r/AetatesLucis • u/Inner_Leg9110 • 1d ago
OG The Hanseatic Republic of Dutchland 🇩🇪 🇳🇱 🚢
Wassup guys ! Welcome to another map, this time the Hanseatic Republic of Dutchland: an Arian Low German merchant republic born out of the medieval Hanseatic League. What's there to know?
-There are 4 constituent countries in the republic: Friesland/Frisia, Sexland/Saxony, West Frankland (Low Franconian folks), and Wendland (Polabian Slavs). Wendland has both Wendish and Saxon as official, because of the Ostsiedlung (in this case Saxon farmers and merchants moving east, but here they don't completely assimilate Polabians bc some PoDs I did: the Obodrites are also successful in forming a Christian principality under Thrasco, very loyal to Charlemagne and the forecoming Carolingians (more on this later); and Jaxa is successful creating a Slavic principality in irl Brandeburg)
-The official Christian denomination is Arian Christianity, based on irl Germans adopting it before converting to Catholicism, here that doesn't happen (excluding Goths, Angles, Lombards migrating to majority Catholic Romance or Celtic lands). This means the Carolingian Empire isn't the predecessor to the Holy Roman Empire (which in this timeline is Spain) and the Empire is just known as the Carolingian Empire, including Catholic, Arian and Orthodox lands. (What could the Pope do? He's too busy fighting the Berbers in Spain and even Italy, might do a historical map of the berber pirate states of the early medieval mediterranean)
-Lastly when the Carolingian Empire starts breaking up due to states' centralization (but mainly the Gaulish War), since there's no powerful German state to unite Germany, the Hanseatic League turns into a political, then a confederation, then a full on state. (Triggered by the Gaulish War on Europe - akin to Napoleonic wars, Dutchland was more born from the Gaulish invasions). That's why some states ended up in Gaul (Trier, Luxembourg, Coblence) and Moravia (akin to Bohemia, continuity of the Great Moravia, which got Meissen)
-The Hanseatic League nowadays is something like the European Union, a very close knit alliance of states namely Dutchland, Livonia, Novgorod, some ex Dutch colonies etc
-Lastly the Germanic languages use Germanic runes (I found a very cool font that actually writes in runes by Naeddyr) and the Slavic langs write in Glagolitic (picture the Cyril & Methodius disciples never being expelled from Great Moravia thus Glagolitic roots up there and Moravia becomes one of the 1st Slavic Christian states, whenever the schism happens they already have roots in Byzantine rites thus Slavs in general are orthodox)
-Forgot to address the elephant in the room, that's Doggerland (named Himmerland after the Cimbri)
GEKOLONISEERD ! (Some Dutchman in New Amsterdam, 1624)
----- This map is a remake (the last one I swear) of these 3 past ones
----- Enjoy and ask anything !
