St Edmund
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| Flag of St Edmund | |
| Motto: Free as the Sea | |
| (No Map Available Yet) | |
| Region | Conservative Paradise |
|---|---|
| Capital | St Edmund's Port |
| Official Language(s) | Anglish, English, French |
| Leader | King Harold I |
| Population | 4 billion |
| Currency | mark |
| NS Sunset XML | |
The Kingdom of St Edmund is basically a “modern-tech” nation, with a few anachronisms (e.g. extensive use of airships) and anomalies, but also has some "fantasy" elements (such as ghosts, although not actually any of the more dramatic forms of "magic").
Contents
History
The country’s original territories, commonly called “Old St Edmund” today, consisted of one medium-sized island and a number of nearby smaller ones in the West Indies. It was named by a Godwinnian privateering captain during the 1580s, but underwent several changes of ownership during the next two centuries and didn’t become an official possession of Godwinnia until it was taken from France after the Battle of Jones's Bay (on the 14th of July, 1781), during the War of the Ruritanian Succession.1 When the country’s population grew too numerous to be housed adequately on those islands, Godwinnian navigators opened up routes into the native-less Earth on which the Godwinnians’ own expansion had already been in progress for some time. Large sections of that world (including its versions of the West Indies, Central and South America, and most of Africa) are now included within St Edmund: These ‘New Territories’ are now home to a majority of the nation’s population. The nation’s capital city, St Edmund’s Port, is located on the largest of the original islands.
Godwinnia abolished the practice of slavery in all its territories and dependencies in 1835, partly because of diplomatic pressure from Britain. Godwinnia and all the other members of the Godwinnian Commonwealth (including St Edmund) remained neutral during the First World War, but fought on the Allied side during WWII2 when their naval forces played an important role in keeping the Atlantic seaways open to Allied traffic. St Edmund was granted dominion status in 1927. The most recent armed conflict in which St Edmund was involved was a 1974 dispute with the Republic of Bolivaria (situated in the northwestern corner of South America) about the ownership of some small islands and territorial waters (containing useful stocks of fish, oyster beds and oil deposits), which involved a few small-scale naval actions and was resolved in St Edmund’s favour.
People
The native inhabitants of Old St Edmund at the time of its discovery by Europeans belonged to the Carib, although, as on several others of the West Indies, these had replaced an earlier wave of Arawaks by conquest. The earliest colonists were Spanish, but groups of Dutch, French, British and Irish origins also settled there in the centuries before Godwinnian control was finally established: Large numbers of Africans were imported as slaves during that period, and a certain amount of interbreeding between the Native American, European and African elements of the population began at quite an early date. The period of Godwinnian rule saw the arrival of significant numbers of settlers from that nation too, including some families who were wholly or partially of Ouphish blood, and also (subsequent to the abolition of slavery) of Chinese, East Indian and Hispanic-American workers as well. Immigrants from other nations have followed in relatively smaller numbers since then, including some Jewish refugees from Europe during the lead-up to the Second World War. Two communities of Caribs still survive, although the larger of these is in fact predominantly African in ancestry today, due to the acceptance of escaped slaves into that tribe.
Religion
Roman Catholicism was the dominant religious belief in Old St Edmund at the time of the Godwinnian conquest, and remains stronger numerically than the Godwinnian Catholic Church, although the latter is favoured by most of the landowning families and the middle classes. Traditional beliefs may still be followed by some of the surviving Caribs, although they are very secretive about this, and a syncretistic system called yoodoo, merging African and Christian traditions, is widely practiced in mainly rural areas. Anglicanism, Methodism, Spiritualism, Hinduism, Judaism and the Chinese combination of beliefs also have noticeable numbers of followers today, and a variety of other faiths or creeds maintain presences on a smaller scale.
Languages
St Edmund’s official languages today are ‘Anglish’ (the main language of Godwinnia), English and French, although a local patois of mixed origins is also widely spoken, and a few small communities still favour Carib.3 Other languages are used amongst the country’s Chinese, Hispanic and East Indian minorities, although almost all the members of those groups can speak one or more of the official languages and normally use their ancestral tongues only in the home or in religious ceremonies, and by more recent immigrants of various other stocks.
Government
The national government follows the same basic pattern as that of Godwinnia, as a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral parliament called the Witan, whose Speaker serves as the effective head of government. The current ruler, King Harold I, is also King Harold III of Godwinnia and spends most of his time in the latter nation. He is represented in St Edmund by an appointed High Eorl for most ceremonial, and some constitutional, purposes. The current Speaker of the Witan is named Simon Reeve, and is a second cousin once removed of his Godwinnian counterpart, who also bears that name. Government ministers, as in Godwinnia (and in assorted other nations of the Godwinnian Commonwealth) are officially known as Firstthanes, for example the Firstthane for Outsidestuff, who is the main minister responsible for non-military foreign affairs, and collectively form a council that's called "the Wardrobe."
Currency and Exports
The version of the ‘mark’ used as St Edmund’s currency is subdivided into 12 shillings (worth 12 pennies each), just like in Godwinnia, but is no longer held equal in value to, and is currently worth somewhat less than, that namesake. The country uses the Gregorian Calendar, which Godwinnia adopted for all its dependencies as well as itself in 1805, but -- again, like Godwinnia -- counts March 1st as New Year’s Day.
The country’s exports include Old St Edmund’s Famous Navy Rum, which is 105% proof on the British scale and has already proven quite popular with some of the other nations’ UN delegations.
United Nations
St Edmund was a member of the UN from early in August 2005 until late in May 2006, and now acts there through a puppet state called the Protectorate of the St Edmundan Antarctic. This new "nation" has also taken St Edmund's place in several separate organisations within the UN: the National Sovereignty Organization, the United Nations Defense Convention (UN DEFCON), FAIRTRADE the Green Think Tank, and Reveal and Repeal, although it hasn’t actually done anything in the latter three of them yet. St Edmund’s former ambassador to the United Nations, who now fills that role for St Edmundan Antarctic, is Alfred Devereux Sweynsson MD.
The passage of Fossil Fuel Reduction Act led to St Edmund spinning-off a daughter state called "St Edmund Air," because it looked as though the bad effects involved would be significantly worse for St Edmund’s aviation industry and airforce than for anything else, the “logical” response being their declaration as a legally separate new nation, with a small island donated as a site for their "capital city," and extraterritorial rights over all of St Edmund’s airfields. Being outside of the UN, St Edmund Air wouldn’t actually have to obey those new rules about drastically reducing fuel consumption. The government of St Edmund also responded to that resolution by setting up and providing facilities for an International Nuclear-powered Aircraft Programme, which several of “the usual suspects” have joined but which hasn’t achieved anything yet (and which is really more to annoy the UN’s “fluffier” members than a serious project, at least as far as the St Edmundan leaders are concerned).
Notes
- The Earth on which its located didn’t have an American War of Independence, because Britain had granted its colonies in North America a sort of collective "dominion" status about a decade before this conflict.
- The wars that were given those labels on the Earth concerned probably differed from their namesakes on the ‘real World’ in significant ways, such as not only the precise years when they took place but also the rival sets of nations involved: I haven’t yet decided on the details.
- In the RL the Carib language was normally used only amongst the males of the Native American people concerned, whilst the Arawak tongue was used by the females and for communication between the sexes: If that was ever the case in St Edmund then it ceased to be so quite a long time ago.
