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Description

Loosely inspired by Likaaon's work, although I disagree with its footnote. Go check it out.

In 1524, as the threat of the closure of Chinese ports loomed over the traders who had worked their way as far as East Asia itself, the merchants António de Peixoto and Jan van Coevorden elected to try and open a new market. Sailing east from the port of Shanghai, they would become the first Europeans to land in the port of Yukago on 1 March 1524. They knew of the islands already, as the Chinese knew it as Néngde (能地), the "bear country". The characters were in turn pronounced as Lengtoe in Cantonese, and it was this name that the Portuguese and Dutch had first encountered. It had then taken several forms in European sources, but as the first official arrival to the country happened to fall on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, the standardized form across Europe would be forever enshrined as Lento. This hasn't changed matters for the Lentoese themselves though, who then as now call their country the much more humble Ainu-Mosir, quite literally just "The Realm of Humanity".

The Federal Republic of Lento is, as far as nation-states go, odd for its context. Most of East Asia falls into two broad categories: Sinocentric or Indocentric, with those two vast areas of cultural influence radiation out from India and China respectively. Yet the Lentoese seem isolated from this in more ways than one. Not only is their language an isolate in the world, but their culture is strikingly non-Sinic in nature, with what seems to be minimal cultural influences from China in almost every form. This combined with their far more hirsute appearance leads many to classify them as something separate and apart from the rest of East Asia, even as far as the Austronesian culture group is concerned. And the Lentoese themselves support the idea, preferring mostly to keep to themselves historically and still to an extent in the modern day. Often perceived as xenophobia, Lento in fact an open country that is quite happy to embrace foreign cultures. Much of the modern perception, unfortunately, originates from more recent events.

Historical study has a great deal of difficulty understanding the course of Lentoese history owing to both a lack of internal records and skewed external records. Throughout history the Chinese, long the arbiters of East Asian history and historical records, disregarded Lento as a fringe region not worth the attention of the Emperor. Especially with more direct threats from the Tibetans, Vietnamese, Mongolians, and Koreans, the insular and mostly isolationist Lentoese were content to "live and let live", barring some trade. Even that was limited, considering that the Lentoese had little the Chinese considered of value, that the Lentoese were considered unruly barbarians who were separated by a vast tract of ocean, and in general the efforts of the Empire to expand or sinicize were wholly disconnected from the five islands to their east. Furthering the problem, the Lentoese tradition of recording history in oral yukar sagas led many European sources to discount these as unreliable or mythical, and while there are certainly elements of mythologizing they are still an important means of understanding the Lentoese past through their own words.

Even the origins of the Lentoese are poorly-understood. Most believe that the Lentoese are the direct descendants of the original inhabitants who populated the isles during the Last Glacial Maximum, but cultural studies instead support the theory that the modern Lentoese are the result of influence coming from both the north and south. The first wave from the south consisted of the Wajin (who the Lentoese call the Sisam), ethnic relatives of the Koreans and Chinese who migrated into the isles around 1000 BCE and who settled the southernmost isle of Hebashir alongside the Austronesian culture of the Kapachiri. This migration met fierce resistance and did not expand beyond this southernmost isle, but importantly it introduced the two innovations of rice farming and metalworking from the mainland. The second wave, less well-understood, came during the 5th Century CE. This "Okhotsk Culture" was evidently in conflict with the Lentoese for many years, but over time they were integrated into their culture and society in such a way that it left a permanent impact on Lentoese language and culture.

Lento prior to the modern era has gone through a number of eras that are often given poetic names, one such era being that of the Ruporo Era (sometimes translated as "Defrosting" or "Great Thaw"). In this period Lento was organized into 16 (sometimes counted as 18) minor states led by hereditary monarchs, two of which were the Wajin and Kapachiri of the south. Initially thought of as a time of conflict in which the states vied for dominance, the modern understanding has evolved to one of cooperative co-existence. That is, while there certainly were wars and efforts by each to assert their primacy, in general Lento prior to the 1200s appears to have been primarily a less violent area in which wars were not as common as mainland Asia with the constant cycle of rising and falling dynasties and the efforts of various Chinese dynasties to assert themselves over the region. It is in this early period when the Chinese applied the name Néngde, using a now-outdated character for the term "bear" in reference to their hirsute appearance.

