The UCNA

A lot of my posts have horrible, wordy introductions. A lot of it's because I'm a horrible, wordy writer. A lot more is because most of my posts are spontaneous, arbitrary, and completely unforeshadowed, so I have to assume that nobody else knows what I'm talking about. We'll have none of that today. This is the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia. It shouldn't need any more introduction than that.

But for you, dear readers, who haven't been with me from the beginning, I'm going to spell this out anyways.

The UCNA 101

Why? Because this is the point. GURPS Infinite Worlds specified that in the Andalus timeline, Moorish Spain threw off the Reconquista and discovered the New World in 1484, building an empire that today (ca. 1930) competes against Saxony, Russia, and Japan. The timeline needed a Moorish great power; ladies and gentlemen, this is that great power.

• Who? EVERYONE. A scattering of aborigines in ash-Shamal. Moorish-speaking Muslims from everywhere that Moorish is spoken. A lot of French Farrellites living on its old frontiers, and a lot of French Catholics living all over the place. Lots of West Africans bought as slaves for the frontier plantations. Andalusi Arabs, Maghribi Arabs, Aqsi Arabs. A dynasty of Sephardi Jews who run half the show behind the scenes. This is a mosaic society the likes of which we haven't seen since the Ottoman Empire. Güntherites from down south, and Gaels from up north. And, above it all, a caliph from the House of Umayya - the first, last, and best leaders the House of Islam will ever know.
• And two Jews.
• What? An Islamic Empire of Brazil (my first and biggest inspiration for it.)
• Where? The continental French New World, and most of the Moorish New World as well (although ironically almost none of the Sevillan New World.) Cuba, through some tangled marital politics, and a scattering of islands in the Caribbean (though not the bigger ones.) What was once France-Outremer, north to the Great Lakes and beyond (not too much north, though, and the northern border with England-Scotland is actually a bit lower than the USA's because it's more prone to following the curves of rivers.) The UCNA also owns some land in Cabralia too, specifically enough to prop up the Transcabralia Canal.
• When? The actual groundwork is at least 15 years older - but it all starts on April 5.

In a broader sense, though, the reason why is because I wanted, early on, for the Moorish great power to be a successor state. Moorish civilization is an enormously complicated thing, for reasons I'll explain in the future - but left to its own devices, I didn't want the Moorish superpower to be a Hispanicized Ottoman Empire. I wanted something that'd reflect how very different an extra 500 years of survival makes Islamic Spain, and the easiest way to do that was to give it a decisive break with its past.

A brief history of the UCNA

Individual derpy details about the UCNA take up entire pages of their own, so writing the UCNA's history is going to be a challenging one. So let's take it from the top.

In the beginning: It all starts on April 5, when Yusuf I promulgates the Charter of the Caliphate.

• The initial land claims in the Charter are... optimistic; they include the heartland of the Moorish New World, which the understaffed UCNA promptly loses to the rising G.P. of Mexico.
• The flip side of this is that the sea battles are won pretty early on.

The reign of Yusuf I (1805-1839): Before Mexico finishes the curb-stomping, though, the stars change a bit.

• The Northern Expansion: Yusuf I realizes early on that the UCNA needs to grow or die, and with Mexico forming an unbreakable southern border he goes the only way he can: north.
• Mapping the north was one of Yusuf's really great efforts. The idea was simply to name and claim as much as he could before anybody else did, so he could claim (or sell) as much as was needed. Everybody had done it before, but nobody had done it so well; the UCNA's maps were normative for the rest of the century.
• It also settled on the site for the future capital of New Toledo.
• The Ohio Wars: Unfortunately, by the time the UCNA's reached that point, New Britain has already started to cross the Appalachians, and who controls which parts of the landscape begin almost immediately. The wars outlast Yusuf I himself.

The acclamation crisis: Yusuf disinherited his oldest son in exchange for one of the younger ones [who?]; I'm not entirely sure how this plays out. What matters is that the designated heir is an asshole, and Don Musa arranges for him to be deposed and revises the Caliphal Charter to suit.

• I'm really not sure about the details of this. What I do know is that it establishes that the succession of the Caliphate is not exactly hereditary, it's by the acclamation of the Maxaca.

The six weak caliphs (1841-1890): Under the Second Charter, and with the Cordovero dynasty as its key political dynasty, the UCNA goes through six caliphs, none of whom establish themselves as particularly important or lasting personalities.

