Angatahuacan Republic
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Angatahuacan Republic Totechiuhcahuan Angatahuaca | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 744-1910 | |||||||||
 Flag | |||||||||
| Capital | Angatahuaca | ||||||||
| Common languages | Nahuatl Purépecha | ||||||||
| Religion | Cozauism | ||||||||
| Government | Cuauhtlatollo | ||||||||
| Historical era | Medieval-Early Modern | ||||||||
• Foundation of Angatahuaca | 744 | ||||||||
• Second Tariata | 650-750 | ||||||||
• Hegemony | 965-1290 | ||||||||
• Omehueyatlatoloyan Rule of Two Oceans | 1390-1650 | ||||||||
| 1650-1660 | |||||||||
| 1910 | |||||||||
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The Angatahuacan Republic (Nahuatl: Totechiuhcahuan Angatahuaca) was a hegemonic city-state and later multi-ethnic polity centered in what is now southeastern littoral Zacapican. It is the direct predecessor to both the present day city of Angatahuaca as well as the modern United Zacapine Republics. Angatahuaca would eventually emerge as one of the pre-eminent maritime powers of the Age of Sail, ruling over a bi-continental empire sometimes referred to as the Great Heron or as the Heron Empire. Its golden age, the Omehueyatlatoloyan period, would last more than two centuries and mark the apogee of Zacapine civilization and global power. Angatahuaca would endure more than a millennium as an independent power before its fall to the western rebellion that would evolve into the Zacapine Revolution, a longevity primarily attributed to the stability of its government which was able to endure most major shocks.
For its entire history, the Angatahuacan Republic was governed by an aristocratic class known as the Cuauhtli descended from the original Purépecha founders. The lingua franca of the city as well as its empire, however, was Nahuatl, thanks to the widespread distribution of Nahua groups across the continent since the fall of Tolan. In particular, Angatahuaca was influenced by a large number of eastern Pochutlan Nahua peoples under its rule, many of whom would become the earliest conquered subjects to attain Angatahuacan citizenship and gain political rights within the Republic. The classical east Nahuatl dialect would be propagated across the Huitzlan landmass that comprises modern day Zacapican, becoming the antecedent of present day Zacapine Nahuatl.
Angatahuaca's thalassocracy brought about an unprecedented era of trade and exchange between the regions of Huitzlan which had historically been regarded as wholly separate, cut off as they were by some of the tallest mountains in the world and the notoriously dangerous southern seas that only the exceptional seamanship of Angatahuaca's maritime legacy inherited from the Purépecha could overcome. Just as a linguistic homogeneity had emerged surrounding Nahuatl as the language of exchange, a broader process of cultural blending took place under Angatahuaca's unipolar domination of the region that saw the distinctions between the myriad indigenous groups blur over time as peoples mixed and exchanged customs and adopted standard practices under Angatahuaca's empire. Most notably, the rich tapestry of indigenous religions across Huitzlan would almost entirely be swallowed up by Cozauist religious doctrine.
History
Economy
The foundation of the Angatahuacan economy was the long-distance trade over which the Cuauhtli families had a near-total monopoly. This was typical of the aristocracies of Oxidentale including Angatahuaca's long-term rivals in the Divine Kingdom, who tended to sustain their elite position through the accumulation of wealth through trade rather than the manorialism seen in Belisarian aristocracies. in Angatahuaca, this emerged as a natural consequence of the city's foundation as a merchant outpost, as well as an adaptation to the divided geography of what would become the Republic's maximum extent. It was far more economically efficient to create a large network of internal and external exchange on the basis of Angatahuaca's maritime superiority in the southern seas than to attempt to foster several disjointed self-sustaining regions cut off from one another geographically and economically. Under this trade-focused system, the Angatahuacan economy was optimized towards the production of desirable trade goods that would most benefit the merchant Cuauhtli elite.