There is no firm evidence for a unified Lentoese state prior to the arrival of the Mongols. In 1275, while the Yuan Dynasty had been working to subjugate Korea, raids by Wajin and Lentoese pirates prompted Kublai Khan to declare a campaign into the Lentoese islands. Landing at Dazafu the campaign was severely complicated by Lento's mountainous terrain, the fierce resistance of the Lentoese, and the Mongols' own inefficacy at sea. In this period the leader Koshamain is said to have led the main resistance, only being defeated after being betrayed by one of his own soldiers and stabbed with a dagger laced with aconite. Nonetheless after 6 years of prolonged war the Lentoese were finally subjugated in 1281, after which the Yuan created a puppet government that became the first unified polity to govern the islands under the leadership of a man named Onibishi. Regarded as the first "King of Lento", the regime (known as the Kinakokka Era, literally "Bent Knee Era") was nonetheless constantly plagued by struggles to subdue the constantly restless country, which reacted with unending hostility to the new government.

This came to an end in 1361, as the ongoing collapse of the Yuan Dynasty allowed the rebel leader Shakushain to rise against the "Hae Government" and topple it in favor of a more purely Lentoese regime. The rebellion and subsequent reassertion of Lentoese independence unified the isles from Karputyashir in the north to Hebashir in the south, starting the Epuyke Era (lit. "Blossoming Era"), a time when Lentoese culture flourished and the (initially) more reconciliatory government of the Ming severely lessened tributary demands and allowed the Lentoese to attend to their own affairs. This wasn't out of some friendship towards Lento and more the result of the Ming focusing their attention back inwards, exemplified in the same isolationism that closed its ports and sent the Dutch and Portuguese across the waters to open trade with the Lentoese. Although the Lentoese had little in the way of tradeable goods compared to China, outside of some local curios, foodstuffs to resupply, and a willingness to buy the products that Europe had to offer.

Trade through the southern ports of Hebashir soon spread to trade across Chupkashir, Poroshir, and Kamuyshir as well. In this period the country was more open to European trade than neighboring China, which allowed it to economically and culturally prosper while China stagnated well into the decline and fall of the Ming Dynasty. As the Qing rose and consolidated power their focus turned primarily to land-based expansionism, seizing power over Tibet and Mongolia while pushing Vietnam, Korea, and neighboring states into tributary status. Only one attempt was made to do the same to Lento, but by that time the Lentoese had improved their naval capacity and their superior European-derived weapons allowed them to turn the Qing forces back. Following this the Qing never pursued any effort to subjugate Lento, though internal communications and documents illustrate that the Qing had aspirations to do so as late as the mid-19th Century, though by then it was impossible such a thing could have been accomplished.

Despite repeatedly demonstrating the capacity to defend themselves, this did not stop foreign elements from constantly making efforts to make inroads. Although Portugal and the Netherlands never did, the Russians, arriving in the Far East by the 1600s, had other thoughts. While the initial reaction was friendly and courteous, as Russian presence in the east developed and started to carve spheres of influence into China, their focus began to turn towards Lento as a means to this end. With a series of treaties, Russia began to steadily work its way into Lento's politics and economy until it operated an effective monopoly. After some protests, the Russians agreed to renegotiate the agreement. However, when translation differences in the Lentoese and Russian versions of the treaty revealed that Lento was effectively giving up almost all diplomatic power to Russia, the Russo-Lentoese War broke out. From 1871 to 1875, Russia struggled to overtake the smaller nation but faced a humiliating defeat despite ostensibly winning most every battle on land.

As the Lentoese were able to assert their independence, their industrialization slowly brought them to a position of parity in the world even as China was nearly divided up into colonies and Korea became a French protectorate. One of the few nations in the region to escape colonization, the steady development of Lento as an industrial power was stymied by a lack of natural resources but at the same time their ability to develop and remain independent made them an unusual thing: an independent "Middle Power" in the world at a time when most nations were either imperial powers or colonies, puppets, or protectorates thereof. This allowed them to remain neutral in World War I, although not from its effects. Two major events took place at this time: the fall of the Russian Empire, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Both had been long in decline and both now fell to pieces through the war's efforts, with Russia coming under a communist regime and China entering an ostensibly republican period of warlordism.

These two threats steadily presented themselves to Lento, who were confident in the efforts of the world's powers to police aggression by the revanchist states. Yet although the Soviet Union began to withdraw into itself, China began to grow aggressive and revanchist. Stamping out the warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang government began to emerge as a force desperate to rebuild its stature in the world. This took the form of invading Tibet in 1929, followed by an invasion of Korea in 1934, and finally an invasion of Lento in 1937. With China aligning itself to the Rome-Berlin Axis, Lento was seen as "too pro-western" in China's eyes, and with the efforts to build an "Asia for Asians" they wanted to bring it to heel. For the next 8 years an ongoing invasion once again subjugated the isles, but constant partisan resistance and the mountainous terrain again hampered the Chinese. The Sino-Lentoese War soon merged with World War II as a whole, and the Lentoese were treated as one of the "First Victims of Axis Aggression".

