History of the Ponant

Because of its isolation, and also because of the abundance of written documents, the Ponant has a heavily documented History.

Pre-European Settlements


According to specialists of the scientific community, the actual native Lemurians were peoples who emigrated from actual Micronesia, Japan and Taiwan. Firsts traces of habitation were found on the western and northern coasts of actual Vascon Province. Thoses traces dated from the middle of the fourth century. Those peoples, the Proto-Lemurian peoples, according to human remains recovered, were of southern Asian type : haplogroup (in the Y chromosome) of their nowadays' descendants seems to correspond to Southeast Asian ethnies, from which we can affirmate that proto-lemurian were mostly Asian sailors who arrived to the Ponant. Some tools have also been recovered near Tausan and was dated from 250 CE. According to specialists, the archipelago of Lemuria was therefore one of the first far Pacific islands to be populated. First by early Austronesian peoples and later by melanesian and polynesian peoples.

The Proto-lemurian people lived in villages inhabited by more than 100 persons and were mostly semi-nomadic. The food was abundant, semi-nomadic peoples became gradually sedentary, but the territory is vast and constituted villages lived in a quasi-autarky. Isolation maintained ancient languages which became isolate progressively in the time, and some of which are still spoken nowadays like Auma, Iwi or Na'e languages, which later influenced the classical Aka language.

The Austronesian peoples from the current archipelago of Micronesia came to colonize the coastal regions and the southern region of Lemuria to the seventh century, and mixed with Asian populations from inner regions.

The 7th century knew the emergence and the expansion of Lakhang civilization ; his culture influenced all other cultures throughout Lemuria. From that time, prays, biographies and chronicles written in Lakhang script were also recovered. From the 7th to the 12th century, Lakhang language was used for most of literary works.

In 1150, Lakhang civilization and culture declined. This period marked the vulgarization of Lakhang languages and the emergence of Lakhan languages, many vulgar languages appearead. It's in this moment that began to appear and modernize most of actual Lemurian languages. Aka language, derived from Proto-Lemurian languages (Auma, Na'e, Iwi), was more and more used and dialects increasingly distant of the mother language appeared circa 1400.

The population was estimated to be around 220,000 inhabitants.

In the 14th and the 15th centuries, explorers from the Hawaii Archipelago began to settle in the southern Lemuria ; their languages influenced and were influenced by local dialects.

European Colonization
First european to discover the Island was Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in 1606 and built a colony names Providencia first inhabited by about one 117 persons. Exploration of the island was finished in 1608. After building Providencia, they sent a first and a second ship to Acapulco and to Manila to bring the settlers.

After Quiros death in 1614, Providencia, the only spanish colony of the archipelago, built in the actual Janalando province, counts 20,887 inhabitants. But around 1620, tensions arose between indigenous peoples and peoples from the sea : among the natives, many thought that these people came from the sea is bad for their people, indeed, when they arrived on the archipelago, many peoples were decimated by diseases previously unknown by the natives. Moreover, the growing power of the City of Povidencia worried a lot of tribal leaders : and since its creation, sixteen attacks had been already conducted against the colony.

Indigenous Peoples (Nehuis, Lakhang, Impengi) increasingly embarrassed by the growing power of Providencia conspired against the city and made a long siege which ended in a bloodbath killing more than 99% of Providencia the population. Only 200 of 20,000 inhabitants of the city survived only a few hundred inhabitants. Surviving peoples built a new village in the southern part of actual Barbudo province. This village called as Nueva Providencia (actual Belmaro de Barbudo), this place, now the capital of Barbudo province, is also known as the "first independent city". This village was very prosperous and in 1640, it counted around 2,500 inhabitants in 1645.



Free nations
The spanish new colony of Nueva Providencia was built by the 2,500 survivors of the former Providencia colony. In order to survive, this colony forged an alliance with surrounding tribes to eliminate the surrounding hostile tribes. In 1644, and with the help 3,500 the Nakaraga clan, the first nation called Proviencia after the name of the capital, was founded.

Feeling the threat of invasion, the clans of the Lakhang Valley accepted to be under the rule of Tuya and form the Cankungpa Antziyam (Union of the seven). The latter entity did not have a centralised government and is governed by the seven clan representatives.