The method and mode of production tended to vary significantly by region and accessibility to the ruling authority. Within the core of the Angatahuaca's hegemony, mainly comprising the Aztaco peninsula, the east coast of Anamictlan and the west coast of Mixincayoco island, the lands were organized by a system of collective freeholds that would become the underpinnings of today's Calpollism. These regions close to Angatahuaca served as the release valve for the city's ills in its early period of expansion, allowing the city to effectively expel the urban poor by converting them into rural colonists and thereby transforming them from a burden into a productive asset. Over time, the colonists in these regions established large clans which held the productive lands in common under the protection of a head (or "warden") lineage, establishing what is today defined as the first agricultural Calpolli. The Calpolli system would become a hallmark of the Angatahuacan economy as it expanded, being introduced to the Zacaco valley, the lower Meco, and eventually the plains of Malaio and the southern Ozeros. In most cases, Calpolli agricultural society was a mixture of colonists transplanted from the metropole and the local clan society which had simply been redefined as Calpolli in order to better integrate them into the economy.
Slavery as a mode of organizing production was relatively uncommon within the core regions but became more prevalent the further away from the metropole one traveled. Close to the core, the political and ideological priorities of the Cuauhtli and the Cozauist Temple institutions demanded the integration of conquered peoples into loyal tribute paying subjects, a process which depended on voluntary conversion to Cozauism and integration into Angatahuaca's trade network. However, the powers of these institutions waned towards the frontiers of their empire, where the military vanguard of Angatahuaca's expansion held different interests which conflicted with those of the city's central authorities. These vanguard forces were typically drawn from the lower classes of Angatahuacan society, serving as a pressure release system in a similar vein to the early colonists of littoral Huitzlan, whose primary incentive was the promise of wealth and status that could be gained by plundering enemy nations and conquered peoples alike, as well as by establishing estates of their own on the frontier. These estates were far from the independent clan-farms of the Calpolli system, typically employing a corvée system of forced labor.
The laws of Angatahuaca did not permit outright chattel slavery, and the central authority generally frowned upon the practice, but this was of little consequence in the peripheral territories such as modern day Phansi Uhlanga in Malaio or Xallipan in Oxidentale. In these places, the practical utility of incentivizing the military vanguards to remain in place and secure the region against outside powers as well as their capability to continue to produce trade goods for the Cuauhtli elite to profit from would prove sufficient motivation for Angatahuacan officials to tolerate the system of mines and plantations worked through a system of forced labor. These was strongly opposed by the Cozauist Temple on moral grounds, which created the tendency of the slave-plantationist gradually disappearing in conquered territories as the Temple made inroads and carried out its campaign of conversion, Nahuanization and assimilation of the native people.
Art and Technology
Clothing
Many species of cotton native to the Mixtepemec mountains had served as the primary textile material for the civilizations of Huitztlan for centuries by the time of Angatahuaca's founding. The city inherited the great importance its Purépecha forefathers vested in the production of cotton clothing and textiles. Weaving of such textiles took place in dedicated buildings near the city center and was undertaken by a privileged class of artisans that jealously guarded the techniques of clothing production which were passed down through lineages of cloth-makers. The weavers and tailors cemented their special status within the city by producing elaborate articles of ceremonial clothing for the city's elite, ingratiating themselves to the upper classes through the patronage of Cuauhtli families. This influx of wealth into the textile mills allowed them to expand as well as innovate ever more complex looms and techniques for producing richly decorated clothing and tapestries, many of which survive today.
The typical citizen of Angatahuaca wore a simple cotton tunic secured at the waist with a string or length of leather, sometimes the same fastener used to secure pants or leggings. These were by far the most common article of clothing, and the base upon which even the garments of the upper class would be based. Among these elite, capes and mantles were common signifiers of rank and status. In particular, Angatahuacan textile artisans became known for the use of gold thread embroidery using golden wire to decorate articles of clothing. Following the traditions of the city founders, necklaces, skirts and other decorative items made of feathers, especially white feathers, were worn by city officials, citizens of high standing, as well as soldiers.
