History of New Ingrea
New Ingrea has been inhabited by humans for less than 800 years, making the history of the islands something of a recent affair.
Pre-history
Oceanic settlement
The New Ingrean archipelago is thought to have been first inhabited by a groups of Oceanic peoples, the Ngati Mōri, as late as the mid-14th century. Archaeological, cultural, and DNA evidence points to a migration of peoples from Pelenesia between 1210 and 1250. It is likely that these peoples were members of the Waitaha tribe (or iwi) who for reasons that have never been discovered, left their home homeland and migrated south to the previously uninhabited archipelago. Likewise, the relationship between these peoples and the Oceanic inhabitants of the nearby Moonshine Islands and Aorangea has never been fully established. Whilst the Ngati Mōri share many of the same customs and traditions with the Aorangeans, there is no mention in the oral history of either group of inter-tribal contact before 1791.
By the 15th-century the Ngati Mōri had established themselves as distinct cultural group, albeit with many similarities to other Oceanic peoples across the Ardentic Ocean. Indeed for many years they were considered to be a separate iwi, rather than a distinct indigenous peoples and were known as the New Ingrean Maori. In the mid-20th-century, recognition of their distinct cultural identity led to their re-categorisation as a separate and distinct cultural group and they have been known by their native name as the Ngati Mōri ever since.
John Coke
In 1773, the isolation of these peoples was broken with the arrival of Captain John Coke on board the HMS Angel. In September 1769 Coke had narrowly missed New Ingrea, having charted the sea to the east, north, and west of the archipelago. For his second voyage, Cook had been charged by the Royal Society in Winburgh with charting the extent of the hitherto unknown southern continent, Terra Incognita. Along with Captain Tobias Furneaux on the HMS Reward, Coke sailed west from Kartumia in June of 1773, and three weeks later struck the south-east coast of the New Ingrean archipelago near the modern town of Coke's Landing.
Over the next few weeks, Coke put his considerable map making and navigation skills in to practice, charting the islands and naming some of the more prominent features that he observed on his journey around the archipelago. Having taken the time to chart the islands, Cook deliberated on a name for the archipelago, before settling on "New Ingrea" before continuing his voyage west towards Archanta. Neither Coke, nor Furneaux, ever journeyed to the islands again.
Sealers and whalers
There is no clear record of who among the various Ulethan adventurers came next to the after Coke departed the archipelago in July 1773. However, it is assumed from archaeological records and the accounts of the Ngati Mōri that numerous waves of Ingerish, Valonnian, and Archantan sealers were the next to arrive on the islands over the coming decades. Indeed, Coke’s description of massive Fur Seal populations in his journal is likely to have drawn many to the archipelago. By 1820, seal populations had crashed to around 10% of their pre-Ulethan numbers.
Whilst the sealers were predominantly transient inhabitants, there was some attempt at colonisation before the 1830s. However hostility from the Ngati Mōri, and the general unpreparedness for the alien harshness of the New Ingrean environment, meant that most attempts at early colonisation failed outright. It is thought that by 1830, the Ulethan population of the islands numbered less than 100, with the largest settlement being the whaling station of Port Waiparu.
Despite a small Ulethan presence, the effect on the Ngati Mōri was dramatic. Disease and conflict caused the number of native inhabitants to decline sharply in the immediate decades after 1773. By 1830, the population, which might have been as high as 250,000 in 1773, had fallen to just 10,000. On many levels, Ngati Mōri culture has never recovered from this trauma, and much of the unique mythology and language of the indigenous peoples has been lost permanently to history.
Colonisation
The New Ingrea Company
Background
The isolated and under-populated nature of the archipelago led to several Ingrean social reformers to look at New Ingrea as a possible location for a broad ranging social experiment. The rapid pace of industrialisation throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century had transformed Ingrea from an agricultural economy to one built on the back of mills and factories. The breathtaking speed of the changes wrought upon society concerned a number of leading social thinkers of the time, and led to reactionary movements such as the romantic movement in literature and the arts as characterised by the writings of the time.