In this sphere the war's end in 1945 was mostly a Lentoese self-liberation. The Great Struggle (Porotumi) as it was known was carried out primarily by Lentoese partisans and resistance forces who threw out the Chinese with the assistance of American and Soviet bombings and arms being dropped into the country. Even before the Soviets began their full-on invasion of China in 1944, the Lentoese had control of the northernmost isles and were beginning the Great March South to push out the Chinese forces. When the cities of Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Tianjin were subjected to atomic bombardment, the Chinese forces in Lento surrendered en masse, and the country was liberated long before the planned Operation Coronet to liberate the country via allied invasion.

In the years that followed an orgy of anti-Sinicism swept the country. Chinese cultural practices, Chinese political ideologies, and even Chinese characters were rendered non grata in Lento, with the government wholly remaking its management of the Lentoese language by using the Latin Alphabet, and creating a Federal Republic explicitly based on the United States and rejecting Chinese institutions of government. This is the Lento that persists to today, which in the aftermath of the war recovered with the assistance of the United States and Soviet Union. While China has also recovered, and began a massive period of economic revival that led it into becoming the world's second-largest economy, in the 21st Century China stagnates while Lento prospers demographically and economically. Considered a developing secondary power in the world, many expect tiny little Lento to be on-track to overtake China in terms of economic weight and even soft cultural power by 2050.

There are many theories for why this is, ranging from Lentoese ingenuity to an embrace of foreign cultures and ideas, but there is little to truly explain the kind of "historical model" that Lento represents. It is almost wholly unique in the world yet clearly still of it, part of the great cycles of diplomacy and economy that have shaped the world for the last 200 years. Nonetheless, whether Lento is something unique in the world or simply one nation among many hardly matters as far as Lento itself is concerned. Above all else, as has always been the case, the Lentoese prefer largely to view themselves as their own entity, a separate people in a separate culture in a separate nation, with all efforts taken to counter any opposition to this idea. And yet despite ostensibly being a breeding ground for xenophobia, the Lentoese welcome the world in, with immigration higher than most neighboring East Asian nations. There eventually comes a point when the historians just say "hang it all" and just leave Lento to its own matters. And for the Lentoese, this is perhaps the most desirable outcome.

Description

Loosely inspired by Likaaon's work, although I disagree with its footnote. Go check it out.

In 1524, as the threat of the closure of Chinese ports loomed over the traders who had worked their way as far as East Asia itself, the merchants António de Peixoto and Jan van Coevorden elected to try and open a new market. Sailing east from the port of Shanghai, they would become the first Europeans to land in the port of Yukago on 1 March 1524. They knew of the islands already, as the Chinese knew it as Néngde (能地), the "bear country". The characters were in turn pronounced as Lengtoe in Cantonese, and it was this name that the Portuguese and Dutch had first encountered. It had then taken several forms in European sources, but as the first official arrival to the country happened to fall on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, the standardized form across Europe would be forever enshrined as Lento. This hasn't changed matters for the Lentoese themselves though, who then as now call their country the much more humble Ainu-Mosir, quite literally just "The Realm of Humanity".

The Federal Republic of Lento is, as far as nation-states go, odd for its context. Most of East Asia falls into two broad categories: Sinocentric or Indocentric, with those two vast areas of cultural influence radiation out from India and China respectively. Yet the Lentoese seem isolated from this in more ways than one. Not only is their language an isolate in the world, but their culture is strikingly non-Sinic in nature, with what seems to be minimal cultural influences from China in almost every form. This combined with their far more hirsute appearance leads many to classify them as something separate and apart from the rest of East Asia, even as far as the Austronesian culture group is concerned. And the Lentoese themselves support the idea, preferring mostly to keep to themselves historically and still to an extent in the modern day. Often perceived as xenophobia, Lento in fact an open country that is quite happy to embrace foreign cultures. Much of the modern perception, unfortunately, originates from more recent events.

Historical study has a great deal of difficulty understanding the course of Lentoese history owing to both a lack of internal records and skewed external records. Throughout history the Chinese, long the arbiters of East Asian history and historical records, disregarded Lento as a fringe region not worth the attention of the Emperor. Especially with more direct threats from the Tibetans, Vietnamese, Mongolians, and Koreans, the insular and mostly isolationist Lentoese were content to "live and let live", barring some trade. Even that was limited, considering that the Lentoese had little the Chinese considered of value, that the Lentoese were considered unruly barbarians who were separated by a vast tract of ocean, and in general the efforts of the Empire to expand or sinicize were wholly disconnected from the five islands to their east. Furthering the problem, the Lentoese tradition of recording history in oral yukar sagas led many European sources to discount these as unreliable or mythical, and while there are certainly elements of mythologizing they are still an important means of understanding the Lentoese past through their own words.