Shoes and footwear were usually made of leather, consisting of sandals in the summer or in warmer climates and fully enclosed shoes and boots stuffed with fur to protect the feet during the bitterly cold winter months. Winter mantles made from llama wool were also typically worn during the winter by both men and women.
Armor
The protective garments worn in battle by the Angatahuacans and their allies were in most cases iterations of older types of armor that had been developed and used for centuries in the region. One of the main innovations the Purépecha founders had brought with them to east was the techniques necessary to produce steel, thereby displacing iron and bronze as the primary metal materials for both weapons and armor. The typical battle armor of Angatahuacan soldiers was the tepozcayohuipilli (lit. "metal scale suit"), a suit of armor consisting of a steel cuirass, a winged backplate and armored apron covering the legs down to the knee. The leg protection, sometimes paired with splinted shin-guards or boots, protected the thighs and was attached to the same shoulder straps as the cuirass rather than the belt, which facilitated the movement of the legs and hips and made it relatively easy to raise the knees or bend over while wearing the full suit. The backplate or matlapalcuicil (lit "wing cloak") was a large articulated plate that protected the upper back, the head, as well as the shoulders and upper arms from attack from behind. The function of this piece of armor was not only to protect the wearer from being hit by the arrows of their own archers behind the battle lines, but also to be used to protect the head and upper body from enemy projectiles by turning their side towards the enemy. This was of particular utility for those armed with bows or crossbows, who could simply turn their body to reload their weapon in relative safety behind their suit of armor which left both hands free for the dexterous task of preparing their weapon.
The actual construction of Angatahuacan armor was typically steel lamella attached to a leather backing, under which a padded cotton layer would be worn. This is largely the same pattern used by earlier iron armors and even the much older indigenous armors made from woven wooden slats. The metal lamella, or the splints of the shin and forearm protectors, could provide excellent protection against slashing weapons like the blades of swords, and a measure of defense against the puncturing action of spears and arrows. Such armor could render cuts to the protected parts of the body virtually harmless, while reducing what would be potentially mortal puncturing wounds to far less serious, ultimately survivable injuries, or simply preventing injury altogether depending on the nature of the attack. The blunt force of the attacks, however, would mostly be transmitted and spread out by the armor. This is what made the cotton under-armor vitally necessary, as the padding would help absorb the blunt force of the blows landing on the armor and in particular help reduce the effectiveness of clubs and other blunt weapons. In the hot climates of modern day Pulacan and Xallipan, much of the peripheral additions to the battle dress would be eschewed, leaving only the cuirass and backplate over a simple cotton vest, which both improved flexibility as well as reducing the heat experienced by the wearer, at the expense of lesser protection from attack.
The Angatahuacan empire was among the principal innovators of early firearms, whose development would bring about a decline in their tradition of armor-making. The first gunpowder weapons, however, did not do much to move the needle on the use of armor. Devices such as the tlemitl ("fire arrow"), a gunpowder rocket with an incendiary explosive charge encased in iron, were useful weapons when employed against fortifications and vessels at sea, but did not influence infantry tactics to a significant degree. It would be the development of the canon and later the tlequiquiztli, the Angatahuacan long guns, that would render personal body armor virtually obsolete. Against the projectiles both the Angatahuacans and their enemies could now project towards the enemy, the lamellar armor of the southern continent was wholly ineffective and was quickly abandoned. The Ichcahuipilli, a coat made of two layers of cotton cloth stuffed with raw cotton fiber, continued to be used as personal protection in the age of the gun for several centuries. Used as under-armor in earlier eras, these cotton garments did not impede movement or add significant weight to a soldier's kit, and offered some protection against blunt blows and cuts although it was virtually useless against the puncturing action of spears, pikes or bayonets. This final survivor of the classical armor of southern Oxidentale would finally fall out of use with the outbreak of the Zacapine Revolution and the downfall of Angatahuaca, as the increasingly industrial nature of war caused shortages of cotton and finally pushed the Ichcahuipilli out of use as all textile production was devoted to regular uniforms.