Formation
In 1834 the New Ingrea Company was formed by way of Letters Patent issued by Queen Charlotte after the passage of the New Ingrea Act through the Ingrean Parliament. The company exploited the connexions of its leading benefactors to secure full control of the archipelago on behalf of the Crown. In return for taking control of the islands on behalf of Ingrean interests, the company would be entitled to manage the exclusive colonisation of the archipelago and would be given full control over New Ingrea's domestic affairs.
From the beginning, the Company was headed by those who held a rather conservative and reactionary world view. Dissatisfied with previous and ongoing organised colonisation attempts around the world, the New Ingrea Company sought to reproduce a pre-industrial Ingrean society in the South Seas. The key emphasis was on a nation that would be built on an agricultural economy, and a solid moral ethos of church, family, and tradition. Concerted attempts were made to ensure that people from all classes of society were given an opportunity for a new life in the antipodes, something that other settlement schemes largely failed to do.
Shaping the colony
There were two crucial decisions taken by the board of the company that ensured this ideal was realised. The first was to invite members of the Ingrean aristocracy to invest by money and manpower in to the company. The Company encouraged the younger sons of peers, who would be otherwise unlikely to benefit by remaining in Ingrea, to settle in the archipelago. The company also added a number of sweeteners to entice aristocratic investors; with a promise of new source of income in the form of rich agricultural lands, and additional social status with the granting of new titles of nobility. Around 30 aristocratic families took up the offer, and today continue to form the bulwark of the New Ingrean upper classes.
At the other end of the social spectrum, the New Ingrea Act granted the Company the right to take a percentage of convicts sentenced to penal transportation and send them to the archipelago as an indentured labour force. Indeed, penal transportation would form the backbone of the country's working classes throughout much of the nineteenth century, and was only ended when public opinion turned against the continued use of indentured labour. The convict labour force was unique from the Kartumian and Archantan experience in that almost none of those transported were non-Ingrean or Roman Catholic. The company was at pains to establish a new society that was overwhelmingly Ingrean and Protestant in nature. Indeed, anti-Catholicism would shape New Ingrea society for much of the next century.
Constitutional deliberations
The aristocratic nature of the company board, and the expectation that New Ingrea would be allowed some latitude to act with a degree of independence from the Ingreans, meant that it was decided very early on that the country would constitute itself with a monarchical system of government.
Ingrean interests were to be preserved and represented by the appointment of a Resident Commissioner, who would act as both the chief minister and representative of the Ingrean Sovereign, and retain full control over all matters relating to defence and foreign affairs. Control over all domestic matters were vested in the Parliament and the various domestic portfolios of the Cabinet.
This action essentially established the islands as a protectorate of Ingrea rather than a colony. However unlike other protectorates, New Ingrea would be overwhelmingly populated by Ulethans.
Settlement
Organised settlement of New Ingrea commenced in February 1835, with the first shipment of convicts sent to the islands. This convict labour force was charged with establishing Port Frederick as the first settlement and capital of nascent colony. Over the next year, the convicts constructed a port, laid down streets, built houses, shops, churches, and granaries. A small number of trusted convicts were tasked with the establishment of the first farms outside the town limits, establishing farming communities on the river flats at Ossulstone and Mariavale. The early settlement was one where most of the luxuries of nineteenth century life were altogether lacking. However, there was never a shortage of food or basic provisions, and the early colony was soon thriving.
The board of directors of the New Ingrea Company arrived in Port Frederick on 18 February 1836, and having set foot on the archipelago, were immediately transformed into the Executive Council. The first action of the Council was to elect the former chairman of the company board of directors, John Lamberton as the first Chief Secretary of the colony. Joining the Council was the first Ingrean Resident Commissioner, Sir George Wheeler. In addition to his role as chief minister and sovereign's representative, Wheeler oversaw the transformation of the New Ingrea Company’s militia force into the New Ingrean Guard, which remained under his command, and the Royal New Ingrean Police, which would be transferred to domestic control on 1 January 1845.
The year of 1836 saw most of the middle and upper class members of the Company arrive in New Ingrea. All resident shareholders in the Company became members of the Senate once they landed in Port Frederick. The Senate would remain a fully appointed body until it was reformed in 1968. Migration would continue for much of the nineteenth century, initially with anyone in Ingrea with the sufficient funds to purchase the £100 subscription entitled to a ¼ acre (1,012 sq m) town block, and 100 acres (40.47 ha) of farmland. Those who could pay £500 for a special subscription received ten times the land entitlement, and also received free passage to New Ingrea and automatic appointment to the Senate.
