Sorry to draw the cliffhanger out- I hadn't finished explrong the coasts in 1600, so decided to play to 1605 and do the world update then, but then I got the alert for what I knew was likely to be a long war.
Nils Wrangel’s Midgard
It was at around this time that Nils Wrangel, having returned from his voyages in the Indian ocean, published his atlas (entitled simply
Midgard) one of the first to truly make a game attempt to chart the entire earth. But what would it have shown?
Fig. 1- Markland at the turn of the 17th century
Markland was increasingly dominated by Spain, with even the scrappy Mesoamericans and the mighty Creek Federation gradually losing ground. The Northeast was contested between Sweden, Britain, and a large but decentralized native coalition known as the Huron Confederacy, however, this was never stable in the long term, and Britain had just launched a war to settle this- one way or the other.
Fig. 2- Religions in Scandinavian and British Markland
Much of Sweden’s recent colonial expansion had actually been done by Christian Norwegians, who believed that it was only a matter of time until Norway was nothing but a province of Sweden, and so fled farther away, settling on the shores of the Gulf of Helluland. The Norse ways were also starting to spread to the native populations in Vinland, often with much syncretism.
Fig. 3- Verdea at the turn of the 17th century
The west coast of Markland, however, was increasingly controlled by Portugal. This was an extension of their empire in the southern continent, controlling most of the west coast there, and trying to build an empire on the Blueside Ocean (the name granted to it by an English cartographer had caught on, referring both to the fact that it consitiuted an entire “Blue side” of the globe, and the fact that he believed that it was too vast to ever exert power across it, meaning that it could essentially be treated a s the sides of the map). However, colonization of Verdea war more scattered than on the Northern continent, with France taking the north, including the Verdean Gate, where cargo could relatively easily be transferred from the Blueside to the Caribbean over a narrow bit of land, the west being settled by Spain and Denmark (where, due to the reduced size of the Danish home countries, the Thane of the Brazils competed with the King for power), and the frigid southern reaches, largely neglected, saw small settlements by England, Spain, and Holland.
Fig. 4- Africa at the turn of the 17th Century
Spain had used its holdings in Verdea to continue southeastwards, and colonize the African Cape. However, they were not the only Europeans to take an interest there, with France. Britain, and Sweden all seizing outposts on the western coast and a Scottibh government-in-exile setting up in a former outpost. However, the continent had not seen the same kind of large-scale land grabs as the New World doe to hostile terrain, Africa having even harsher diseases then Europe, and the local powers being somewhat plugged in to Middle Eastern politics, the largest of them being Muslim, though pagan Benin, Kongo and Antemoro remained significant.
Fig. 5- The Middle-East at the turn of the 17th Century
And within the Middle East, the balance of power had largely held for the last 50 years, despite Spain increasing its holdings on the south. The one difference being the the Mamlukes, always shrewd diplomats, had shifted south, taking less of an interest in the affairs of the steppes to try to set themselves up as hegemons of East Africa. Persia remained divided.
Fig. 6- North Asia at the turn of the 17th Century
On the steppe, however, the relentless tide of state-building had finally reached them. The great cities of Kazan and Bukhara now ruled the horse-nomads instead of fearing them, and were allied to each other in fear of external threats. A watchful peace prevailed on the eastern border, with Kazan being of poor terms with its western rivals, but Sweden and Lithuania not wanting to get tangled up in a war that extended off the Eastern edges of their maps into the trackless plains- the tartars might not be as rowdy as they once were, but they were still the greatest horsemen of the world, and the memory of what a coordinated, united Central Asia could do had not faded after merely half a millennium. However, Kazan did not want to push off the Western edges of their maps and get tangled with empires that were said to span over the very oceans.
Fig. 7- East Asia at the turn of the 17th Century
It was probably for the best that the steppes had calmed, for the empire, long united, had divided. The once-proud Ming Dynasty was reduced to a few exilied garrison towns in Manchuria, holding on against the Khan of the Orochoni, who sought to unite the Jurchens. China was divided between a northern and southern dynasty again, with the Northern Shun theoretically being heir to the throne, but being acknowledged by few. They were even forced to acknowledge the small breakaway state of Wu as an equal- something no true Emperor of China would even countenance. In Japan however, the empire long divided had united, with the Ashikaga dynasty successfully cowing the daimyos and casting aside the shogun, becoming a power in truth, and even extending northward into Ainuland and claiming a foothold in Manchuria
Fig. 8- South Asia at the turn of the 17th century
While the spread of worship of the One had reversed in Europe, it had somewhat continued in India, with the Muslim Bahmani dynasty and Kingdom of Bengal being dominating. I say “Somewhat” because they had followed in the path of Andalus in centuries past and made little effort to convert their subjects, preferring their gold to their souls. It remained to be seen whether this would prove a model of tolerance and prosperity, or whether the Vijayanagari government-in exile in Lanka could replicate the accomplishments of Asturias and reverse the tide. In Indochina, Khmer had recovered from its decline in the 15th century and re-establish its primacy, while Yue China had sought to bring Annam back into the fold.