The Second Era (1700-1788)
After the dark period that lasted from 1700 to around 1715, the reconstruction of the country ravaged by war started. The crops abandoned by their owners were starting to produce, reducing starvation in the countryside and poverty and disease in the cities. Crops are so productive that the population started to increase : in the 1720 first census the Confederate Nations of Lemuria counted 428,400 inhabitants : the empty caused by emigration was filled but manpower started to be insufficient because there were many mouths to feed : to remedy this, we brought slaves from California, they were Native Americans for a good portion of them, because Africa was too far.

The country was back again prosperous and viable, but manpower was still rare and expensive. The population is very fastly growing (more than four percent per year) because of increasing of agricultural productivity and a decrease of illness and starvation.

In 1720, the population in Lemuria was estimated to 850,000 person, with more than 420,000 living in the East Coast. This population was unevenly distributed due to internal migration of people who are attracted from rural Northern and Western regions to the fertile and prosperous lands of Ilineo.

In America, colonies of California are very prosperous and had over a million and half people. However in 1744, an expeditionary force with nearly a hundred thousand men came back from Mexico the land. Then follows a war followed by a famine that killed nearly a quarter of the people of California formerly so prosperous. In 1748, Defeated by New Spain, Lemurian colonies of California were abandoned and from 1745 to 1769, more than 580,000 settlers left California to take refuge to Lemuria. Thus ended the colonization of Lemurian California.

In addition to the loss of the so prosperous colony of California, the CNL suffered a coup d'état masterminded by Ta'o Natana, a leader of Tungi origin. He proclaimed the Kingdom of Lemuria, became the king of the kingdom of Lemuria under the name of Ta'o I and ordered the closure of the country to foreigners and prohibited citizens to leave the country. Thus was decreted the autarky policy in July 1769.

The new kingdom, although again become prosperous by the arrival of settlers returning from California, was closed to foreign products and goods in order to develop local industries and then accelerate the country development with local manpower and financing methods. During the Kingdom Era from 1769 until 1815, population has increased sharply throughout the archipelago : It went from two to six million in less than 60 years. This demographic surge is due to people's health improvement with the eradication of starvation in the countryside.

Ta'o I died in 1788, and his son Ta'o II succeeded him, continues his father's autarky policy and reformed the education. He imposed the Criollatina instead of Spanish as official language of the Kingdom and was written in that language the Book of Rights and Duties (Criollatina : Libro dos Derejos y dos Deveres).

But all is not well in that period of economic prosperity, even during the autarky politic. Indeed, some regions who are very far of the East Coast like in the Lingkang region are still poor because of lack of infrastructures like practicable and secure roads which would allow them to sell their harvests in prosperous regions.

Fragmentation of the Confederate Nations of Lemuria
In 1788, the country wiped away two terrible droughts that destroyed nearly two-thirds of cereal crops, which provoked a revolt that spread from region to region, fueled more by the disapproval of the new king's reign, which appeared more low in the eyes of the Lemurian. Believing that King unable to run the country, many nations broke the Oath of Nations and seceded. The cities of Rio Pablo, Ciuda Jaui and Veracruz did likewise and elected their own leader. Between 1788 and 1791 twenty-four independent States shares the archipelago of Lemuria. The population was estimated at nine millions of inhabitants. Demographic grow in that time was very high (it was estimated to be at about 4 or 5 percent because of a birth rate of 85 per thousand)

The 24 independent state were relatively peaceful. Making the local language as official language, the 24 countries maintained good business relationships and were in peace and industry started his development, especially in the central and the eastern regions.

Main spoken languages by the independent states were Spanish, Aka and Criollatina. Some states changed local dialects to make them usable as official languages (Criollatina : Dialectos oficialis). Almost all countries abandoned autarky policy set up by Ta'o Natana.

Third Era (1791-1888)


The Archipelago of Lemuria is now fragmentated in twenty four independent countries. The Third Era began with the partition of the Confederate Nations of Lemuria, and ended with the total reunification of the archipelago and consequently the establishement of the Republic of the Ponant in 1889.

In Lemuria, consecutive liberty gained to the "balkanization" of the Lemuria archipelago, many newly formed states which were under different influences (Mostly spanish influence due to close relations with spanish colonies of the Pacific, but also Dutch, Chinese and Japanese.) : Spanish was abandoned in favor of local vernacular languages.