The subscription system proved to be a victim of its own success, and was abolished by the Senate in March 1850 once the availability of good farmland became an issue. Newer settler had complained that the lands granted to them were marginal at best, and could not be made a profitable concern. Faced with a crisis, the Senate opted to end the scheme rather than tarnish the good name of the islands as a place where settlers were given marginal and unprofitable farm land.
Despite the end of land incentives, migration from the middle classes continued unabated throughout the 1850s, with thousands taking the opportunity for a new life, or to escape the dire poverty and grime of industrial Ingrea.
Expansion of the colony
The late 1830s and early 1840s saw the rapid expansion in urban development across the islands, with new towns surveyed and laid down at Regentsmere (1837), Pasquale (1838), Williamsdene (1839), Hillsborough (1840), Langford (1842), Shepton (1843), Earnestvale (1845), and Swanbrook (1846).
With the abolition of subscription system in 1850, Senate membership was effectively capped at a maximum 75 members, with vacancies inheritable by the eldest son of the incumbent. As with the Ingrean House of Lords, attendance at every Senate debate was not compulsory, with senators expected only to participate in debates to which they had an interest or some form of expert knowledge. Despite the noble intentions of many senators, pressure soon began to mount for a second chamber to better represent the middle and lower classes in the Parliament. After years of lobbying and pressure, the House of Assembly was formed by an amendment to the Constitution, which passed the Senate in 1854. The first elections to the Assembly took place in April of same year, and was overwhelmingly dominated by conservatives.
The "Surian threat"
The 1850s saw the Valonnian and Ingrean empires engage with the Surians over the "Eastern Question". In 1854 New Ingrea found itself drawn into the conflict, with Ingrean units in New Ingrea redeployed to protect assets elsewhere in the empire. With the fear of Surian invasion considered to be a very real (albeit remote) possibility, the Resident Commissioner, Sir Edward Brinkmann, took the decision that New Ingrea should assume control over all land military forces. Maritime defence would remain the purview of the Ingreans, with the Royal Navy providing defence on the high seas, and local maritime detachments of New Ingreans placed under the command of the Resident Commissioner.
The placing of military units under local command for the first time led to an increase in recruitment, driven mostly by patriotic fervour and a determination on the part of many to "do their bit" for the country. By the time the Surian War ended in 1856, New Ingrea was able to boast a small, but well equipped fighting force that would be more than capable of defending the archipelago in the event of an invasion. This transfer of power had a two-found impact on New Ingrea. First, it led to the removal of all Ingrean land forces from the islands at the end of 1858. Second, the transfer led the demands for more sovereignty to be shifted to the New Ingrean government, and can be seen as the spark for the independence movement that took root in the 1860s.
A new capital
The war also led to a rethink of the location of New Ingrea’s political institutions. The vulnerability of Port Frederick to a foreign attack led the Parliament to vote on a relocation to a greenfield site on the Central Plateau, many miles from the coast. A site was chosen between Hillsborough and Shepton in the county of Centralia, with Kingsbury settled upon as the name for the new city. A competition for the design of the city was undertaken, with two minor Archantan architects be awarded first prize.
Construction of the city, which drew some inspiration in its design from the garden design movement, commenced in 1858 and took some 10 years before it was completed to the extent that would allow the Executive and Parliament to relocate. The new city featured spacious avenues, and increased room for the various departments of the government to do their business. Civil projects, such as the cathedral, military barracks, various museums and galleries, railway station, and university were undertaken by subscription drives throughout the last decades of the nineteenth century.
The death of Brinkmann in 1867 coincided with the transition of leadership of the kingdom from the first settlers to the first native born New Ingreans. The conservative faction remained dominant in both houses of parliament, but for the first time, a liberal faction began to emerge as a serious political force. In the 1868 general election, the liberals won 34% of the popular vote, but the first-past-the-post electoral system saw them victorious in just 15 electoral districts of the 59 seat Parliament.
