"The Bloody Man"
- Thread starter EdT
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Maybe so, but when those disputes do crop up it's going to be a nightmare.
Epic Battle between Cromwell and the shark, (the Buffy fan in me smiled at the description of the shark as a beast of the Hellmouth lol), and would be perfectly suitable for a massive portrait in the halls of a future capitol building. With the merger of the New Netherlands into the Confederation, will there be a continued pushed into the Delaware valley? What are the relations with Maryland and the Virginia colony going to be like now that Cromwell's palate for conquest has been wetted? Keep it comming EDT
Lots of farms/gardens in the city. I'm guessing they could have held out against a siege for a while. Also I'm hoping this leads to a(n at least) bilingual New England.
Highly unlikely while I have no idea about the precise demographics I'd be shocked if English speakers don't outnumber the Dutch by at least 25 to 1. New Amsterdam (is that going to be renamed) however might remain a bilingual city as might some of the upriver areas but just like OTL I suspect that will fade in time.
I agree but look how many international or sub-national boundaries are rivers. Outside America and Africa where lines of geometry are the norm they are the most common method, everything from the Sino-Russian border in the Far East to the Rio Grande between the US and Mexico.
Maybe the Agitators join up with the States of Holland to form a united republic based on equality and freedom? Or maybe the royalist reaction in both countries create an alliance to ward off the radical ideals? Either way, this is one hell of a point of speculation.
Very interesting, I can honestly say that I wasn't expecting Cromwell to fight a shark before the invasion but I was pleasantly surprised. It looks like the Netherlands may become part of a new British Republic or Kingdom which could be very interesting for developments after the TL ends, I am definitely waiting for more.
I suspect it might keep the name as the change of 'ownership' is less antogonistic TTL. Especially if the thoughts about close relationships between England and the Netherlands turns out to be accurate. One thing we can be pretty damned certain about, at least at this time. Its not going to be renamed after a member of the house of Stuart!
Very good update EdT and interesting encounter with the shark. Could see Cromwell viewing the situation that way and wonder what might have happened if he had ended up dying in the encounter? Could that have totally demoralised a lot of the force?
Steve
Thande
Donor
Cromwell vs shark, great concept. Perhaps it could eventually come to be seen as a sort of New World revival version of St George and the Dragon, the story retold for a New England.
Ditto.
Ditto.
A future *Melville may well make it a vital thread in a larger work of New England, and the Sea...
Bruce
Well, the charters of both Massachusetts and Saybrook have the colony extending ‘westwards to the sea’; as a result Broughton and Boston are very keen to push their western border as far as possible. There’s also the desire to get a piece of the growing trade up and down the Hudson River; at present, this is very much a Dutch thing, and the New Englanders want their slice of the action. While the land on the eastern side of the Hudson valley isn’t as suitable for settlement, this isn’t widely recognised yet.
And yes, this boundary will cause all manner of legal disputes further down the line- but then again IOTL you could say much the same of the Delaware and the Ohio rivers, particularly if the boundary ends up giving one colony or another the whole river bed as in the case of the Ohio.
It’s now neck and neck in the Best TL category, so please everyone vote early and often! Although if Malê Rises wins, it’ll be well deserved…
Also I'm hoping this leads to a(n at least) bilingual New England.
I think Thoresby has it right here. By this point ITTL you have 35,000 or so New Englanders versus 800 New Netherlanders, so it’s a massive disparity, more like 40-1 than 25-1. Plus, it’s worth remembering that Dutch isn’t even the majority language in the New Netherlands at this point; about 45% of the settlers are from the Netherlands, a third are from England and the rest are mostly German and Scandinavian.
I can see Dutch persisting for quite some time as a common language in New Kent- it did IOTL after all, with some speakers still using it into the 19th century- but over time I think English will prevail. Assuming the arrangements as set out in the previous chapter stick, however, we may see Dutch phrases persist in the formal governance of the colony for rather longer.
