History of Hrydonia

In the Beginning...

The land that is now known as the Empire of Hrydonia was discovered in the mid 1600s AD by an English explorer, whose journey is only known due to its mention by a lower-class scholar. Scholars believe that Hrydonia derived its name from the name of the aboriginal inhabitants (or at least the aborigines that this explorer encountered), who called themselves Rydoniet, which was rendered in Latin as Rydonii, which became "Hrydonia".

From this, scholars have hypothesized that the Latinate name of Hrydonia shows that the discoverer of Hrydonia was educated enough to know Latin, which by extension shows that (presumably) he must have been a member of the nobility, or at least the son of a rich merchant. Scholars have also hypothesized that the native population within Hrydonia's present borders was around 50 million at the time of discovery.

Empire

Empire was declared in the early to mid 1700s AD, which scholars believe to be about 1720. However the exact date is unknown, as the records of the Hrydonian Emperors show that the first Emperors used a system in which the year was counted from a year after the first Emperor was crowned, so most lists say, for example: "Emperor Alexander I: R. 0-5".

After the Empire was declared, the bulk of Hrydonia's military and economic energies was devoted, for some 170 years, to the conquest of the aboriginals, and thus Hrydonia readily tested modern weapons, from the first rifled muskets to early machine guns, against the aboriginals. Another consequence of this was that Hrydonia cared very little about the outside world, devoting its energies instead to subjugating the natives, and that isolationist attitude has survived to the present.