Even the origins of the Lentoese are poorly-understood. Most believe that the Lentoese are the direct descendants of the original inhabitants who populated the isles during the Last Glacial Maximum, but cultural studies instead support the theory that the modern Lentoese are the result of influence coming from both the north and south. The first wave from the south consisted of the Wajin (who the Lentoese call the Sisam), ethnic relatives of the Koreans and Chinese who migrated into the isles around 1000 BCE and who settled the southernmost isle of Hebashir alongside the Austronesian culture of the Kapachiri. This migration met fierce resistance and did not expand beyond this southernmost isle, but importantly it introduced the two innovations of rice farming and metalworking from the mainland. The second wave, less well-understood, came during the 5th Century CE. This "Okhotsk Culture" was evidently in conflict with the Lentoese for many years, but over time they were integrated into their culture and society in such a way that it left a permanent impact on Lentoese language and culture.

Lento prior to the modern era has gone through a number of eras that are often given poetic names, one such era being that of the Ruporo Era (sometimes translated as "Defrosting" or "Great Thaw"). In this period Lento was organized into 16 (sometimes counted as 18) minor states led by hereditary monarchs, two of which were the Wajin and Kapachiri of the south. Initially thought of as a time of conflict in which the states vied for dominance, the modern understanding has evolved to one of cooperative co-existence. That is, while there certainly were wars and efforts by each to assert their primacy, in general Lento prior to the 1200s appears to have been primarily a less violent area in which wars were not as common as mainland Asia with the constant cycle of rising and falling dynasties and the efforts of various Chinese dynasties to assert themselves over the region. It is in this early period when the Chinese applied the name Néngde, using a now-outdated character for the term "bear" in reference to their hirsute appearance.

There is no firm evidence for a unified Lentoese state prior to the arrival of the Mongols. In 1275, while the Yuan Dynasty had been working to subjugate Korea, raids by Wajin and Lentoese pirates prompted Kublai Khan to declare a campaign into the Lentoese islands. Landing at Dazafu the campaign was severely complicated by Lento's mountainous terrain, the fierce resistance of the Lentoese, and the Mongols' own inefficacy at sea. In this period the leader Koshamain is said to have led the main resistance, only being defeated after being betrayed by one of his own soldiers and stabbed with a dagger laced with aconite. Nonetheless after 6 years of prolonged war the Lentoese were finally subjugated in 1281, after which the Yuan created a puppet government that became the first unified polity to govern the islands under the leadership of a man named Onibishi. Regarded as the first "King of Lento", the regime (known as the Kinakokka Era, literally "Bent Knee Era") was nonetheless constantly plagued by struggles to subdue the constantly restless country, which reacted with unending hostility to the new government.

This came to an end in 1361, as the ongoing collapse of the Yuan Dynasty allowed the rebel leader Shakushain to rise against the "Hae Government" and topple it in favor of a more purely Lentoese regime. The rebellion and subsequent reassertion of Lentoese independence unified the isles from Karputyashir in the north to Hebashir in the south, starting the Epuyke Era (lit. "Blossoming Era"), a time when Lentoese culture flourished and the (initially) more reconciliatory government of the Ming severely lessened tributary demands and allowed the Lentoese to attend to their own affairs. This wasn't out of some friendship towards Lento and more the result of the Ming focusing their attention back inwards, exemplified in the same isolationism that closed its ports and sent the Dutch and Portuguese across the waters to open trade with the Lentoese. Although the Lentoese had little in the way of tradeable goods compared to China, outside of some local curios, foodstuffs to resupply, and a willingness to buy the products that Europe had to offer.

Trade through the southern ports of Hebashir soon spread to trade across Chupkashir, Poroshir, and Kamuyshir as well. In this period the country was more open to European trade than neighboring China, which allowed it to economically and culturally prosper while China stagnated well into the decline and fall of the Ming Dynasty. As the Qing rose and consolidated power their focus turned primarily to land-based expansionism, seizing power over Tibet and Mongolia while pushing Vietnam, Korea, and neighboring states into tributary status. Only one attempt was made to do the same to Lento, but by that time the Lentoese had improved their naval capacity and their superior European-derived weapons allowed them to turn the Qing forces back. Following this the Qing never pursued any effort to subjugate Lento, though internal communications and documents illustrate that the Qing had aspirations to do so as late as the mid-19th Century, though by then it was impossible such a thing could have been accomplished.