In 1800 the independent states in the archipelago of Lemuria are :

During the Third Era, the States that occupied the islands of Lemuria developped and industrialized. The western states are economically turning to Asia while the eastern states are turning to Latin America.

Peace in the archipelago of Lemuria is maintained by economic prosperity and industrialization due to the abundance of natural resources such as iron or gold. Often the exchanges with Europe are made via european colonies (Mexico, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, India).

The Southern Confederacy
In the central part of the main island is the Southern Confederacy: the largest state and one of the most powerful. It focused more on the conquests of the southern islands of the Pacific Ocean. In 1799, The Southern Confederation navy (Confederación del Sur) invaded the Hawaiian archipelago located in the southwest.

The Southern Confederacy, as the coastal states of Eastern and Western, had a powerful navy. Unlike other nations of Lemuria, who maintained good diplomatic relations with European powers, the Southern Confederacy had no relationship with European powers, and although she was one of the most powerful nations militarily, she had for European nations no official existence.

The leaders of the Confederation of South decided to invade the islands and archipelagos of the Southern Pacific Ocean, beginning with the Hawaiian Islands and Micronesia in 1805, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji in 1806 and 1807, then New Caledonia in 1808. The Southern Confederate explorer Georgio Vallante (1770-1844) who explored Viti and Vanua Levu, founded the colony of Urbo Georgiana near the actual city of Nasau in June 19, 1812. Penal colonies were created in the surrounding islands and in 1833, in order to deport all prisoners held in the Southern Confederacy, almost all of the 25,000 prisoners of the Southern Confederacy were deported to the Southern Islands.

Demography
The population of the Southern Confederacy was estimated to be at about 4 million inhabitants in 1800, which was 44% percent of the total population of Lemuria, estimated to 9 million in 1830.

The waves of colonization led policies have impacted so significantly on the composition of the population of the southern islands. And in the Fiji islands there were nearly 50,000 Southern Confederate nationals in 1850.

Most populated States were eastern hispanophone States. This large population was mostly found in the fertile and prosperous regions of Ilini. Thus the only region in southern region of the Alliance of Santiago, there were nearly two million inhabitants. Even today, it is one of the most populated regions, with nearly 22 million people.

Dialects of Criollatina
The first communication language was no more Spanish language but several Spanish dialects called Criollatina, based in spanish language which is mainly spoken by inhabitants from amerindo-european descent. It became the vehicular language of Lemuria after the fragmentation of the Confederate states of Lemuria. But written language was mainly Spanish, and aside the Pledge of Nations written in the proto-Criollatina language, very few documents were written in that language. This favored the dialectization language during the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Explanations of emergence criollatina were diverse: isolation of the mother language from the language's source (Spain), extension of the language, its use by non-spanish language speakers. Spanish language is spoken mainly by people of the East who have more or less privileged with hispanophone colonies of America.

Criollatina dialects were considered by the elite as an impure or "colloquial" form of Spanish language. But, those "colloquial" form of Spanish language started in the nineteenth century to have its own identity and culture, but it was mostly an oral culture and the quasi-absence of litterature and a regulating organism slows very strongly the unification of the language ; but during the fragmentation of the Lemurian Archipelago, Many states have used the local language as official language, which accelerated local languages normalization in a state. This led to fragmentation of languages spoken in several regions : and Western Criollatina dialect had five different spellings ; the language had not been normalised until 1890 where a uniformisation of Criollatina has been tried. Normalisation and using of only one Criollatina language was unsuccessful because of too big differences between dialects, and only western and eastern dialects were successful. Criollatina dialects have also inspired the conceivers of Kriollatino, a language that later inspired L. Zamenhof and its International Language.

The Reunification (1867-1888)
With economic prosperity and moved in order to have more power over the world at that time, the states that were still independent and began to ally himself to merge to form larger states. It was thus that the states of Veracruz, Santiago and cities beyond the East Estuary merged to form the Allied Eastern States in 1867, which counted nearly six million inhabitants.

To match for such a state, the Southern Confederacy signed a treaty of union between himself and ten other coastal states to form the 1st January 1868, the Union of Great Lemuria (Union de Lemuria Grande) was created.