• The Northern Wars: A constant throughout the six weak caliphs is ongoing conflict in the north, fought between the UCNA, England-Scotland, New Britain, and various aboriginal nations. The dust doesn't settle until the Ohio Valley's partitioned, the northern border is established, and so forth.
• At least one Caribbean crisis: The Emirate of Cuba was a frightening independent place from the Thousand Years' War to the formation of the UCNA. They've been far too quiet, and I need to fill in their history too.
• From 1875, the incredibly old Don Musa is struggling with geriatric ill health. He dies in 1883, and the Secretary of the Caliphal Household passes to his son, Don Ibrahim. The last of the weak caliphs [who?] is weak in part because of that leadership change.

The reign of Yusuf II (1891-1908): When the last of the six weak caliphs dies, the only lineal heirs are insane, infants, or unborn. One of the family elders (another Yusuf) is eventually nominated as a regent while the Cordoveros wait to see which Umayyad has the mental health and good character for the job. Against all expectations, that Umayyad turns out to be Yusuf II himself.

The reign of Basil II (1908-1918): After the death of Yusuf II, Don Ibrahim passes the Caliphate to Basil II, his boon companion for the next ten years - until his abrupt death. [details?]

The reign of Yusuf III (1919-present): On Basil's death, the youngest son of the last weak caliph [who?] gets proposed for acclamation, with the Believers rallying behind him. He takes the throne and has held it since.

The awkward part about this whole thing is that for such a big country, I honestly don't know a hell of a lot about how it evolves. And so, alas, this is going to be a stub and a work in progress for quite some time.

The UCNA today

The UCNA today has evolved into a very complicated thing.

Language: De jure, the UCNA's official language has always been Moorish. Moorish is the language of the government publications, the state universities, the government bodies, and the military. In practice, it's more complicated than that.

• "Moorish" is actually a koiné, which the UCNA standardized under the six caliphs; it's distinct both from Mexican Sevillan and Moorish as spoken in Seville, although the standards board has driven it closer to the latter.
• The language of the court has always been Andalusi Arabic. Unlike Moorish, the UCNA hasn't given rise to New Andalusi Arabic; from the start, it's been reinforced by immigrants from the old country, and nobody spoke it locally anyways.
• Unlike neighboring states, the UCNA is proudly and actively polyglot; Yusuf I intended Moorish to be a lingua franca, as it was in Seville. (It only became Andalusian Moorish a few decades later, when it turned out that it was the second language of most of the Moros and Saracenos as well.)

Religion: The UCNA is about 55% Muslim, 35% Christian, and about 10% other. In practice, it's more complicated than that.

• They only count citizens, and the UCNA has lots of resident aliens. If they were counted, either Christians or Muslims would hold a slim plurality.
• The UCNA's census-takers are more ecumenical than its churches. If they're counted separately, Maliki Islam is easily and clearly the largest faith.

Government: The UCNA is, as stated above, a constitutional monarchy of sorts.

• The UCNA (like the Empire of Brazil) has four branches of government: the the UCNA began as a presidential monarchy, and remains more or less so to the present day. (Under Don Musa, and his successor Don Ibrahim, it became less so, but the Cordoveros never went any further. [why not?])
• The UCNA uses a distinctive voting system, arising from the Moorish Dissent's arguments about democracy and majority rule. (Yusuf I, who was quite happy with absolute power as long as it was his, went with a Borda count because it wasn't majoritarian; as the UCNA's diversified, this has become a feature, not a bug.)

Economy: The biggest in continental America, obviously... but I'm not able to specify much more than that at the moment. (While it's got an enormous amount of resources to develop into something very big, I have only the vaguest idea when those resources are discovered and how that ties into their exploitation and use.)

• One thing that the UCNA isn't a major producer of, that the USA is? Cotton. Under French rule, the southern states never really developed cotton latifundia (although the UCNA's heartland does have lots of sugar and rice), and by the time the Industrial Revolution got underway, the Cotton Belt had been broken up into smaller farmsteads. The UCNA has always dominated the American wool market, but its cotton production has only recently overtaken farming in Axamalla.

Foreign Relations: The UCNA is the single most powerful nation in the New World, but it wasn't always that way, and that's shaped its foreign policy quite a bit.

• The UCNA has fluctuated back and forth between Anglo-Scottish and French alliances. In the early history, England-Scotland was the immediate threat in the north and France their ally against that, but that died down after the collapse of Russian North America and the stabilization of the borders. (A bigger and grayer part of the relationship between the two was Andalusian involvement in the slave trade...)
• If the UCNA has any designs on Spain, they haven't acted on them; New Andalusia's always had its hands full securing the New World empire. That doesn't come as much comfort to the Spanish Crown, though.