Despite repeatedly demonstrating the capacity to defend themselves, this did not stop foreign elements from constantly making efforts to make inroads. Although Portugal and the Netherlands never did, the Russians, arriving in the Far East by the 1600s, had other thoughts. While the initial reaction was friendly and courteous, as Russian presence in the east developed and started to carve spheres of influence into China, their focus began to turn towards Lento as a means to this end. With a series of treaties, Russia began to steadily work its way into Lento's politics and economy until it operated an effective monopoly. After some protests, the Russians agreed to renegotiate the agreement. However, when translation differences in the Lentoese and Russian versions of the treaty revealed that Lento was effectively giving up almost all diplomatic power to Russia, the Russo-Lentoese War broke out. From 1871 to 1875, Russia struggled to overtake the smaller nation but faced a humiliating defeat despite ostensibly winning most every battle on land.

As the Lentoese were able to assert their independence, their industrialization slowly brought them to a position of parity in the world even as China was nearly divided up into colonies and Korea became a French protectorate. One of the few nations in the region to escape colonization, the steady development of Lento as an industrial power was stymied by a lack of natural resources but at the same time their ability to develop and remain independent made them an unusual thing: an independent "Middle Power" in the world at a time when most nations were either imperial powers or colonies, puppets, or protectorates thereof. This allowed them to remain neutral in World War I, although not from its effects. Two major events took place at this time: the fall of the Russian Empire, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Both had been long in decline and both now fell to pieces through the war's efforts, with Russia coming under a communist regime and China entering an ostensibly republican period of warlordism.

These two threats steadily presented themselves to Lento, who were confident in the efforts of the world's powers to police aggression by the revanchist states. Yet although the Soviet Union began to withdraw into itself, China began to grow aggressive and revanchist. Stamping out the warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang government began to emerge as a force desperate to rebuild its stature in the world. This took the form of invading Tibet in 1929, followed by an invasion of Korea in 1934, and finally an invasion of Lento in 1937. With China aligning itself to the Rome-Berlin Axis, Lento was seen as "too pro-western" in China's eyes, and with the efforts to build an "Asia for Asians" they wanted to bring it to heel. For the next 8 years an ongoing invasion once again subjugated the isles, but constant partisan resistance and the mountainous terrain again hampered the Chinese. The Sino-Lentoese War soon merged with World War II as a whole, and the Lentoese were treated as one of the "First Victims of Axis Aggression".

In this sphere the war's end in 1945 was mostly a Lentoese self-liberation. The Great Struggle (Porotumi) as it was known was carried out primarily by Lentoese partisans and resistance forces who threw out the Chinese with the assistance of American and Soviet bombings and arms being dropped into the country. Even before the Soviets began their full-on invasion of China in 1944, the Lentoese had control of the northernmost isles and were beginning the Great March South to push out the Chinese forces. When the cities of Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Tianjin were subjected to atomic bombardment, the Chinese forces in Lento surrendered en masse, and the country was liberated long before the planned Operation Coronet to liberate the country via allied invasion.

In the years that followed an orgy of anti-Sinicism swept the country. Chinese cultural practices, Chinese political ideologies, and even Chinese characters were rendered non grata in Lento, with the government wholly remaking its management of the Lentoese language by using the Latin Alphabet, and creating a Federal Republic explicitly based on the United States and rejecting Chinese institutions of government. This is the Lento that persists to today, which in the aftermath of the war recovered with the assistance of the United States and Soviet Union. While China has also recovered, and began a massive period of economic revival that led it into becoming the world's second-largest economy, in the 21st Century China stagnates while Lento prospers demographically and economically. Considered a developing secondary power in the world, many expect tiny little Lento to be on-track to overtake China in terms of economic weight and even soft cultural power by 2050.

There are many theories for why this is, ranging from Lentoese ingenuity to an embrace of foreign cultures and ideas, but there is little to truly explain the kind of "historical model" that Lento represents. It is almost wholly unique in the world yet clearly still of it, part of the great cycles of diplomacy and economy that have shaped the world for the last 200 years. Nonetheless, whether Lento is something unique in the world or simply one nation among many hardly matters as far as Lento itself is concerned. Above all else, as has always been the case, the Lentoese prefer largely to view themselves as their own entity, a separate people in a separate culture in a separate nation, with all efforts taken to counter any opposition to this idea. And yet despite ostensibly being a breeding ground for xenophobia, the Lentoese welcome the world in, with immigration higher than most neighboring East Asian nations. There eventually comes a point when the historians just say "hang it all" and just leave Lento to its own matters. And for the Lentoese, this is perhaps the most desirable outcome.