St Edmund

St Edmund is basically a “modern-tech” nation although with a few anachronisms (e.g. extensive use of airships ;-) & anomalies, but also has some ‘fantasy’ elements’ (such as ghosts, although not actually any of the more dramatic forms of ‘magic’).
The country’s original territories, commonly called “Old St Edmund” today, consisted of one medium-sized island & 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 “permanently” a possession of Godwinnia until it was taken from France during the ‘War of the Ruritanian Succession’ [1774-1783]*. When the country’s population grew too numerous to be housed adequately on those islands Godwinnian navigators opened up routes from here into the native-less Earth on which the Godwinnians’ own expansion had already been in progress for some time, and large sections of that world (including its versions of the West Indies, Central & 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, which is called ‘St Edmund’s Port’, is located on the largest of the original islands.
Godwinnia abolished the practice of slavery in all its territories & dependencies in 1835, partly because of diplomatic pressure from Britain. Godwinnia & 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 WWII** 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 dispute with the ‘Republic of Bolivaria’ (which is situated in the north-western corner of South America) about the ownership of some small islands & their territorial waters (which contain not only useful stocks of fish but oyster beds [producing pearls] and oil deposits too…), in 1974, which involved a few small-scale naval actions and was resolved in St Edmund’s favour.
The native inhabitants of “Old St Edmund” at the time of its discovery by Europeans belonged to the ‘Carib’ people 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 & 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 subsequently — after the abolition of slavery — of Chinese, [‘East’] Indian and Hispanic-American workers as well. Immigrants from other peoples 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 (due to the acceptance of escaped slaves into that tribe) nowadays.
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’ which merges African traditions with Christian ones is quite widely practiced [mainly in rural areas] too. 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.
St Edmund’s official languages today are ‘Anglish’ (the main language of Godwinnia), English and French, but a local patois of mixed origins is very widely spoken too and there are also a few small communities where ‘Carib’ is still favoured***. 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 too and normally use their ancestral tongues only in the home or in religious ceremonies, and by more recent immigrants of various other stocks too.
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 instead: He is represented in St Edmund by an appointed ‘High Eorl’ for most ceremonial [& some constitutional] purposes. The current ‘Speaker of the Witan’ is named Simon Reeve, and is a second cousin once removed of his counterpart in Godwinnia who also bears that name. Government ministers, as in Godwinnia (and in the assorted other nations of the ‘Godwinnian Commonwelath’, too) are officially known as ‘Firstthanes’, for example the ‘Firstthane for Outsidestuff’ who is the main minister responsible for [non-military] foreign affairs.
The a version of the ‘mark’ which is used as this nation’s currency is subdivided into 12 ‘shillings’ (of 12 ‘pennies’ each), just like the Godwinnian one, 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 being “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.
St Edmund belongs to several separate organisations within the UN: There’s the National Sovereignty Organization, the ‘United Nations Defense Convention’ (or UN DEFCON) whose members discuss & draft proposals for defence & security-based resolutions, a newer group called FAIRTRADE which works on market-friendly proposals, and a ‘Green Think Tank’ (for ‘Environmental’-category proposals) too, although it hasn’t actually done anything in the latter two of them yet… St Edmund’s ambassador to the United Nations is named Alfred Devereux SWEYNSSON MD.
The passage of an ill-advised UN resolution called the ‘Fossil Fuel Reduction Act’ [on 8th October ’05] 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 & airforce than for anything else locally and the [“logical”] response that occurred was their declaration as legally a 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) which — being outside of the UN — wouldn’t actually have to obey those new rules about drastically reducing fuel consumption. Also, the government of St Edmund responded to that resolution by setting up & providing facilities for an ‘International Nuclear-powered Aircraft Programme’, which several of “the usual suspects” have also 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.

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(* The Earth on which it’s located didn’t have an ‘American War of Independence’, because Britain had granted its colonies in North America a sort of ‘dominion’ status [collectively] 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.)
(*** On the ‘RealWorld’ version of Earth 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 & 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.)