message was felt within the populace as a whole, and crime rates dropped significantly. The 2270s as a decade are generally regarded as rather uneventful, even on the homefront. The first half of the decade passed relatively uneventfully. The second half of the decade saw a period of anomalous weather events, mainly due to bad timing of natural disasters. In 2276, Huaynaputina, a stratovolcano in Tawantinsuyu erupted in late August, causing the ensuing winter to be brutal for many within the northern hemisphere. Temperatures plummeted to points below even pre-Industrial era lows in certain places. While the damage in Suramerica and more specifically in Tawantinsuyu and in Bowuliwya, the winter of 2276-2277 resulted in long lasting cold spells, even causing ice to coat most of the Quabbin and Hudson Seas, and many islands in Scosha were linked together by ice bridges. The following spring, a La Niña developed on the coast offshore of the Tawantinsuyu, resulting in increased rainfall and snowfall for months in the northern hemisphere. Cydalia's spring was nonexistent, and when summer came, it was marked by heavy rainfall and floods. The fall harvest was recorded as "abysmal," leading for Cydalia to break out official food stores for the first time since 2243. Cydalia spent the rest of the year relying primarily on hydroponics and international trade to make up for losses. The mutual aid given to and received by other nations in Merica didn't go unnoticed by politicians on the continent, and the Huaynaputina eruption is generally regarded as the main catalyst for the eventual formation of the Merican Union.
King Eliab would die on December 15th, 2284, and he would succeeded by his oldest son, Franklin II. The early years of King Franklin II's reign were generally about agricultural revitalization, and achieving full autarky when it came to food production within Cydalia even outside of staple foods. In a unique case, the leader of the Farming and Agricultural Syndicate was overlooked for a position of speaker, and the first "dictatorial" appointment of a Speaker of Pahlament was made, given to Samuel Sieweczki, a run-of-the-mill farmer from eastern Pioneer. The term "dictatorial" in this case is meant in a similar style to ancient Rome, where a leader with the right set of skills would be appointed, and after the problem at hand was solved, said dictator would willingly step down. Speaker Sieweczski is commonly regarded as doing a great job for what was needed in fixing the nation's agriculture, and willingly stepped down after two years of being speaker.
The rest of the decade would be marred by social changes resulting in a brief heresy in Upstate that resulted in Catholic Church officials being called in to fix the situation. Eventually, by 2290, the issues were resolved. The biggest turning point of the 2290s, however, is widely regarded as the development of the Merican Union. Inspired by the amount of cooperation that different Merician nations showed one another during the Huaynaputina eruption and it's aftermath, King Franklin II began covert negotiations with neighboring nations and Merican nations with similar values and governments such as Alaska and California. Over the course of the next few years, negotiations expanded more and more, and the Merican Union was founded at the end of the century. The founding nations were Cydalia, Federalia, Marval, Québec, Rontroit, the NCR, Canada, the État Michif, Nunavut, Minasota, California, Alaska, and Dinétah.
With the beginning of the 2300s, the Merican Union, which was initially seen as a loose alliance of nations that agreed to continue not only the Ceasefire's promise of not attacking one another, but to additionally aid each other when possible, began to slowly expand. By 2305, Chicagoland, Athabasca, and the Tlingit-Xaayda Union had joined. The following years, Erie and Cascadia did as well. By 2310, most nations in Merica had joined, with the final addition, the Lakotah, joining in 2315.
King Franklin II resigned in late 2319 due to health reasons, being the first Cydalian King to do so. His eldest and only son, Planter I, took over as King within a week, and is the current King of Cydalia. Under Planter's rule, Cydalia has taken a leading role in the Merican Union, and due to increasing tensions with the DPEK and the Rijk, Planter's reign has seen the development of the MU from a mutual aid agreement to a fully fledged military alliance from shore to shore of the Merican continent.