Ending transportation
Throughout the mid-1800s, pressure had been steadily increasing from free settlers to end the practice of penal transportation, which by the 1870s was seen less as source of free labour and increasingly perceived as doing little more than increasing the number of undesirable characters who did not subscribe the national identity. Critics also pointed out that continuing transportation at a time when there was plenty of labour on hand from freed convicts and their descendants was an expensive folly which the government could ill afford, and would only increase the popularity of socialism and trade unions at the expense of national stability.
The 1880 general election saw the first liberal premier in Bernard Clifton elected to office. The new government soon went about implementing a radical platform of social and economic reform to New Ingrea. One of the first actions of the new government was to see that transportation would be finally brought to end. New Ingrea’s discontinuation of this practice came some 12 years after the last of the Australian colonies had abolished transportation. The arrival of the ship La Hogue in December 1880 marked the final passage of convicts from Ingrea to the antipodes.
XXth Century
Independence
Background
The unique political character of New Ingrea as a white protectorate would endure from 1836 until 1907, however from the 1860s there were calls for the country to take full control of her affairs. Even at the outset of settlement, it had been recognised that New Ingrea would be a unique entity within the Ingrean Empire, and could therefore be expected to seek a degree of independence as time went by. New Ingrea's domestic institutions had proved themselves over the previous decades when the power to control policing and the army had been devolved to local control. In 1875, the then Resident Commissioner, Sir John Kittler, gave his tacit support to the government to pursue a further devolution of powers from the Colonial Office in Winburgh.
However, the Ingreans were initially unwilling to consider any change to New Ingrea’s constitutional status. The Colonial Office felt that the islands provided strategic and economic benefits that might be lost if the kingdom was given full control of its affairs. Furthermore, with a population of just 200,000, the Ingreans believed that the country could not yet possess sufficient economic base to compete on the world stage. Between 1875 and 1900, there were a further four attempts launched by successive New Ingrea governments to bring about change in the constitutional arrangements of the kingdom. None ever progressed beyond a proposal stage.
Protracted negotiations
In the aftermath of the Serionian War, the Ingreans finally recognised that New Ingrea had earned the right to go her own way. New Ingrea troops had fought gallantly in Serion, and the Ingreans were satisfied that the kingdom would remain a staunch ally even without the presence of a Resident Commissioner ensuring Ingreans interests or adequately taken into account. The Ingreans however, did not believe that New Ingrean independence could be granted unconditionally. New Ingrea, in the eyes of the Ingreans, remained something of a static provincial backwater, given to the bouts of reactionary politics. The country continued to operate under the auspices of the New Ingrea Act, meaning that the political institutions of the country were much the same as they had been in 1854, which the Ingreans felt had come to the end of it's useful life. New Ingrea also continued to vigorously enforce anti-Catholic legislation, which forbade the Roman Catholic Church from erecting a diocesan structure or having bishops. The Catholic Church was also forbidden from operating it's own schools or hospitals. To the Ingreans, such measures had long since ceased to be reasonable in a modern society.
The conditions for the reform and the demand for their implementation were passed to the New Ingreans in late 1905 in form a memo from Alexander Veivers, the Resident Commissioner, to the government. The Veivers Memo, as it came to be known, placed four demands on the New Ingreans before independence would be granted. These demands were, retaining the monarchy, a mutual assistance treaty, a fairer electoral system, and the removal of all anti-Catholic legislation. Initially, the New Ingrean reaction to these demands was tepid at best. The constitutional arrangements suited the New Ingreans well, and they were loathe to change them for a system of government they saw as a 'modish fad' (i.e. democracy). The power of the Ingrean Church was also sufficient to initially resist any attempts to offer relief to the 7,000 or so Roman Catholics that lived in New Ingrea.
Independence at last
However, as the months went by, the New Ingreans came to see that the required changes were unlikely to cause any significant detriment to their government and society. A new constitution was drawn up by a Constitutional Convention, and Parliament enacted legislation to reform the electoral system and provide relief for Roman Catholics. By May 1907, these measures were in place, and Veivers telegraphed the Colonial Office in Winburgh his blessing that independence be granted. Having made good on Ingrean requests to reorganise her affairs, New Ingrea was granted independence on 1 October 1907 to delirious celebrations in Kingsbury. Independence for the archipelago came alongside the granting of Dominion status to several other former colonies, and marked a recognition that the country was a partner in maintaining and defending the Ingrean way of life.