That newly-formed state adopted an industrialization policy, but on 12 million inhabitants, five millions were unable to work (mostly children under 8). Because of lack of workforce, industrialization of the country was slow and to avoid shortage of workforce, the Union of Great Lemuria opened its borders and most of newly admitted immigrants were hired by a company for 10 or 15 years. During that period, many skilled immigrants had Employment contract of indefinite duration. (see immigration in the Republic of the Ponant)

Immigration in the Union of Great Lemuria was very high during ten years and number of new migrants doubled in size each ten years, and, in 1880, nine years before the unification of the Lemuria, there was yearly more than 300,000 migrants coming to the Union of Great Lemuria.

Industrialization of the Union of Great Lemuria, comparing to the Allied Eastern States, was very fast. So fast that it was feared that a war could ravage the archipelago once again. To avoid a future war that would plunge the whole archipelago into a war without end that sacrifices of the same pitch all the progress made in economics, the two superpowers signed a nonaggression pact March 1 1869 followed a year later by a peace treaty. The reconciliation between the two countries continued smoothly, and in 1875 to facilitate trade between the two states; customs fees were lowered, and finally abolished in 1880.

In order to accelerate unification of the Allied Eastern States and Great Lemuria, respective assemblies of both nations together voted for unification. In 1883, a parliamentary vote was held in both parliaments and the majority vote was 52% for the Allied East States and 61.5% for Great Lemuria. The deed of covenant was applied on May 8 of that year, committing the two countries in a common caretaker government. The caretaker leader Fernando Gonzalez (Ferdinando Goncalvo) who later became the first president of the Ponant lead a caretaker government that lasted more than four years during which the administration of the territory, the national constitution and the official language will be drafted. In 1885, the development of Kriollatino, future official language of the Republic of the Ponant, was achieved, and the first criollatina-kriollatino dictionary was published in 1886 under the title of Una Gramatiko de Linguon Nacia (First Grammar Of The National Language). The language was then adopted as the national and official language of the Republic of the Ponant. After the conception and the creation of the National Academy of languages, the Kriollatino had to be propagated, because no one apart one thousand speakers belonging to the conception committee in the country spoke Kriollatino language, which was supposed to be propagated to unite the country under one language. To remedy this and to accelerate the spread of the language, the government considered progressive Kriollatinization of the country.

Fourth Era
Also called as Era of Prosperity (Kriollatino : Éro de Prosperon), the Fourth Era starts by the formation of the Republic of the Ponant by the unification of the Eastern Allied States and the Kingdom of Great Lemuria.

The future first president of the new republic had to be elected by relative majority, and at the first round, Fernando Gonzalez, the former caretaker government leader, was elected by more than 69.1% of votes. He will become the first president of the Republic of the Ponant and will be investe don January 1st 1888 ; he will be maintained president until December 31, 1899.

First Prosperity Era
The newly formed country had a very dynamic economy. Thanks to abondant resources and a very productive agriculture, the country has in any point taken a new breath, and the end of the 19th century is considered by many eminent modern historians as the First Prosperity era. But recently, according to the economic growth of the Ponant thoughout the History, the First Prosperity Era does not start at the same time with the beginning of the Fourth Era, it actually had begun twenty or thirty years earlier. It is taught in schools that the Prosperity Era had begun with the Fourth Era to ease History understanding.

World War I

During the W.W.I, as an ally of the United States, the Republic of the Ponant sent to Europe 15,000 soldiers (called famously in Kriollatino as gereros, from the Spanish word guerrero meaning warrior) and only 8,300 of them has survived. The last survivor of the soldiers sent by the Ponant to go to war during the W.W.I died in 2001 at the age of 112 years.

After the World War I

After the First World War, the Ponant realized that army training is very insufficient, then the part of the budget allocated to the National Army increased to 10%, and Arms Industry was financially exonerated.

In the beginning of the year 1920, The Republic of the Ponant joined the League of Nations in order to preserve peace in the World and left it in 1930 during the 1929 crisis.

End of the First Prosperity Era 

The Prosperity Era ended with the 1929 economical crisis. At this time, the whole industry and the financial system of the Ponant was threatened, and State debt has reached a level it never reach before. One of the causes of the 1930 crisis is mainly industrial surproduction.

Kriollatinization
The Republic of the ponant was officially created : the new administration had taken place ; the scolar system and the administration will be slowly kriollatinized (see Kriollatinization)