I’m breaking down this update into two parts. The first will
look at colonisation, and the second will look at war. Portugal’s prime ambitions
are trade based, and as such colonisation is the focus of our game. But there
are times when we arrive somewhere to find that someone else already lives
there, and won’t let us in.... First, though, the colonial bit...
1576-1590 King Felipe I, Part 4 – Continental adventures
As far as colonisation goes, we focussed our efforts on 3 areas
in roughly five year chunks.
Initially, our focus was on completing our colonies in South
America, to block off Castilian access to the interior of the continent. By
1577, as shown in the picture below, we had colonies in the coastal areas, and
by 1580, both ourselves and the Castilians had completed our rapid expansion
phase
Following on from the South America phase, our attention
turned to the Indies and the newly discovered Pacific Ocean islands, as we sought
to expand our colonial range and provide bases for further exploration. We even
took a mission to expand our trade power in Malacca, to focus our attention
Hawaii was discovered in 1575, but not yet settled
Cocos Island in the Eastern Indian Ocean became
self-sustaining in 1578
Followed by Nauru (to the north east of Papua New Guinea and
the Solomons, near Micronesia) in 1580.
Whilst our colonists are busy over to the east, we notice
with some alarm that France have taken a province in Namibia... does this mean
that they have ambitions in the Indian Ocean?
Well, we can’t have that now can we! The Indian Ocean is
going to be our lake. We immediately start sending our colonists to the next
obvious place for French expansion... Madagascar. As you can see from this
picture taken in 1580, all three provinces in Madagascar are currently being
settled by us, and the French have a second territory in Namibia.
There are only two islands in the Indian Ocean that are not
Portuguese, one off the coast of Yemen (Socotra, owned by Yemen), and an
uncolonised chain to the east of the Bay of Bengal, the Andamans. The picture
below lists these two in yellow, plus all of our island holdings in orange...
By 1584, we somewhat crazily have 5 colonies on the go, and
are losing money quite dramatically out of our treasury. But it’s all in a good
cause. Our current colonies are 3 in Madagascar, the Maldives, and this circled
one in South Africa, which will block the French from moving inland.
By 1590, all five of those colonies are self-sustaining, and
we have shifted our focus back to Indonesia, and are colonising three provinces
on the island of Java
Meanwhile, by 1580, South America looked like this. The interior
of the continent, south of the Amazonian wasteland, is entirely blocked off
from everyone apart from the Incas! Castile has shifted its focus to the north
of the continent
By 1584, Castile had a new colonial subject nation,
Colombia, and would continue expanding towards Panama and to the south west in
the years to come.
North America has also seen some activity. France has a
colonial nation, the wonderfully named Cosmopolitaine Mexico, and has also
taken Manhattan and the surrounding provinces. Castile has a couple of
provinces near the Mississippi delta. The big player though is Great Britain,
who has taken most of the Eastern seaboard, and is only a step or two away from
creating its first colonial nation, the Thirteen Colonies. They also have 4
provinces up in Nova Scotia. Interestingly, Norway is being diplomatically annexed
by Great Britain, and as it stands in 1601 GB will inherit a couple of Floridian
provinces, a couple of provinces in Newfoundland, and Iceland, massively increasing
their foreign holdings.
And that's it for the colonisation update.... next up we will look at what happens when we need to take trade power the old fashioned way... with the bayonet!
No comments:
Post a Comment