Thursday, August 6, 2009

Cascadia




Now we have the Pacific Northwest, by far the least populated, as well as the most mysterious. White mentions it briefly, largely that there are people here waging war against its neighbors, trying to get ahold the Bay Area and Snake River. In fact, he talks so little the above map can't be seen on the main site, and has to be obtained by rummaging through the image cachet. This is because all of the aspects of Cascadia--Republics, Buddhism, etc. have yet to have their own pages. I had to make a map myself when I originally started this blog. (I'll be honest, I liked my flags a little better. I don't know what White has against deep greens) In short, a lot of questions about  perhaps the most isolated spot in the country.

Most people know this are as "The Temperate Rainforest", where the rainshadow keeps things pretty  wet, and resulting in those iconic giant evergreens. Interestingly enough, White doesn't give an independent "lifestyle" icon for the northwest--it shares the "Yankee" icon, even though the former Oregon territory is much milder than the Northern reaches of the east. Even more so because I imagine Cascadians import a lot of their food.

Like its eastern counterpart, the Northwest is dominated by Republics, and in some ways, even moreso resembles the independent city states of Medieval Italy--they're certainly larger. The major difference they don't seem to be as expansionist, so they're probably more in line with your Florence or your Milan. And urbanized it is. Despite only two million people, the region has one the largest cities on the continent in Portland, the also sizable Seattle, and even Victoria and Vancouver--the two most northern cities, and the largest of the former Canada. Overall, it's very urbanized, which is interesting, considering it's not too bad on the agricultural front. One supposes that the mix of town hall politics, hippie communes, and even silicon valley-style greed created fairly laid back nation states, and by the time they got it into their heads to become conquerors, they found there was very little room to grow, and similarly-sized neighbors it was hard to get an upper hand on.

The religion seems to be Buddhism, or at least an on offshoot of it. It can kind of mean several things at this point, as it's kind of the non-religion religion, and put in the context of holy wars, it could mean many different things. I do have a belief the balance of nature is emphasized, and, in general, Environmentalism is take to the lengths of religious dogma. I wouldn't be surprised if local indigenous aspects have made inroads. Totem poles have been perhaps the most well-known symbol in this part of the country, and the American Indian influence is probably the most valued (if not co-opted) around here.

Despite the Cascadia map concentrating on the city states aspect of the region, the only flag belongs to The District of Colombia--a dyed-in-the-wool feudal state on the other side of the mountains. The name probably derives from the Columbia river, as very little of it reaches into British Columbia. It's unsure what their relationship with the merchant cities must be--probably not bad, it's possible they don't even think about each other an awful lot. It's also possible it purposely exists as a sort of Crusader state, or is a sponsored buffer. In any case, this is also where White's sense of humor pops up, as, seeing as how it exists in Washington, the name exists for the sole purpose of reinforcing the confusion of Washington City vs Washington State.

2 comments:

  1. It still my opinion, that Columbia represent a Knight Order, and that its a territory comparable to the State of the Teutonic Knight. If I remember it right, Columbia was original represented through the stylized cross at the left side of the religous map. We have this stylized cross also at the South-west-map. Some years ago, if you went with the cursor on this cross, it was shown that the name of the symbol was Columbia. Today it doesn´t seemed to work anymore, so you propably havn´t seen it, but original Columbia is part of the Religion map.
    But I must partly correct my theorie, that the Knights came to protect a christian enclave. I had more the example of the crusader states in mind, with large christian Minorities and christian Holy places. But the Teutonic Knights seem to be a better example,where the goal was conquering of "pagan" lands. So, there is no Christians shown in this area on the Religionmap, because:

    1. they are represented through the cross of Columbia
    2. they are still a small minority of feudal overlords (Knights, priest) ruling the buddihst peasants with a iron fist.

    For the Buddihsts in the North-west I had always the theorie that they are not so much the result of a mass conversion but that they are the descentens of refugees from Japan and China.

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  2. Hmm, I had no idea White changed the maps at all at the time. In any case, I was largely working with that I had--area where Columbia would exist seems to be under the Buddhist sphere. Likewise, the Deseret page shows that they've been at war with "Buddhists from the North".

    I think the thing about Christian bulwarks in the west is....New Israelite and Mormonism are in amny ways, Christian nations themselves. Certainly not enough by many standards of the time, but simply that any holy order might want to prioritize by moving out west as opposed to east.

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