Fig. 9- Oceania at the turn of the 17th century
In the uttermost southeast, the islands had shattered utterly since the fall of the Majapahit empire, with even a short sail down a coast putting one under a different sovereign. This chaos had allowed outsiders to begin to move in, with the Spanish continuing to grow their southern hemisphere empire by grabbing up the newly-discovered continent of Tierra Austral and the Republic of Lanfang, run by Chinese exiles, establishing a power base. Some Swedish Vikings had also settled in the region, seeing the chaos as being ripe for piracy
Fig10- Europe at the turn of the 17th century
And then there was Europe. Looking at lines on a map, it would seem that not much had changed over the course of the last century, save that Venice was now directly in control of much of Northern Italy, with most of the powers focusing on expansion outward. This would be wrong. The fall of Austria and the subsequent disassembly of the Hansa- one of the few other pan-Imperial power structures- had removed the sort of stasis that had prevailed in the Holy Roman Empire, and now Bohemia sought to establish itself as leader, while Bavaria, Saxony, Munster, and others sought to carve out their own power bases.
Fig. 11- the leagues
Of course, many outside the Empire had been quite satisfied for it to be forever divided against itself, and now sought to lean in, and ensure that whatever new balance of power emerged in the Germanies after Austria would be to their benefit. Of course, there was also the question of what faith the Empire would have, for there had been another upheval in Europe that would not be obvious looking at lines on a map.
Fig. 12- Religions in Europe at the turn of the 17th Century
What had begun as a questioning of the internal politics of the Vatican had grown into something greater. With mass-printed Bibles increasingly available the languages people actually spoke, and the precedent set by Gotthilf Fischer, Christianity had spiraled out in a number of bizarre directions, the major currents of which I shall attempt to summarise here. There are,of course, countless minor variations that failed to make much of an impact for one reason or the other, such as the Murphyites, who never got many converts and were crushed by the English crown, the Vaclavites, who are so similar to the Revelationists that there is little to be gained by distinguishing them, the Jorjeans, who adopted the rather self-defeating idea of celibacy after marriage, and various groups who took the concept of returning to the original Church to a logical extreme and converted to Judaism.
However, these groups can be broadly divided into two categories- Protestants, who wanted to radically change the structure of the church, but more-or-less accepted previous doctrine, and Reformed, whose disputes with the previous consensus were often over factual matters (and, indeed, were often okay with the existence of the Catholic church in theory, merely disapproving of the way previous popes had sought to make their interpretations unchangeable, as they believed that the apocalypse was coming and Christendom would have to hang together, hence why the two largest Reformed nation were a part of the Catholic League).
Protestants included the revived Hussite movement of Bohemia, the Fischerites, who have been discussed earlier, and believed that every bishop should be independent, able to address local issues. They now predominated in much of Northrn Germany, and the Scandinavian Church, who were essentially Danish and Norwegian speaking Fischerites who had absorbed some liturgical tendencies from their Norse neighbors (such as female priests and a tendency to worship outside rather than in churches). There was also the Anglican Church, a creation of the English Crown, that maintained the hierarchies of English and Irish Catholicism, but transferred their allegiance from the Pope to the King of England, though they liked to present themselves as a revived Insular Christianity.
The Reformed churches, by their nature, were more divergent and esoteric. The first to really break from previous doctrine were the Revelationists, who originated in Poland, but had spread into Lithuania (though the Grand Dukes remained Catholic despite hardly any of their subjects doing so) and had some influence in the Low Countries. Their belief was simple- the End Times were upon them, the Antichrist, if he had not yet been born, was coming soon (The Norse Revival was clearly a sign of this), and Christiandom needed to prepare for Armageddon. The New Covenant was briefly predominant in Scotland, but by 1600 was already beginning to fade, having tied their fortunes to the Kingdom of Scotland, which had since been reduced to a rump state in Africe. This was a dour faith that combined revival of Old Testament rules of diet and dress with an extreme intolerance of all other religions in a way that struck most Jews as the utmost in hypocrisy.
The final prominent Reformed movement were the Landreyites. These were the followers of Serge Landrey, a French priest who had been driven into exile in Switzerland, but from there spread his word throughout the Alps and the surrounding countryside. He combined the Revelationist belief in an immanent apocalypse with the New Covenent’s re-examination of neglected old-testament rules- in his case the Noachian Laws. He believed that the Apocalypse would not be a war between humans, but an invasion of demonic armies, and that there would not be time to Christianize the whole world, so the Noachian Laws could provide a framework for an ad-hoc alliance of all humans against the demonic hordes. They also allowed female priests, for Landrey believed that Joan of Arc had been a full-on prophet, old-testament style, and her trial had been where the Catholic Church had lost its way. You can start to see why they got along so well with the Norse.