As promised, independence saw the office of Resident Commissioner abolished, and replaced with the ambassadorial office of High Commissioner. In theory, Ingrean now passed from being a colonial master to an equal partner and ally. In reality, New Ingrea remained heavily dependant on the Ingrea for her economic prosperity and security. In return, the Ingreans used this dependence to their advantage, and used it to extract concessions at regular intervals over the next fifty years. The Mutual Assistance Treaty was often abused or ignored outright by the Ingreans, with the New Ingreans finding themselves in no position to argue their point of view. It took until 1956, and the aftermath of the catastrophic Dematisnan Crisis, for New Ingrea to be able to assert herself as an equal partner.
New Ingrea and the world at war
This unequal relationship persisted throughout the 1920s and 30s, and meant that in 1939, New Ingrea found itself caught up in a war despite having played any part in it's escalation and outbreak . The New Ingrea Expeditionary Force (NIEF) was raised in October 1939, and sailed for Khaiwoon in early 1940, with the intention of joining the Western Front. However, the collapse of that front in June 1940 led to New Ingrea forces remaining in Khaiwoon to help expel fascist forces from the region. The Gobrassanyan Campaign saw New Ingrea commit two initial divisions to the campaign in 1940, before they were joined by a third division sent from home later on in the campaign. The fighting in Gobrassanya continued until November 1941 with the capture of Quesagnais in the Gobrassanyan highlands. New Ingrea casualties for the campaign were not significant, with 45 men killed in action over the 18 month campaign.
Coinciding with the Gobrassanyan Campaign, Allied forces were involved in the expulsion of fascist forces from North Tarephia throughout much of 1941. A single New Ingrean battalion was deployed from home to South Serion to assist Ingrean efforts in the region until the liberation of the region in late May. From Aeda, the battalion was then sent to reinforce New Ingrea's contribution in Gobrassanya, having first rested and retrained in Aeda. New Ingrea casualties for the North Tarephian Campaign numbered just 94, including 2 killed in action.
After the liberation of Al-Kaza, New Ingrea recalled her forces and began the process of remobilisation. New recruits raised were intended to deployed to North Archanta in 1945-46, but end of the war in August 1945 made this redundant. The last New Ingrea forces arrived home in September and were demobilised by December, coinciding with the dissolution of the NIEF.
Recent times
The post-war period was one of steady growth and modernisation.
Apart from participation in peacekeeping operations between 1950 and 1953, New Ingrea has remained out of most of the major post-war conflicts. New Ingrea did give aid and support during the Commonian Emergency. Units from the New Ingrean Army were placed on standby in the late 1955 in order to support Commonwealth troops in suppressing Communist forces, but none were ever deployed in to active service. Forces were also mobilised for deployment during the Dematisnan Crisis in 1956, but the spectacular failure of that campaign aborted New Ingrea's mission, and led to the termination of the first Mutual Assistance Treaty. New Ingrea nevertheless maintained it's forces on standby throughout the 1960s in response to numerous conflicts in North Archanta, but refused to be drawn in to the conflict. Both these conflicts led to New Ingrea maintaining an army much larger than a country of it's size would ordinarily maintain in peacetime. The Accords of 1973, coupled with the Oil Shock, finally convinced the government to stand down it's forces and implement a reduction in military spending.
New Ingrea's inexorable march toward 'modernisation' was not straight forward, with 'progress' sometimes thwarted by the will of the people. In 1965, the Braddock government proposed the implementation of a decimal currency and metric weights and measures to bring the kingdom in line with much of the rest of the world, which was slowly going through similar processes at the same time. A petition to withhold assent on both bills was successfully carried and a plebiscite to override the Parliament was also easily carried. To this day, New Ingrea remains one of the few nations to still use the £.s.d system of currency and imperial (or customary) units of weight and measurement.
The general isolation of New Ingrea began to change in 2012, with the election of the Jones government. Jones pursued closer relations with a number of small and minor states across the world.