Hispano-Baltic Texas

At the start, the USA still existed; greatly reduced, but far more of it, and more recognizable, than it had any right to be. (It was my first alt history. Sue me.) As I wrote the world, it gave way to many countries in the continent called, very simply, "America." The UCNA, obviously, is the dominant one.

Due south of the UCNA lies the G.P. of Mexico, which is now a quirky miniboss antagonist - but used to be an existential threat. In between Mexico and the UCNA lies a swathe of land with at least one recognizable border, painted (on the B_Munro map) in what the Expanded Universal Colour Scheme would call the Lone Star Republic. I'm going to call it by its working name: Hispano-Baltic Texas.

Hispano-Baltic Texas 101

Why? Rule of Cool, of course; but more to it than that. Andalusada is a world that has not been good to the cause of republicanism; by establishing HBT as a republic, it offset the fact that a lot of (often dysfunctional) monarchies prevail in the timeline. (And it's still "Texan"; it has a very different attitude and style from the Atlantic confederacy that broke away from England-Scotland.)

• Who? Originally it was mostly Moorish mestizos; after about 1750, it was run by Prussians and Pomeranians. Since then it's attracted a few waves of refugees from these two old-stock ethnicities (originally Balts, more recently a lot of Mexicans), as well as a fair number of republican Moors from the UCNA.
• What? A quirky, plucky republic synthesizing Moorish dissent with Baltic republicanism, supported by the UCNA as a buffer state against Sansinger Mexico.
• Where? Corresponding with IRL Texas, with some parts of Oklahoma and Arizona included and the eastern borders a little pushed back. (The northwestern borders I'm not clear about, but the Rio Grande provides an obvious geographic boundary anyways.)
• When? It started becoming Baltic in the 1750s; it became formally independent in I think the late 1830s. From that point, it's continued to the present day.

The question, of course, is "how."

And now, for the writer's-eye statement about why Axamalla is the way it is: laziness. The first Andalusada world map had the USA existing as a recognizable nation, with the Louisana Territory colored in UCNA green. It took an insane amount of time to realize how implausible that was, and my first response was to simply recolor it. Over time, the recolor stuck, and rather than think further on the matter I opted to come up with an explanation as to why it stuck - whence this post.

A brief history of Hispano-Baltic Texas

Up to a certain point, Axamalla's history is inseparable from that of the Moorish colonial world in general. (That's where it got its name from; for most of that time, definitely before the French acquisitions, it actually was ash-Shamal.) Where it gets interesting is the 1730s:

• At the tail end of the war, Moorish colonial America, with a fair bit of help from French Sodalites, rises in revolt, which goes down in history as the Mexican Liturgical War. It's an ugly affair for all parties; it's ugliest in the Bilad ash-Shamal, which (after being pacified early on) revolts again, very nearly turning the tides in the process. 
• At the same time, Saxony and Poland-Ruthenia have decided that Pomerania's outlived its usefulness; as the Liturgical War dies down in Mexico, the Second Pomeranian Reduction resolves too, reducing the Güntherite territory to a rump state. An enormous number of Pomeranians, unwilling to live under the Papist despots they'd fought so long and successfully against, flee to better climes.
• Seeing an opportunity (and having devastated most of the Bilad ash-Shamal), Seville makes some favorable offers to a lot of Balts, setting them up in plantations on the northern border. (The idea is that, because they're not Catholic, they'll be less inclined to go along with the next specifically Catholic rebellion. It worked in Ulster, after all.)
• And Seville is right; the new Shamalis don't join the next Catholic revolt. That's because, when Umayyad Seville implodes in the early 1790s, the revolt isn't sectarian but separatist, and the second generation of those Güntherite plantations (led, most notably, by Oskar Sansinger) topple the last holdouts of the Umayyad government and go on a rampage.