I thought it’d make a nice image. Worth pointing out though that Leviathan is less a beast of the Hellmouth than its gatekeeper (or in some traditions, the hellmouth itself)- he’s one of the seven princes of hell, who also has a sideline in tempting people into heresy. Cromwell, having read the Clavis Solomonis and quite probably also the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, is well up on all of this, hence is (completely misplaced) confidence in how to deal with his attacker.
With the merger of the New Netherlands into the Confederation, will there be a continued pushed into the Delaware valley? What are the relations with Maryland and the Virginia colony going to be like now that Cromwell's palate for conquest has been wetted? Keep it comming EDT
Relations with New Sweden will be interesting; there’s definitely New England interest in the Delaware valley. Like the New Netherlands, the settlers could take the place if they chose, although they would find it difficult to hold on to; overstretch would be a real concern, and colonial adventuring is a very expensive thing to do. Certainly Cromwell will be inclined to let New England digest its new prize before striking out for more acquisitions, although it’s likely that New Kent will claim the Delaware settlements to be under its jurisdiction just as the New Netherlands did. That might provoke trouble (or the excuse for trouble) in the medium term.
Wait and see! IOTL there was certainly an (entirely unrealistic) aspiration on the part of many in the Commonwealth to see some sort of Protestant, Republican confederation between England and the Netherlands; the same sentiments exist ITTL, but in different circumstances (and it’s worth noting that this was entirely unrequited; the English genuinely thought it was a potential goer, while the Dutch were utterly astonished anyone would think of such a thing). It remains to be seen whether it’s just a slogan or something more substantial, but as the United Provinces is descending into civil war just as England emerges from it, it seems possible that there will be a temptation on the part of the Agitators to intervene.
I suspect it might keep the name as the change of 'ownership' is less antogonistic TTL. Especially if the thoughts about close relationships between England and the Netherlands turns out to be accurate. One thing we can be pretty damned certain about, at least at this time. Its not going to be renamed after a member of the house of Stuart!
Oh, New Amsterdam is now Hampden, as far as the New Englanders are concerned; sorry, should have made that clearer. Many of the other settlement names will stay the same though, or be gradually anglicised over time; Beverwyck isn’t going to be anything close to Albany, for example.
I imagine that if Cromwell had died, it would have badly shaken the invading New Englanders- being taken by the Devil is not the most wonderful omen after all- but, accusations of punishment for hubris aside, I suspect that John Seeley and Lion Gardiner would have continued the expedition, and the Dutch wouldn’t have been minded to resist any more than they did in (alternative) reality. It wasn’t just Cromwell’s expedition, after all!
Can imagine the legend growing up to be much more similar to OTL’s Spuyten Duyvil myth though; Cromwell grandiosely promises to conquer New Amsterdam “in spite of the devil” and gets cut down to size as a result.
It would be difficult for any New Englander ITTL to watch Jaws without thinking about it, certainly; but sharks are common enough off the Eastern Seaboard for other tales to appear I’m sure. We may see more of them ITTL however, simply because of the prominence of Cromwell’s experience.
Nothing interesting enough to devote a post to yet, sadly- I will at some point, but for the time being Virginia is still recovering from its devastating war with the Powhatans.
That was rather the idea. I got the idea for the incident from OTL’s tale of the Spuyten Duyvil, which is a small inlet into the River Hudson in New York. The story goes that in 1642, a man named Anthony Van Corlaer was sent to warn nearby Dutch colonists of an attack by the English. When he got to the water, he vowed to cross it “in spite of the devil”. The Devil heard the boast, took the form of a giant fish, and ate Van Corlaer as he tried to swim across. We don’t know for sure, but when you take away all the talk of the devil, this is probably the first recorded shark attack in American history. I was also inspired by the story of Brook Watson. I figure that the symbolism involved is so strong that it couldn’t fail to end up as New England’s founding myth.
Almost certainly! Melville used a lot of OTL New England superstition and tradition IOTL, and the White Whale was just as daemonic; ITTL he’ll have a broader set of sources to draw on.
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