FillyofDelphi
Banned
My brother recently came back from a study abroad period in Europe (He's studying to be a Castilian Teacher back here in the States... there's been a real demand for those lately) and even after all this time growing up with somebody who's interest on the languages of the Hispania (Let's not get into a war over the official name here, please; I'm from the Christian World so we use the Roman name) I was introduced to a unique little fact he learned while on a field course to Galicia in order to study the local dialects. Apparently, back before the consolidation/standardization of Andalusian Arabic back in the 1600's, the rural population roughly the western 1/4-1/3 of the peninsula spoke a language that wasen't a close dialect of Castilian, but actually or similar but distinct tongue sometimes refereed to as "Portucalies" or something like that. Apparently, the Visgothic tribes who came to the area around Isbunah (OOC: Our Lisbon) absorbed more of the local Celtic tongues and, due to a degree of geograhic isolation and looking towards the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean, briefly started to standardize as it was used by regional nobles. Of course, these houses were largely wiped out and replaced during the centuries of warfare between the states that would consolidate under the Castilian crown to know the nation we know today and the Berber-Moorish states that emerged in the south and eventually consolidated into the Almohad Sultanate that would become known as "The Last Crusades", culminating in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between the nations of the Holy League (under the Papacy) and the Grand Jihad which, at least in theory, ended the era of holy wars between the the two faiths (at least overtly justified as such), and the Catholics gave up the right to trade and establish factories/forts in Africa in exchange for the exclusive right to settle the New World Territories.
Now, while the colonization of the New World was hardly bloodless (The free for all between every nation with an Atlantic coast didn't help) as was hoped for, the idea of a single nation facing entirely west, with limited land prospects at home, a strong open-ocean going naval tradition (Which a Portucalies nation would have to have) who might be able to make a quick jump and lay claim if not threatened by Muslim nations on her border got me thinking. What if, by some means, the Moors were unable to hold onto Andalusia and the Western coast of the penninsula was somehow able to get and keep its freedom from Castile? How would this impact the world? Certainly, without a strong Muslim hold on West Africa there could be threats to the "Muslim Lake" in the Indian Ocean trade... might this cut down down on the massive East African slave trade that so stains Ottoman and Hindustani history? Or would the European Christians perhaps duplicate the tactics used in Spice Islands and the sugar plantations of the Moroccoan tradition with the West Africans and result in whites being the big target of post-colonial sentiments by the "black" populations of the world? I'm personally against that notion, given Christianity and Western European (particularly British) distaste of slavery, I'm not going to claim we're somehow pure-hearted people who, if given access to a cheap and consistant source of it and the temptation of the oodles of cash available by plantation agriculture, wouldn't have partaken in it.
Now, while the colonization of the New World was hardly bloodless (The free for all between every nation with an Atlantic coast didn't help) as was hoped for, the idea of a single nation facing entirely west, with limited land prospects at home, a strong open-ocean going naval tradition (Which a Portucalies nation would have to have) who might be able to make a quick jump and lay claim if not threatened by Muslim nations on her border got me thinking. What if, by some means, the Moors were unable to hold onto Andalusia and the Western coast of the penninsula was somehow able to get and keep its freedom from Castile? How would this impact the world? Certainly, without a strong Muslim hold on West Africa there could be threats to the "Muslim Lake" in the Indian Ocean trade... might this cut down down on the massive East African slave trade that so stains Ottoman and Hindustani history? Or would the European Christians perhaps duplicate the tactics used in Spice Islands and the sugar plantations of the Moroccoan tradition with the West Africans and result in whites being the big target of post-colonial sentiments by the "black" populations of the world? I'm personally against that notion, given Christianity and Western European (particularly British) distaste of slavery, I'm not going to claim we're somehow pure-hearted people who, if given access to a cheap and consistant source of it and the temptation of the oodles of cash available by plantation agriculture, wouldn't have partaken in it.