The buildup to the Axamallan secession: Mexico's first generation was volatile, and ethnoreligious tensions were tough to navigate. There were some particular landmine issues:

• Disregarding their critical role in the founding war, Axamallans were still regarded as Moorish enforcers settled there against the Mexicans, and their reinforcement (by a wave of Pomeranian rebels fleeing from the abortive rebellions) slowed down their assimilation into the Mexican mainstream. Thirty years after the founding of the Grand Principality, a huge number of Axamallans spoke no Sevillan at all and saw no need to learn.
• That sense of the Pomeranians as separate and hostile to Mexico really wasn't helped by the fact that Pomeranians were really overrepresented in the Mexican officer corps, which the G.P. regularly fielded against other Mexicans
• For their part, the Pomeranians were devoutly Holy and had fresh memories of forced Catholicization on the Baltic littoral. Oskar Sansinger's place on the throne (and later in the regency) was a sop to them, but as Mexico increasingly asserted its Roman Catholic identity (and Oskar's children, raised Catholic, approached the age of maturity) they became afraid that they'd get displaced from Mexican society as thoroughly as the Muslims were.

The Axamallan Revolt: The last straw was when a dying Oskar Sansinger approved the marriage of his son to a Catholic princess - specifically a Guise princess [who?], a plausible heiress to the Most Christian Kingdom. A core cadre of Axamallan officers [who?] refused to swear their loyalty to the Grand Prince, and (following the example of their cousins back home) demanded a specific list of concessions from the Grand Prince. When that list was flatly refused, they revolted.

• The UCNA was an all-important ally in the war.

Hispano-Baltic Texas today

As of today, HBT is at once quite foreign and recognizably Texan. The parent stocks have changed beyond recognition, but it's still the same melting pot that as IRL Texas, and still captures the frontier ethos. (Unlike the Anglo-Scottish separatists on the Atlantic coast, Axamalia is diverse, and hard-nosedly "plebeian"; when republicans in the UCNA finally despair of their government, a fair number of them emigrate here.)

• Language: Moorish Sevillan Moorish and Low German are co-official. (As a breakaway from Mexico, Moorish in the HBT follows the Mexican standard rather than the Andalusian, but because of international politics they're okay with calling it "Moorish.")
• Religion: HBT is the regional Güntherite stronghold, following the Pomeranian usage. The Holy Church is kinda pillarized; Güntherite churches are episcopal, but I wouldn't be surprised if HBT's is governed by a synod because of ethnolinguistic issues.
• Axamalla disestablished the Catholic Church during the Revolt, and most of the clergy fled, died, or (in a few cases) converted. While Catholicism's come back since then (mostly among the Mexican refugees), they're part of the UCNA's archdioceses, and generally follow the Isidoran Rite.
• Government: HBT is a consciously plebeian republic on the Baltic model.
• Axamalla's framers drew heavily on the lessons of the Burning Thirties; like the Brandenburg Free State constitution of 1836, theirs includes a lot of detailed emergency succession rules to maintain an orderly government in times of crisis. Because the succession rules haven't been amended, changes in the government structure have been addressed with laws, the repeal and appeal of which is a unique (and maddeningly confusing) part of politics.
• There are strict laws against formal oligarchies, but that's made the oligarchs more creative; the history of HBT is one of political machines, and "intrigues" are a serious problem. Part of what makes Axamallan politics so maddening to follow is the legacy of machines past. (IRL example: the Texas Railroad Commission, which is really important and doesn't involve railroads.)
• Economy: The *Texan economy revolves in no small part around its shared borders with both the UCNA and Mexico. (Smuggling has been a serious problem in the past.)
• Foreign Relations: In classic Tejas fashion, HBT is loudly going its own way and doing its own thing. (This is actually somewhat true; because none of its neighbors are Pomeranian, Axamalla's national identity is much more distinct than, say, Texas's.) In equally classic Tejas fashion, its interests lie firmly with its northern neighbor.
• Ever since Ross supplied the first order of Chinese six-guns, Taiping China's been on fairly good terms with HBT. Mind you, Taiping China being what it is they'll happily buy surplus from almost anybody - but when they order it, they tend to order from HBT.